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ENGLAND - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Apart from traces of decoration on standing stones and the “transplanted” art of Roman occupation, the history of sculpture in England is rooted in the Christian church. Monumental crosses of carved stone, similar to the Celtic crosses of Ireland, represent the earliest sculpture of Anglo-Saxon Christians. The tradition of relief carving attained its highest expression in the stonework of the Gothic cathedrals.
        
        The influences of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture on the Continent were slow to reach England. What borrowings there were prior to the 18th century remained ill-conceived and crudely executed. From the 1730s, however, the presence of first-rate foreign artists, together with the flowering of archaeology and the resulting accessibility of antique art, brought a new refinement to English sculpture.
        
        While the Romantic movement of the 19th century, which assailed the academic restraint of Neoclassicism in all the arts, invested continental sculpture with an increasing subjectivity, as well as a broader range of subject matter, the sculptors of England pursued a more conservative path. Many free-standing public monuments date from this period.
    - - Painting in England emerged under the auspices of the church. From the 8th to the 14th century the illumination of Gospel manuscripts developed from essentially abstract decoration derived from Celtic motifs to self-contained pictorial illustration more in keeping with the style of the European continent. In the 15th century, Italian innovations in perspective and composition began to appear in English work. The advent of printing during this period, however, rendered the labour-intensive illumination increasingly rare. English painting remained largely unaffected by the concerns of the Renaissance, and it was not until the 1630s, when Charles I employed the Flemish Baroque painters Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck in his court, that a broader artistic current reached England’s shores. Even so, provincial themes and the genres of portrait and landscape continued to preoccupy English painters for the next 150 years.
    - - Theatre is probably the performing art for which England is best known. Theatrical performance as such emerged during the Middle Ages in the form of mumming plays. Under the influence of Christianity, mumming plays gradually were absorbed by mystery plays (centred on the Passion of Christ).
        That England remains one of the foremost contributors to world theatre can be seen in its lively theatrical institutions, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company (1864; reorganized in 1961 by Peter Hall), the Royal National Theatre (1962), regional theatres such as the Bristol Old Vic, and the great number of theatres that flourish in London’s celebrated West End district.
  - - - Little is known of English literature before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, though echoes of England’s Celtic past resound in Arthurian legend. Anglo-Saxon literature, written in the Old English language, is remarkably diverse.
      - The Elizabethan era of the late 16th century fostered the flowering of the European Renaissance in England and the golden age of English literature. The plays of William Shakespeare achieve a depth of characterization and richness of invention that have fixed them in the dramatic repertoire of virtually every language.
      - Political and religious conflicts of the 17th century provided a backdrop for a wealth of poetry.
      - English literature in the 20th century was remade by native writers such as Virginia Woolf and popular novelists such as Agatha Christie fed the English love for mysteries and police procedurals.
      - The dichotomy of Classicism and Romanticism as well as of reason and imagination came to dominate the 18th century. Also during this period, the novel emerged as a form capable of bringing everyday life into the province of literature, as can be seen in the work of Jane Austen. The Brontë sisters also appeared in this century.
      - In the mid to late 19th century, English literature increasingly addressed social concerns. Many writers also found a new audience in children, giving rise to work such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and generating later classics such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.