SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

1. Published in March 1722, Daniel Defoe wrote The Journal of the Plague Year. It chronicles an individual's account of the 1665 bubonic plague later called the Great Plague of London. 

2. The Journal of the Plague year was published under the initials H.F. It is speculated that the account is based on the journal of Defoe's uncle Henry Foe.

3. Octasyllable is a line with 8 syllables. Its first appearance can be traced to the 10th-century French legend of an old saint titled Vie de Saint Leger. 

4. Octasyllabic couplet consists of two lines of the same rhyme and meter. It may be iambic or trochaic teterameter lines. (PAPER 2, Q7,2004)

5. Il Penseroso or The Serious Man was first seen in the quarto of verses published in the 1645-46 called  The Poems of Mr. John Milton, both in English and Latin. 

6. Il Penseroso was written in couplets of iambic tetrameter like L' Allegro, its companion piece. The poem invokes the goddess Melancholy.

7. On His Blindness also known as When I Consider How my Light is Spent is a sonnet written in Petrarchan form abba abba cde cde. It is one of the most popular sonnets written by John Milton. It was first seen in Milton's 1673 poems.

8. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont is a sonnet by the English poet John Milton. The poem is based on the Easter Massacre of Waldesians in Piedmont. The troop was sent by Charles Emanuel the Second, Duke of Savoy in April 1655.

9. The Shakespearean Sonnet also known as the English sonnet is of 14 lines. It is divided into three quatrains and a couplet. the rhyming scheme is abab cdcd efef gg . (PAPER 2,Q4,2004)

10.Lycidas, written in 1637, is a pastoral elegy by John Milton. Apperared first in 1638 collection of elegies, it is dedicated to the memory of Edward King. 

11. Edward King, to whom the poem Lycidas is dedicated, was a friend of Milton at Cambridge. He drowned when his ship sank in August 1637.

12. Pastoral is a genre in literature. A pastoral, basically depicts a shepherd's way of life. Close to nature, it depicts herding, changing seasons, green pastures in an idealised manner. It is also known as bucolic. Hesoid's ' Works and Days' is considered to be the first to depict pastoral mannerisms and also to have started the pastoral tradition. 

13. Elegy is a poem of sadness over losing someone to grave. It is written in praise of the dead expressing a sense of loss, also known as lamentation. Milton's Lycidas and Thomas Grey's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard are such exmples. 

14. The Restoration(1660-1710) Comedy of Manners find its roots in the works Greek playwright Menander- the best realisation of  New Comedy Period (325-260 B.C). Later, Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence imitated the Greek playwright. The best depiction of the Comedy of Manners is seen in the plays of French dramatist Moliere- The School for Wives(1662), The Imposter (1664) and The Misanthrope (1666). 

15. The Comedy of Manners as a genre of literature depicts realistically the manners and lifestyle of a highly sophisticated upper class. It a social commentary and satirisation of the hypocracies, fop and conventions the artificial society. The drama is often charactised by wit and humor.

16. The best example of the Restoration Comedy of Manners can be seen Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

17. The adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra can be found in Dryden's All for Love.(PAPER2, Q9, 2004)

18. Philaster also known as Love Lies a Bleeding is an early Stuart play or Jacobean era play by Francis Beaumont and Fetcher. 

19. The play Philaster is a tragicomedy. A tragicomedy has both the aspects of a tragedy and a comedy. It often contains comic elements in a tragic play to lighten the mood. The term is also applied on a serious play with a happy ending. For example- Shakespeare's The Tempest.

20. Romeo and Juliet is a play by Shakespeare about two Italian star-crossed lovers. The play was published in the first quarto in 1597.

21. The plot of Romeo and Juliet is based on the verse translation of an Italian tale by Arthur Brooke's The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet in 1562 and William Painter's prose Palace of Pleasure in 1567. 

22. Principia or the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Issac Newton states Newton's Laws of Motion. 

23. Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan' (1588-1679) published in 1651 is cited as the most representative work on Social Contract Theory. The full title of the work is The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. The title is borrowed from the Hebrew Bible in which Leviathan is a monster. (PAPER 2, Q10, 2004)

24. In Leviathan, Hobbes argues for complete sovereign rule. It was written in the backdrop of English Civil War (1642-1651).

25. The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is a book by Robert Burton. Its subject is melancholia, now known as clinical depression. Burton's sombre tone and heavy quotes was made fun of in Laurence Stern's Tristam Shandy.