Chapter One The Medieval Period 1
1．Introduction 1
1.1 Historical Background 1
1.2 Literature in the Middle Ages 1
2．Geoffrey Chaucer(ca. 1343-1400) 2
3．Selected Writings 3
3.1 Beowulf(an excerpt) 3
3.2 The Twa Corbies(a popular ballad) 4
3.3 The General Prologue(excerpts from The Canterbury Tales) 5
Chapter Two The Elizabethan Age 11
1．Introduction 11
1.1 The Renaissance 11
1.2 The Renaissance in England 12
1.3 Literature of the Renaissance 12
2．Edmund Spenser(1552-1599) 13
3．Francis Bacon(1561-1626) 14
4．Christopher Marlowe(1564-1593) 15
4.1 Life and Career 15
4.2 Dr Faustus(synopsis) 16
5．William Shakespeare(1564-1616) 16
5.1 Life and Career 16
5.2 Major Works 17
5.2.1 Hamlet(synopsis) 17
5.2.2 Macbeth(synopsis) 19
5.2.3 TheMerchant of Venice(synopsis) 20
6．John Donne(1572-1631) 21
7．Selected Writings 21
7.1 The Faerie Queene by Spenser(two excerpts from Canto Ⅰ,Book Ⅰ) 21
7.2 Dr Faustus by Marlowe(an excerpt from Scene Ⅰ,Act Ⅰ) 22
7.3 The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare（an excerpt from ACT Ⅳ) 25
7.4 Hamlet by Shakespeare(An Excerpt from Act Ⅲ） 36
7.5 "Sonnet 18"by Shakespeare 37
7.6 "Sonnet 29"by Shakespeare 38
7.7 "The Flea"by Donne 38
7.8 "The Sun Rising"by Donne 39
7.9 "The Canonization"by Donne 40
7.10 "Death Be Not Proud"by Donne 42
7.11 "Of Studies"by Bacon 42
7.12 "Of Marriage and Single Life"by Bacon 44
Chapter Three The Restoration 46
1．Introduction 46
1.1 The Restoration 46
1.2 Literary Characteristics 46
2．John Mihon(1608-1674) 47
3．John Bunyan(1628-1688) 48
3.1 Life and Career 48
3.2 The Pilgrim's Progress(synopsis) 49
4．John Dryden(1631-1700) 49
5．Selected Writings 50
5.1 ParadiseLost(Excerpts from Book Ⅰ)by Milton 50
5.2 "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"by Milton 52
5.3 "Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint"by Milton 53
5.4 The Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan(An Excerpt from Part Ⅰ) 53
5.5 "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham"by Dryden 56
5.6 "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day"by Dryden 57
Chapter Four The Enlightenment Period 61
1．Introduction 61
1.1 Enlightenment Ideas 61
1.2 Literature during the Enlightenment Period 61
2．Daniel Defoe(1660-1731) 63
2.1 Life and Career 63
2.2 Robinson Crusoe(synopsis) 63
3．Jonathan Swift(1667-1745) 64
3.1 Life and Career 64
3.2 Gulliver's Travels(synopsis) 65
4．Joseph Addison(1672-1719) 66
5．Alexander Pope(1688-1744) 66
6．Samuel Richardson(1689-1761) 67
6.1 Life and Career 67
6.2 Clarissa:or The History of a Young Lady(synopsis) 68
7．Henry Fielding(1707-1754) 68
7.1 Life and Career 68
7.2 Tom Jones(synopsis) 69
8．Samuel Johnson(1709-1784) 69
9．Selected Writings 70
9.1 "A Modest Proposal"by Swift 70
9.2 "Sir Roger at Church"from The Spectator(July 9,1711)by Addison 77
9.3 An Essay on Man:Epistle Ⅱ(an excerpt)by Alexander Pope 79
9.4 "To the Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterfield"by Johnson 80
Chapter Five The Romantic Period 83
1．Introduction 83
1.1 Historical Background 83
1.2 Romanticism 84
1.3 English Romanticism 84
2．William Blake(1757-1827) 85
3．Robert Burns(1759-1796) 86
4．William Wordsworth(1770-1850) 86
5．Walter Scott(1771-1832) 88
5.1 Life and Career 88
5.2 Ivanhoe(synopsis) 88
6．Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834) 89
7．Jane Austen(1775-1817) 90
7.1 Life and Career 90
7.2 Pride and Prejudice(synopsis) 90
8．Charles Lamb(1775-1834) 91
9．George Gordon Byron(1788-1824) 92
10．Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822) 93
11．John Keats(1795-1821) 94
12．Selected Writings 95
12.1 "London"by Blake 95
12.2 "The Tyger"by Blake 95
12.3 "The Chimney Sweeper"by Blake 96
12.4 "A Red,Red Rose"by Burns 97
12.5 "Auld Lang Syne"by Burns 98
12.6 "Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn"by Burns 99
12.7 "For a'that and a'that"by Burns 100
12.8 "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"by Wordsworth 102
12.9 "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud"by Wordsworth 102
12.10 "The Solitary Reaper"by Wordsworth 103
12.11 "To the Cuckoo"by Wordsworth 104
12.12 "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,September 3,1802"by Wordsworth 105
12.13 "London,1802"by Wordsworth 106
12.14 "Kubla Khan"by Coleridge 107
12.15 "Dream Children;a Reverie"by Lamb 108
12.16 "She Walks in Beauty"by Byron 113
12.17 "The Isles of Greece"(from Canto Ⅲ,Don Juan)by Byron 113
12.18 "Ode to the West Wind"by Shelley 117
12.19 "Ozymandias"by Shelley 120
12.20 "To—"by Shelley 121
12.21 "To a Skylark"by Shelley 122
12.22 "Ode to a Nightingale"by Keats 125
12.23 "Ode on a Grecian Urn"by Keats 128
12.24 "On first Looking into Chapman's Homer"by Keats 130
Chapter Six The Victorian Age 131
1．Introduction 131
1.1 Historical Background 131
1.2 Literary Characteristics 131
2．Alfred Lord Tennyson(1809-1892) 133
3．Robert Browning(1812-1889)and Elizabeth Browning(1806-1861) 134
4．Charles Dickens(1812-1870) 135
4.1 Life and Career 135
4.2 David Copperfield(synopsis) 136
5．The Bront？ Sisters 136
5.1 Literary Career 136
5.2 Maior Works 137
5.2.1 Wuthering Heights(synopsis) 137
5.2.2 Jane Eyre（synopsis） 138
6．George Eliot(1819-1880) 140
6.1 Life and Career 140
6.2 Middlemarch(synopsis) 141
7．Thomas Hardy(1840-1928) 142
7.1 Life and Career 142
7.2 Tess of the D'Urbervilles(synopsis) 142
8．George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950) 144
8.1 Life and Career 144
8.2 Mrs.Warren's Profession(synopsis) 144
9．Selected Writings 145
9.1 "Ulysses"by Tennyson 145
9.2 "Break,Break,Break"by Tennyson 147
9.3 "My Last Duchess"by Robert Browning 148
9.4 "Home Thoughts,from the Sea"by Robert Browning 150
9.5 "How Do I Love Thee?Let me Count the Ways."by Elizabeth Browning 151
9.6 "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell"by Charlotte Bronte 151
Chapter Seven The Twentieth Century 158
1．Introduction 158
1.1 Historical Background 158
1.2 Modernism 159
1.3 Literary Characteristics 160
2．Joseph Conrad(1857-1924) 161
2.1 Life and Career 161
2.2 Heart of Darkness(synopsis) 162
3．William Butler Yeats(1865-1939) 162
4．E.M. Forster(1879-1970) 163
4.1 Life and Career 163
4.2 A Passage to India(synopsis) 164
5．James Joyce(1882-1941) 165
5.1 Life and Career 165
5.2 Ulysses(synopsis) 166
6．Virginia Woolf(1882-1941) 167
6.1 Life and Career 167
6.2 To the Lighthouse(synopsis) 168
7．D.H. Lawrence(1885-1930) 168
7.1 Life and Career 168
7.2 Sons and Lovers(synopsis) 169
8．T.S.Eliot(1888-1965) 170
9．Samuel Beckett(1906-1989) 171
10．Wystan Hugh Auden(1907-1973) 172
11．William Golding(1911-1993) 173
11.1 Life and Career 173
11.2 Lord of the Flies(synopsis) 174
12．Doris Lessing(1919-2013) 174
12.1 Life and career 174
12.2 The Golden Notebook(synopsis) 175
13．Sir V.S.Naipaul(1932- ) 175
13.1 Life and Career 175
13.2 A House for Mr.Biswas(synopsis) 176
14．Selected Writings 176
14.1 "Down by the Salley Gardens"by Yeats 176
14.2 "Leda and the Swan"by Yeats 177
14.3 "Sailing to Byzantium"by Yeats 178
14.4 "The Second Coming"by Yeats 179
14.5 "My Wood"by Forster 180
14.6 "Araby"by Joyce 183
14.7 "Dorothy Wordsworth"by Woolf 189
14.8 "The Mark on the Wall"by Woolf 195
14.9 "Tickets,Please"by Lawrence 202
14.10 "Journey of the Magi"by Eliot 212
14.11 "Sweeney among the Nightingales"by Eliot 214
14.12 Waiting for Godot by Beckett(An Excerpt from Act Ⅰ) 215
14.13 "Who's Who"by Auden 223
14.14 "Their Lonely Betters"by Auden 223
14.15 "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"by Auden 224
Bibliography 228