PREFACE TO THE NEW REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION 1
REFERENCES 1
PART ONE EARLY AND MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE 1
1. The Making of England 1
The Britons 1
The Roman Conquest 1
The English Conquest 2
The Social Condition of the Anglo-Saxons 2
Anglo-Saxon Religious Belief and Its Influence 2
2. Beowulf 3
Anglo-Saxon Poetry 3
The Story of Beowulf 3
Analysis of Its Content 4
Features of Beowulf 5
3. Feudal England 5
The Danish Invasion 5
The Norman Conquest 5
The Influence of the Norman Conquest on the English Language 6
Social Feature of the Feudal England 6
The Miseries of the Peasants 7
The Rising of 1381 7
The Content of the Romance 8
The Romance Cycles 8
The Class Nature of the Romance 9
Malory's LeMorte D'Arthur 9
4. Langland 11
Piers the Plowman and Its Author 11
A Picture of Feudal England 11
Artistic Features 15
5. The English Ballads 16
Oral Literature 16
The Ballads 17
The Robin Hood Ballads 17
6. Chaucer 19
Life 19
Chaucer's Literary Career 21
Troilus and Criseyde 21
The Canterbury Tales (13871400) 22
PART TWO THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 27
1. Old England in Transition 27
The New Monarchy 27
The Reformation 27
The English Bible 28
The Enclosure Movement 29
The Commercial Expansion 30
The War with Spain 30
The Renaissance and Humanism 30
William Caxton 31
The Beginning of the English Renaissance 32
2. More 32
Life 32
Utopia 33
Utopia , Book One 33
Utopia , Book Two 35
More's Limitations 37
Engels on the Renaissance 37
3. The Flowering of English Literature 38
The Flourishing of Literature 38
Sidney and Raleigh 39
Edmund Spenser 40
John Lyly 43
Francis Bacon 44
4. Drama 46
The Miracle Play 46
The Morality Play 47
The Interlude 47
The Classical Drama 47
The London Theatre 47
The Audience 48
The Playwrights 49
5. Marlowe 50
Life 50
Work 51
Doctor Faustus 52
Social Significance of Marlowe's Plays 54
Marlowe's Literary Achievement 55
6. Shakespeare 55
Life 55
A Chronological List of Shakespeare's Plays 59
Periods of Shakespeare's Dramatic Composition 60
The Great Comedies 67
The Mature Histories 70
The Great Tragedies 80
Hamlet 84
The Later Comedies 89
The Poems 90
Features of Shakespeare's Drama 91
7. Ben Jonson 93
PART THREE THE PERIOD OF THE ENGLISH BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION 97
1. The English Revolution and the Restoration 97
The Weakening of the Tie Between Monarchy and Bourgeoisie 97
The Clashes Between the King and Parliament 97
The Outburst of the English Revolution 98
The Split within the Revolutionary Camp 98
The Bourgeois Dictatorship and the Restoration 98
The Religious Cloak of the English Revolution 99
Literature of the Revolution Period 99
2. Milton 100
Life and Work 100
Paradise Lost 107
Samson Agonistes 110
Brief Summary 111
3. Bunyan 112
Life 112
The Pilgrim's Progress 114
4. Metaphysical Poets and Cavalier Poets 116
John Donne 116
George Herbert 118
Andrew Marvell 118
Henry Vaughan 119
5. Some Prose-Writers 120
Robert Burton 120
Thomas Browne 120
Jeremy Taylor 121
Izaak Walton 121
6. Restoration Literature 122
Restoration Comedy 122
John Dryden 124
PART FOUR THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 126
1. The Enlightenment and Classicism in English Literature 126
The Enlightenment and 18th Century England 126
Classicism 128
2. Addison and Steele 128
Steele and The Tatler 128
Addison and The Spectator 130
3. Pope 134
Life 134
Work 135
Workmanship and Limitation 137
4. Swift 138
Early Life 138
A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books 139
Bickerstaff Almanac (1708) 140
Gulliver's Travels 140
Pamphlets on Ireland 143
Illness and Death 144
Swift's Style 145
5. Defoe and the Rise of the English Novel 146
The Rise of the English Novel 146
Defoe 147
Defoe's Novels 149
Robinson Crusoe 150
6. Richardson 153
7. Fielding 156
Life 156
Fielding as a Playwright 157
Joseph Andrews 159
Jonathan Wild 162
Tom Jones 164
Summary 168
8. Smollett and Sterne 171
Smollett 171
Sterne 174
9. 18th Century Drama and Sheridan 176
18th Century English Drama 176
Sheridan 178
10. Johnson 180
Life 180
Johnson's Dictionary 181
Boswell's Life of Johnson 183
11. Goldsmith 183
Life 183
Work 184
12. Gibbon 189
Life 189
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 190
13. Sentimentalism and Pre-Romanticism in Poetry 192
Sentimentalism in English Poetry 192
Pre-Romanticism 193
14. Blake 195
Life 195
Songs of Innocence(1789) and Songs of Experienced (1794) 197
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) 200
Blake's Position in English Literature 201
15. Burns 201
Life 201
The Poetry of Burns 203
Features of Burns' Poetry 208
PART FIVE ROMANTICISM IN ENGLAND 210
l. The Romantic Period 210
2. Wordsworth 212
3. Coleridge and Southey 217
Coleridge 217
Southey 221
4. Byron 222
Life 222
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 226
Don Juan 228
5. Shelley 232
Life 232
Queen Mab 235
The Revolt of Islam 237
Prometheus Unbound 238
The Masque of Anarchy and Other Political Lyrics 239
Lyrics on Nature and Love 240
A Defence of Poetry 243
6. Keats 244
Life 244
Long Poems 246
Short Poems 250
7. Lamb 253
Life 254
Lamb's Literary Career 255
The Essays of Elia 256
8. Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt 258
Hazlitt 258
Leigh Hunt 262
9. DeQuincey 263
10. Scott 265
Life 265
His Historical Novels 266
Features of Scott's Historical Novels 269
PART SIX ENGLISH CRITICAL REALISM 271
1. The Rise of Critical Realism in England 271
Social Background 271
Chartist Movement and Chartist Literature 272
English Critical Realism 276
2. Dickens 277
Dickens' Novels 280
The First Period (1836—1841) 280
The Second Period (1842—1850) 287
The Third Period (1851—1870) 295
Dickens:Man and Writer 300
3. Thackeray 303
Life and Work 303
Vanity Fair:A Novel Without a Hero 305
4. Some Women Novelists 308
Jane Austen 309
The Bronte Sisters 310
Mrs. Gaskell 314
George Eliot 316
PART SEVEN PROSE-WRITERS AND POETS OF THE MID AND LATE 19TH CENTURY 321
1. Carlyle 321
Thomas Carlyle 321
Sartor Resartus 323
The French Revolution 324
Heroes and Hero-Worship 325
Past and Present 325
Carlyle as a Literary Critic 326
Engels on Carlyle 326
2. Ruskin and Some Other Prose-Writers 327
Ruskin 327
Arnold 331
Macaulay 334
3. Tennyson 336
Tennyson's Life and Career 336
In Memoriam 337
The Idylls of the King 339
4. The Brownings 341
Browning's Early Life and Career 341
Elizabeth Barrett ( Mrs. Browning) 342
Browning's Main Achievement in Poetry 344
Browning's Short Lyrics 345
5. The Rossettis and Swinburne 348
Dante Gabriel Rossetti 348
Christina Georgina Rossetti(1830—1894) 351
Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat 353
Algernon Charles Swinburne 355
6. William Morris 356
Life 357
A Dream of John Ball 359
News from Nowhere 360
7. Literary Trends at the End of the Century 364
Naturalism 364
Neo-Romanticism 365
Aestheticism 367
PART EIGHT TWENTIETH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE 371
1.The New Century:Social and Historical Background 371
2. English Novel of Early 20th Century 372
The Realists 373
Kipling,Bennett and Conrad 374
Henry James 376
Katharine Mansfield 377
3. Hardy 378
Life and Work 378
Tess of the D'Urbervilles 379
Jude the Obscure 380
4. Galsworthy 381
Life and Work 381
The Forsyte Saga 382
5. The Irish Dramatic Movement 384
The Abbey Theatre and Lady Gregory 384
J. M. Synge 385
O'Casey 385
6. Bernard Shaw 386
Life 386
Dramatic Work 388
Mrs. Warren's Profession 389
Major Barbara 391
Heartbreak House 393
7.Some Poets of Early 20th Century 394
8. Modernism in Poetry 396
Imagism 396
W. B. Yeats 396
T. S. Eliot 399
9. The Psychological Fiction 402
D. H. Lawrence 403
The "Stream of Consciousness" School of Novel 405
James Joyce 406
Virginia Woolf 408
10. Robert Tressell:A Working-Class Novelist 411
11. Marxist Literary Criticism 415
Ralph Fox and The Novel and the People 415
Christopher Caudwell 418
Other Marxist Critics 420
PART NINE POETS AND NOVELISTS WHO WROTE BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR 421
1. Social and Historical Background 421
2. W. H. Auden 423
3. Dylan Thomas 430
4. Hugh MacDiarmid 434
5. E. M. Forster 442
6. Evelyn Waugh 445
7. Graham Greene 448
8. Aldous Huxley 451
Point Counter Point 452
Brave New World 452
9. George Orwell 454
10. William Golding 456
11. Doris Lessing 459