Part One The Anglo-Saxon Period 1
Chapter 1 The Early Invasions of the British Isles 1
Chapter 2 Anglo-Saxon Literature 2
2.1 Poetry 2
2.2 Prose 4
Part Two The Medieval Age 7
Chapter 3 Anglo-Norman Literature 7
3.1 Norman Conquest 7
3.2 Literature 7
Chapter 4 Literature in the Age of Chaucer 9
4.1 William Langland 10
4.2 Geoffrey Chaucer 10
Chapter 5 Literature in the 15th Century 13
5.1 Popular Ballads 13
5.2 Sir Thomas Malory 14
Part Three The Renaissance Period 18
Chapter 6 English Renaissance 18
6.1 Background 18
6.2 Renaissance 18
Chapter 7 Poetry in the Renaissance Period 20
7.1 Sir Thomas Wy 20
7.2 Henry Howard,Earl of Surrey 21
7.3 Sir Philip Sidney 21
7.4 Edmund Spenser 23
Chapter 8 Prose in the Renaissance Period 26
8.1 Sir Thomas More 26
8.2 John Lyly 27
8.3 Thomas Nashe 28
8.4 Francis Bacon 30
Chapter 9 Drama in the Renaissance Period 31
9.1 English Drama 31
9.2 Thomas Kyd 32
9.3 Christopher Marlowe 33
9.4 William Shakespeare 36
9.5 Ben Jonson 46
Part Four The Period of Revolution and Restoration 55
Chapter 10 Historical Context 55
Chapter 11 Literature in the Period of Revolution 56
11.1 Literary Characteristics 56
11.2 Metaphysical Poets 56
11.3 Cavalier Poets 61
11.4 John Milton 62
Chapter 12 Literature in the Period of Restoration 65
12.1 Literary Characteristics 65
12.2 John Bunyan 66
12.3 John Dryden 68
12.4 The Restoration Theater 72
Part Five The Age of Enlightenment 78
Chapter 13 Introduction 78
13.1 Background 78
13.2 Enlightenment 79
13.3 Literature 80
Chapter 14 Neoclassical School 81
14.1 Alexander Pope 82
14.2 Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele 86
14.3 Samuel Johnson 87
14.4 James Boswell 89
Chapter 15 Fiction of Realistic Tradition 89
15.1 Daniel Defoe 90
15.2 Jonathan Swift 93
15.3 Henry Fielding 96
15.4 Tobias George Smollett 101
Chapter 16 Sentimentalist Novels 104
16.1 Samuel Richardson 104
16.2 Laurence Sterne 108
16.3 Oliver Goldsmith 111
Chapter 17 Poetry of Pre-Romanticism and Sentimentalism 114
17.1 Pre-Romanticism 114
17.2 Sentimentalism 115
17.3 Representative Poets 115
Chapter 18 Drama in the 18th Century 125
Part Six The Romantic Period 136
Chapter 19 English Romanticism 136
19.1 Background 136
19.2 Romanticism 136
19.3 Literature 137
Chapter 20 Romantic Poetry 138
20.1 Representative Poets of the First Generation 138
20.2 Representative Poets of the Second Generation 148
Chapter 21 Fiction in the Romantic Age 162
21.1 Sir Walter Scott 162
21.2 Jane Austen 168
Chapter 22 Essays in the Romantic Age 170
22.1 Charles Lamb 170
22.2 William Hazlitt 172
22.3 James Henry Leigh Hunt 174
22.4 Thomas Penson De Quincey 174
Part Seven The Period of Realism 182
Chapter 23 Critical Realism 182
23.1 Background 182
23.2 Realism 183
23.3 Literary Currents 183
Chapter 24 Critical Realist Novels 184
24.1 Charles Dickens 185
24.2 William Makepeace Thackeray 191
24.3 George Eliot 193
24.4 The Bronte Sisters 198
24.5 Elizabeth Gaskell 202
24.6 George Meredith 203
24.7 Samuel Butler 205
24.8 Thomas Hardy 207
Chapter 25 Victorian Poetry 212
25.1 Alfred,Lord Tennyson 212
25.2 The Brownings 215
25.3 Matthew Arnold 219
Chapter 26 Victorian Essays 221
26.1 Thomas Carlyle 221
26.2 John Stuart Mill 223
26.3 John Ruskin 224
Chapter 27 Literary Trends at the End of the 19th Century 225
27.1 Naturalistic Trend 225
27.2 New Romanticism 227
27.3 Aestheticism and Decadence 228
Part Eight The Early Twentieth Century 238
Chapter 28 Introduction 238
28.1 Background 238
28.2 Literature 239
Chapter 29 Drama in the Early 20th Century 239
Chapter 30 The Edwardians 243
30.1 Arnold Bennett 244
30.2 Rudyard Kipling 246
30.3 John Galsworthy 247
30.4 H.G.Wells 249
30.5 Joseph Conrad 250
30.6 E.M.Forster 252
30.7 Katherine Mansfield 253
Chapter 31 The Georgians and the War Poets 254
31.1 W.H.Davies 254
31.2 Walter de la Mare 255
31.3 Philip Edward Thomas 255
31.4 John Drinkwater 256
31.5 Rupert Brooke 257
31.6 Wilfred Owen 257
31.7 David Jones 259
31.8 Robert von Ranke Graves 259
31.9 Edmund Blunden 260
Chapter 32 The 1920s'Literature 261
32.1 Novel 262
32.2 Poetry 274
Chapter 33 The 1930s'Literature 277
33.1 Poetry 277
33.2 Fiction 286
Part Nine The Postwar Period 303
Chapter 34 Postwar Poetry 303
34.1 The Movement Poetry 303
34.2 Poetry since the 1960s and 1970s 308
34.3 Younger Poets of the Later Period 312
Chapter 35 Postwar Fiction 317
35.1“Angry Young Men” 317
35.2 Other Writers on the Postwar Literary Scene 325
Chapter 36 Postwar Drama 343
36.1 Samuel Barclay Beckett 344
36.2 Harold Pinter 348
36.3 Sir Tom Stoppard 350
36.4 John James Osborne 353
36.5 Sir Arnold Wesker 355
Glossary 363
Key to Exercises 418
Appendix Ⅰ List of Nobel Laureates in Literature 431
Appendix Ⅱ List of Poets Laureate of the UK 442
Appendix Ⅲ List of Recipients of the Golden PEN Award in English Literature 444
Appendix Ⅳ List of Winners of the Booker Prize for Fiction 445
Appendix Ⅴ Periods in British History 448
References 460