CHAPTER Ⅰ ENGLISH LITERATURE TO THE TIME OF CHAUCER 1
Ⅰ Old English Poetry：Beowulf 1
Ⅱ Old English Prose：Bede and Alfred 5
Ⅲ Chivalry and Romance 8
Ⅳ Folk Tales and Folk Songs 11
CHAPTER Ⅱ CHAUCER AND THE 15TH CENTURY 15
Ⅰ Langland,Wycliffe and the Lollards 15
Ⅱ Chaucer and His Canterbury Tale 19
Ⅲ The Popular Ballad 25
Ⅳ Forms of Early Drama 28
CHAPTER Ⅲ THE RENAISSANCE 31
Ⅰ Humanism in England 31
Ⅱ Non-dramatic Poetry 35
Ⅲ Tudor Prose 37
Ⅳ Predecessors of Shakespeare 41
CHAPTER Ⅳ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 47
Ⅰ Shakespeare and the Renaissance 47
Ⅱ Early Tragedies and Comedies 51
Ⅲ Historical Plays 54
Ⅳ Great Tragedies 57
Ⅴ The Art of Shakespeare 62
CHAPTER Ⅴ THE EARLY 17TH CENTURY 67
Ⅰ Francis Bacon 67
Ⅱ Ben Jonson and John Donne 69
Ⅲ Milton and the English Revolution 73
Ⅳ Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes 78
CHAPTER Ⅵ THE LATE 17TH AND THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY 82
Ⅰ John Bunyan and John Dryden 82
Ⅱ Addison,Steele and Pope 86
Ⅲ Daniel Defoe 88
Ⅳ Jonathan Swift 92
CHAPTER Ⅶ THE MID-18TH CENTURY 96
Ⅰ Richardson,Smollett and Sterne 96
Ⅱ Henry Fielding 100
Ⅲ Johnson and His Circle 104
Ⅳ Poetry：From Neo-Classic to Romantic 109
CHAPTER Ⅷ THE ROMANTIC PERIOD（Ⅰ） 113
Ⅰ Radicalism and Romanticism 113
Ⅱ Wordsworth and Coleridge 117
Ⅲ Sir Walter Scott 120
Ⅳ Jane Austen 124
CHAPTER Ⅸ THE ROMANTIC PERIOD（Ⅱ） 128
Ⅰ George Gordon,Lord Byron 128
Ⅱ Percy Bysshe Shelley 134
Ⅲ John Keats 139
CHAPTER Ⅹ THE VICTORIAN PERIOD（Ⅰ） 145
Ⅰ “Cruel Thirties and Hungry Forties” 145
Ⅱ Charles Dickens 148
Ⅲ William Makepeace Thackeray 154
Ⅳ The Bront？s and Mrs.Gaskell 160
CHAPTER Ⅺ THE VICTORIAN PERIOD（Ⅱ） 166
Ⅰ Tennyson,Browning and Poetic Retreat 166
Ⅱ Carlyle,Ruskin and Huxley 170
Ⅲ George Eliot and Samuel Butler 174
Ⅳ Morris and Socialist Romance 180
CHAPTER Ⅻ SOME MODERN WRITERS 185
Ⅰ Thomas Hardy 185
Ⅱ John Galsworthy 189
Ⅲ H.G.Wells 194
Ⅳ George Bernard Shaw 197