Archive for the ‘British Literature’ Category

Great Works / Great Authors – Part 2

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Most of us today are quite comfortable in talking about ourselves. Indeed, having “an identity crisis” is rather common. But, in Elizabethan Francis Bacon’s day, it was unusual to talk about oneself so much. Yet, Bacon does so with reckless abandon. The following is an excerpt from his ESSAYS.

An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd thing in an orchard or garden. And certainly men that are great lovers of themselves waste the public. Divide with reason between self-love and society; and be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others; specially to thy king and country. It is a poor centre of a man’s actions, himself. It is right earth. For that only stands fast upon his own centre; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens move upon the centre of another, which they benefit. The referring of all to a man’s self is more tolerable in a sovereign prince; because themselves are not only themselves but their good and evil is at the peril of the public fortune. But it is a desperate evil in a servant to a prince, or a citizen in a republic. For whatsoever affairs pass such a man’s hands, he crooke th them to his own ends; which must needs be often eccentric to the ends of his master or state. Therefore let princes, or states, choose such servants as have not this mark; except they mean their service should be made but the accessory. That which maketh the effect more pernicious is that all proportion is lost. It were disproportion enough for the servant’s good to be preferred before the master’s; but yet it is a greater extreme, when a little good of the servant shall carry things against a great good of the master’s. And yet that is the case of bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other false and corrupt servants; which set a bias upon their bowl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their master’s great and important affairs. And for the most part, the good such servants receive is after the model of their own fortune; but the hurt they sell for that good is after the model of their master’s fortune. And certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs; and yet these men many times hold credit with their masters, because their study is but to please them and profit themselves; and for either respect they will abandon the good of their affairs. Wisdom for a man’s self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox,20that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they could devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are sui amantes, sine rivali [lovers of themselves without a rival] are many times unfortunate. And whereas they have all their times sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they sought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned.

Read Bacon and reflect on our own culture’s penchant to navel gaze!

Great Works / Great Authors

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Most British anthologies, unfortunately, emphasize Shakespeare to the exclusion of others. One overlooked writer is Ben Jonson.

His contemporaries characterized Ben Jonson as “a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others.” He gave evidence of his narcissism by publishing his collected works in 1616 – an unpreecedented event. But he had reason to boast. Jonson – a friend of Shaakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh, Bacon, and John Donne – was a great writter in his own right. Many think that he was the greatest English writer of the Elizabethan period. Period. Better than Shakespeare or Marlowe or anyone else (JP Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2005)).

Everyone read’s Jonson’s elegy for William Shakespeare–and it is great. But my favorite is Jonson’s poem for his deceased son.

On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
Seven years tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, “Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

The Noble Nature
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night –
It was the plant and flower of Light
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Beautiful!

Great Literature – Part 4

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

The problem of evil in Western thought is a real one. The problem of evil arises (1) from the loss of a sense of God’s presence in the face of evil or suffering and (2) from an apparent conflict between the language used to describe God (e.g., all powerful, all good, and all wise) and that used to describe the world as being characterized by evil and suffering. The solution proffered by the Book of Job is that of evoking such a sense of awe around the created universe that, discovering in this way a renewed sense of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, one accepts both evil and good and contents himself verbally by acknowledging a final incomprehensibility. The issue is God’s omnipotence vs. God’s impotence, God’s sovereignty vs. God’s incompetence. Do Job’s conclusions satisfy you? Why or why not?

This sort of question is at the heart of Shakespeare’s MACBETH.

Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s best tragedies, is the story of how a man’s debility first brought him puissance, and then destruction. We meet one of the greatest heroes in Western literature – Banquoo – and one of the most diabolical villains – Lady Macbeth – whose chicanery would rival the most malevolent Walt Disney miscreant. The story is based on historical fact: Holinshed’s Chronicles recounts a similar story of Scottish treachery.

Here are some of the Bible application questions in my text (J. P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2005).

Biblical Application
A. Banquo is one of the most tragic figures in this play. He is loyal, innocent, and loving. But Macbeth and especially Lady Macbeth know that he must die. Why? In a two-page essay, compare and contrast him to Jonathan, son of Saul and good friend to David.

B. Macbeth and his wife weave their evil plots as if there is no judgment for their actions. They are sadly mistaken. William Willimon, Chaplain to Duke University and an ordained Methodist preacher, tells of a congregant who said to him one day,

When I look at the God of Abraham, I feel I’m=2 0near a real God, not the sort of dignified businesslike, Rotary Club God we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. . . . Abraham’s God could blow a man to bits, give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person and then want more. I want to know that God.

Do you live your life as if there are no consequences? Explain.

C. In Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide to Six Shakespeare Plays, Peter J. Leithart says:

Shakespeare shares the opinion, reflected in different ways in both ancient paganism and in Christianity, that one can lead a good life only in a community, only as he shares that life with others. Christianity teaches that God is One and Three, both a Person and a society of Persons. Man, made in God’s image, reflects that image fully only when he lives in close communion with his fellows, for it is not good for man to be alone. . . . Sin separates human beings.

Macbeth powerfully portrays this process. As Macbeth gives in to sin, he becomes increasingly isolated. Give evidence of this process in the text and illustrate its unfolding in a two- or three-page essay.

Great Literature – Part 3

Monday, April 20th, 2009

My students read SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, author unknown.

No one knows who the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was. All we know is that he was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer – although his alliterative stylle would have been considered barbaric to Chaucer. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1360 – 1400) is a Middle English alliterative romancee written by an anonymous West Midlands poet also credited with The Pearl, Patience, and Purity or Cleanness. The protagonist, Sir Gawain, survives two tests: a challenge, which he alone of King Arthur’s knights accepts, to behead the fearsome Green Knight, and a temptation to commit adultery with the wife of Lord Bertilak – in reality the Green Knight – in whose castle he stays en en route to the chapel. Critics have long complimented its intricate and well-written poetry and its superb portrait of Gawain, an ideal knight who remains fallibly human.

In light of the ambivalence and subjectivity which so flippantly rules our culture, it is refreshing, and informative, to read something like SIR GAWAIN.

May I make one last suggestion: use J. R. R. Tolkein’s translation.

Great Literature – Part 2

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I met Venerable Bede at Harvard Unniversity.

In the winter of 1976, I was sitting in a drafty Harvard Yard building listening to Dr. Williams lecture on a miracle described by the Venerable Bede. Williams was notorious for his criticism of miracles – supernatural hocus-pocus, he called it. But Professor Williamss was sick and needed a miracle. He knew it, too. As he lectured on Venerable Bede, he reached a point in his lecture where he paused and looked out the window at Widener Library. We all sat and waited. “You know,” he finally said, still looking out the frosted window, “I used to laugh at people who believed in miracles.” In good nature, we all laughed with him. “But, now, it is not funny. I need a miracle. I have cancer. And now, laugh at me too, because now I believe in miracles, too.” Funny, isn’t it? We find it easier to believe in a miracle when things are bad. For most of us, the greatest miracle was the day Christ came into our hearts. The Venerable Bede thought that miracles were a natural part of history. Bede was not afraid to admi t that he, himself, needed a miracle. Are you willing to admit to Him that you need a miracle?

The earliest and most important writer of prose was the Venerable Bede, a contemporary of the author of Beowulf. Bede (also spelled Baeda, or Beda; 672/673–735), Anglo-Saxon theologian, hisstorian, and chronologist, is best known today for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), a source vital to the history of the Anglo-Saxon people’s conversion to Christianity. A brilliant man and a devoted Christian, Bede wrote the first extant English history. Many students will find it difficult to read the entire History. Those who persevere, however, will be blessed by the gentle, committed Christian who understood history better than many know.

Read Philippians 3:1-13. When is loss gain? When we surrender our control and our search for security in tangible things, we discover that trusting in God and God’s design is ultimately more satisfying. As a historian, Bede understood and firmly believed that human history was always reconstructed from evidence. B ede understood, and modern historians understand, that history cannot be re-created – only reinterpreted. But Paul is telling us, and Bedee understood, that salvation is out of history. That it is really something new. Something is created that was not here. A new birth. And that is worth more than all the knowledge, money, or prestige in the whole world. What do you want more than anything else in the whole world? To win the World Cup? To be rich? Handsome? To receive a full academic scholarship to Harvard University? What does Paul and the poet Caedmon tell you is of inestimable worth?

If you have not already done so, read Bede’s ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. If you can’t read the whole thing, then at least read his chapter “Caedmon’s Song,” a beautiful story. (Based on James P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashbille, TN: B&H, 2005).

Great Literature

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

There is so much literature that Americans are ignoring. These gems, as it were, are at the heart of our culture. They must not be lost! In the next few weeks, I will review a few of these gold nuggets.

The first is the Anglo-Saxon long narrative poem SEAFARER author unknown.

It was in A.D. 449 that the Jutes, from Denmark, invaded land previously conquered by the Romans and earlier by the Britons, Celts, and Druids. Following the Jutes came the Angles and Saxons. The origins of the Anglo-Saxon peoples are obscure. Scholars believe that they inhabited southern Swed en, the Danish peninsula, and northern Germany (between the Ems River on the west, the Oder River on the east, and the Harz Mountains on the south). The Anglo-Saxons created an English civilization that lasted until 1066 A.D., when William the Conqueror, from Normandy, France, conquered England at the Battle of Hastings. Who were the Anglo-Saxons? They were a Germanic people who loved epic legends and stories about the sea. They loved a good fight but also had a highly developed feeling for beauty. The Anglo-Saxons loved to describe rippling brooks and stunning sunsets. They dominated England’s culture for almost a century.

“True is the tale that I tell of my travels . . .” is the beginning of one of the oldest pieces of literature in the English language (although one would not recognize the language—it is closer to contemporary German). “The Seafarer,” however, written by an unknown Anglo-Saxo n, is quite contemporary in its magnitude of feeling. It is an elegy. Elegies are common in Old English poems. They lament the loss of worldly goods, glory, or human companionship. A contemporary elegy, for instance, might be a story-song performed by the contemporary Christian musician Carmen. One Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Wanderer,” is narrated by a man, deprived of lord and kinsmen, whose journeys lead him to the realization that there is stability and hope only in the afterlife. “The Seafarer” is similar, but its journey motif more explicitly symbolizes the speaker’s spiritual yearnings. In this sense it is Judeo-Christian: Moses and the Children of Israel wander in the wilderness, too. The journey motif is common in Western literature.

In the Old Testament, Moses and the children of Israel wander in the wilderness. But they are not lost. God is leading them.

The Seafarer

This tale is true, and mine. It tells
How the sea took me, swept me back

And forth in sorrow and fear and pain,
Showed me suffering in a hundred ships,
In a thousand ports, and in me. It tells
Of smashing surf when I sweated in the cold
Of an anxious watch, perched in the bow
As it dashed under cliffs. My feet were cast
In icy bands, bound with frost,
With frozen chains, and hardship groaned
Around my heart. Hunger tore
At my sea-weary soul. No man sheltered
On the quiet fairness of earth can feel
how wretched I was, drifting through winter
On an ice-cold sea, whirled in sorrow,
Alone in a world blown clear of love,
Hung with icicles. The hail storms flew.
The only sound was the roaring sea,
the freezing waves. The song of the swan
Might serve for pleasure, the cry of the sea-fowl,
The death-noise of birds instead of laughter,
The mewing of gulls instead of mead.
Storms beat on the rocky cliffs and were echoed
By icy-feathered terns and the eagle’s screams;
No kinsmen could offer comfort there,
To a soul left drowning in desolation.
And who could believe, knowing but
The passion of cities, swelled proud with wine
And no taste of misfortune, how often, how wearily
I put myself back on the paths of the sea.
Night would blacken; it would snow from the north ..
Frost bound the earth and hail would fall,
The coldest seeds. And how my heart
Would begin to beat, knowing once more
The salt waves tossing and the towering sea!
The time for journeys would come and my soul
Called me eagerly out, sent me over
The horizon, seeking foreigner’s homes.
But there isn’t a man on earth so proud,
So born to greatness, so bold with his youth,
Grown so brave, or so graced by God,
That he feels no fear as the sails unfurl,
Wondering what Fate has willed and will do.
No harps ring in his heart, no rewards,
No passion for women, no worldly pleasures,
Nothing, only the ocean’s heave;
But longing wraps itself around him.
Orchards blossom, the towns bloom,
Fields grow lovely as the world springs fresh,
And all these admonish that willing mind
Leaping to journeys, always set
In thoughts traveling on a quickening tide.
So summer’s sentinel, the cuckoo, sings
In his murmuring voice, and our hearts mourn
As he urges. Who could understand,
In ignorant ease, what we others suffer
As the paths of exile stretch endlessly on?
And yet my heart wanders away,
My soul roams with the sea, the whales’
Home, wandering to the widest corners
Of the world, returning ravenous with desire,
Flying solitary, screaming, exciting me
To the open ocean, breaking oaths

On the curve of a wave.
Thus the joys of God
Are fervent with life, where life itself
Fades quickly into the earth. The wealth
Of the world neither reaches to Heaven nor remains.
No man has ever faced the dawn
Certain which of Fate’s three threats
Would fall: illness, or age, or an enemy’s
Sword, snatching the life from his soul.
The praise the living pour on the dead
Flowers from reputation: plant < /div>
An earthly life of profit reaped
Even from hatred and rancor, of bravery
Flung in the devil’s face, and death
Can only bring you earthly praise
And a song to celebrate a place
with the angels, life eternally blessed
In the hosts of Heaven.
The days are gone
When the kingdoms of earth flourished in glory;
Now there are no rulers, no emperors,
No givers of gold, as once there were,
When wonderful things were worked among them
And they lived in lordly magnificence.
Those powers have vanished, those pleasures are dead.
The weakest survives and the world continues,
Kept spinning by toil. All glory is tarnished.
The world’s honor ages and shrinks,
Bent like the men who mold it. Their faces
Blanch as time advances, their beards
Wither and they mourn the memory of friends.
The sons of princes, sown in the dust.
The soul stripped of its flesh knows nothing
Of sweetness or sour, feels no pain,
Bends neither its hand nor its brain. A brother
Opens his palms and pours down gold
On his kinsmen’s grave, strewing his coffin
With treasures intended for Heaven, but nothing
Golden shakes the wrath of God
For a soul overflowing with sin, and nothing
Hidden on earth rises to Heaven.
We all fear God. He turns the earth,
He set it swinging firmly in space,
Gave life to the world and light to the sky.
Anglo-Saxon poetry was spoken before it was written. Poems were memorized by scops who wandered around the countryside chanting their poems in castles and mead halls.

Death leaps at the fools who forget their God.
He who lives humbly has angels from Heaven
To carry him courage and strength and belief.
A man must conquer pride, not kill it,
Be firm with his fellows, chaste for himself,
Treat all the world as the world deserves,
With love or with hate but never with harm,
Though an enemy seek to scorch him in hell,
Or set the flames of a funeral pyre
Under his lord. Fate is stronger
And God mightier than any man’s mind.
Our thoughts should turn to where our home is,
Consider the ways of coming there,
Then strive for sure pe rmission for us
To rise to that eternal joy,
That life born in the love of God
And the hope of Heaven. Praise the Holy
Grace of Him who honored us,
Eternal, unchanging creator of earth. Amen.
–From James P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Broadman & Holman, 2005).

Literature Curricula Contents – 2

Monday, April 13th, 2009

British Literature

A nglo-Saxon Age:
Authors Unknown
“The Seafarer”
Beowulf
Bede, Venerable (673-735)
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731)
Middle Ages:
Authors Unknown
“Bonnie Barbara Allan” (Scottish Folk Ballad)
“Get Up and Bar the Door”
Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340-1400)
Canterbury Tales:
The Prologue,
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,
The Pardoner’s Tale
Author Unknown
Sir Gawain & the Green Knight (late 14th century)
Elizabethan Age: (16th Century)
Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603)
“On Monsieur’s Departure”
“The Doubt of Future Woes”
“Speech to the Troops at Tilbury”
Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599)
The Fairie Queene (1590)
Amoretti:
Sonnet 26: “Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a briar”
Sonnet 75: “One day I wrote her name upon the strand”
Marlowe, Christopher (1564-1593)
Dr. Faustus (1604)
Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618)
“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586)
“To Sleep”
Drayton, Michael (1563-1631)
“Love’s Farewell”
Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619)
“To Sleep”
Campion, Thomas (1562-1619)
“When to Her Lute Corinna Sings”
Whitney, Isabella (ca. 1540-1580)
“The Admonition by the Author to all Young Gentlewomen:
And to20all other Maids being in Love”
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Sonnet 116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Sonnet 29: “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”
Sonnet 55: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments”
Sonnet 73: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”
Macbeth

Cary, Elizabeth (1585–1639)
The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry
Jonson, Ben (1572-1637)
“On My First Son”
“The Noble Nature”
“To the Memory of My Beloved master, William Shakespeare
“A Farewell to the World”
Bacon, Francis (1561–1626)
Essays (1597)
Herbert, Mary Sidney (1561-1621)
“To the Thrice-Sacred Queen Elizabeth”
The English Bible
“Psalm 58”
Seventeenth Century
Cavandish, Margaret (1623-1673)
“An Excuse for So Much Writ upon My Verses”
Donn e, John (1572-1631)
“Go and Catch a Falling Star”
“Holy Sonnet X”
“Holy Sonnet XIV”
“Meditation XVII”
Philips, Katherine (1632-1664)
“To My Excellent Lucasia, on our Friendship, 7th July 65”
Lovelace, Richard (1618-1657)
“To Lucasta. Going to the Wars”
Herbert, George (1593-1633)
“The Collar”
Vaughan, Henry (1622−1695)
“The Retreat”
“Silex”
Herrick, Robert (1591-1674)
“To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”
Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)
“Bermudas”
“To His Coy Mistress”
Milton, John (1608-1674)
“O Nightingale”
“How Soon Hath Time”
“To a Virtuous Young Lady
“When I Consider How My Light is Spent”
“L’Allegro
“Il Penseroso”
Paradise Lost (1667)
Killigrew,20Anne (ca. 1660—1685)
“Upon Being Contented with a Little”
Dryden, John (1631-1700)
“An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
“A Song for St. Cecelia’s Day
Eighteenth Century
d’Arbla y, Frances Burney (1752–1840)
aka Fannie Burney
Evelina (1778)
Cecelia (1782)
Defoe, Daniel (1660-1731)
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Robinson, Mary Darby (1758-1800)
“London’s Summer Morning”
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
“The Rape of the Lock” (1712)
Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
“An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity” (1708)
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
A Modest Proposal (1729)
Goldsmith, Oliver (ca. 1730-1774)
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784) -British
“Mr. Johnson’s Preface to his Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays”
“The Vanity of Human Wishes”
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)
The Rivals (1775)
Burns, Robert (1759—1796)
“A Man’ s a Man for A’ That”
“O, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose”
“Till a’ the Seas Gang Dry”
“To a Mouse”
Blake, William (1757-1827)
“How Sweet I Roam’d From Field to Field”
“And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time”
“The Clod and the Pebble”
“The Lamb”
“The Tiger”
Nineteenth Century
Williams, Helen Maria (1762-1827)
“A Song”
Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
“London, 1802”
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
“To the Cuckoo”
“To a Skylark”
“Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
“Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known”
“The Tables Turned”
“Lines Written in Early Spring”
Wordsworth, Dorothy (1771-1855)
The Grasmere Journals (1897)
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1796)
Byron, Lord (1788-1824)
“Don Juan”
“The Prisoner of Chillon”
“She Walks in Beauty”
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
“Kubla Khan”
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
“Ozymandias”
“To a Skylark”
Keats, John (1795-1821)
“Bright Star”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn0
“Ode to a Nightingale”
“Posthuma”
Bronte, Charlotte (1816-1854)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Shelley, Mary (1797- 1851)
Frankenstein (1818)
Austen, Jane (1775–1817)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Browning, Robert (1812-1889)
“Prospice”
“The Lost Leader”
& nbsp; “My Last Duchess Ferrara”

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861)
“Sonnet XIV”
“Sonnet I”
“Sonnet XLII”
Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Coleridge, Mary Elizabe th (1861-1907)
“The Witch”
Newman, John Henry (1801-1890)
“The Idea of a University”
Tennyson, Alfred Lord (1809-1892)
“Break, Break, Break”
“The Charge of the Light Brigade”
“Ulysses”
“Crossing the Bar”
Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)

Twentieth Century
Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924)
Lord Jim (1900)

Smith, Stevie (Florence Margaret Smith) (1902-1971)
“Not Wavering but Drowning”
Mansfield, Katherine (1888-1923)
“Miss Brill”
Joyce, James (1882-1941)
“Araby”

Wilde, Oscar=2 0(1854-1900)
“The Selfish Giant” (1888)

Saki (H.H. Munro) (1870-1916)
“The Bag”
Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)
“Without Benefit of Clergy” (1919)
Lawrence, D.H. (1885—1930)
9 CThe Rocking Horse Winner” (1926)
Sayers, Dorothy (1893-1957)
Are Women Human? The Human-Not-Quite Human (1938)
Housman, A.E. (1859-1936)
“Terence, This is Stupid Stuff” (1896)
“The Loveliest of Trees”
“Be Still My Soul”

Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918)
“Greater Love”
Brooke, Rupert (1887-1915)
“The Fish”
McCrae, John (1872-1918)
“In Flanders Fields” (1919)
Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939)
“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”
“When You are Old”
“The Second Coming”
“The White Swans at Coole”
“Byzantium”

Lewis, C.S. (1898-1963) -Irish
Mere Christianity (1952)
Tolkien, J.R.R. (1892 –1973)
The Lord of the Rings (1954)

British Literature

Friday, August 1st, 2008

Anglo-Saxon Age:

Authors Unknown
“The Seafarer”
Beowulf

Bede, Venerable (673-735)
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731)

Middle Ages:

Authors Unknown
“Bonnie Barbara Allan” (Scottish Folk Ballad)
“Get Up and Bar the Door”

Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340-1400)
Canterbury Tales:
The Prologue,
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,
The Pardoner’s Tale

Author Unknown
Sir Gawain & the Green Knight (late 14th century)

Elizabethan Age: (16th Century)

Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603)
“On Monsieur’s Departure”
“The Doubt of Future Woes”
“Speech to the Troops at Tilbury”

Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599)
The Fairie Queene (1590)
Amoretti:
Sonnet 26: “Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a briar”
Sonnet 75: “One day I wrote her name upon the strand”

Marlowe, Christopher (1564-1593)
Dr. Faustus (1604)

Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618)
“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”

Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586)
“To Sleep”

Drayton, Michael (1563-1631)
“Love’s Farewell”

Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619)
“To Sleep”

Campion, Thomas (1562-1619)
“When to Her Lute Corinna Sings”

Whitney, Isabella (ca. 1540-1580)
“The Admonition by the Author to all Young Gentlewomen:
And to all other Maids being in Love”

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Sonnet 116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Sonnet 29: “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”
Sonnet 55: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments”
Sonnet 73: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”
Macbeth

Cary, Elizabeth (1585?1639)
The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry

Jonson, Ben (1572-1637)
“On My First Son”
“The Noble Nature”
“To the Memory of My Beloved master, William Shakespeare
“A Farewell to the World”

Bacon, Francis (1561?1626)
Essays (1597)

Herbert, Mary Sidney (1561-1621)
“To the Thrice-Sacred Queen Elizabeth”

The English Bible
“Psalm 58”

Seventeenth Century

Cavandish, Margaret (1623-1673)
“An Excuse for So Much Writ upon My Verses”

Donne, John (1572-1631)
“Go and Catch a Falling Star”
“Holy Sonnet X”
“Holy Sonnet XIV”
“Meditation XVII”

Philips, Katherine (1632-1664)
“To My Excellent Lucasia, on our Friendship, 7th July 65”

Lovelace, Richard (1618-1657)
“To Lucasta. Going to the Wars”

Herbert, George (1593-1633)
“The Collar”

Vaughan, Henry (1622−1695)
“The Retreat”
“Silex”

Herrick, Robert (1591-1674)
“To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”

Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)
“Bermudas”
“To His Coy Mistress”

Milton, John (1608-1674)
“O Nightingale”
“How Soon Hath Time”
“To a Virtuous Young Lady
“When I Consider How My Light is Spent”
“L’Allegro
“Il Penseroso”
Paradise Lost (1667)

Killigrew, Anne (ca. 1660?1685)
“Upon Being Contented with a Little”

Dryden, John (1631-1700)
“An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
“A Song for St. Cecelia’s Day

Eighteenth Century

d’Arblay, Frances Burney (1752?1840)
aka Fannie Burney
Evelina (1778)
Cecelia (1782)

Defoe, Daniel (1660-1731)
Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Robinson, Mary Darby (1758-1800)
“London’s Summer Morning”

Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
“The Rape of the Lock” (1712)

Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
“An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity” (1708)
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
A Modest Proposal (1729)

Goldsmith, Oliver (ca. 1730-1774)
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784) -British
“Mr. Johnson’s Preface to his Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays”
“The Vanity of Human Wishes”

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)
The Rivals (1775)

Burns, Robert (1759?1796)
“A Man’s a Man for A’ That”
“O, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose”
“Till a’ the Seas Gang Dry”
“To a Mouse”

Blake, William (1757-1827)
“How Sweet I Roam’d From Field to Field”
“And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time”
“The Clod and the Pebble”
“The Lamb”
“The Tiger”

Nineteenth Century

Williams, Helen Maria (1762-1827)
“A Song”

Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
“London, 1802”
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
“To the Cuckoo”
“To a Skylark”
“Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
“Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known”
“The Tables Turned”
“Lines Written in Early Spring”

Wordsworth, Dorothy (1771-1855)
The Grasmere Journals (1897)

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1796)

Byron, Lord (1788-1824)
“Don Juan”
“The Prisoner of Chillon”
“She Walks in Beauty”

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
“Kubla Khan”
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
“Ozymandias”
“To a Skylark”

Keats, John (1795-1821)
“Bright Star”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
“Ode to a Nightingale”
“Posthuma”

Bronte, Charlotte (1816-1854)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Shelley, Mary (1797- 1851)
Frankenstein (1818)

Austen, Jane (1775?1817)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Browning, Robert (1812-1889)
“Prospice”
“The Lost Leader”
“My Last Duchess Ferrara”

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861)
“Sonnet XIV”
“Sonnet I”
“Sonnet XLII”

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth (1861-1907)
“The Witch”

Newman, John Henry (1801-1890)
“The Idea of a University”

Tennyson, Alfred Lord (1809-1892)
“Break, Break, Break”
“The Charge of the Light Brigade”
“Ulysses”
“Crossing the Bar”

Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)

Twentieth Century

Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924)
Lord Jim (1900)

Smith, Stevie (Florence Margaret Smith) (1902-1971)
“Not Wavering but Drowning”

Mansfield, Katherine (1888-1923)
“Miss Brill”

Joyce, James (1882-1941)
“Araby”

Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900)
“The Selfish Giant” (1888)

Saki (H.H. Munro) (1870-1916)
“The Bag”

Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)
“Without Benefit of Clergy” (1919)

Lawrence, D.H. (1885?1930)
“The Rocking Horse Winner” (1926)

Sayers, Dorothy (1893-1957)
Are Women Human? The Human-Not-Quite Human (1938)

Housman, A.E. (1859-1936)
“Terence, This is Stupid Stuff” (1896)
“The Loveliest of Trees”
“Be Still My Soul”

Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918)
“Greater Love”

Brooke, Rupert (1887-1915)
“The Fish”

McCrae, John (1872-1918)
“In Flanders Fields” (1919)

Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939)
“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”
“When You are Old”
“The Second Coming”
“The White Swans at Coole”
“Byzantium”

Lewis, C.S. (1898-1963) -Irish
Mere Christianity (1952)

Tolkien, J.R.R. (1892 ?1973)< The Lord of the Rings (1954)