English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World

When Victoria became queen, in 1837, English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age w...

HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. The Revolution of 1688, which banished the last of the Stuart kings and called William of Orange to the throne, marks the end of the long struggle for pol...

The first half of the nineteenth century records the triumph of Romanticism in literature and of democracy in government; and the two movements are so closely associated, in so...

POLITICAL SUMMARY. In the Age of Elizabeth all doubt seems to vanish from English history. After the reigns of Edward and Mary, with defeat and humiliation abroad and persecutio...

BEOWULF. Here is the story of Beowulf, the earliest and the greatest epic, or heroic poem, in our literature. It begins with a prologue, which is not an essential part of the st...

THE PURITAN MOVEMENT. In its broadest sense the Puritan movement may be regarded as a second and greater Renaissance, a rebirth of the moral nature of man following the intellec...

banished from Paradise, and the archangel Michael is sent to execute the sentence. At the end of the book, after Eve's feminine grief at the loss of Paradise, Michael begins a p...

HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. It seems a curious contradiction, at first glance, to place the return of Charles II at the beginning of modern England, as our historians are wont to do;...

HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. Two great movements may be noted in the complex life of England during the fourteenth century. The first is political, and culminates in the reign of Edwa...

THE NORMANS. The name Norman, which is a softened form of Northman, tells its own story. The men who bore the name came originally from Scandinavia,--bands of big, blond, fearle...

POLITICAL CHANGES. The century and a half following the death of Chaucer (1400-1550) is the most volcanic period of English history. The land is swept by vast changes, inseparab...

THE SHELL AND THE BOOK. A child and a man were one day walking on the seashore when the child found a little shell and held it to his ear. Suddenly he heard sounds,--strange, lo...

invocation for light and divine guidance. Then begins the account of Satan and the rebel angels, their banishment from heaven, and their plot to oppose the design of the Almight...

Political Summary. Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age. The Non-Dramatic Poets. Edmund Spenser. Minor Poets. Thomas Sackville. Philip Sidney. George Chapman. Michael Drayton....

History of the Period. Literary Characteristics. The Classic Age. Alexander Pope. Jonathan Swift. Joseph Addison. "The Tatler" and "The Spectator." Samuel Johnson. Boswell's "Li...

Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics. Poets of the Victorian Age. Alfred Tennyson. Robert Browning. Minor Poets of the Victorian Age. Elizabeth Barrett. Rossetti. Morris...

The Puritan Movement. Changing Ideals. Literary Characteristics. The Transition Poets. Samuel Daniel. The Song Writers. The Spenserian Poets. The Metaphysical Poets. John Donne....

Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics of the Age. The Poets of Romanticism. William Wordsworth. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Robert Southey. Walter Scott. Byron. Percy Bysshe...

Our First Poetry. "Beowulf." "Widsith." "Deor's Lament." "The Seafarer." "The Fight at Finnsburgh." "Waldere." Anglo-Saxon Life. Our First Speech. Christian Writers. Northumbria...

The Normans. The Conquest. Literary Ideals of the Normans. Geoffrey of Monmouth. Work of the French Writers. Layamon's "Brut." Metrical Romances. The Pearl. Miscellaneous Litera...