Bastida Rodríguez, Patricia y Paloma Fresno Calleja 2005: English Literature: An Anthology . Colección Materiales Didácticos, nº 114, Servicio de Publicaciones   de la Universitat de las Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca. 401 páginas, ISBN:  84-7632-937-7.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Our intention in compiling this anthology of literary texts has been to offer our students of English Literature I and English Literature II a comprehensive textbook containing all the compulsory reading material required for both courses, as well as some guidelines for the completion of the different assignments that will have to be submitted throughout the academic year. The need to compile this material originated from our awareness of the difficulties both English Literature I and English Literature II present to first and second-year English Philology students, particularly those regarding the understanding and close analysis of literary texts written in a language different from their own.
The selection process has been determined to a great extent by the wide scope of the aforementioned courses, designed as a first approach to the literature produced in the different historical periods from Anglo-Saxon England to the twentieth century. Due to the academic calendar, one of the criteria followed for the selection of texts has been that of relevance. Graded difficulty, in accordance with our students’ literary knowledge, has been another one; nevertheless, several particularly complex texts have also been included due to their importance within the context in which they were produced.
Although the reader can observe the omission in this volume of crucial texts by authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas More, Daniel Defoe, Charlotte Brontë or James Joyce, this is explained by the specific didactic framework of both courses, which also entail the reading of complete works, not included here in extract form. The perceptive reader will probably notice that the arrangement of texts is not strictly chronological; the reason for this is that the order chosen is more dependent on the specific organization of our syllabuses, which are often arranged following criteria like genre, literary movement or author.
Our selection of literary texts is also accompanied by introductions to the specific historical and cultural backgrounds surrounding them, as well as by a glossary of literary terms, a chronology with the most relevant historical and cultural events in each period, a bibliography section, and some guidelines for the completion of the assignments which students are expected to submit throughout the year and perform in the exam. We hope that this volume can prove a helpful tool to our students in their first approach to English literature.

INDEX

PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
GENERAL INTRODUCTION    15
1. OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE    17
Historical and Cultural Background    19
Selected Texts    23
Extracts from Beowulf    23
Extracts from The Battle of Maldon    27
Extracts from The Dream of the Rood    30
Wulfstan: From Sermo Lupi ad Anglos    33
Extracts from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle    36
2. MEDIEVAL LITERATURE    39
Historical and Cultural Background    41
Selected Texts    45
Extracts from The Owl and the Nightingale    45
The Fox and the Wolf in the Well    52
Geoffrey of Monmouth: From History of the Kings of Britain    60
Wace: From Roman de Brut    68
Layamon: From Brut    70
Thomas Malory: From Le Morte Darthur    72
Extracts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight    76
William Langland: From Piers Plowman    89
Extracts from The Flood, York Cycle    91
Extracts from The Castle of Perseverance    99
Julian of Norwich: From Revelations of Divine Love    106
3. SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE    111
Historical and Cultural Background    113
Selected Texts    117
Sir Thomas Elyot. From The Book Named the Governor    117
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: “The Soote Season”    118
Sir Thomas Wyatt: “I find no peace”    119
Sir Philip Sidney: From Astrophil and Stella    119
Edmund Spenser: From Amoretti    121
William Shakespeare: From Sonnets    122
Christopher Marlowe: From Doctor Faustus    124
William Shakespeare: From A Midsummer Night’s Dream    129
William Shakespeare: From Henry V    133
William Shakespeare: From Hamlet    135
Thomas Nashe: From The Unfortunate Traveller    137
Thomas Deloney: From Jack of Newbury    143
4. SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE    149
Historical and Cultural Background    151
Selected Texts    156
Ben Jonson: From Volpone, or the Fox    156
Ben Jonson: “To Penhurst”    160
John Donne: “The Flea”    163
John Donne: “The Canonisation”    164
John Donne: “Sonnet X”    165
Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”    166
John Milton: From Paradise Lost    167
Francis Bacon: “On Plantations”    169
Francis Bacon: “On Masques and Triumphs”    171
Aphra Behn: From Oroonoko    172
William Wycherley: From The Country Wife    180
5. EIGHTEEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE    187
Historical and Cultural Background    189
Selected Texts    193
John Locke: From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding    196
Alexander Pope: “Epistle to Miss Blount”    196
Alexander Pope: From The Rape of the Lock    197
Jonathan Swift: “A Modest Proposal”    200
Jonathan Swift: From Gulliver’s Travels    208
Joseph Addison: “The Aims of The Spectator”    212
Richard Steele: From “The Spectator's Club”    215
Samuel Richardson: From Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded    216
Henry Fielding: From Joseph Andrews    219
Laurence Sterne: From The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy    223
Richard Brinsley Sheridan: From A School for Scandal    230
Samuel Johnson: From Lives of the Poets. On Pope    232
Thomas Gray: “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”    234
Roberts Burns: “O my Luve’s like a red, red rose”    238
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea: “The Introduction”    239
Mary Wollstonecraft: From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman    241
6. NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE    249
Historical and Cultural Background    251
Selected Texts    256
William Blake: “London”    256
William Wordsworth: “Tintern Abbey”    256
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Kubla Khan”    261
P. B. Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”    262
P. B. Shelley: “To Wordsworth”    265
John Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”    266
Walter Scott: From The Heart of Mid-Lothian    267
Jane Austen: From Pride and Prejudice    270
Charles Dickens: From Great Expectations    274
Charles Dickens: From A Tale of Two Cities    278
Alfred Tennyson: “OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII”    280
Alfred Tennyson: “Poem VI”    282
Alfred Tennyson: “The Charge of the Light Brigade”    283
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Sonnet XXII”    285
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Sonnet XLIII”    285
Christina Rossetti: “In an Artist’s Studio”    286
Thomas Hardy: “Hap”    287
Thomas Hardy: From Tess of the d’Urbervilles    287
7. TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE    291
Historical and Cultural Background    293
Selected Texts    298
Joseph Conrad: From Heart of Darkness    298
Wilfred Owen: “Dulce et Decorum Est”    300
T. S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”    301
W. B. Yeats: “Easter, 1916”    305
Virginia Woolf: From To the Lighthouse    308
George Orwell: From Nineteen Eighty-Four    310
Stevie Smith: “Not Waving but Drowning”    312
Dylan Thomas: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”    313
Samuel Beckett: From Waiting for Godot    314
John Osborne: From Look Back in Anger    317
Muriel Spark: From The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie    320
Seamus Heaney: “Digging”    321
John Fowles: From The French Lieutenant’s Woman    323
Angela Carter: “The Werewolf”    327
Salman Rushdie: From Midnight’s Children    329
Michèle Roberts: From Impossible Saints    331
Carol Ann Duffy: “Mrs Midas”    332
8. GUIDELINES FOR WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS    335
How to write a literary commentary    337
How to write an essay    342
Style guidelines    345
9. GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS    351
10. CHRONOLOGY    373
11. BIBLIOGRAPHY    391

 

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