A Survey of British Literature

G. Rudzewicz
June, 2013
A SURVEY OF BRITISH LITERATURE USING PUBLIC DOMAIN E-TEXTS

I. The Anglo-Saxon Period
A. Beowulf Gutenberg Project, e-text #981
B. The Seafarer
C. Supplementary links
a. suttonhoo.org
b. staffordshirehoard.org.uk
c. labyrinth.georgetown.edu

II. The Middle Ages
A. The Canterbury Tales, GP etext#2383
1. General Prologue
2. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”
3. “The Pardoner’s Tale”
B. Popular Lyrics and Ballads
C. Everyman GP etext#19481, Ernest Phelps, ed.
D. Supplementary links
a. luminarium.org/medlit
b. labyrinth.georgetown.edu

III. Shakespeare GP etext#100
A. Macbeth
B. Hamlet
C. The Taming of the Shrew
D. Much Ado About Nothing
E. The Sonnets, GP e-text #1041 or 1105
F. Supplemental links a. luminarium.org. Button Seventeenth Century. Button Shakespeare

IV. The Seventeenth Century
A. Metaphysical Poets
B. Lyrics
C. Milton, GP e-text #1745
1. From Areopagitica
2. From Paradise Lost
D. Supplemental links
a. luminarium.org. Button: Metaphysical Poets; Button: Cavalier Poets

V. The Neoclassical Period
A. Samuel Johnson
1. “Vultures Talk About Men”
2. From the Dictionary
B. Joseph Addison
1. “Dissection of a Beau’s Head”
2. “Dissection of a Coquette’s Heart”
C. Jonathan Swift
1. “A Modest Proposal”
D. Mary Wollstonecraft
1. “Vindication of the Rights of Women”
E. Supplemental Links
a. Luminarium.org. Button: Eighteenth Century
b.
VI. The Romantic Period.
A. Wordsworth
1. Preface to Lyrical Ballads
2. “The World is Too Much With Us,” “London, 1802”
3. “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”
B. Coleridge
1. “Kubla Khan”
2. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
C. Byron
1. “She Walks in Beauty”
2. “Darkness”
D. Shelley
1. “England in1819”
2. “Ozymandias”
3. “Song to the Men of England”
4. “Mutability”
E. Keats
1. “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”
2. “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
3. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
E.

Links: 2. “The World is Too Much With Us,” “London, 1802” 3