English Literature: Its History and Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World, William J. Long [suggested reading .txt] 📗

Humour
Everyman
Excursion, The
Exeter Book
Faber, Frederick
Fables, Dryden's
Faery Queen
Fall of Princes
Faust (foust), Faustus (fas'tus)
Ferrex and Porrex
Fielding,
    novels,
    characteristics
Fight at Finnsburgh
Fingal (fing'gal)
First-folio Shakespeare
Fletcher, Giles
Fletcher, John
Ford, John
Formalism
Four Georges, The
Foxe, John
Fragments of Ancient Poetry
French influence in Restoration literature
French language in England
French Revolution, influence of
French Revolution, Carlyle's
Fuller, Thomas
Gammer Gurton's Needle
Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth
Gawain and the Green Knight (gä'-w[=a]n)
Gawain cycle of romances, 57
Gebir (g[=a]-b[=e]r')
Geoffrey of Monmouth (jef'r[)i])
George Eliot;
    life;
    works;
    characteristics;
    as a moralist
Gest (or jest) books
Geste of Robin Hood
Gibbon,
    his history
Gifts of God, The
Girondists (j[)i]-ron'dists)
Gleemen, or minstrels
Goldsmith;
    life;
    works
Good Counsel
Gorboduc (gôr'b[=o]-duk)
Gorgeous Gallery
Gower
Grace Abounding
Gray, Thomas;
    life;
    works
Greatest English Poets
Greene, Robert
Gregory, Pope
Grendel; story of;
    mother of
Grubb Street
Gulliver's Travels
Gull's Hornbook
Hakluyt, Richard (h[)a]k'loot)
Hallam,
    his criticism of Bacon
Hardy, Thomas
Hastings, battle of
Hathaway, Anne
Hazlitt, William
Hengist (h[)e]ng'gist)
Henry Esmond
Herbert, George;
    life;
    poetry of
Hero and Leander
Heroes and Hero Worship
Heroic couplet
Heroic Stanzas
Herrick, Robert
Hesperides and Noble Numbers (h[)e]s-p[)e]r'[)i]-d[=e]z)
Heywood, John
Heywood, Thomas
Hilda, abbess
Hildgund (hild'gund)
Historical novel
History, of England, Macaulay's;
    of Frederick the Great, Carlyle's;
    of Henry VIII, Bacon's;
    of the Reformation in Scotland, Knox's;
    of the Wortd, Raleigh's
Hnæf (n[e=]f)
Hobbes, Thomas
Holofernes (hol-[=o]-fer'n[=e]z) in Judith
Holy and Profane State
Holy Living
Holy War
Homer, Chapman's;
    Dryden's;
    Pope's;
    Cowper's
Hooker, Richard
Hooker, Thomas
Hours in a Library
Hours of Idleness
House of Fame
House of Life
Hrothgar (r[)o]th'gar)
Hudibras (h[=u]'d[)i]-bras)
Humanism
Humphrey Clinker
Hunt, Leigh
Husband's Message
Huxley,
Hygelac (h[=i]-j[=e]'lak)
Hymn book, first English
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Hymns, Addison's;
    Cowper's
Hypatia (h[=i]-p[=a]'shia)
Hyperion (h[=i]-p[=e]'r[)i]-on)
Idealism of Victorian Age
Ideals
Idols, of Bacon
Idylls of the King
Il Penseroso (il pen-s[)e]-r[=o]'s[=o])
Iliad, Pope's translation;
    Chapman's;
    Dryden's
Imaginary Conversations
Impeachment of Warren Hastings
In Memoriam
Instauratio Magna (in-sta-r[=a]'shi-o)
Interludes
Intimations of Immortality
Jacobean poets
Jane Eyre (âr)
Jeffrey, Francis
Jest (or gest) books
Jew of Malta
John Gilpin
Johnson, Samuel; life;
    works; his conversations;
    Boswell's Life of Johnson
Jonathan Wild
Jonson, Ben; life; works
Joseph Andrews
Journal of the Plague Year
Journal to Stella
Judith
Juliana
Keats; life; works;
    place in literature
Kilmarnock Burns, the
Kings' Treasuries
Kingsley, Charles
Knight's Tale, The
Knox, John
Kubla Khan (kob'lä kän)
Kyd, Thomas
L'Allegro (läl-[=a]'gr[=o])
Lady of the Lake
Lake poets, the
Lamb, Charles; life; works;
    style
Lamb, Mary
Lamia (l[=a]'mi-ä)
Land of Cockaygne (k[)o]-kän')
Land of Dreams
Landor, Walter Savage; life;
    works
Langland, William
Language, our first speech; dual
    character of; Teutonic origin
Last Days of Pompeii (pom-p[=a]'y[=e])
Law, Hooker's idea of
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,
Lay Sermons
Layamon
Lays of Ancient Rome
Lead, Kindly Light
Lectures on Shakespeare
Legends of Goode Wimmen
Leviathan
Lewes, George Henry
Liberty of Prophesying
Life, compared to a sea voyage
Life of Johnson
Life of Savage
Lindsay, David
Literary Club, the
Literary criticism. See also
    Critical writing.
Literary Reminiscences
Literature, definition; qualities;
    tests; object in studying; importance;
    Goethe's definition;
    spirit of modern
Literature and Dogma
Lives, Plutarch's; Walton's
Lives of the Poets
Locke, John
Lockhart, John
Lorna Doone
Lost Leader, The
Lovelace, Richard
Lycidas (lis'[)i]-das)
Lydgate, John
Lyly, John (lil'[)i])
Lyra Apostolica
Lyrical Ballads
Lytton, Edward Bulwer
Macaulay; life; works;
    characteristics
Macpherson, James (mak-fer'son)
Magazines, the modern
Maldon, The Battle of
Malory
Mandeville's Travels
Manfred
Marlowe; life; works;
    and Milton; and Shakespeare
Marmion
Marvell, Andrew
Massinger, Philip
Matter of France, Rome, and Britain
Melodrama
Memoirs of a Cavalier
Meredith, George
Merlin and the Gleam
Metaphysical poets
Metrical romances
Middleton, Thomas
Miles Gloriosus (m[=e]'les gl[=o]-r[)i]-[=o]'s[u:]s)
Mill on the Floss
Milton; life; early or Horton
    poems; prose works;
    later poetry; and Shakespeare;
    Wordsworth's sonnet on
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Miracle plays
Mirror for Magistrates
Mr. Badman, Life and Death of
Modern literature, spirit of
Modern Painters
Modest Proposal, A
Moral Epistles
Moral period of the drama
Moral purpose in Victorian literature
Morality plays
More, Hannah
More, Thomas
Morris, William
Morte d'Arthur (mort där'ther)
Mother Hubbard's Tale
Mulèykeh (m[=u]-l[=a]'k[)a])
My Last Duchess
Mysteries of Udolpho, The ([=u]-dol'f[=o])
Mystery plays
New Atalantis
Newcomes, The
Newman, Cardinal; life;
    prose works; poems;
    style
Newspapers, the first
Nibelungenlied (n[=e]'b[)e]-lung-en-l[=e]d)
Noah, Play of
Norman Conquest
Norman pageantry
Norman period. See Anglo-Norman
Normans;
    union with Saxons;
    literature of
North, Christopher (John Wilson)
North, Thomas
Northanger Abbey (north'[=a]n-jer)
Northern Antiquities
Northumbrian literature; decline
    of; how saved
Novel, meaning and history;
    precursors of; discovery of
    modern
Novelists, the first English.
    See Scott, Dickens, etc.
Novum Organum (or'g[)a]-num)
Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity
Ode to Dejection
Ode to the West Wind
Odes, Pindaric
Odyssey, Pope's; Chapman's;
    Dryden's
Old Fortunatus (for-t[=u]-n[=a]'tus)
Oliver Cromwell, Carlyle's
Oliver Twist
Origin of Species
Orlando Furioso (or-lan'd[=o] foo-r[=e]-[=o]'s[=o])
Orm, or Orme; his Ormulum
Orosius ([=o]-r[=o]'si-us), his history
Ossian (osh'ian) and Ossianic poems
Owl and Nightingale, The
Oxford movement
P's, The Four
Palamon and Arcite (pal'a-mon, är'-s[=i]te)
Pamela (pam'e-lä)
Pantisocracy (pan-t[=i]-sok'r[=a]-se), of Coleridge,
    Southey, etc.
Paradise Lost
Paradise Regained
Paradyse of Daynty Devises
Paraphrase, of Cædmon
Parish Register, The
Pauline
Pearl, The
Pelham
Pendennis
Pepys, Samuel (pep'is, peeps, pips)
Percy, Thomas
Peregrine Pickle (per'e-grin)
Pericles and Aspasia (per'i-kl[=e]z, as-p[=a]'shi-ä)
Philistines, the
Phoenix (f[=e]'nix)
Pickwick Papers
Piers Plowman (peers)
Pilgrim's Progress
Pindaric odes (pin-där'ic)
Pippa Passes
Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven
Plutarch's Lives
Poems by Two Brothers
Poetaster, The
Polyolbion (pol-[)i]-ol'b[)i]-on)
Pope, Alexander; life;
    works
Porter, Jane
Practice of Piety
Praeterita (pr[=e]-ter'[)i]-tä)
Praise of Folly
Prelude, The
Pre-Raphaelites (rä'f[=a]-el-ites)
Pride and Prejudice
Princess, The
Prometheus Unbound (pr[=o]-m[=e]'th[=u]s)
Prose development in eighteenth century
Pseudo-classicism (s[=u]'d[=o])
Purchas, Samuel; Purchas His
    Pilgrimes
Puritan Age: history; literary
    characteristics; poets;
    prose writers; compared with
    Elizabethan; summary;
    selections for reading; bibliography,
    questions;
    chronology
Puritan movement
Puritans, wrong ideas of
Queen Mab, in Romeo and Juliet
Queen's Gardens
Rabbi Ben Ezra
Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne
Raleigh, Walter
Ralph Royster Doyster
Rambler essays
Rape of the Lock
Reade, Charles
Realism
Recluse, The
Reflections on the French Revolution
Religio Laici
Religio Medici
Religious period of the drama
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
Reminiscences, Carlyle's
Remorse
Renaissance, the (re-n[=a]'säns, r[=e]'n[=a]s-sans, etc.)
Restoration Period: history; literary
    characteristics; writers;
    summary; selections for
    reading; bibliography;
    questions; chronology
Revival of Learning Period: history;
    literature; summary;
    selections for reading; bibliography;
    questions; chronology
Revolt of Islam
Revolution, French; of
    1688; age of
Richardson, Samuel; novels of
Rights of Man
Rime of the Ancient Alariner
Rime Royal
Ring and the Book, The
Robin Hood
Robinson Crusoe
Roderick
Roderick Random
Romance; Greek Romances
Romance languages
Romance of the Rose
Romantic comedy and tragedy
Romantic enthusiasm
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, Age of; history;
    literary characteristics;
    poets; prose writers; summary;
    selections for reading;
    bibliography; questions;
    chronology
Romanticism, meaning
Romola
Rosalynde
Rossetti, Christina (ros-set't[=e])
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
Rowley Papers
Royal Society
Runes
Ruskin; life; works;
    characteristics; message
Sackville, Thomas
St. Catherine, Play of
St. George's Guild
Saints' Everlasting Rest
Samson Agonistes (ag-o-nis't[=e]z)
Sartor Resartus (sar'tor re-sar'tus)
    Satire; of Swift; of Thackeray
Saxon. See Anglo-Saxon
School of Shooting
Science, in Victorian Age
Scop, or poet (skop)
Scott, Walter; life; poetry;
    novels; criticism of Jane
    Austen
Scottish Chiefs
Scyld (skild), story of
Sea, names of, in Anglo-Saxon, 25
Seafarer, The
Seasons, The
Selections for reading:
    Anglo-Saxon period;
    Norman;
    Chaucer;
    Revival of Learning;
    Elizabethan;
    Puritan;
    Restoration;
    Eighteenth Century;
    Romanticism;
    Victorian
Sentimental Journey
Sesame and Lilies (ses'a-m[=e])
Shakespeare;
    life;
    works;
    four periods;
    sources of plays;
    classification of plays;
    doubtful plays;
    poems;
    place and influence
She Stoops to Conquer
Shelley;
    life;
    works;
    compared with Wordsworth
Shepherds' Book
Shepherd's Calendar
Shirley, James
Shoemaker's Holiday, The
Short View of the English Stage
Sidney, Philip
Sigurd the Volsung
Silas Marner
Silent Woman, The
Sir Charles Grandison
Skelton, John
Sketches by Boz
Smollett, Tobias
Social development in eighteenth century
Sohrab and Rustum (soo'rhab, or s[=o]'hrab)
Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience
Sonnet, introduction of
Sonnets,
    of Shakespeare;
    of Milton
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Southey;
    works
Spanish Gypsy
Spanish Tragedy
Specimens of English Dramatic Poets
Spectator, The
Spenser;
    life;
    works;
    characteristics;
    compared with Chaucer
Spenserian poets
Spenserian stanza
Stage, in early plays;
    Elizabethan
Steele, Richard
Stephen, Leslie
Sterne, Lawrence
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Style, a test of literature
Suckling, John
Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of
Swan, The
Swift;
    life;
    works;
    satire;
    characteristics
Swinburne
Sylva
Symonds, John Addington
Tabard Inn
Tale of a Tub
Tale of Two Cities
Tales from Shakespeare
Tales in Verse
Tales of the Hall
Tam o' Shanter
Tamburlaine (tam'bur-lane)
Task, The
Tatler, The
Taylor, Jeremy
Temora (te-m[=o]'rä)
Tempest, The
Temple, The
Tennyson;
    life;
    works;
    characteristics;
    message
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
Terra
Tests of literature
Teufelsdroeckh (toy'felz-droek)
Thackeray;
    life;
    works;
    characteristics;
    style;
    and Dickens
Thaddeus of Warsaw
Thalaba (täl-ä'bä)
Theater, the first
Thomson, James
Thyrsis (ther'sis)
Timber
Tintern Abbey
Tirocinium (t[=i]-r[=o]-sin'[)i]-um), or A Review of Schools
Tom Jones
Tories and Whigs
Tottel's Miscellany
Townley plays
Toxophilus (tok-sof'[)i]-lus)
Tractarian movement
Tracts for the Times
Tragedy, definition,
    of blood
Transition poets
Traveler, The
Treasure Island
Treatises on Government
Tristram Shandy
Troilus and Cressida (tr[=o]'[)i]-lus, kres'-[)i]-dä)
Trollope, Anthony
Troyes, Treaty of
Truth, or Good Counsel
Tyndale, William (tin'dal)
Udall, Nicholas ([=u]'dal)
Udolpho ([=u]-dol'f[=o])
Unfortunate Traveller, The
Universality, a test of literature
University wits
Unto This Last
Utopia
Vanity Fair
Vanity of Human Wishes
Vaughan, Henry
Vercelli Book
Vicar of Wakefield
Vice, the, in old plays
Victorian Age,
    history,
    literary characteristics,
    poets,
    novelists,
    essayists, etc.,
    spirit of,
    summary,
    selections for reading,
    bibliography,
    questions,
    chronology
View of the State of Ireland
Village, The
Vision of the Rood
Volpone (vol-p[=o]'ne)
Voyages, Hakluyt's
Wakefield plays
Waldere (väl-d[=a]'re, or väl'dare)
Waller, Edmund
Walton, Izaak
Waverley
Wealth of Nations
Weather, The, play of
Webster, John
Wedmore, Treaty of
Westward Ho
Whigs and Tories
Whitby (hwit'b[)i])
Widsith (vid'sith)
Wiglaf (vig'läf)
Wilson, John (Christopher North),
Wither, George
Women, in literature
Wordsworth,
    life,
    poetry,
    poems of nature,
    poems of life,
    last works
Wordsworth, Dorothy
Worthies of England
Wuthering Heights (wuth'er-ing)
Wyatt (w[=i]'at), Thomas
Wyclif (wik'lif)
Wyrd (vird), or fate
York plays

1. From The Bard of the Dimbovitza, First Series, p. 73.

2. There is a mystery about this old hero which stirs our imagination, but which is never explained. It refers, probably, to some legend of the Anglo-Saxons which we have supplied from other sources, aided by some vague suggestions and glimpses of the past in the poem itself.

3. This is not the Beowulf who is hero of the poem.

4. Beowulf, ll. 26-50, a free rendering to suggest the alliteration of the original.

5. Grendel, of the Eoten (giant) race, the death shadow, the mark stalker, the shadow ganger, is also variously called god's foe, fiend of hell, Cain's brood, etc. It need hardly be explained that the latter terms are additions to the original poem, made, probably, by monks who copied the manuscript. A belief in Wyrd, the mighty power controlling the destinies of men, is the chief religious motive of the epic. In line 1056 we find a curious blending of pagan and Christian belief, where Wyrd is withstood by the "wise God."

6. Summary of ll. 710-727. We have not indicated in our translation (or in quotations from Garnett, Morley, Brooke, etc.) where parts of the text are omitted.

7. Grendel's mother belongs also to the Eoten (giant) race. She is called brimwylf (sea wolf), merewif (sea woman), grundwyrgen (bottom master), etc.

8. From Garnett's Beowulf, ll. 1384-1394.

9. From Morley's version, ll. 1357-1376.

10. Beowulf, ll. 2417-2423, a free rendering.

11. Lines 2729-2740, a free rendering.

12. Morley's version, ll. 2799-2816.

13. Lines 3156-3182 (Morley's version).

14. Probably to the fourth century, though some parts of the poem must have been added later. Thus the poet says (II. 88-102) that he visited Eormanric, who died cir. 375, and Queen Ealhhild whose father, Eadwin, died cir. 561. The difficulty of fixing a date to the poem is apparent. It contains several references to scenes and characters in Beowulf.

15. Lines 135-143 (Morley's version).

16. A lyric is a short poem reflecting some personal emotion, like love or grief. Two other Anglo-Saxon poems, "The Wife's Complaint" and "The Husband's Message," belong to this class.

17. First strophe of Brooke's version, History of Early English Literature

18. Seafarer, Part I, Iddings' version, in Translations from Old English Poetry.

19. It is an open question whether this poem celebrates the fight at which Hnæf, the Danish leader, fell, or a later fight led by Hengist, to avenge Hnæf's death.

20. Brooke's translation, History of Early English Literature, For another early battle-song see Tennyson's "Battle of Brunanburh."

21. William Camden (1551-1623), one of England's earliest and greatest antiquarians. His first work, Britannia, a Latin history of England, has been called "the common sun whereat our modern writers have all kindled their little torches."

22. From Iddings' version of The Seafarer.

23. From Andreas, ll. 511 ff., a free translation. The whole poem thrills with the Old Saxon love of the sea and of ships.

24. From Beowulf, ll. 1063 ff., a free translation.

25. Translated from The Husband's Message, written on a piece of bark. With wonderful poetic insight the bark itself is represented as telling its story to the wife, from the time when the birch tree grew beside the sea until the exiled man found it and stripped the bark and carved on its surface a message to the woman he loved. This first of all English love songs deserves to rank with Valentine's description of Silvia:

                      Why, man, she is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, II, 4.

26. From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, record of the year 457.

27. According to Sweet the original home of the Aryans is placed in central or northern Europe, rather than in Asia, as was once assumed. See The History of Language, p. 103.

28. "Cædmon's Hymn," Cook's version, in Translations from Old English Poetry.

29. Ecclesiastical History, IV, xxiv.

30. Genesis, 112-131 (Morley).

31. Exodus, 155 ff. (Brooke).

32. Runes were primitive letters of the old northern alphabet. In a few passages Cynewulf uses each rune to represent not only a letter but a word beginning with that letter. Thus the rune-equivalent of C stands for cene (keen, courageous), Y for yfel (evil, in the sense of wretched), N for nyd (need), W for ivyn (joy), U for ur (our), L for lagu (lake), F for feoh (fee, wealth). Using the runes equivalent to these seven letters, Cynewulf hides and at the same time reveals his name in certain verses of The Christ, for instance:

Then the Courage-hearted quakes, when the King (Lord) he hears
Speak to those who once on earth but obeyed Him weakly,
While as yet their Yearning fain and their Need
most easily Comfort might discover.... Gone is then the Winsomeness
Of the earth's adornments! What to Us as men belonged
Of the joys of life was locked, long ago, in Lake-flood.
All the Fee on earth.

See Brooke's History of Early English Literature, pp. 377-379, or The Christ of Cynewulf, ed. by Cook, also by Gollancz.

33.

My robe is noiseless while I tread the earth,
Or tarry 'neath the banks, or stir the shallows;
But when these shining wings, this depth of air,
Bear me aloft above the bending shores
Where men abide,