English Literature - An Anthology for Students - Vol. 1 Part 5

2010

The Eighteenth Century. The sixth part of the anthology including examples of Augustan and Pre-Romantic Literature from Pope to Burns. The anthology is intended as a source of texts for students. English Literature – An Anthology for Students. Volume 1 - From the Old English Period to the Eighteenth Century. Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2010, pp. 512.

2010

Old English Literature The first part of the anthology including examples of Old English Literature starting from Beowulf. The anthology is intended as a source of texts for students. English Literature – An Anthology for Students. Volume 1 - From the Old English Period to the Eighteenth Century. Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2010, pp. 512.

2010

Middle English Literature The second part of the anthology including examples of Middle English Literature starting with Sir Gawain and Canterbury Tales. The anthology is intended as a source of texts for students. English Literature – An Anthology for Students. Volume 1 - From the Old English Period to the Eighteenth Century. Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2010, pp. 512.

2010

The Sonneteers and the Elizabethans. The third part of the anthology including examples of Early Modern English Literature starting with a selection of poems by Shakespeare. The anthology is intended as a source of texts for students. English Literature – An Anthology for Students. Volume 1 - From the Old English Period to the Eighteenth Century. Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2010, pp. 512.

1983

The entry for each writer consists of a biography, a complete list of his published books, a selected list of published bibliographies and critical studies on the writer, and a signed critical essay on his work. In the biographies, details of education, military service, and marriage(s) are generally given before the usual chronological summary of the life of the writer; awards and honours are given last. The Publications section is meant to include all book publications, though as a rule broadsheets, single sermons and lectures, minor pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, etc. are omitted. Under the heading Collections, we have listed the most recent collections of the complete works and those of individual genres (verse, plays, novels, stories, and letters); only those collections which have some editorial authority and were issued after the writer's death are listed; ongoing editions are indicated by a dash after the date of publication; often a general selection from the writer's works or a selection from the works in the individual genres listed above is included. Titles are given in modern spelling, though the essayists were allowed to use original spelling for titles and quotations; often the titles are "short." The date given is that of the first book publication, which often followed the first periodical or anthology publication by some time; we have listed the actual year of publication, often different from that given on the titlepage. No attempt has been made to indicate which works were published anonymously or pseudonymously, or which works of fiction were published in more than one volume. We have listed plays which were produced but not published, but only since 1700; librettos and musical plays are listed along with the other plays; no attempt has been made to list lost or unverified plays. Reprints of books (including facsimile editions) and revivals of plays are not listed unless a revision or change of title is involved. The most recent edited version of individual works is included if it supersedes the collected edition cited. In the essays, short references to critical remarks refer to items cited in the Publications section or in the Reading List. Introductions, memoirs, editorial matter, etc. in works cited in the Publications section are not repeated in the Reading List. Frye concludes by showing a special use of metaphor is central to what he calls the age of sensibility, and by emphasising the "oracular" quality it displays. One of the most interesting features of the discussion is the way Frye is able to effect a disjunction not just with the Augustans but also with the Romantics: indeed, for the purposes of his argument he aligns both schools as concerned with "literature as product." The essay has a sharp, bright texture which gives it unusual intellectual force and clarity. Naturally it is possible to pick holes in the case. No such brief survey (it runs only to about 4000 words) can deal comprehensively with such a complex period of literature. Many important writers of the period figure intermittently in the discussion, or not at all. There is scarcely any mention of Johnson, the greatest English author active throughout the key period: although Boswell, significantly, appears as a practitioner of the new mode. Drama is totally absent, and so the potential difficulties occasioned by Goldsmith and Sheridan elude observation. The novel appears in the shape of Richardson and Sterne, but the forms of fiction most popular in the heyday of "sensibility" poetry-barring a cursory reference to the Gothic novel-play no part in the argument. However, the chief value of the essay has lain in the purchase it offers a critic with regard to poetry: it is in relation to Collins, Smart, Chatterton, Cowper, and Blake that Frye's concept has proved most fruitful. Essentially, then, the notion of an "age of sensibility" stands or falls by its ability to explain or illuminate the poetic history of our final phase, c. 1740 to 1790. As such, the model works well in practice. I should prefer to say that Augustan poetic ministers to something a little different from "continually fulfilled expectation." We might suggest that the poem will tend sometimes to fulfil, and sometimes to contradict, the reader's expectations-very much as is the case with a listener to the music of Haydn or Mozart.

2010

Metaphysical Poetry. The fourth part of the anthology including examples of Metaphysical Poetry from Donne to Marvell. The anthology is intended as a source of texts for students. English Literature – An Anthology for Students. Volume 1 - From the Old English Period to the Eighteenth Century. Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2010, pp. 512.

With this study we hope to serve the needs of those students and teachers who feel particularly committed to the changes that have characterized our field in recent years. The renewed emphasis on historicism and the decline of formalist aestheticism in medieval studies have rendered it desirable to have a literary history that attends more singularly to the material and social contexts and uses of Old English texts. Although the need is greater than this volume can really satisfy, we hope that the present study will nonetheless prove useful to those who, like us, see literature’s relation to history and culture as our field’s area of chief pedagogical interest, and the respect in which it has most to offer literary studies at large.

2004

This volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism, and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld, and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the 'Lake' and 'Cockney' schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for all students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.