works. Finally, each chapter concludes with a concise summary of the period under consideration, a list of selections for reading and a bibliography of works that will be found most useful in acquiring a larger knowledge of the subject. In its general plan this little volume is modeled on the author's more advanced English Literature and American Literature; but the material, the viewpoint, the presentation of individual writers, all the details of the work are entirely new. Such a book is like a second journey through ample and beautiful regions filled with historic associations, a journey that one undertakes with new companions, with renewed pleasure and, it is to be hoped, with increased wisdom. It is hardly necessary to add that our subject has still its unvoiced charms, that it cannot be exhausted or even adequately presented in any number of histories. For literature deals with life; and life, with its endlessly surprising variety in unity, has happily some suggestion of infinity. STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT WILLIAM J. LONG CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE What is Literature? The Tree and the Book. Books of Knowledge and Books of Power. The Art of Literature. A Definition and Some CHAPTER II. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Tributaries of Early Literature. The Anglo-Saxon or Old-English Period. Specimens of the Language. The Epic of Beowulf. Anglo- Saxon Songs. Types of Earliest Poetry. Christian Literature of the Anglo-Saxon Period. The Northumbrian School. Bede. Cædmon. Cynewulf. The West-Saxon School. Alfred the Great. The Anglo- The Anglo-Norman or Early Middle-English Period. Specimens of the Language. The Norman Conquest. Typical Norman Literature. CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF CHAUCER AND THE REVIVAL Specimens of the Language. History of the Period. Geoffrey Chaucer. Historical Background. Literary Characteristics of the Period. Foreign Influence. Outburst of Lyric Poetry. Lyrics of Love. Music and Poetry. PAGE Masques. Popular Comedies. Classical and English Drama. Prede- cessors of Shakespeare. Marlowe. Shakespeare. Elizabethan Drama- tists after Shakespeare. Ben Jonson. The Prose Writers. The Fashion of Euphuism. The Authorized Version of the Scriptures. Francis Bacon. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. Historical Outline. Three Typical Writers. Milton. Bunyan. Dry- History of the Period. Eighteenth-Century Classicism. The Meaning of Classicism in Literature. Alexander Pope. Swift. Addison. Steele. Johnson. Boswell. Burke. Historical Writing in the Eighteenth Century. The Revival of Romantic Poetry. Collins and Gray. Goldsmith. Burns. Minor Poets of Romanticism. Cowper. Macpherson and the Ossian Poems. Chatterton. Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. The Early English Novel. The Old Romance and the New Novel. Defoe. Richardson. Fielding. Influence of the Early Novelists. Sum- Historical Outline. The French Revolution and English Literature. Wordsworth. Coleridge. Southey. The Revolutionary Poets. Byron The Greater Victorian Novelists. Dickens. Thackeray. George Victorian Essayists and Historians. Typical Writers. Macaulay. Carlyle. Ruskin. Variety of Victorian Literature. Summary of the CHAPTER I. THE PIONEERS AND NATION-BUILDERS Unique Quality of Early American Literature. Two Views of the Pioneers. The Colonial Period. Annalists and Historians. Bradford and Byrd. Puritan and Cavalier Influences. Colonial Poetry. Wiggles- worth. Anne Bradstreet. Godfrey. Nature and Human Nature in Colonial Records. The Indian in Literature. Religious Writers. Cotton The Revolutionary Period. Party Literature. Benjamin Franklin. Revolutionary Poetry. The Hartford Wits. Trumbull's M'Fingal. Freneau. Orators and Statesmen of the Revolution. Citizen Litera- ture. James Otis and Patrick Henry. Hamilton and Jefferson. Miscel- laneous Writers. Thomas Paine. Crèvecœur. Woolman. Beginning CHAPTER II. LITERATURE OF THE NEW NATION Historical Background. Literary Environment. The National Spirit in Prose and Verse. The Knickerbocker School. Halleck, Drake, Willis and Paulding. Southern Writers. Simms, Kennedy, Wilde and Wirt. Various New England Writers. First Literature of the West. Major Writers of the Period. Irving. Bryant. Cooper. Poe. Summary CHAPTER III. THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT. Political History. Social and Intellectual Changes. Brook Farm and Other Reform Societies. The Transcendental Movement. Literary Characteristics of the Period. The Elder Poets. Longfellow. Whittier. |