3 CONTENTS By Way of Introduction ................................................................................................................. 5 Preface to the Second Edition ..................................................................................................... 7 Old English Period .......................................................................................................................... 9 Riddles ............................................................................................................................................ 9 Beowulf .......................................................................................................................................... 9 The Battle of Maldon ................................................................................................................ 11 The Seafarer ................................................................................................................................ 12 Middle English Period ................................................................................................................. 14 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ........................................................................................... 14 Cuckoo Song ............................................................................................................................... 22 In April ........................................................................................................................................ 22 I Sing of a Maiden ..................................................................................................................... 24 William Langland: Piers Plowman ........................................................................................... 25 Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales ............................................................................... 28 Sir Patrick Spens ......................................................................................................................... 32 Robin Hood and the Widow´s Sons ........................................................................................ 34 Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte D`arthur ................................................................................ 40 The York Cycle of Mystery Plays ............................................................................................. 43 Everyman ................................................................................................................................... 48 Renaissance ..................................................................................................................................... 50 Sir Philip Sidney: Come, Sleep .................................................................................................. 50 Edmund Spenser: Sonnet LXXV. ............................................................................................ 50 William Shakespeare: XVIII. .................................................................................................... 51 LXVI. ..................................................................................................... 52 Christopher Marlowe: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus ....................................... 53 Willaim Shakespeare: King Richard II. ................................................................................... 54 Hamlet.................................................................................................... 56 Othello ................................................................................................... 60 Romeo and Juliet ................................................................................. 61 Henry V. ................................................................................................ 63 King Lear .............................................................................................. 68 The Seventeenth Century ............................................................................................................ 80 Ben Jonson: Volpone ................................................................................................................. 80 John Donne: Death Be Not Proud .......................................................................................... 84 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning .............................................................. 84 Richard Lovelace: To lucasta, Going to the Wars ................................................................. 86 Robert Herrick: To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time ..................................................... 87 Henry Vaughan: Peace ............................................................................................................... 87 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan ...................................................................................................... 89 John Milton: Paradise Lost ....................................................................................................... 90 Samuel Pepys: The Diary ........................................................................................................... 94 The Eighteenth Century .............................................................................................................. 97 Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe .............................................................................................. 97 Moll Flanders .................................................................................................... 98 John Swift: Gulliver´s Travels ................................................................................................ 101 A Modest Proposal ............................................................................................. 103 Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock................................................................................. 107 Essay on Man ............................................................................................. 109 4 Samuel Richardson: Pamela .................................................................................................... 111 Henry Fielding: Tom Jones ..................................................................................................... 113 Thomas Gray: Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat.......................................................... 116 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ..................................................... 118 Samuel Johnson: A Dictionary of the English Language.................................................... 119 Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy.......................................................................................... 120 Richard B. Sheridan: The School for Scandal ....................................................................... 122 Fanny Burney: Evelina ............................................................................................................. 124 Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication on the Rights of Woman.......................................... 126 Robert Burns: My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose ................................................................ 127 John Anderson My Jo..................................................................................... 127 William Blake: Tiger ................................................................................................................. 128 The Garden of Love....................................................................................... 129 London ............................................................................................................ 130