This volume contains a selection of the best and most characteristic writings,in diverse literary genres, of maior English authors. The present edition has been expanded so that it includes not only the thirty-four authors in the preceding edition, but also four additional authors, the medieval drama Noah's Flood, and three sections of notable lyric poems by writers of the sixteenth,seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The texts and editorial materials are reprinted (with a few exceptions) from the sixth edition of the two-volume Norton Anthology of English Literature. There is a biographical and critical headnote for each author, as well as an introduction to each period that sets forth the historical and social contexts of the literature and indicates the relations of individual authors to literary and historical developments in their era.
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PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Middle Ages (to ca. 1485)
Introduction
Timeline
BEOWULF
The Last Survivor's Speech in Old English with Verse Translation
Beowulf 23
[Prologue: The Earlier History of the Danes] 23
[Beowulf and Grendel] 24
[Beowulf Returns Home] 47
[Beowulf and the Dragon] 52
[Beowulfs Funeral] 60
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (ca. 1343-14oo)
THE CANTERBURY TALES 68
The General Prologue 70
The Miller's Prologue and Tale 90
The Prologue 90
The Tale 92
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale 106
The Prologue 106
The Tale 125
The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale 134
The Introduction 134
The Prologue 135
The Tale 138
The Epilogue 147
The Nun's Priest's Tale 149
From The Parson's Tale 163
The Introduction 163
Chaucer's Retraction 164
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (ca. 1375-1400)
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586)
Astrophil and Stella 557
1 ("Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show") 5
2 ("Not at first sight, nor with a dribbEd shot") 558
6 ("Some lovers speak, when they their muses entertain")
7 ("When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes") 55
31 ("With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies")
39 ("Come sleep! O sleep the certain knot of peace") 560
61 ("Oft with true sighs, oft with uncallEd tears") 560
71 ("Who will in fairest book of Nature know") 56o
72 ("Desire, though thou my old companion art") 561
74 ("I never drank of Aganippe well") 561
108 ("When Sorrow [using mine own fire's might]") 561
Leave Me, O Love 562
MICHAEL DRAYTON 0563-1631)
Idea
61 ("Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part") 563
THOMAS NASHE (1567-16ol)
A Litany in Time of Plague 564
AEMILIA LANYER (1569-1645)
The Description of Cooke-ham 565
The Early Seventeenth Century (1603-1660)
Introduction
Timeline
JOHN DONNE 0572-1631)
The Good-Morrow 586
Song ("Go and catch a falling star") 587
The Undertaking 588
The Sun Rising 589
The Indifferent 589
The Canonization 590
Air and Angels 592
Break of Day 592
A Valediction: Of Weeping 593
Love's Alchemy 594
The Flea 594
A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day 595
The Apparition 596
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 597
The Ecstasy 598
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