With a foreword by Mohit K. Ray; xviii+502p.; x+503-1052p., Index, 23 cm.
CONTENTS
CONTENTS:-
Vol.1: Foreword; Preface; I. The preliminaries of English literature: 1. The earliest Anglo-Saxon poetry; 2. Caedmon, Cynewulf, and those about them; 3. Anglo-Saxon prose; 4. The Decadence of Anglo-Saxon; II. The making of English literature: 1. The transition; 2. First middle English period 1200-1250; 3. Second middle English period--1300-1360; 4. Early romances--metrical; 5. Early romances--alliterative; III. Chaucer and his contemporaries: 1. Chaucer's life and poems; 2. Langland and Gower; 3. Chaucer's prose--Wyclif, Trevisa, Mandeville; IV. The fifteenth century: 1. The English Chaucerians; 2. The Scottish poets--historical, political, and minor; 3. The four Great Scottish poets; 4. Later romances in prose and verse; 5. Minor poetry and Ballads; 6. Miscellaneous prose; V. Elizabethan literature to the death of Spenser: 1. Preliminaries--drama; 2. Preliminaries--prose; 3. Preliminaries--verse; 4. Spenser and his contemporaries; 5. The university wits; 6. Lyly and Hooker--the translators, Pamphleteers, and critics; VI. Later Elizabethan and Jacobean literature: 1. Shakespeare; 2. Shakespeare's contemporaries in Drama; 3. The schools of Jacobean poetry; 4. Jacobean prose--secular; 5. The golden age of the English pulpit--I.
Vol.2: VII. Caroline Literature: 1. Blank verse and the new couplet; 2. The metaphysicals--the lyric poets--the miscellanists, etc; 3. The drama till the closing of the theatres; 4. The golden age of the English Pulpit--II; 5. Miscellaneous prose; 6. Scots poetry and prose; VIII. The Augustan Ages: 1. The age of Dryden--poetry; 2. The age of Dryden--drama; 3. The age of Dryden--prose; 4. Queen Anne prose; 5. Pope and his elder contemporaries in verse; IX. Middle and later eighteenth-century literature: 1. The poets from Thomson to Crabbe; 2. The eighteenth-century novel; 3. Johnson, goldsmith, and the later Essayists; 4. The Graver prose; 5. Eighteenth-century drama; 6. Miscellaneous writers; X. The triumph of romance: 1. The poets from Coleridge to Keats; 2. The novel--Scott and Miss Austen; 3. The new Essay; 4. The last Georgian prose; 5. The minor poets of 1800-1830; XI. Victorian literature: 1. Tennyson and browning; 2. The Victorian Novel; 3. History and Criticism; 4. Poetry since the middle of the century; 5. Miscellaneous; Conclusion; Index.
DESCRIPTION
One of the pioneering works in literary historiography, the book A Short History of English Literature combines in a remarkable manner the historical and the critical principles that ought to govern any literary history. On Saintbury's own testimony the book is not meant to be "bird's-eye views". It is, in fact, a fine critical survey of the entire history of English literature from its beginning to the end of the Victorian period. Saintsbury's copious scholarship, fine clarity of thought and literary sensibility have made the approach to each text both microscopic and telescopic so that while a text is kept under a sharp critical focus, all the relevant contextual aspects are touched upon to further illuminate it. Despite Saintsbury's Englishness, the book, as a short but succinct account of the history of literature, is of perennial value. While any student of English literature will find the book immensely useful, anybody interested in English literature will find it eminently readable and interesting.
