Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Monday, December 26, 2022

History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne by Andrew Lang (PDF)

History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne by Andrew Lang

 

HISTORY OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE

FROM

"BEOWULF" TO SWINBURNE

BY

ANDREW LANG, M.A.

LATE HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE OXFORD

NEW IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1921

[Pg v]

PREFACE.

A Preface to a book on the History of English Literature is apt to be an apology, for a writer must be conscious of his inability to deal with a subject so immense and so multiplex in its aspects. This volume does not pretend to be an encyclopædia of our literature; or to include all the names of authors and of their works. Selection has been necessary, and in the fields of philosophy and theology but a few names appear. The writer, indeed, would willingly have omitted not a few of the minor authors in pure literature, and devoted his space only to the masters. But each of these springs from an underwood, as it were, of the thought and effort of men less conspicuous, whom it were ungrateful, and is practically impossible, to pass by in silence. Nevertheless the attempt has been made to deal most fully with the greatest names.

The author's object has been to arouse a living interest, if it may be, in the books of the past, and to induce the reader to turn to them for himself. Scantiness of space forbids the presentation of extracts; for poetry there is perhaps no better selection than that of the Oxford Book of Verse by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. For prose, the[Pg vi] Anthologies of Mrs. Barnett and Mrs. Dale may be recommended.

It is unhappily the fact that the works of a majority of the earlier authors are scarcely accessible except in the publications of learned societies or in very limited editions; but from Chaucer onwards the Globe Editions are open to all; and the great Cambridge "History of English Literature" is invaluable as a guide to the Bibliography. It is better to study even a little of the greatest authors than to read many books about them. If the writer should perchance succeed in bringing any readers to the works of the immortals his purpose will be fulfilled But readers, like poets and anglers, are "born to be so"; and when born under a fortunate star do not need to be allured or compelled to come into the Muses' paradise.

That sins of commission as well as of omission will be discovered the author cannot doubt, for through much reading and writing they that look out of window are darkened, and errors come.




[1]University Press.

[2]Longmans, Green & Co.


[Pg vii]

CONTENTS.

 Preface   v

List of Authors  xi

CHAPTER

I. Anglo-Saxon Literature: The Anglo-Saxon Way of Living — Minstrels, Story-Tellers, and Stories — Beowulf — The Wanderer — The Plaint of Deor — The Seafarer — Waldhere — The Fight at Finnsburg   1

II. Anglo-Saxon Christian Poetry: Cædmon — Cynewulf — Andreas — Dream of the Rood — Elene — Riddles — Phœnix  16

III. Anglo-Saxon Learning and Prose: Latin among the Anglo-Saxons — Bede — Alcuin — Alfred — The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — The Monks and Learning — Ælfric  23

IV. After the Norman Conquest: Latin Literature — Walter Map — Changes Since the Conquest  35

V. Geoffrey of Monmouth: The Stories of Arthur  42

VI. Layamon's "Brut": Ormulum — Ancren Riwle — The Owl and the Nightingale — Lyrics — Political Songs — Robert of Gloucester — Cursor Mundi — Devotional Books — Minot  48

VII. The Romances in Rhyme: Tristram — Havelok — King Horn — Beues of Hamtoun — Guy of Warwick — Arthur and Merlin — The Tale of Troy — The Story of Troy from Homer to Shakespeare — King Alisaundre  60

VIII. Alliterative Romances and Poems: Gawain and the Green Knight — Pearl — Huchowne  72

IX. Chaucer: Early Poems — The Dethe of the Duchesse — Other Early Poems — Troilus and Criseyde — The Canterbury Tales  78

X. "Piers Plowman," Gower  99

XI. The Successors of Chaucer: Lydgate — Occleve — Hawes110

XII. Late Mediaeval Prose: Wyclif — Chaucer's Prose Style — Trevisa — Mandeville — Pecock: "The Repressor" — Capgrave — Lord Berners115

XIII. Malory124

XIV. Early Scottish Literature: Barbour — Wyntoun — The Kingis Quhair — Henryson — Dunbar — Blind Harry — The Buke of the Howlat — Gawain Douglas — Sir David Lyndsay129

XV. Popular Poetry. Ballads

Professional Poetry: Skelton — Barclay147

XVI. Rise of the Drama: Heywood — Ralph Roister Doister — Gammer Gurton's Needle — "Gorboduc"153

XVII. Wyatt and Surrey. Gascoigne. Sackville: The Earl of Surrey — Tottel's Miscellany — Gascoigne — Sackville163

XVIII. Prose of the Renaissance: Elyot — Ascham — Lyly's Euphues — Sidney — Sidney's "Defence of Poesie" Spenser172

XIX. The Elizabethan Stage and Playwrights: John Lyly — Peele — Greene — Lodge — Nash — Marlowe — Kyd — Shakespeare — The Sonnets — Later Plays — Jonson — Jonson's Prose193

XX. Other Dramatists: Beaumont and Fletcher — Chapman — John Marston — Dekker — Middleton — Heywood — Webster — Massinger — Ford — Shirley242

XXI. Elizabethan and Jacobean Prose Writers: Hooker — "Martin Marprelate" — Bacon — Raleigh — Overbury — Translators — Pulpit Eloquence265

XXII. Late Elizabethan and Jacobean Poets: Minor Lyrists — Drayton — Daniel — Davies — Giles and Phineas Fletcher — Corbet — Sir John Beaumont283

XXIII. Late Jacobean and Caroline Prose: Burton — Herbert of Cherbury — Browne.

Caroline Prose: Milton — Jeremy Taylor — Thomas Fuller — Hobbes — Izaak Walton — John Bunyan — Clarendon303

XXIV. Caroline Poets: Crashaw — Herbert — Vaughan — Herrick — Carew — Lovelace — Suckling — Habington — Cartwright — Davenant — Cowley — Denham — Sherburne — Stanley — Browne — Cotton — Waller — Marvell — Milton — Samuel Butler328

XXV. Restoration Theatre: Congreve — Vanbrugh — George Farquhar — Otway — Nat Lee — Dryden358

XXVI. Augustan Poetry: Alexander Pope — Prior — Gay — Ambrose Philips — Tickell382

XXVII. Augustan Prose: Steele — Addison — Swift — De Foe394

XXVIII. Georgian Poetry I.: Edward Young — James Thomson — William Collins — Thomas Gray — The Wartons — John Dyer — William Shenstone422

XXIX. Georgian Poetry II.: Thomas Chatterton — William Cowper — Literature in Scotland (1550-1790) — Robert Burns — Charles Churchill — George Crabbe434

XXX. Georgian Prose I.: The Great Novelists — Richardson — Henry Fielding — Tobias Smollet458

XXXI. Georgian Prose II.: Samuel Johnson — Oliver Goldsmith — Edmund Burke — Horace Walpole — Laurence Sterne — David Hume — Robertson — Edward Gibbon — Richard Brinsley Sheridan — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu — Junius471

XXXII. The Romantic Movement: Coleridge — Walter Scott — William Wordsworth — Robert Southey — Shelley — Byron — Keats — Walter Savage Landor497

XXXIII. Later Georgian Novelists: Frances Burney — Mrs. Radcliffe — Maria Edgeworth — Charles Brockden Brown — Jane Austen — Walter Scott, the Novelist — James Fenimore Cooper — Washington Irving.

Magazines and Essayists: Charles Lamb — Leigh Hunt — William Hazlitt — Thomas de Quincey530

XXXIV. Poets after Wordsworth: Philip Freneau — William Cullen. Bryant — John Greenleaf Whittier — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — Alfred Tennyson — Robert Browning — Edgar Allan Poe — Ralph Waldo Emerson — James Russell Lowell — Matthew Arnold.

General Writers: John Ruskin560

XXXV. Late Victorian Poets: Edward FitzGerald — George Meredith — Elizabeth Barrett Browning — Christina Rossetti — Dante Gabriel Rossetti — William Morris — Swinburne.

Poetic Underwoods594

XXXVI. Latest Georgian and Victorian Novelists: Dickens — Thackeray — The Brontë Sisters — Nathaniel Hawthorne — Oliver Wendell Holmes — Charles Kingsley — George Meredith — Anthony Trollope — George Eliot — Robert Louis Stevenson — Minor Novelists609

XXXVII. Historians: Thomas Babington Macaulay — Thomas Carlyle — James Anthony Froude — Edward Augustus Freeman — William Hickling Prescott — John Lothrop Motley — J. S. Mill — Cardinal Newman — W. E. H. Lecky643

Index



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