Deze uitgebreide serie biedt een kritisch overzicht van de Engelse en Amerikaanse literatuur, verspreid over veertien eeuwen. Het volgt de evolutie van literaire kunst vanaf de Angelsaksische oorsprong tot heden. Elk deel duikt in belangrijke auteurs, baanbrekende werken en grote literaire stromingen. Het dient als een onmisbare bron voor het begrijpen van het rijke weefsel van de literaire geschiedenis.
This opening volume of "The Penguin History of Literature" begins with the earliest surviving documents of literary importance, dating from around 800 AD. It ends with the works of writers such as Skelton, Dunbar and Malory, whose careers were established before the accession of Henry VIII in 1509.
The essays in this volume are intended to give a modern reader a sense of the many contexts within which literature exists. The particular angle or emphasis is the contributor's choice. Thus Spenser's work is discussed in relation to his life and times; Shakespeare's sonnets are explored as transforming a specific genre; while Marvell is read in the context of the Caroline circle. Writers such as Sidney, Donne and Milton are discussed in more than one context. There are substantial chapters on genres, such as the epyllion or minor epic, the lyric and the prose of the period, as well as chapters on individual writers, and there is a bibliography and a table of dates. Published in ten volumes, "The Penguin History of Literature" is a critical survey of English and American literature covering 14 centuries, from the Anglo-Saxons to the present.
Essays cover medieval and Renaissance drama as well as the works of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Restoration playwrights
This collection has been edited to reflect the changing nature of criticism and scholarship in relation to the Romantic period.
The Victorian age was one whose principal tenets were progress and individualism, and one characterized by Tennyson as an awful moment of transition. In this volume introductory essays on aspects of Victorian thought, faith and doubt lead into chapters on the major novelists and poets of the period, as well as pieces on women prose-writers, fantasy and nonsense, the Victorian theatre and the fin de siecle.
This collection is edited to reflect the changing nature of criticism and scholarship in relation to literature in the 20th century.