The Norton anthology of English literature / M. H. Abrams

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface to the Seventh Edition -- Acknowledgments -- "The Persistence of English"-- The Middle Ages (to ca. 1485) -- Anglo-Saxon England -- Anglo-Norman England -- Legendary Histories of Britain -- Celtic Contexts -- Middle English Literature in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries -- The Sixteenth Century (1485-1603) -- Literature of the Sacred -- The Wider World -- The Early Seventeenth Century (1603-1660) -- The Science of Self and World -- Voice of the War -- The Restoration of the Eighteenth Century (1660-1785) -- Debating Women: Arguments in Verse -- Slavery and Freedom -- Selected Bibliographies -- Geographic Nomenclature -- British Money -- The British Baronage -- Religions in England -- Poetic Forms and Literary Terminology -- Illustrations -- Permissions Acknowledgments -- Index.

The outpouring of English Literature overflows all boundaries, including the capacious boundaries of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. But these pages manage to contain many of the most remarkable works written in English during centuries of restless creative effort. We have included epic poems and short lyrics; love songs and satires; tragedies and comedies written for performance on the commercial stage and private meditations meant to be perused in silence; prayers, popular ballads, prophecies, ecstatic visions, erotic fantasies, sermons, short stories, letters in verse and prose, critical essays, polemical tracts, several entire novels, and a great deal more. Such works generally form the core of courses that are designed to introduce students to the history of English literature, a history not only of gradual development, continuity, and dense internal echoes, but also of radical contingency, sudden change, and startling innovation. -- Preface.