Citation Information
Article Title: English literature
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 04 February 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature
Access Date: August 16, 2019
Additional Reading General works
A comprehensive reference source is Margaret Drabble (ed.), The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th ed., rev. (2006). John Buxton and Norman Davis (eds.), The Oxford History of English Literature, 15 vol. (1945–90), provides comprehensive coverage of each period, though it is in the process of being replaced by Jonathan Bate (ed.), The Oxford English Literary History (2002– ). Other useful sources are Lionel Stevenson, The English Novel (1960, reprinted 1978); Peter Conrad, Cassell’s History of English Literature (2003); and Carl Woodring and James Shapiro (eds.), The Columbia History of British Poetry (1994). Nicholas Shrimpton The Old English period
R.D. Fulk and Christopher M. Cain, A History of Old English Literature (2002), is an excellent introductory survey of both the literature and critical trends. Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry (1977), is a good critical survey of both periods. Elaine Treharne (ed.), Old and Middle English: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (2004), presents an extensive selection of works; the more-difficult texts are accompanied by translations. S.A.J. Bradley (trans. and ed.), Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1982, reissued 1995), anthologizes prose translations of Old English poems. The Middle English period
Two good general approaches are A.S.G. Edwards (ed.), Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres (1984), which includes bibliographies and surveys of scholarship; and David Wallace (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (1999), on literature after the Norman Conquest. R.M. Wilson, Early Middle English Literature, 3rd ed. (1968), critically surveys this period. J.A.W. Bennett and G.V. Smithers (eds.), Early Middle English Verse and Prose, 2nd ed. (1968, reissued 1982), is an authoritative anthology, with a glossary. J.B. Trapp, Douglas Gray, and Julia Boffey (eds.), Medieval English Literature, 2nd ed. (2002), is another useful anthology.
Analytic studies include David Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing, 1360–1430 (1988); Piero Boitani, English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (1982; originally published in Italian, 1980); Nancy Mason Bradbury, Writing Aloud: Storytelling in Late Medieval England (1998); J.A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (1986); Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson (eds.), Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature (1994); David Lawton (ed.), Middle English Alliterative Poetry and Its Literary Background (1982); C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936, reissued 1995); Robert Potter, The English Morality Play (1975); and A.C. Spearing, Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry (1985). Richard Beadle Peter S. Baker The Renaissance period, 1550–1660 Elizabethan poetry and prose
In terms of material covered, C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding the Drama (1954, reprinted 1997), remains without rival, although some of its judgments now seem very dated. Also impressive for its coverage is David Loewenstein and Janel Mueller (eds.), The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (2002), which has essays on topics surveying the whole field. A less-ambitious collection, though still highly useful, is Michael Hattaway (ed.), A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (2000). Challenging and provocative reinterpretations of the period are Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980, reissued 2005); and David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. ed. (2002). Works devoted to particular topics include Gary Waller, English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century, 2nd ed. (1993); J.W. Lever, The Elizabethan Love Sonnet, 2nd ed. (1966, reprinted 1978); and Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance (1984). Elizabethan and early Stuart drama
The most authoritative late-20th-century overview is G.K. Hunter, English Drama 1586–1642 (1997). Surveys that are more user-friendly are presented in vol. 3 and 4 of Clifford Leech and T.W. Craik (eds.), The Revels History of Drama in English, 8 vol. (1976–83, reprinted 1996), which cover 1576 to 1613 and 1613 to 1660, respectively. Alexander Leggatt, English Drama: Shakespeare to the Restoration, 1590–1660 (1988), is a reliable overview. Collections of helpful essays covering the entire period include A.R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, 2nd ed. (2003); Arthur F. Kinney (ed.), A Companion to Renaissance Drama (2002); and Jane Milling and Peter Thomson (eds.), The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol. 1: Origins to 1660 (2004). Among the studies of the politics of Renaissance drama are Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre (1980); and Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy, 3rd ed. (2004). Feminist studies include Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (1983); and Kathleen McLuskie, Renaissance Dramatists (1989). Martin White, Renaissance Drama in Action (1998), discusses the stagecraft and conditions of playwriting. Early Stuart poetry and prose
The most-detailed general narrative (though dated) is Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, 1600–1660, 2nd ed., rev. (1962, reissued 1979). More useful are Thomas N. Corns, The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell (1993); Alan Sinfield, Literature in Protestant England, 1560–1660 (1983); and Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy, and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (1999). Among studies on prose is Roger Pooley, English Prose of the Seventeenth Century (1992). Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 (1994), discusses the Civil War period. M.H. Butler The Restoration and the 18th century
Helpful introductions include Stephen Copley (ed.), Literature and the Social Order in Eighteenth-Century England (1984); Maximillian E. Novak, Eighteenth-Century English Literature (1983); and Pat Rogers (ed.), The Eighteenth Century (1978). The chapters on literature in John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1997), are another useful source.
A book that covers the whole period but focuses on a more-restricted topic is Jean H. Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility: Ideal and Erotic Love from Milton to Mozart (1980). Among important thematic and general studies with a narrower chronological range are Marjorie Nicolson, Science and Imagination (1956, reprinted 1976); and David Nokes, Raillery and Rage: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Satire (1987).