APPENDIX C. 1. BIBLIOGRAPHY. GENERAL WORKS OF REFERENCE. HISTORY. Gardiner's Student's History of England. Green's Short History of the English People. Terry's History of England for Schools. Traill's Social England. LANGUAGE. Marsh's Lectures on the English Language. Louns- LITERARY HISTORY. General: Saintsbury's A Short History of Ten Brink's History of English Literature. Two volumes. Morley's English Writers. Eleven volumes. Down to and Saintsbury's History of Elizabethan Literature. 1560-1660. Gosse's History of Eighteenth Century Literature. 1660-1780. 1780-1895. Courthope's History of English Poetry. Ward's A History of English Dramatic Literature. Three volumes. Herford's Age of Wordsworth. Walker's Age of Tennyson. BIOGRAPHY. Dictionary of National Biography. Encyclopædia Britannica. English Men of Letters Series. Contains biographies of: Chalmer's British Poets from Chaucer to Cowper. Twenty-one volumes. Ward's The English Poets. Selections, with critical introductions. Four volumes, Chaucer to Tennyson. Craik's English Prose. Similar to the last. Five volumes. Arber's British Anthologies, 1401-1800. Ten volumes with glossaries. Palgrave's Golden Treasury. Songs and lyrical poems only, with notes. Stedman's British Anthology. Selections from over three hundred nineteenth century poets, with compact biographical notes. Page's British Poets of the Nineteenth Century. Extended selections from the fifteen foremost poets. SINGLE VOLUME EDITIONS OF THE POETS. Cambridge Edition. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Edited, with introductions, dates, notes, glossaries, etc. Contains Ballads (English and Scottish, Child). E. B. Browning, Robert Browning, Burns, Keats, Milton, Scott, Shelley, Tennyson, Wordsworth. In preparation: Byron, Dryden, Herbert, Shakespeare, Spenser. Globe Edition. Macmillan Co. With introductions and sometimes glossaries. Contains Arnold, E. B. Browning, Robert Browning (two volumes), Burns, Chaucer, Coleridge, Cowper, Dryden, Goldsmith (miscellaneous works), Malory, Milton, Pope, Scott, Shelley, Shakespeare, Spenser, Tennyson, Wordsworth. Oxford Poets. Henry Frowde, Clarendon Press. Edited, with introductions and notes. Burns, Byron, Chaucer, Keats, Milton, Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Wordsworth. SERIES OF CLASSICS ADAPTED TO SCHOOL USE. (Abbreviations, to be used in the references below, are given first.) The Athenæum Press Series. Ginn & Co. A. P. S. B. L. S. Belles Lettres Series. Heath & Co. Clarendon Press Series. The Clarendon Press, Oxford. C. P. S. Eng. R. Eng. C. Lake E. C. Lake English Classics. Scott, Foresman & Co. Cassell. Cassell's National Library. Texts modernized. Riverside Literature Series. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. G. S. Gateway Series. American Book Co. Long. Longman's English Classics. 2. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. CHAPTER I. Old English Poetry. Thomas Arnold's edition of Beowulf (Longman's) contains the text, translation, and notes. A later text is A. J. Wyatt's (1894). An excellent prose translation is that by C. B. Tinker (Newson & Co., N. Y.). There are rhythmical translations by James M. Garnett (Ginn & Co.) and by John Lesslie Hall (paper, D. C. Heath & Co.), and an edited translation by C. G. Child in R. L. S. Parts are also to be found translated in Stopford Brooke's Early English Literature and Morley's English Writers, Vol. I. Ex tracts from the original may be found in March's or Sweet's AngloSaxon Reader. An outline of the story of Beowulf should be read and then several of the best passages, for example, the coming of the heroes, 194-380; the swimming-match with Breca, 530-580; the fight with Grendel, 710-836; Grendel's mere, 1357-1379; the fight with Grendel's mother, 1492-1590; Beowulf's funeral-pyre, 3100-3184. Read also the translation of the Fight at Finnsburg, Brooke's Early English Literature, 64-65 (also included in Hall's translation of Beowulf) The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Riddles, Charms, etc., may be found both in Brooke and in Morley (Vol. II.). Read the Dream of the Rood, Brooke, 440-442. Can you find evidence in this early poetry of a love of the gentler aspects of nature? How far could you localize the scene of Beowulf from internal evidence? Of what occupations do you get hints? What virtues are honored? Find Christian interpolations. Is war indulged in for the love of it? Does familiarity with fighting diminish respect for order, justice, charity, or humanity? Find passages that might be modern. Can you trace any parallels between The Seafarer and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner? Cite some modern examples of English sea-poetry. Define alliteration carefully. In modern English versification what principles have been added to those which governed AngloSaxon verse? What principles have been modified or discarded? What influences have helped to work the change? What AngloSaxon verse characteristics appear in Longfellow's Hiawatha? Collateral Reading: Tennyson's translation of The Battle of Brunanburh; The Exile's Complaint, The Ruined Wall-Stone, etc., in Longfellow's Poets and Poetry of Europe; The Grave, in Morley, Vol. II., p. 333; Tennyson's drama, Harold; also William Morris's prose romances. CHAPTER II. Old English Prose. Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Alfred's Boëthius and Orosius, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may be found translated in Bohn's Antiquarian Library. Read Cuthbert's account of the death of Bede in Morley's Library of English Literature, or in Brooke's Early English Literature, pp. 339-340; also the conclusion of the Ecclesiastical History, Encyc. Brit., article Bede. Chapter xxiv. of the History contains the story of Cadmon. Read Alfred's account of the decay of learning in the preface to his Pastoral Care, Brooke's English Literature to the Norman Conquest, p. 64. Chapter xxii. (Bohn, p. 257). Read his Boëthius, Preface, and for the years 871, 878, 958, and 1087 CHAPTERS III. and IV. Legends of Britain For further accounts of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Walter Map, and Layamon, consult Saintsbury, Morley, etc. The third volume of Morley's English Writers contains an outline of the Brut (and also of Havelok the Dane). What legendary British kings give the titles to two of Shakespeare's dramas? Find a passage in Milton's Comus referring to the old British kings. What familiar American poem is based on the quest for the Holy Grail? (All these works afford collateral reading.) Collateral reading for the twelfth century: Tennyson's Becket; Scott's Ivanhoe. CHAPTER V. Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, edited by Professor Skeat for the Early English Text Society. The Pearl, edited by Morris for the same (Early English Alliterative Poems); also by I. Gollancz, 1891. Editions of both are promised in B. L. S. Mandeville. The standard edition of the English translation is the Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville, edited by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. A good reprint of this, with modernized spelling, is in Macmillan's Library of English Classics. The text in Bohn's Library and in Cassell is very freely modernized and loses something of the original flavor. Read the chapters about the royal estate of Prester John (xxvii. to end), or read the selections in Craik, Vol. I. How many strange words and phrases do you find? In what respects does the style seem crude? Does the author write as if he believed his stories? Wyclif, Langland, Gower. Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English, Part II., gives selections from all three in the original form. Selections from Wyclif with modernized spelling may be found in Craik, I., and from Langland and Gower in Ward, I. The entire Confessio Amantis is in Chalmers and in Morley's Carisbrooke Library. Selections from Wyclif's Bible may be found in Old South Leaflets (No. 57) and in Maynard, Merrill & Co.'s English Classics. Some portion of this translation should be carefully compared with the King James version. Note especially such plurals as workis, such verb-forms as hungren, and such words as agenrisyng (resurrection). |