An Anthology to the Course in the History of English Literature [antikvár]

THE EDITORS' PREFACE This anthology is the result of collaboration and was designed to provide students with those works of English literature that constitute the subject of the first part of the survey course "The History of English literature" at the Teacher Training Faculty of Veszprém University. Along with the original (at times annotated) texts, one can also find in it (hopefully) useful supplementary material to them. Thus this book includes some of the best known works composed from Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the seventeenth century, among which we can find important excerpts from Beowulf, two tales from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a medieval mystery and morality play, Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, a selection of Elizabethan epic and lyric poetry, the perhaps most cited metaphysical poems and a comedy of manners by Congreve — to mention just the most important ones. Our policy in the selection of text for the various sections was to focus on those with which every student who intends to complete the first stage of the course must be familiar. As the table of contents shows, no Shakespearean drama was included, no need there was, since his plays are accessible, as opposed to certain medieval or early renaissance texts. The introductory matter to each section aims to describe the cultural background in which the works came to be written, and mention some (and by far not all) of the essential, mainly historical data concerning their possible sources, the foreign and native influences that contributed to the composition of the works; and as is shown in the section dealing with Shakespearean drama, it also attempts to collect and display the probably most disputed characteristics of the works. Éva Bús is responsible for the introductory studies of the sections dealing with Anglo-Saxon literature, early and late medieval poetry and medieval drama, the development of the stage after the middle ages, those summing up the important aspects of Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies and the final one describing some of the major features of restoration comedy. Zsuzsanna S. Rednik is responsible for the introductory texts of the sections treating the subject of the English Renaissance, Elizabethan lyric and epic poetry, Shakespeare's histories, the School of Donne and, in the end, that discussing baroque epic poetry. The edition of the literary texts we did together. Last but not least we wish to thank Terence McGuigan and James Arthurs for their reading and correcting of certain sections, some of our students for their help (without their aid the anthology would not have been completed in time), M.T. RobArt for drawing the cover picture, and FEFA for their financial support. Éva Bús Zsuzsanna S. Rednik