Textbook

***Readings marked as PDF are located on Blackboard under “Course Documents.”

Old English

King Alfred the Great

• Introduction: Alfred’s “Prose Preface”

• Alfred, “Prose Preface,” Pastoral Care

Bede

• "Caedmon's Hymn"

Anonymous

• Introduction: Exeter Book Elegies

• Exeter Book Elegies

  • "The Wanderer"

  • "The Wife's Lament"

• Beowulf

Anglo-Norman

Marie de France

• • Introduction: Marie de France, "Translator's Note"

  • Bisclavret

  • Lanval

  • Yonec

Middle English

Gawain-Poet

• Introduction: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Anonymous

• Introduction: Sir Orfeo

• Sir Orfeo

Chaucer

• Introduction:

  • Bruce Holsinger, "Chaucer's Difficult Lives"

  • Kathleen E. Kennedy, "Everyday Life in Late Medieval England"

• Canterbury Tales, "General Prologue"

• Canterbury Tales, "The Miller's Prologue and Tale"

Early Modern

William Tyndale (PDF)

Queen Elizabeth I

• “To the Troops at Tilbury”

• The Golden Speech

Thomas More

• Utopia (PDF)

Christopher Marlowe

• Doctor Faustus

Poets

• Sir Thomas Wyatt

• Elizabethan Sonnet/Lyric (PDF)

• Shakespeare (PDF)