Old English
Caedmon’s Hymn (pdf and other versions)
French Romances
Eric and Enid by Chretien de Troyes
Framing Stories
Bocaccio’s Decameron (prose translation)
Middle English
Canterbury Tales: the Knight’s Tale
Canterbury Tales: General Prologue
Chris: The Canterbury Tales (Prologue)
Avery Rose: The Kight’s Tale
The beginnings of allegory
History:
Roman Poet Statius wrote the Thebaid (about the battle for Thebes) roughly contemporary with the golden age of latin literature (the time following Horace, Virgil, Ovid, & co.) part of his Thebaid can be found here:
Thebaid by Staius (1st Century)
Post Christian Roman poet “invented” the allegorical form with the Psychomachia, an epic-like struggle between personified virtues and vices that can be found here:
Psychomachia by Prudentius (5th Century)
Piers Plowman–A political allegory?
Piers Plowman prologue (translation in modern English)
Middle English Lyrics
Middle English Ballads
Middle English Prose
Le Morte D’Artur by Thomas Mallory
For Tuesday read The Preface by Caxton and Book 1: Chapters 1-5
For Thursday read through the end of Book I, concentrating on the last four chapters.
For Monday read Book XIX in volume II. Avi will lead the discussion everyone bring a (written) answer to the question,
How do the concepts of love and betrayal in Malory compare with the chivalric code of love of the French Romance poets?
Modern English
16th Century
Sir Philip Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry
Read from the beginning to page 117 through the end of the paragraph ending with “…maintaining of public societies.” Pick up again at page 138, “But since I have so long a career in this matter…” and read to the end. What do you notice about his prose?
Shepherd’s song or tale from Arcadia
First read a synopsis of the whole thing and then read the poem and a little of the prose around it found at these places.
In this version, it seems to begin at something labeled “Book I.] Arcadia 109.”
The Shepherd’s song appears from the middle of page 130 to the middle of page 135 in this edition.
Sydney’s Sonnet Cycle
For Tuesday, 7 November, read sonnets 1, 10, 39, 41, and 74 from the following link:
Christopher Marlowe
The Passionate Shepherd to his love
Read both of these for Monday, the 13th of November. Pay special attention to the language of the descriptions of Hero’s shoes in Hero and Leander. This is the most “golden” of the golden age.
Tamburlane the Great streaming
Read Act I for Friday the 17th
Shakespeare
Poetry
Plays
Read the Induction for Tuesday
The Taming of the Shrew (open source)
For Monday, 4 December, read the rest of the play and write notes about what is left out of the movie 10 things I hate about you and if leaving those things out distorts Shakespeare’s intentions.
Over Break consider staging options for Macbeth around the “vision” scenes, especially those involving the witches. How should the audience think about the witches?
17th Century
The Metaphysicals
John Donne
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
What is commonly presented as a poem entitled alternately “No Man is an Island” or “For whom the Bell Tolls” was actually part of a prose selection, the seventeenth of 20 Meditations dedicated to Charles I. Read both of the excerpts below.
Meditation XVII (including the, “No man is an island,” passage).
“For whom the Bell Tolls” as a poem
Izaak Walton
For Monday, January 22, read the first few pages of Izaak Walton’s biography of John Donne finished in 1639 but reworked and published much later. Read through “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” which you should recognize when you reach. If you want to have a look at The Compleat Angler, we’ll be starting that for Tuesday.
Robert May
John Milton
For Thursday, Feb 8, read Sonnet XV and On Shakespear.1930
Sonnet XV: On the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of Colchester
For Monday, read the argument and first 330 lines of Book I. For Tuesday, you’ll need to read the rest of Book I, so if you want to get ahead…. silly thought, I know.
Neoclassical
Satire:
Jonathan Swift
Essay:
Samuel Johnson
Romantic Poets
Samuel Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
William Blake
We’ll start with a couple of Blake’s early poems from Songs of Innocence and Experience read
Read the following for Friday, 23 March
On Monday we will look at these Blake “prophetic poems” (the first one is long and cryptic the second and third short and impenetrable).
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Jerusalem: I See the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in Deadly Sleep
Here is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, including the illustrations found in the original copy.
Marriage of Heaven and Hell with illustrations
Wordsworth
The Preface to Lyrical Ballads
The Ruined Cottage (published as Part I of The Excursion
Keats
Romantic Prose
Elia (Charles Lamb)
Ann Radcliffe
For Thursday, 19 April, read the introduction and first two chapters, paying special attention to the section introducing the monk Schedoni at the end of the second chapter.
Victorians
Tennyson
For Thursday, read The Epic and the poem it “frames” Morte D’Arthur, paying close attention to similarities and differences between Tennyson’s poem and Mallory’s tale.
For Friday read Crossing the Bar, Mother and Poet, and Dover Beach
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Mathew Arnold
Monday: In light of today’s reading, write a brief essay on Arnold’s topic after 130 years, discussing both the accuracy of his prediction (considering the place of belles lettres in education and the rational study of them), and the likelihood of the same prediction made about the future of education.
Post-Empire
T. S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Good Literature? Why/why not? No such thing? Why not?
The Georgetown School 
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