Autorentext

PETER BROWN is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Kent and former Academic Director of its Paris School of Arts and Culture. A Fulbright Scholar and founding editor-in-chief of Literature Compass, he also serves as general editor of the Blackwell Histories of Literature series. His teaching portfolio spans the full breadth of English literary history in both the UK and the US.

Klappentext

Presents a personal and thematic journey through English literature from Chaucer to the present Chapter and Verse: A Reader's History of English Literature offers a compelling reimagining of literary history-one that places the reader's experience at the heart of the narrative. Unlike traditional surveys of English literature that prioritize chronology and critical consensus, Peter Brown's approach emphasizes the subjective, evolving relationship between reader and text. This unique perspective addresses a long-standing gap in the field, emphasizing the emotional and intellectual engagements that shape how literature is received, remembered, and reinterpreted across a lifetime. Structured around thematic chapters-such as "Performance," "Fragments," and "Home"- Chapter and Verse spans the medieval to the contemporary, exploring Chaucer, Shakespeare, Eliot, and other canonical figures alongside neglected or overlooked authors such as Charlotte Dacre and Abdulrazak Gurnah. Each chapter blends literary analysis with personal narrative, beginning with formative reading experiences and culminating in a scholarly vantage point honed over decades of teaching. The result is both intimate and instructive, offering detailed engagements with texts and authors contextualized within broader literary movements. Uniquely integrating personal memoir with a thematic and chronological overview of English literature, Chapter and Verse:

• Explores literature's emotional and transformative power through lived reading experiences
• Reflects decades of university-level teaching across the full span of English literary history
• Provides accessible entry points into complex literary periods through thematic framing
• Includes notes and recommended readings at the end of each chapter to encourage further exploration

• Offers a fresh pedagogical approach that highlights how personal engagement can enhance critical analysis Chapter and Verse: A Reader's History of English Literature is a must-read for advanced secondary students, undergraduates, and postgraduates studying English literature, as well as general readers seeking a more personal connection to the history of English literature.

  Inhalt

  Timeline xi

  Prologue xiv

  Acknowledgements xix

  1 'In the Beginning': How Religion Fostered Poetry, Narrative and Drama 1

  Initiation 1

  The Book of Common Prayer 5

  Drama of the Liturgy 8

  Mystery Plays 9

  The Canterbury Crucifixion 12

  Continuity and Change 16

  Notes 17

  2 '... Was the Word': On Being Taught 'English Literature' 19

  A Bookish Man 19

  Hanley High School 21

  Encountering Geoffrey Chaucer 23

  Revolt 32

  Notes 35

  3 Romance: Love Stories from Ancient Troy and the Court of King Arthur 38

  Carmountside 38

  Romance 40

  Chaucer Revisited 42

  Embraces 47

  The Gawain Poet 49

  Thomas Malory 55

  Notes 61

  4 Translations: Inspirations from Other Cultures 63

  Translating and Adapting 63

  Radical Shifts 65

  William Langland 68

  Allegory 73

  Edmund Spenser 75

  Philip Sidney 78

  The Sonnet Craze 80

  Notes 83

  5 Performance: Playacting on Stage and in Everyday Life 85

  Roleplay 85

  Shakespeare's Theatre 89

  John Donne 94

  Lancelot Andrewes 97

  George Herbert 98

  Silent Actors 99

  John Milton 101

  Aphra Behn 104

  Notes 106

  6 Difference: The Age of Satire and the Birth of the Novel 109

  A Mistake 109

  John Dryden 112

  Alexander Pope 114

  Jonathan Swift 116

  Daniel Defoe 118

  Henry Fielding 120

  Laurence Sterne 122

  In the Archives 123

  New Perspectives 125

  Notes 128

  7 Margins: Breaking the Frame 131

  Relevance 131

  William Blake _134

  William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 136

  John Clare 140

  Lord Byron 142

  John Keats 145

  Percy Bysshe Shelley 147

  Mary Shelley 149

  Charlotte Dacre 153

  Jane Austen 154

  Notes 157

  8 Identity: Work in Progress 160

  Sink or Swim 160

  Charlotte Brontë 165

  Emily Brontë 167

  Anne Brontë 169

  W M Thackeray 171

  Charles Dickens 173

  George Eliot 176

  Anthony Trollope 181

  Robert Browning 183

  Elizabeth Barrett 184

  Notes 186

  9 Fragments: The World Upended 188

  Garbutt's Ark 188

  Thomas Hardy 191

  Joseph Conrad 195

  D H Lawrence 199

  Poetry of the First World War 202

  Early T S Eliot 210

  Notes 212

  10 Home: Sanctuary and Exile 214

  The Sewing Kit 214

  James Joyce _217

  Virginia Woolf 222

  George Orwell 226

  Later Eliot 228

  W H Auden 229

  John Osborne 231

  Samuel Beckett 232

  Seamus Heaney 233

  Abdulrazak Gurnah 234

  Notes 238

  Epilogue 240

  Index 000