Pastoral poetry of the English Renaissance : An anthology

Renaissance pastoral poetry is gaining new interest for its distinctive imaginative vein, its varied allusive content, and the theoretical implications of the genre. This is by far the biggest ever anthology of English Renaissance pastoral poetry, with 277 pieces spanning two centuries. Spenser, Sidney, Jonson and Drayton are amply represented alongside their many contemporaries. There is a wide range of pastoral lyrics, weightier allusive pieces, and translations from classical and vernacular pastoral poetry; also, more unusually, pastoral ballads and poems set in all kinds of prose works. Each piece has been freshly edited from the original sources, with full apparatus and commentary. This book will be complemented by a second volume, to be published in 2017, which includes a book-length introduction, textual notes and analytic indices.

Material Type: Reading, Textbook

Author: Chaudhuri Sukanta

British Literature Through History

This is an OER textbook with historical background on many great works of British literature, from the Anglo-Saxon period through the twentieth century. It contains links to free online versions of the texts, but the actual texts are not included in this book.

Material Type: Textbook

The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales – A new way to learn about old books

The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales (OACCT) is a volume of introductory chapters for first-time, university-level readers of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The chapters have been created and edited by professional scholars of Chaucer, and all material is released open access and free of charge for classroom, scholarly, and personal use. There are two kinds of material available here. Essay chapters explore each of the tales in relation to an engaging topic of broad general interest, while reference chapters provide key context and tools for understanding the Canterbury Tales and its time period. In the future, more material will be added to this project: teaching resources, reader contributions, and new essay chapters that consider tales from additional viewpoints and in relation to different topics.

Material Type: Reading

Author: Candace Barrington

Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution

The University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia bring you Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution. Featuring sixty-nine authors and full texts of their works, the selections in this open anthology represent the diverse voices in early American literature. This completely-open anthology will connect students to the conversation of literature that is embedded in American history and has helped shaped its culture.

Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Textbook

Author: Wendy Kurant

DALA Digital American Literature Anthology

The Digital American Literature Anthology is a free, online textbook that surveys American literature from its beginnings to the early twentieth century. It is available in multiple digital formats, though specifically designed for tablets, laptops, and e-readers. The textbook has links to unit introductions, and multiple supplemental online resources.

Material Type: Primary Source, Reading, Textbook

Author: Michael O'Conner

Compact Anthology of World Literature II: Volumes 4, 5, and 6

Although the text is designed to look like an actual book, the Table of Contents is composed of hyperlinks that will take you to each introductory section and then to each text. The three parts of the text are organized into the following units: Part 4—The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Unit I: The Age of Reason Unit II: The Near East and Asia Part 5—The Long Nineteenth Century Unit I Romanticism Unit II Realism Part 6—The Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature Unit I Modernism Unit II Postcolonial Literature Unit III Contemporary Literature Texts from a variety of genres and cultures are included in each unit. Additionally, each selection or collection includes a brief introduction about the author and text(s), and each includes 3 – 5 discussion questions. Texts in the public domain--those published or translated before 1923--are replicated here. Texts published or translated after 1923 are not yet available in the public domain. In those cases, we have provided a link to a stable site that includes the text. Thus, in Part 6, most of the texts are accessible in the form of links to outside sites. In every case, we have attempted to connect to the most stable links available.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Anita Turlington, Karen Dodson, Laura Getty, Laura Ng, Matthew Horton

An Outline History of World Literature

This is an anthology of world literature from the early 20th century. It might be a useful resource for discussing the evolution of the canon and the changing ideas of what should be included in a course like this.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Walter Blair

Introduction to Literature

This course is designed to introduce students to the study, analysis, and interpretation of literature across multiple genres. Key topics include literary genres and conventions; how to read and write about literature; literary analysis; and readings and responses in the genres of poetry, drama, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Primary literary works and critical responses are included, as well as a collection of writing assignments aligned with course content and learning outcomes.

Material Type: Full Course, Homework/Assignment, Textbook

Authors: Ivy Tech Community College, Lumen Learning

The Open Anthology of Literature in English

This is an anthology in progress of writing in English from 1650-1800. It is designed to be a transatlantic anthology, with examples of texts written in the British Isles, but also colonial America, which was, of course, a part of Britain until 1783, when the Treaty of Paris formally recognized the independence of the new United States of America. Many of the texts have been freshly edited and annotated to provide authoritative and curated editions for the use of students and general readers, and to create an alternative to expensive print anthologies. Over time, all of these texts (and more) will be edited and annotated to use the full resources enabled by the digitization of literary works. Please feel free to comment on these texts; we hope to improve the anthology based on the needs of readers.

Material Type: Primary Source, Reading

Author: John O’Brien

Publishing Blackness: Textual Constructions of Race Since 1850

From the white editorial authentication of slave narratives, to the cultural hybridity of the Harlem Renaissance, to the overtly independent publications of the Black Arts Movement, to the commercial power of Oprah's Book Club, African American textuality has been uniquely shaped by the contests for cultural power inherent in literary production and distribution. Always haunted by the commodification of blackness, African American literary production interfaces with the processes of publication and distribution in particularly charged ways. An energetic exploration of the struggles and complexities of African American print culture, this collection ranges across the history of African American literature, and the authors have much to contribute on such issues as editorial and archival preservation, canonization, and the "packaging" and repackaging of black-authored texts. Publishing Blackness aims to project African Americanist scholarship into the discourse of textual scholarship, provoking further work in a vital area of literary study.

Material Type: Reading, Textbook

The Black Arts Enterprise and the Production of African American Poetry

The outpouring of creative expression known as the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s spawned a burgeoning number of black-owned cultural outlets, including publishing houses, performance spaces, and galleries. Central to the movement were its poets, who in concert with editors, visual artists, critics, and fellow writers published a wide range of black verse and advanced new theories and critical approaches for understanding African American literary art.

Material Type: Reading, Textbook

Author: Howard Rambsy II

ENGL 300 - Lecture 21 - African-American Criticism

In this lecture, Professor Paul Fry examines trends in African-American criticism through the lens of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Toni Morrison. A brief history of African-American literature and criticism is undertaken, and the relationship of both to feminist theory is explicated. The problems in cultural and identity studies of essentialism, “the identity queue,” expropriation, and biology are surveyed, with particular attention paid to the work of Michael Cooke and Morrison’s reading of Huckleberry Finn. At the lecture’s conclusion, the tense relationship between African-American studies and New Critical assumptions are explored with reference to Robert Penn Warren’s poem, “Pondy Woods.”

Material Type: Lecture

Author: Paul Fry

American Women's Literature, 1847 to 1922

LibriVox recording of a collection of 20 short stories and long-form poetry by American women writers. (Summary by BellonaTimes) Includes selections from Mary E. Wilkins, Kate Chopin, Louisa May Alcott, Alice Dunbar, Willa Cather, Lola Ridge, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Fannie Hurst, Zitkala-Sa, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Elinor Wylie, Lucretia P. Hale, Edna Ferber, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Lydia Maria Child, Sara Teasdale, Susan Fenimore Cooper, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. For further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording. For more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit LibriVox.org. Download M4B (168MB)

Material Type: Reading

Authors: Alice Dunbar, Amy Lowell, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edna Ferber, Elinor Wylie, Fannie Hurst, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hilda Doolittle, Kate Chopin, Lola Ridge, Louisa May Alcott, Lucretia P. Hale, Lydia Maria Child, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins, Sara Teasdale, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Willa Cather, Zitkala-Sa

Victorian Women Writers Project- Home

The Victorian Women Writers Project (VWWP) began in 1995 at Indiana University and is primarily concerned with the exposure of lesser-known British women writers of the 19th century. The collection represents an array of genres - poetry, novels, children's books, political pamphlets, religious tracts, histories, and more. VWWP contains scores of authors, both prolific and rare.

Material Type: Reading

Author: Indiana University Digital Library Program

Perseus Digital Library

The Perseus Digital Library offers primary and secondary sources for the study of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as 19-Century American, Renaissance, Humanist and Renaissance Italian Poetry in Latin, and issues of the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Material Type: Primary Source, Reading

Author: Gregory R. Crane

The Internet Classics Archive

This site includes a collection of public domain texts, mainly Greco-Roman works (some Chinese and Persian), all in English translation.

Material Type: Reading

Author: Daniel C. Stevenson

Survey of English Literature II

A survey of British literature from 1789 to 1989, this course begins with the poetry of William Blake and ends with the prose of Chinua Achebe and the graphic fiction of Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The literature presented represents a complex range of forms or genres of writing, including poetry, non-fiction prose, and the novel. The course will chart the evolution of the British Empire, from the time of the French and Industrial Revolutions through the expansion of frontiers and the consequences of that expansion.

Material Type: Reading, Textbook

Author: Howard Tinberg

English Literature II

Lumen Learning English Literature II. Covers the Romantics, the Victorians, and the Moderns.

Material Type: Primary Source, Textbook

African American Literature: Course Readings for African American Literature

AAS 267, African American Literature, is a survey course that explores the early days of enslavement to the present. The course includes readings, analysis, and discussion of literary texts written by African Americans, paying particular attention to the political, historical, and social context that informs these texts.

Material Type: Full Course, Syllabus

Author: Anne Rice

Othello Teaching Project

Inspired by Dr. Kim Hall’s video Why Study Shakespeare Today?, 2:46 (Folger Shakespeare Library, Jul. 11, 2012), this project seeks to link in conversation teachers and learners from diverse places and at different kinds of selective and open-admission, four-year and two-year educational institutions. Through assignments on and discussions of Shakespeare’s Othello, we can share thoughts on controversial social issues such as race, migration, politics, rule of law, sex, gender, and domestic violence. We can ask about the difficulties, drawbacks, and benefits of studying these topics in Shakespeare’s plays, begin conversations, and hear different perspectives.

Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Lesson, Reading

Author: Dr. Christine E. Hutchins