A History of English Literature

his master. At the end of the play he is released, and Prospero’s final words to the audience also ask that he, like his servant ...

man, this side idolatry’; he also mentioned his ‘small Latin and less Greek’ and his carelessness. Ben Jonson was given a feroci ...

The Alchemist In The AlchemistSir Epicure Mammon plans the sexual conquests he will enjoy after taking the elixir of youth: ‘I w ...

Overview The 17th century is divided into two by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 and the temporary overthrow of the monarc ...

became Latin Secretary to the Council of State, losing his eyesight in 1652 while writing the Council’s defence of its regicide. ...

of a twice-disrupted dynasty onto a round number. (The first century regularly to call itself a century was the 19th century.) L ...

lyrics and high doctrine, and were imitated by Milton. But a masque was the ances- tor of modern opera and ballet, a show not al ...

Aquinas (1225–1274) had thought man good but stupid, whereas Martin Luther (1483–1546) found man bad but clever. The doctrine of ...

Essex, found office and became a Member of Parliament. But in 1602 a rash secret marriage to the young neice of his patron ended ...

his death. Twentieth-century critics were struck especially by such love poems as ‘The Sun Rising’, ‘The Anniversary’ and ‘The G ...

therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.’ Despite its last gesture, this famous passage is commu ...

dividing the supernatural truths of biblical revelation from the truths of nature. After the Advancement of Learning he proposed ...

Donne practised this contraction – as did Jonson, in (reportedly) saying that Donne ‘for not being understood, would perish’ and ...

For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might persuade the world I have none at all, as the general scandal ...

Jonson’s social ideal is exemplified in ‘To Penshurst’, a thank-you letter to the Sidney family for their hospitality at their e ...

Donne ‘affects the metaphysics’ in his love poems, perplexing ‘the fair sex’ with ‘nice speculations of philosophy’. As ‘affects ...

Blindness’). This remoteness was increased for rational Anglicans by the Puritan enthusiasm of the 1640s. Herbert’s simple faith ...

mentioned Mistress Anne Bradstreet, a colonist whose poems were published in London without her knowledge in 1650 as The Tenth M ...

He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe’s edge did try .... Praise for Charles ...

rewrite the Bible as it might have been written with the benefit of a humanist English education. If this does not conform to ou ...