Author Profile

Dr. Prajna Paramita has done her higher studies in Classical Literature. She has served as Associate Professor in Maldives National University. Currently she is teaching English in GTE College in Delhi. Her expertise includes Literature, Political Studies, and Women Issues. She has written seven books for civil servants and other competitive examinations.

About The Book

This book is a comprehensive survey in chronological fashion of the major periods, authors and movements from Chaucer to the present. Written for undergraduate and postgraduate students in universities this book locates the authors’ genres and developments within their social political and historical contexts. Informed by contemporary literary and cultural theory this account also prepares students for further explorations in particular genres and periods in English literature. This work has a twofold purpose. It seeks in general to promote an historical understanding of English literature; and at the same time to extend this to wider circles. The book leaves the reader informed about each writer’s main output sensitive to the special character of his gifts and aware of the writer’s place in the story of English literature as a whole. A lucid and readable guide it is invaluable both to the student of English literature and to the general reader.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. The Fourteenth Century
2. Fifteenth-century Poetry and Prose
3. The Early Sixteenth Century
4. Elizabethan Drama
5. Jacobean Drama
6. Elizabethan Poetry
7. Metaphysical and Cavalier Poetry
8. Elizabethan and Seventeenth-century Prose
9. Milton to Dryden
10. Restoration Drama
11. Origins of the Novel
12. The Age of Swift and Pope
13. The Age of Johnson
14. The Eighteenth Century Novel
15. The Close of the Eighteenth Century
16. Wordsworth and the Romantics
17. Scott and Contemporary Novelists
18. Victorian Poetry
19. The Victorian Novel
20. Twentieth-century Drama
21. Twentieth-century Poetry
22. The Twentieth-century Novel
Bibliography
Index