本书运用学界最新的研究成果和观点，吸纳现代教学理论和方法，结合现代文学批评理论，将文学史、作品选读和文学知识纳入同一本书。本书按照文学式样的不同划分而采用了一种独特的编写体例，共包括四部分：按体裁划分：诗歌、小说、戏剧和散文。本书可最大程度地帮助学生清晰文学发展的脉络，领悟文学作品的内涵，欣赏文学杰作的美韵。

本书可作为高等院校或者自学考试英语专业学生的教材。

本书运用学界最新的研究成果和观点，吸纳现代教学理论和方法，结合现代文学批评理论，将文学史、作品选读和文学知识纳入同一本书。本书按照文学式样的不同划分而采用了一种独特的编写体例，共包括四部分：按体裁划分：诗歌、小说、戏剧和散文。各部分均有发展脉络概说、作家生平与作品介绍、选文、注释和思考题。同一作家根据其作品分类出现在不同体裁部分，但讲解侧重点有所不同。本书按历史时期划分，其中文学史部分和作家生平部分文字浅显，易读易懂，可最大程度地帮助学生清晰文学发展的脉络，领悟文学作品的内涵，欣赏文学杰作的美韵。

本书既可作为高等院校或者自学考试英语专业学生的教材，也可供英语专业研究生和广大英语爱好者阅读参考。

Poetry

 Port One Early and Medieval Period

 Chapter 1 Anglo-Saxon Poetry

 Chapter 2 Anglo-Norman Poetry

 Chapter 3 Poetry in the Age of Chaucer

 Chapter 4 The Fifteenth Century Poetry

 Part Two The Sixteenth Century

 Chapter 1 The Renaissance in England

 Chapter 2 Sir Thomas Wyatt

 Chapter 3 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

 Chapter 4 Sir Philip Sidney

 Chapter 5 Edmund Spenser

 Chapter 6 Sir Walter Ralegh

 Chapter 7 Christopher Marlowe

 Chapter 8 William Shakespeare

 Chapter 9 Ben Jonson

 Part Three The Seventeenth Century

 Chapter 1 Revolution and Restoration

 Chapter 2 Metaphysical Poets

 Chapter 3 Cavalier Poets

 Chapter 4 John Milton

 Part Four The Eighteenth Century

 Chapter 1 General View of the 18th-century English Poetry

 Chapter 2 Alexander Pope

 Chapter 3 Thomas Gray

 Chapter 4 William Collins

 Chapter 5 ()liver Goldsmith

 Chapter 6 William Blake

 Chapter 7 Robert Burns

 Part Five The Romantic Period

 Chapter 1 The English Romantic Movement

 Chapter 2 William Wordsworth

 Chapter 3 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 Chapter 4 George Gordon Byron

 Chapter 5 Percy Bysshe Shelley

 Chapter 6 John Keats

 Part Six The Victorian Age

 Chapter 1 General View of the English Poetry

 Chapter 2 Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 Chapter 3 Alfred Tennyson

 Chapter 4 Robert Browning

 Chapter 5 Matthew Arnold

 Chapter 6 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 Part seven The Twentieth Century

 Chapter 1 General View of the English Poetry

 Chapter 2 Thomas Hardy

 Chapter 3 Gerard Manley Hopkins

 Chapter 4 A. E. Housman

 Chapter 5 William Butler Yeats

 Chapter 6 Thomas Stearns Eliot

 Chapter 7 Rupert Brooke

 Chapter 8 Robert Graves

 Chapter 9 Wystan Hugh Auden

 Chapter 10 Philip Larkin

 Chapter 11 Dylan Thomas

 Chapter 12 Ted Hughes

 Chapter 13 Seamus Heaney

Novel

 Part Eight Evolution of the English Novel

 Chapter 1 The Rise of the English Novel

 Chapter 2 Aphra Behn

 Part Nine The Eighteenth Century English Novel

 Chapter 1 The Rapid Growth of the English Novel

 Chapter 2 Daniel Defoe

 Chapter 3 Jonathan Swift

 Chapter 4 Samuel Richardson

 Chapter 5 Henry Fielding

 Chapter 6 Oliver Goldsmith

 Part Ten The Nineteenth Century

 Chapter 1 The Prosperous Period in Novel Writing

 Chapter 2 Jane Austen

 Chapter 3 Walter Scott

 Chapter 4 Charles Dickens

 Chapter 5 William Makepeace Thackeray

 Chapter 6 Charlotte Bronte

 Chapter 7 Emily Bronte

 Chapter 8 George Eliot

 Chapter 9 Thomas Hardy

 Part Eleven The Twentieth Century

 Chapter 1 The Development of the English Novel

 Chapter 2 John Galsworthy

 Chapter 3 Joseph Conrad

 Chapter 4 E. M. Forster

 Chapter 5 Virginia Woolf

 Chapter 6 James Joyce

 Chapter 7 D. H. Lawrence

 Chapter 8 George or Well

Drama

 Part Twelve Molar English Dramatists and Selected Plays

 Chapter ] General view of the English Drama

 Chapter 2 Major English Dramatists

 Chapter 3 Selected Plays William Shakespeare

Essay

 Part Thirteen Major Essayists and Selected Essays

 Chapter 1 General view of the English Essay

 Chapter 2 Major Essayists

 Chapter 3 Selected Essays