The full text of Literature in Britain: The Middle Ages
The full text of Literature in Britain: The Renaissance to 1660

Homer: The Iliad (Translated by Samuel Butler)
        An extract from Book 24, telling the visit of Priam to Achilles

Homer: The Odyssey (Translated by Samuel Butler)
        An extract from Book 9, telling the encounter with th Cyclops Polyphemus

Virgil: The Aeneid (Translated by John Dryden)

Aeschylus: Agamemnon
Sophocles:Oedipus; Antigone
Aristophanes: Birds, Lysistrata

Plato: The Symposium (Translated by Benjamin Jowett)
          Socrates quotes Diotima's definition of Love

A selection of passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses :
    Origins of the Cosmos
    The Golden Age
    The First Sin
    The Flood
and various famous stories :
    Daphne
    Pyramus & Thisbe
    Pygmalion
    Philemon & Baucis
    Orpheus & Eurydice
    Daedalus & Icarus
    Echo & Narcissus

The last part of Plutarch's Life of Julius Caesar

The early Christian Church

The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity

The Confessions of Saint Augustine

The Confessio of Saint Patrick, the first surviving text by a British writer.

Medieval texts:

Old English Dates, The Dream of the Rood, Beowulf summarized, The Seafarer (fragment), The Wanderer

St. Bernard of Clairvaux: On Loving God

Middle English: Winner and Waster (extracts) | Pearl (summary) | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (summary) | Piers Plowman (extracts) | The Book of Margery Kempe (extracts). I Have a Young Sister. Ballads : Lord Randall; The Three Ravens


Geoffrey Chaucer: an overall survey. Life and Times | Shorter Works | Troilus and Criseyde | The Canterbury Tales (general introduction) |


Brief summaries of the Canterbury Tales : Fragments I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X. | Reading the Canterbury Tales |


Longer introductions to certain Tales: The General Prologue; The Miller's Tale; The Nuns' Priest's Tale; The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale; The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. An annotated text of the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.


The General Prologue Text with notes, (also a selection of portraits with modernised spelling);
The Knight's Tale Full text (Abbreviated text for class),
The Miller's Tale  Text,
The Nun's Priest's Tale Text (Article),
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale,
The Clerk's Prologue and Tale,
The Pardoner's Introduction, Prologue and Tale.


        In addition, you may consult the unedited full text of certain Tales saved from the University of Virginia on our local server: The General Prologue; The Knight's Tale; The Miller's Tale; The Nun's Priest's Tale; The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale; The Pardoner's Introduction, Prologue and Tale; The Clerk's Prologue and Tale.


Also, I have prepared an abbreviated text of Troilus & Criseyde Books 1-3, Books 4-5.

Renaissance texts:
 

Sir Thomas More, Utopia (full text)

Early Elizabethan poetry (Gascoigne, Googe, Turberville). Ralegh 'The Lie'

Edmund Spenser : Extracts from The Shepheardes Calendar;  extracts from FQ. The Bower of Bliss. Spenser Amoretti sonnets 34, 37, 54 . A detailed summary of The Faerie Queene.

Sir Philip Sidney : Arcadia (summary) / Double Sestina / Defence (extracts) / Astrophel and Stella (extracts) / One of the Certain Sonnets / From the New Arcadia. Astrophel and Stella sonnets 1, 47, Second Song;

Christopher Marlowe : Faust's final Soliloquy; extracts from Hero and Leander


Shakespeare : Summaries of the action of some of the Major Plays and brief comments on them.King John / Richard III / The Taming of the Shrew / Romeo and Juliet / A Midsummer Night's Dream / The Merchant of Venice / Richard II / Henry IV part 1 & part 2 / Henry V / Much Ado About Nothing / As You Like It / Julius Caesar / Hamlet / Twelfth Night / Troilus & Cressida / King Lear / Macbeth / Othello / Antony & Cleopatra / The Tempest and suggestions for Further Reading. Sonnets 29, 73, 116, 144. Shakespeare; Songs 'When Daisies Pied;' 'Blow, Blow';

Campion 'Rose-cheeked Laura,' 'There is a Garden'.

17th-century texts:

John Donne: 'The Good Morrow', 'Song', 'The Sun Rising', 'The Canonization', 'The Flea', 'The Ecstasy', 'Batter My Heart'; A Valediction Forbidding Mourning; the 1631 Songs and Sonnets (complete)

Ben Jonson: A summary of Volpone
From Epigrams: To My Book; To William Camden; On My First Daughter; On My First Son; To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with Mr. Donne's Satires.(Separate) On my First Son.
Sequence: The Forest.
Individual poems from The Forest: 2. To Penshurst; 4. To the World; 5. To Celia; 7. That Women are but Men's Shadows; 9. To Celia; 15. To Heaven.
From Underwoods: Elegy

Herrick To the Virgins

George Herbert: Virtue; The Flower; Love 3; 'The Pulley', 'The Altar', 'Easter Wings',  'Love 3';

Henry Vaughan: Regeneration; The Retreat; The World

Andrew Marvell: To His Coy Mistress;

Francis Bacon Of Truth.

Jacobean Drama : Summaries of major plays. The Knight of the Burning Pestle / Philaster; or, Love Lies A-Bleeding / The Maid's Tragedy / A King and No King / Beggar's Bush / The Island Princess / The Humorous Lieutenant / The Wild-Goose Chase / Rule a Wife and Have a Wife / A Chaste Maid in Cheapside / The Changeling / Women Beware Women / The Revenger's Tragedy / A New Way to Pay Old Debts / A Woman Killed with Kindness / The Shoemakers Holiday / Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge / The Malcontent / The Dutch Courtesan / The White Devil / The Duchess of Malfi / 'Tis Pity She's a Whore / The Broken Heart / The Cardinal.

John Milton:  On the Morning of Christ's Nativity; L'Allegro, Il Penseroso

Post-1700 texts


Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

A list of the main pre-1900 novels

A series of more or less modern poems with some biographies of poets, both British and American.