BIBLIOGRAPHY.[113]

HISTORY.  Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 150-208, or Cheyney, pp. 264-328.  Greene, ch. 6; Traill; Gardiner; Froude; etc.

Special Works.  Denton’s England in the Fifteenth Century; Flower’s The Century of Sir Thomas More; The Household of Sir Thomas More, in King’s Classics; Green’s Town Life in the Fifteenth Century; Field’s Introduction to the Study of the Renaissance; Einstein’s The Italian Renaissance in England; Seebohm’s The Oxford Reformers (Erasmus, More, etc.).

LITERATURE.  General Works.  Jusserand; Ten Brink; Minto’s Characteristics of English Poets.

Special Works.  Saintsbury’s Elizabethan Literature; Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, edited by Sommer; the same by Gollancz (Temple Classics); Lanier’s The Boy’s King Arthur; More’s Utopia, in Temple Classics, King’s Classics, etc.; Roper’s Life of Sir Thomas More, in King’s Classics, Temple Classics, etc.; Ascham’s Schoolmaster, in Arber’s English Reprints; Poems of Wyatt and Surrey, in English Reprints and Bell’s Aldine Poets; Simonds’s Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Poems; Allen’s Selections from Erasmus; Jusserand’s Romance of a King’s Life (James I of Scotland) contains extracts and an admirable criticism of the King’s Quair.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 1.  The fifteenth century in English literature is sometimes called “the age of arrest.”  Can you explain why?  What causes account for the lack of great literature in this period?  Why should the ruin of noble families at this time seriously affect our literature?  Can you recall anything from the Anglo-Saxon period to justify your opinion?

2.  What is meant by Humanism?  What was the first effect of the study of Greek and Latin classics upon our literature?  What excellent literary purposes did the classics serve in later periods?

3.  What are the chief benefits to literature of the discovery of printing?  What effect on civilization has the multiplication of books?

4.  Describe More’s Utopia.  Do you know any modern books like it?  Why should any impractical scheme of progress be still called Utopian?

5.  What work of this period had the greatest effect on the English language?  Explain why.

6.  What was the chief literary influence exerted by Wyatt and Surrey?  Do you know any later poets who made use of the verse forms which they introduced?

7.  Which of Malory’s stories do you like best?  Where did these stories originate?  Have they any historical foundation?  What two great elements did Malory combine in his work?  What is the importance of his book to later English literature?  Compare Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King” and Malory’s stories with regard to material, expression, and interest.  Note the marked resemblances and differences between the Morte d’Arthur and the Nibelungen Lied.