An introduction to the earliest poetry, prose and drama in English, considered in chronological order and in historical context. Examine important literary works as the old English epic Beowulf, Chaucer's entertaining collection Canterbury Tales, the Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the devotional autobiography The Book of Margery Kempe, the sermon in dramatic form Everyman, Edmund's Spenser's chivalric saga The Faerie Queen and the sonnets of Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare.