This course is a chronological introduction to the important movements in British literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the eighteenth century. Because we have such a limited time to cover such a broad period, we will not be studying drama in this course, but will concentrate on poetry and short- to medium-length prose texts. We will try to combine close readings of the works on the syllabus with attention to historical and cultural developments during a millennium of literary activity in England. The authors covered will include Geoffrey Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare (as a poet), Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, John Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson.