English literature

The old Roman ‘virtue’ mated with cheerfulness.
~ Arthur Quiller-Couch (‘Q’)

English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world.

Quotes

• Ōs byþ ordfruma ǣlcre sprǣce
  wīsdōmes wraþu and wītena frōfur
  and eorla gehwām ēadnys and tō hiht.
  • God is the origin of all language
    wisdom’s foundation and wise man’s comfort
    and to every hero blessing and hope.
  • Old English rune poem (ós)
  • Tr. Stephen Pollington, Rudiments of Runelore (Anglo-Saxon Books, 2008), p. 46

• Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning; or, pure, ornate, and grotesque art in English poetry.
  • Walter Bagehot, in The National Review (November 1864)

• For this Anthology I have tried to range over the whole field of English Verse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most delights to honour.
  • Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900 (1900), Preface

• The Muses’ house has many mansions: their hospitality has outlived many policies of State, more than a few religions, countless heresies—tamen usque recurret Apollo—and it were profane to misdoubt the Nine as having forsaken these so long favoured islands. Of experiment I still hold myself fairly competent to judge. But, writing in 1939, I am at a loss what to do with a fashion of morose disparagement; of sneering at things long by catholic consent accounted beautiful; of scorning at ‘Man’s unconquerable mind’ and hanging up (without benefit of laundry) our common humanity as a rag on a clothes-line. Be it allowed that these present times are dark. Yet what are our poets of use—what are they for—if they cannot hearten the crew with auspices of daylight?
• The reader, turning the pages of this book, will find this note of valiancy—of the old Roman ‘virtue’ mated with cheerfulness—dominant throughout, if in many curious moods. He may trace it back, if he care, far behind Chaucer to the rudest beginnings of English Song. It Is indigenous, proper to our native spirit, and it will endure.
  • Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1918 (1939), Preface to New Edition

• I dip my hat to Chaucer,
  Swilling soup from his saucer,
  And to Master Shakespeare
  Who wrote big on small beer.
  The abstemious Wordsworth
  Subsisted on a curd’s-worth,
  But a slick one was Tennyson,
  Putting gravy on his venison. ...
  The influence of Milton
  Came wry out of Stilton.
  Sing a song for Percy Shelley,
  Drowned in pale lemon jelly,
  And for precious John Keats,
  Dripping blood of pickled beets.
  Then there was poor Willie Blake,
  He foundered on sweet cake.
  • John Crowe Ransom, "Survey of Literature", in Selected Poems (New York: Knopf, 1963), p. 81