Texts from the English literary and folk traditions, from Old English and Middle English through ballads, early modern prose, witchcraft pamphlets, and wonder literature.
Folders
5th-11th Century — Old English foundations: Anglo-Saxon poetry, Bede, Beowulf, and the earliest literary record of English before the Norman Conquest. (4)
14th Century — Middle English in renewal: romance, marvel travel, border song, and the literary return of English after the Norman Conquest. (6)
15th Century — Fifteenth-century English and Scots writing: late medieval balladry, courtly poetry, and popular narrative before the Tudor turn. (6)
16th Century — Sixteenth-century English: Tudor prose, Reformation instruction, demonology, travel, drama, and balladry in a rapidly changing language. (24)
17th Century — Seventeenth-century English: devotion, science, colonial encounter, witchcraft trials, fairy faith, biography, poetry, and popular song. (114)
18th Century — Eighteenth-century English: the ballad revival of Percy's Reliques and Defoe's history of the Devil. (4)
19th Century — Nineteenth-century English literature, folklore, antiquarian study, and supernatural history after the Romantic turn. (2)
Arthurian and Heroic Tradition — English Arthurian, Beowulf, chivalric, and heroic literary inheritance, including Malory and later English-language retellings. (5)
Ballads and Popular Song — Cross-century ballad materials and anthologies that gather English popular song across periods rather than belonging cleanly to one century. (6)
Folklore and Popular Tradition — English fairy tales, folk custom, Robin Hood, West Country lore, games, seasonal practice, and popular tradition. (10)
Witchcraft and Demonology — Christian and European witchcraft, demonology, persecution, trial theory, and the theological machinery of witch-hunting. (2)
Pages
Glossary — A shelf-specific slice of the Good Works Glossary for English folklore and Old English terms.
Introduction to English Literature — A source-critical public introduction to English literary traditions — from the Anglo-Saxon migrations to the ballad collectors, tracing how Germanic vernaculars, Latin Christianity, Norse contact, Norman French, manuscript culture, and oral balladry shaped the archive.
Reader's Guide to English Literature — Routes through the multilingual, regional, devotional, popular, theatrical, colonial, and contested histories gathered on the Aenglisc shelf.