Introduction Part I A Language Is Born Old Anglo-Saxon Evolving Language in Evolving Adolescents The Norman Conquest Chaucer's Middle English The Language Wakes up, Renewed Elizabethan English: Shakespeare Expansion and Contraction: King James Bible Part II Lyric Activity in Metaphysical Poetry: John Donne The English Epic: Milton The Eighteenth Century and Blake Wordsworth Coleridge Byron Shelley Keats Elizabeth Barrett Browning Robert Browning Tennyson Gerard Manley Hopkins Part III Alteration of the Early American Mind Poetry in American Prose: The Novel Whitman Emily Dickinson Contemporary American Speech Speech and Drama in High School Conclusion
