Includes bibliographical references and index.

Pt. I. Introduction. General introduction / Rebecca Lemon, Emma Mason, and Jonathan Roberts -- The literature of the Bible / Christopher Rowland -- Biblical hermeneutics and literary theory / David Jasper -- Pt. II. Medieval. Introduction / Daniel Anlezark -- Old English poetry / Catherine A.M. Clarke -- The medieval religious lyric / Douglas Gray -- The Middle English mystics / Annie Sutherland -- The Pearl-poet / Helen Barr -- William Langland / Mary Clemente Davlin -- Geoffrey Chaucer / Christiania Whitehead -- Pt. III. Early modern. Introduction / Roger Pooley -- Early modern women / Elizabeth Clarke -- Early modern religious prose / Julie Maxwell -- Edmund Spenser / Carol V. Kaske -- Mary Sidney / Rivkah Zim -- William Shakespeare / Hannibal Hamlin -- John Donne / Jeanne Shami -- George Herbert / John Drury -- John Milton / Michael Lieb -- John Bunyan / Andrew Bradstock -- John Dryden / Gerard Reedy -- Pt. IV. Eighteenth century and Romantic. Introduction / Stephen Prickett -- Eighteenth-century hymn writers / J.R. Watson -- Daniel Defoe / Valentine Cunningham -- Jonathan Swift / Michael F. Suarez -- William Blake / Jonathan Roberts and Christopher Rowland -- Women Romantic poets / Penny Bradshaw -- William Wordsworth / Deeanne Westbrook -- S. T. Coleridge / Graham Davidson -- Jane Austen / Michael Giffin -- George Gordon Byron / Wolf Z. Hirst -- P. B. Shelley / Bernard Beatty -- Pt. V. Victorian. Introduction / Elisabeth Jay -- The Brownings / Kevin Mills -- Alfred Tennyson / Kirstie Blair -- The Brontës / Marianne Thormählen -- John Ruskin / Dinah Birch -- George Eliot / Charles LaPorte -- Christina Rossetti / Elizabeth Ludlow -- G. M. Hopkins / Paul S. Fiddes -- Sensation fiction / Mark Knight -- Decadence / Andrew Tate -- Pt. VI. Modernist. Introduction / Ward Blanton -- W. B. Yeats / Edward Larrissy -- Virginia Woolf / Douglas L. Howard -- James Joyce / William Franke -- D. H. Lawrence / T.R. Wright -- T. S. Eliot / David Fuller -- The Great War poets / Jane Potter.