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542
Plague kills half of the population of Constantinople.
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552
Buddhism is introduced.
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May 4, 653
Celtic church begins Christianity among Severn Valley.
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May 4, 750
Surviving version of Beowulf is composed.
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May 4, 771
Charlemagne becomes king.
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May 4, 1020
Viking explorer Leif Ericson explores Canadian coast.
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May 4, 1042
Macbeth kills Duncan I.
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May 4, 1042
Edward the Confessor becomes king of Saxons.
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May 4, 1053
Normans conquer Sicily.
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May 4, 1066
William the Conqueror becomes king of England.
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May 4, 1073
Canterbury becomes Enlgand's religious center.
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May 4, 1096
First Crusade begins - Europe and Middle East.
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May 7, 1170
The Pardoners Tale
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May 7, 1170
The Wife of Bath's Tale.
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May 4, 1215
King John is forced to sign Magna Carta.
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May 4, 1258
First commoners allowed in Parliament.
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May 4, 1272
Edward I becomes king.
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May 4, 1277
England conquers Wales.
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May 4, 1337
Beginning of the Hundred Years' War with France.
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May 4, 1348
Black Death begins expanding through England.
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May 6, 1375
Surviving version of Sir Garwain and the Green Knight is written.
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May 6, 1386
Chaucer begins writing The Canterbury Tales.
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May 7, 1465
Letters of Margaret Paston
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May 6, 1470
Thomas Malory writes Morte d' Arthur.
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Period: May 7, 1485 to
The English Renaissance
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May 7, 1552
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
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May 7, 1554
Sir Phillip Sidney (1554-1586)
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May 7, 1554
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554?-1618)
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May 7, 1564
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
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May 7, 1564
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
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May 7, 1572
works of John Donne (1572?-1631)
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May 7, 1572
Ben Johnson (1572-1637)
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WIlliam Shakespeare - Macbeth
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John Milton (1608-1674)
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Sir John Suckling (1609-1642)
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Period: to
Turbulent Time
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Jonathon Swift (1667-1745)
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Gullivers Travels
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Jonathan Swift published A Modest Proposal
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Thomas Gray wrote Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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A Dictionary of the English Language - Samuel Johnson
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Robert Burns - To A Mouse
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Percy bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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Period: to
Rebels and Dreamers
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Elizabeth Browning (1806-1861)
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
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Robert Browning (1812-1889)
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Charlies Dickens (1812-1870)
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Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
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Mary Wollstone Shelley - published Frankenstein
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Emily Bronte (1818-1848)
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Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
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Period: to
The Victorian Period
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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
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Tennyson's In Memoriam, A.H.H. is published.
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Hard Times is published by Charles Dickens
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A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
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Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
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William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
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Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
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T.S. Elliot (1888-1965)
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Period: to
A Time of Rapid Change
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George Orwell (1903-1950)
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Dover Beach by Arnold
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Vikings attack Lindisfarne.
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Alfred the Great becomes King of Wessex,
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Incas build city of Machu Picchu.
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Saxon monks copy Old English poems into "The Exeter Book."
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English is defeated by Danes at Battle of Maldon.
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Feudalism develops in Western Europe.
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Normans establish Normandy.
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Eric the Red establishes first viking colony.
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St. Augustine founded Christian monastery at Canterbury, Kent.
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The Seafarer and The Wanderer are written.
circa 975, around the time The Exeter Book was copied. -
Period: to Apr 29, 1485
Old English and Medieval Period
beginnings of English
