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Jan 1, 1386
The Canturbury Tales
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Note; This date is approximate. -
Period: Jan 1, 1386 to Dec 31, 1485
The Middle Ages
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Jan 1, 1390
The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Note: This date is approximate -
Jan 1, 1395
Chaucer's Retraction
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Note; This date is approximate -
Dec 31, 1396
Battle of Nicopolis
Marks the final failure of the Crusades. -
Dec 31, 1399
Richard II abdicates the throne to Henry IV.
Ends the Plantagenet dynasty; the Lancastrian dynasty begins. -
Oct 25, 1415
Battle of Agincourt
Marks the turning point of the 100 Years' War. -
Dec 31, 1429
Joan of Arc lifts the siege of Orleans.
This turn of events shifts the momentum of the war toward France. -
Dec 31, 1431
Joan of Arc is tried and executed.
Joan of Arc was one of the most key figures in the 100 Years' War. -
Dec 31, 1439
Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press.
This invention allows for the spreading of literature to the masses. -
Dec 31, 1453
The 100 Years War ends.
England's territory in France is almost completely lost. -
May 22, 1455
Battle of St. Albans
Marks the beginning of the War of the Roses -
Jan 1, 1470
Morte Darthur
Author: Sir Thomas Malory -
Aug 22, 1485
Battle of Bosworth Field
Richard III dies and Henry Tudor becomes king; this marks the last liniage shift in the English monarchs. -
Period: Jan 1, 1486 to
16th Century
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Jun 16, 1487
Battle of Stoke
This marks the end of the War of the Roses. -
Dec 31, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the New World.
Marks the beginninf of European colonization of the New World. -
Dec 31, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci begins painting the Mona Lisa
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Dec 31, 1510
The great plague hits England
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Dec 31, 1513
Batlle of the Spurs
Henry VIII crushes the French. -
Dec 31, 1517
The 95 Theses
Marks the official beginning of the Protestant Reformation. -
Dec 31, 1532
The Formation of the Anglican Church
England breaks away from Rome and establishes Henry VIII as head of the Anglican church. -
Dec 31, 1553
Mary Tudor becomes the first queen of England
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Dec 31, 1558
Elizabeth Tudor becomes Queen Elizabeth of England
Her reign marks the height of the English Renaissance. -
Dec 31, 1564
William Shakespeare is born in 1564
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Dec 31, 1580
Francis Drake circles the world
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England respulses the grand Spanish Armada
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Spain repulses the English Armada
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Amoretti
Author: Edmund Spenser -
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Author: Christopher Marlower -
The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
Author: Sir Walter Raleigh -
Period: to
Early 17th Century
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The Sonnets
Author: William Shakespeare -
Eve's Apology in Defense of Women
Author: Aemilia Lanyer -
Epigrams
Author: Ben Johnson -
William Shakespeare dies.
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Poems
Author: John Milton -
Galileo publishes his ideas about the universe
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The Temple
Author: George Herbert
Note: The date for this collection of poems has not been firmly establish. So, I applied the date above is the year of Herbert's death. -
Holy Sonnets
Author: John Donne -
Descartes coins his famour philosophical assumption: "I think; therefore, I am."
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Parliament revolts against Charles I
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Lucasta
Author: Richard Lovelace -
Charles I is beheaded
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Cromwell massacres the populations of Drogheda and Wexford
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Poems
Author: Andrew Marwell -
Oliver Cromwell dissolves Parliament and becomes dictator of England
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Sonnets
Author: John Milton -
Areopagitica
Author: John Milton -
Cromwell dies
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England's Parliament restores Charles II to the throne
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Period: to
Restoration and the 18th Century
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An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
Author: John Dryden -
Mac Flecknoe
Author: John Dryden -
Isaac Newton presents Principia
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William of Orange (from the European mainland) overthrows James II
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John Locke rejects political power derived from the authority of God
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A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire
Author: John Dryden -
A Tale of the Tub
Author: Jonathan Swift -
Scotland and England become the United Kingdom of Great Britain
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An Essay on Criticism
Author: Alexander Pope -
A Modest Proposal
Author: Jonathan Swift -
The Dunciad
Author: Alexander Pope -
Marriage A-la-Mode
Author: William Hogarth -
Rambler No. 4
Author: Samuel Johnson
Note: The above date is a publication date. -
Rambler No. 60
Samuel Johnson -
Both England and France lay claim to the Ohio River Valley; these claims lead to the French and Indian War.
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English armies achieve victory in the Americas over the French
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Battle of Bunker Hill
Marks the beginninf of the American Revolution -
Pope
Author: Samuel Johnson -
King George declares the colonies free and independent
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Period: to
Romantic Period
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There Is No Natural Religion
Author: William Blake -
Songs of Innocence
Author: William Blake -
Holy Willie's Prayer
Author: Robert Burns -
The Eolian Harp
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge -
The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge -
Kubla Khan
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge -
The Ruined Cottage
Author: William Wordsworth -
Michael
Author: William Wordsworth -
Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems
Author: William Wordsworth -
The Irish begin rebelling against English authority
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Songs of Experience
Author: William Blake -
The British win the naval battle of Trafalgar; this ends Napoleon's hopes of invading England.
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Lyrical Ballads
Author: William Wordsworth -
Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos
Author: George Gordon, Lord Byron -
They say that Hope is happiness
Author: George Gordon, Lord Byron -
She walks in beauty
Author: George Gordon, Lord Byron -
Napolon is exiled to the island of Elba
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Mutability
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley -
To Wordsworth
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley -
Battle of Waterloo
Marks the end of Napoleon's rule forever -
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Author: John Keats -
Ozymandias
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley -
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
Author: John Keats -
To Homer
Author: John Keats -
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Author: John Keats -
A Song: "Men of England"
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley -
England in 1819
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley -
Bright star, I would I were stedfast as thou art
Author: John Keats -
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Author: John Keats -
Ode on Melancholy
Author: John Keats -
La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad
Author: John Keats -
Sonnet to Sleep
Author: John Keats -
Ode to Psyche
Author: John Keats -
Ode to a Nightingale
Author: John Keats -
Ode on Indolence
Author: John Keats -
To a Sky-Lark
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley -
John Keats dies of tuberculosis at the age of 26
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George Gordon, Lord Byron dies of fever in Greece
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Period: to
Victorian Age
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Charles Darwin sails to South America as a naturalist
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Lady of Shalott
Author: Alfred, Lord Tennyson -
The Whigs acquire more power in the English Parliament for a short time
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Porphyria's Lover
Author: Robert Browning -
Queen Victoria begins reigning in Great Britain
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58 children under the age of 13 die in mining accidents in England
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My Last Duchess
Author: Robert Browning -
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning -
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Author: Alfred, Lord Tennyson -
Battle of Balaclava
Inspires Tennyson's poem The Charge of the Light Brigade -
Charles Darwin publishes On Origin of Species
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Hap
Author: Thomas Hardy -
God's Grandeur
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins -
The Windhover
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins -
Spring and Fall
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins -
No worst, there is none
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins -
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle punlishes his first Sherlock Holmes short story, A Study in Scarlet
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Crossing the Bar
Author: Alfred, Lord Tennyson -
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Author: William Butler Yeats -
Studies in psychology by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud launch an age of analysis
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Period: to
20th Century Onward
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Heretics
Author: G. K. Chesterton -
No Second Troy
Author: William Butler Yeats -
On Lying in Bed
Author: G. K. Chesterton -
Love Song
Author: T. S. Eliot -
The Convergence of the Twain
Author: Thomas Hardy -
World War I begins
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Piano
Author: D. H. Lawrence -
World War I ends
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The Second Coming
Author: William Butler Yeats -
Adolf Hitler becomes Fuhrer of the Nazi Party
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Journey of the Magi
Author: T. S. Eliot -
BBC is given a royal charter in the United Kingdom
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The world population reaches 2 billion
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BBC World Service starts broadcasting
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Adolf Hitler becomes the Chancellor of Germany
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Mesee des Beaux Arts
Author: W. H. Auden -
The Unknown Citizen
Author: W. H. Auden -
Germany's invasion of Poland begins World War II
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Winston Churchill becomes prime minister of England
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World War II ends
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Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Author: Dylan Thomas