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Period: 450 (invasion of Celtic England) – 1066 (conquer England)
Themes: heroism, fate, moral instruction
Genres: Oral traditions, poetry
Key authors: Beowulf poet, Exeter author, Caedmon poet, Cynewulf poet.
Historical context: Clans ruled themselves. People were first very warrior-like; later became farmers. -
Period (1066–1500)
Themes: “modern” (recognizable) English
Genres: religious
Key authors: Chaucer, Thomas Malory, and Robert Henryson
Historical context: Sees a huge transition in the language, culture, and lifestyle of England -
Period: (1500–1660) “Early Modern” period
Themes: Religious, moral, and political
Genres: Poetry, drama Epic, translations, comedy, tragedy
Key authors:
Elizabeth Age: Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare
The Jacobean Age: John Donne, Michael Drayton, John Webster, Elizabeth Cary, Ben Jonson.
Caroline Age: John Milton, Robert Burton, and George Herbert
Commonwealth period: Thomas Fuller, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell. -
Period: The Restoration (1660–1700), The Augustan Age (1700–1745), and The Age of Sensibility (1745–1785)
Themes: neoclassicism, a critical and literary mode, Age of reason
Genres: comedies of manner, novelty, poetry
Key authors: William Congreve, John Dryden, Samuel Butler, Aphra Behn, John Bunyan, and John Locke.
Historical context: The Restoration period sees some response to the puritanical age, especially in the theater. -
Period: (1785 – 1832)
Themes: Dreams and visions, imaginary creatures, heroes, exotic places and people, unrequited love.
Genres: Character sketches, slave narratives, poetry, short stories.
Key authors: Wordsworth, Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, John Keats, Charles Lamb.
Historical context: When one speaks of Romanticism, one is referring to this great and diverse age of British literature, perhaps the most popular and well-known of all literary ages. -
Period: The period has often been divided into “Early” (1832–1848), “Mid” (1848–1870), and “Late” (1870–1901)
Themes: Industrialization, Urbanization, immigration
Genres: Prose fiction, essay, Poetry
Key authors: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold, among others. Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and Walter Pater.
Historical context: It was a time of great social, religious, intellectual, and economic issues, heralded by the passage. -
Period: (1901–1914) this period covers the period between Victoria’s death and the outbreak of World War I
Themes: rigid class society, interest in socialism, industrialization, upper class, lower class.
Genres: Poetry, drama, novel
Key authors: Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and Henry James. Alfred Noyes and William Butler Yeats. James Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, and John Galsworthy.
Historical context: Este período lleva el nombre del rey Eduardo VII -
Period: usually refers to the reign of George V (1910–1936)
Themes: rural or pastoral in nature, treated delicately and traditionally rather than with passion or with experimentation.
Genres: Poetry
Key authors: Ralph Hodgson, John Masefield, W.H. Davies, and Rupert Brooke.
Historical context: Includes the reigns of the four successive Georges from 1714–1830. -
Period: (1915 – 1946)
Themes: Uncertainty, fragmentation, political changes, disillusionment.
Genres: Poetry, drama, epic, fiction, tragedy.
Key authors: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, the poets W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Auden, Seamus Heaney, Wilfred Owens, and the dramatist's Tom Stoppard, George Bernard Shaw.
Historical context: Common features include bold experimentation with subject matter, style, and form, encompassing narrative, verse, and drama. -
The postmodern period begins about the time that World War II ended. Many believe it is a direct response to modernism. Some say the period ended about 1990, but it is likely too soon to declare this period closed. Poststructuralist literary theory and criticism developed during this time. Some notable writers of the period include Samuel Beckett, Joseph Heller, Anthony Burgess, John Fowles, Penelope M. Lively, and Iain Banks. Many postmodern authors wrote during the modern period as well.