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Period: 450 to 1066
Old English (Anglo-Saxon Period)
Old English literary works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period. There are four great poetic codices of Old English poetry: the Junius Manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Nowell Codex or Beowulf Manuscript. -
Period: 1066 to 1500
Middle English Period
The English language reached a slandered towards the end of this period. Prose got a strong foundation though it remained immature. Poetry served as the main genre. Drama began in the form of “Mystery Play” Morality Play and Interlude” and Boccaccio. Love, Chivalry and religion are the three main literary ideals of this period. This spirit of romance pervades in every writing of the time.
Major Writers:
J. Wyclif, G. Chaucer, W. Langland, J. Gower, Sir Thomas Malory. -
Period: 1500 to
Renaissance
The chief characteristic of the Renaissance was its emphasis on Humanism, which means man’s concern with himself as an object of contemplation. This movement was started in Italy by Dante, Petrarch and Baccaccio in the fourteenth century, and from there it spread to other countries of Europe. In England it became popular during the Elizabethan period.
Authors and works: G. Boccaccio (The Decameron), D, Alighieri (Divine Comedy), W. Shakespeare (Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet) -
Period: to
Neoclassical Period
The Neoclassical period is also subdivided into ages, including The Restoration (1660–1700), The Augustan Age (1700–1745), and The Age of Sensibility (1745–1785). The Restoration period sees some response to the puritanical age, especially in the theater. Restoration comedies (comedies of manner) developed during this time under the talent of playwrights such as William Congreve and John Dryden. Satire, too, became quite popular, as evidenced by the success of Samuel Butler. -
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Romantic Period
Scholars say that the Romantic Period began with the publishing of Lyrical Ballads (1798) by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Succeeding Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth was a new generation of poets, each following the pattern of Romanticism of those before them. During the Romantic Period the novel grew in popularity as The gothic did too which combines intense emotions of terror, anguish, fear, and even love. the vampirsm era was created as well. -
Period: to
Victorian Age
The main topics for this unit on the Victorians are Industrialism, Religious Doubt, The Role of Women (“The Woman Question”) and Imperialism. This is not to say that these issues were peculiar to that era; indeed, we will see them reappearing in later units; for example, the “Woman Question” in the Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield chapters, Industrialism in Shaw’s play Major Barbara and in Huxley’s Brave New World, and Imperialism and Religious Doubt in the Orwell and Eliot chapters. -
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Edwardian Period
The literature of the Edwardian Age encompassed virtually all forms, genres, and styles, but many writers of the era reacted against what they viewed as the staid attitudes and conventions of Victorianism. Prose was dominant, especially prose fiction in the form of novels and short stories. Major prose fiction writers included J. M. Barrie, Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, Ford M. Ford, John Galsworthy, T- Hardy, and notable poets included Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Noyes, and Arthur Symons. -
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Modern Period: Early 20th century
World War I shook England to the core. As social mores were shaken so too were artistic conventions. The work of war poets like S. Sassoon and W. Owen was particularly influential. The new era called for new forms typified by the work of G. Hopkins Its difficulty, formal invention and bleak antiromanticism were to influence poets for decades. Sensitivity and psychological subtlety mark the superb novels of Virginia Woolf, who, like D. Richardson, experimented with the interior forms of narration -
Period: to
Georgian Period
The Georgian Period refers to the period that is named for the reign of George V (1910-1936). Many writers of the Edwardian Period continued to write during the georgian period. This era also produced a group of poets known as the Georgian Poets. These writers, now regarded as minor poets, were published in four anthologies antitled Georgian Poetry, published by Edward Marsh between 1912 and 1922. Georgian poetry tends to focus on rural subject matter and is traditional in technique and form. -
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Postmodern Period: Mid-20th century
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. It is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Among postmodern writers are H. Miller, W. Burroughs, J. Heller, K. Vonnegut, H. Thompson, T. Capote and T. Pynchon.