Chronology of English Literature

By romas2019
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    2. Middle English Period 1.066 – 1.500

    The English language got maturity and widespread popularity among the people, one of the most important characteristics of Middle English literature is its anonymity, most of the literature of the ages was anonymous. The public reproduction of nooks by hand gave them a communal character a text was exposed both to unconscious alteration and conscious change, different manuscripts of the work often differed greatly from the another, originality was not the major requirement
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    3. English Renaissance 1.500 – 1.660

    The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.
    - Elizabethan Period: 1.558 – 1.625
    - Jacobean Period: 1.603 – 1.625
    - Carolina Period: 1.625 – 1.653
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    4. Puritan Period 1.653 – 1.660

    Puritans came to American land in search of religious freedom from the Anglican Church or the High Church and the persecution of the Puritans under the King and Queen of the time. The first Puritan or Pilgrim settlement is at Plymouth. The Puritans had a huge cultural and political role in crystallizing the American life. There imported notions regarding religion and Enlightenment form the bedrock of new settlement culture.
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    5. Restoration Age 1.660 – 1.700

    The Restoration Period begins in 1660 A.D., the year in which King Charles-II was restored to the English Throne. The monarchical restoration was accompanied by the re-opening of English theatres and the restoration of the Church of England as the National Church. Now sacraments by all civil and military offices were taken in the Anglicans Church and those who refused (Protestants and Roman Catholics) were not allowed to hold the public offices.
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    6. 18th Century 1.700 – 1.798

    The expiry of the Licensing Act in 1695 halted state censorship of the press. During the next 20 years there were to be 10 general elections. These two factors combined to produce an enormous growth in the publication of political literature. Senior politicians, especially Robert Harley, saw the potential importance of the pamphleteer in wooing the support of a wavering electorate, and numberless hack writers produced copy for the presses.
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    7. Romanticism 1.798 – 1.837

    A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    8. Victorian 1.837 – 1.901

    The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the middle class the political power it needed to consolidate—and to hold—the economic position it had already achieved. Industry and commerce burgeoned. While the affluence of the middle class increased, the lower classes, thrown off their land and into the cities to form the great urban working class, lived ever more wretchedly.
  • Period: 1 CE to 1 CE

    9. Modern Literature

    Marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views.
    Belief that the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the world is what we say it is.
    There is no such thing as absolute truth. All things are relative.
    No connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.
  • Period: 1 CE to 2

    10. Contemporary 1.940 – today

    The United States, which emerged from World War II confident and economically strong, entered the Cold War in the late 1940s. This conflict with the Soviet Union shaped global politics for more than four decades, and the proxy wars and threat of nuclear annihilation that came to define it were just some of the influences shaping American literature during the second half of the 20th century.
  • Period: 450 to 1 CE

    1. Old English Period or “Anglo Saxon Literature” 450 – 1.066

    It start when The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries brought with them the common Germanic metre. For nearly a century after the conversion, there is no evidence that the English wrote poetry in their own language. But St. Bede the Venerable, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, wrote that in the late 7th century Caedmon, an illiterate Northumbrian cowherd, was inspired in a dream to compose a short hymn in praise of the creation.