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This period started in the fifth century when the Jutes, Angles and Saxons came to England from Germany, defeated the English tribes and started their reign. It ended in 1066 with the Norman Conquest. The historical events which influenced the literature of this period were: Christianity reached England and Christianization of the pagan English tribes began, monasteries were established where a written literature began.
Beowulf
The Seafarer
The Husband’s -
This period started with the Norman Conquest in1066 and ended with the end of fifteenth century. There are two ages in this period. The span from 1066 to 1340 is called Anglos-Norman Period. The period from 1340 to 1400 is called the Age of Chaucer because Chaucer, the great poet, dominated this period. The time from 1066 to 1500 is also called the Middle Ages. The early part of the Middle Ages is called the Dark Ages.
Authors:
John Wyclif
Geoffrey Chaucer
William Langland
John Gower -
This period is often subdivided into four parts, including the Elizabethan Age (1558-1603), the Jacobean Age (1603-1625), the Caroline Age (1625-1649), and the Commonwealth Period (1649-1660). Authors of this age: Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, and, of
course, William Shakespeare. John Donne, Michael Drayton, John Webster, Elizabeth
Cary, Ben Jonson, and Lady Mary Wroth.
John Milton and Thomas Hobbes Thomas Fuller, Abraham Cowley. -
This 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 developed during this time under the talent of playwrights like William Congreve and John Dryden. Satire, too, became quite popular, as evidenced by the success of Samuel Butler. Other writers: Aphra Behn, John Bunyan, and John Locke. -
Occurring in the context of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and the social, political, and economic changes that occurred following the Augustan Age, Romanticism moved away from an emphasis on the importance of an empirical, material worldview and looked to the imagination and nature as sources of insight.
This era includes the works of: Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas De Quincey, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley. -
Named for the reign of Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne in 1837, and it lasts until her death in 1901. It was a time of great social, religious, intellectual, and economic issues, heralded by the passage of the Reform Bill, which expanded voting rights. The period has often been divided into Early , Mid and Late periods.
Poets of this time include: Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, William Makepeace Thackeray. -
Named for the reign of Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne in 1837, and it lasts until her death in 1901. It was a time of great social, religious, intellectual, and economic issues, heralded by the passage of the Reform Bill, which expanded voting rights. The period has often been divided into Early, Mid and Late periods.Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, William Makepeace Thackeray.
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This period is named for King Edward VII and covers the period between Victoria’s death and the outbreak of World War I. Although a short period , the era includes incredible classic novelists such as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and Henry James; notable poets such as Alfred Noyes and William Butler Yeats; and dramatists such as James Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, and John Galsworthy. -
The Georgian period usually refers to the reign of George V, but sometimes also includes the reigns of the four successive Georges from 1714–1830. Here, we refer to the former description as it applies chronologically and covers, for example, the Georgian poets, such as Ralph Hodgson, John Masefield, W.H. Davies, and Rupert Brooke.
The themes and subject matter tended to be rural or pastoral in nature, treated delicately and traditionally rather than with passion or with experimentation. -
The modern period traditionally applies to works written after the start of World War I. Common features include bold experimentation with subject matter, style, and form, encompassing narrative, verse, and drama. Writers of this age: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Dorothy Richardson, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster, and Doris Lessing; Wilfred Owens, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Graves, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Frank McGuinness. -
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. -
-Burgess, A. (2020). A Brief Overview of British Literary Periods. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/british-literary-periods-739034
-https://www.tetsuccesskey.com/2018/07/the-old-english-period-the-anglo-saxon-period.html
-https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Renaissance-period-1550-1660
https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-romantics/