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Period: 450 to 1066
OLD ENGLISH
The most famous literary work of this period is a fragment of the epic Beowulf poem
The most famous literary work of this period is a fragment of the epic Beowulf poem. -
455
BEOWULF
anonymous poem, It has two big parts: the first happens during the youth of the gauta hero who gives name to the poem, and tells how he comes to the aid of the Danes or Jutes, who suffered the attacks of a gigantic jotun and after killing it, he faces his terrible mother; in the second part, Beowulf is already the king of the gauta and fight to the death with a fierce dragon. -
Period: 1066 to 1500
MIDDLE ENGLISH
The middle English was strongly influenced by Anglo-Norman as later by the Anglo-French. The most famous writer in English is Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. -
1069
Geoffrey Chaucer
He was an English writer, philosopher, diplomat and poet, known above all as the author of the Canterbury Tales. Its main characteristics are the naturalism of its narrative, the variety of stories that count and the different characters that are found during the pilgrimage -
Period: 1500 to
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
English Vowel Evolution (Great Vowel Shift), English was standardized from the London dialect. William Shakespeare's time. In 1604 the first English dictionary (Table Alphabeticall) was published. -
William Shakespeare/Romeo and Juliet
He was an English playwright, poet and actor. Sometimes known as the Bardo. Shakespeare is considered the most important writer in the English language and one of the most famous of the world literature.
The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet, 1597. It tells the story of two young lovers who, despite the opposition of their families, rivals to each other, decide to marry clandestinely and live together. -
Period: to
RESTORATION AGE
Corresponding to the last years of the reign of the house of Stuart in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
they focus on the celebration or rejection of the restored court of Charles II. It encompasses works in some totally opposite cases: The Lost Paradise of John Milton next to Sodom by John Wilmot or the comedy of William Wycherley The Country Wife beside the austerity of The Progress of John Bunyan's Pilgrim -
Period: to
PURITAN
Puritanism was a radical faction of Calvinist Protestantism, which rejected both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. The beginning of American literature has Puritan writers like Cotton Mather or Thomas Shepard. His texts used to be religious or political. Puritanism has been a central theme of literary works such as The Scarlet Letter. -
John Milton/Paradise Lost
John Milton was an English poet and essayist, best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.
Paradise Lost is the most complete and important epic poem in the English language. Composed in twelve songs, the central theme is the fall into the sin of Adam and Eve. Milton, faithful to the spirit of dramatization that surrounds the whole poem, gives us a compassionate and touching picture of the couple expelled from Paradise. -
Period: to
18th CENTURY
classical cultural root, whose ideal of equilibrium was perfectly adapted to the English character. One of the genres most in vogue was that of travel literature, of pure testimony, or used as a means to criticize one's own reality from other points of view.
One of these books, the adventures of the shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe (1719), by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), was a huge success. -
Robinson Crusoe
one of the most famous works of the famous English writer Daniel Defoe, published in 1719 and considered the first English novel. It is a fictional autobiography of the protagonist, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote desert island.
Probably the story was inspired by real events occurred to Alexander Selkirk, from where he would build, with a simple and authentic plot, a symbol of colonialism, the perfect man and the supreme moral. -
Jane Austen
She was a leading British novelist who lived during the Georgian era. His works are full of comedy, romance, wit and satire, the six novels of this English author were also a sharp reflection of the social and territorial situation that England lived in his time. -
Period: to
ROMANTICISM
it is conceived as the idea of the imagination of the individual as a form of exploration. The main characteristics are: individuality, nature, symbolism, poetry and politics. -
Period: to
VICTORIAN
during the reign of Victoria
Its main characteristics are: an indisputable preoccupation with decency, with the consequent elevation of the moral level; a growing interest in social improvements and the awakening of a strong humanitarian spirit; remarkable lack of humor. -
The Scarlet letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel published in 1850 and considered his masterpiece.1 It is set in the Puritan New England of the early seventeenth century, and tells the story of Hester Prynne, a woman accused of adultery and sentenced to carry a letter in her chest «A», adulteress. Hester refuses to reveal the identity of her daughter's father, and tries to live with dignity in an unjust and hypocritical society. In the novel Hawthorne deals with issues of legalism, sin and guilt. -
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde belongs to realism, identifying himself specifically with English aestheticism and his characteristics are clearly visible in his works. He often uses paradoxes, some of which have become very famous. The author also uses themes of moral decadence and criticizes much of the society of that Victorian era, showing its great flaws. In his works you can also observe the free indirect style. -
Virginia Woolf
Outstanding figure of the so-called "Bloomsbury Group" as a novelist and literary critic, his poetic and technical style of interior monologue are considered among the most important contributions to the modern novel. -
Period: to
MODERM LITERATURE
Between the two World Wars we find important novelists like D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, member of the Bloomsbury group. The Sitwells also gained strength among the literary and artistic movements, but it was less influential. The most important writers of popular literature were P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. -
John Fowles
British writer, one of the most brilliant narrators of his generation, whose work includes such acclaimed novels as The Collector and The Woman of the French Lieutenant. A constant theme in his work is free will, which sometimes involves the reader, as in The woman of the French lieutenant, who proposes two possible endings. She also resorts to irony to interpolate allusions to scientific and artistic theories of the time in which her narrations are set. -
Period: to
POST MODERMS
Economic and social changes. New
voices. The old colonies. Gender and sexualities; body and identity
Two examples of English postmodern literature are: John Fowles and Julian Barnes. Some important writers of the beginning of the 21st century are: Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Will Self, Andrew Motion and Salman Rushdie. -
Jeannette Walls
Writer and American journalist, Jeanette Walls became famous thanks to her work as a reporter of the heart on MSNBC.com and as the author of the novel El castillo de cristal, in which she narrates the adventures of her strange family. The success of his book was such that he remained in the Top-100 of the New York Times for 100 weeks, receiving awards such as the Readers or the American Library Association Award. -
Period: to
CONTEMPORANY
It has the double purpose of approaching a specific discipline together with the acquisition of the relevant vocabulary.
