History of English Literature

By MadridCarlos87
  • Period: 1066 BCE to 1500

    The Medieval Period

  • Period: 1066 BCE to 1500

    Social background

    • Battle of Hastings
    • The Norman Conquest under William
    • Duke of Normandy
    • Feudalism
  • Period: 1066 BCE to 1500

    Literature

    • Langland (Piers the Plowman, allegory(where everything related to narrative is equated))
    • Ballad (story told in a song)
    • Romance (prevailing literature in feudalism. Long composition in verse, prose. About a particular character)
    • Chaucer
      (foundation of poetry, Rhyme stanza)
    • The Canterbury Tales(influenced by Decameron)
      (a view from the 14th century)
  • Period: 449 BCE to 1066 BCE

    The Anglo-Saxon Period

  • Period: 449 BCE to 1066 BCE

    Social background

    • England was building itself
    • Roman's Invasion
    • Vikings' attack
  • Period: 449 BCE to 1066 BCE

    Literature

    • Beowulf
    • Epic = long narrative poem in elevated style (Illiad, Odyssey)
    • Alliteration = certain accent where a line starts with same letter
  • Period: 1501 to

    English Renaissance

  • Period: 1501 to

    Social background

    • Years of war and civil wars
    • Weakening of Novelty and rising of bourgeoisie
    • New monarchy
    • Reformation and weakening of power of church
    • Commercial expansion
  • Period: 1501 to

    Literature

    • Renaissance (translation from medieval to modern world, revival of letters, curiosity for classical literature and activities of humanity)
    • Humanism (dignity of human beings and importance in present life) (Utopia and The Faerie Queene)
    • Drama (the highest glory of English) (Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Ben Jonson's Volpone and Shakespeare's 38 plays, 154 sonnets and 2 poems)
    Thomas More, Edmund Spencer, Francis Bacon
  • Period: to

    The Period of Revolution and Restoration

  • Period: to

    Social background

    • Clash between King and the parliament
    • Civil War
    • Charles 1st execution
    • Decline of Cromwell's Commonwealth
  • Period: to

    Literature

    • John Milton(poet)
      (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonists)
    • John Bunyan
      (The Pilgrim's Progress, a religious allegory)
    • John Dryden(the best figure of Restoration Period)
      (Heroic Couplet(two successive lines of verse, equal length and rhyme)
    • Methaphysical Poets
      (Break away from the convention, simple diction, common speech words)
  • Period: to

    Literature 2

    • Sentimentalism (Discontent with social reality, turn to sentiment and human hurt) (Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)
    • Pre-Romanticism (protest against the bondage of Classicism) (William Blake's The songs of Innocence and The songs of experience, Robert Buns' songs in Scottish dialect) (Sheridan's The Rivals and The School of Scandal)
  • Period: to

    The Period of Enlightenment and Classicism

  • Period: to

    Social background

    • The age of reason
    • Intellectual movement
    • Modern philosophical and artistic idea
    • Celebration of reason, equality and science
  • Period: to

    Literature

    • School of Classicism (literature modelled by ancient Greek and Roman writers and controlled by fixed laws and rules, artistic ideals ordered) (Steele's The Tatler, Addison's The Spectator, Pope(most important representative of classical poetry))
    • Modern Novel (new realistic novel) (Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Richardson's Pamela, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Swift's Gulliver's Travel, Fielding's Tom Jones, Smollett's Roderick Random)
  • Period: to

    The Romantic Period

  • Period: to

    Social background

    • French Revolution
    • English Industrial Revolution
  • Period: to

    Literature

    • Romanticism
      (Literary and philosophical theory where individuals as the centre of life, experience and art, nature source of poetic imagery and provider of dominant matter, tend to be nationalist)
    • Wordsworth
      (Lyrical Ballads)
    • Coleridge
      (Kubla Kahn, Christabel and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
    • Byron
      (Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
    -Shelley
    (Promethues Unbound, Ode to the West Wind) -Keats
    (Ode to the Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
  • Period: to

    Literature 2

    • Prose Writer
      -Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt
    • Thomas de Quincey
      (English Opium Eater)
    • Charles Lamb
      (Essays of Elia)
    • Jane Auster
      (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility)
    • Walter Scott
      (Ivanhoe)
  • Period: to

    Critical Realistic Period

  • Period: to

    Social background

    -Workless and capitalists
    - Chartist Movement
    - Victorian morality
  • Period: to

    Literature

    • Fiction With Dickens as its representative
    • Critical Realism (Criticism of the society and the defence of the mass, concerning about fate of common people, awakening of public consciousness to the social problem and in the actual improvement of society)
    • Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities)
    • Bronte (Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights)
    • George Elliot (MIlls on the Floss)
    • Tennyson (In Memorian and The Idylls of the King)
    • Browning (Dramatic monologue)
  • Period: to

    Literature 2

    • Dramatic Monologue
    (Characters talk about their lives, minds and heart, one- sided talks)
    • Naturalism
    (Reproduce real life, talk about poor and oppressed)
    • Neo-Romanticism
    (Dissatisfied with drab and social reality, invention of exciting adventures and fascinating stories) (Robert Stevenson's Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
  • Period: to

    Literature 3

    • Aestheticism
    (Theory of Art, Art should not serve a religious, moral or social end) (Oscar Wilde and Walter Peter)
    • Hardy/Wessex novels
    (Description of vicissitudes of people who live in an agricultural setting)
    (Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Jude the Obscure)
  • Period: to

    Modern Period

  • Period: to

    Social background

    • Gap between rich and poor
    • Postwar economic dislocation and spiritual disillusion
    • Rise of all kinds of philosophical ideas
    • Marx's Scientific Socialism
    • Darwin's Theory of Evolution
    • Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's Pessimism
  • Period: to

    Literature

    • Literature (Modernism rises, philosophy and psychoanalysis as its theoretical base)
    • Realistic Novels (Victorian Tradition, urgent social problems) (John Galsworthy, HG wells and Arnold Bennet)
    • The Angry Youngman (Protest against the out moved social and political values in their society)
    • Modernism in Fiction (Golden years, theory of Freudian and Jungian) (D.H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley's Lover)
  • Period: to

    Literature 2

    • Stream of Consciousness School Novels (James Joyce and Virginia Woolf)
    • Drama (Bernard Shaw considered the best because of his inspiration in social criticism, John Galsworthy with the Irish Movement)
    • Modernism in Drama (The working classes and The Theatre of Absurd, John Osborne's The Angry Youngman, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot)
    • Modernism in Poetry (Revolution against the conventional ideas and forms of the Victorian poetry, poems of Eliot and Yeats, rise of Modern poetry)