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It refers to the literature written in old or Anglo-Saxons English. From the first poems as "Cædmon's Hymn" in the 7th century to “The Soul's Address to the Body” at the end of the period. This period is recognized for few or any words from Latin and the strict adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work of Old English literature, but it was also rich in sermons, chronicles and history, laws, wills, works on grammar, medicine, and geography.
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"Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes help Hrothgar whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory." (Wikipedia, 2020)
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This period helps the English to become a lot more recognized as a formal language for educated people. Expressing some medieval romances, works from this period are an amazing way to live the diversity of medieval culture through a language that began to look more with artistic possibilities. Different tales series represent the Middle English literature, but the most important are King Arthur and specially “The Canterbury Tales” by the author Geoffrey Chaucer.
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Written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400, “The Canterbury Tales, written in a combination of verse and prose, tells the story of some 30 pilgrims walking from Southwark to Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas Beckett. On route, the pilgrims engage in a story telling competition to win a meal at the Tabard Inn!” (www.canterburytales.org.uk, 2020)
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Radiant, confident, heroic for some, but “a time of unusually traumatic strain” (Kemp, P., Butler, M.H.,2019) for others, this period was mainly a social movement that transformed cultural expressions in all Europe, and also a moment of new possibilities built on doubts about old and new truths.
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That’s the name of a body of works written during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558-1603) which is merely a chronological reference and does not describe any special characteristic of the writing. During this period there was a flowering of poetry and prose, but was a golden age of drama due to the plays of Shakespeare.
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This period refers to the restoring of the traditional English monarchical form of government after a short period of rule by a handful of republican governments. This happened under Charles II reign. This literature expresses political views of the events that had occurred in previous decades. It is innovative and varied from religion to satire.
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This period was a radical protestant movement to reform the Church of England. “The idea of a Puritan poet may seem a bit of a contradiction as Puritans disagreed with the practice of using metaphor and verbal flourishes in speech and writing, with their beliefs in God.” (Wikipedia, 2020). Puritan poets such as John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor and John Dryden produced the most important works representing this period.
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This period is about the literature from 1603 to 1625 is properly called Jacobean, after the new monarch, James I. But it was a transition between the 16th and the 17th centuries. Some of Shakespeare's most prominent works were written during the reign of James; Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest.
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Anne Bradstreet (March 20, 1612 – September 16, 1672). The most representative of early English poets of North America. She is the first Puritan figure in American Literature. All her work represents the Puritan period of religious focus and a simple style of writing.
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The Caroline era refers to the period in English and Scottish reign of Charles I (1625–1649). The term is derived from Carolus, the Latin for Charles. Here Cavalier poetry express the joys and celebrations in a much livelier way than did its predecessors. The idea was to promote the crown, and spoke outwardly against the Roundheads. It produced figures like John Donne (Poems (1633), Robert Herrick and John Milton.
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This author created "Paradise Lost" in 1667. The poem is about the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. He represents The restoration period or late Puritan one.
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Ranging from 1700 to 1750 the literature from these years showed the grow of the novel genre as well as a rich production of satire and essays. The content was mainly political, but it gave a way to the beginning of more personal traits of these works. Some important authors were Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.
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This period is important due to the beginning of the novel as a strong literary genre. The most important authors of this movement were Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Jonathan Swift (with his Gulliver's Travels), and Henry Fielding (Tom Jones). The essay and the satire works were important too in the field of political literature with Johnson, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.
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The second half of the 18th century saw the emergence really important authors like Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Laurence Sterne and Dr Johnson, the most important English author who made lasting contributions to English literature. His works include the poems "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes"
The sentimental novel is a genre which celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment. It was a reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age -
Romanticism literature took place between 1798-1837 and, as many other aspects of society, was focused on nature, life, love and emotion. Really important authors were representative of this movement, among all we have William Wordsworth, Lord Byron and John Keats.
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“Born in London, England, on October 31, 1795, John Keats devoted his short life to the perfection of poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend” (Biography.com, 2019)
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The love poems of Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Lord Alfred Tennyson's sweeping saga of Camelot entitled "Idylls of the King," and the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure stories and novels, including his famous "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.", to name but a few, created a bridge between Romanticism and Modernism with a more realistic style and excellence in its prose. These novels talk about human qualities to defeat the difficulties of life.
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Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer. He wrote some of the world's best-known characters and is possibly the most important novelist of the Victorian era. You definitely will recognize David Copperfield or Christmas Carol novels.
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The novel genre was completely built in the 19th century, then modernists add characteristics like psychological death, disillusionment stories and some other literary forms. William Butler Yeats, Virginia Woolfe, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence represent this period of the English literature.
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Ulysses is the most recognized work of this author who preserved the stream of consciousness delivered by Homer in the original portrait of this character. Other important works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).
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“The horrors of the war, including bombs, ground wars, genocide and corruption, are the pathways to this type of literature. It is from these real-life themes that we find the beginning of a new period of writing.” (study.com, 2003). Basically, this literature reveals the events that are happening now in the human context. The messages are up to make readers reflect about social and economic events as well as remark societal strengths and weaknesses as a way to awake consciousness.
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The literature from this period is elaborated with complex techniques like the self-conscious about language, literary form, and storytelling. Another feature is the ability of a subject to speak of or refer to itself. It makes also the interconnection between similar or related works of literature that reflect and influence the reader understanding or interpretation of the text. Some important writers from this period are Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka.
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Irish playwright, novelist, critic and poet. Beckett is one of the most important representatives of literature of the century XX, within Anglo-Saxon modernism. He was also a key figure in the so-called theater of the absurd and, as such, one of the most influential writers of his time. He was an assistant and disciple of novelist James Joyce. His best-known work is the drama Waiting for Godot.
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“Smith wrote White Teeth in her early 20’s. It provided a whole new perspective on the English “city novel”. Set in modern London, this novel chronicles Bangladeshi and Jamaican families as they struggle to express their identity in an increasingly saturated society....White Teeth is an unbiased view of modern urban life through the lens of characters we learn to love and hate in startlingly uncanny fashion.” (qwiklit.com, 2013)
