History of English Literature

  • Old English
    410

    Old English

    The anglo-saxon period.
    It begins approximately 410 A.D. when the Romans withdrew from Britain, leaving it to Germanic and Scandinavian settlers.
  • Period: 410 to 1066

    Old English

  • Beowulf
    800

    Beowulf

    Is the longest epic poem in Old English before the Norman conquest.
    These kind of poems would often have been recited from memory by a court misntrel, or scop, to the accompaniment of the harp.
  • Eddas
    950

    Eddas

    Eddas are the main sources of Norse mythology and skaldic poetry that relate religion, cosmogony, and history of scandinavians and proto-germanic tribes.
  • Book of life
    1031

    Book of life

    The beliefe was that these names were going to apper on the heavenly book opened on the Day of the judgement
  • Norman Pslater
    1060

    Norman Pslater

    A prayerbook.
    The first letter of Psalm 1 receives the most elaborate decoration of all the Psalms. Within it appear a figure of a man climbing a vine and, below, a picture of King David composing the psalms
  • Period: 1066 to 1500

    Medieval Period

    The Norman conquest under William, Duke of Normandy, the battle of Hasting in 1066.
    The manuscript, containt two historical accounts.
  • 1150

    Texts in middle English

    The end of the Old English is visible in the written sermons
  • The owl and the nightingale
    1190

    The owl and the nightingale

    It is a poem in which two competitive characters trade insults each other.
    It is an example of a popular literary form known as verse contest.
  • Period: 1200 to 1400

    Alliterative texts

    The theater was discovered, a relevant fact for the church. The church indoctrinated people through dramaturgy. (That is, the church realized that because of Christianity people gathered for the Eucharist, so the church decided to gather from the general to teach representative plays with religious messages).
  • Magna Carta
    1215

    Magna Carta

    It is one of the most celebrated documents in Western History.
    It was the first written material to set limits on the power of an English monarch.
  • Medieval Bestiary
    1235

    Medieval Bestiary

    A medieval book that gathers together descriptions of animals from ordinary creatures such as goats and bees to fantastical beasts including griffins, mermaids and unicorns
  • Medieval illuminator
    1240

    Medieval illuminator

    Hand-written texts that contain beatuful decorations and illustrations, decorated letters, borders and miniatures painted with glowing, radiant colors and gold.
  • Medieval English Song
    1245

    Medieval English Song

    Written for six voices. Singers can choose between black lyrics (Middle English) or Latin ones in red.
  • Duns Scotus
    1300

    Duns Scotus

    Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later gives the humanists the name Dunsman or dunce.
  • William of Ockham
    1340

    William of Ockham

    William of Ockham advocates reducing arguments to the essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor.
  • Genesis picture book
    1350

    Genesis picture book

    Many bibles of the Middle Ages had very beautiful illustration, and in the picture book there are images of Gos creating the earth, of the tower of Babel and many other scenes from Genesis.
  • William Langland
    1367

    William Langland

    A storyteller who calls himself Will, whose name may be Langland, begins Piers Plowman's epic poem.
  • Le Palmer´s encyclopedia
    1370

    Le Palmer´s encyclopedia

    It ha smore than 2.000 pages and 800 illustrations. It covers subjects like: natural sciences, history of man, theology, the liberal arts and religion
  • Sir Gawain and the green knight
    1375

    Sir Gawain and the green knight

    It is one of the most famous romances
  • Chaucer
    1387

    Chaucer

    Chaucer begins an ambitious plan for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he is only 24 by the time of his death.
  • 1450

    Evolution

    Ordinary men and women begin to consume literature, iterlude Thomas Heywood and there begins to be authorship.
  • First printed book
    1473

    First printed book

    William Caxton was the first Englishman to learn to use a printing press. The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye was his first printed book, and the first book printed anywhere in English.
  • Before the Golden Age
    1500

    Before the Golden Age

    Appearance of the printing press, which facilitates the dissemination of the texts that have culminated in the history of literature because texts are as we know them today.
  • William Tyndale
    1524

    William Tyndale

    William Tyndale studies at the University of Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English.
  • Marlowe

    Marlowe

    Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, features the chilling blank verse from the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
  • Shakespeare

    Shakespeare

    Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disappointment of a less trusting age.
  • The tempest

    The tempest

    The play "the tempest" by William Shakespeare is performed
  • John Smith

    John Smith

    John Smith publishes A Description of New England, an account of his exploration of the region in 1614.
  • John Milton

    John Milton

    John Milton's Lycidos is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King.
  • Period: to

    Restoration Age

  • Paradise Lost

    Paradise Lost

    Paradise Lost (a narrative poem) is published by John Milton.
  • John Locke

    John Locke

    John Locke publishes his Essay on Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience.
  • George Berkeley

    George Berkeley

    He attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Robinson Crusoe

    The first English Novel written by Daniel Defoe.
  • Gulliver's travels

    Gulliver's travels

    Jonathan Swift sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels
  • Henry Fielding

    Henry Fielding

    Henry Fielding introduces a character of enduring appeal in the scruffy but good-hearted Tom Jones.
  • Thomas Chatterton

    Thomas Chatterton

    17-year-old Thomas Chatterton, who was later hailed as an important poet, he commits suicide in a London attic.
  • Thomas Paine

    Thomas Paine

    Thomas Paine publishes his full Age of Reason, An Attack on Conventional Christianity.
  • Jerusalem

    Jerusalem

    William Blake includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton
  • The lay of the last Misntrel

    The lay of the last Misntrel

    the long romantic poem by Walter Scott
  • William Cobbett

    William Cobbett

    William Cobbett returns to England the bones of Thomas Paine, who died in the USA in 1809.
  • Friederich Engels

    Friederich Engels

    After running a textile factory in Manchester, He publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England
  • Peter Mark Roget

    Peter Mark Roget

    London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.
  • George Eliot

    George Eliot

    English author George Eliot gains fame with his first full-length novel, Adam Bede.
  • The origin of species

    The origin of species

    Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution. It is the the result of 20 years' research
  • George du Maurier

    George du Maurier

    French artist and author George du Maurier publishes his novel Trilby.
  • Period: to

    Modern Literature

  • Rudyard Kipling

    Rudyard Kipling

    Rudyard Kipling publishes Just So Stories for Little Children.
  • James Joyce

    James Joyce

    James Joyce's novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, begins serial publication in a London newspaper, The Egoist.
  • Henry Williamson

    Henry Williamson

    Henry Williamson wins a wide readership with Tarka the Otter, a realistic story of the life and death of an otter in Devon.
  • John Maynard Keynes

    John Maynard Keynes

    John Maynard Keynes defines his economics in the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
  • Period: to

    Post modernism

  • Kingsley Amis

    Kingsley Amis

    Kingsley Amis and other young writers in Britain are known as Angry Young Men.
  • Roald Dahl

    Roald Dahl

    British author Roald Dahl publishes a children's novel, James and the Giant Peach.
  • Iris Murdoch

    Iris Murdoch

    Iris Murdoch publishes The Sea, the Sea, and wins the 1978 Booker Prize.
  • Julian Barnes

    Julian Barnes

    English author Julian Barnes publishes a multifaceted literary novel, Flaubert's Parrot.
  • a brief history of time from the big bang to black holes

    a brief history of time from the big bang to black holes

    Hawking wrote the book for readers without prior knowledge of the universe and people who are just interested in learning something new.
  • Louis de Bernières

    Louis de Bernières

    Louis de Bernières publishes Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Kefalonia.
  • Michael Frayn

    Michael Frayn

    Michael Frayn's play in Copenhagen dramatizes Werner Heisenberg's visit to Niels Bohr in Denmark during the war.