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410 BCE
BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Occurred in the Anglo-Saxon period. started in 410 AD. At that time the Romans withdrew from Britain. there were the Germans and Scandinavians. This period goes until the year 1066. -
400 BCE
EARLY BRITISH LITERATURE.
Oral traditions of Old and Middle English: The most popular is the epic poem "Beowulf." There are numerous written versions of the work, it was originally a spoken poem passed through generations of early inhabitants of England called Anglo-Saxons. The most surprising thing about these early British works is their graphic content and crude sexual content. -
Oct 15, 731
c. 731
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people -
800
c. 800
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons -
950
950
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy. -
1066
1066
In the year 1066 the French agreed with the Anglo-Saxon to produce medium English (language of Geoffrey Chaucer). -
1300
1300
Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce -
1340
1340
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor. -
1375
1375
The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur -
1385
1385
Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy -
1387
1387
Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death -
1469
1469
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur -
1510
1510
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism -
1524
1524
William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English -
1549
1549
The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer -
1564
1564
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months -
17TH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
William Shakespeare's plays and poems figure prominently. His works are divided into comedies, tragedies and stories. -
1601
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age. -
1611
Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed. -
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
Middle English gave way to modern English during the Middle Ages, and Britain produced many great authors during the 16th and 17th centuries. -
VICTORIAN AND MODERNIST BRITISH LITERATURE
Lasted from the mid-1800s to the beginning of the twentieth century, includes 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." -
1712
Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry -
1747
Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language
This period produced authors who wrote about life, love and nature. The most relevant authors are John Keats (1795- 1821), William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. -
VICTORIAN AND MODERNIST BRITISH LITERATURE
Lasted from the mid-1800s to the beginning of the twentieth century, includes 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." -
1820
English poet John Keats publishes Ode to a Nightingale, inspired by the bird's song in his Hampstead garden English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Ode to the West Wind, written mainly in a wood near Florence -
XIX AND XX CENTURIES
The 19th century is considered the great age of the novel. The turn of the 20th century saw the rise of modernism, a movement characterized by stylistic experimentation and the questioning of traditional values. -
1828
University College London began teaching in 1828 and included on its staff Britain’s first ‘Professor of English Language and Literature’. The political establishment responded by founding a rival institution, King’s College London, the following year; by 1835 it had a professor of English Literature and History too. -
1919
In The Economic Consequences of the Peace Maynard Keynes publishes a strong attack on the reparations demanded from Germany -
1920
Sapper's patriotic hero makes his first appearance, taking on the villainous Carl Peterson in Bull-dog Drummond One of the most significant developments in English Studies in the 1920s and 1930s was a response to these changes. They noticed the emergence of mass society. -
1945
English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love It was in the 1960s that a shift in the nature of literary studies began remains the context in which English Literature is taught in universities today. -
1972
English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London -
1984
English author Julian Barnes publishes a multi-faceted literary novel, Flaubert's Parrot -
1985
British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair -
1987
English poets John Fuller and James Fenton collaborate in a volume of satirical poems, Partingtime Hall. -
1998
Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark -
2000
The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials. -
NOVELS SINCE 2000.
Oscar Wao‘ – Junot Díaz. Edward P. Jones. Hilary Mantel. ‘Gilead – Marilynne Robinson. Jonathan Franzen. Michael Chabon. ‘A visit from the goon squad‘ – Jennifer Egan. ‘Billy Lynn’s long halftime walk‘ – Ben Fountain. Ian McEwan. ‘Middlesex‘ – Jeffrey Eugenides.
