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Period: 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE
Mesopotamia
When writing is first developed, an oral poetic tradition is already a feature of civilized life -
Period: 1500 BCE to 400 BCE
Eastern heritage
The Sanskrit literature of India dates back in oral tradition to the middle of the second millennium BC. -
Period: 1000 BCE to 1000 BCE
Western Heritage
Two great reservoirs of source material for European literature (and indeed for all European art) are recorded for posterity in regions bordering the eastern Mediterranean during the centuries. -
Period: 1000 BCE to 1 CE
Twin sources - Bible and Homer
The strongest argument for Homer as a single writer of genius is the accomplished literary form of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Bible is one of the moust famous books in the whole world, even is made to put bases in almost all civilations under the excuse of faith and heaven, using the eternal life to keep people under control -
Period: 600 BCE to 600 BCE
Herodutus the father of history
No one before Herodotus has consciously attempted to discover the truth about the past and to explain its causes. He is rightly known as the 'father of history -
Period: 600 BCE to 600 BCE
Greek Drama
The origins of Greek theatre lie in the revels of the followers of Dionysus, a god of fertility and wine. In keeping with the god's special interests, his cult ceremonies are exciting occasions -
Period: 387 BCE to 430
St. Agustin
Confessions, his account of his early life and conversion to Christianity, is the world's first autobiography, introducing the genre with a masterpiece. And the massive City of God is one of the most influential works of Christian philosophy. -
Period: 300 BCE to 200 BCE
Rome Comedy
Plautus and Terence, achieve lasting fame in the decades before and after 200 BC - Plautus for a robust form of entertainment close to farce, Terence for a more subtle comedy of manners. -
Period: 42 BCE to 17
Augustan Age
golden age of Latin literature coincides with the peace and prosperity of Italy in the early decades of the empire. the emperor Augustus is the immensely rich Maecenas, whose name has become synonymous with patronage of the arts -
Period: 500 to 700
Sanskrit Literature
Gupta Empire
Sanskrit has become a literary language, known and used only by a small educated minority - much like Latin in medieval Europe. -
Period: 700 to
Old and Modern English
This epic poem of the 8th century is in Anglo-Saxon, now more usually described as Old English. It is incomprehensible to a reader familiar only with modern English. Even so, there is a continuous linguistic development between the two. The most significant turning point, from about 1100, is the development of Middle English - differing from Old English in the addition of a French vocabulary after the Norman conquest. -
900
Germanic Tradition
Beowulf stands at its head.
This epic poem of the 8th century is in Anglo-Saxon
more usually described as old english -
Period: 1200 to 1400
Italian Awakening
The earliest poetry in the Italian language is written at the court of Frederick II in Sicily. Love poems in particular are popular, inspired by the troubadours in Provence. -
Period: 1400 to
Renaissance
With the poems of Villon literature seems to spring, at one bound, from the mentality of the Middle Ages to a completely modern poetic sensibility -
Period: 1552 to
Poetry
Edmund Spencer: an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. -
1558
Elizabethan period
(1558–1603) -
1561
Drama
Is notable especially as the first verse drama in English to employ blank verse, and for the way it developed elements, from the earlier morality plays and Senecan tragedy -
Period: 1564 to
Shakespeare
The mysterious death of Marlowe, the Cambridge graduate, and the brilliant subsequent career of Shakespeare, the grammar-school boy from Stratford. -
Period: 1572 to
Late Renaissance Poetry
Metaphysical poets John Donne and George Herbert -
Period: to
17th Century
The qualities identifiable as donquichottisch in German, donchisciottesco in Italian and plain 'quixotic' in English belong to the hero of the discursive novel Don Quixote published in that year by Miguel de Cervantes. -
Late Renaissance
-
Jacobean Period
After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era. Jonson's aesthetics hark back to the Middle Ages. -
Restoration
the sexual comedy
the moral wisdom
holy meditations
literary criticism -
Period: to
18th Century
Literary life in England flourishes so impressively in the early years.
The new Augustan Age becomes identified with the reign of Queen Anne -
Period: to
Augustan Literatture
A rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues that promoted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility. -
Period: to
Late 18Th Century
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words -
Period: to
18th - 19th Century
Goethe accepts an invitation to visit the 18-year-old duke Karl August of Weimar, ruler of a tiny state. In 1797, when Europe is in the turmoil caused by the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, Goethe - with his power to guarantee a production in the Weimar court theatre -
Period: to
Romanticism
Artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe
Arrived later in other parts of the English-speaking world. -
Period: to
Victorian Literature
Novel became the leading literary genre in English.
Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers. -
Period: to
The origyn of Species
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research -
Period: to
20th Century - Modernism
General sense of disillusionment.
attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth. -
Period: to
The economic consequences of the peace
Maynard Keynes publishes a strong attack on the reparations demmanded from germany -
Period: to
Modernism go ahead!
Important British writers between the World Wars, include the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid.
An important development, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s was a tradition of working class novels actually written by working-class background writers. -
Period: to
Post-Modernism
Postmodern literature is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is difficult to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. -
Period: to
2000
The amber spyglass completes Philip Phullman's trilogy. His dark materials