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Old English literature
encompasses the surviving literature written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England.
EXAMPLE:
The poem Beowulf, which often begins the traditional canon of English literature, is the most famous work of Old English literature. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has also proven significant for historical study, preserving a chronology of early English history -
1066
Middle English literature
written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society.
EXAMPLE:
the Ormulum, Havelock the Dane, and Thomas of Hales's Love Rune. -
1500
English Renaissance
After William Caxton introduced the printing press in England in 1476, vernacular literature flourished. The Reformation inspired the production of vernacular liturgy which led to the Book of Common Prayer (1549), a lasting influence on literary language.
EXAMPLE :
Elizabeth herself was a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, and wrote occasional poems such as On Monsieur's Departure at critical moments of her life. -
Restoration Age
The official break in literary culture caused by censorship and radically moralist standards under Cromwell's Puritan regime created a gap in literary tradition, allowing a seemingly fresh start for all forms of literature after the Restoration.
EXAMPLE:
Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the high-spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of The Pilgrim's Progress. -
18th century
During the 18th century literature reflected the worldview of the Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason): 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.
EXAMPLE:
In 1704, Jonathan Swift (Irish satirist) published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books. -
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century.[78] Romanticism arrived later in other parts of the English-speaking world.
EXAMPLE:
The publication "Lyrical Ballads" by Wordsworth and Coleridge
The composition "Hymns to the Night" by Novalis -
Victorian literature
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English.Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers, and monthly serialising of fiction also encouraged this surge in popularity, further apheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832".
EXAMPLE:
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) dominated the first part of Victoria's reign:The Pickwick Papers, was published in 1836, and his last Our Mutual Friend between 1864–5. -
20th century
English literary modernism developed in the early twentieth-century out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth.
EXAMPLE:
The best-selling literary works of the 20th century are estimated to be The Lord of the Rings (1954/55, 150 million copies) -
Post–modernism
Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939, with regard to English literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred".
EXAMPLE ;
Italo Calvino's 1979 novel If on a winter's night a traveler is about a reader attempting to read a novel of the same name.
