History of English Literature

By Cesarluisangulovargas
  • Period: 436 to 1066

    The Old English Period

    731 The Venerable Bede, in his monastery for him at Jarrow.
    975-1025. Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature.
    959 The Eddad material, which is taking shape in Iceland, comes from earlier sources in Norway, Great Britain and Burgundy. Much of the first half of this period, at least before the 7th century, featured oral literature. Works like Beowulf and those of the period poets Caedmon and Cynewulf, are important.
  • Period: 1066 to 1500

    Middle English Period

    1367 A narrator who calls himself Will, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman.
    1387 Chaucer writes 24 de 100 Canterbury tales.
    1469 Thomas malory, in gaol somewhere in England.
    The Middle English period sees a huge transition in the language, culture, and lifestyle of England and results in what we can recognize today as a form of modern English.This period is home to the likes of Chaucer, Thomas Malory, and Robert Henryson. Notable works include Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • Period: 1500 to

    The Renaissnace Period

    1510 Erasmus and Thomas More take the northen Renaissance of Christian humanism.
    1590 English poet Edmund Spencer celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queen.
    1601 Shakespear`s central character expresses the ideals of the Renaissance. This period is subdivided into four parts, including the Elizabethan Age 1558–1603, the Jacobean Age 1603–1625, the Caroline Age 1625–1649, and the Commonwealth Period 1649–1660.
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    The Neoclassical Period

    1667 Paradaide Lost is published, author John Milton.
    1726 Jonathan Swift- Gulliver´s Travels.
    1775 Samuel Johnson-Dictionary of the English Language
    The Restoration period sees some response to the puritanical age. The Augustan Age was the time of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, who imitated those first Augustans.The Age of Sensibility was the time of Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, Hester Lynch Thrale, James Boswell.
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    The Romantic Perios

    1792 Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of teh Rights of Woman.
    1813 Jean Austen- Pride and Prejudice
    1831 Oliver Wendell Holmes poem The Lats Leaf.
    When one speaks of Romanticism, one is referring to the British literature, perhaps the most popular and well-known of all literary ages.
    This era includes the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas De Quincey, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley.
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    The Victorian Period

    1843 Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dicken`s A Christmas Carol.
    1895 H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine.
    1900 Frank Baum-The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
    Poets of this time include Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold, among others. Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and Walter Pater.
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    The Edwardian Period

    1901 Beatrix Potter-The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
    1908 Lucy Maud Montgomery`s-Anne of Green Gables.
    1910 H.G. Wells-The History of Mr Polly.
    This period is named for King Edward VII and covers the period between Victoria’s death and the outbreak of World War I. Although a short period, the era includes incredible classic novelists such as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and Henry James.
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    The Georgian Period

    1915 Ruper Brooke`s 1914 and Other Poems
    1925 Virginia Woolf-Mrs Dalloway
    1928 Frank Harris-My Life and Loves.
    Georgian poetry today is typically considered to be the works of minor poets anthologized by Edward Marsh. The themes and subject matter tended to be rural or pastoral in nature, treated delicately and traditionally rather than with passion.
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    The Modern Period

    1936 US Margaret Mitchell-Gone with the Wind.
    1940 Ernest Hemingway-For Whom the Bell Tolls, set in the Spanish Civil War.
    1945 George Orwell`s fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig.
    The modern period traditionally applies to works written after the start of World War. Features include bold experimentation with subject matter, style, and form. Notable writers of this period James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Dorothy Richardson, Graham Greene and E.M. Forster.
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    The Postmodern Period

    1950 C.S. Lewis-Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
    1979 US Maya Angelou-I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
    1997 J.K. Rowling-Harry Potter and the Philosopher`s Stone.
    The postmodern period begins about the time that World War II ended. Poststructuralist literary theory and criticism developed during this time. Notable writers of the period, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Heller, Anthony Burgess, John Fowles, Penelope M. Lively, and Iain Banks.

  • The Contemporary Period

    2010 Mockingjay completes Suzanne Collin`s trilogy, The Hunger Games.
    2013-Present J.K. Rowling (under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) starts Cormoran Strike, a series of crime fiction novels.