English literature 1

New English literature history-Unit 1 Task 2 -551029- Javier Landazabal

By Javier Landazabal Caballero
  • 450 BCE

    First Period; Old English literature (c. 450–1066)

    First Period; Old English literature (c. 450–1066)
    Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses the surviving literature written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England. In this period after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England (Jutes and the Angles) c. 450, after the withdrawal of the Romans, and "ending soon after the Norman Conquest" in 1066. Representative; The poem Boewulf.
  • 1066

    Second Period; Middle English literature (1066–1500)

    Second Period; Middle English literature (1066–1500)
    After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the 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. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives, and the Norman dialects of the ruling classes became Anglo-Norman. Representative; Goeffry Chaucer, Known for Canterbury tales.
  • 1500

    Third Period; English Renaissance (1500–1660)

    Third Period; English Renaissance (1500–1660)
    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. The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the 17th century. Representatives; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517–1547) introduced the sonnet from Italy.

  • Fourth Period; Late Renaissance (1625–1660)

    Fourth Period; Late Renaissance (1625–1660)
    Group of poets who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–51) In the 17th century as the Cavalier poets, also metaphysical poets. Representatives; The Cavalier poets,Richard Crashaw (1613–1649), Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637–1674) and Henry Vaughan (1622–1695).

  • Fifth Period; Restoration Age/Puritan (1660–1700)

    Fifth Period; Restoration Age/Puritan (1660–1700)
    Restoration literature includes both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of Pilgrim's Progress. The official break in literary culture caused by censorship and radically moralist standards.Puritan regime,1653, created a gap in literary tradition, allowing a fresh start for all forms of literature. Representatives; Puritan authors such as John Milton were forced to retire from public life or adapt.

  • Sixth Period; 18th century/Augustan literature (1700–1750)

    Sixth Period; 18th century/Augustan literature (1700–1750)
    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. Intolerance, censorship, and economic and social restraints. They considered the state the proper and rational instrument of progress. Representatives; James Thomson (1700–1748) produced his melancholy.

  • Seventh Period; Romanticism (1798–1837)

    Seventh Period; Romanticism (1798–1837)
    The Romantic period was one of major social change in England and Wales, because of the depopulation and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial cities, a roughly period between 1750 and 1850. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces: the Agricultural Revolution, that involved the Enclosure of the land, drove workers off the land, and the Industrial Revolution. Representatives; Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a pioneer of the Romantic movement,

  • Eighth Period; Victorian literature (1837–1901)

    Eighth Period; Victorian literature (1837–1901)
    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, it was a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity. Representatives; Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845) by Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke (1849).

  • Nineth Period; 20th century/Modernism (1901–1939)

    Nineth Period; 20th century/Modernism (1901–1939)
    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. Representatives; The movement was influenced by the ideas of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), James G. Frazer (1854–1941), Karl Marx (1818–1883).

  • Tenth Period; Post–modernism (1940–2000)

    Tenth Period; Post–modernism (1940–2000)
    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". Representatives; In 1947 Malcolm Lowry published Under the Volcano, while George Orwell's satire of totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949.