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449
Old Literature (449/600-1100)
Anglo-saxon (Invasion of Britain by Anglo, Saxon and Jutes) - Norman Conquest (A landmark). http://emsarchive.blogspot.com/2015/07/impacts-of-norman-conquest-on-english-literature.html -
1100
Middle Ages (1100/1200-1500) Influence of French Poetry
Influence of French Poetry. English poet- Known as the Father of English Literature.
Considered the greatest English poet.
His major achievements were in the field of narrative poetry.
Chaucer introduced the Lambic Pentameter (is a line of ten syllables)
His greatest works are mostly narrative like: (The Canterbury Tales, The House of Fame) https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature#ref12744 -
1350
The later Middle English and Early Renaissance Periods (1350-1550)
Courtly Poetry – the cultivation and refinement of human sentiment with respect to love; writings such as the Harley Lyrics, took firm root in English court culture during the reign of Richard II, (1377-99). https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Renaissance-period-1550-1660 -
1550
The Renaissance period: (1550-1660)
Theatre The English theatre scene, performed by the court and nobility was the most crowded in Europe. With a host of other playwrights as well as the giant figures of Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. William Shakespeare as Poet – He developed a new form of sonnet called the English Sonnet or the Shakespeare sonnet, many of his sonnets refer to a girl, a rival poet and a dark-eyed beauty. https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Renaissance-period-1550-1660 -
The Restoration (1660 to around 1688)
The name “Restoration” comes from the crowning of Charles II, which marks the restoring of the traditional English monarchical form of government following a short period of rule by a handful of republican governments. John Dryden was the representative writer of this period. https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Restoration -
English Literature -The eighteenth century
Major Political Writer – Alexander Pope – Best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733-34). Major Novelist – Daniel Defoe – English Novelist, Pamphleteer and journalist, author of Robinson Crusoe (1719-1722) and Moll Flanders (1722). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzqKjOqsdao https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Restoration -
Romantic Period (1830- 1900)
In Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), a watershed in literary history, William Wordsworth and Samuel Tylor Coleridge presented and illustrated a liberating aesthetic- “Poetry should express, in genuine language, experience as filtered through personal emotion and imagination” https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/arts/english-lit/20th-century-plus/english-literature/the-romantic-period -
The Victorian Age (1837-1901)
The Victorian era was the great age of the English Novel – Realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters and long; it was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/arts/english-lit/20th-century-plus/english-literature/the-victorian-age https://study.com/academy/lesson/introduction-to-victorian-literature-overview-of-themes-style-and-authors.html -
The 20th Century – The Literature of World War II (1939-1945)
The outbreak of war in 1939, as in 1914, brought to an end an era of great intellectual and creative exuberance. The poem and the short story, convenient forms for men under arms, became the favored means of literary expression. The most important issue for many authors in this period is to influence reader’s feeling and emotions toward the war. http://gent.uab.cat/saramartinalegre/sites/gent.uab.cat.saramartinalegre/files/Post-War%201945-1990.pdf -
The Postwar Era to the Present (1945-2019)
After the war most English writers chose to focus on aesthetic or social rather than political problems. While the postwar era was not a great period of English literature, it produced a variety of excellent critics, Including William Empson, Frank Kerdome and F.R. Leavis. https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/arts/english-lit/20th-century-plus/english-literature/the-postwar-era-to-the-present https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=7859674932
