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600 BCE
Anglo-Saxon Literature
. For nearly a century after the conversion of King Aethelberht I of Kent to Christianity about 600, there is no evidence that the English wrote poetry in their own language. But St. Bede the Venerable, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), wrote that in the late 7th century Caedmon. -
658
Caedmon
first Old English Christian poet, whose fragmentary hymn to the creation remains a symbol of the adaptation of the aristocratic-heroic Anglo-Saxon verse tradition to the expression of Christian themes. -
750
Beowulf
heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic, whose exploits and character provide its connecting theme. There is no evidence of a historical Beowulf, but some characters, sites, and events in the poem can be historically verified. -
1000
Middle English
the vernacular spoken and written in England from about 1100 to about 1500, the descendant of the Old English language and the ancestor of Modern English. -
1250
Early Middle English
from about 1100 to about 1250, during which the Old English system of writing was still in use. -
1357
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer is frequently referred to as the Father of English literature; The English in which he wrote was standard English. At that time there were other authors writing, such as the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or William Langland, but his English was dialectal and difficult to understand already in the seventeenth century. Chaucer's English was London's, Oxford's and Cambridge's, and he identified, and identifies, with English. -
1400
Central Middle English
period from about 1250 to about 1400, which was marked by the gradual formation of literary dialects, the use of an orthography greatly influenced by the Anglo-Norman writing system, the loss of pronunciation of final unaccented -e, and the borrowing of large numbers of Anglo-Norman words; the period was especially marked by the rise of the London dialect, in the hands of such writers as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer; -
1500
Late Middle English
was marked by the spread of the London literary dialect and the gradual cleavage between the Scottish dialect and the other northern dialects. the basic lines of inflection as they appear in Modern English were established. Among the chief characteristic differences between Old and Middle English were the substitution of natural gender in Middle English for grammatical gender and the loss of the old system of declensions in the noun and adjective and, largely, in the pronoun. -
1564
William Shakespeare
His time is known as early modern English, and it happened to medieval English. In part, the flowering of this new Renaissance English had a driver in Shakespeare.
The nickname of "the language of Shakespeare" is perfect for English, and it is not for less, because in his works and poems William used more than 28 thousand different words -
Jacobean literature
In the English literature of the period of the Jacobean reign, called Jacobean literature, they produced a gallery of great authors, some of whom have never been surpassed, and granted many minor talents the enviable ability to write fluently, imagination and enthusiasm. -
Jhon Milton
He is undoubtedly one of the greats of British history and the world, his poetic language is comparable to Shakespeare's and his political knowledge made him one of the main sources of knowledge used for the drafting of the US Constitution -
John Dryden
Poet, playwright, translator and English critic of the stage of the Restoration, whose work is qualified as the most important of that period, which is why he is considered the father of the "Augustan Poets", a movement that lasted until the mid-eighteenth century . -
John Poper
Jonathan Swift's great friend, with whom he formed a club, is one of the most recognized poets in English literature. His translations of the classics -Homero- had a warm welcome that allowed him to become the first English poet who lived exclusively from his poetry, among which satirical highlights -
English literature in the 19th century
The first English romantic versifiers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Word-sworth, are called "lakists" or "lake poets" for having lived in a region of Scotland where they abound. His work is quite similar, and they even jointly publish a book by Lyrical Ballads (Ballad lyrics, 1798), the first sample of romantic poetry in England. Both cultivate the old ballad and sing to nature. -
George Gordon
hectic life aristocrat who travels through Europe and ends his life in Greece, in favor of which he fights during the Greco-Turkish war. In 1807 he published his first book of poems, Hours Idleness, mostly translations or imitations of classical authors -
romance novel
it has his most excellent cultivator in the Scottish Walter Scott (1771-1832), undisputed master in the genre of the historical novel. He began his literary activity with poems about past events and legends in verse, such as The Lady of the Lake (The Lady of the Lake, 1810); but soon he writes novels, in which he wisely combines real and imaginary elements, and creates very intense human types. -
Spencer
It greatly influenced literature and rhetoric. His 1852 essay The Philosophy of Style explored a growing trend of formalistic approaches to writing. Very focused on the correct placement and order of the parts of an English sentence, he created an effective composition guide. -
20th century literature
It is characterized by the desire for experimentation and the appearance of different avant-garde that seek to create new forms and new content. Break with the traditional elements of literature: create narratives with chronological leaps, use new scenarios in theater, break metrics and rhyme in poetry, etc. -
20 CENTURY LITERATURE
English literature continues to explore modernism with names that begin their career, such as Graham Greene or Dylan Thomas who live with the great authors of the previous period. In the United States, the Great Depression marks the theme of most novels, with authors such as John Steinbeck or Henry Miller. -
postmodern literature
Two examples of English postmodern literature are: John Fowles and Julian Barnes. Some important writers of the early 21st century are: Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Will Self, Andrew Motion and Salman Rushdie.
