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449 BCE
Anglo-Saxon period
-Strong belief in fate
-Juxtaposition of the church and pagan worlds
-Admiration of heroic warriors who prevail in battle
-Express religious faith and give moral instruction through literature
-Christianity helps literacy spread
-Introduces Roman alphabet to Britain
-Oral tradition helps unite diverse people and their myths
-Styles / Genres
-Oral tradition of literature
-Poetry is the dominant genre -
Apr 15, 1066
Medieval Period
-Plays that instruct the illiterate masses in morals and religion
“Morality Plays”
-Chivalric code of honor
Knights, their ladies fair
-Religious devotion
-Romances
-Oral tradition continues
Folk Ballads
-Church instructs its people through the morality and miracle plays
-The Crusades bring the development of a money economy for the first time in Britain
-Trading increases dramatically
-Henry III crowned king in 1154
Brings a judicial system, royal courts, juries, and chivalry to Britain -
May 15, 1485
The Renaissance
1485-1660
-Worldview shifts from religion and afterlife to the human life on earth
-Popular Themes
Development of human potential
Love (unrequited, constant, timeless, courtly, Love subject to change)
-Styles/Genres
Poetry
-Sonnets
Drama
-Written in verse
-Supported by royalty
-Tragedies, comedies, histories
Metaphysical poetry
-Elaborate, unexpected metaphors called “conceits -
The restoration
1660-1785
1660-1700: emphasis on decorum
1700-1745: emphasis on satire and on a wide public readership
1745-1785: emphasis on revolutionary ideas
-Literacy has expanded to include the middle classes and even some of the poor
-Emphasis on rules, reason, and logic
The Age of Enlightenment
Styles / Genre
-Satire
-Uses irony and exaggeration to poke fun at human faults and foolishness in order to correct human behavior
Novels becoming better known than poetry
-Essay
Letters, diaries, biographies -
Romanticism
1785-1830
-A literary, artistic, and intellectual movement
-Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution
It was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of Enlightenment
-Celebrated emotion, spontaneity, imagination, subjectivity, and the purity of nature
-Validated intense emotion as an authentic source of experience
-New emphasis on
Apprehension
Horror and terror
Awe
-Romantics wanted to escape the confines of population growth, -urban sprawl, and industrialism -
Realism /Naturalism
1830-1901
Realism
-Aimed for an honest portrayal over sensationalism, exaggeration, or melodrama
-Desired an accurate and detailed portrayal of ordinary, contemporary life
Naturalism
-An offshoot of the realism movement
-An intensification of realism
-Used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character
-The novel begins to rise in popularity -
Modern/Post- Modern
1900-1980
-The loss of the hero in literature
-Major theme: technology’s destruction of society
-Free verse poetry
-Novelists begin writing in “stream of consciousness”
Increasing role of science and technology
-Mass literacy and proliferation of mass media
-Spread of social movements
-Individualism
-Industrialization
-Urbanization
Historical Context
-World War I
-World War II
