-
Period: 600 to 1200
Anglo Saxon - Literature
Moreover, Old English heroic poetry is the earliest extant in all of Germanic literature. It is thus the nearest we can come to the oral
pagan literature of Germanic culture, and is also of inestimable value as a source of knowledge about many aspects of Germanic society. -
700
Beowulf
A complete epic, is the oldest surviving Germanic epic as well as the longest and most important poem in Old English. It originated as a pagan saga transmitted orally from one generation to the next; court poets known as scops were the bearers of tribal history and tradition.
Beowulf evidences the constant fear of invasion that plagued Scandinavian society. Only a single manuscript of Beowulf survived the Anglo‐Saxon era. -
975
Widsith
Widsith, 7th‐century Anglo‐Saxon poem found in the Exeter Book
It is an account of the wanderings of a Germanic minstrel and of the
legends he relates. The poem gives an excellent description of minstrel life in the Germanic heroic age.
It is one of the earliest Old English poems, and thus is of particular historic and linguistic interest. -
Period: 1200 to 1500
Middle English Literature
During this time the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English became widespread and the printing press regularized the language. Between the 1470s and the middle of the following century there was a transition to early Modern English. -
1382
The Wiclifite Bible
Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. Wiclif proposed to popularize the entire book, in order to make the conscience of every man the final authority in every question of belief and religious practice, and this the Church would not allow. -
Period: 1500 to
The Renaissance
The whole of England was profoundly stirred by the Renaissance to a new and most energetic life, but not least was this true of the Court, where for a time literature was very largely to center. he invention of printing, multiplying books in unlimited quantities where before there had been only a few manuscripts laboriously copied page by page, absolutely transformed all the processes of knowledge and almost of thought. -
Shakespeare
Shakespeare's greatness rests on supreme achievement‐‐the result of the highest genius matured by experience and by
careful experiment and labor‐‐in all phases of the work of a poetic dramatist.
Shakespeare, great playwright and representative of literature. -
Period: to
The Restoration
It is marked by the restoration of the monarchy and the triumph of reason and tolerance over
religious and political passion. The Restoration produced an abundance of prose and poetry and the distinctive comedy of
manners known as Restoration comedy -
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained
It was during the Restoration that John Milton published Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained. Other major writers of the era include John Dryden, John Wilmot 2nd Earl of Rochester, and John Locke. -
Period: to
The Eighteenth Century
Moderation and common sense became intellectual values as well as standards of behavior.These values achieved their highest literary expression in the poetry of Alexander Pope .Probably the most celebrated literary circle in history was the one dominated by Samuel Johnson. -
Scriblerus Club
English literary group to satirize all the false tastes in learning. Among its chief members were Arbuthnot, Gay, Thomas Parnell, Pope, and Swift. Meetings of the club were discontinued after 1714. The club's major production, Memoirs of … Martinus Scriblerus, was published in Pope's prose works in 1741, although it is considered to be primarily the work of Arbuthnot. The influence of the club is seen in Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Pope's Dunciad. -
Gothic literature
Traits of Gothic literature are dark and gloomy settings
and characters and situations that are fantastic, grotesque, wild, savage, mysterious, and often melodramatic. Two of the
most famous Gothic novelists are Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelley. -
Period: to
Romanticism
The Age of Revolution.
In Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), a watershed in literary history, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge presented and illustrated a liberating aesthetic. The romantic era was also rich in literary criticism and other nonfictional prose. William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft , wrote ground–breaking books on human, and women's, rights. -
Period: to
The Victorian Period
The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long.
Emily Brontë's single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense.
The Victorian masters of nonfiction; Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle.
The preeminent poet of the Victorian age was Alfred, Lord Tennyson -
"Pre‐Raphaelite Brotherhood"
In 1848, a group of English artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed the "Pre‐Raphaelite Brotherhood." It was the
aim of this group to return painting to a style of truthfulness, simplicity, and religious devotion that had reigned prior to
Raphael and the high Italian Renaissance. Rossetti and his literary circle, which included his sister Christina, incorporated
these ideals into their literature, and the result was that of the literary Pre‐Raphaelites. -
Edwardian Period
The writings of the Edwardian Period reflect and comment on these social conditions. For example, writers such as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells attacked social injustice and the selfishness of the upper classes. Other writers of the time include William Butler Yeats, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, and E.m. Forster -
Period: to
Modern Period
The Modern Period applies to British literature written since the beginning of World War I in 1914. The authors of the
Modern Period have experimented with subject matter, form, and style and have produced achievements in all literary
genres. Poets of the period include Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Seamus Heaney. Novelists include James Joyce,
D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. Dramatists include Noel Coward and Samuel Beckett. -
Georgian Period
This era also produced a group of poets known as the Georgian poets. These writers, now regarded as minor poets, were published in four anthologies entitled Georgian Poetry, published by Edward Marsh between 1912 and 1922. Georgian poetry tends to focus on rural subject matter and is traditional in technique and form. -
Postmodern and Contemporany Period
New millennium is crowded and varied, the authors still fall into the categories of modernism and postmodernism.
However, with the passage of time the Modern era may be reorganized and expanded -
REFERENCES
English literature: 731 - 2000 - Oxford Reference. (2013, September 24). Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191737053.timeline.0001
Muñoz, M. (2018). History of English Literature. [Video File]. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10596/20315
Borges, L. E. I. L. A. (s.f.). British Literature & American Literature [PDF]. Recuperado de http://www.cje.ids.czest.pl/biblioteka/British%20Literature%20and%20American%20Literature.pdf
