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Jan 1, 1010
Semantics
The semantics of words in Old English were likely simple, where each word meant one thing. Although negative/positive connotations were stillprevalent. The many French words that came into English provided multiple words for the same definition, resulting in slight variations in meaning. E.g. liberty and freedom, answer and respond... The influence of the French also made the semantics of some old English words to narrow, e.g. apple, all fruits -> a specific fruit -
Jan 1, 1066
Anglo Saxon
The peoples of each of the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms spoke distinctive dialects, which evolved over time and together became known as Old English. Within that variety of dialects, an exceptionally rich vernacular literature emerged. Examples include the masterful epic poem Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of manuscripts that cover events in the early history of England. -
Period: Jan 1, 1150 to Jan 1, 1500
Middle English
In terms of ‘external’ history, Middle English is framed at its beginning by the after-effects of the Norman Conquest of 1066, and at its end by the arrival in Britain of printing (in 1476) and by the important social and cultural impacts of the English Reformation (from the 1530s onwards) and of the ideas of the continental Renaissance. -
Jan 1, 1166
Norman Conquest
King Harold was killed in this battle and William becomes the new King of England. Because of the Norman invasion of England, the Old English era ended as the Normans brought French politics, fashion, architecture and most importantly the language (Durkin, 2013). -
Apr 7, 1362
English becomes language for saxtons
In 1362 English becomes official language of the law courts. More and more authors are writing in English. -
Jan 1, 1500
Effects in grammer
.)Change was gradual, and has different outcomes in different regional varieties of Middle English, but the ultimate effects were huge: the grammar of English c.1500 was radically different from that of Old English.Grammatical gender was lost early in Middle English. The range of inflections, particularly in the noun, was reduced drastically (partly as a result of reduction of vowels in unstressed final syllables), as was the number of distinct paradigms -
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Neoclassicism
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Romanticism
the Romanticism movement would spread throughout Europe and would ultimately impact not only the arts and humanities, but the society at large, permanently changing the ways in which human emotions, relationships, and institutions were viewed, understood, and artistically and otherwise reflected. -
Enlightenment influence
The Enlightenment had developed and championed logic and reason above all other qualities and there was little room in this worldview for the emotion-based nature that would define Romanticism. According the Enlightenment view, people and their relationships, roles, institutions, and indeed, their whole societies, could be understood best if organized and approached with a scientific perspective.5 -
Romantic period
The romantic period that began in europe at the end of the 18th century -
Charles Dickens
While in the preceding Romantic period poetry had been the dominant genre, it was the novel that was most important in the Victorian period. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) dominated the first part of Victoria's reign: his first novel, Pickwick Papers, was published in 1836, and his last Our Mutual Friend between 1864–5 -
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victorian period
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The Style Of Victorian novels
Victorian novels tend to be idealised portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love, and luck win out in the end; virtue would be rewarded and wrongdoers are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart -
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Modernism
Modernism information The period was marked by sudden and unexpected breaks with traditional ways of viewing and interacting with the world. Experimentation and individualism became virtues, where in the past they were often heartily discouraged. -
America enters world war 1
The war’s extreme brutality led to an outpouring of literature concerning its conduct and effects that began with the war poets themselves, extended through the interwar period, and reappeared periodically throughout the twentieth century. -
19th amendment womens suffrage
From the early 1850s, when an organized national women’s rights movement emerged, to 1920, when the 19th Amendment enfranchising women was ratified, U.S. women writers from a variety of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds published hundreds of short stories, novels, poems, plays, essays and conversion narratives in support of woman suffrage. -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was one of the most desperate periods in U.S. history, and one of the most important in American literature.The time period gave rich material to work with
Great Depression, had such devastating affects deep emotion,
great art and literature pieces . -
Pearl Harbor attack; U.S. enters World War II
On Dec. 7, 1941, radios buzzed with the news that several hundred Japanese planes attacked a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 Americans as well as damaging or destroying eight Navy battleships and more than 100 planes. Though it would be some time before people learned the full scope of the damage, within days a once-distant war in Europe and the Pacific became a central part of life in the United States, affecting politics, business, media, and entertainment. -
Realism and Experimentation
Post modern Literature starts after WW2.Novelists were heavily inspired by movies,songs,comics and oral history. Thus creating a different type of writing. -
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Post Modernism
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1950s
During the 1950s writers were focused on alienation,loneliness, and conformity of the company man.These stories were made so readers could relate to everyday lifestyle.Another theme is inability to succeed, racism in society, and other subtle uneasy subjects. -
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Contemporary period
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1960s
Civil Rights, Feminism, Antiwar, Minority Activism, and the rise of counterculture occurred during this time.Writers began to write about conformity and the aesthetic project of modernism. -
1970s & 1980s
Intrnal conflict began to fade away and writers began to focus more on realism. Writers wrote more about individual interests rather than social problems. -
Contemporary Content
Content:
• identity politics
•people learning to cope with problems through communication
•people's sense of identity is shaped by cultural and gender attitudes
•emergence of ethnic writers and women writers -
Contemporary Style
sourceStyle:
• narratives: both fiction and nonfiction
•anti-heroes
•concern with connections between people
•emotion-provoking
•humorous irony
•storytelling emphasized
•autobiographical essays -
Beowolf
Beowulf is both the first English literary masterpiece and the earliest European epic written in the vernacular, or native language, instead of literary Latin -
Period: to Jan 1, 1100
Old English
Content
•strong belief in fate
•juxtaposition of church and pagan worlds
•admiration of heroic warriors who prevail in battle
•express religious faith and give moral instruction through literature
