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1066
Anglo Saxon Period 449-1066
During this period, Christianity was established and there was a flowering of literature and language.
Epic poems were thus very popular, and some, including Beowulf, have survived to the present day. Beowulf, is the most famous work in Old English and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. The genres used in this period were: Oral literature, epic poetry and unique verse form. -
1455
Middle Englih Period 1066-1455
Religios Devotion: Church instructs its people through moralty and plays. And also illiterate people starts to hear an see literature.
Chivalric Code: Code of Conduct associated with Medieval Period knights, military bravery.
Oral tradition continues as a genre, but also folk ballads, morality plays, tock epithets, kennings, frame stories and moral tales.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late-14th-century Middle English alliterative romance. It is one of the better-known Arthurian stories. -
Renaissance Period 1485-1660
The sonnet form was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt.
Establishment of the first printing press in England in 1474.
William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare wrote plays in a variety of genres, including histories, tragedies, comedies and the late romances, or tragicomedies.
War ends and peace becomes. -
Neoclassical Period 1660-1780
Period of enlightment or Age of Reason: Literature of the age is concerned with nature, supremacy of reason.
The period is marked by the rise of deism, intellectual blacklash against earlier Puritanism and American's Revolution against England.
Neoclassical literature is characterized by order, accuracy and structure.It includes: parody, essays, satire, letters and rhyming with couplets.
The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope. -
Romantic Period 1798-1832
Romanticism may be seen as a reaction against the scientific rationalisation of nature. Human knowledge and individual mind were the base of this period and also there was an introduction to gothic elements.
The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake was one of the first of the English Romantic poets.
Novelists: Jane Austen and Mary Shelley
Poets: Robert Burns, William Blake and William Wordsworth -
Victorian Period 1832-1901
It was in the Victorian era that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Improvements on Industrial Revolution.
Charles Dickens emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the history of British literature. -
Modern Period 1901-Now
Genres: Poetry (free verse), speeches, memoirs, novels and consciousness.
