English Literature

  • Period: 1387 BCE to 1469

    Canterbury tales

    Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 canterbury tales, of wich he completes only 24by the time of his death.
  • Period: 1375 BCE to 1385

    Sir Gawain and theGreen Knight

    The courtly poem of a mysterious visitor to the round table of king Arthur.
  • Period: 1367 BCE to 1375 BCE

    Langland.

    A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may de Langlnd, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman.
  • Period: 1340 BCE to 1367 BCE

    William of Ockham

    Advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham´s Razor.
  • Period: 1300 BCE to 1340 BCE

    Duns Scotus

    Know as the subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce.
  • Period: 950 BCE to 1300 BCE

    the material of the Eddas

    Taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy.
  • Period: 800 BCE to 950 BCE

    Beowulf

    the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons.
  • Period: 731 to 800

    Venerable Bede

    In is monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people.
  • Period: 1385 to 1387 BCE

    Troilus and Criseide

    His long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy.
  • Period: 1469 to 1510

    Thomas Malory

    In gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte dÁrthur an English account of the French tales of King Arthur.
  • Period: 1510 to 1524

    Erasmus and Thomas

    More take the Northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism.
  • Period: 1549 to 1564

    English prayer book.

    Book of common prayer, is publisher with text by Thomas Cranmer.
  • Period: 1564 to 1567

    Marlowe and Shakespeare

    Are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by to months.
  • Period: 1567 to 1582

    The Book of Common Prayer

    New testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588.
  • Period: 1582 to

    William Shakespeare

    The 18 year old William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway in Stratford upon avon.
  • Period: to

    Tamburlaine the Great

    Introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
  • Period: to

    Edmund Spenser

    Celebrates the potestant Elizabeth I as the Faerie Queene
  • Period: to 1611 BCE

    Shakespeare

    Sonnets written ten years previously, are published.
  • Period: to

    Alexander Pope

    Of the look introduces a delicate vein of mock heroic in English poetry.
  • Period: to

    Robinson Crusoe

    With is detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel.
  • Period: to

    Samuel Richardsons

    Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English Language.
  • Period: to

    Samuel Johnson

    Publishes is magisterial dictionary of the English language.
  • Period: to

    Housman

    Publishes is firts collection.
  • Period: to

    Virginia Woolf

    Publishes the first novel, the Voyage Out.
  • Period: to

    Jhon Fuller and James Fenton

    Collaborate in a volume of satirical poems, partingtime hall.
  • Period: to

    Tom Gunn

    The man with night sweats deals openly with AIDS
  • Period: to

    Sebastian Faulks

    Publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of world War I.