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465
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period (450–1066)
During this period there was a flowering of literature and language. Authors: Caedmon, Beda, Alfredo el Grande
Cynewulf, Geoffrey Chaucer. Works: The Junius Manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Nowell Codex or Beowulf Manuscript.
Lyric poems such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Deor, and The Ruin are found in the Exeter Book
Epic Poem "Beowulf" and "The Canterbury Tales,
"Topics: Prose from translation. Legal, medical, religious and Oral literature. -
1066
Middle English Period (1066–1500)
During this period the English language experienced different variations and developments
Many romances were based on Celtic legends, about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Authors: Chaucer, Thomas Malory, and Robert Henryson
Works: "Piers Plowman" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
Topics: religious, secular literature, adventurous stories in verse about battles and heroes -
1500
The Renaissance Period (1500–1660)
The period was influenced by the intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with the renaissance. It focused on self-actualization and one's ability to accept what is going on in one's life.
It was characterized by the adoption of humanist philosophy and the recovery of classical Antiquity. It was also divided into four parts. -
1555
The Renaissance Period "Elizabethan Age" (1558–1603)
Elizabethan age inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over Spain.
The era is most famous for its theatre, as William Shakespeare. Authors: Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, and William Shakespeare.
Works: Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Richard III, and King Lear) Topics: drama, poetry, music, and literature. -
The Neoclassical Period (1600–1785)
- The Restoration Authors: William Congreve, John Dryden, Samuel Butler, Aphra Behn, John Bunyan, and John Locke Topic: comedies, satire
- The Augustan Age Authors: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Daniel Defoe
- The Age of Sensibility Authors: Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, Hester Lynch Thrale, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, William Cowper, and Thomas Percy. Topics: neoclassicism, a critical and literary mode, and the Enlightenment.
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The Renaissance Period "The Jacobean Age" (1603–1625)
The period was characterized by visual arts, decorative arts, and literature.
Authors: John Donne, Shakespeare, Michael Drayton, John Webster, Elizabeth Cary, Ben Jonson, and Lady Mary Wroth
Work: King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, To Celia, Volpone, The Alchemist
Topics: Religious, poetry, prose, drama. -
The Renaissance Period "The Caroline Age (1625–1649)
The Caroline era was dominated by growing religious, political, and social discord between the King and his supporters. Authors: Robert Burton, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, John Suckling, Henry Vaughan, Katherine Philips. John Donne, Robert Herrick, and John Milton. (Some are called Cavalier poets) Work: To Althea, from Prison", and "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres". Topics: religion, philosophy, and arts, -
The Renaissance. Commonwealth period (1649–1660)
This period took place between the end of the English Civil War and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy.
At this time, public theaters were closed (for nearly two decades) to prevent public assembly and to combat moral and religious transgressions.
Authors: John Milton and Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Fuller, Abraham Cowley, and Andrew Marvell published prolifically. Topics: political writings, drama, and prose. -
The Romantic Period (1785–1832)
It brings a new set of ideas. It is about a mindset and a way of feeling.
Its features: industrialization, urbanization, secularization, consumerism.
Authors: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Rousseau
works: "The world is too much with us, late and soon", "The Rime of the Ancient Marine", The raising of children.
Topics: life, love, and nature -
The Victorian Period (1832–1901)
Time of growth, expansion, and reform.
Social advancement: industrialization, technology, morality, and values.
Authors: Charles Dickens "Great Expectation"
Charlotte Bronte "Marrying above one´s station"
Jane Austin "Pride and prejudice"
Alfred Lord Tennyson "Ulisses"
Bram Stoker "Dracula"
Oscar Wilde "The Picture of Dorian"
Topic: Social advancement, prose, fiction, essay, satire, novels, poetry -
The Edwardian Period (1901–1914)
Its name for King Edward VII. This era includes incredible classic novelists
Authors: Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Henry James, Alfred Noyes, William Butler Yeats, James Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, and John Galsworthy.
Works: Peter Pan, The little white bird, Neverland, Milestones, The great adventure
Topics: Fairy plays, fantasy, novels, and plays, -
The Georgian Period (1910–1936)
The term "Georgian" is typically used in the contexts of social and political history and architecture
Authors: Ralph Hodgson, John Masefield, W.H. Davies, Rupert Brooke, Edward Marsh.
works: The Bull, A Song, A Song of Honour, A Wood Song, After, Babylon, Salt-Water Ballads, The Widow in the Bye Street, Philip the King and Other Poems
Topics: Poems, rural or pastoral in nature. -
The Modern Period (1914–1945)
Common features include bold experimentation with the subject matter, style, and form.
Authors:
Novelists: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Dorothy Richardson. Poets: W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Wilfred Owens, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Graves.
Dramatists: Tom Stoppard, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Frank McGuinness, Harold Pinter, and Caryl Churchill. Topics: narrative, verse, drama, literary criticism. -
The Postmodern Period (1945–?)
Postmodernism is "The theory of rejecting theories" Tony Cliff.
It concerns the nature of being, becoming existence or reality. Authors: Samuel Beckett, Joseph Heller, Anthony Burgess, John Fowles, Penelope M. Lively, and Iain Banks.Godot. Works: Infinite Jest, The Love Song, Waiting for
Topics: Poststructuralist literary theory and criticism
