-
Period: 520 to 670
THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH SPEECH
French romancers.
Celtics influence.
Author: Tennyson.
Examples: Passing of Arthur.
French influence: Faint from faint; cry from crier; sounds from soun; city from cité; voice from vois. -
670
The Anglo-Saxon period
Anglo-Saxon Poetry.
Parallelism, alliteration, absense of rhyme, compound words, diffuse style.
Authors: Alfred. Edgar and Elfric.
Examples: Beowulf. -
1050
The Middle English Period
Latin and French influence.
The Romantic Note.
The Religious Note.
Ballad Poetry.
Authors: William Langland
Examples:
Saxon Chronicle.
The Morte d' Arthur.
Piers Plowman. -
1215
Orm's Ormulum
Written by Orm, a monk, it is a work of biblical exegesis. -
Period: 1400 to
THE ENGLISH RENASCENCE
Each nation expressed in its own way: Italy, Germany, England.
Authors: Roger Ascham. Sir John Cheke. Nicholas Udall.
Example: Fra Lippo Lippi. Johannes Agricola. -
1562
The Drama.
First stage: The Play. Mysteries. Examples: Miracle Plays.
Second stage They play of Noah. The Pageants and May Games.
Third stage: The Morality and Interlude
Examples: Everyman. The Four P's of Heywood.
Fourth stage. English tragedy. Greece tragedy. -
Shakespeare
The first period.
Romeo and Juliet (1592).
The Merchant of Venice (1594).
Venice (1594).
The second period.
The Taming of the Shrew (1595).
As You Like It (1600).
The Third Period. (1600-08). All's Well and Ends Well (1595). Measue of Measure (1604).
The Fourth Period. (1608-12). Antony and Cleopatra (1608). Corilanus (1609). -
Romeo and Juliet
It is the story of a boy who meets a girl; girl's family hates boy's family; boy's family hates girl's family; boy kills girl's cousin; boy and girl kill themselves. -
The Merchant of Venice
It is a play in which a merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. -
The Taming of the Shrew
It is a comedy about a framing device, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. -
All's Well and Ends Well
It is a comedy of Helena, an orphan daughter of a famous physician. -
As You Like It
It is a comedy about Rosalind, who flees persecution in her uncle's court, accompanied by her cousin Celia to find safety and, eventually, love, in the Forest of Arden. -
Antony and Cleopatra
It is a tragedy about the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Sicilian revolt to Cleopatra's suicide during the Final War of the Roman Republic. -
Period: to
THE AGE OF SATIRE
Literary fashion fluctuation.
Spiritual and material expansion.
Milton's prose.
Poetry.
Authors: William Congreve, William Wycherley, George Farquhar, Thomas Hobbes.
Examples: Leviathan, Lives, Fable of the Bees. The Aeropagitica. -
Dunciad
It is a landmark mock-heroic narrative poem. -
Period: to
THE AGE OF SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Emotional sensitiveness.
Romantic revival.
Johnson and the Eighteenth Century Novelists.
The Novel (Samuel Richardson).
Golsmith and Johnson.
Authors: Hume, Robertso, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Chalmers, Samuel Richardson. Edmund Burke. -
Period: to
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL
Romanticism.
The Spiritualising of Nature.
The Humanising of Social Life.
Examples: Lyrical Balladas, The Prelude.
Reviews. Magazines. Journals.
Authors: William Wordsworth. Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Professor Wilson. -
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
It is the story of the Western civilization from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. -
Period: to
THE VICTORIAN ERA
The Democratic Note. The Scientific Note.
The Pre-Raphaelite School Characteristics.
Humour and Satire.
Philosophic Poetry.
The Novel of Character.
Realistic Fiction.
Romance and Realism.
Authors: Dante Gabriel Rosseti, Christina Rosetti, Robert Buchanan.
Examples: City of Dreadful Night. Light verse. Ingoldsby Legends. The Athenoeum.
