Histo

History of English Literature.

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  • 800 BCE

    Beowulf Eddas

    Beowulf Eddas
    Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons
    The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy
  • 730

    The Venerable Bede

    The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people
  • 950

    Eddas

    The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy
  • 1300

    Duns Scotus

    Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce
  • 1340

    William of Ockham

    William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor
  • 1367

    Piers Plowman

    A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman
    One of four new yeomen of the chamber in Edward III's household is Geoffrey Chaucer
  • 1375

    Sir Gawain and the Green Knigh

    The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur
  • 1385

    Troilus and Criseyde

    Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy
  • 1387

    Canterbury Tales

    Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death
  • 1469

    Thomas Malory

    Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur
  • 1510

    Erasmus and Thomas

    Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism
  • 1524

    William Tyndale

    William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English
  • 1549

    Thomas Cranmer

    The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer
  • 1564

    Marlowe and Shakespeare

    Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months
  • 1567

    The Book of Common

    The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588
  • 1582

    Shakespeare wedding

    The 18-year-old William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon

  • Elizabethan and Jacobean

    Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama

  • Poet Edmund Spenser

    English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene

  • Parts of Henry VI

    After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III

  • Hamlet by Shakespeare

    Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age