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Period: 450 to 1066
Old English
Anglo-Saxon literature: Many works were anonymous as they were rewritten from stories heard or read which did not have an owner. There was no conscience of authorship, much less plagiarism.
The verse was characteristic of the literary genre, therefore the narrative genre included works in verse as well as prose. At the end of the Middle Ages, the divine was mixed with the profane.
"Beowulf" is the oldest surviving Germanic epic and the longest Old English poem. -
Period: 1066 to 1500
Middle english
The Norman Conquest worked no immediate transformation on either the language or the literature of the English. A postconquest example is “The Grave,” which contains several rhyming lines; a poem from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the death of William the Conqueror, lamenting his cruelty and greed, has more rhyme than alliteration.New genres emerged such as Verse romance, The lyric, Prose and religious prose -
Period: 1500 to
Renaissance literature
From its beginnings during the 14th century, Renaissance ideas based on classical learning and a focus on all things human – including art, literature, culture, and politics – spread from Italy throughout Europe. when the Renaissance came to England, it inspired a flowering of magnificent English literature throughout the 15th and 16th centuries that readers still revere and thrill to read today. -
Elizabethan literature
the Elizabethan era had a prosperous literary production, especially in the field of theater. William Shakespeare was an outstanding author of poetry and plays, surely the most relevant figure that English literature has had in its history, but also other figures have had a relevant weight in the theater such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. The urban comedy genre was also developed much followed and admired -
Jacobean literature
The poet and playwright Ben Jonson led Jacobean literature after Shakespeare's death. Several authors followed his style such as Beaumont and Fletcher, all of them were called "sons of Ben." Another popular style of the time was the revenge theater that was made popular by John Webster and Tomas Kyd. -
Caroline Era
The Caroline era (1625-1649) was dominated by growing religious, political, and social discord between the King and his supporters, termed the Royalist party, and the Parliamentarian opposition that evolved in response to particular aspects of Charles's rule. While the Thirty Years' War was raging in continental Europe, Britain had an uneasy peace, growing more restless as the civil conflict between the King and the supporters of Parliament worsened. -
Period: to
Puritan Literature
Puritans excluded decorations such as candles and images from their churches and rituals, placing greater emphasis on scripture and preaching. They refused to celebrate traditional holidays, including Christmas.Their literature consisted of prose or poetry. Because of their Puritan values, they disapproved of plays and dramas, and under Cromwell many of London's theatres, including those founded by William Shakespeare, which had been so popular in the Elizabethan era, were ordered to be closed. -
Period: to
Restoration literature
The reopening of the theaters gave the opportunity to perform satirical works about the new nobility and the growing bourgeoisie. The mobility of society, which followed the social upheavals of the previous generation, provided the ideas for the creation of the comedy of manners. Aphra Behn was the first female professional novelist and playwright. John Bunyan's allegory, The Pilgrim, is one of the most widely read works of this period. -
Literature of the Age of Augustus
Early 18th century is known as the Age Augustus or neoclassical literature. The Alexander Pope works show that the poetry of these years was very formal. The English novel wasn't popular until the 18th century, although many works were very important, such as Robinson Crusoe (1719 Daniel Defoe) In the mid 18th century, the novel was established by authors such as Henry Fielding, Laurence Stern & Samuel Richardson, Richardson was moralistic while Fielding and Stern were closer to the comic genre -
Period: to
Romanticism Era
The reaction to industrialization and urbanism pushed poets to explore nature, like the group of "The Poets of the Lake" in which we include William Wordsworth. These romantic poets brought a new degree of sentimentality and introspection to English literature. Among the most important authors of the second generation of romantic poets are Lord Byron, Percy Bysse Shelley and John Keats. -
Period: to
Victorian Literature
The novel was the most important literary form in Victorian literature. Most of the authors were more focused on knowing the tastes of the middle class who read, than on satisfying the aristocrats. Among the best-known works of this time we highlight: the works of strong emotional content by the Brontë sisters; the Vanity Fair satire by William Makepeace Thackery; George Eliot's realist novel; and Anthony Trollope's insightful portraits from the life of landowners and the professional class. -
Period: to
Moderm Literature
The most prominent novelists of the interwar period were D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, the latter a member of the Bloomsbury group. The Sitwells also gained traction among the literary and artistic movements, but with less influence. The most important popular literature writers were P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. -
Period: to
Postmodern literature
Literary postmodernism has tended to be focused on one kind of writing, namely, narrative fiction. The most influential books on literary postmodernism, such as Linda Hutcheon’s A Poetics of Postmodernism and Brian McHale’s Postmodernist Fiction, are devoted to postmodern fiction. It seems oddly fitting that what Hutcheon calls the “poetics of postmodernism” should turn out to be most in evidence in its fiction.
