-
405 BCE
Anglo-Saxon Literature (405-1066)
-Old English
-At that time the oral tradition was very important and a large part of the literary works were written to be represented.
-Epic poems became very popular.
-Few surviving texts with little in common. -
Period: 405 BCE to
ENGLISH LITERATURE
-
800
Beowulf
The first great work of Germanic literature, mixes the legends of Scandinavia with the English experience of the Angles and Saxons. -
1066
MIDDLE ENGLISH
-Works frequently of a religiously didactic content.
-The mystery works were represented in towns and cities to celebrate the main festivities -
1200
Literature after the Norman Conquest
-The authors began to write romances, both in verse and in prose.
- The "theater" made relevant to the church was "discovered".
-The church indoctrinated people through dramaturgy -
1367
Piers Plowman
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem by Piers Plowman. -
1375
Sir Gawain and the green knight
-The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the green knight speak of a mysterious visitor at the round table of King Arthur.
-The work emphasizes the behavior of knights with religious overtones. -
1387
100 Canterbury Tales
-Chaucer begins an ambitious plan for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he only turns 24 by the time of his death.
-Is a collection of stories of disparate genres narrated by a group of pilgrims traveling to Canterbury -
1469
Morte d'Arthur
Thomas Malory, in jail somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur, an account in English of the French tales of King Arthur -
1476
Print
- William Caxton introduced the printing press in England.
- The Protestant Reformation inspired the production of a liturgy of its own that led to the Book of Common Prayer, a key influence in English literature
-
1500
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
- Literature is characterized by a special interest in human behavior as the main theme of the works, partly due to the influence of Italian humanism -It became very relevant: appearance of the printing press, which facilitates the dissemination of texts that have culminated the history of literature. -. Influence or Aristotle, Ovid and other Greco-Roman thinkers, as well as science and exploration
-
1549
Thomas Cranmer
The first version of the English prayer book, or Common Prayer Book, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer. -
Tamburlaine the Great
Marlowe's first work, Tamburlaine the Great, presents the shocking blank verse of the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. -
William Shakespeare
- The central character of Shakespeare in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disappointment of a less confident era
- Shakespeare also popularized the English sounds that signify a profound change in the relationship with the Petrarch model.
- His last works, written during the beginnings of the reign of Jacobo I, are considered by critics as his most masterful compositions: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antonio and Cleopatra and The Tempest
-
NEOCLASSICAL PERIOD England (1660-1785) America (1750-1800)
-Reaction to the expansiveness of the Renaissance in the direction of order and restraint.
-Developed in France (Moliere, Rousseau, Voltaire)
-Emphasized classical ideals of rationality and control (human nature is constant through time)
-Art should reflect the universal commonality of human nature
-Reason is emphasized as the highest faculty -
John Locke
John Locke publishes his Essay on Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience -
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, with its detailed realism, can be considered as the first English novel. -
Thomas Gray
The English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in the courtyard of a rural church -
Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
-Scotland
-English literature for the first time in the university
-Adam Smith -
ROMANTIC PERIOD England (1785-1830) America (1800-1860)
-Reaction against the scientific rationality of Neoclassicism and the Industrial Revolution.
-Developed in Germany (Kant, Goethe)
-Emphasized individuality, intuition, imagination, idealism, nature (as opposed to society and social order)
-Elevation of the common man (folklore, myth)
-mystery and supernatural
-authors such as Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth -
Edmund Burke
The Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a pressing attack on recent events throughout the Canal -
Thomas Paine
-Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man, his response to Burke's reflections on the revolution in France.
-Thomas Paine publishes his complete Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity. -
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about how to give life to an artificial man. -
Thomas De Quincey
-The English author Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
-The English poet John Keats dies in Rome at twenty-five.
-The English radical William Cobbett begins his travels through England, published in 1830 as Rural Rides.
-English author William Hazlitt publishes Table Talk, a two-volume collection that includes most of his best-known essays -
First Professor of English Language and Literature
University College London. First ‘Professor of English Language and Literature’. Britain -
American Transcendentalism (Romantic philosophy) (1830-1860)
-Exaltation and literary worship to the self. The romantic poet is self-centered, he only cares about his own life
-Intense idealism The feelings are idealized in a great way, one could say that it is because the feeling and emotions will predominate in poetry, narrative and theater
-Developed in New England influenced by Eastern philosophy
-Authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman. -
VICTORIAN PERIOD England (1832-1901)
-A growing interest in social improvements and the awakening of a strong humanitarian spirit
-The predominant note was the rationalization of the literary impulse
-Era of political and social transformations, religious concerns, firm moral attachment, rapid expansion of English trade and culmination of the Industrial Revolution.
-Realism arises with brilliant poetry and rich in thought. The novel appears in its maximum splendor. -
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens's first novel, Oliver Twist, begins its monthly publication (in the form of a book, 1838) -
Brontë sisters
-Charlotte becomes the first of the Brontë sisters to publish a novel - Jane Eyre
-Emily Brontë's novel, Wuthering Heights, follows only two months after Jane Eyre's sister Charlotte -
Charles Darwin
-Charles Darwin presents the theory of evolution in On the origin of species, the result of a 20-year investigation
-Charles Dickens publishes his novel of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities -
REALISTIC PERIOD (America 1860-1914)
-Reaction against Romantic values (war civil)
-Developed in France (Balzac, Flaubert, Zola)
-Emphasized the commonplace and ordinary (as opposed to the romanticized individual)
-Sought to depict life as it was, not idealize
-Authors like Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser -
Lewis Carroll
Lewis mathematician Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell, 10, on a boat trip, a story about his own adventures in Wonderland. -
Marx
The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and published in Hamburg. -
Naturalism hyper-realism
-Named for the belief that man is simply a higher order animal, and thus under the same natural constraints and limitations as other animals.
-Controlled by heredity and environment
-Naturalist writers consider that instinct, emotion or social or economic conditions govern human behavior.
-Satire and social complaint. The naturalist novel is not a simple pastime, it is a serious and detailed study of social problems, whose causes it seeks to find and show in a documentary way -
Oxford
Oxford. Professorship in English Language and Literature. -
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling's jungle book surrounds the Mowgli child with a collection of vivid animal keepers. -
EDWARDIAN PERIOD England (1901-1914)
-Named for king Edward
-It was a period in which a large number of novels and short stories were published, and a significant distinction emerged between "intellectual" literature and popular fiction.
-Authors such as Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, George Bernard Shaw, A.C. Bradley -
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Nostromo, about a revolution in South America and a horde of fatal silver. -
AC Bradley (Oxford Lectures on Poetry)
The result of his five years as a professor of poetry at the University of Oxford were Bradley's two major works, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) and Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909). All his published work was originally delivered in the form of lectures. Bradley's pedagogical manner and self-confidence made him a real guide for many students about the meaning of Shakespeare. -
POSTMODERNISM (1940-2000)
-A literature characterized by the dependence on narrative techniques such as fragmentation, paradox and the unreliable narrator
-Postmodern works also tend to celebrate chance rather than craftsmanship and further employ metafiction to undermine the authority or authenticity of the text. -Subjectivism is explored, moving from external reality to examining the internal states of consciousness -
Flann O'Brien
The Irish novelist Flann O'Brien completed The Third Policeman in 1939. It was rejected for publication and was supposedly lost until it was published posthumously in 1967. -
CONTEMPORARY
-The authors follow very varied tendencies: the total freedom for the creation once the obstacles of the censorship are broken and the links with the political commitment are finalized; Mass communication with all kinds of news and trends; and the ideological fragmentation of Western thought.
-Tendency to subjectivity and intimacy
-Abundance of novels with a humorous tone and lyrical or nostalgic tones
-Flexibility of the narrative structure
