-
Period: 450 to 1066
Old English
Old English literature, also called Anglo-Saxon literature.
Beowulf is the oldest surviving Germanic epic and the longest Old English poem.
Old English prose works include legal writings, medical tracts, religious texts, and translations from Latin and other languages -
975
Beowulf
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important works of Old English literature -
Period: 1066 to 1500
Middle English
There are three main categories of Middle English Literature: Religious, Courtly love, and Arthurian.
Other transitional works were popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. -
1368
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Book of the Duchess is the first of Chaucer's major poems.
best known for his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales, composed in the last twelve years of his life and left unfinished at his death. The Canterbury Tales, first published c. 1476 CE by William Caxton, became so popular that Chaucer’s earlier work was overshadowed, only receiving critical attention much later and popular notice as late as the 19th century CE. -
Period: 1500 to
English Renaissance
Elizabethan / Jacobean / Carolina The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England.
The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were literature and music. -
Edmund Spencer
The Faerie Queene, verse epic that had a strong influence on English literature. -
Period: to
Puritan
Puritan standards prevailed in England, and also the greatest literary figure John Milton (1608-1674) was a Puritan. The Puritans struggled for righteousness and liberty.
Puritanism became a great national movement which included English Churchman as well as extreme Separatists. While the Catholic Church had always held true to the ideal of the united church, the possibility of the ideal of a purely national Protestantism grew. -
Period: to
Restoration Age
Restoration literature, English literature written after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 following the period of the Commonwealth. Some literary historians speak of the period as bounded by the reign of Charles II (1660–85), while others prefer to include within its scope the writings produced during the reign of James II (1685–88), and even literature of the 1690s is often spoken of as “Restoration.” -
John Milton
John Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest epic poem in English. Together with Paradise Regained, it formed his reputation as one of the greatest English writers. In his prose works he advocated the abolition of the Church of England. His influence extended through the English civil wars and also to the American and French revolutions. -
Period: to
18th Century
Augustan (1700-1750) / Age of Sensibility (1750-1798) The 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama, satire, and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel. -
Robinson Crusoe/Gulliver's Travels
Daniel Defoe was another political pamphleteer turned novelist like Jonathan Swift and was publishing in the early 18th century.
Jonathan Swift published Gulliver's Travels, one of the first novels in the genre of satire. -
William Blake
William Blake was a 19th century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages, and he has been deemed both a major poet and an original thinker.
One of his most famous works is a book called Songs of Innocence and Experience. -
Period: to
Romanticism
Romantic poetry and romantic novel.
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. -
Period: to
Victorian
The literature of the Victorian age (1837-1901) entered a new period after the romantic revival. The literature of this era was preceded by romanticism and was followed by modernism or realism. Hence, it can also be called a fusion of romantic and realist style of writing. -
Charles Dickens
He is the most famous Victorian novelist. Champion of realism and the first famous author of the period, whose works helped popularize the serialized form of the novel. Bleak House is often chosen as the ‘best’ Dickens novel. -
Period: to
Modern Literature
In broad terms, the period was marked by sudden and unexpected breaks with traditional ways of viewing and interacting with the world. Experimentation and individualism became virtues, where in the past they were often heartily discouraged. Modernism was set in motion, in one sense, through a series of cultural shocks. -
Period: to
Post Modern
Postmodern literature is literature characterized by reliance on narrative techniques such as fragmentation, paradox, and the unreliable narrator; and is often (though not exclusively) defined as a style or a trend which emerged in the post–World War II era. -
Period: to
Contemporary
The word contemporary literature means belonging to or occurring in the now, which suggests that writers after 1940 were focusing on their feelings, emotions and societies as they were experiencing them. The writing styles can vary, but the main idea is to convey realistic characters and experiences -
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut is a poster child for postmodernism. One of the big names of the 1960s and '70s, and his works are perfect go-to texts if you're trying to get a handle on some of the main themes and techniques of postmodern literature. Vonnegut's best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), is about a soldier called Billy Pilgrim, who travels back and forward through time, relives the events in his life, and even finds himself abducted by aliens.
