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Period: 450 to 1066
anglosajón
The year of the Norman conquest of England, the Germanic tribes of Europe that invaded England in the fifth century, after the Roman defeat, brought with them the old English or Anglo-Saxon language, which contributes the basis of modern English, also provided a specific poetic tradition whose formal characteristics amazingly survived six centuries later -
731
venerable Bede
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery in Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people -
800
Beowulf
In his monastery in Jarrow, he completes his history of the English church and people -
Period: 1066 to 1485
Medieval
Medieval or middle English was caused by the invasion of the Normans to Britain, when the Duke of Normandy defeated King Harold of Great Britain in the battle of Hastings. The language was a dialect of French descent with Germanic influences, usually called Anglo-Norman. This fun brought English closer to what we know and use today. Among the poems that present a certain formal continuity with respect to ancient English, Piers the labrador of William Langland -
1300
Duns Scotus
Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later gives the humanists the name Dunsman or dunce -
1340
William of Ockham
William of Ockham advocates reducing arguments to the essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor -
1367
William Langland
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins Piers Plowman's epic poem. -
1387
Chaucer
Chaucer begins an ambitious plan for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he only turns 24 by the time of his death -
Period: 1485 to
Renaissance
From the introduction of the printing press, in 1476, the number of readers multiplied. The increase of the middle class, the development of commerce, the dissemination of education among the laity and not only the clergy, the centralization of power and the intense intellectual life in the court of the Tudors and the Stuart, were elements that favored A new impetus in the literature. The new literature, however, will not fully flourish until 1550. -
1524
William Tyndale
William Tyndale studies at the University of Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English -
Marlowe
Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, features the shocking blank verse of the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. -
Shakespeare
The central character of Shakespeare in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disappointment of a less confident era -
John Smith
John Smith publishes A Description of New England, a review of his exploration of the region in 1614 -
John Milton
John Milton's Lycidas is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King -
Period: to
The restoration and the century XVIII
Literature was then characterized by the search for moderation, good taste and simplicity. The great philosophical and political treatises of the time promote rationalism, as evidenced by the work of John Locke, who defended the experience as the exclusive basis of knowledge -
John Locke
John Locke publishes his Essay on human understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience -
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding presents a character of lasting appeal in the scruffy but good-hearted Tom Jones -
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton, 17, who was later hailed as an important poet, commits suicide in a London attic. -
Period: to
the victorian era
The Victorian era was a time of social transformations that forced writers to take positions on the most immediate issues. Thus, although romantic forms of expression continued to dominate English literature for almost the entire century, the attention of many writers sometimes turned passionately to issues such as the development of English democracy, mass education, industrial progress. and the materialist philosophy that he brought with him, and the situation of the working class -
Peter Mark Roget
London doctor Peter Mark Roget publishes his thesaurus, thesaurus of words and phrases in English -
George Eliot
The English author George Eliot gains fame with his first full-length novel, Adam Bede -
George du Maurier
French artist and author George du Maurier publishes his novel Trilby -
Period: to
The literature of the century x x
A severe economic depression and the austerity of life in Britain that followed the Second War, explain the various directions that English literature has followed in the twentieth century. The traditional values of Western civilization, of which Victorian spirits had only begun to doubt, were seriously questioned by many young writers. Traditional literary forms are often left aside, and writers look for other ways of expressing what they consider to be new types of experience. -
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling publica Just So Stories for Little Children -
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes defines his economy in the general theory of employment, interests and money. -
Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn's work in Copenhagen dramatizes Werner Heisenberg's visit to Niels Bohr in Denmark during the war
