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490
Old english 490-1150
Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses the surviving literature written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England (Jutes and the Angles) c. 450, after the withdrawal of the Romans, -
1066
Middle English 1066
Middle English saw significant changes to its grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English language became fragmented, localized, and was for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470) -
1400
Geoffrey Chaucer
was an English poet and author. Widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is known as the "Father of English literature", and he was the first writer to be buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. -
1550
The Renaissance Period: 1500–1600
England had a strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular, which gradually increased as English use of the printing press became common by the mid 16th century. By the time of Elizabethan literature a vigorous literary culture in both drama and poetry included poets such as Edmund Spenser, whose verse epic The Faerie Queene had a strong influence on English literature but was eventually overshadowed by the lyrics of William Shakespeare, -
The Elizabeththan period 1558-1603
Elizabeth I presided over a vigorous culture that saw notable accomplishments in the arts,
During her reign a London-centred culture, the influence of the Medieval theatre with the Renaissance's rediscovery of the Roman dramatists, Seneca, for tragedy, and Plautus and Terence, for comedy. Italy was an important source for Renaissance ideas in England and the linguist and lexicographer John Florio (1553–1625), -
The caroline period 1625-1649
In literature, and especially in drama, the Caroline period has often been regarded as a diminished continuation of the trends of the previous two reigns. William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, though some of their successors, especially Philip Massinger, James Shirley, and John Ford, carried on to create interesting, even compelling theatre. In poetry, however, the Caroline period saw the flourishing of the Cavalier poets (including Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace. -
The puritan preiod 1649-1660
The Commonwealth period, also known as the Puritan Interregnum, is a literary epoch influenced by the English historical context between 1649 and 1660. This period born after the Second English war (civil war), this causes the execution of Charles I, the last king of England before the Puritan Interregnum -
The Restoration period 1660-1700
One of the most important and interesting aspects of literature is the way that it both responds to and is inevitably shaped by the political context in which it is written. Some of the best examples of this can be found in the Restoration period, which lasted from 1660 to around 1688. The name 'restoration' comes from the crowning of Charles II,
The writings of this time are both innovative and varied; the style and subject matter of the literature produced during the Restoration -
The Augustan period 1700-1785
is a style of British literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II in the first half of the 18th century and ending in the 1740s, with the deaths of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, in 1744 and 1745, respectively. It was a literary epoch that featured the rapid development of the novel, an explosion in satire, the mutation of drama from political satire into melodrama and an evolution toward poetry of personal exploration. In philosophy, -
The Romantic Period 1785-1830
The British Romantic period designates the time period 1785–1830. Romantic poets and writers would not have considered themselves similar and many of the writers considered canonical today were not popular until later in their careers or after their deaths. This period, nonetheless, designates a time in which many writers were responding to similar events and ideas about the form and function of literature.
The French Revolution had an important influence -
The Victorian period 1830-1901
1837 roughly half of England's population was literate; that figure continued to grow throughout the Victorian period (due especially to reforms that mandated at least minimal education for everybody).
Because of advances in printing technology, publishers could provide more texts (of various kinds) to more people.
The Victorian period saw enormous growth in periodicals of all kinds. Many famous novelists, like Charles Dickens, -
the Modern Period 1901-1922
English literary modernism developed in the early twentieth-century out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth.The movement was influenced by the ideas of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), James G. Frazer (1854–1941),
A major British lyric poet of the first decades of the twentieth-century was Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). -
Modernism (1922–1940)
Important British writers between the World Wars, include the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978), who began publishing in the 1920s, and novelist Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), who was an influential feminist, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique in novels like Mrs Dalloway (1925)
An important development, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s was a tradition of working class novels actually written by working-class background writers. -
Twentieth-century English literature
British Literature II Defining Literary Techniques of 20th Century English Literature During the 20th Century, much advancement and change occurred throughout English Literature. The writers all examined the world around them and tried to express it through their writings. All of the poetry we examined was centered around warfare and the effects of it.
