Periods of English Literature -1

1. Old English / Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066) Historical Context:

1. life centered around ancestral tribes or clans that
2. Middle English Period / The Medieval Period
ruled themselves
(1066-1500) 2. at first the people were warriors from invading outly-
3. The Renaissance / Early Modern Period ing areas: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes
(1500-1660) 3. later they were agricultural
Key Literature/Authors:
a) Elizabethan Age (1558-1603)
1. Beowulf (a long poem of the 8th Century)
b) Jacobean Age (1603-1625) 2. Bede ( a monk and a writer)
c) Caroline Age (1625-1649) 3. Exeter Book
d) Commonwealth Period / 2. MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD / THE MEDIEVAL
PERIOD (1066-1500)
Puritan Interregnum) (1649-1660)
Content:
4. The Neoclassical Period (1660-1785) 1. plays that instruct the illiterate masses in morals and
a) The Restoration (1660-1700) religioun
2. chivalric code of honor
 romances
b) The Augustan Age /
Age of Pope) (1700-1745)
3. religious devotion
c) The Age of Sensibility / Style/Genres:
Age of Johnson) (1745-1785) 1. oral tradition continues
5. The Romantic Period (1785-1830) 2. folk ballads (a song that tells a story)
6. The Victorian Period (1830-1901) 3. mystery and miracle plays
4. morality plays
a) The Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1860) 5. stock epithets (A stock epithet is a literary device most
b) Aestheticism and Decadence often found in classical epic poems (i.e. the works of Homer).
(1880-1901) A stock epithet is used to reintroduce a character or other
7. The Edwardian Period (1901-1914) object by using a phrase or two repeatedly when introducing
it into a scene.
8. The Georgian Period (1910-1936) For example, in The Odyssey Homer repeatedly refers to
9. The Modern Period (1914- ...) Athena as "gray-eyed Athena", or the sea as the "wine dark
a) Postmodernism (1945-Present) sea". )
6. kennings (a type of literary device in the form of a
1. OLD ENGLISH OR ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD compound (usually two words, often hyphenated) that
(449-1066) employs figurative language in place of a more concrete
Content:  single-word noun. They are strongly associated with Old
Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry. For
1. strong belief in fate
example, Old Norse poets might replace the regular word
2. juxtaposition of church and pagan worlds: for “sword”, with a more abstract compound such as “wound-
hoe”
 frame stories - A frame story (also frame tale, frame
3. admiration of heroic warriors who prevail in battle
4. express religious faith and give moral instruction through
narrative, etc.) is a literary technique that sometimes serves
literature    
as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an
Style/Genres: introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part,
1. oral tradition of literature for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more
2. poetry dominant genre emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories.
The frame story leads readers from a first story into another,
3. unique verse form
smaller one (or several ones) within it.
i. caesura (is a complete pause in a line of poetry or  moral tales
in a musical composition. The plural form of caesura is Effect:
caesurae. Caesurae feature prominently in Greek and Latin 1. Church instructs its people through the morality and
miracle plays
verse, especially in the heroic v erse f orm, dactylic
2. An illiterate population is able to hear and see the
hexameter) literature
ii. alliteration (repetition of a particular sound in the Historical Context:
prominent lifts (or stressed syllables) of a series of words or 1. Crusades bring the development of a money economy
for the first time in Britain
phrases- “Eric’s eagle eats eggs, enjoying each episode of
2. Trading increases dramatically as a result of the
eating”. Crusades
iii. repetition 3. William the Conqueror crowned king in 1066
iv. 4 beat rhythm (Tetrameter Four Feet) 4. Henry III crowned king in 1154 brings a judicial system,
royal courts, juries, and chivalry to Britain
Effect:
Key Literature/Authors:
1. Christianity helps literacy to spread 1. Domesday Book
2. introduces Roman alphabet to Britain 2. L’Morte de Arthur
3. oral tradition helps unite diverse peoples and their myths 3. Geoffrey Chaucer
 Periods of English Literature - 2
The Renaissance Period (1500-1660)
Content:
1. World view shifts from religion and after life to one
stressing the human life on earth.
2. popular theme: development of human potential
3. popular theme: many aspects of love explored
4. unrequited love
5. constant love
6. timeless love
7. courtly love
8. love subject to change
Style/Genres:
1. poetry
 sonnet (p oems of 14 lines ) of W illiam
Shakespeare , which were probably written in the
1590s . Many of them are addressed to a young man,
expressing the poet’s affection for him and giving
him advice. Others are written to a beautiful dark
lady . The sonnets are dedicated to ‘Mr W H ’, and
his identity is also a mystery. “
2. drama
 written in verse
 supported by royalty
 tragedies, comedies, histories
3. metaphysical poetry
 elaborate and unexpected metaphors called
conceits
Effect:
1. Commoners welcomed at some play productions (like
ones at the Globe) while conservatives tried to close
the theaters on grounds that they promote brazen (
disapproving )
2. Not all middle-class embrace the metaphysical poets
and their abstract conceits
Historical Context:
1. War of Roses ends in 1485 and political stability
arrives
2. Printing press helps stabilize English as a language
and allows more people to read a variety of literature
3. Economy changes from farm-based to one of
international trade
Key Literature/Authors:
1. William Shakespeare - poet and dramatist (1564-
1616)
2. John Donne- poet (1572-1631)
3. Christopher Marlowe - dramatist, poet (1564-1593)
Neoclassical Period orThe Restoration (1660-1785)
Content:
1. emphasis on reason and logic
2. stresses harmony, stability, wisdom
3. Locke (1632–1704): a social contract exists between
the government and the people. The government
Effect:
1. emphasis on the individual
2. belief that man is basically evil
3. approach to life: “the world as it should be”
Historical Context:
1. 50% of the men are functionally literate (a dramatic
rise)
2. Fenced enclosures of land cause demise of traditional
village life
3. Factories begin to spring up as industrial revolution
begins
4. Impoverished masses begin to grow as farming life
declines and factories build
5. Coffee houses—where educated m en sp end
evenings with literary and political associates
Key Literature/Authors:
1. Alexander Pope- poet, satirist (1688-1744)
2. Daniel Defoe - novelist ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (1660-173)
3. Jonathan Swift Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist (1667-1745)
4. Samuel Johnson poet, essayist (1709-1784)
5. John Bunyan (1628-1688) The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Romanticism (1785-1830)
Content:
1. Human knowledge consists of impressions and ideas
formed in the individual’s mind
2. introduction of gothic (romantic adventures) elements
and terror/horror stories and novels
3. in nature one can find comfort and peace that the man-
made urbanized towns and factory environments
cannot offer
Style/Genres:
1. poetry
2. lyrical ballad (a song that tells a story)
Effects:
1. evil attributed to society not to human nature
2. human beings are basically good
3. movement of protest: a desire for personal freedom
4. children seen as hapless victims of poverty and
exploitation
Historical Context:
1. Napoleon rises to power in France and opposes
England militarily and economically
2. gas lamps developed
3. Tory philosophy that government should NOT interfere
with private enterprise
4. middle class gains representation in the British
parliament
5. Railroads begin to run
Key Literature/Authors:
1. Novelists:
 Jane Austen

 Mary Shelley
governs guaranteeing “natural rights” of life, liberty,
and property
2. Poets:
 Robert Burns
Style/Genres:
1. satire:   uses  irony  and exaggeration  to  poke  fun  at
 William Blake
 William Wordsworth
human faults and foolishness in order to correct

 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

human behavior
2. poetry
3. essays  Lord Byron
4. letters, diaries, biographies  Percy Shelley
5. novels  John Keats
 Periods of English Literature - 3
Victorian Period (1830-1901) Modern Period (1914- ...)
Content: Content:
1. conflict between those in power and the common 1. lonely individual fighting to find peace and comfort in a
masses of laborers and the poor world that has lost its absolute values and traditions
2. Man is nothing except what he makes of himself.
2. shocking life of sweatshops and urban poor is highlighted
3. a belief in situational ethics—no absolute values.
in literature to insist on reform Decisions are based on the situation one is involved in
3. country versus city life at the moment
4. sexual discretion (or lack of it) 4. mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality
5. strained coincidences for reader
6. romantic triangles 5. loss of the hero in literature
7. heroines in physical danger 6. destruction made possible by technology
8. aristocratic villains Genres/Styles:
9. misdirected letters 1. poetry: free verse
2. epiphanies begin to appear in literature
10. bigamous marriages
3. speeches
Genres/Styles: 4. memoir
1. Novel becomes popular for first time; mass produced 5. novels
for the first time
 bildungsroman: “coming of age”
6. stream of consciousness
7. detached, unemotional, humorless
 political novels 8. present tense
 detective novels: (Sherlock Holmes) 9. magic realism
 serialized novels Effect: an approach to life: “Seize life for the moment and
2. elegies get all you can out of it.”
Historical Context:
3. poetry: easier to understand
 dramatic monologues
1. British Empire loses 1 million soldiers to World War I
2. Winston Churchill leads Britain through WW II, and the
4. drama: comedies of manners
 magazines offer stories to the masses
Germans bomb England directly
3. British colonies demand independence
Effect: literature begins to reach the masses Key Literature/Authors:
Historical Context: 1. James Joyce 2. Joseph Conrad
1. Paper becomes cheap; magazines and novels cheap 3. D.H. Lawrence 4. Graham Greene
to mass produce 5. Dylan Thomas 6. George Orwell
2. unprecedented growth of industry and business in Britain 7. William Butler Yeats 8. Bernard Shaw
3. unparalleled dominance of nations, economies and trade Post Modern Period (1945-Present)
abroad Content:
Key Literature/Authors: 1. concern with connections between people
1. Charles Dickens 2. Thomas Hardy 2. exploring interpretations of the past
3. open-mindedness and courage that comes from being
3. Rudyard Kipling 4. Robert Louis Stevenson
an outsider
5. George Eliot 6. Oscar Wilde
4. escaping those ways of living that blind and dull the
7. Alfred Lord Tennyson 8. Robert Browning human spirit
Edwardian Period (1901-1914) Genres/Styles:
The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 and the 1. all genres represented
2. fictional confessional/diaries / 50% of contemporary
succession of her son Edward marked the end of the Victorian
fiction is written in the first person
era. In fiction, some of the best-known names are E. M. 3. narratives: both fiction and nonfiction
Forster, Rudyard Kipling, Saki, A. C. Bradley, George 4. emotion-provoking
Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. Apart from these famous 5. humorous irony
writers, this was a period when a great number of novels 6. storytelling emphasized
and short stories were being published. Among the most 7. autobiographical essays
famous works of literary criticism was A. C. Bradley’s 8. mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality
Shakespearean Tragedy (1904). for reader
The Georgian Period (1910-1936) Effect: too soon to tell
Historical Context:
The Georgian Period refers to the period of British Literature 1. world growing smaller due to ease of communications
that is named for thereign of George V (1910-36). Many between societies
writers of the Edwardian Period continued towrite during the 2. a world launching a new beginning of a century and a
Georgian Period . This era also produced a group of poets millennium
known as the Georgian poets. These writers, now regarded 3. media culture interprets values and events for individuals
as minor poets, were publihed infour anthologies entitled Key Literature/Authors:
Georgian Poetry, published by Edward Marsh between 1. Seamus Heaney 2. Doris Lessing
3. Louis de Bernieres 4. Kazuo Ishiguro
1912and 1922. Georgian poetry tends to focus on rural
5. Tom Stoppard 6. Salman Rushdie
subject matter and is traditional in technique and form.
7. John Le Carre 8. Ken Follett