How many ways of loving does the speaker identify? Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s (1806-61) “How Do I Love Thee?” (1850) is a heartfelt...Continue
The history of English literature is very closely related to the history of the English people. It began with the emergence of the English nation and continued evolving along with its social development. Each of the phases, known as Age or Period. It has been given a particular name, sometimes after the name of the king or queen, sometimes after the name of a great writer, and sometimes according to the spirit of the time. The names and time span of the ages of English literature differ from historian to historian; the following list derived from M. H. Abrams is dependable:
The Old English Period or The Anglo-Saxon Period (450-1066)
The Middle English Period (1066-1500)
The Renaissance Period (1500-1660)
The Neoclassical Period (1660-1785)
The Romantic Period (1798-1832)
The Victorian Period (1832-1901)
The Modern Period (1901-1939)
The Post-modern Period (1939 – Present)
You must remember the following diagram because these branches will be taught to you in the next years. It will help you to explore literary knowledge in many ways.
Old English Period
Beowulf | Anglo-Saxon Chronicles | German Tribes | Anonymous Writing |
Middle English Period
Norman Conquest | Chaucer | The Canterbury Tales | Hundred Years War | Black Death |
Renaissance Period
Renaissance | Comedy | Tragedy | Tragicomedy |
Comedy of Humor | Beast Fable | William Shakespeare | Christopher Marlowe |
Ben Johnson | Edmund Spencer | Francis Bacon | John Webster |
Humanism |
Neo-classical Period
Comedy of Manners / Restoration Drama | Age of Prose and Reason | Dr. Samuel Johnson |
Satirical Writing | Literary Criticism | Addison and Steele |
Epic | Mock Heroic Poem | Alexander Pope |
Jonathan Swift | Dictionary | Aphra Ben |
Daniel Defoe | Novel | John Milton |
Romantic Period
French Revolution | Lyrical Ballads | Escapism |
Imagination | Supernaturalism | Fancy |
Pantheism | The Romantics | Romantic Movement |
Biographia Literaria | Negative Capability | Pastoral Elegy |
Victorian Period
Victorian Compromise | The Bronte Sisters | Pre-Raphaelitism | Adventure |
Dramatic Monologue | The Origin of Species | Oxford Movement | Tennyson |
Mathew Arnold | Robert Browning | G.M. Hopkins | Charles Dickens |
Modern Period and Post-Modern Period
Stream of Consciousness | One-Act Play | Drama of Ideas | Absurd Drama |
Modernism | Modern Trends of Poetry | World War I & II | W. B. Yeats |
G. B. Shaw | J. M. Synge | Wole Soyinka | T. S. Eliot |
Sylvia Plath |
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