Periods of English Literature

Periods of English Literature

1. Old English (700 – 1100) – Anglo-Saxon literature - the 1st works in English were written in Old English - influenced by coming Christianity - strong oral tradition (proverbs, riddles, gnome songs) - the most important literary work - epic poem Beowulf- anonymous, written in manuscripts 2. Middle English (1100 – 1470) - Anglo – Norman period 2.1 Early Middle English - French influence – - Norman Conquest - a new genre: romances (adventures of knights and heroes) 2.2 Late Middle English - new poetic genres: hymns, legends, visions, ballads - new dramatic genres: mysteries, miracles, moralities - Geoffrey Chaucer – important personality, spoke and wrote the dialect of official London, which later developed into Modern English - wrote The Canterbury Tales – the collection of stories of 29 pilgrims, showing realistic and satirical observation of the characters in the 14th cent. 3. Period of Renaissance (early 16th – early 17th century) 3.1 the age of Shakespeare or the Elizabethan era - following the introduction of a printing press - Italian and French influence ( the translation of many classical literatury works) Important personalities: Thomas Moor – famous humanist - work UTOPIA ( his image of an ideal future society) William Shakespeare – famous dramatist - one of the founders of London Globe theater tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth 3.2 the Age of Reason or Augustan period - literature concerned with the men in society and their interests, trying to educate its readers - popular genres: essay, novel, verse, journals -important writers: Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) John Milton ( epic Paradise Lost) Jonathan Swift ( Gulliver's travel) 4. Early Modern Period 4.1 Romanticism – connected to Great French Revolution in 1789, which brought the ideas of freedom, equality, love, beauty and brotherhood - important poets: Percy, P.B. Shelley, lord Byron, John Keats – used symbols to describe their feelings, attitudes Writer: Mary Shelley – Frankenstein Victorian Age (1837-1901) - the great age of English novel - functions: to describe ordinary life, to entertain the middle class - most of the writers concerned with social problems, ethical conflicts, description of reality - the best women writers: Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre) Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights), the realist novels of George Eliot, Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion) - the best men writers: Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield) – about London life and the struggles of the poor, in a good-humoured fashion which was acceptable to readers of all classes Thomas Hardy ( Tess of d'Urbevilles, Far from the Madding Crowd) 5.Modernism (19th – 20th cen.) - disillusionment with values and ideals of Victorian era, influence of WWI and WWII - angry young men movement, fighting against the social disorder( John Osborne, John Waine) - humorous and witty dialogues, irony to describe human characters: Oscar Wilde (Picture of Dorian Gray) , G.B.Shaw (Pygmalion) - important writers of 20th cent.: novelists: J. Joyce (Dubliners, Ulysses (stream of consciousness novel), Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence

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poet: T.S.Elliot