History of English literature in a nutshell

Definition of literature

                Dear reader I really happy to write about the literature of English, from my childhood I love literature more than anything in the world, this blog is out of my passion towards literature. First I would like to define what literature is. Literature is a way to experience a way of life. But if you try to find exact meaning for literature is a road that is much travelled, though the point of arrival, if ever reached is seldom satisfactory. Literature is something that reflects society that make us think about our self and our society make us to analyze and understand everything easily. Literature is a yet another world if you wish to enter there you have to read the literary pieces of great writers, literature allow us to enjoy language and its beauty. The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry which attempts to provide entertainment, enlightenment or instruction to the reader.

Introduction for English Literature

            English as we know it descends from the language spoken by the North Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5^th century A.D onwards. They had no writing until they learned the Latin alphabet from roman missionaries. The earlier written works in old English were probably composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. Old English literature is mostly chronicle and poetry. Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And their forms do not significantly affect subsequent development in English literature.

1. Old English or Anglo – Sexon period (450-1066)

•          It begins with the invasion of Celtic England by Germanic  tribes.

•          Literature -  Beowulf the earliest literature The national epic of Anglo – sexon, one of the striking features.

•          Epic – homer’s Iliad and odyssey.

•          Poetry – Beowulf, the wanderer, the seafarer, Doer.

•          Prose – writing of Alfred the great.

2. Middle English period (1100 – 1500)

•          The Norman Conquest under William, duke of Normandy, the battle of Hastings in 1066.

•           In the 15^th century, literature aimed at a popular audience grew.

•          Poetry – sir Gawain and the green knight, Dream of the Rood,  William Langland’s piers  plowman, lyrics such as “ The Cuckoo Song”.

•          Drama -  Second Play of the Shepherds, every man.

3. English Renaissance (1500 – 1660)

•         The Renaissance means "Rebirth" it  is used broadly to refer to the flourishing of literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and learning in general that began in Italy in the 14th century.

    Five subsections in Renaissance.

1.   Early Tudor
2.   Elizabethan
3.   Jacobean
4.   Caroline
5.   Commonwealth

1. Early Tudor period (1500 – 1558)

•          The Early Tudor period is the first phase of the Renaissance period

•          This period is known for its poetry and nonfiction prose

•          English literature's first dramatic comedy, Ralph Roister Doister, was first performed in 1553

•          Poetry – john skeltan, Henry Howard, the early of surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt.

•          Prose – sir Thomas more’s utopia, sir Thomas Elyot

•          Drama – John Heywood, Nicholas Udall, Ralph roister Doister  

2. Elizabethan period (1558 – 1603)

•  Second era of the Renaissance period in British literature, spanning the reign of Elizabeth I.

•        The Elizabethan era was a period marked by developments in English commerce, nationalism, exploration, and maritime power. 

•        It is considered a great age in literary history, particularly for drama.

•       Poetry – Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare.

•        Prose – Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh.

•     Drama - Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Kidd’s The Spanish tragedy.

3. Jacobean Age (1603 – 1625)

•          Third era of the Renaissance period in British literature defined by the reign of James I. 

•          In this era, there were significant writings in prose, including the King James Bible. 

•          Drama and poetry also flourished.

•          Poetry – John Donne, George Chapman, Lady Mary Wroth.

•          Prose – Francis Bacon, Robert Burton.

•          Drama – William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Webster, John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, George Chapman.

4. Caroline age (1625 – 1649)

•          The Caroline Age marks the period of the English Civil War between the supporters of the King (called Cavaliers) and the supporters of Parliament (called the Roundheads). 

•          Literature of this period featured poetry, nonfiction prose, and the Cavalier Poets, who were associated with the court and wrote poems of gallantry and courtship.

•          Poetry – John Milton, George Herbert. Cavalier Poets.

•          Prose - Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne.

•          Drama – Philip Massinger, john ford’s “Tis pity she’s a whore.

5. Commonwealth or puritan period (1649 – 1658)

•         In this era, England was ruled by Parliament and, Oliver Cromwell and then briefly by his son, Richard, until 1859. 

•          Theatres were closed on moral and religious grounds. While drama did not flourish, significant examples of nonfiction prose and poetry were written during this period.

•          Poetry – John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, Edmund Waller, Abraham Cowley, Katherine Philips.

•          Prose – Thomas Hobbes leviathan, sir Thomas Browne, Izaak Walton, Thomas fuller, Jeremy Taylor.

4. Neoclassical Period (1660 – 1798)

The neoclassical period is divided into three sub titles   

1. The Restoration era     
2.  The Augustan age 
3.  The age of sensibility

1. The Restoration Age (1660 – 1700)

•    Charles II brought about a revolutionary change in life and literature. During this period gravity, moral earnestness and decorum in all things

•    Restoration poetry was characterized by mathematical precision and elegance.

•     Poetry – John Milton's Paradise Lost, John Dryden, Samuel Butler

•     Prose – Samuel Pepys' Diary, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, John Dryden, Isaac Newton's Principles of Mathematics.

•      Novel – Aphra Behn's Oroonoko.

•       Drama – Sir George Etherege, William Congreve's The Way of the World, Aphra Behn's The Rover.

2. Augustan literature (1700 – 1745)

•      The term Augustan literature derives from authors of the 1720s and 1730s themselves.

•      Augustan writers imitated the literary forms of Horace, Virgil, and Ovid and drew upon the perceived order, decorum, moderation, civility, and wit of these writers.

•        The 18th century literature reflected the worldview of the Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason): a rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues that promoted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility

•       Poetry – Alexander Pope, John Gay, Jonathan Swift.

•        Prose – Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Eliza Haywood, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

•      Novel - Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

•     Drama - Henry Fielding, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera.

3. Age of Sensibility (1750 – 1798)

•     This period is also sometimes described as the "Age of Johnson” because of his contribution in English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor.

•      The Romantic Movement in English literature of the early 19th century has its roots in 18th-century poetry, the Gothic novel and the novel of sensibility. This includes the graveyard poets.

•       The Age of Sensibility anticipates the Romantic period

•      New cultural attitudes and new theories of literature emerged at this time.

•      The novel became an increasingly popular and prevalent form.

•        Poetry – Thomas Gray, William Collins, Christopher Smart, William Cowper, Anne Finch, Mary Leapor.

•       Prose – Samuel Johnson's essays and Dictionary, Edmund Burke, James Boswell.

•        Novel - Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollet, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Frances Burney.

•       Drama – Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal.

5. Romanticism (1798–1837)

•       Romantic period was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century.

•      The Romantic period was one of major social change in England.

•     Many writers in the Romantic period emphasized feeling and imagination and looked toward nature for insight into the divine.

•  The individual and his or her subjective experiences and expressions of those experiences were highly valued.

•      In addition to a wealth of poetry, the Romantic period featured significant innovations in the novel form, including the Gothic novel.

•    Poetry – Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley, John Keats, Helen Maria Williams, Anna Laetitia Barbauld.

•     Prose – Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Prince's The History of Mary Prince, Charles Lamb, Dorothy Wordsworth.

•    Novel - Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk, Ann Radcliffe.

•    Drama - Joanna Baillie.

6. The Victorian Period (1837-1901)

•       Early Victorian literature is that written before 1870.

•       Late Victorian literature is that written after 1870. 

•        Varied in form, style and content, Victorian literature reflects a changing social, political, economic, and cultural climate.

•      Poetry – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

•      Prose – Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Florence Nightingale, Frances Power Cobbe, Charles Darwin.

•      Novels – Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell.

•      Drama – Tom Taylor, Gilbert and Sullivan, H.J. Byron.

7. Modern Period(1901- present)

•        A period in British and American literature spanning the years between WWI and WWII. 

•      Works in this period reflect the changing social, political, and cultural climate and are diverse, experimental, and nontraditional.

•     Poetry – Wilfred Owen, W.H Auden, A.E. Housman, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore.

•      Prose – Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot.

•      Novels – Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, D.H Lawrence.

•     Drama – Sean O'Casey, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw.

8. Post-modern literature

•      The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature.

•       It is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.

•    Postmodern works are often highly experimental and anti-conventional.

•       Poetry – Edith Sitwell, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland.

•        Prose – George Orwell, Jeanette Winterson, Martin Amis.

•       Novels – George Orwell, William Golding, Doris Lessing, Margaret Drabble, Graham Greene, John Fowles, Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, A.S. Byatt, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul.

•        Drama – Samuel Beckett, Noel Coward, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill.