ENGLISH LITERATURE
Literary Periods,
Movements and History
English Literature History
From the Conquest to Chaucer 1066-1400
From Chaucer to Spenser 1400-1599
The Age of Shakespeare 1564-1616
The Age of Milton 1608-1674
From the Restoration to the Death of Pope 1660-1744
The Death of Pope to the French Revolution 1744-1789
The French Revolution to the Death of Scott 1789-1832
From the Death of Scott to the Present Time 1832-1893
Appendix
American Literature History
Preface
The Colonial Period 1607-1765
The Revolutionary Period 1765-1815
The Era of National Expansion 1815-1837
The Concord Writers 1837-1861
The Cambridge Scholars 1837-1861
Literature in the Cities 1837-1861
Literature Since 1861
Appendix
Literary Periods
Renaissance Literature
The Enlightenment
Romanticism
Transcendentalism
Victorian Literature
Realism
Naturalism
Modernism
Bloomsbury Group
Existentialism
Beat Generation
MAJOR WRITERS OF THE BEAT GENERATION (USA)
Ginsberg, Allen (1926-1997)
Kerouac, Jack (1922-1969)
Burroughs, William S. (1914-1997)
Corso, Gregory (1930-2001)
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence (1919-)
Cassady, Neal (1926-1968)
Solomon, Carl (1928-1993)
Holmes, John Clellon (1926-1988)
Johnson, Joyce (1935-)
Kesey, Ken (1935-2001)
Brautigan, Richard (1935-1984)
Snyder, Gary (1930-)
ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD:
-BEOWULF
MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD:
-THE CANTERBURY TALES
-THE HOUSE OF FAME
THOMAS MALORY:
MORTE d’ARTHUR
Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight
1500-1660
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE:
TUDOR PERIOD (Humanist Era)
Sir Thomas More
1500-1660
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE:
TUDOR PERIOD (Humanist Era)
John Skelton
1500-1660
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE:
TUDOR PERIOD (Humanist Era)
Sir Thomas Wyatt
THE RENAISANCE
PERIOD
1500-1660
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE:
The Elizabethan Age
WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Elizabethan Age
Christopher
Marlowe
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Elizabethan Age
Edmund
Spenser
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Elizabethan Age
Sir Walter
Raleigh
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Elizabethan Age
Ben
Johnson
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Jacobean Age
Metaphysical POETS
John
DONNE
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Jacobean Age
Metaphysical POETS
Francis
BACON
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Jacobean Age
Metaphysical POETS
Thomas
MIDDLETON
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Caroline Age
Metaphysical POETS
John
MILTON
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The Caroline Age
Metaphysical POETS
John
FORD
1500-1660
ENGLISH
RENAISSANCE:
The COMMONWEALTH
PERIOD
(Puritan &
Protectorate)
Thomas Hobbes
Andrew Marvell
1660-1700
Neoclassical Period:
The RESTORATION
PERIOD:
JOHN MILTON
JOHN DRYDEN
1660-1700
Neoclassical
Period:
The AUGUSTAN AGE:
ALEXANDER
POPE
The THE GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
1660-1700
Neoclassical Period:
The AUGUSTAN AGE:
JONATHAN
SWIFT
1700-1800
Neoclassical Period:
The AGE of SENSIBILITY:
• SAMUEL
JOHNSON
• HENRY
FIELDING
1785-1870
ROMANTICISM
The AGE of
REVOLUTION:
•
•
•
•
•
•
William Blake
William Wordsworth
S.T. Coleridge
G. G. Byron
Percy B. Shelley
John Keats
• Jane Austen
1785-1870
ROMANTICISM
The AGE of
REVOLUTION:
•
•
•
•
•
•
William Blake
William Wordsworth
S.T. Coleridge
G. G. Byron
Percy B. Shelley
John Keats
• Jane Austen
1785-1870
ROMANTICISM
The AGE of
REVOLUTION:
•
•
•
•
•
•
William Blake
William Wordsworth
S.T. Coleridge
G. G. Byron
Percy B. Shelley
John Keats
• Jane Austen
1870 - 1914
Victorian
Period
•
•
•
•
•
•
Charles Dickens
The Bröntes
George Eliot
Robert Browning
Lord Tennyson
Thomas Hardy
1870 - 1914
Victorian
Period
•
•
•
•
•
•
Charles Dickens
Robert Browning
The Bröntes
George Eliot
Lord Tennyson
Thomas Hardy
1870 - 1914
Victorian
Period
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Charles Dickens
Robert Browning
The Bröntes
George B. Shaw
George Eliot
Lord Tennyson
Thomas Hardy
1870 - 1914
Victorian Period
• Charles Dickens
• Robert Browning
• The Bröntes
• William B. Yeats
• George Eliot
• Lord Tennyson
• Thomas Hardy
1870 - 1914
Victorian
Period
•
•
•
•
Charles Dickens
Robert Browning
The Bröntes
George Eliot
• D.H. Lawrence
• Lord Tennyson
• Thomas Hardy
1870 - 1914
Victorian
Period
• Charles Dickens
• Robert Browning
• The Bröntes
• T. S. Eliot
• Lord Tennyson
• Thomas Hardy
1941, the year in which Irish novelist James Joyce and English novelist
Virginia Woolf both died, is sometimes used as a rough boundary for
postmodernism's start.
Virginia Woolf
James Joyce
POST-WAR LITERATURE
Post-war developments in literature (such as the Theatre of the Absurd, the
Beat Generation, and Magic Realism)
Samuel Beckett
William S. Burroughs
Beat Generation (USA)
Underground, anti-conformist youth movement
in New York
Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956),
William S. Burroughs's Naked
Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's
On the Road (1957) are among
the best known examples of Beat
literature.
Jack Kerouac
Allen Ginsberg
MAGIC REALISM
Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, John Fowles, Angela Carter, John Banville,
John Fowles
Angela Carter
ENGLISH & AMERICAN WRITERS TODAY
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale (1985) is
perhaps Atwood's best known
novel and emblematic of the
social criticism
David Mitchell
In his first novel, Ghostwritten
(1999), he uses nine narrators to
tell the story and 2004's Cloud
Atlas is a novel comprised of six
interconnected stories
Ian McEwan
Jonathan Franzen (USA)
The Corrections, his third novel, was
selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club in
2001
Toni Morrison (USA)
British writer Ian McEwan started winning
literary awards with his first book, First Love,
Last Rites (1976) and never stopped.
Atonement (2002) won several awards and is
being made into a movie, and Saturday (2005)
won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Philip Roth (USA)
Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) was named best novel of
the past 25 years in a 2006 New York Times Book Review
survey. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and
Toni Morrison, whose name has become synonymous
with African American literature, won the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1993.
The Plot Against America (2005)
In Everyman (2006), Roth's 27th
novel,what it's like growing old
Jewish in America.
Zadie Smith
She wrote her first novel,
White Teeth, while still at
Cambridge and
published it after
graduation in 2000.
In 2002, Smith published
The Autograph Man.
On Beauty (2005)
In 2009, Smith published
Changing My Mind
John Updike (USA)
John Updike's first book of poetry,
The Carpentered Hen and Other
Tame Creatures, was published in
1958, and his first novel, The
Poorhouse Fair, was published in
1959. In 1960, Updike published
Rabbit Run, the first of the
"Rabbit" novels (Rabbit, Run;
Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich;
Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit
Remembered). The book was an
instant success and established
Updike's reputation as one of the
most significant contemporary
American novelists.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Guildford, Surrey, England
In his first novel, An
Artist of the Floating
World (1986), Ishiguro
explored the world of
post World War II
Japanese society.
ENGLISH & AMERICAN WRITERS TODAY
Summary
THE GREAT WRITERS
in ENGLAND
The Great Writers of English Literature
There are many writers who have served to augment the English
Literature. At the early period, it was poets and dramatists. The
latter part of the English literature, was illuminated by the great
writers of novels and short stories.
The oldest western poems were named as ‘Beowulf’ and
‘Seafarer’ by the editors of the History of English books, in 19th
century.
During the Middle English period, 13th Century poem ‘Owl and
the Nightingale’ was written by Geoffrey Chaucer (1345-1400).
He wrote many poems in the Middle English period. His bestknown work is ‘The Canterbury Tales’ which have kept even
today’s literature illuminated.
The Modern English period dawned just after Chaucer, during
the Renaissance Period in England.
The great poet William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) enhanced
English literature immensely. Even today his poetry was
accepted as unbeaten by the whole world.
The earliest work as a dramatist dates from 1591 of Henry VI,
Henry V and Richard III.
Shakespeare’s style has a wider range than that of any other
writer, ancient or modern.
Then Sir Walter Scott of 1771-1832, wrote his first poem ‘The Lady
of The Last Minstrel’. Also ‘Lady of the Lake’ and ‘Rokeby’ were
famous. His most famous novel was ‘Ivanhoe’. He wrote an average
of two novels per year.
Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936 served immensely for English
Literature. The poem ‘The Ballad of East and West’ raised him to the
front rank. Then he wrote many books –‘The Light That Failed’ in
1901 – ‘Kim’, deep love for English soil made him live in England.
The children’s’ stories ‘Just so-stories’ 1902, ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’
1906, Rewards and Fairies’ in 1910..He received many honors as
1907 – Nobel Price for Literature.
John Milton 1608 – 1674,is a poet who won a remarkable place in
English Literature. He wrote poem ‘Paradise Lost’ ‘Lycidas’ ‘Nativity
Ode’ etc. The true Miltonic vitality takes various literary forms. It
shows itself in the heat and commotion of his pros, in the youthful
enthusiasm of the ‘Nativity Ode’.
John Dryden was educated in Westminster and Trinity College,
Cambridge. He wrote satirical and didactic poems. ‘Absalom’ and
‘Achitophel’ in 1681. He rattled the reader with joy in ‘Farewell
ungrateful Tailor’, ’The Lady’s Song’ or ‘Ah Fading Joy’ and in many
more touching the good and bad side of human nature.
D.H.Lawrance 1885-1930 was a gifted writer in English Literature.
Mostly he wrote of the relationship of men and women. He wrote,
‘The White Peacock’ (1911), ‘The Trespasser’ (1912), ‘Sons and
Lovers’ (1913), ‘The Rainbow’ (1915) and many more stories. The
novel ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover(1925) was famous among the
people those who watch films as well as readers.
The female writers as Bronte sister, Emily, Anna and
Charlotte, wrote the famous books as ‘Wuthering Heights’
‘Villette’ ‘Agnes Grey’ ‘Tenant of Wild fell Hall’.
It is said that no other story is more explicable in fiction
than that of the three sisters. The writers looked at so far
had represented the major literary forces of English
language.
There are many more too, worthwhile to mention as great
writers in English Literature.