History of Literature
Epochs in History of Literature
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Discuss with a friend:
◦ Which literary epochs do you know about?
◦ What are they called and what characterize
them?
◦ Which English or American writers do you
know about? Think about written material but
also film adaptations of famous works.
Epochs in History of Literature
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500-110: Old English
1100-1400: Middle English
1400-1500: The Renaissance begins to spread
1500-1650: The Renaissance and The Reformation
1650-1800: The Restoration, The Age of
Enlightenment
1800-1835: The Romantic Age
1837-1901: The Victorian Age
1900-1945: Modernism
1946: Postmodernism
Timeline History of Literature
Old English (500-1100)
History and epic poems
 Oral tradition  writing tradition
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Example: King Alfred
Middle English (1100-1400)
Latin and French
 Poetry
 Drama
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Example: Geoffrey Chaucer
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0Mt
ENfOMU (General Prologue from
Canterbury Tales, end of 14th century)
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Canterbury Tales General Prologue
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When April's gentle rains have pierced the drought Of March
right to the root, and bathed each sprout Through every vein
with liquid of such power It brings forth the engendering of
the flower; When Zephyrus too with his sweet breath has
blown 5 Through every field and forest, urging on The tender
shoots, and there's a youthful sun, His second half course
through the Ram now run, And little birds are making melody
And sleep all night, eyes open as can be 10 (So Nature pricks
them in each little heart), On pilgrimage then folks desire to
start. The palmers long to travel foreign strands To distant
shrines renowned in sundry lands; And specially, from every
shire's end 15 In England, folks to Canterbury wend: To seek
the blissful martyr is their will, The one who gave such help
when they were ill.
The Renaissance Begin to Spread
(1400-1500)
Romances increasingly popular
 Folk ballads
 Early Modern English
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Example: Sir Thomas Malory
The Renaissance and the
Reformation (1500-1650)
Interest in education, science, arts, the classic
 Lyric poetry
 Non-fiction prose
 Early Modern English
 Theatres
 Examples: Shakespeare, Marlowe
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn3gclQ1ak (10 things I hate about you, 1999,
based on The Taming of the Shrew by
Shakespeare)
The Restoration and The Age of
Enlightenment (1650-1800)
Religious content
 Age of Reason
 Poetry
 The rise of the novel
 Examples: John Milton, Daniel Defoe,
Jonathan Swift
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph0XLhn
TNNM (Gulliver’s travels, 2010, based on the
book with the same name by Jonathan Swift)
The Romantic Age (1800-1835)
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Romantic poetry
Use of everyday language
Mystery and terror
Late Modern English
Examples: Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Sir
Walter Scott
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkJmxlZ7o (Ivanhoe, 1982, based on the
book with the same name, by Sir Walter
Scott)
The Victorian Age (1837-1901)
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Prose
From Romantic  realism
Episodic writing
Detective stories
Drama
Examples: the Brontë sisters, Lewis Carroll,
Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuvbFHWfHb
o&feature=related (Alice in Wonderland, 1951,
based on the book with the same name by Lewis
Caroll)
Modernism (1900-1945)
Modernism develops
 The ”ice-berg technique”
 Imaginative children’s literature
 War poets
 Examples: Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf,
James Joyce, TS Eliot, George Orwell
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl08W86
Oaqo&feature=related (The Hours, 2002,
based on Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolf)
Postmodernism (1945)
Diversity in all forms
 ”The angry young men”
 Novels
 Examples: Doris Lessing, VS Naipul, Harold
Pinter, Toni Morrison
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Timeline History of Literature
Info on Assignment
Instructions
 Form pairs
 Make research in the classroom our
outside
 Pick one writer
 Tell me
 Back in classroom at xx.xx
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