Timeline of British Literature
Period
Anglo-Saxon/
Old English
(449-1066)
Middle
English/
Medieval
Period (10661485)
The
Renaissance
(1485-1660)
Content
Style/Genre
-strong belief in _________________
-juxtaposition of church and
________________ worlds
-____________________ of heroic warriors
who prevail in battle
-______________ religious
_________________ and give moral
___________________ through literature
-plays that instruct the
______________________ masses in
morals and religion
-chivalric code of _____________
-romances
-religious _______________
-_______________
tradition
-_____________ dominant
genre (epic)
-unique verse form
_____________,
alliteration, repetition, fourbeat rhythm
-oral tradition continues
-folk _______________
-mystery and miracle plays
-morality _____________
-stock epithets
-_____________________
-frame
__________________
-moral tales
-poetry (sonnet)
-______________
-written in verse
-supported by
_________________
-tragedies, comedies,
histories
-metaphysical poetry
-elaborate and unexpected
metaphors called
_________________
-world view shifts from ______________
and after life to one stressing the human life
on ________________
-popular theme: _______________ of
human ______________________
-popular theme: many aspects of
_________________ explored-unrequited
love, constant love; timeless love; courtly
love; love subject to change
Effect
Historical Context
Key
Works/Authors
-__________________ helps
literacy to spread
-introduces Roman alphabet to
Britain
-oral tradition helps
_______________ diverse
peoples and their myths
-life centered on ancestral
_________________ or clans that
__________________ themselves
-at first the people were warriors from
invading outlying areas: Angles, Saxons,
Jutes, and _____________________
-later they were agricultural
-church instructs its people
through the morality and miracle
___________________
-an _________________
population is able to hear and see
the literature
-_______________ bring the development
of a money economy for the first time in
Britain
-trading ______________ dramatically as a
result of the Crusades
-_____________ the Conqueror crowned
king in 1066
-Domesday Book
-L’Morte de
Arthur
-Geoffrey
______________
-commoners welcomed at some
play productions while
conservatives try to close the
theaters on grounds that they
_________________ brazen
______________
-not all middle-class embrace the
metaphysical poets and their
abstract conceits
-War of ______________ ends in 1485
-printing _________________ helps
stabilize English as a language and allows
more people to read a variety of literature
-economy changes from ______________based to one of international
__________________
-William
______________
___
-John Donne
-Cavalier Poets
-metaphysical
poets
-Christopher
Marlowe
-Andrew Marvell
-Beowulf
-Bede
-Exeter Book
Neoclassical
Period: The
Restoration
(1660-1798)
Romanticism
(1798-1832)
The Victorian
Period (18321900)
-emphasis on reason and
__________________
-stresses harmony, stability, wisdom
-Locke: a social contract exists between the
government and the
____________________________
-government governs guaranteeing
“natural rights” of life, liberty, and
______________________
-satire: uses ____________
and exaggeration to poke
fun at human
______________________
and foolishness in order to
__________________
human behavior
-poetry
-______________________
-letters, diaries, biographies
-___________________
-emphasis on the
____________________
-belief that man is basically
_____________
-approach to life: “the world is
as it _________________ be”
-50% of the men are functionally
_________________ (a dramatic rise)
-fenced enclosures of ________________
cause ______________________ of
traditional village life
-___________________ begin to spring up
as industrial revolution begins
-impoverished masses begin to grow as
farming life __________________ and
factories build
-coffee houses-where
____________________ men spend
evenings with literary and political
associates
-Alexander Pope
-Daniel Defoe
-Jonathan Swift
-Samuel Johnson
-John Bunyan
-human knowledge consists of impressions
and ideas formed in the
__________________________ mind
-introduction of
_______________________ elements and
terror/horror stories and novels
-in _____________________ one can find
comfort and peace that the man-made
urbanized towns and factory environments
cannot offer
-poetry (lyrical
_________________)
-evil attributed to
________________ and not to
________________
_____________
-human beings are basically
________________
-movement of protest: a desire
for personal
____________________
-children seen as hapless victims
of _____________ and
exploitation
-________________ rises to power and
opposes England militarily and
economically
-gas lamps developed
-tory philosophy that government should
________________ interfere with private
enterprise
-middle class gains
_______________________ in the British
_______________________
-____________________ begin to run
-conflict between those in ______________
and the _____________ masses of laborers
and the poor
-shocking life of ________________ and
urban _____________ is highlighted in
literature to insist on _________________
-country versus _____________ life
-_________________
becomes popular for first
time; mass produced for the
first time-bildungsroman: “______________ of
_______________”;
political novels; detective
-literature begins to reach the
________________
-paper becomes _________________;
magazines and novels cheap to _________
_________________
-unprecedented growth of
______________ and business in Britain
-unparalleled ___________________ of
nations, economies and trade abroad
-Novelists: Jane
Austen, Mary
______________
-Poets: Robert
Burns, William
Blake, William
______________,
Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Lord
Byron, Percy
Shelley, John
_____________
-Charles
____________
-William Hardy
-Rudyard Kipling
-Robert Louis
Stevenson
-George Eliot
-Oscar Wilde
Modern/
Post Modern
(1900-1980)
-sexual discretion (or lack of it)
-strained __________________
-________________ triangles
-_________________ in physical danger
-aristocratic _____________________
-misdirected letters
-bigamous marriages
novels; serialized novels
______________________
_
-poetry: easier to
_____________________
-dramatic monologues
-drama:
_________________ of
manners
-magazines offer stories to
the masses
-lonely individual fighting to find peace and
comport in a world that has lost its absolute
________________ and traditions
-man is _________________ except what he
makes of ______________________
-a belief in situational
__________________—not absolute
values—where decisions are based on the
situation one is involved in at the moment
-mixing of ____________________ with
nonfiction; blurs lines of
________________ for reader
-loss of __________________ in literature
-__________________ made possible by
technology
-poetry (______________
__________ )
-epiphanies begin to appear
in literature
-_____________________
-memoir
-_____________________
-stream of
______________________
___
-detached,
______________________
__, humorless
-present
_________________
-magical
________________
-Alfred Lord
Tennyson
-Darwin
-Charlotte
______________
-Robert Browning
-approach to life: “Seize
_______________ for the
moment and get _____________
you can out of it.”
-British Empire loses 1 ______________
soldiers to World War I
-Winston __________________ leads
Britain through WWII, and the
________________ bomb
_______________ directly
-British colonies demand independence
-James
_____________
-Joseph Conrad
-D.H. Lawrence
-Graham Greene
-Dylan Thomas
-Nadine Gordimer
-George
___________
-William Butler
Yeats
-Bernard Shaw
Contemporary
Period
(1980-present)
-concern with _____________________
between people
-exploring ____________________ of the
past
-open-mindedness and courage that comes
from being an ______________________
-escaping those ways of living that blind and
dull the human ____________________
-________________ genres
represented
-fictional
confessional/diaries
(50% of contemporary
fiction is written in the
_____________ person)
-narratives: both
______________ and
nonfiction
-emotion__________________
-___________________
irony
-storytelling emphasized
-autobiographical
______________
-mixing of fantasy with
______________________;
blurs line of reality for
reader
-too _______________ to tell
-a world growing ____________________
due to ease of _______________________
between societies
-a world launching a new beginning of a
century and a _____________________
-____________________ culture interprets
_________________ and events for
individuals
-Seamus Heaney
-Doris Lessing
-Louis de
Bernieres
Kazuo Ishiguro
-Tom Stoppard
-Salman Rushdie
-John Le Carre
-Ken Follett