THE
IMPORTANT PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
- The The old English [450AD -1066AD]
- Middle English [1066AD-1500AD]
- The Renaissance period [1500-1600]
- The Elizabethan period [1500-1603]
- The Jacobean period [1603-1625]
- The Caroline period [1625-1649]
- The Puritan period [1649-1660]
- The Restoration period [1660-1700]
- The Augustan period [1700-1785]
- The Romantic period [1785-1830]
- The Victorian period [1830-1901]
- The Modern period [1890-1918]
- The Inter- war period [1918-1939]
- The Mid 20th century [1939
onwards]
THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD [450AD-1066]
Overview
The
Angles and Saxons conquered what is now called England in the 5th and 6th
centuries. In the 7th century, Christian missionaries taught the English to
write. The English wrote down law-codes and later their poems. Northumbria soon
produced Cædmon and Bede. Heroic poetry, of a Christian kind, is the chief legacy
of Old English literature, notably Beowulf and the Elegies. A
considerable prose literature grew up after Alfred (d. 899). There were four
centuries of writing in English before the Norman Conquest.
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Places of interest in Old and Middle English Literature |
Social
Background:
Celts (Britons)
------------ Britain
The making of England;
the invasion of Roman Empire in the 4th AD…
According to British
traditions the English from the
continent came first as mercenaries to help in the defense against the Picts and Scots, at first
the people were warriors from invading outlying areas:
Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes
- later they were
agricultural
* Alfred the Great was
most prominent King
Texts
feature:
- strong belief in fate
- admiration of heroic
warriors who prevail in battle
- express religious faith
and moral instruction through literature
Styles
include:
- oral tradition of
literature
- poetry dominant genre
- unique verse form
Five
Great Principles Of Life:
- Love for personal freedom
- Responsiveness to nature
- Love for Reliogion
- Love for Woomanwood
- Struggle for Glory
Effect of
Literature:
- Christianity helps literacy to spread
- introduces Roman alphabet to Britain
- oral tradition helps unite diverse peoples and their
myths
Important works:
v Beowulf (3182 Lines)
• Beowulf,
the earliest literature, the national epic of the Anglo-Saxon,one of the
striking features- The poem can be considered as the pagan origin
• Work
is anonymous
• Widsith(Autobiography of scop)
v Anglo- Saxon Chronicle
• Inspired
by king Alfred
• Description
of the horrors of Stephen's reign
• Description
of William the conqueror
Other Works:
The Vercelli Book, Junius Manuscript, Exeter
Book, Beowulf(4Scripts)
Authors
v Caedmon (poet)
• The
Genesis ,Exodus ,Daniel
• Three
shorter poems often considered as one under the title ‘Christ and Satan’
v Cynewulf(poet)
• Four
poems contain the signature of Cynewulf in runic characters :Juliana , Elene
,Christ , Wife’s Lament, Husband’s Message
• Bede
& Afred the Great ( Historian & Prose writer)
Ø
The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English, from the 9th
century, that chronicle is the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The poem Battle of Maldon also deals with
history. This is a work of uncertain date, celebrating the Battle of Maldon of
991, at which the Anglo-Saxons failed to prevent a Viking invasion.
Ø
Oral
tradition was very strong in early English culture and most literary works were
written to be performed. Epic poems were very popular, and some, including Beowulf, have survived to the present
day. Beowulf is the most famous
work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite
being set in Scandinavia. The only surviving manuscript is the Nowell Codex,
the precise date of which is debated, but most estimates place it close to the
year 1000. Beowulf is the conventional title, and its composition is dated
between the 8th and the early 11th century.
THE
MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD[1066AD-1500]
Overview
Literature
in England in this period was not just in English and Latin but in French as
well, and developed in directions set largely in France. Epic and elegy gave
way to Romance and lyric. English writing revived fully in English after 1360,
and flowered in the reign of Richard II (1372-99). It gained a literary
standard in London English after 1425, and developed modern forms of verse, of
prose and of drama.
• Establishment
of Norman and Angevin dynasties
• Internal
struggle between king, clergy , noble and people
Crusades bring the development
of a money economy for the first time in Britain
- trading increases
dramatically as a result of the Crusades
- William the Conqueror
crowned king in 1066
- Henry III crowned king
in 1154 brings a judicial system, royal courts, juries, and chivalry to Britain
.
Features
of the Age
• An
Era of transition
• Period
of transition and of experiment
• The
anonymous nature
Works are entirely
without known authors
• The
domination of poetry
.Black
death, Famine and social unrest
.The
corruption of church and Reformation
Important
Works:
The vision of William
concerning piers the plowman- William Langland
Brut- Lazamon
Texts
feature:
- plays that instruct the
illiterate masses in morals and religion
- chivalric code of
honor/romances
- religious devotion
Styles
include:
- oral tradition
continues
- folk ballads
- mystery and miracle
plays
- morality plays
-
frame stories
-
moral tales
-
Interludes
THE
CHAUCEREAN PERIOD (1340-1400)
• The
period includes the greater part of the rein of Edward III and the long French wars associated with his name
• The
accession of his grandson Richard II
• The
revolution of 1399, the disposition of Richard, and the foundation of the Lancastrian
dynasty.
• The
age of unrest and transition
The
literary movement of the age clearly reflected by five famous poets
v Langland:- voicing the social
discontent, preaching the equality of men and
the dignity of labor.
v Wycliffe:- giving the gospel to
the people in their own tongue
v Gower:- criticizing the
vigorous life and plainly afraid of its consequences
v Mandeville:- romancing about the
wonders to be seen abroad
v Chaucer:- sharing in all the
stirring life of the times
• The
first humanist
• The
first novelist in verse
• The
father of modern English language
Works:
- The Canterbury tales
- The book of the duchess
- The house of fame
- Anelida and Arcite
- The parliament of fowls
- Troilus and Criseyde
- The legend of good women
Shorter
poems
- An ABC
- The complaint of mass
- The complaint to his lady
- The complaint of Venus
- Fortune
- truth
Ø
Middle English Bible translations, notably
Wycliffe's Bible, helped to establish English as a literary language.
Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into
Middle English that were made under the direction of, or at the instigation of,
John Wycliffe. They appeared between about 1382 and 1395. These Bible
translations were the chief inspiration and cause of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation
movement that rejected many of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
THE
ELIZABETHAN PERIOD [1500-1603]
Overview
The
hopes of the humanists and the writers of the early Renaissance were c short by
the turmoil of the Reformation and the despotism of Henry VIII. A literary
Renaissance was triumphantly relaunched in the late 1570s by Sidney and
Spenser, and the 1590s produced - besides the drama - an unprecedented
abundance of non-dramatic poets and translators. This Elizabethan golden age
also saw a variety of prose, artful, lively and dignified.
- Also called Renaissance Period
- The golden age of English history
- The Elizabethan era is perhaps more
famous for its theatre and the
works of William Shakespeare
- Elizabethan Renaissance theatre
begins with the opening of the “the
red lion” theatre in 1567
- Other famous theatres:-curtain
theatre[1577]
- Globe theatre[1599]
- Shakespeare is considered the
greatest writer of the English
language
- Important genres of theatre are
history plays , the tragedy and the
comedy
Characteristics:
- - world view shifts from religion and
after life to one stressing the
-
human life on earth
- - popular theme: development of human
potential
- - popular theme: many aspects of love
explored
- - constant, timeless& courtly
love
- - Reforms in Institution
- - Dominance of Reason &
Development of Science
- - love subject to change
Styles
include:
- - poetry
- - the sonnet
- - metaphysical poetry
- - elaborate and unexpected metaphors
called conceits
- - drama
- - written in verse
- - supported by royalty
- - tragedies, comedies, histories
Author and works
v Edmund Spencer[1552-1599]
• Poets
poet and prince of poet- called by Charles lamb and Milton
• Poets
poet and critic’s critic - T.S Eliot
Works
(88 Sonnets)
- The Faerie queen
- Shepherds calendar
- Prothalamion
- Epithalamion
Sir Philip Sydney [1554-1586]
- Father of English criticism
- He took a brilliant in the
military-literary-courtly life.
Works
Astrophel and stella Arcadia
Apology for poetry
Totell’s Miscellany (Known
as first printed book of Poetry In English Literature) Collection of poetry of
different poets.
Ø Francis Bacon 1561-1526
Father of English essays
Bacon’s fame rests very
largely on his essays
-the aphoristic style and
epigrammatic brevity in his
essay
-the compact and
condensed thought in his essay, are very important
Works
• The
history of Henry VII
• The
new Atlantis
• The
advancement of learning
Ø Christopher Marlowe(Father Of English Drama)
• Dramatist
and poet
• Works
• Doctor
Faustus,
• The
Jew Of Malta
Ø William
Shakespeare
• The
greatest poet and dramatist in English literature
• Playwright,
actor and shareholder in an acting company
• He
wrote 37 plays, 154 sonnets,2 long narrative poem and 3 poems
Works
• Poems:-
The rape of Lucrene 1594
-Venus and Adonis 1593
-The Passionate Pilgrim
1599
• Tragedies
:–Hamlet
-Othello
-King Lear
-Macbeth
• Comedies
–The Midsummer Night’s Dream
-The Merchant of Venice
-As You Like it
-Twelfth Night
• Tragic
comedies –Cymbeline
-The Winter’s Tale
-The Tempest
• Last
play :- The Tempest (an autobiographical play)
University
wits
• Group
of young dramatists associated with
oxford and Cambridge
• They
introduced Romantic drama into English
theatre
The
university wits are:-
v George
peele1558-1598
v Robert
greene1558-1592
v Thomas
nash1567-1601
v Thomas
lodge1558-1625
v Thomas
kyd1558-1594
v John
Lyly
v Christopher
marlowe1564-1593
Ø
After William Caxton introduced the printing
press in England in 1476, vernacular literature flourished. The Reformation
inspired the production of vernacular liturgy which led to the Book of Common
Prayer (1549), a lasting influence on literary language. The English
Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the
late 15th to the 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European
Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th
century. Like most of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments
until more than a century later. Renaissance style and ideas were slow in
penetrating England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th
century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.
[JACOBEAN
PERIOD [1603-1625] and
[CAROLINE PERIOD 1625-1649]
• James
ascended the throne in 1603
• Court
standards were lowered
• Development
of English prose
• Decline
of the drama after the death of
Shakespeare
Important
events from Jacobean to restoration period
• Caroline
age
• Metaphysical
age
• Puritan
revolution
• Puritan
age
• Period
of commonwealth
Authors and works
(The cavalier poets)
v Robert
Herrick:- Hesperides , noble numbers
v Edmund
Waller:-go lovely Rose
v Richard
Lovelace:- Lucasta , To Alter from Prison
(Metaphysical
poets)
v John
Donne:-Father Of Metaphysics
v Andrew
Marvell:-the Rehearsal Transposed
v Henry
Vaughan:- Silex Saintillans
v Abraham
Cowley:- The Mistress
PURITAN
PERIOD[1649-1660]
- Clash between Catholics and
Protestants
- Extreme fundamentalism
- Rebellion began during the age of
Charles I
- Civil war between Charles I and
Puritans for 7 years
- 1649-1660-Rule of commonwealth under
Oliver Cromwell
- Charles I ascended the throne after
the death of Cromwell ; beginning
of Restoration period
Important
authors and works
v John
Milton
• The
first literary epic poet
• Poetry
, mathematics and music were his main studies
Works
• Paradise
Lost
• Paradise
regained
• Comus
• On
Blindness
• lycidas
Ø
The most important prose work of the early 17th century
was the King James Bible. This, one of the most massive translation projects in
the history of English up to this time, was started in 1604 and completed in
1611. This represents the culmination of a tradition of Bible translation into
English that began with the work of William Tyndale, and it became the standard
Bible of the Church of England.
RESTORATION
PERIOD[1660-1700]
- Known as
Age of Dryden
- Death of
Cromwell in 1660
- Accession
marked the beginning of the Restoration Age
- Influence
of French culture
- Theatres
came back to life
- Witty
intellectual satirizing manners
and fashions of a particular time in society
Important
works and Authors
- John
Dryden:- Political Satire,
Doctrinal Poems& The Fables
The Rival Ladies Tyrannick
Love, All for Love, Alexander’s Feast
Hind& Panther
•
William
Congreve:-The Old Bachelor , The Double Dealer , The Mourning Bride
•
George
Etherege:-The Comical Revenge , She Would If She Could …Comedy Of Manners
Characteristics:
1. Form of realism
2. Preciseness
Restoration Drama:
Comedy Of
Manners
It is an entertainment form which satirizes the manners and affections of
social class or of multiple classes.
Dryden was the first to write Comedy of Manners with his Wild Gallant, which
was a failure.
Works:
1. The Comical Revenge
2. The way Of the World
3. Love for Love
4. The Country Wife & The Plain Dealer
AUGUSTAN
AGE[1700-1785] Or, THE AGE OF POPE ( 1700-1744) Or, THE AGE OF JOHNSON
(1744-1785)
Overview
After
the brilliant achievements of Pope, literary civilization broadened to include
more of the middle class and of women. The aristocratic patron gave way to the
bookseller. After mid-century, the Augustan ‘sense’ of Swift, Pope and Johnson
was increasingly supplemented by Sensibility, with ‘Ossian’, Gray and Walpole.
The novel flourished in the 1740s, with Richardson, Fielding and Sterne. The
latter part of the century saw major achievements in non-fictional prose, with
Johnson, Gibbon and Boswell, a brief revival of drama (Goldsmith, Sheridan),
and a retreat of poetry into privacy and eccentricity.
The eighteenth century
The
main features
- Strong
traditionalism
- Conceived
literature primarily as an art
- To them
poetry was an imitation of human life
- Rise and
fall of satires
- New
developments in science shattered man’s ego
- Rise of
novels
Important
writers and works
v Alexander Pope:-An Essay on Criticism , The Rape of
the Lock, Windsor Forest
v Oliver Goldsmith:-She Stoops to Conquer, The
Deserted Village, The Man in Black
v Dr. Samuel Johnson:-Preface to Shakespeare ,London
,Rasellas
v Daniel Defoe:-A True –born English man , Robinson
Crusoe, Raxona
v Henry Fielding:-Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, Amelia
ROMANTIC
AGE [1785-1830]
Overview
English
Romantic literature is overwhelmingly a poetic one, with six major poets
writing in the first quarter of the 19th century, transforming the literary
climate. Blake was unknown; Wordsworth and Coleridge won partial acceptance in
the first decade; Scott and Byron became popular. The flowering of the younger
Romantics, Byron, Shelley and Keats, came after 1817, but by 1824 all were
dead. The other great literary artist of the period is Jane Austen, whose six
novels appeared anonymously between 1811 and 1818. Other books appearing
without an author’s name were Lyrical Ballads (Bristol, 1798) and Waverley
(Edinburgh, 1814). The novels of ‘the author of Waverley’, Sir
Walter Scott, were wildly popular. There was original fiction from Maria
Edgeworth and Mary Shelley, and non-fiction from Thomas De Quincey, Charles
Lamb and William Hazlitt.
- Inaugurated
with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads(1798)
- English
Romanticism came from Germany
- Give
importance to subjectivity
- Love for
external nature
- Revival of
lyricism
- Interest in
medievalism
- The
influence of French literature
Important
writers and works
v William Wordsworth:-The Prelude, The Excursion,
Immortality Ode
v Samuel Taylor Coleridge:-Biographia Literaria ,
Kubla Khan , Scholar , Life of Nelson ,
Roderick
v Lord Byron:-Child Harold’s Pilgrimage , House of
Idleness Cain
v Mercy Bysshe Shelly:-Ode to the West Wind
,Prometheus, Unbound,
v John Keats:-Isabella , Hyperion, Lamia , ode to
Nightingale
v Jane Austen:-Pride and Prejudice, Emma
VICTORIAN
PERIOD [1830-1901]
Overview
Victoria’s
long reign saw a growth in literature, especially in fiction, practised notably
by Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, George Eliot, Trollope, James and Hardy.
Poetry too was popular, especially that of Tennyson; Browning and (though then
unknown) Hopkins are also major poets. Thinkers, too, were eagerly read.
Matthew Arnold, poet, critic and social critic, was the last to earn the
respectful hearing given earlier to such sages as Carlyle, Mill, Ruskin and
Newman.
Many Victorians allowed their understanding to be led by thinkers, poets, even novelists.
It was an age both exhilarated and bewildered by growing wealth and power, the
pace of industrial and social change, and by scientific discovery.
- It extends
to the death of Queen Victoria
- Industrial
Revolution
- Mood of
Nationalistic power
- Social
stress
- Spiritual
conflicts was evident
- Publication
of Origin of Species
Important
writers and works
v Lord Tennyson:-Ulysses, Lotus Eaters , Idllus of the
King
v Robert Browning:-The Lady of Shallot ,Fra Lippo
Lippi , Men and Women
v Mathew Arnold:-Dover Beach , Scholar Gypsy , Essays
on Criticism
v Charles Dickens:-David Copperfield ,Dickwide Papers,
Hard times
v Thomas Hardy:-Tess of D’Umbervilles ,Far from the
Madding Crowd
THE
MODERN PERIOD [1890-1918]
In
this age the modern writers are often called modernists. The word ‘modernism’
is a convenience term, for the ‘-ism’ of the new is hard to define; it
therefore appears in this text without a capital letter. Although the present
had begun - before 1914 - to feel more than usually different from the past,
there were no agreed principles for an artistic program. Rather, the old ways
would not do any more. Behind this cultural shift were changes in society,
politics and technology, and slackening family, local and religious ties. As
the value for the human person fostered by Christianity and continuing in
liberal humanism weakened, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, the fathers of modern
atheism, were read. But these general factors do not point to an obvious
formulation which fits these writers as a group. Ambitious, they broke with
prevailing formal conventions. ‘Modern Art’, meaning the painting of Picasso,
the music of Stravinsky and the poetry of Eliot, soon became a historical label.
Overview .
Two
pieces of writing published in 1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses and T. S.
Eliot’s The Waste Land, differed in form from the novels and poems that
had preceded them. This was the crest of a new wave in English literature, from
Ezra Pound’s Lustra and Joyce’s Dubliners in 1914 to Virginia
Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in 1927. The modern writing of Joyce, Pound,
Eliot and D. H. Lawrence came when Hardy, Conrad, Shaw, Kipling and Ford were
still writing, and Yeats was becoming a powerful poet. This writing, new and
old, makes the period 1914-27 the richest in 20th-century English literature.
It may be the richest since the Romantics, and certainly since the years about
1850, when many novelists and poets flourished.
- Break with
tradition
- Rejected
Romantic conventions
- Traditional
verse patterns were rejected
- The
catastrophe of the world wars had
shaken faith in moral and spiritual life
Important
writers and works
v T . S. Eliot:- Ash Wednesday, The Hollow Man,
The Waste Land, Murder in the Cathedral
v W . B .Yeats:- Sailing to Bysantium,September 1913
v Ezra Pound:- Cantos
- W .H .
Auden:-Age of Anxiety , Look Stranger
- D .H .
Lawrence:-Sons And Lovers , Rainbow ,Women
in Love
Modern
Novelists:
- E.M Foster
- James Joyce
- Virgina
Woolf
- D.H
Lawrence
- Joseph
Conard
- Henry James
Important
Works:
The
Golden Bowl & The Years
A
Passage to India & Voyage Out
The
Dubliners & Light and Day
Ulysses
& The Exiles
To
the Light House & Lord Jim
1. McCann, Patrick. Introduction to British Literature