ENGLISH LITERATURE

Literary Periods, Movements and History

IES ‘MARÍA ZAMBRANO’-LEGANES (Madrid)

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

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-)

MAJOR WRITERS OF THE BEAT GENERATION (USA)

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

1660-1700 Neoclassical Period: The AUGUSTAN AGE:

JONATHAN SWIFT

The THE GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

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

Virginia Woolf James Joyce

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.

Post-war developments in literature (such as the Theatre of the Absurd, the

Beat Generation, and Magic Realism)

POST-WAR LITERATURE

Samuel Beckett William S. Burroughs

Beat Generation (USA)

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.

Allen Ginsberg

Jack Kerouac

Underground, anti-conformist youth movement

in New York

MAGIC REALISM

Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, John Fowles, Angela Carter, John Banville,

John Fowles Angela Carter

Margaret Atwood Jonathan Franzen (USA) Ian McEwan

David Mitchell Toni Morrison (USA) Philip Roth (USA)

The Handmaid's Tale (1985) is

perhaps Atwood's best known

novel and emblematic of the

social criticism

The Corrections, his third novel, was

selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club in

2001

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.

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

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.

ENGLISH & AMERICAN WRITERS TODAY

Zadie Smith John Updike (USA) Kazuo Ishiguro

In his first novel, An

Artist of the Floating

World (1986), Ishiguro

explored the world of

post World War II

Japanese society.

Guildford, Surrey, England

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'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.

ENGLISH & AMERICAN WRITERS TODAY

Summary

THE GREAT WRITERS in ENGLAND

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 best-known work is ‘The Canterbury Tales’ which have kept even today’s literature illuminated.

The Great Writers of English Literature

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.