ENGLISH LITERATUREENGLISH LITERATURE

Literary Periods, Movements and

History

Literary Periods, Movements and

History

English Literature History

From the Conquest to Chaucer 1066-1400From Chaucer to Spenser 1400-1599The Age of Shakespeare 1564-1616The Age of Milton 1608-1674From the Restoration to the Death of Pope 1660-1744The Death of Pope to the French Revolution 1744-1789The French Revolution to the Death of Scott 1789-1832From the Death of Scott to the Present Time 1832-1893Appendix

American Literature History

PrefaceThe Colonial Period 1607-1765The Revolutionary Period 1765-1815The Era of National Expansion 1815-1837The Concord Writers 1837-1861The Cambridge Scholars 1837-1861Literature in the Cities 1837-1861Literature Since 1861Appendix

Literary Periods

Renaissance LiteratureThe EnlightenmentRomanticismTranscendentalismVictorian LiteratureRealismNaturalismModernismBloomsbury GroupExistentialismBeat 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

1500-1660ENGLISH RENAISSANCE:

TUDOR PERIOD (Humanist Era)

John Skelton

1500-1660ENGLISH RENAISSANCE:

TUDOR PERIOD (Humanist Era)

Sir Thomas Wyatt

THE RENAISANCEPERIOD

1500-1660ENGLISH RENAISSANCE:

The Elizabethan Age

WILLIAMSHAKESPEARE

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Elizabethan Age

Christopher

Marlowe

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Elizabethan Age

EdmundSpenser

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Elizabethan Age

Sir WalterRaleigh

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Elizabethan Age

BenJohnson

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Jacobean Age

Metaphysical POETS

JohnDONNE

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Jacobean Age

Metaphysical POETS

Francis BACON

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Jacobean Age

Metaphysical POETS

ThomasMIDDLETON

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Caroline Age

Metaphysical POETS

JohnMILTON

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The Caroline Age

Metaphysical POETS

JohnFORD

1500-1660ENGLISH

RENAISSANCE:The COMMONWEALTH

PERIOD(Puritan &

Protectorate)

Thomas HobbesAndrew Marvell

1660-1700Neoclassical Period:

The RESTORATIONPERIOD:

JOHN MILTONJOHN DRYDEN

1660-1700Neoclassical

Period:The AUGUSTAN AGE:

ALEXANDERPOPE

1660-1700Neoclassical Period:The AUGUSTAN AGE:

JONATHANSWIFT

The THE GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

1700-1800Neoclassical Period:

The AGE of SENSIBILITY:

• SAMUEL JOHNSON

• HENRYFIELDING

1785-1870ROMANTICISM

The AGE of REVOLUTION:

• William Blake• William Wordsworth• S.T. Coleridge• G. G. Byron• Percy B. Shelley• John Keats• Jane Austen

1785-1870ROMANTICISM

The AGE of REVOLUTION:

• William Blake• William Wordsworth• S.T. Coleridge• G. G. Byron• Percy B. Shelley• John Keats• Jane Austen

1785-1870ROMANTICISM

The AGE of REVOLUTION:

• William Blake• William Wordsworth• S.T. Coleridge• G. G. Byron• Percy B. Shelley• John Keats• Jane Austen

1870 - 1914Victorian

Period

• Charles Dickens• The Bröntes• George Eliot• Robert Browning• Lord Tennyson• Thomas Hardy

1870 - 1914Victorian

Period

• Charles Dickens• Robert Browning• The Bröntes• George Eliot• Lord Tennyson• Thomas Hardy

1870 - 1914Victorian

Period

• Charles Dickens• Robert Browning• The Bröntes• George B. Shaw• George Eliot• Lord Tennyson• Thomas Hardy

1870 - 1914Victorian Period

• Charles Dickens• Robert Browning• The Bröntes • William B. Yeats • George Eliot• Lord Tennyson• Thomas Hardy

1870 - 1914Victorian

Period

• Charles Dickens• Robert Browning• The Bröntes • George Eliot• D.H. Lawrence• Lord Tennyson• Thomas Hardy

1870 - 1914Victorian

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.