Periods of English Literature

Periods of English Literature
By: Cita Aulia Anggraini
0802595
class B

Everything has its own origin or history, so do English Literature. Its history contain a lot of periods. There are eight periods of English Literature where each period has its own unique story and background. However, there are a lot of versions of names and they are still debated. I choose a common periods and the mostly periods that are mentioned in every sources. Therefore, the periods are:
A. Old English Periods or Anglo-Saxon Period
Old English Periods or is also known as Anglo-Saxon Periods was happened in 5th to 11th century. It’s the first or earliest periods of English Literature. In this period, the number of the text is very small, the writer was unknown, the oral tradition was very popular and the writer wrote his work to be performed. The works are poems and riddles. Epic poem was popular at that time, such as Beowulf. Beowulf has survived till now in the rich of Anglo-Saxon literature. This period is the stimulus period for the next eras.
B. Middle English Period
Middle English Period was happened in 12th-15th century. In this period, the text had been developing. The genres of the text became various, such as romance.
The types of the text also developed, for example narrative text. It was the beginning of short story. During the period, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, the Pearl Poet wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, William Langland wrote Piers Plowman. There are three main categories of Middle English Literature: Religious, Courtly love, and Arthurian.
C. Renaissance
Renaissance is also called the Early New English Period was occurred in 16th-17th century. The focus of this period is on the history of the language and sometimes referred to as “the age of Shakespeare” or “the Elizabethan era” or Jacobean Age. This period can called as a “re” period because in this period many kinds of genres became popular again or revival. For examples, classical genres; such as the epic with Edmun Spenser’s Faerie Queene, drama with William Shakespeare, and the others. Shakespeare composed theatrical representations of the English that take on life, death, and history. At that time, the revival of Greco-Roman genres was to influence and dominate the further course of English literary origin.
D. Augustan Age
I think that this era can be called as a greatest mutation and development period because there are a lot of works that mutate to another kind of work. For examples, the mutation of drama from political satire into melodrama, and an evolution toward poetry of personal exploration.
“Augustan” derives from George I wishing to be seen as Augustus Caesar. Alexander Pope, who had been imitating Horace, wrote an Epistle to Augustus that was to George II and seemingly endorsed the notion of his age being like that of Augustus, when poetry became more mannered, political and satirical than the era of Julius Caesar. Then, Voltaire and Oliver Goldsmith used the term “Augustan” as one of the names of English Literature Period. This era was happened in 18th century.
E. Romantic Period
In this era was happened an increasing of industry, machine etc. It was the greatest event in Britain. It was influenced and changed Britain points of view and work. Many people lost their job because their job was handled by machines. It made a lot of poor men. Because of this condition, many authors felt so sad and sympathy with the condition at that time. Therefore, writers or authors wrote poets that were contained of beauty, mother earth, etc. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge made the first poet in England at this period, Lake Poets. Those early Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection.
F. Victorian Age
Victorian literature is the literature produced during reign of Queen Victoria; therefore it is called Victorian Age. This era was happened in second half of 19th century. In 19th century, novel was the leading form of literature in English. The “Victorian novelist” created legacy works with continuing appeal. Significant Victorian novelists and poets are: Matthew Arnold, the Brontë sisters, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Josep Conrad, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lewis Carrol, Wilkie Collins, etc.
G. Modernism
Modernist Literature attempted to move from bonds of Realist literature and to introduce concepts such as disjointed timelines. Modernism was distinguished by an emancipatory metanarrative. Modernist literature can be viewed largely in terms of its formal, stylistic and semantic movement away from Romanticism, examining subject matter that is traditionally ordinary.
Modernist literature often moves beyond the limitations of the Realist novel with a concern for larger factors such as social or historical change. Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in large part as a reaction to the emergence of city life as a central force in society. The main of works of this period include James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Gertrude Stein’s The Cantos, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
H. Postmodernism
Postmodernism was happened in first to second world war 1960s and 1970s. The term postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature and indirectly deals with Nazi crimes. In this period, modernist, especially narrative technique, is taken up again and adapted in academic. The narrative techniques with lots of perspectives, interwoven strands of plot and experiments in typography characterize the text of this era. The works such as John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Raymond Federman’s Double or Nothing, and John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Those works helped the movement to attain recognition in literary criticism.
From those periods we can see that there are a lot of processes that are happened in English Literature. There are some reasons and backgrounds that make English Literature changes. Mostly, it is because of human hands. Human who broke world. Therefore, it made the writers or authors wrote their beautiful and meaningful works. Situations and conditions make someone produced lots of beautiful works. Without that process, our literary can not develop.



References:
Klarer, Mario.1998.An Introducing to Literary Studies.London:Routledge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_literature
http://home.comcast.net/~stephen.gottlieb/romantic/periods.html
http://englisharticles.info/free-reading-articles/literature/literary-periods-of-english-liter.html