Periods of English Literature
by Peppy Febriandini (0801190)
Related to some sources the writer has searched and explored, this brief summary explains in general the periods of English literature, when it first appears, how it grows and develops and so on. Though the accuracy of the material is still debated to this day, the writer just tries to show common information based on some various sources. According to them, periods of literature in English are divided into eight eras.
Old English/ Anglo-Saxon Period (450-1066)
This earliest period of English literature is observed as beginning with north Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) tribes invasion to Britain in the 5th century. Initially, literary works in Anglo-Saxon had been probably passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. It may be the reason why most of writings are anonymous.
Rounded by warfare, heroic theme is commonly used in almost every old English literature like. But unfortunately, there are just small number of texts that have been inherited from this period containing chronicles, poems, narratives and epics like Beowulf (c. 8th century), “The Wanderer” (c. 9th-10th centuries) or “The Battle of Maldon” (c. 1000).
Middle English Period (1066-1500)
In the eleventh century, when the French-speaking Normans conquered Britain, there was a tangible separation between literature and culture. Later, some various literary genres have been preserved. The anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 14th century) is included in a romance, a new genre of a secular kind which develops in this period. Indirectly, this form affected the development of the novel in the eighteenth century. Besides, other literary works that is produced in the middle period such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1387) and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone also play some important roles for the short story of the nineteenth.
Early New English Period (1500-1660)
It is also known as English renaissance, a period when the focus is on the language history and divisions that based on political rule like in Elizabethan Age (Queen Elizabeth I) or Jacobean Age (King James). Classical genres arises during this period and influences English literary history a lot, as for example, Edmund Spenser’s epic, Faerie Queene, William Shakespeare’s drama, Christopher Marlowe’s and others’. Shakespeare was so outstanding with his poets and plays whereas he was probably not a man of letters by profession. He was only a very gifted man and surprisingly versatile. Although most plays brought him to a great success, he still wrote what have been considered his great plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest.
In the early 16th century, Thomas Wyatt acquaints another kind of literature, the sonnet. Besides, poems are prepared to be set into music as songs, such as by Thomas Campion, becomes well-known as written literature.
Restoration Literature (1660-1700)
The greatest and the most important poetic form of the restoration period was satire. Same as previous periods, publication of works—they were satires—were done anonymously. Having associate with satire was very dangerous. In the one side, contemptible law was widely acclaimed, and the satirists would find some difficulties to avoid prosecution if they were proven to have written a work that looked to criticize a noble. In the another side, noble would pay attention to satire as often as not by having the suspected poem. John Dryden was set on for being merely suspected because of his Satire on Mankind. A consequence of this anonymity is that so many outstanding poet, are unpublished and greatly unknown.
Christian religious writing largely dominated prose form in the restoration period. is dominated by Christian religious writing, but the Restoration also indicated the beginnings of two genres that would dominate the next periods, fiction and journalism.
Augustan Age (1700-1745)
The following period which is referred to neoclassical, golden or Augustan age, which is also mentioned as an independent era of literature is the eighteenth century.
The literature of the period is overtly political and thoroughly aware of critical dictates for literature. It is an age of exuberance and scandal, of enormous energy and inventiveness and outrage, that reflected an era when English, Scottish, and Irish people found themselves in the midst of an expanding economy, lowering barriers to education, and the stirrings of the Industrial Revolution (Wikipedia, 2009). At the beginning of the epoch, John Vanbrugh and William Congreve carry on comedy play like in restoration period with some changes.
Alexander Pope stands out his poetries and becomes the most popular of the age. In the early period, the development of prose seems shifted by the English essay. But this is also the time when the English novel develops into a major literary form. For example, Daniel Defoe who is a journalist and criminal writer for the press shifts his writing to fictional criminal lives.
Romantic Period (1785-1830)
Romanticism occurs at the end of eighteenth century. The best level of instinct and nature over civilisations has been preached by J.J. Rousseau and his message was picked by almost all European poets. So nature, individual, emotional experience are very important in romantic period. The early romantic poems bring new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is manifested by the first romantic in English literature, the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.
The next generation of romantic poets includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats. Also, the poet, painter and printmaker William Blake is usually included among the English romanticists, although his visionary work has some differences from the others.
Victorian Age (1832-1901)
That the novel leads other form of English literature is in the Victorian era (1837-1901). Most literary writers are then more regarded to taste a large middle class reading public than to please aristocratic patrons. The best known works of the period consists the emotionally powerful works of the Brontë sisters; the realist novels of George Eliot; and the satire Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.
The Bronte sisters are the English writers of the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they are published for the first time. They have written from early childhood and were first published, at their own expense, in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Unluckily, the book gets little attention, selling only two copies. The sisters returned to compose a novel each in the following year. Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey are released in 1847 after their long and hard striving.
Children literature develops as a ruptured genre. Many writers become globally popular, such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. In the end, there is Helen Beatrix Potter, an English author and illustrator, who becomes well-known for her children books that featured animal characters. Along with Lewis Carroll, her books are still published and read to this day.
Modernism (1914-1945)
English modernism seems like a reaction to the realist movements in the late nineteenth century. It reaches the top between the first and second World War. A. E. Housman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy represented a few of modernists literary writing in English during the Victorian period.
The movement grows out of a general sense of disappointment with Victorian age conservatism, attitudes of certainty, and objective truth, and is enormously influenced by some ideas of romanticism, Karl Marx's political writings, and The Psychoanalytic Theories of Subconscious by Sigmund Freud. The continental art movements of Impressionism, and later Cubism, are also important inspirations for modernist writers.
An America author, Gertrude Stein, is also a great literary force during this period, famous for her line "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
Postmodernism (1945-present)
The term Postmodern literature is to describe the definite inclinations in post-World War II literature. It is a continuation of the experiment that achieved by writers of the modernist period and a reaction against implicit enlightenment ideas in modernist literature. Like a whole postmodernism, postmodern literature is not easy to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, divisions, and importance of postmodern literature. Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Joseph Heller, Hunter S. Thompson, and William S. Burroughs.
References:
Klarer, Mario. 1998. An Introduction to Literary Studies. London: Rouledge.
English Literature. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Literature. Retrieved on 25/09/09/
Literary Periods of British Literature. Available at http://englisharticles.info/free-reading-articles/literature/literary-periods-of-english-liter.html. Retrieved on 29/9/09.
Periods of English Literature. Available at http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-century/bl-periods.htm. Retrieved on 25/09/09.
by Peppy Febriandini (0801190)
Related to some sources the writer has searched and explored, this brief summary explains in general the periods of English literature, when it first appears, how it grows and develops and so on. Though the accuracy of the material is still debated to this day, the writer just tries to show common information based on some various sources. According to them, periods of literature in English are divided into eight eras.
Old English/ Anglo-Saxon Period (450-1066)
This earliest period of English literature is observed as beginning with north Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) tribes invasion to Britain in the 5th century. Initially, literary works in Anglo-Saxon had been probably passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. It may be the reason why most of writings are anonymous.
Rounded by warfare, heroic theme is commonly used in almost every old English literature like. But unfortunately, there are just small number of texts that have been inherited from this period containing chronicles, poems, narratives and epics like Beowulf (c. 8th century), “The Wanderer” (c. 9th-10th centuries) or “The Battle of Maldon” (c. 1000).
Middle English Period (1066-1500)
In the eleventh century, when the French-speaking Normans conquered Britain, there was a tangible separation between literature and culture. Later, some various literary genres have been preserved. The anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 14th century) is included in a romance, a new genre of a secular kind which develops in this period. Indirectly, this form affected the development of the novel in the eighteenth century. Besides, other literary works that is produced in the middle period such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1387) and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone also play some important roles for the short story of the nineteenth.
Early New English Period (1500-1660)
It is also known as English renaissance, a period when the focus is on the language history and divisions that based on political rule like in Elizabethan Age (Queen Elizabeth I) or Jacobean Age (King James). Classical genres arises during this period and influences English literary history a lot, as for example, Edmund Spenser’s epic, Faerie Queene, William Shakespeare’s drama, Christopher Marlowe’s and others’. Shakespeare was so outstanding with his poets and plays whereas he was probably not a man of letters by profession. He was only a very gifted man and surprisingly versatile. Although most plays brought him to a great success, he still wrote what have been considered his great plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest.
In the early 16th century, Thomas Wyatt acquaints another kind of literature, the sonnet. Besides, poems are prepared to be set into music as songs, such as by Thomas Campion, becomes well-known as written literature.
Restoration Literature (1660-1700)
The greatest and the most important poetic form of the restoration period was satire. Same as previous periods, publication of works—they were satires—were done anonymously. Having associate with satire was very dangerous. In the one side, contemptible law was widely acclaimed, and the satirists would find some difficulties to avoid prosecution if they were proven to have written a work that looked to criticize a noble. In the another side, noble would pay attention to satire as often as not by having the suspected poem. John Dryden was set on for being merely suspected because of his Satire on Mankind. A consequence of this anonymity is that so many outstanding poet, are unpublished and greatly unknown.
Christian religious writing largely dominated prose form in the restoration period. is dominated by Christian religious writing, but the Restoration also indicated the beginnings of two genres that would dominate the next periods, fiction and journalism.
Augustan Age (1700-1745)
The following period which is referred to neoclassical, golden or Augustan age, which is also mentioned as an independent era of literature is the eighteenth century.
The literature of the period is overtly political and thoroughly aware of critical dictates for literature. It is an age of exuberance and scandal, of enormous energy and inventiveness and outrage, that reflected an era when English, Scottish, and Irish people found themselves in the midst of an expanding economy, lowering barriers to education, and the stirrings of the Industrial Revolution (Wikipedia, 2009). At the beginning of the epoch, John Vanbrugh and William Congreve carry on comedy play like in restoration period with some changes.
Alexander Pope stands out his poetries and becomes the most popular of the age. In the early period, the development of prose seems shifted by the English essay. But this is also the time when the English novel develops into a major literary form. For example, Daniel Defoe who is a journalist and criminal writer for the press shifts his writing to fictional criminal lives.
Romantic Period (1785-1830)
Romanticism occurs at the end of eighteenth century. The best level of instinct and nature over civilisations has been preached by J.J. Rousseau and his message was picked by almost all European poets. So nature, individual, emotional experience are very important in romantic period. The early romantic poems bring new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is manifested by the first romantic in English literature, the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.
The next generation of romantic poets includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats. Also, the poet, painter and printmaker William Blake is usually included among the English romanticists, although his visionary work has some differences from the others.
Victorian Age (1832-1901)
That the novel leads other form of English literature is in the Victorian era (1837-1901). Most literary writers are then more regarded to taste a large middle class reading public than to please aristocratic patrons. The best known works of the period consists the emotionally powerful works of the Brontë sisters; the realist novels of George Eliot; and the satire Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.
The Bronte sisters are the English writers of the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they are published for the first time. They have written from early childhood and were first published, at their own expense, in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Unluckily, the book gets little attention, selling only two copies. The sisters returned to compose a novel each in the following year. Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey are released in 1847 after their long and hard striving.
Children literature develops as a ruptured genre. Many writers become globally popular, such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. In the end, there is Helen Beatrix Potter, an English author and illustrator, who becomes well-known for her children books that featured animal characters. Along with Lewis Carroll, her books are still published and read to this day.
Modernism (1914-1945)
English modernism seems like a reaction to the realist movements in the late nineteenth century. It reaches the top between the first and second World War. A. E. Housman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy represented a few of modernists literary writing in English during the Victorian period.
The movement grows out of a general sense of disappointment with Victorian age conservatism, attitudes of certainty, and objective truth, and is enormously influenced by some ideas of romanticism, Karl Marx's political writings, and The Psychoanalytic Theories of Subconscious by Sigmund Freud. The continental art movements of Impressionism, and later Cubism, are also important inspirations for modernist writers.
An America author, Gertrude Stein, is also a great literary force during this period, famous for her line "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
Postmodernism (1945-present)
The term Postmodern literature is to describe the definite inclinations in post-World War II literature. It is a continuation of the experiment that achieved by writers of the modernist period and a reaction against implicit enlightenment ideas in modernist literature. Like a whole postmodernism, postmodern literature is not easy to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, divisions, and importance of postmodern literature. Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Joseph Heller, Hunter S. Thompson, and William S. Burroughs.
References:
Klarer, Mario. 1998. An Introduction to Literary Studies. London: Rouledge.
English Literature. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Literature. Retrieved on 25/09/09/
Literary Periods of British Literature. Available at http://englisharticles.info/free-reading-articles/literature/literary-periods-of-english-liter.html. Retrieved on 29/9/09.
Periods of English Literature. Available at http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-century/bl-periods.htm. Retrieved on 25/09/09.
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