Periods of English Literature ( Muh. Alif 0809327)

British Literature through Time
In large context Periods of English Literature can be divided to eight periods:
British Literature through Time
1. Anglo-Saxon/ Old English
2. Medieval/Middle English Period
3. Renaissance
4. Neoclassical/Restoration
5. Romantic
6. Victorian
7. Modern/Post-Modern
8. Contemporary

Old English/Anglo-Saxon Period
Years: 449-1066
Content:
 strong belief in fate
 juxtaposition of church and pagan worlds
 admiration of heroic warriors who prevail in battle
 express religious faith and give moral instruction through literature

Style/Genres:
 oral tradition of literature
 poetry dominant genre
 unique verse form
• caesura
• alliteration
• repetition
• 4 beat rhythm

Effect:
 Christianity helps literacy to spread
 introduces Roman alphabet to Britain
 oral tradition helps unite diverse peoples and their myths

Historical Context:
 life centered around ancestral tribes or clans that ruled themselves
 at first the people were warriors from invading outlying areas: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes
 later they were agricultural

Key Literature/Authors:
 Beowulf
 Bede
 Exeter Book
Middle English Period
(The Medieval Period)
Years: 1066-1485
Content:
 plays that instruct the illiterate masses in morals and religioun
 chivalric code of honor
> romances
 religious devotion

Style/Genres:
 oral tradition continues
 folk ballads
 mystery and miracle plays
 morality plays
 stock epithets
 kennings
> frame stories
> moral tales
Effect:
 church instructs its people through the morality and miracle plays
 an illiterate population is able to hear and see the literature

Historical Context:
 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

Key Literature/Authors:
 Domesday Book
 L’Morte de Arthur
 Geoffrey Chaucer
The Renaissance
Years: 1485-1660
Content:
 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
 unrequited love
 constant love
 timeless love
 courtly love
 love subject to change

Style/Genres:
 poetry
o sonnet
 drama
o written in verse
o supported by royalty
o tragedies, comedies, histories
 metaphysical poetry
o elaborate and unexpected metaphors called conceits
Effect:
• commoners welcomed at some play productions (like ones at the Globe) while conservatives try to close the theaters on grounds that they promote brazen behaviors

• not all middle-class embrace the metaphysical poets and their abstract conceits

Historical Context:
 War of Roses ends in 1485 and political stability arrives
 Printing press helps stabilize English as a language and allows more people to read a variety of literature
 Economy changes from farm-based to one of international trade

Key Literature/Authors:
* William Shakespeare
* John Donne
*Cavalier Poets
* Metaphysical Poets
* Christopher Marlowe
* Andrew Marvell

Neoclassical Period
(The Restoration)
Years: 1660-1798
Content:
 emphasis on reason and logic
 stresses harmony, stability, wisdom
 Locke: a social contract exists between the government and the people. The government governs guaranteeing “natural rights” of life, liberty, and property

Style/Genres:
 satire: uses irony and exaggeration to poke fun at human faults and foolishness in order to
correct human behavior
 poetry
 essays
 letters, diaries, biographies
 novels

Effect:
* emphasis on the individual
* belief that man is basically evil
* approach to life: “the world as it should be”
Historical Context:
 50% of the men are functionally literate (a dramatic rise)
 Fenced enclosures of land cause demise of traditional village life
 Factories begin to spring up as industrial revolution begins
 Impoverished masses begin to grow as farming life declines and factories build
 Coffee houses—where educated men spend evenings with literary and political associates
Key Literature/Authors:
*Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, John Bunyan,
Romanticism
Years: 1798 – 1832

Content:
*human knowledge consists of impressions and ideas formed in the individual’s mind
* introduction of gothic elements and terror/horror stories and novels
* in nature one can find comfort and peace that the man-made urbanized towns and factory environments cannot offer

Style/Genres:
*poetry
* lyrical ballads
Effects:
* evil attributed to society not to human nature
* human beings are basically good
* movement of protest: a desire for personal freedom
* children seen as hapless victims of poverty and exploitation
Historical Context:
* Napoleon rises to power in France and opposes England militarily and economically
* gas lamps developed
* Tory philosophy that government should NOT interfere with private enterprise
* middle class gains representation in the British parliament
* Railroads begin to run
Key Literature/Authors:
* Novelists: Jane Austen, Mary Shelley
* Poets: Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats,
Victorian Period
Years: 1832-1900

Content:
* conflict between those in power and the common masses of laborers and the poor
*shocking life of sweatshops and urban poor is highlighted in literature to insist on reform
* country versus city life
* sexual discretion (or lack of it)
* strained coincidences
* romantic triangles
* heroines in physical danger
* aristocratic villains
* misdirected letters
* bigamous marriages
Genres/Styles:
*novel becomes popular for first time; mass produced for the first time
*bildungsroman: “coming of age”
* political novels
* detective novels: (Sherlock Holmes)
* serialized novels
* elegies
* poetry: easier to understand
*dramatic monologues
* drama: comedies of manners
* magazines offer stories to the masses

Effect:
* literature begins to reach the masses
Historical Context:
* paper becomes cheap; magazines and novels cheap to mass produce
* unprecedented growth of industry and business in Britain
* unparalleled dominance of nations, economies and trade abroad
Key Literature/Authors:
* Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy , Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson,
George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Darwin, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Browning


Modern/Post Modern Period of Literature
Years: 1900-1980

Content:
*lonely individual fighting to find peace and comfort in a world that has lost its absolute values and traditions
* man is nothing except what he makes of himself
* a belief in situational ethics—no absolute values. Decisions are based on the situation one is involved in at the moment
*mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader
* loss of the hero in literature
* destruction made possible by technology
Genres/Styles:
* poetry: free verse
* epiphanies begin to appear in literature
* speeches
* memoir
* novels

 stream of consciousness
 detached, unemotional, humorless
 present tense
 magic realism
Effect:
*an approach to life: “Seize life for the moment and get all you can out of it.”
Historical Context:
*British Empire loses 1 million soldiers to World War I
* Winston Churchill leads Britain through WW II, and the Germans bomb England directly
* British colonies demand independence

Key Literature/Authors:
James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas, Nadine Gordimer, George Orwell, William Butler Yeats, Bernard Shaw


Contemporary Period of Literature
(Post Modern Period Continued)
1980-Present

Content:
* concern with connections between people
* exploring interpretations of the past
* open-mindedness and courage that comes from being an outsider
* escaping those ways of living that blind and dull the human spirit
Genres/Styles:
* all genres represented
* fictional confessional/diaries
50% of contemporary fiction is written in the first person
*narratives: both fiction and nonfiction
*emotion-provoking
*humorous irony
*storytelling emphasized
*autobiographical essays
* mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader
Effect:
* too soon to tell
Historical Context:
* a world growing smaller due to ease of communications between societies
* a world launching a new beginning of a century and a millennium
* media culture interprets values and events for individuals

Key Literature/Authors:
Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing, Louis de Bernieres, Kazuo Ishiguro, Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie. John Le Carre, Ken Follett
Refference :
http://www.studyguide.org/brit_lit_timeline_victorian.htm