Literary Periods English Literature

450-1066: Old English (or Anglo Saxon) Chaucer, drama, romance, and verse

1066-1500: Middle English Period

1500-1660: The Renaissance ==> A period of rebirth… William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne

1558-1603: Elizabeth Age

1603-1625: Jacobean Age

1625:1649: Caroline Age

1649-1660: Commonwealth

1600-1785: The Neoclassical Period== > The Regency Period In England...Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Horace Walpole, Oliver Goldsmith, Edward Young

1660-1700: The Restoration

1700:1745: The Augustan Age (or Age of Pope)

1745-1785: The Age of Sensibility (or Age of Johnson

1785-1830: The Romantic Period (includes the Gothic Period)== > Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, William Blake, Samuel Taylor, Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Ann Radcliffe

1832-1901: The Victorian Period The Great Age of the English Novel: realistic, thickly plotted and long. Emily Bronte, Oscar Wide, Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth

Browning

1901-1914: The Edwardian Period Virginia Woolf. E.M Forster, D.H Lawrence

1910-1936: The Georgian Period

1914-1945: The Modern Period

1945-Present: Postmodern Period Ted Hughes, Samuel Beckett, John Obsborne

Main Characteristics of Literary Periods

Let’s see some of the most crucial characteristics of the most important literary Periods:

Middle Ages The Literary writings are in Old English. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is the beginning of 200 years of Freench domination in English letters. Chaucer’s “The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” as long been recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces of English Literature.

Main Characteristics of Literary Periods

Let’s see some of the most crucial characteristics of the most important literary Periods:

Rennaissance

A cultural movement which began in Italy during the 15th century and spread about Europe during the 17th century. Education was not offered for girls, except for daughters of nobility and puritans, and even the subjects were focused on chastity and housewifery.

Main Characteristics of Literary Periods

Let’s see some of the most crucial characteristics of the most important literary Periods:

Neoclassical Period

Neoclassical literature was written in period were social order was undergoing tremendous changes. In the so called Enlightenment period, people believe that natural passions aren’t necessarily good; natural passions must be subordinated to social needs and must be strictly controlled.

Romantic Period

While literature from the classical period was based on reason, order in rules, literature and art from the romantic period was based on emotion, adventure and imagination. The name “romantic” itself comes from the term “romance” which is genre of prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature.

Modern Period

The early modern period is a term initially used by historians to refer mainly to the period roughly from 1500 to 1750 in Western Europe. Theatrical power flourishes this period.

Post-Modern PeriodThe term Post modern period literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-world war II literature. Although it is a constinuation of modernist period (paradoxes and fragmentation), modernist literature seeks meaning in a chaotic world whereas postmodernist literature is not only avoiding the possibility of meaning, at the same time it is parodying it.

Angelyn A. DugayJohn Romel P. Robles