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ENGLISH LITERATURE
English Literature term is very popular that means a writing in English language. Formerly,
it was meant to be British writing. With the course of the time, the concept has changed
and now it means a writing produced in English language by any one at any place in the
world.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A Chronology of the English Language

449 Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain begins
450-480 Earliest Old English inscriptions date from this period
597 St. Augustine arrives in Britain. Beginning of Christian conversion
731 The Venerable Bede publishes The Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Latin
792 Viking raids and settlements begin
871 Alfred becomes king of Wessex. He has Latin works translated into English and begins practice of
English prose. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is begun
911 Charles II of France grants Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger. The beginning of
Norman French
c. 1000 The oldest surviving manuscript of Beowulf dates from this period
1066 The Norman conquest
c. 1150 The oldest surviving manuscripts of Middle English date from this period
1171 Henry II conquers Ireland
1204 King John loses the province of Normandy to France
1348 English replaces Latin as the medium of instruction in schools, other than Oxford and Cambridge
which retain Latin
1362 The Statute of Pleading replaces French with English as the language of law. Records continue to
be kept in Latin. English is used in Parliament for the rst time
1384 Wyclif publishes his English translation of the Bible
c. 1388 Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales
1476 William Caxton establishes the rst English printing press
1492 Columbus discovers the New World
1549 First version of The Book of Common Prayer
1604 Robert Cawdrey publishes the rst English dictionary, Table Alphabeticall
1607 Jamestown, the rst permanent English settlement in the New World, established
1611 The Authorized, or King James Version, of the Bible is published
1702 Publication of the rst daily, English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, in London
1755 Samuel Johnson publishes his dictionary
1770 Cook discovers Australia
1928 The Oxford English Dictionary is published

Neena Sairam at 2:48 AM 1 comment:

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Authors (chronological by date of birth)
Authors: Chaucer to Shakespeare

Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare

Authors: Donne to Milton

John Donne, Ben Jonson, John Webster, John Milton

Authors: Bunyan to Gray

John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Thomas Gray

Authors: Goldsmith to Austen

Oliver Goldsmith, Boswell and Johnson, Richard Sheridan, Fanny Burney, William Blake, Jane Austen

Authors: Wordsworth to Keats

William Wordsworth, Samuel taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe ShelleyJohn Keats

Authors: Mary Shelley to the Bronte Sisters

Mary Shelley, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Bronte Sisters

Authors: George Eliot to Bram Stoker

George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker

Authors: R L Stevenson to E M Forster

Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, RudyardKipling, W B Yeats,
E M Forster

Authors: James Joyce to William Faulkner

James Joyce, Viginia Woolf, D H Lawrence, Ring W Lardner, T S Eliot, J R R Tolkien,F Scott Fitzgerald,
William Faulkner

Authors: C S Lewis to Arthur Miller

C S Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bishop, WilliamGolding,
Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller

Authors: Anthony Burgess to Harold Pinter

Anthony Burgess, J D Salinger, Doris Lessing, Philip Larkin, Robert Cormier, Harper Lee,Chinua Achebe,
Harold Pinter

Authors: Toni Morrison to Salman Rushdie

Toni Morrison, Frank McCourt, Syvia Plath, Tom Stoppard, Margaret Atwood, Barry Hines,Seamus
Heaney, Angela Carter, Alice Walker, Brian Patten, Salman Rushdie

Authors: Ian McEwan to J K Rowling

Ian McEwan, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, J K Rowling

 Neena Sairam at 11:49 PM 1 comment:

Authors Index of English Literature

A
Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926)
Sarah Flower Adams (1805-1848)
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Mark Akenside (1721-1770)
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895)
ANONYMOUS (1100-1945)
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
B
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Anna Ltitia Barbauld (1743-1825)
Mary Barber (1690-1757)
Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845)
Sabine Baring-Gould (1824-1924)
William Barnes (1801-1886)
Richard Barneld (1574-1627)
David Bates (1809-1870)
Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929)
Thomas Bateson (ca. 1570-1630)
L. Frank Baum (1856-1919)
James Beattie (1735-1803)
Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)
The Venerable Bede (673-735)
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Robert Blair (1699-1746)
William Blake (1757-1827)
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850)
Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672)
Nicholas Breton (1555?-1626)
Anne Bront (1820-1849)
Charlotte Bront (1816-1855)
Emily Jane Bront (1818-1848)
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897)
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
William Browne (1590?-1645)
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)
Samuel Butler (1613-1680)
William Byrd (1543-1623)
Lord Byron (see George Gordon, lord Byron, 1788-1824)
C
Cdmon (fl. 658-80)
Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884)
Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)
William Wilfred Campbell (1858?-1918)
Thomas Campion (1587-1620)
George Canning (1770-1827)
Richard Carew of Anthony (1555-1620)
Thomas Carew (1595?-1640)
Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
George Chapman (1559?-1634)
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)
Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400)
Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648)
Lady Mary Chudleigh (1656-1710)
Charles Churchill (1732-1764)
John Clare (1793-1864)
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835-1910)
John Cleveland (1613-1658)
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)
William Collins (1721-1759)
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Eliza Cook (1818-1889)
Dr. D. Cooper (fl. 1514)
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Richard Corbet (1582-1635)
William Johnson Cory (1823-1892)
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
William Cowper (1731-1800)
George Crabbe (1754-1832)
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887)
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)
Isabella Valancy Crawford (1850-1887)
D
Samuel Daniel (1563?-1619)
Sir William D'Avenant (1606-1668)
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
John Davidson (1857-1909)
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Thomas Dekker (1570?-1632)
Sir John Denham (1615-1669)
John Dennis (1657-1734)
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Sydney Thompson Dobell (1824-1874)
Henry Austin Dobson (1840-1921)
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (see Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898)
John Donne (1572-1631)
Earl of Dorset (see Charles Sackville, 1638-1706; and Thomas Sackville, 1536-1608)
Gavin Douglas (1475?-1522)
Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895)
John Dowland (1563-1626)
Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)
Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649)
William Henry Drummond (1854-1907)
John Dryden (1631-1700)
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
William Dunbar (1456?-1513?)
Sir Edward Dyer (1543-1607)
E
George Eliot (1819-1880)
Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (see George Eliot, 1819-1880)
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904)
Sir George Etherege (ca. 1635-1691)
F
Owen Felltham (1602?-1668)
Robert Fergusson (1750-1774)
Eugene Field (1850-1895)
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)
Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Giles Fletcher the Younger (1585?-1623)
John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650)
Thomas Ford (1580?-1648)
Stephen C. Foster (1826-1864)
J. H. Frere (1769-1846)
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Sarah Fyge (Egerton) (1670-1723)
G
George Gascoigne (ca. 1534-1577)
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865)
John Gay (1685-1732)
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774)
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
John Gower (1330?-1408)
James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1612-1650)
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
William Gray of Reading (?-1557)
Robert Greene (1560-1592)
Julian Grenfell (1888-1915)
Fulke Greville, Baron Brooke (1554-1628)
Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
H
William Habington (1605-1654)
Joseph Hall (1574-1656)
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Gabriel Harvey (ca. 1550-1631)
Stephen Hawes (ca. 1475-1511)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Caroline Hayward (fl. 1855)
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835)
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)
Henry VIII, king of England (1491-1547)
Robert Henryson (1424?-1506?)
George Herbert (1593-1633)
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Arthur Clement Hilton (1851-1877)
Thomas Hoccleve (1369?-1426)
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
Thomas Hood (1799-1845)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
George Moses Horton (1797?-ca. 1880)
John Hoskyns (1566-1638)
A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
Joseph Howe (1804-1873)
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-1917)
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
J
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
James I, of Scotland (1394-1437)
Henry James (1843-1916)
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake; 1861-1913)
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
James Joyce (1882-1941)
K
John Keats (1795-1821)
Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)
Anne Killigrew (1660-1685)
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
Benjamin Franklin King (1857-1894)
Henry King (1592-1669)
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Raymond Knister (1899-1932) L
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
Frederick Locker Lampson (1821-1895)
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838)
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
William Langland (ca. 1330-ca. 1386)
milia Lanyer (1569-1645)
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
Mary Leapor (1722-1746)
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Amy Levy (1861-1889)
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
Thomas Lodge (1558-1625)
Jack London (1876-1916)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Richard Lovelace (1618-1657)
Robert Lowry (1826-1899)
John Lydgate (1370?-1449)
John Lyly (1554-1606)
M
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)
Evan MacColl (1808-1898)
Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918)
George MacDonald (1824-1905)
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
James Macpherson (1736-1796)
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
John Marston (1575?-1634)
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
George Meredith (1828-1909)
Alice Meynell (1847-1922)
William Mickle (1735-1788)
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
John Milton (1608-1674)
Mary Monck (ca. 1678-1715)
Lady Mary Wortley Mon***u (1689-1762)
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)
Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863)
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer (fl. 1907)
Thomas Morley (1557/58-1602)
William Morris (1834-1896)
Mother Goose (18th cent.)
Anthony Munday (1560-1633)
N
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)
Edith Nesbit (1858-1924)
John Henry Newman, Cardinal (1801-1890)
John Newton (1725-1807)
Frank Norris (1870-1902)
O
John Oldham (1653-1683)
Amelia Opie (1769-1853)
Wilfred Owen (1893-Nov. 4, 1918)
P
Thomas Parnell (1679-1718)
Walter Pater (1839-1894)
Coventry Patmore (1823-1896)
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
George Peele (1556-1596)
Martin Peerson (1571?-1650)
Thomas Percy (1728-1811)
Katherine Philips (1631-1664)
Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922)
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
Alexander Pope (1688-1731)
Walter Porter (ca. 1590?-1659)
Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972)
Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839)
Matthew Prior (1664-1721)
Adelaide A. Procter (1825-1864)
George Puttenham (ca. 1529-91)
Q
Francis Quarles (1592-1644)
R
Sir Walter Ralegh (ca. 1552-1618)
Allan Ramsay (1686-1758)
Thomas Randolph (1605-1635)
James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)
Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
Mary Robinson (1758-1800)
Earl of Rochester (see John Wilmot, 1647-1680)
William Roscoe (1753-1831)
Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
S
Charles Sackville, earl of Dorset (1638-1706)
Thomas Sackville, earl of Dorset (1536-1608)
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947)
Frederick George Scott (1861-1944)
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876)
Sir Charles Sedley (1639?-1701)
Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
Robert W. Service (1874-1958)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
William Shenstone (1714-1763)
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
James Shirley (1596-1666)
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
John Skelton (1460?-1529)
Christopher Smart (1722-1771)
Arabella Eugenia Smith (ca. 1844-1916)
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)
Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915)
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Robert Southwell, SJ (1561?-1595)
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Thomas Sprat (1635-1713)
James Kenneth Stephen (1859-1892)
Leslie Stephen (1832-1904)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
William Stevenson (fl. 1553)
Trumbull Stickney (1874-1904)
Bram Stoker (1847-1912)
William Strode (1602-1645)
Sir John Suckling (1609-1642)
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (1517?-1547)
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
Joshua Sylvester (ca. 1563-1618)
T
Ann Taylor (1782-1866) and Jane Taylor (1783-1824)
Tekahionwake (see E. Pauline Johnson, 1861-1913)
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1883)
Ernest Lawrence Thayer (1863-1940)
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
Francis Thompson (1859-1907)
James Thomson (1700-1748)
James Thomson (1834-1882)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Chidiock Tichborne (ca. 1558-86)
Thomas Tickell (1685-1740)
Augustus Mon***ue Toplady (1740-1778)
Thomas Traherne (1636-1674)
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) (1835-1910
V
Henry Vaughan (1621?-1695)
Thomas Lord Vaux (1509-1556)
W
Annie Louisa Walker (1836-1907)
Edmund Waller (1606-1687)
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
William Warner (ca. 1558-1609)
Joseph Warton (1722-1800)
Thomas Warton the younger (1728-1790)
Frances Ellen Watkins (1825-1911)
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
John Webster (ca. 1578-c.1632)
Thomas Weelkes (1576?-1623)
Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
John Wesley (1703-1791)
R. Wever (fl. ca. 1549-1553)
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784)
Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
John Wilbye (1574-1638)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
John Wilmot, earl of Rochester (1647-1680)
George Wither (1588-1667)
Charles Wolfe (1791-1823)
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Henry Clay Work (1832-1884)
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Y
Edward Young (1683-1765

Neena Sairam at 11:41 PM No comments:

Monday, April 20, 2009

FAMOUS WRITERS & THEIR WORK

Old English (Anglo-Saxon Period):
writers: Caedmon and Cynewulf.
work: Beowulf (by anonymous).

1200-1500: Middle English Period :

Geoffrey Chaucer's(1343-1400) :
The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and Book of the Duchess.
Other Major Poems
The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowles, The Legend of Good Women. Prose Treatises Treatise
on the astrolabe. Short Poems The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse ,Truth, Gentilesse, Merciles
Beaute, Lak of Stedfastnesse, Against Women Unconstant.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Thomas Malory's (1405-1471) :

Morte d'Arthur.
work: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (by anonymous).
1500-1660: The English Renaissance 1500-1558: Tudor Period
(Humanist Era)
The Humanists:

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) :

Utopia, The History of King Richard the Third, The Life of Pico della Mirandola, The Four Last Things, A
Dialogue Concerning Tyndale, The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, A Dialogue of Comfort Against
Tribulation and Sadness of Christ .
Sir Thomas More

John Skelton (1460-1529):

A ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge

John Skelton

Sir Thomas Wyatt(1503-1542):

My Lute Awake! Once, As Methought, Fortune Me Kissed They Flee From Me The restful place ! renewer
of my smart It may be good, like it who list In faith I wot not what to say There Was Never Nothing More
Me Pained Patience ! though I have not Though I Cannot Your Cruelty Constrain Blame Not My Lute My
Pen ! Take Pain The heart and service to you proffer'd Is It Possible? And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus?
Since so ye please to hear me plain Forget Not Yet The Tried Intent What Should I Say!

Sir Thomas Wyatt.

The Renaissance Period consists of four subsets:

1. 1558-1603: The Elizabethan Age (High Renaissance):

William Shakespeare (1564-1616):

Comedies: All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost,
Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's
Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Winter's Tale
Histories: King John, Richard II, Henry IV, part 1, Henry IV, part 2, Henry V, Henry VI, part1, Henry VI, part
2, Henry VI, part 3, Richard III,Henry VIII
Tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth,
Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra.Poems: Shakespeare's Sonnets,
Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, The Phoenix and the Turtle, A Lover's
Complaint.

William Shakespeare

Christopher Marlowe(1564-1593):
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus The Jew of Malta Massacre at Paris Tamburlaine the Great, Part
1 Tamburlaine the Great, Part 2 Lucan's First Book Edward II Dido Queen of Carthage Hero and Leander
Ovid's Elegies The Passionate Shepherd to his Love
Christopher Marlowe

Edmund Spenser(1552-1599):
The Faerie Queene, Iambicum Trimetrum, The Shepheardes Calender.
Edmund Spenser

Sir Walter Raleigh(1552 1618):

What is Our Life, The Ocean to Cynthia and The Lie.
Sir Walter Raleigh

Ben Jonson(1573-1637):
An Hymn to God the Father An Hymn on the Nativity of My Savior An Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbet
On the Portrait of Shakspeare To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare To Mr.
John Fletcher, Upon His "Faithful Shepherdess" Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke Epitaph on
Michael Drayton To His Much and Worthily Esteemed Friend, the Author To My Worthy and Honored
Friend, Master George Chapman
 Ben Jonson

2. 1603-1625:The Jacobean Age {Mannerist Style (1590-1640) other styles: Metaphysical Poets;
Devotional Poets}:

John Donne(1572-1631):
Song A Hymn to God the Father Death, Be Not Proud Conned Love The Dissolution Oh my black soul!
now art thou summoned Father, part of his double interest A Hymn to Christ at the Author's Last Going
into Germany
John Donne

Francis Bacon (1561-1626):

The Advancement of Learning, The Essays, The New Atlantis, Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of
Nature
Francis Bacon

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627):

The Phoenix Michaelmas Term A Mad World, My Masters A Trick to Catch the Old One The Puritan
 Thomas Middleton

3.1625-1649: The Caroline Age : John Ford, John Milton

John Milton (1608-1674): Lycidas Paradise Lost Paradise Regained

John Milton

John Ford (1586-1640): Fame's Memorial Christ's Bloody Sweat, attr. Honour Triumphant The Witch of
Edmonton The Sun's Darling The Lover's Melancholy Contention of a Bird and a Musician The Broken
Heart A Bridal Song Love's Sacrice 'Tis Pity She's a Whore Perkin Warbeck The Fancies, Chaste and
Noble The Lady's Trial
John Ford

4. 1649-1660: The Commonwealth Period (which is also known as the Puritan & The Protectorate
(Baroque Style, and later, Rococo Style)
The Neoclassical Period: political writings of John Milton, Thomas Hobbes' political treatise Leviathan,
and the prose of Andrew Marvell.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678):
To his coy mistress

The Neoclassical Period can be divided into three subsets:

1. 1660-1700: The Restoration:
John Milton (1608-1674):
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

John Dryden (1631-1700), John Wilmot 2nd Earl of Rochester (16471680), satirical poet; and John
Locke.
John Dryden
2. 1700-1800: The Eighteenth Century(The Enlightenment; Neoclassical Period; The Augustan Age)
The Augustan Age:
Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope , Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, (rst English novels by Defoe) and
Pamela, by Samuel Richardson.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744):

An Essay on Criticism The Rape of the Lock The Dunciad
Alexander Pope

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745):

A Modest Proposal
Gulliver's Travels
Ladys Dressing room
Strephon and Chloe
Cassinus and Peter
Jonathan Swift

3. The Age of Sensibility.

Samuel Johnson , and Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Tom Jones.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784):
A Dictionary of the English Language
To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chestereld

1785-1870: Romanticism (The Age of Revolution) William Blake, William Wordsworth,

S.T. Coleridge, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Jane Austen.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850):

London 1802
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
The Prelude
To a Skylark
Tintern Abbey

William Wordsworth

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 1834):

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Chrisabel
Kubla Khan
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824):

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Don Juan Song for the Luddites
The Isles of Greece

George Gordon Byron

1870-1914: Victorian Period (Early, Middle and Late Victorian) Charles Dickens, the Bronts, George
Eliot, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Hardy.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870):

Great Expectations
Hard Times
The Old Curiosity Shop
Dombey and Son
A Tale of Two Cities
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens

George Eliot (1819-1880):

Middlemarch
The mill on the floss
George Eliot

Robert Browning (1812-1889):

The Ring and the Book
My Last Duchess
 Robert Browning

1914-1945: Modern Period:

George Bernard Shaw, John Galosworthy, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot.

George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950):

Candida
Pygmalion
An Unsocial Socialist Arms and the Man
Caesar and Cleopatra
The Irrational Knot
Cashel Byron's Profession
George Bernard Shaw

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939):

The Island Of Statutes Iris
Fairy Tales
On Baile' Strand
The Hour Glass
In The Seven Woods
The Kings Treshold
Reveries Over Childhood And Youth Responsibilities
Sailing To Byzantium
The Second Coming
At The Hawk's Well
William Butler Yeats

D.H. Lawrence(1885-1930):
Sons and Lovers
Everlasting Flowers Elegy
Discord in Childhood
Dolor of Autumn
Excursion
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Women in Love

D.H. Lawrence

T.S.Eliot(1888-1965):
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Gerontion Sweeney Among the Nightingales
The Waste Land
The Hollow Men
The Journey of the Magi
Ash Wednesday
 T.S.Eliot

1945- Postmodern and Contemporary Period

Neena Sairam at 2:57 AM 16 comments:

Sunday, April 12, 2009

A brief history of English literature

Old English
English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the north Germanic tribes who settled in
England from the 5th century A.D. onwards. They had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until
they learned the Latin alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English (as
their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at rst, and may have been
passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. We know the names of some of the later
writers (Cdmon, lfric and King Alfred) but most writing is anonymous. Old English literature is
mostly chronicle and poetry - lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the time literacy becomes
widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And its forms do not signicantly
affect subsequent developments in English literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th century
poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who nds in Old English verse the model for his metrical system of
"sprung rhythm".)

Middle English and Chaucer

From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas and themes from
French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about this time, but the rst great name in
English literature is that of Geoffrey Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter
line, the rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which rhyming is
arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer's
work is prose and some is lyric poetry, but his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we nd in
Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the anonymous
Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same author) and William Langlands' Piers
Plowman.
Tudor lyric poetry

Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-
1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian,
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while Surrey
(as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus inventing the verse form which
will be of great use to contemporary dramatists. A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth
comes with such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Walter
Ralegh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The
major works of the time are Spenser's Faerie Queene, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's
sonnets.

Renaissance drama

The rst great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English drama meant the amateur
performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on public holidays. Marlowe's plays (Tamburlaine; Dr.
Faustus; Edward II and The Jew of Malta) use the ve act structure and the medium of blank verse,
which Shakespeare nds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts this form, his
Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely performed today, though some pieces have
literary merit, notably The Duchess of Mal and The White Devil by John Webster (1580-1625) and The
Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and gratuitous violence of Jacobean
plays leads to the clamour for closing down the theatres, which is enacted by parliament after the Civil
war.

Metaphysical poetry

The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short love poems are
characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning from experience. The preoccupation with
the big questions of love, death and religious faith marks out Donne and his successors who are often
called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay of 1779, was revived
and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921. It can be unhelpful to modern students who are
unfamiliar with this adjective, and who are led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school
or group - which is not the case.) After his wife's death, Donne underwent a serious religious conversion,
and wrote much ne devotional verse. The best known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert
(1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).

Epic poetry

Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek (Homer's Iliad and
Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil's neid) poetry. John Milton (1608-1674) who was Cromwell's secretary,
set out to write a great biblical epic, unsure whether to write in Latin or English, but settling for the latter
in Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on classical and biblical subjects.
Though Dryden's work is little read today it leads to a comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic.
The best poetry of the mid 18th century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is the
best-regarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many masterpieces, one of the
more accessible is The Rape of the Lock (seekers of sensation should note that "rape" here has its
archaic sense of "removal by force"; the "lock" is a curl of the heroine's hair). Serious poetry of the
period is well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at the time.

Restoration comedy
On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A new kind of comic drama,
dealing with issues of sexual politics among the wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration
Comedy, and the style developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost.
The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the best drama uses the
restoration conventions for a serious examination of contemporary morality. A play which exemplies
this well is The Country Wife by William Wycherley (1640-1716).

Prose ction and the novel

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known for the extended prose
work Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing
familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose ction, this
time much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics is Daniel Defoe (1661-
1731), author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

The rst English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761):
this novel takes the form of a series of letters; Pamela, a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of
her rich employer, who eventually marries her. Richardson's work was almost at once satirized by Henry
Fielding (1707-1754) in Joseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the brother of Richardson's Pamela
Andrews) and Tom Jones.

After Fielding, the novel is dominated by the two great gures of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Jane
Austen (1775-1817), who typify, respectively, the new regional, historical romanticism and the
established, urbane classical views.

Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically remote or exotic settings
are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen in Northanger Abbey but include one undisputed
masterpiece, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1797-1851).

Romanticism
The rise of Romanticism

A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or
passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its rst stirrings may be seen
in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller and Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe.

The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a signicant event in English literary history, though
the poems were poorly received and few books sold. The elegant latinisms of Gray are dropped in
favour of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly). Actually, the attempts to
render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric
verse in the dialect of lowland Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the
most often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every New Year's Eve.

Later Romanticism

The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-
1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt to make language beautiful, and by an interest
in remote history and exotic places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes,
sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as a revolt against
established views, but eventually becomes the established outlook. Wordsworth becomes a kind of
national monument, while the Victorians make what was at rst revolutionary seem familiar, domestic
and sentimental.
Victorian poetry

The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-
1889). Both are prolic and varied, and their work dees easy classication. Tennyson makes extensive
use of classical myth and Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities
of his writing.

Browning's chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic monologues in which the
speaker achieves a kind of self-portraiture: his subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi,
Andrea del Sarto) and representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium).

Other Victorian poets of note include Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he
calls "sprung rhythm"; as in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of
stresses. Hopkins' work was not well-known until very long after his death.

The Victorian novel

The rise of the popular novel

In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide education by the state, and
self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in
instalments means that works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading
public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois world of Austen gives way to
an interest in characters of humble origins. The great novelists write works which in some ways
transcend their own period, but which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.

Dickens and the Bronts

Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all time, is Charles Dickens
(1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create
surface problems for the modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great Expectations,
Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit are works with which every student should be
acquainted.

Charlotte Bront (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) are
understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly. Charlotte is notable for several good
novels, among which her masterpiece is Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity,
achieve happiness on her own terms. Emily Bront's Wthering Heights is a strange work, which enjoys
almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less contemporary than those of Jane Eyre - but its
themes of obsessive love and self-destructive passion have proved popular with the 20th century
reader.

The beginnings of American literature

The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849), the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), Herman Melville (1819-91), and Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910), and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-92) and Emily
Dickinson (1830-86). Notable works include Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby Dick,
Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Later Victorian novelists

After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes rmly-established: sensational or
melodramatic "popular" writing is represented by Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne (1861), but the best
novelists achieved serious critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony
Trollope (1815-82), Wilkie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), George Eliot
(Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Among the best novels are Collins's The
Moonstone, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, and
Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the
Obscure.

Modern literature
Early 20th century poets

W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two gures who dominate modern poetry, the other
being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965). Yeats was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in
England, and took UK citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the
connection between modern themes and classical and romantic ideas. Eliot uses elements of
conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured whole in his greatest works. Where Yeats is
prolic as a poet, Eliot's reputation largely rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land
(1922) and Four Quartets (1943).

The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian
poets, some of whom came to prominence during the First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy,
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), A.E. Housman (1859-1936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert Brooke
(1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-
1918). The most celebrated modern American poet, is Robert Frost (1874-1963), who befriended
Edward Thomas before the war of 1914-1918.

Early modern writers

The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of foreign birth: the American
Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James
relates character to issues of culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad's narratives may
resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with issues of character and
morality. The best of their work would include James's The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad's Heart of
Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.

Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), H.G.
Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). Shaw was an essay-writer, language scholar and
critic, but is best-remembered as a playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even
better known today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a popularizer of
science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural themes, The History of Mr. Polly being
perhaps his masterpiece. Forster's novels include Howard's End, A Room with a View and A Passage to
India.

Joyce and Woolf

Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel, more radically modern
writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (1882-1941), of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and of D.H.
Lawrence (1885-1930). Where Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint
and structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more profoundly than his
predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new psychology with his own acute observation.
Working-class characters are presented as serious and dignied; their manners and speech are not
objects of ridicule.

Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), Graham Greene
(1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner, William Golding (1911-1993).

Poetry in the later 20th century

Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the work of W.H. (Wystan
Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72). Auden seems to be
a major gure on the poetic landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The Welsh
poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language, alternating from extreme
simplicity to massive overstatement.

Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century, evaluation is even more difcult,
but writers of note include the American Robert Lowell (1917-77), Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S.
Thomas (1913-2000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel laureate
Seamus Heaney (b. 1939). (source teachit.co.uk/armoore/lit/history.htm)

Neena Sairam at 3:26 AM 1 comment:

Periods of English Literature

PERIODS OF BRITISH LITERATURE
450-1066 : Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period

1066-1500 : Middle English Period

1500-1660 : The Renaissance

1558-1603 : Elizabethan Age
1603-1625 : Jacobean Age
1625-1649 : Caroline Age
1649-1660 : Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum)

1660-1785 : The Neoclassical Period

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

1832-1901 : The Victorian Period

1848-1860 : The Pre-Raphaelites
1880-1901 : Aestheticism and Decadence

1901-1914 : The Edwardian Period

1910-1936 : The Georgian Period

1914-1945 : The Modern Period

1945-present : Postmodern Period

Neena Sairam at 12:01 AM 3 comments:

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