The History of

Literature
Ancient Palestianian Literature
Great Literary Achievement
- Hebrew Scriptures (Sacred Scriptures, Bible)
800BC-400BC: Ancient Greek
Literature
• Forms the basis of liberal arts education, and
has been taught since organized education
began. Includes philosophical treatises, epic
poetry, myths and plays.
• Aristotle, Poetics
• Plato, The Apology
• Sophocles, Antigone
• Homer, The Illiad & The Odyssey
450-1066: The Medieval Period
(Anglo-Saxon Period) Literature
• Primarily consists of poems already circulating
in oral form at the time they were first written
down. The bulk of the prose literature is
historical or religious in nature.
• Beowulf
• The Canterbury Tales
• The Dark Ages and the Bards
450-1066: The Medieval Period
(Anglo-Saxon Period) Literature
Famous Author during this Significant Literary Genres
period:
• Narrative Romance
• Geoffrey Chaucer • Religious Liturgy
• Thomas Aquinas
• Martin Luther
1066-1500: Middle English Literature
• The transitional period between Anglo-Saxon
and modern English literature. This time period
saw a flowering of secular literature, including
ballads and allegorical poems.
• Considered to be the division between Middle
age and Modern era.
• Petrarch Petrarchan sonnets
• Dante Aligheri The Divine Comedy
• Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales
1500-1660: The Renaissance

• Influenced by the artistic and cultural

Renaissance, the transformation of both English
language and literature in this period can be
seen to move away from the medieval Middle
English literature period and into the more
recognizably modern Elizabethan literature.
• The period is characterized by the influence of
the classics (in literature, language, and
philosophy), as well as an optimistic forward-
thinking approach to the potential of humans.
The Renaissance (cont’d)
• Miguel Cervantes Don Quixote,
• William Shakespeare plays & sonnets
• Christopher Marlowe Dr. Faustus, pastoral
poetry
• Ben Jonson: satirical plays & lyric
poetry
• John Donne: metaphysical poetry
• Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queen
• John Milton Paradise Lost
1660-1785: Neoclassicism

• A movement whose artists looked to the classical

texts for their creative inspiration in an effort to
imitate classical form. The writers in particular
drew on what were considered to be classical
virtues—simplicity, order, restraint, logic,
economy, accuracy, and decorum—to produce
prose, poetry, and drama. Literature was of
value in accordance with its ability to not only
delight, but also instruct.
Neoclassicism (cont’d)
• Voltaire Candide
• Alexander Pope epic and narrative poetry,
heroic couplet
• Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe
• Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
1730-1800: The Age of Reason
• The 18th-century American “Age of Reason” was a movement
marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than religious
tradition. It’s foremost thinkers, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
Jefferson, also served as political leaders of the American
Revolution. Some of the most noteworthy characteristics of this
movement were:
• constructive deism — the belief that Reason leads us to some basic
religious truths and that morality is an intellectual pursuit rather
than a religious one.
• scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma
• representative government in place of monarchy.
• emphasis on ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural
rights of man
• intellectual pursuit is the highest form of human consciousness.
Faith in human goodness and dignity of humankind.
1785-1830: Romanticism
• Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in
late 18th century Western Europe and quickly spread to America. Some of
the main underlying ideas of the movement are:
• The idea that neither theism nor deism can adequately answer the question
of man’s relationship with God.
• The belief in the natural goodness of man and the idea that man, in a state
of nature, would behave well but is hindered by civilization.
• A revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the
Enlightenment period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature,
in art and literature.
• Belief in self-knowledge , a principle of Romanticism.
• Romantic artists wished to move away from the formality of the previous
generation. Strong emotion became a source of aesthetic experience,
placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe
experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature.
Romanticism (cont’d)
British Poetry
• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Lord Byron
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• John Keats
• Alfred Lord Tennyson

British Literature
• Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
• Mary Shelley Frankenstein

American Literature
• Washington Irving Rip Van Winkle
• James Fenimore Cooper Last of the Mohicans
1830-1900: The Victorian Period

• Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of

difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance,
love and luck win out in the end; virtue would be
rewarded and wrongdoers are suitably punished.
They often contain a central moral lesson or
theme.
Victorian Period (cont’d)
World Literature
• Henrik Ibsen A Doll’s House
• Victor Hugo Les Miserables
• Gustave Flaubet Madame Bovary

British Victorian Poetry

• Robert Browning
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning

British Victorian Literature

• Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
• Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
• Charles Dickens Great Expectations
1830-1865: American Renaissance

• A period during which American literature came of

age as an expression of a national spirit. These
authors utilized native dialect, history, landscape,
and characters in order to explore uniquely
American issues. Critics regard some of the short
fiction produced during the American Renaissance
as some of the best American fiction ever written.
• Emily Dickinson poetry
• Walt Whitman poetry
• Herman Melville Moby Dick & Billy
Budd
• Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
1855-1900: American Realism & Regionalism

• A literary movement that attempted to portray an accurate, detailed picture of

ordinary, contemporary life. Some of its main ideas were:
• Character is more important than action and plot: complex ethical
choices are often the subject.
• Humans control their destinies: characters act on their environment rather
than simply reacting to it.
• Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail: Selective
presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense
of a well-made plot.
• Events will usually be plausible: Realistic novels avoid the sensational,
dramatic elements of the Romantic movement.
• Class is important: primarily, the interests and aspirations of an insurgent
middle class.
• Diction is the natural vernacular: not heightened or poetic; tone may be
comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.
• The use of symbolism is controlled and limited: the realists depend more
on the use of images.

• Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

• Kate Chopin The Awakening
1890-1910: Naturalism

• Naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to

apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment
to its study of human beings. It focuses on the "brute
within" each individual, comprised of strong and often
warring emotions: passions such as lust and greed, the
desire for dominance or pleasure, and the fight for
survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. Naturalist
authors viewed nature as an indifferent force acting on
the lives of human beings.

• Jack London The Call of the Wild

• Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie
• Edith Wharton Ethan Frome
1900-1940: Modernism

• Modernism provided a radical break with

traditional modes of literature. Its main
characteristics were stylistic innovations -
disruption of traditional syntax and form – and
an obsession with primitive attitudes (violence,
self-centeredness)
SOURCE:

• Language in Literature (World Literature)