The

The
English
English Literature
Literature
Timeline Timeline
The Classical Period 1200-455 BCE III. CLASSICAL ROMAN PERIOD
(200 BCE-455 CE)
I. HOMERIC or HEROIC PERIOD
(1200-800 BCE) After nearly 500 years as a Republic, Rome slid
Greek legends were passed along orally, including into a dictatorship under Julius Caesar and finally
Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. This is a into a monarchial empire under Caesar Augustus
chaotic period of warrior-princes, wandering sea- in 27 CE. This later period is known as the Roman
traders, and fierce pirates. Imperial period. Roman writers include Ovid,
Horace, and Virgil. Roman philosophers include
II. CLASSICAL GREEK PERIOD Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius. Roman
(800-200 BCE) rhetoricians include Cicero and Quintilian. IV. PATRISTIC PERIOD
Greek writers, playwrights, and philosophers include (c. 70 CE-455 CE)
Gorgias, Aesop, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, Early Christian writers include Saint
and Sophocles. The fifth century (499-400 BCE) in Augustine, Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, Saint
particular is renowned as The Golden Age of Greece. Ambrose and Saint Jerome. This is the
This was the sophisticated era of the polis, or period when Saint Jerome first compiled
individual City-State, and early democracy. Some of the Bible, Christianity spread across
the world's finest art, poetry, drama, architecture, Europe, and the Roman Empire suffered
and philosophy originated in Athens. its dying convulsions.
I. THE OLD ENGLISH (ANGLO-SAXON) PERIOD 455 CE-1485 CE The Medieval Period
(428-1066 CE)
The so-called "Dark Ages" occurred after Rome II. THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD
fell and barbarian tribes moved into Europe. (c. 1066-1450 CE)
Franks, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Goths settled
in the ruins of Europe, and the Angles, Saxons, This often tumultuous period is marked by the
and Jutes migrated to Britain displacing native Middle English writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, the
Celts into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Early Old "Gawain" or "Pearl" Poet, the Wakefield Master,
English poems such as Beowulf, The Wanderer, and William Langland. Other writers include
and The Seafarer originated sometime late in the Italian and French authors like Boccaccio,
Anglo-Saxon period. Petrarch, Dante, and Christine de Pisan.

The Renaissance Period 1485-1660 CE

I. EARLY TUDOR PERIOD II. ELIZABETHAN PERIOD
(1485-1558) (1558-1603)

The War of the Roses ended in England with Queen Elizabeth saved England from both
Henry Tudor (Henry VII) claiming the throne. Spanish invasion and internal squabbles at
Martin Luther's split with Rome marks the home. Her reign is marked by the early works
emergence of Protestantism, followed by Henry of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, and Sidney.
VIII's Anglican schism, which created the first
Protestant church in England. Edmund Spenser IV. CAROLINE AGE
is a sample poet. (1625-1649)
III. JACOBEAN PERIOD John Milton, George Herbert, Robert Herrick,
(1603-1625) the "Sons of Ben" and others wrote during the
The Jacobean Era was the period in English and Scottish history reign of Charles I and his Cavaliers.
that coincides with the reign of James VI of Scotland who also
inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I.

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 The
English Literature
Timeline

II. THE AUGUSTAN AGE

(1700-1750) 1660-1790 CE The Enlightenment Period
This period is marked by the imitation of Virgil and I. RESTORATION PERIOD
Horace's literature in English letters. The principal English (1660-1700)
writers include Addison, Steele, Swift, and Alexander Pope. This period marks the British king's restoration to the throne
Abroad, Voltaire was the dominant French writer. after a long period of Puritan domination in England. Its
III. THE AGE OF JOHNSON symptoms include the dominance of French and Classical
(1750-1790) influences on poetry and drama. Sample writers include John
Dryden, John Locke, Sir William Temple, and Samuel Pepys, and
This period marks the transition toward the upcoming
Aphra Behn in England. Abroad, representative authors include
Romanticism though the period is still largely
Jean Racine and Molière.
Neoclassical. Major writers include Dr. Samuel Johnson,
Boswell, and Edward Gibbon who represent the
Neoclassical tendencies.

The Romantic Period 1790-1830 CE

Romantic poets wrote about nature, imagination, and
individuality in England. Some Romantics include
Coleridge, Blake, Keats, and Shelley in Britain and Johann
von Goethe in Germany. Jane Austen also wrote at this 1832-1901 CE The Victorian Period
time, though she is typically not categorized with the male
Romantic poets.
Writings from the period of Queen Victoria's reign include
sentimental novels. British writers include Elizabeth Browning,
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning,
Charles Dickens, and the Brontë sisters. Pre-Raphaelites, like the
Rossetti siblings and William Morris, idealize and long for the
morality of the medieval world.

The Modern Period 1914-1945 CE

In Britain, modernist writers include W. B.
Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Dylan Thomas, W.
H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, and Wilfred
Owen.
In America, the modernist
period includes Robert Frost and 1945 - onward The Postmodern Period
Flannery O'Connor as well as T. S. Eliot, Morrison, Shaw, Beckett, Stoppard, Fowles, Calvino,
the famous writers of The Lost Ginsberg, Pynchon, and other modern writers, poets, and
Generation (also called the playwrights experimented with metafiction and fragmented
writers of The Jazz Age, 1914- poetry. Multiculturalism led to an increasing canonization of
1929) such as Hemingway, non-Caucasian writers such as Langston Hughes, Sandra
Stein, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. Cisneros, and Zora Neal Hurston.

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