period*sub-period*

notes british american world

Greek800 - 400 BC

tragedies

Trojan War1200 - 1100 BC

Peloponnesian War430 - 400 BC

Homer (epic poet)Iliad, Odyssey

AeschylusPrometheus Bound

SophoclesOedipus the King

EuripidesMadea

PlatoRepublic

Aristotle (student of Plato)Nicomachean Ethics

Aesop (slave, satirical fables, moral lessons)

Roman250 - 150 AD

Virgil (epic poet)Aeneid

Horace (lyric poet)

Ovid (poet)

Old English / Anglo-Saxon

450 - 1070

fate

religious vs. pagan

heroic warriors

moral instruction

oral tradition

haiku poetry - Japan

UnknownBeowulf

Bede (monk, historical writing)

Unknown (poetry anthology)Exeter Book

Murasaki Shibiku (Japan)Tale of Genji

Middle English1070 - 1500

moral / religious instruction

chivalric code of honor

oral tradition, folk ballads, plays, stock epithets, bennings

Crusades1095 - 1291

Invention of printing press1450

literary criticism = elements of plot, importance of

religion

Geoffrey ChaucerCanterbury Tales

UnknownDoomesday Book (record of survey of England)

Sir Thomas Maloryle Morte d’Arthur

Gawain Poet - Unknown (1300s, maybe John Massey?)

Pearl

Rumi (Persia, poet)

Petrarch (Italy, poet, invented sonnet)

Dante (Italy)Devine Comedy

Boccacio (Italy)Decameron

Marco Polo (1300s, Italy)Travels of Marco Polo

Renaissance1500 - 1660

*Elizabethan*1558 - 1603

*Jacobean*1603 - 1625

*Caroline*1625 - 1649

*Commonwealth*1649 - 1669

conceits = elaborate metaphors

printing press

literary criticism = classical ideas of unity of form

and content

Christopher Marlowe (1580s, playwright, poet)Hero and Leander

Edmund Spenser (1580s, poet)Faerie Queene

William Shakespeare (1590s, playwright, poet, prolific)

Ben Johnson (1620s, playwright, poet)

John Donne (1620s, poet)

Andrew Marvell (1650s, poet)

John Milton (1660s, poet)Paradise Lost

Henry Vaughan (1670s, poet)

John Bunyan (1670s)Pilgrim’s Progress

Miguel de Cervantes (Spain)don Quixote

Michel de Montaigne (France, essayist)

Machiavelli (Italy)Prince

Neoclssical1660 - 1785

*Restoration*1660 - 1700

*Augustan (Age of Pope)*

1700 - 1745

*Puritan / Colonial (America)*1650 - 1750

reason + logic

Industrial Revolution1800s

Bible + church authority

jeremiads = long prose lamenting state of society

Alexander Pope (1700s, poet)

Daniel Defoe (1710s)Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders

Jonathan Swift (1720s, satire)Gulliver’s Travels

Henry Fielding (1740s)Tom Jones

Samuel Johnson (1750s, dictionary)

Horace Walpole (1760s, politician)

John Winthrop (1630s, sermons)City upon a Hill

Anne Bradstreet (1660s, poet)

Jonathan Edwards (1730s, pious)Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Moliere (France, playwright)Tartuffe

Voltaire (1750s, France)Candide

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1760s, France, philosopher)

Social Contract

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1770s, Germany)Faust

Adam Smith (1770s, Scotland, economist)Wealth of Nations

Immanuel Kant (1790s, Germany)Critique of Pure Reason

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period*sub-period*

notes british american world

Age of Reason (America)

1750 - 1800

American Revolution1750 - 1800

political satire

Thomas Jefferson (1770s, 3rd president)Declaration of Independence

Thomas Paine (1770s)Common Sense

Patrick Henry (1770s)Give me Liberty or give me Death

Phyllis Wheatley (1770s, black poet)

Hamilton, Madison, and Jay (1780s)Federalist Papers

Romantic1780 - 1830

*Gothic*1780 - 1830

lyrical ballads

supernatural

Napoleon1800s

literary criticism = elevate common subject to the

sublime

William Blake (1790s, poet)

William Wordsworth (1800s, poet)

Samuel Taylor Coolidge (1800s)Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan

Jane Austen (1810s)Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,

Mansfield Park, Emma

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1810s, poet, novelist, playwright)

John Keats (1810s, poet)

Mary Shelley (1810s)Frankenstein

Lord Byron (1820s, poet)Don Juan

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1830s, Poet Laureate)

Washington Irving (1810s)Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle

James Fenimore Cooper (1820s)Last of the Mohicans

Robert Burns (1780s, aka Rabbie Burns, Scotland, poet)

Auld Lang Syne, Man’s a Man for a ‘That, Halloween, Battle of Sherramiur

Jacob + Wilhelm Grimm (1810s, aka Brothers Grimm, Germany)

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Sir Walter Scott (1820s, Scotland)Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Lady of the Lake

Arthur Schopenhauer (1820s, Germany, philosopher)

World as Will and Representation

Hans Christian Andersen (1830s, Denmark, fairy tales)

Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina, Little Mermaid, Emperor’s New Clothes, Snow Queen, Ugly

Duckling

Victorian1830 - 1900

*Pre-Raphaelites*1848 - 1860

*Transcendentalism (America)*1840 - 1860

*Realism (America)*1865 - 1900

paper becomes inexpensive

magazines

American Civil War1860s

local color

Robert Browning (1840s, poet)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1840s, poet)

Charlotte Bronte (1840s)Jane Eyre

William Makepeace Thackeray (1840s)Vanity Fair

Matthew Arnold (1850s)Dover Beach

Charles Dickens (1850s)Oliver Twist, Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities, Great

Expectations

Charles Darwin (1850s, biologist)Voyage of the Beagle, On the Origin of the

Species

George Elliot (1860s, aka Mary Anne Evans)Silas Mariner, Middlemarch

Lewis Caroll (1860s)Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the

Looking Glass, Jaberwocky)

Samuel Butler (1870s)Erewhon

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1880s, explorer)Arabian Nights

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890s, crime mystery)

Sherlock Holmes

Rudyard Kipling (1890s)Gunga Din, Jungle Book, If, Just So Stories

Baroness Emma Orczy (1900s, playwright)Scarlet Pimpernel

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1900s)Secret Garden

E. M. Forster (1900s)Howards End, Passage to India

Edgar Allen Poe (1840s, poet, short story)Masque of the Red Death, Raven

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1840s, poet)Paul Revere’s Ride, Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline

Henry James (1840s, transcendentalist)Turn of the Screw, Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller

Margaret Fuller (1840s, transcendentalist)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1840s, transcendentalist)Nature, Self-Reliance

Henry David Thoreau (1850s, transcendentalist)Walden, Civil Disobedience

Frederick Douglass (1850s, black, autobiography)

Nathanial Hawthorne (1850s)Scarlet Letter, House of the Seven Gables

Herman Melville (1850s)Moby-Dick, Billy Bud, Sailor

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1850s)Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Abraham Lincoln (1860s, 16th president)Gettysburg Address

Emily Dickenson (1860s, poet, slant rhyme)

Bronson Alcott (1860s, father of Louisa, teacher)

Harriet Jacobs (1860s, black)Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Louisa May Alcott (1870s)Little Women

Walt Whitman (1870s, poet, free verse)Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself

Mark Twain (1880s, aka Samuel Clemens)Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1890s, black poet)Ode to Ethiopia

Stephen Crane (1890s)Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Red Badge of

Courage

Ambrose Bierce (1900s, pessimist)Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Devil’s

Dictionary

Kate Chopin (1890s)Awakening

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1890s)Yellow Wallpaper

Stendhal (1830s, realism)Red and the Black, Charterhouse of Parma

Alexandre Dumas (1840s, France)Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1850s, France)Camille

Victor Hugo (1850s, France)Les Miserables, Hunchback of Notre Dame

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1860s, Ireland, poet, sprung rhythm)

Ivan Turgenev (1860s, Russia)Fathers and Sons

Gustave Flaubert (1860s, France)Madame Bovary

Karl Marx (1860s, Marxism)Communist Manifesto, Capital

Leo Tolstoy (1870s, Russia)War and Peace, Anna Karenina

Feodor Dostoevski (1870s, Russia, mystery)Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamozov

Jules Verne (1870s, France)Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty

Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days

Henrik Ibsen (1880s, playwright)Peer Gynt, Doll’s House

Robert Louis Stevenson (1880s, Scotland)Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde

Oscar Wilde (1890s, Ireland)Picture of Dorian Gray, Importance of Being

Earnest, De Profundis

Bram Stoker (1890s, Ireland)Dracula

Sigmund Freud (1900s, psychologist)Interpretation of Dreams

Kenneth Grahame (1900s)Wind in the Willows

Edmond Rostand (1900s, France, playwright)Cyrano de Bergerac

Anton Checkov (1900s, Russia, playwright)

Rabindranath Tagore (1910s, India, poet)Gitanjali

Literary Timeline

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period*sub-period*

notes british american world

Edwardian (Europe)1900 - 1920

Naturalism (America)

1900 - 1920

man vs. nature

Marxism

Darwinism

J. M. Barrie (1900s)Peter Pan

Joseph Conrad (1900s)Heart of Darkness

Thomas Hardy (1900s, naturalism)Tess of the d’Ubervilles, Far from the Madding

Crowd, Return of the Native

Beatrix Potter (1900s, naturalist)Tale of Peter Rabbit

W. E. B. Dubois (1900s, black journalist, autobiography)

Frank Norris (1900s)McTeague

Jack London (1900s)Call of the Wild, White Fang, To Build a Fire

Edith Wharton (1910s)Ethan Frome

George Bernard Shaw (1900s, Ireland, reformist socialist)

Pygmalian

Modern1910 - 1950

*Harlem Renaissance*1920 - 1930

experimental

technology

magic realism

World War I1910s

World War II1940s

independence of British colonies

black migration to northern cities

gospel, jazz, blues music

literary criticism = “new criticism,” close reading of

text, self-contained

H. G. Wells (1910s, science fiction)Time Machine, Island of Doctor Moreau,

Invisible Man, War of the Worlds

D. H. Lawrence (1910s)Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Virginia Woolf (1920s)Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando,

Room of One’s Own

Aldous Huxley (1930s)Brave New World

George Orwell (1940s, aka Eric Blair)Animal Farm, 1984

T. H. White (1940s, fantasy)Once and Future King

John Dewey (1910s, pragmatism)How We Think

T. S. Eliot (1920s)Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Waste Land

Robert Frost (1920s, poet)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1920s, poet)

Countee Cullen (1920s, black poet)

Willa Cather (1920s, frontier life)My Antonia

Sherwood Anderson (1920s)Winesburg, Ohio

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920s, lost generation)Great Gatsby

Sinclair Lewis (1920s)Babbitt

Theodore Dreiser (1920s)Sister Carrie, American Tragedy

Carl Sandburg (1920s, poet, Lincoln biographer)

E. E. Cummings (1920s, poet, unusual grammar)

W. H. Auden (1930s, previously British, poet)

Thornton Wilder (1930s, novelist, playwright)Bridge of San Luis Rey, Our Town, Skin of Our

Teeth

Gertrude Stein (1930s)

Gwendolyn Brooks (1930s, black poet)

Ernest Hemmingway (1930s, lost generation)Farewell to Arms, Sun also Rises, For Whom the

Bell Tolls, Old Man and the Sea

William Faulkner (1930s)Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom,

Absalom!

William Carlos Williams (1930s, poet)Red Wheelbarrow, Spring and All

Nathanael West (1930s)Miss Lonelyhearts, Day of the Locust

Dashiell Hammett (1930s, mystery)Maltese Falcon

Dylan Thomas (1940s)Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1940s, Florida)Yearling

John Steinbeck (1940s)Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath

Zora Neale Hurston (1940s, black)Their Eyes were Watching God

Langston Hughes (1940s, black poet)

Tennessee Williams (1940s, playwright)Glass Menagerie, Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on

a Hot Tin Roof, Night of the Iguana

Lillian Hellman (1940s, playwright)Children’s Hour, Little Foxes, Toys in the Attic)

Ayn Rand (1940s, Objectivism)Anthem, Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged

Rainer Maria Rilke (1910s, Austria, poet)

Franz Kafka (1910s, Germany)Trial, Castle, Metamorphosis

William Butler Yeats (1920s, Ireland, poet)

James Joyce (1920s, Ireland)Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,

Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake

Oswald Spengler (1920s, Germany)Decline of the West

Jorge Luis Borges (1930s, Argentina, poet)

Isak Dinesen (1940s, aka Karen Blixen, Denmark)Out of Africa

Albert Camus (1940s, France, absurdism)Stranger

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1940s, France)Little Prince

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period*sub-period*

notes british american world

Post-Modern1950 -

post World War II prosperity

media culture

ethnic / female writers

literary criticism = “reader response” - 1960s,

reader is active agent“new historicism” - 1980s,

culturally and time sensitive“marxist” - political

“feminist”

William Golding (1950s)Lord of the Flies

J. R. R. Tolkein (1950s, fantasy)Hobbit, Lord of the Rings

C. S. Lewis (1950s, fantasy)Chronicles of Narnia

Saul Bellow (1950s)Adventures of Augie March

Robert Penn Warren (1950s, New Criticism)All the King’s Men

James Baldwin (1950s, black, gay)

Vladimir Nabokov (1950s)Lolita

J. D. Salinger (1950s)Catcher in the Rye

Ralph Ellison (1950s, black)Invisible Man

Arthur Miller (1950s, playwright)Death of a Salesman, Crucible, View from the

Bridge

Ray Bradbury (1950s, science fiction, fantasy)Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something

Wicked this way Comes

Eugene O’Neill (1950s, playwright)

Jack Kerouac (1950s, beat)On the Road, Dharma Burns, Big Sur

Shirley Jackson (1950s, mystery, horror)Lottery

Flannery O’Connor (1950s)

Truman Capote (1960s)Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood

Madeleine L’Engle (1960s, fantasy)Wrinkle in Time

Harper Lee (1960s)To Kill a Mockingbird

Elie Weisel (1960s, Holocaust survivor)Night

Joseph Heller (1960s, satire)Catch-22

John Knowles (1960s)Separate Peace

Ken Kesey (1960s, beat)One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Sometimes a

Great Notion

Sylvia Plath (1960s, poet)Bell Jar, Ariel

Doris Lessing (1960s)Golden Notebook

Chain Potok (1960s, rabbi)Chosen

Kurt Vonnegut (1970s)Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of

Champions

Maya Angelou (1970s, black)I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Toni Morrison(1970s, black)Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved

Rudolfo Anaya (1970s, Chicano)Bless Me, Ultima

Leslie Marmon Silko (1970s, Native American)Ceremony

N. Scott Momaday (1970s, Native American)House Made of Dawn

John Updike (1980s)Rabbit, Run, Witches of Eastwick

Maxine Hong Kingston (1980s, Chinese)China Men

Rita Dove (1980s, black)Thomas and Beulah

Alice Walker (1980s)Color Purple

Sandra Cisneros (1980s, Mexican)House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek

and Other Stories

Louise Erdich (1990s, Native American)Love Medicine

Amy Tan (1990s, Asian-American)Joy Luck Club

Pablo Naruda (1950s, Chile, Communist, poet)

Czeslaw Milosz (1950s, Poland, anti-Stalinism)Captive Mind

Primo Levi (1950s, Holocaust survivor)If This is a Man

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1960s, Russia)One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer

Ward, Gulag Archipelago

Nadine Gordimer (1970s, South Africa)Conservationist, July’s People

Literary Timeline

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