Periods of British LitCeltic > 50BC Preliterate, paganRoman 50BC – 450AD Caesar, infrastructure, LatinAnglo-Saxon 450 – 1066 Angle-land, kingdoms, Latin, Old Eng.Medieval 1066 – 1485 Normans, French, Middle EnglishRenaissance 1485 – 1660 Rebirth, humanist, intellectual

Elizabethan 1558 – 1603 Spencer, Marlowe, Sydney, Shakes, BaconJacobean 1603 – 1649 Kings James/Charles, Donne, CavaliersPuritan 1649 – 1660 No fun, Cromwell dictator, Milton, Bunyan

Restoration 1660 – 1702 Fire, plague, first novels18th Century 1702 – 1798 Enlightenment/Reason, non-fictionRomantic 1798 – 1832 Anti-Enlightenment, Lyrical BalladsVictorian 1832 – 1914 First Reform Law, Scott’s death20th Century 1914 > Anything goes, Modernism, wars

Anglo Saxon (450-1066)Beowulf:

British epic about what makes a good warrior, king, Anglo-Saxon values, good and evil

Historical Beowulf ~500 AD, told ~800, written ~1000 in Old English/Anglo-Saxon

All translations from same source document

Bede: 673-735 History of the English Church and People (Caedmon of Whitby)

Alfred: d.899 King committed to writing in vernacular versus Latin

Medieval (1066-1485)Chretien d’Troyes: late 12th century, Arthurian Romances (Yvain), French

Lion in Winter: modern play about Henry II and his family in 1185, eve of crusades

Chaucer: d.1400, Canterbury Tales, Middle English, frame story was to contain 120 tales (Prologue, Knight’s, Pardoner’s, Reeve’s, Wife of Bath’s)

Malory: d.1471, Morte d’Arthur, collected stories of Arthurian legend, PROSE!, sets forth English stance on chivalry, national character

Renaissance (1485-1660)

Henry VII – VIII, Edward, MaryColumbus, CabotThomas More (Man for All Seasons, Utopia)Luther, Reformation, Church of EnglandSonnets introduced

Elizabethan (1558-1603)

Jacobean (1603-1649) reigns of James I and Charles I

Puritan (1649-1660) English civil war resulted in Cromwell as a military dictator)

Elizabethan (1558-1603)

Spenser – Fairie Queen

Marlowe – Playwright, Faust

Sydney – Sonneteer, Defense of Poesy, Astrophel and Stella

Shakespeare

Francis Bacon – Novum Organum, Of Studies

Jacobean (1603-1648)John Donne

Early period: conceits, love poems, To a FleaMiddle period: to his wife, compass conceitLate period: metaphysical, Death Be Not Proud, No Man Is an Island, Ask Not for Whom the Bell Rings

Herbert – Metaphysical poet

Andrew Marvell – between metaphysical poets and cavaliers

Tribe of Ben (Jonson)Cavalier poets: Suckling, Lovelace, Vaughan

Puritans (1648-1660)

John Milton: goes blind, VERY IMPORTANTParadise Lost: English Epic

John BunyanPilgrim’s Progress: Vanity Fair

Restoration/18th Century

• Not a lot of fiction, poetry or drama

• Age of science: i.e., Newton

• Technology: Watt (steam engine) > coal

• Age of political science: Locke, Hobbs

• Age of history: Gibbon

• Biography, dictionary, magazines, philosophy

• Age of wit, satire, descriptions of real things, ideas

Restoration/18th Century

John Dryden: Critic : An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (re: Shakespeare)Poet: Mac Flecknoe: Scathing lampoon of contemporary poet; Song for St. Cecelia’s Day

Samuel Pepys: Diarist of 17th Century London, in code

Daniel Defoe: Pen for hireJournal of the Plague YearsRobinson CrusoeMoll Flanders

Restoration/18th Century

Jonathan Swift: greatest satiristGulliver’s Travels: 4 journeys (Lilliputians, Giants, Scientists, Horses)

Modest Proposal (to eat Irish babies)

Addison & Steele: first magazines

Alexander Pope: everything in heroic coupletsRape of the Lock (mock epic)

Epigrams (hope springs eternal, a little learning is a dangerous thing, to err is human, to forgive divine, fools rush in where angels fear to tread)

Restoration/18th Century

• Samuel Johnson: first dictionary, critic, lexicographer, wit

• James Boswell: first great biographer

• Thomas Grey: poet (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)

Restoration/18th Century

Transitional Figures

• Robert Burns: National poet of Scotland – To a Mouse– Auld Lang Syne– Sweet Afton

• William Blake: Poet, printer, artist, print-maker– Poems of Innocence and Experience– Dante’s Divine Comedy– Milton’s Paradise Lost

Romantic Period (1798-1832)

• Begins with Lyrical Ballads

• Gothic novels pre-date

• Reaction against rationality of Enlightenment

• Passion, nature, supernatural, radicalism, REVOLUTION

• Ends with First Reform Bill, death of Scott, ascendency of Victoria

Romantic Poets

First Generation

• William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads!– Tintern Abbey– I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

• Samuel Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads– Rime of the Ancient Mariner– Kubla Khan

Romantic PoetsSecond Generation

• Lord Byron– After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos, She

Walks in Beauty, Childe Harold, Don Juan

• Percy Shelley: politically radical, communes, free love, married Mary, died young and mysteriously– Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, England in

1819

• John Keats: died very young, very promising– On first Looking into Chapman’s Homer, Bright

Star, The Eve of St. Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Romantic Novelists• Walter Scott: started out as a poet, felt he could

not be more successful than Byron. Practically invents historical fiction– Ivanhoe– Waverly– Rob Roy

• Jane Austen: Comedic novels about class issues/marriage– Pride and Prejudice– Sense and Sensibility– Persuasion– Northanger Abby– Mansfield Park

• Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Victorian Poets• Alfred, Lord Tennyson: poet laureate

after Wordsworth– Lady of Shalott, Idylls of the King, Ulysses,

Charge of the Light Brigade, In Memoriam

• Robert Browning: dramatic monologues (My Last Duchess)

• Matthew Arnold: also a critic (Dover Beach)

• Thomas Hardy: also a novelist (The Man He Killed, Are You Digging on My Grave?)

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Victorian Novelists• Charles Dickens: serialized novels, extremely popular

(Great Expectations, Christmas Carol, Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist)

• William Thackeray: Rival to Dickens (Vanity Fair)• Charlotte Bronte: Wuthering Heights• Emily Bronte: Jane Eyre• Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped,

Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde• Thomas Hardy: (Three Strangers) Tess of the

D’Urbervilles, Return of the Native, Far from the Madding Crowd

• George Eliot: (Woman) Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner• Rudyard Kipling: Kim, Just So Stories, Jungle Book• W.H. Hudson: How Green Were My Valleys• Joseph Conrad: (The Lagoon) Heart of Darkness, Lord

Jim

Victorian (Other)

• Gilbert and Sullivan: operettas (Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore)

• Lewis Carroll: children’s trippy fantasy/logic fiction (Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Jabberwocky)

• Oscar Wilde: playwright (Importance of Being Ernest), novelist (Portrait of Dorian Grey), short stories (The Canterville Ghost)

20th Century• George Bernard Shaw: deep comedic plays

(Pygmalion, Man and Superman, Major Barbara)

• George Orwell: dystopian social criticism (1984, Animal Farm)

• Virginia Woolf: Bloomsbury Group: Mrs. Daloway

• E.M. Forster: Passage to India, Room with a View

• James Joyce: Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as A young Man, Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake

• Saki: short stories (The Interlopers, Schartz-Metterklume Method)