Download Timeline of British Literature

TIMELINE OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
This is a brief, and by no means comprehensive, overview of literature from the major time
periods of British literacy history. This is just to give students an overall context. Any author or
work with an asterisk beside it is included in the assigned course readings.
Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066)
Most of the storytelling in this time period was of the oral tradition. There are few written
manuscripts that still survive. The major themes of this time were praise of heroes who triumph
in battle and religious/moral instruction. The predominant genre in this time period was epic
poetry.
Work: Beowulf
Medieval Period (1066-1485)
This was the time of knights and their ladies fair. The chivalric code of honor was very important
to literature of this time, and romances became popular. Religion was still a major reason for
literature, as well, and plays that instructed the illiterate masses in moral codes, called morality
plays, were produced. One of the major genres of this period was the folk ballad.
Author:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Cerca 1390)
The Renaissance (1485-1660)
This time period marks a shift in literature from a focus on religion and the afterlife to human life
on earth. Two of the most popular themes of the time were love and human potential. Genres in
use at this time included metaphysical poetry, sonnets, and drama written in verse.
Major Author:
William Shakespeare (born 1564)
Edmund Spencer, The Faerie Queene (1590)
William Shakespeare, (Romeo and Juliet (1597)
William Shakespeare, (Macbeth (1603)
Other major authors: John Donne, Christopher Marlowe, and Andrew Marvell
The Restoration (1660-1798)
The Restoration was a time where the emphasis was on rules, reason, and logic. This is the time
period of grammarians, the men who created many of the grammar rules that are still in use
today. During this time some of the predominant genres were: satire, essays and novels.
Major Author:
Daniel Defoe
Authors:
Alexander Pope
Jonathan Swift
Samuel Johnson
Romanticism (1798-1832)
The major theme of the Romantic period was nature. The Romantics saw patterns and meaning
in the natural world around them. This was a time of lyrical ballad. Also, the Romantic period
brought to popularity the gothic horror novel.
Major Author:
William Wordsworth
Authors
William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (1798)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, (1818)
Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819)
Jane Austen,
William Blake,
William Wordsworth,
Dorothy Wordsworth,
Samuel Coleridge,
Percy Shelley,
John Keats
Transcendental movement (1830-1860)
The adherents to Transcendentalism believed that knowledge could be arrived at not just through
the senses, but through intuition and contemplation of the internal spirit. As such, they professed
skepticism of all established religions, believing that Divinity resided in the individual, and the
mediation of a church was cumbersome to achieving enlightenment. The father of the movement,
an appellation he probably did not relish, was Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Major Author
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Authors
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)
Margareth Fuller, Woman in the 19th century (1845)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)
Henry David Thoreau, Walden,(1854)
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
The Victorian Period (1832-1900)
It was in this time period that the novel began its rise in popularity. The availability of cheap
paper made mass publication possible. Serialized novels and magazines were popular with the
masses. Contrived plot twists such as strained coincidences and romantic triangles were often
utilized. This time period also saw a heightened conflict between the rich and the poor. In poetry
elegies were extremely popular.
Major Author
Charlotte Bronte
Authors:
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847)
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam (1849)
Robert Browning, Men and women (1855)
George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861)
Charles Dickens
Thomas Hardy
Rudyard Kipling
Robert Louis Stevenson
Oscar Wilde
The Modern/Post Modern Period of Literature (1900-1980)
This era heralded the loss of the hero in literature. One of the major themes was technology’s
destruction of society. Poetry began to be written in a style called free verse. Many novelists
began writing in a style called stream of consciousness. Many works from this time period
contain “epiphanies.”
Major Author
James Joyce
Authors:
Joseph Conrad
D.H. Lawrence
Dylan Thomas
George Orwell
William Butler Yeats
Virginia Woolf
Realism (1850 – 1900)
Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary
technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a
technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of
middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the
systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all
affected the rise of realism. Examines realities of life, human frailty; regional culture (local
color).
Major Author
Stephen Crane
Authors: Stephen Crane , The Red Badge of Courage
Willa Cather, O, Pioneers
Emily Dickinson,“Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Existentialism (1850-today)
Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the
view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite
existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human existence, and the feeling
that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or
any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness (and hence to
find meaning in life) is by embracing existence.
Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal
responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound anguish
or dread). It therefore emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental, and holds that
the only way to rise above the essentially absurd condition of humanity (which is characterized
bysuffering and inevitable death) is by exercising our personal freedom and choice.
Major Author
Jean-Paul Sartre
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942)
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)
Modernism (1910-1965)
The beginning of the 20th century was a time of change across the globe. Whether it was rapid
growth in city populations, industrialization or global conflict, it was clear that a new and
modern world was taking shape. Modernism was an artistic movement that grew out of this
changing landscape of life during this time. Modernism, for the most part, represented the
struggle that many had with the way that new ideas and discoveries challenged their previous
lives during a time when tradition didn't seem so important anymore.
This artistic movement grew strength first in Europe in the early 20th century, eventually
growing in the United States. It was fueled by domestic shifts (increase in city life, technology
and wealth, for example) as well as changes on an international scale (like World War I). As this
stable structure of a strong, patriotic nation began to weaken, so did the writing of the time
reflect the uncertainty of its citizens. Growth, prosperity, fear, war, death, money, materialism,
psychology and disillusionment all contributed to the creation of a modern literary movement in
the United States. One that was very much a reflection of the unease of a people who felt that the
old rules and the old ways of living and thinking were no longer relevant.
Major Author
T.S. Eliot
Authors :
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B”
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Post-modernism (1965-today)
Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to
explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in
human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own
particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations
which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the
relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything;
reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us
individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing
always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather
than certain and universal.
Authors : Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night
Joyce Carol Oates, Bellefleur
J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions