TIME PERIODS

Old English Period

The literary period from 428-1100, marked by the invasion of England by the Teutonic Tribes (Angles, Saxons, & Jutes).

• Christianity won over paganism

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Beowulf

Anglo-Norman Period

The period in English literature from 1100-1350, also known as the Early Middle English Period.

• Dated from the Conquest in 1066

• Dominance of French culture

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• King Arthur

• The Play of St. Catherine

Middle English Period

The literary period from 1350-1500 between the replacement of French by Middle English as the language of court.

• Age of Chaucer, marked by political/religious unrest

• Black Death, Peasant’s Revolt, & Lollards

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Wycliffe, Malory’s Le Morte Darthur

Renaissance Period

A literary period from 1500-1660, marking the revival of classical learning and values.

Early Tudor Age

A literary period spanning from 1500-1557, where the ideals of the Renaissance rapidly replace those of the Middle Ages. Humanism modified life and in literature, experimentation, French, and Italian writings were popular.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Wyatt, Surrey, Thomas Elyot & Thomas More, “Tottel’s Miscellany”

Elizabethan Age

A segment of the Renaissance (1558-1603) noted for nationalistic expansion and religious controversy — “Golden Age of Literature”

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Bacon, Jonson, & Donne

Jacobean Age

The portion of the Renaissance from 1603-1625, noted for realism and cynicism in literature.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Chapman, Middleton, Massinger, Donne’s metaphysical verse

Caroline Age

Applied in general to the age of Charles I in England, including the Cavalier Lyricists

• drama & decline of Romanticism

Colonial Period in American Literature

Marked by the founding of Jamestown until the Stamp Act (1607 - 1765), this was a literary period marked by the separation from England.

• Utilitarian, polemical, religious

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin

Commonwealth Interregnum

The period between 1649-1660 between the execution of Charles I and the restoration of the monarchy.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes, Milton’s pamphlets, Hobbes’ Leviathan, Taylor’s Holy Dying/Living, Dryden, Marvell

Neoclassic Period

The literary period from 1660-1798 between the return of the Stuarts to the English throne and the Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Milton, Bunyan, Dryden — Paradise Lost & Pilgrims’ Progress,

Restoration Age

A literary period (1660-1700) marked by the crowning of the Stuarts in the latter part of the 17th century, reflecting against puritanism, revival of drama, receptiveness to French influence, and the dominance of classical points of view.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Dryden, Milton, Locke, Temple, Pepys

Augustan Age

Notable for the perfection of letters and learning, this time period applies to the reign of Queen Anne. Their literature paralleled Latin writings.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Addison and Steele, Swift, Pope

Age of Johnson/Age of Sensibility in English Literature

The period from 1750-1798 marking a transitional age in English literature. Neoclassicism was beginning to yield to Romanticism; a name frequently applied to the last half of the eighteenth century in England, period was a seed field for emerging romantic qualities in literature.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Burns, Gray, Cowper, Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Revolutionary Age in American Literature

Between the Stamp Act and the formation of the Federal government (1765-1789), poetry was neoclassical, dominante influence from the Pope, and patriotic works.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Trumbell, Freneau, Hopkinson, Dwight, Barlow, Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson

• Godfrey’s The Prince of Parthia, the Federalist Papers, Brown’s The Power of Sympathy

Revolutionary and Early National Period in American Literature

This period, ending with the “second revolution” represented by the ascendancy of Jacksonian democracy, was the time of establishment of a new nation. It featured a strong reaction against the Stamp Act, Continental Congress, & the DOI.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Brackenridge, Freneau, Hopkinson, Poe’s Tamerlane, Godfrey’s Prince of Parthia

Federalist Age in American Literature

The period between the formation of the nationalist government and the “Second Revolution” of Jacksonian Democracy. “Era of Good Feeling”, the U.S. emerged as a world force.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Brown, Brackenridge, Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales

Early Victorian Age

This period (1832-1870), was a time of the gradual tempering of the romantic impulse and the steady growth of realism in English letters.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Tennyson, both Brownings, Arnold, Swinsburne

Romantic Period in American Literature

The period from 1830-1865 between the “second revolution” of the Jacksonian Era and the close of the Civil War. Marked by westward expansion and moral questioning.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Bryant, Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, Simms, Melville, Dickinson, Thoreau, Emerson, Holmes

Romantic Period in English Literature

The period between the publication of Lyrical Ballads and the death of Dickens, including the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Bryon, Tennyson, Arnold, Pre-Raphaelites, Godwin, Scott, Austen, Dickens, etc

Age of the Romantic Movement in England

A literary period spanning from 1798-1832, characterized, beginning with Blake’s Songs of Innocence and ending in 1832 with the death of Scott.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Mary, P.B. Shelley, Keats (+ Lyrical Ballads)

Realistic Period in English Literature

A period from 1870-1914 starting in the latter portion of the reign of Queen Victoria. It was a reaction to Romanticism and was under attack by the First World War.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Zola, Balzac, Tolstoi, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Huxley, Spencer

Late Victorian Age

The period between 1870 and the death of Queen Victoria (1901) saw the flowering of the movement toward Realism.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Eliot, Hardy, Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hydr, Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Stoker’s Dracula

Edwardian Age

The period between the death of Victoria in 1901 and the beginning of the First World War in 1914; marked by a strong reaction in thought, conduct, and art.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Celtic Renaissance: Gregory, Hyde, Robinson, Yeats

Naturalistic and Symbolistic Period

The period between 1900 and 1930 in America, sharply divided by the First World War.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• James’ The Ambassadors, Dreiser, London, Robinson, Monroe, Frost, Fitzgerald, Hemingway

Period of Conformity and Criticism

Modernist Period

The period from 1914-1965 marked by the impact of World War I and experimental literature.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• James Joyce’s Ulysses, Galsworthy, Wells, Bennett, Forster, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Yeats

Georgian Age in English Literature

A literary period beginning with the First World War (1914-1940), marked by a long and butter struggle for national survival.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

Period of Modernism and Consolidation in American Literature

A literary period beginning with the stock-market crash and lasting through the Great Depression.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinback, Wolfe, Salinger, Ellison’s Invisible Man

Period of the Confessional Self in American Literature

The literary period beginning from the 1960s onward, marked by a time of uncertainty, revolt, and cynicism in America, especially due to the Vietnam and Cambodia eatd.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Sexton, Plath, Roethke, Bettyman, Lowell

Post-Modernist Period

The literary period from 1965 onwards with little change, characterized by continuance and spiritual malaise.

MAJOR WORKS/AUTHORS:

• Drabble’s The Ice Age, Lessing’s Children of Violence, Snow’s Strangers and Brothers, Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time