AP Lit Literary Time Periods

Anglo Saxon Date

(c. 450-1066)

Medieval Date

(c. 1066-1450)

Renaissance Date

(c. 1485-1660)

Restoration/Neoclassic Date

(c. 1660-1789)

Romanticism Date

(c. 1789-1837)

Victorian Date

(c. 1837-1901)

Modern Date

(c. 1901-1945)

Contemporary Date

(c. 1945-present)

Anglo Saxon Historical Background

Foundations of the Oral and Heroic Tradition.

Medieval Historical Background

Norman Conquest (1066), influence of French, chivalry, courtly love, feudal morality, religious devotion, social satire.

Renaissance Historical Background

Humanism, reformation, age of global exploration, rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman learning.

Restoration/Neoclassic Historical Background

Rejection of Puritan rule, restoration of monarchy, enlightenment rationalism.

Romanticism Historical Background

Rebellion against reason and industrialization.

Victorian Historical Background

Rapid industrialization, British imperial expansion, scientific advancements, crisis of faith.

Modern Historical Background

World War I disillusionment and trauma.

Contemporary Historical Background

Post-WWII landscape, postmodernism, breakdown of absolute truths.

Anglo Saxon Focus/Style/Theme

Germanic heroic code (loyalty, bravery, fate/wyrd), Christian-pagan synthesis, alliterative verse, kennings, riddles.

Medieval Focus/Style/Theme

Transition to Middle English aristocratic ideals, religious themes, social commentary.

Renaissance Focus/Style/Theme

Peak of English dramatic theater, perfection of the Sonnet form, focus on human potential.

Restoration/Neoclassic Focus/Style/Theme

Elegant order, structural restraint, intellectual clarity, biting political satire early evolution of the English novel.

Romanticism Focus/Style/Theme

Raw human emotion, sublime nature, individual imagination, Gothic terror, exploration of darker psychology.

Victorian Focus/Style/Theme

Moral earnestness, concern over poverty and class struggle, societal anxieties.

Modern Focus/Style/Theme

Rejection of traditional victorian structures, urban alienation, psychological complexity, narrative fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness.

Contemporary Focus/Style/Theme

Postmodern deconstruction, global diversity, marginalized voices, metafiction, dystopian themes, fluid genre borders.

Anglo Saxon Key Figures & Works

Beowulf, The Wanderer, Caedmon’s Hymn.

Medieval Key Figures & Works

Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte d’Arthur.

Renaissance Key Figures & Works

William Shakespeare’s unparalleled plays and sonnets. Christopher Marlowe’s pioneering dramatic tragedies. Edmund Spenser’s lush and complex epic poetry. John Milton’s monumental blank-verse epic, Paradise Lost.

Restoration/Neoclassic Key Figures & Works

Alexander Pope and John Dryden in poetry. Jonathan Swift with his satirical masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels. Samuel Johnson’s foundational dictionary and essays.

Romanticism Key Figures & Works

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Bryan, Mary Shelley who pioneered science fiction with Frankenstein.

Victorian Key Figures & Works

Novelists like Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and the Bronte sisters. Definitive poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson and Oscar Wilde.

Modern Key Figures & Works

Virginia Woolf, James Joyce with Ulysses, T.S. Eliot’s defining poem The Waste Land, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s critiques of the modern age.

Contemporary Key Figures & Works

Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy.