Periods of British Lit

1
Periods of British Lit

• Celtic 50BC Preliterate, pagan
• Roman 50BC 450AD Caesar, infrastructure, Latin
• Anglo-Saxon 450 1066 Angle-land, kingdoms,
  Latin, Old Eng.
• Medieval 1066 1485 Normans, French, Middle
  English
• Renaissance 1485 1660 Rebirth, humanist,
  intellectual
• Elizabethan 1558 1603 Spencer, Marlowe, Sydney,
  Shakes, Bacon
• Jacobean 1603 1649 Kings James/Charles, Donne,
  Cavaliers
• Puritan 1649 1660 No fun, Cromwell dictator,
  Milton, Bunyan
• Restoration 1660 1702 Fire, plague, first
  novels
• 18th Century 1702 1798 Enlightenment/Reason,
  non-fiction
• Romantic 1798 1832 Anti-Enlightenment, Lyrical
  Ballads
• Victorian 1832 1914 First Reform Law, Scotts
  death
• 20th Century 1914 Anything goes, Modernism, wars

2
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

3
Medieval (1066-1485)

• Chretien dTroyes 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, Knights, Pardoners, Reeves, Wife of
  Baths)
• Malory d.1471, Morte dArthur, collected stories
  of Arthurian legend, PROSE!, sets forth English
  stance on chivalry, national character

4
Renaissance (1485-1660)

• Henry VII VIII, Edward, Mary
• Columbus, Cabot
• Thomas More (Man for All Seasons, Utopia)
• Luther, Reformation, Church of England
• Sonnets 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)

5
Elizabethan (1558-1603)

• Spenser Fairie Queen
• Marlowe Playwright, Faust
• Sydney Sonneteer, Defense of Poesy, Astrophel
  and Stella
• Shakespeare
• Francis Bacon Novum Organum, Of Studies

6
Jacobean (1603-1648)

• John Donne
• Early period conceits, love poems, To a Flea
• Middle period to his wife, compass conceit
• Late 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

7
Puritans (1648-1660)

• John Milton goes blind, VERY IMPORTANT
• Paradise Lost English Epic
• John Bunyan
• Pilgrims Progress Vanity Fair

8
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

9
Restoration/18th Century

• John Dryden
• Critic An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (re
  Shakespeare)
• Poet Mac Flecknoe Scathing lampoon of
  contemporary poet Song for St. Cecelias Day
• Samuel Pepys Diarist of 17th Century London, in
  code
• Daniel Defoe Pen for hire
• Journal of the Plague Years
• Robinson Crusoe
• Moll Flanders

10
Restoration/18th Century

• Jonathan Swift greatest satirist
• Gullivers Travels 4 journeys (Lilliputians,
  Giants, Scientists, Horses)
• Modest Proposal (to eat Irish babies)
• Addison Steele first magazines
• Alexander Pope everything in heroic couplets
• Rape 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)

11
Restoration/18th Century

• Samuel Johnson first dictionary, critic,
  lexicographer, wit
• James Boswell first great biographer
• Thomas Grey poet (Elegy Written in a Country
  Churchyard)

12
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
• Dantes Divine Comedy
• Miltons Paradise Lost

13
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

14
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

15
Romantic Poets

• Second 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 Chapmans Homer, Bright
  Star, The Eve of St. Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale,
  Ode on a Grecian Urn

16
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

17
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

18
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
  DUrbervilles, 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

19
Victorian (Other)

• Gilbert and Sullivan operettas (Pirates of
  Penzance, HMS Pinafore)
• Lewis Carroll childrens 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)

20
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, Finnegans Wake
• Saki short stories (The Interlopers,
  Schartz-Metterklume Method)