Lines in Literary History

1
Lines in Literary History

• An overview

2
Timeline

• 8th C Old English
• Beowulf

14th C Middle English Canterbury Tales
15-16th C Early Modern English Shakespeare
18th C The Enlightenment Swift, Defoe
Early 19th C The Romantic Era Austen, Shelley,
Poe
Mid and Late 19th C The Realistic Era Dickens,
Dickenson,
The turn of the 19th C into mid 20th C Yeats,
Hemingway, Thomas, Lessing
3
Early English Literature

• Beowulf Famous poem in Old English 8th CFirst
  hero
• The Canterbury TalesChaucerPilgrims telling
  stories to pass the time

4
The Birth of Modern English

• Elisabethan Era in British history the golden
  age.
• The Hight of English Renaissance flowering of
  English literature and poetry.
• William ShakespearePlaywright and poetRomeo and
  Juliet, Hamlet

5
The Enlightenment 18th C

• Common sense, respect, tolerance, democracy.
• No room in literature for imagination and
  sentiments.Literature as a medium for discussing
  politics and enlightening people.
• Jonathan Swift A Modest ProposalDaniel Defoe
  Robinson Crusoe

6
The Romantic Era

• Lets dream away! Reaction to the focus on
  reality.
• Emotions, dreams, escaping reality are features
  of the Romantic literature.
• Jane Austen Pride and PrejudiceMary Shelley
  FrankensteinEdgar Allan Poe The Raven

7
The Realistic Era 19th C

• Techmical and economic development created great
  wealth and great poverty.
• Socioeconomic classes.
• Lack of housing, iliteracy, crime and infant
  mortality were discussed in literature, shocking
  the public.
• Charles Dickens Oliver TwistEmily Dickenson
  poems

8
The turn of the 19th C into the mid 20th C

• Two World Wars, apartheid, racial problems were
  made visible in literature.
• Womens liberation and suffrage paved way for
  women writers.
• Cross culture phenomenon.
• Beatniks - Kerouac
• Virginia Wolf, Yeats, GB Shaw, Dylan Thomas, E
  Hemingway, Doris Lessing