ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD (450 AD - 1066 AD)

 LITERARY WORKS: -
o The Ruined Burg
o The Lover’s Message
o The Maiden’s Complaint
o The Wanderer – also, Widsith – wandering life of the gleeman
o The Seafarer – hard sea life
o Deor’s Lament – much more poetic – one of the perfect lyric of the Anglo-Saxon
period
 AUTHORS – the Pagan literature of this age was chiefly in the form of oral legends from the
foreign lands, the Christian writing mainly came into existence from the teachings of the
monks from two schools – the Augustinian School (from Rome) and the Northumbrian
School (from Ireland): -
o The Venerable Bede (673 – 735)
o Caedmon (seventh century)
o Cynewulf (eighth century)
 TRANSLATOR: - Alfred (848 AD – 890 AD)

MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1066 AD – 1500 AD)

 Geoffrey:
o Historic Regum Britanniae (1137 AD), or History
 Layamon’s Brut, or The Chronicle of Britain – Middle English alliterative verse by the English
priest Layamon
 Arthurian legends: -
o Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
o Quest of the Holy Grail
o Death of Arhut
o Merlin
 Hundred Yeas wart between England and France started in 1338 AD when Chaucer was born
in 1340 AD
 Black Death – the plague of England – 1348 to 1349
 Most significant writers of this age – Chaucer, Langland, Dunbar.
 MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS:
o WYCLIFF (1320 – 1384)
 The Bible
o GEOFFREY CHAUCER (1340-1400)
 The Book of the Duchess, or The Deth of Blaunche
 The Romaunt of the Rose
 The House of Fame
 Troilus and Criseyde – epic poem
 The Canterbury Tales – collection of twenty-four stories
 Legends of Good Women
 The Parliament of Fouls
o WILLIAM LANGLAND (1330-1400)
  Piers the Plowman, or William’s Vision of Piers Plowman – allegorical
narrative poem – un-rhymed, alliterative verse divided into section called
passus
 A Treatise on Astrolabe
o JOHN GOWER (1332-1408)
 Confessio Amantis (or The Lover’s Confession) – it was composed at the
request of Richard II
 Speculum Meditantis (or The Mirror of Mankind) – iambic octosyllables
o THOMAS OCCLEVE (1370-1440)
 The Governail of Princess
 Occleve’s Complaint
 La Mala Regle
 The Complaint of our Lady
o JOHN BARBOUR (1316-1395)
 Bruce
o JOHN LYDGATE (1370-1451)
 The Fall of Princess – rhyme royal
 The Temple of Glass
 Story of Thebes
 London Lickpenny
o KING JAMES I of Scotland (1394-1497)
 The King’s Quair
o SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE (14TH CENTURY)
 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
o JOHN SKELTON (1460-1529)
 The Garland of Laurel
 Dirge on Edward IV
 Magnificence
o WILLIAM DUNBAR (1465-1530)
 The Thrissil and the Rois
 The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins
o SIR THOMAS MORE (1478-1535)
 Utopia
o WILLIAM TYNDALE (1485-1536)
 New Testament
o SIR DAVID LYNDSAY (1490-1555)
 The Dreme – allegorical lament on the misgovernment of the realm
o ROBERT HENRYSON (15TH CENTURY) – Scottish makar (term from Scottish literature
for a poet or bard, often thought of as a royal court poet):
 The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian
 The Testament of Cresseid
o SIR THOMAS MALORY (15TH CENTURY)
 Le Morte d’Arthur (or, The Death of Arthur)
o NICHOLAS UDALL (1505-1556)
 Ralph Roister Doister – first Comedy written in English language
o ROGER ASCHAM (1515-1568)
 The scholemaster – effective teaching methodology
THE RENAISSANCE (1500-1625)
THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD (1578-1603),
JACOBEAN PERIOD (1603-1625)
1. James ascended the throne in 1603
2. Court standards were lowered
3. Development of English prose
4. Decline of drama after the death of Shakespeare
 Plutarch’s Parallel Lives was translated by Sir Thomas North (1579) from the French version
 Ovid’s Metamorphoses was translated by Arthur Golding
 Homer’s Iliad was translated by George Chapman
 POETRY: -
o EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)
 The Shepheardes Calender – an allegory – used deliberately archaic spellings
to suggest a connection to medieval literature, and to Geoffrey Chaucer in
particular – Spenser dedicated the poem to Philip Sydney
 An Hymn in honour of love
 An hymn in honour of beauty
 Mother Hubberd’s Tale – denounce the neglect of arts and letters
 Amoretti (1595) – sonnet cycle – describes his courtship and eventual
marriage to Elizabeth Boyle
 Epithalamion – ode to his bride, Elizabeth Boyle, written on their wedding
day
 The Faerie Queene – Spenserian stanza
o SIR PHILIP SYDNEY (1554-1586) – Father of English criticism
 Arcadia (or The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia) – long prose pastoral
romance – romance of chivalry and love – language is characterized by
pathetic fallacy
 Astrophel and Stella (1591)
 An Apology for Poetry (or The Defence of Poesy) – literary criticism
o JOHN LYLY (1554-1606)
 Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – through this famous romance, Lyly invented
an artistic, flowery style called euphuism. This style was adopted by the
refined people of the Court. This style is characterized by the use of
alliteration and antithesis, fantastic metaphors and similes based on
mythology, and natural history of flora and fauna
o SAMUEL DANIEL’s (1562-1619) The Civil Wars
o MICHAEL DRAYTON – First English language author to write odes in the style of
Horace
 Idea
 The Shepherd’s Garland
 The Baron’s Wars
 England’s Heroicall Epistles
 Poly-Olbion – topographical poem describing England and Wales
o CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE – Hero and Leander
o SHAKESPEARE’s Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece
o BEN JONSON (1573-1637) – satirist and neo-classicist
  Epigrams and The Forest (1616) and The Underwoods (1640)
 Prose: -
o ROBERT GREENE (1558-1592)
 Mamilia
 Menaphon
o THOMAS LODGE (1558-1625) – Rosalynde; Or, Euphues’ Golden Legacy
o THOMAS NASHE (1567-1601)
 Pamphlets like The Anatomy of Absurdity and The Terrors of the Night
o THOMAS DEKKER (1572-1632) – The Gull’s Hornbook
o RICHARD HOOKER (1554-1600)
 Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594)
o FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
 The Novum Organum – its title is a reference to Aristotle’s work Organon,
which was his treatise on logic and syllogism
 “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be
chewed and digested.
o JOHN DONNE
 Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes –
death, rebirth and the Elizabethan concept of sickness as a visit from God,
reflecting internal sinfulness.
 Ignatius His Conclave – 1611
 Death’s Duel – sermon - 1631
 DRAMA: -
o JOHN LYLY’s euphuistic romances
 Campaspe
 Sapho and Phao
 Endymion, the Man in the Moon
 Midas
o GEORGE PEELE’s
 The Arraingement of Paris
 The Old Wives’ Tale
o THOMAS KYD (1558-1594) – The Spanish Tragedie (1585)
o CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593) – he crafted the blank verse -
 Tamburlaine, the Great
 Doctor Faustus – allegory on the Renaissance love of power
 The Jew of Malta
 Edward II
o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
 Two Gentlemen of Verona (1589)
 The Taming of the Shrew
 King Edward III
 Henry VI, Part 3 (1590)
 Henry VI, Part 2
 Titus Andronicus
 Henry VI, Part 1 (1591)
 Richard III (1592)
 The Comedy of Errors
  Love’s Labour’s Lost (1593)
 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
 Romeo and Juliet (1594)
 Richard II
 King John
 The Merchant of Venice
 Henry IV, Part 1 (1596)
 Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor (1597)
 Henry IV, Part 2
 Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
 Henry V (1599)
 Julius Caesar (1599)
 As You Like It (1599)
 Hamlet (1600)
 Twelfth Night, Or What You Will (1601)
 Troilus and Cressida (1602)
 Othello (1603)
 All’s Well That Ends Well
 Measure for Measure (1604)
 Timon of Athens
 King Lear
 Macbeth (1606)
 Antony and Cleopatra
 Pericles
 Coriolanus (1608)
 The Winter’s Tale (1609)
 Cymbeline
 The Tempest (1610)
 Henry VIII
 The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613)
o BEN JONSON
 Every Man in his Humour
 Every Man out of his Humour
 Volpone
 The Alchemist
 Poetaster
 The Devil Is An Ass
 The Masque of Beauty
 Sejanus His Fall – historical tragedy
 Catiline His Conspiracy – historical tragedy
o JOHN WEBSTER’s horror plays
 The White Devil
 The Duchess of Malfi
 The Devil’s Law Case
o Thomas Heywood
 A Woman Killed With Kindness – domestic tragedy
 The English Traveller – tragicomedy in five acts
 The Captives
  METAPHYSICAL POETS:
o JOHN DONNE
 Songs and Sonnets – collection
 Air and Angels
 A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day
 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
 The Ecstasy
 Of the Progress of the Soul
 Good Morrow
 The Canonization
o ABRAHAM COWLEY
 Epitaph of Pyramus and Thisbe
 The Mistress – a series of love poems
 Davideis, a Sacred Poem of the Troubles of David – unfinished epic poem
 Pindarique Odes – 15 Pindarique odes in 1656
 Constantia and Philetus
o GEORGE HERBERT
 The Temple
 The Affliction
 Easter Wings
 The Collar
 Pulley
o ANDREW MARVELL
 To His Coy Mistress
 The Rehearsal Transposed – prose work
 An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland

THE CAROLINE AGE (1625-49)

 Cavalier poets
o ROBERT HERRICK
 Hesperides – 1200 lyrical poems
o RICHARD LOVELACE
 The Grasshopper
 The Scrutinie
 The Snail
o JOHN SUCKLING
 A Ballad Upon a Wedding
 Why So Pale and Wan Fond Lover (in his play Aglaura)
o THOMAS CAREW
 He That Loves A Rosy Cheek

THE PURITAN AGE (1649-60)

 Clash between Catholics and Protestants
 Extreme fundamentalism
 Rebellion began during the age of Charles I
 Civil war between Charles I and the Puritans
 Charles I ascended the throne after the death of Cromwell; beginning of Restoration Period
  PROSE
o ROBERT BURTON (1577-1640)
 The Anatomy of Melancholy – treatise
o SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682)
 Religio Medici
 Vulgar Errors
 Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found
in Norfolk
 Christian Morals
o THOMAS HOBBES
 Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth,
Ecclesiasticall and Civil
o JEREMY TAYLOR – during Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell – “Shakespeare of Divines”
 The Liberty of Prophesying
 Holy Living
 Holy Diving
 POETRY
o JOHN MILTON
 Paradise Lost – epic poem in blank verse – 1667: ten volumes; and 1674:
twelve volumes
 Paradise Regained – 1671
 Comus – a masque in honour of chastity – 1634
 Lycidas – a pastoral elegy dedicated to the memory of Edward King, a friend
of Milton’s at Cambridge
 Samson Agonistes – tragic closet drama – 1671 – appeared with the
publication of Paradise Regained
 1645 Poems – An Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, Comus, Lycidas,
L’Allegro
 Sonnets:
 On His Blindness (or, When I Consider How My Life is Spent) – “They
also serve who only stand and wait
 On the Late Massacre in Piedmont – has been described by William
Hazlitt as filled with “prophetic fury”
 When the Assault was Intended to the City
 On his Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three

THE RESTORATION (1660-1700)

 Death of Cromwell in 1660
 Accession marked the beginning of Restoration Age
 Influence of French culture
 Theatres came back to life
 Witty, intellectual, satirizing manners and fashions of a particular time in society
 JOHN DRYDEN – England’s first Poet Laureate in 1668
o Sir Walter Scott called him “glorious John”
o The Wild Gallant – a comedy
o The Rival Ladies – a tragicomedy
o Secret Love, or The Maiden Queen – a tragicomedy
 o An Evening’s Love, or The Mock Astrologer – comedy in prose
o Tyrrannick Love, or The Royal Martyr – tragedy
o The State of Innocence – rhymed adaptation of Paradise Lost
o All for Love: or, the World Well Lost – heroic drama – tragedy in blank verse –
acknowledged imitation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, and focuses on the
last hours of the lives of its hero and heroine
o Troilus and Cressida; or, Truth Found Too Late – 1679 tragedy – reworking of
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida – prologue is spoken by Shakespeare’s ghost ,
defending the alterations made to the play
o Essay of Dramatick Poesie
o Absalom and Achitophel – satirical poem
o Mac Flecknoe – verse mock-heroic satire – direct attack on Thomas Shadwell,
another prominent poet of that time
 WILLIAM CONGREVE – satire and comedy of manners
o The Old Bachelor – play
o The Double Dealer - play
o Love for Love - play
o The Mourning Bride - play
o The Way of the World – play
o Buried at the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey
 WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
o The Country Wife – comedy – aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology – controversial
for its sexual explicitness
o The Plain Dealer – comedy – based on Moliere’s Le Misanthrope
o Love in a Wood – comedy play
 GEORGE ETHEREGE
o The Comical Revenge; or, Love In A Tub – 1664 comedy
o She Would if she Could – comedy
o The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter

AUGUSTAN AGE (1700-1785)

 Strong traditionalism
 Conceived literature primarily as an art
 To them poetry was an Imitation of human life
 Rise and fall of satires
 New developments in science shattered man’s ego
 Rise of novels
