Periods of English literature

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Periods of English literature

Periods of English literature

Old English: sixth through eleventh centuries

c. 410 Withdrawal of Roman legions

449 Jutes arrive in Kent under Hengest

477 First Saxon invasion (Sussex)

495 Second Saxon invasion (Wessex)

537 Death of King Arthur (resistance of Britons at an end)

547 Norwegian (Viking) colony in Northumbria

565 St. Columba: Irish mission

597 St. Augustine at Canterbury (Roman mission)

664 Synod of Whitby

eighth century Mercia (Midlands) predominant among seven kingdoms (Northumbria, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Wessex)

802 Egbert of Wessex rules over Essex, Kent, Sussex

866 Danish "Great Army" (Vikings) lands in East Anglia and occupies Northumbria and Mercia as well

871 Alfred the Great King of Wessex (d. 899)

878 boundary to Danelaw between London and Chester

tenth century English forces re-occupy Danelaw

c. 990 another Danish invasion in the south (Sweyn)

1016 Canute, son of Sweyn, king of England

1042 Death of Canute´s son; Edward the Confessor

1066 Death of Edward the Confessor; Harold (queen´s brother) defeats the Norwegian invaders at Battle of Stamford Bridge (near York), but is defeated himself in the Battle of Hastings by William the Conqueror (Normandy)

1086 Domesday Book

1095 Crusades

Middle English: twelfth century to fifteenth century

1154 Henry II (married to Eleanor of Aquitaine)

1210 English colonisation of Ireland

1215 Magna Carta (King John)

1265 Simon de Montfort´s rebellion

1282 Subjection of Wales (King Edward I.)

1314 Battle of Bannockburn: Scotland re-asserts its independence

1339-1453 100 Years´ War

1377 Richard II (sons of Edward III, John of Gaunt of Lancaster and Edmund of York/uncles of Richard II (son of Black Prince) regents)

1380 Wyclif´s bible

1381 Peasants´ Revolt under Wat Tyler

1399 Richard II deposed by Henry "Bolingbroke" (son of John Gaunt)

1400 Death of Chaucer

1415 Battle of Agincourt, "Hal" (Henry V)

1423-1424 King James I of Scotland imprisoned by the English, Kingis Quair

c. 1440 Invention of printing in Europe

1453-1485 War of the Roses (Lancaster/red rose vs. York/white rose)

1456 Gutenberg Bible, first printed book

1476 William Caxton establishes the first printing press in England

1485 Sir Thomas Malory´s Le Morte d`Arthur

Battle of Bosworth Fields: Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond

Renaissance/Early Modern Period: c. 1500-1616/1649/1660

Elizabethan/Jacobean Literature

?1477-1535 Sir Thomas More (Utopia1516)

1549 First Book of Common Prayer

1557 Tottle´s Miscellany (Songs and Sonnets)

1558-1603 Queen Elizabeth I

1564-1616 William Shakespeare

1581 Sir Philip Sidney, Old Arcadia

1603-1625 King James I (Stuarts)

1611 King James Bible ("Authorized Version")

1625-42 King Charles I (executed 1649)

Restoration: 1660- 1700/1707

1608-1674 John Milton

1628-1688 John Bunyan

1660-1685 Charles II

1667 John Milton, Paradise Lost

1678 John Bunyan, Pilgrim´s Progress

1685-1688 brother James II (Catholic)

1700 death of John Dryden

1707 death of John Farquhar

The Eighteenth Century

1712 Rape of the Lock (Alexander Pope)

1719 Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Crusoe)

1726 Gulliver´s Travels (Jonathan Swift)

1740 Pamela (Samuel Richardson)

1742 Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding)

1748 Clarissa (Samuel Richardson)

1749 Tom Jones (Henry Fielding)

Romanticism: 1798-1830

1789-1804 French Revolution

1798 Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge)

1799/1805/1850 The Prelude

1817 Biographia Literaria

1812-1818 Childe Harold´s Pilgrimage (George Gordon Byron)

1815 Vienna Congress: end of the Napoleonic era

1795-1821 John Keats

1792-1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley

1834 death of Coleridge

1850 death of William Wordsworth

The Victorian Period: 1830-1900

1809-1892 Alfred Lord Tennyson

1811-1863 William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair 1847; The Newcomes 1853-55)

1812-1870 Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist 1837; Dombey and Son 1848; David Copperfield 1849-50; Bleak House 1852-53; Hard Times 1854; Little Dorrit 1855-57; Great Expectations 1860-61)

1815-82 Anthony Trollope (Barchester Towers 1857; TheDuke´s Children 1880)

1832 First Reform Bill

1837-1901 Queen Victoria

1840-1928 Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D´Urbervilles 1891; Jude the Obscure 1895, last novel)

1843-1916 Henry James (Daisy Miller 1879; Portrait of a Lady 1881; What Maisier Knew 1897; The Golden Bowl 1904)

1859 John Stuart Mill, Liberty; Chales Darwin, Origin of Species

Modernist Literature

1856-1950 George Bernard Shaw (Widower´s Houses 1893)

1857-1924 Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim 1900)

1864-1941 James Joyce (Dubliners 1916; Ulysses 1922; Finnegans Wake 1939)

1865-1939 W.B. Yeats

1882-1941 Virginia Woolf (Jacob´s Room 1922; Mrs Dalloway 1925; To the Lighthouse 1927; The Waves 1931; Between the Acts 1941)

1885-1972 Ezra Pound (Cantos 1970)

1888-1965 T.S. Eliot (Prufrock 1917; The Waste Land 1922; Four Quartets 1935-42; Murder in the Cathedral 1935)

Post-War British Literature

1906-1989 Samuel Beckett (1953: Watt; 1951: Molloy; 1955: Waiting for Godot)

1952 Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems 1934-1952

1956 Look Back in Anger (John Osborne)

1957 The Room (Pinter)

Source : http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/seminar/abteilungen/literaturwissenschaft/ls_fludernik/docs/periods.doc

Web site link: http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/seminar/abteilungen/literaturwissenschaft/ls_fludernik

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