1.

OLD ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The Old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon, was the

earliest form of English. It is difficult to give exact dates for the
rise and development of a language since it does not change
suddenly; but it is true to say that Old English was spoken from
about A.D. 600 to about 1100. English descends from the
language spoken by the North Germanic tribes settled in England
from the 5th century A.D. onwards. Except runes, used as
charms, they had no writing until they learned the Latin alphabet
from Roman missionaries.
The oldest surviving English text is
Caedmon’s Hymn of Creation
Old English Literature:

Literature means mostly poetry when we speak

of Old English period.
This period has two different styles of poetry;
the heroic Germanic poetry, the Christian
(religious) poetry as well as elegiac poetry.
The most famous heroic poem of this period is
Beowulf
Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English,
the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England
before the Norman Conquest. More than 3,000
lines long, Beowulf relates the exploits of its
eponymous hero, and his successive battles with
a monster, named Grendel, with Grendel’s
revengeful mother, and with a dragon which was
guarding a hoard of treasure.
Elegiac Poems
This kind of poems represents sad feelings
about someone who has died or something that
no longer exists. Besides, these also tell of the
sadness of exile or separation from one’s lord or
community. The Wanderer, the Seafarer, Deor’s
Lament are examples of elegiac poetry.
Religious Poems: The Christian poems, on the other
hand, were written in Latin by the monks or
churchman. It was from their imitation of church
hymns in Latin that the gradual introduction of rhyme
into English verse developed. The themes of such
poems focus on religious events or figures such as
Jesus the Christ or saints’ lives. The Venerable Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History of English People is an example of
this kind of poetry.
Riddle: A riddle is a joke or puzzle in which you
ask a question that is deliberately very confusing
and has a humorous or clever answer.
Old English Prose: Although, Old English literature was
dominated by poetry, the amount of surviving Old English prose
is much greater than the amount of poetry simply because great
majority of poems belong to this period do not survive due to
the oral presentation. Of the surviving prose, the majority
consists of sermons and translations of religious works that were
composed in Latin as well as chronicles. The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle is an example for prose genre. It is a collection of
annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons.
THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (1100 – 1500)
Medieval Romances: Medieval romances
consisted largely of tales of chivalry to which
were added a love interest to please the ladies
and all sorts of wonders and marvels were
commonly used such as giants, wizards, fairies
etc.
Mystery Plays:
Mystery plays are dramas based on Biblical
stories.
Miracle Plays:
The miracle play had as its subject either a story
from the Bible, or else the life and martyrdom of
a saint.
Morality Plays: Morality plays were dramatized
allegories of a representative Christian life in the plot
form of a quest for salvation, in which the crucial
events are temptations, sinning, and the climactic
confrontation with death. The best-known morality play
is the 15th century Everyman (Anonymous) , which is
still given an occasional performance; other notable
examples, written in the same century, are The Castle
of Perseverance and Mankind. (Anonymous)
Chaucer and His Works: Known as the Father of English
literature, Geoffrey Chaucer is widely considered the greatest
English poet of the medieval times. Besides, he also served three
English kings in high governmental positions. His masterpiece
Canterbury Tales is a collection tales told by pilgrims. However,
these tales are nor written in prose but in poetry. Chaucer
displays rich portrait of fourteenth-century life style since the
pilgrims come from all classes and areas of society such as The
Friar, the Pardoner, the Miller and the Knight. He uses irony
very effectively in his masterpiece.
RENAISSANCE PERIOD: 1500-1660
RENAISSANCE PROSE
Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Elyot and Roger Ascham are the
famous prose writers of the Renaissance England. More’s best
known work is Utopia, which tells of an ideal state. The relation
between the State and the individual are discussed in Utopia. In
the land of Utopia, there is a truly representative government,
where people work for only six hours, all sexes are equally
educated, all houses are equally comfortable, and all religions
are tolerated. Utopia is also seen as satire as it compares the
state of Britain with that of the fictional Utopia.
Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh were
the courtly poets of the Renaissance Period.
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was famous for his allegorical
verse. He wrote The Faerie Queene, The
Shepherd’s Calendar, Amoretti and
Epithalamion.
Metaphysical poetry

Metaphysical poetry was widely used in the Renaissance Period.

Religion and romantic love were the two main subject matters of
metaphysical poetry.

John Donne was the most popular metaphysical poet of the

Renaissance Period. He was famous for his use of unusual
imagery for traditional situations. ”Go and Catch a Falling Star”,
”The Indifferent”, ”A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”, ”The
Flea”, “The Ecstasy”, “The Canonization and Good Friday, 1613.
Riding Westward” are some of his poems.
John Milton
John Milton also wrote religious poetry, However, Milton's
poetry was not based on ordinary life like Donne’s poetry.
Instead, Milton wrote on Heaven, Hell, angels and demons.
Milton’s monumental epic poem was called Paradise Lost, which
tells the story of the fail of the rebel angels from Heaven,
Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from
the Garden of Eden. Paradise Regained is another important
work of his.
THE RESTORATION PERIOD: 1660-1700

RESTORATION DRAMA
The Comedy of Manners was the new type of the
comedy during the Restoration Period. The comedy of
manners criticizes the artificial values of the society
who values “good form” more than ethics and morality.
Heroic plays and the Restoration Tragedy are the
other Restoration dramas of the period.
John Bunyan, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift,
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele are
important writers of the period.
18th CENTURY NOVEL
Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding
and Tobias Smollet, Alexander Pope, James
Boswell, Samuel Johnson
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD: 1785-1837

The Romantic Period witnessed a shift from faith in

reason to faith in feelings, and imagination; a shift from
interest in urban society to an interest in the rural and
natural; a shift from public, impersonal poetry to
subjective poetry; and from concern with the scientific
to interest in the mysterious.
ROMANTIC PERIOD POETRY
William Blake, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelly, John Keats
ROMANTIC PERIOD NOVELIST
Jane Austen was famous for her novel of
manners. The novel of manners dealt with the
manners and customs of a specific social class.

Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma

VICTORIAN AGE
The Victorian Period was a time of great change as Britain became a major
imperial power and the world's first industrialized nation. Steam power, first
used to drive industries, also powered fast railways, ships, printing presses
and farmers' combines. These were soon followed by the introduction of the
telegraph, intercontinental cable, photography, anesthetics and universal
compulsory education. It was a time of great energy and the poets and
novelists of the period were extraordinarily productive as they sought to
chronicle their exciting age and provide it with a high moral tone and a
refined taste in literature and the arts. It was also a time of rising unrest and
social consciousness marks much of Victorian literature. Therefore, most of
the literary works, especially novels, reflected these problems aroused in
the Victorian age.
The Novels of Brontes:

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre, Villette,

Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Anne Bronte: Agnes Gray
Charles Dickens:
The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas
Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard
Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great
Expectations
George Elliot called "the first modern novelist”.

The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch,

Daniel Deronda
Thomas Hardy
Far from the Madding Crowd, the Mayor of
Casterbridge, Tess of the D’Urbelvilles, The
Trumpet Major and the Well-Beloved.
Oscar Wilde

Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of

Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray
20th CENTURY LITERATURE

Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim, Under the Western Eyes, the Secret
Agent, the Heart of Darkness
James Joyce

Dubliners, the Portrait of an Artist as a Young

Man, Ulysses
Virginia Woolf

Jacob’s Room, Mrs Dalloway, the Waves

George Orwell

Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The

Road to Wigan Pier, Animal Farm, 1984(a
dystopic novel)
E. M. Forster

Where Angels Fear to Tread, A Room with a

View, Howards End, A Passage to India, Maurice
J.R.R. Tolkien (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien)

The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings