Categories: All - individualism - renaissance - modernism - satire

by Felix Bartolett 5 years ago

167

Eras of Brit Lit

British literature has evolved through various distinct periods, each characterized by unique styles, themes, and representative works. The Postmodernist Period, spanning from 1939 to the present, is eclectic, encompassing diverse themes such as political power, unconscious influence, and various dramatic styles including absurdism and realism.

Eras of Brit Lit

Periods of British Literature

Postmodernist Period

Subtopic

Waiting for Godot

A Clockwork Orange

Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Flies

1984

sound

performance

concrete

modernists clinging to relevance

radio plays

absurdism

drawing room plays

kitchen sink realism

power of unconscious

utopias/dystopias

a little bit of everything
1939-today

Modern Period

James Joyce
T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeets
Virginia Woolf
Style

disconnected images

free verse

mixed slang and elevated words

interior monologue

stream of consciousness

obsession with breaking tradition

"make it new"

isolation
1901-1939

Victorian Period

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Oscar Wilde
Charlotte Bronte
George Elliot
Robert Browning
Robert Louis Stevenson
Rudyard Kipling
Thomas Hardy
Charles Darwin
Charles Dickens
magazines
drama

comedies of manners

monologues

elegies

serialized

detective

political

misdirected letters
aristocratic villains
damsel in distress
romance

bigamy

love triangles

sex

rural vs urban
rich vs poor
1832-1901

Romantic Period

John Keats
Lord Byron
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
William Wordsworth

go figure he became an author

William Blake
Robert Burns
Jane Austen
Percy Shelley
Mary Shelley
poetry
gothic fiction
sentimental novels
nature>urbanization
gothic elements

horror

human knowledge

individual thoughts

1798-1832

Neoclassical Period

John Milton
John Bunyan
Samuel Johnson
Jonathan Swift
Daniel Dafoe
Alexander Pope
essays
novels
biographies
diaries
letters
satire
time of the enlightenment
John Locke <3

life, liberty, and property

harmony, stability, wisdom
FACTS and LOGIC
1660-1798

The Renaissance

Katherine Phillips
Robert Herrick
Andrew Marvell
Christopher Marlowe
John Donne
Ben Jonson
Shakespeare
dramas

histories

comedies

tragedies

poems

conceits

metaphysical

sonnets

honest to god thinking

less religion

individualism

1485-1660

Medieval Period

The Canterbury Tales
L'Morte de Arthur
Domesday Book
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
moral tales and frame stories
kennings
stock epithets
mystery, miracle, and morality plays
folk ballads
emphasis on Christianity
chivalry m'lady
strong emphasis on morality
1066-1485

Anglo-Saxon Period

Examples
Exter Book
The Venerable Bede
Beowulf
Styles
verse form included

four beat rhythm

repetition

caesura

alliteration

mostly poems
oral tradition
Content
honored the idea of a heroic warrior
compared/contrasted Christianity and Paganism

often had religious morals

belief in fate
449-1066