Periods of British Literature

449-1066

Content

belief in fate

compared/contrasted Christianity and Paganism

often had religious morals

honored the idea of a heroic warrior

Styles

oral tradition

mostly poems

verse form included

alliteration

caesura

repetition

repetition

four beat rhythm

Examples

Beowulf

The Venerable Bede

Exter Book

1066-1485

Content

strong emphasis on morality

chivalry m'lady

emphasis on Christianity

Styles

oral tradition

folk ballads

mystery, miracle, and morality plays

stock epithets

kennings

moral tales and frame stories

Examples

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Domesday Book

L'Morte de Arthur

The Canterbury Tales

1485-1660

Content

honest to god thinking

individualism

less religion

Styles

poems

sonnets

metaphysical

conceits

dramas

tragedies

comedies

histories

Examples

Shakespeare

Ben Jonson

John Donne

Christopher Marlowe

Andrew Marvell

Robert Herrick

Katherine Phillips

1660-1798

Content

FACTS and LOGIC

harmony, stability, wisdom

John Locke <3

life, liberty, and property

time of the enlightenment

Styles

satire

letters

diaries

biographies

novels

poems

essays

Examples

Alexander Pope

Daniel Dafoe

Jonathan Swift

Samuel Johnson

John Bunyan

John Milton

1798-1832

Content

human knowledge

individual thoughts

gothic elements

horror

nature>urbanization

Styles

sentimental novels

gothic fiction

poetry

Examples

Mary Shelley

Percy Shelley

Jane Austen

Robert Burns

William Blake

William Wordsworth

go figure he became an author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lord Byron

John Keats

1832-1901

Content

rich vs poor

rural vs urban

romance

sex

love triangles

bigamy

damsel in distress

aristocratic villains

misdirected letters

Styles

novels

political

detective

serialized

elegies

poems

monologues

drama

comedies of manners

magazines

Examples

Charles Dickens

Charles Darwin

Thomas Hardy

Rudyard Kipling

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Browning

George Elliot

Charlotte Bronte

Oscar Wilde

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes

1901-1939

Content

individualism

isolation

obsession with breaking tradition

"make it new"

Style

novels

stream of consciousness

interior monologue

poems

mixed slang and elevated words

free verse

disconnected images

Examples

Virginia Woolf

W.B. Yeets

T.S. Eliot

James Joyce

1939-today

Content

a little bit of everything

Subtopic

novels

utopias/dystopias

political

power of unconscious

drama

kitchen sink realism

drawing room plays

absurdism

radio plays

poems

modernists clinging to relevance

concrete

performance

sound

Examples

1984

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Rings

A Clockwork Orange

Waiting for Godot