EARLY
PERIODS OF LITERATURE
These periods
are spans of time in which literature shared intellectual, linguistic,
religious, and artistic influences. In the Western tradition,
the early periods of literary history are roughly as follows
below:
A.
THE CLASSICAL PERIOD (1200 BCE-455
CE)
I.
HOMERIC or HEROIC PERIOD (1200-800
BCE) Greek legends are passed along orally, including Homer's
The Iliad and The Odyssey. This is a chaotic
period of warrior-princes, wandering sea-traders, and fierce
pirates.
II.
CLASSICAL GREEK PERIOD (800-200
BCE) Greek writers and philosophers such as Gorgias, Aesop.
Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles. The fifth
century (499-400 BCE) in particular is renowned as The
Golden Age of Greece. This is the sophisticated period
of the polis, or individual City-State, and early democracy.
Some of the world's finest art, poetry, drama, architecture,
and philosophy originate in Athens.
III.
CLASSICAL ROMAN PERIOD (200 BCE-455
CE) Greece's culture gives way to Roman power when Rome conquers
Greece in 146 CE. The Roman Republic was traditionally
founded in 509 BCE but it is limited in size until later,. Playwrights
of this time include Plautus and Terence. After nearly 500 years
as a Republic, Rome slid into dictatorship under Julius Caesar
and finally into a monarchial empire under Caesar Augustus in
27 CE. This later period is known as the Roman Imperial
period. Roman writers included Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. Roman
philosophers included Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius. Roman rhetoricians
included Cicero and Quintilian.
IV.
PATRISTIC PERIOD (c. 70 AD-455
CE) Early Christian writings such as Saint Augustine, Tertullian,
Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome. This is the period
in which Saint Jerome first compiled the Bible, when Christianity
spread across Europe, and the Roman Empire suffered its dying
convulsions. In this period, barbarians attack Rome in 410 AD
and the city finally falls to them completely in 455 CE.
B.
THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (455 CE-1485
CE)
I.
THE OLD ENGLISH (ANGLO-SAXON) PERIOD
(428-1066)
The so-called "Dark
Ages" (455 AD -799 CE) occur when Rome falls and
barbarian tribes move into Europe. Franks, Ostrogoths, Lombards,
and Goths settle in the ruins of Europe and the Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes migrate to Britain, displacing native Celts into Scotland,
Ireland, and Wales. Early Old English poems such as Beowulf,
The Wanderer, and The Seafarer originate sometime late in the
Anglo-Saxon period.
The Carolingian Renaissance
(800- 850 CE) emerges in Europe even as great. In central Europe,
texts include early medieval grammars, encyclopedias, etc. In
northern Europe, this time period marks the setting of Viking
sagas.
II.
THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (c. 1066-1450)
In 1066, Norman French
armies invade and conquer England under William I. This spells
the end of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy and the emergence of the
a Twelfth Century Renaissance (c. 1100-1200
CE) French chivalric romances--such as works by Chretien de
Troyes--and French fables--such as the works of Marie de France
and Jeun de Meun--spread in popularity. Abelard and other humanists
produce great scholastic and theological works.
Late or "High"
Medieval Period (c. 1200-1485 CE): This often tumultuous
period is marked by the Middle English writings of Geoffrey
Chaucer, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, Christine de Pisan, the
Gawain or Pearl Poet, the Wakefield Master, and William Langland.
C.
THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION (c.
1485-1660 CE) (The Renaissance takes place in
the late 15th, 16th, and early 17th century in Britain, but
somewhat earlier in Italy and the southern Europe, somewhat
later in northern Europe)
I.
Early Tudor Period (1485-1558): The War of the Roses
ends in England with Henry Tudor (Henry VII claiming the throne.
Martin Luther's split with Rome marks the emergence of Protestantism,
followed by Henry VIII's Anglican schism, which creates the
first Protestant church in England. Edmond Spencer is a sample
poet.
II.
Elizabethan Period (1558-1603): Queen
Elizabeth saves England from both Spanish invasion and internal
squabbles at home. Her reign is marked by the early work of
Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kydd, and Sidney.
III.
Jacobean Period (1603-1625): Shakespeare's later work,
Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, John Donne.
IV.
Caroline Age (1625-1649): John Milton,
George Herbert, Robert Herrick, the "Sons of Ben"
and others write during the reign of Charles I and his Cavaliers.
V.
Commonwealth Period or Puritan Interregnum (1649-1660):
Under Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship, we find writers like
Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Browne and the final writings
of John Milton.
LATER PERIODS OF LITERATURE
These periods
are spans of time in which literature shared intellectual, linguistic,
religious, and artistic influences. In the Western tradition,
the later periods of literary history are roughly as follows
below:
D.
The Enlightenment (Neoclassical) Period (c. 1660-1790)
"Neoclassical"
refers to the increased influence of Classical literature upon
these centuries. The Neoclassical Period is also called the
"Enlightenment" due to the increased
reverence for logic and disdain for superstition. The period
is marked by the rise of Deism, intellectual backlash against
earlier Puritanism, and America's revolution against England.
I. Restoration
Period (c. 1660-1700): This period marks the British
king's restoration to the throne after a long period of Puritan
domination in England. It symptoms include the dominance of
French and Classical influences on poetry and drama. Sample
writers include John Dryden, John Lock, Sir William Temple,
and Samuel Pepys, and Aphra Behn in England. Abroad, representative
authors from France include Jean Racine and Molière.
II. The Augustan
Age (c. 1700-1750): This period is marked by the imitation
of Virgil and Horace's literature in English letters. The principle
English writers include Addison, Steele, Swift, and Alexander
Pope. Abroad, Voltaire is the dominant French writer.
III. The Age of
Johnson (c. 1750-1790): This period marks the transition
toward the upcoming Romanticism though the period is still largely
neoclassical. Major writers include Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell,
and Edward Gibbon who represent the Neoclassical tendencies,
while writers like Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, Cowper, and Crabbe
show movement away from the Neoclassical ideal. In America,
this period is called the Colonial Period.
It includes colonial and revolutionary writers like Ben Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.
E.
ROMANTIC PERIOD (c. 1790-1830): Romantic poets
wrote about nature and the imagination in England. Some Romantics
include Coleridge, Blake, Keats, and Shelley in Britain and
Johann von Goethe in Germany. In America, this period is called
the Transcendental Period. Transcendentalists
include Emerson and Thoreau. Gothic writings,
(c. 1790-1890) overlap with the Romantic and Victorian periods.
Writers of Gothic novels (the precursor to horror novels) include
Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, and Victorians like Bram Stoker in Britain.
In America, Gothic writers include Poe and Hawthorne.
F.
VICTORIAN PERIOD And The 19th Century (c. 1832-1901):
Writing during the period of Queen Victoria's reign includes
sentimental novels. British writers include Browning, Alfred
Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens,
the Brontë sisters, and Jane Austen Pre- Raphaelites like
the Rossettis, William Morris, idealize and long for the morality
of the medieval. The end of the Victorian Period marked by intellectual
movements of Asceticism and "the Decadence"
in writings of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. In America, Naturalist
writers like Stephen Crane flourish, as do early free
verse poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
G.
MODERN PERIOD (c. 1914-1945):
In Britain, modernist writers include W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney,
Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, In America, the modernist
period includes Robert Frost, Wilfred Owen, and Flannery O'Connor
as well as the famous writers of The Lost Generation
(also called the writers of The Jazz Age, 1914-1929)
such as Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. "The
Harlem Renaissance" marks the rise of black writers
such as Baldwin and Ellison.
H.
POSTMODERN PERIOD (c. 1945 onward): T.S.
Eliot, Morrison, Shaw, Beckett, Stoppard, Fowles, Calvino, Ginsberg,
Pynchon, and other modern writers, poets, and playwrights experiment
with metafiction and fragmented poetry. Multiculturalism leads
to increasing canonization of non-Caucasian writers such as
Langston Hughes, Sandra Cisneros, and Zora Neal Hurston. Magic
Realists such as Gabriel García Márquez,
Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier Günter Grass, and Salman
Rushdie flourish with surrealistic writings embroidered in the
conventions of realism.