British Literary Movements PDF

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———————————————————————————————————————————————— British Literary Movements ———————————————————————————————————————————————— ———————————————————————————————————————————————— Timeline ———————————————————————————————————————————————— 449 - 1066 : Anglo-Saxon Literature

- Oral tradition and poetry with use of caesura, alliteration, repetition and four-beat rhyme - Religion, moral instruction and fate, admiration of warriors in battle and contrasting images of Pagan vs Christian life - Beowulf, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (The Venerable Bede) 1066 - 1485 : Medieval Literature

- Oral tradition, folk ballads, mystery and miracle plays, morality plays, kennings, moral tales - Christian Morality, religious devotion and chivalric code of honour to teach the illiterate masses about Christianity - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, L’Morte de Arthur (Thomas Malory) and the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 1485 - 1660 : The Renaissance Age

- Poetry, sonnet, metaphysical poetry (elaborate metaphors conceits) and dramatic tragedies, comedies and histories - Human life on earth as opposed to religion, human potential and the complexities of love, including unrequited, constant, timeless and courtly love

- William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas More 1660 - 1798 : The Neoclassical Age

- Satire, poetry, essays, letters, diaries, biographies and novels - Belief that humanity is inherently evil and the world is as it should be, emphasis on the individual, reason, logic, harmony, stability and wisdom

- Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, John Bunyan, John Milton 1798 - 1832 : The Romantic Age

- Poetry and lyrical ballads - Belief that comfort and peace are found in nature and not man-made urbanized cities, human nature is good but society is evil, human knowledge is simply an impression formed on individual’s mind

- Movement of protest against society and desire for personal freedom - Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1832 - 1901 : The Victorian Age

- Novel (political, detective, serialized and coming-of-age novels), elegies, drama, magazine stories and poetry in form of dramatic monologues

- Struggles between the powerful and the masses, aristocratic villains, illustrations of urban poverty to advocate reform, country versus city life, unlikely coincidences, misdirected letters, lack of discretion, romantic triangles and heroines needing rescue from danger

- First mass production of literature, available to the masses via novels and magazines - Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde 1901 - present : The Modern Age

- Free verse poetry, epiphanies in literature, speeches, memoirs and novels - Stream of consciousness style and reactions to the devastating effects of WWI and WWII - James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, William Butler Yeats...