History of English Literature

History of English Literature :  

The history of English literature is very closely related to the history of the English people.It began with the emergence of the English nation and then onward kept on developing with the social development of the nation.In the history of the English there had been several religious and political changes. Several scientific discoveries and invention also changed the mode of life.Each of those changes reflected a change in its literature.As in the history of English literature,there were different phases of progress.Each of those phases,known as"Age"or "period",has been given a particular name.

**Literature comes from Latin word '' litera'' which means acquainted with letters .
**It includes different things in different context . 
When we begin the study of literature,which has always two aspects,one of simple enjoyment and appreciation,the other of analysis and exact description.

Different Periods of English Literature

1.   450 - 1066 : Anglo - Saxon Period

2.  1066 - 1500 : Middle English Period
                 a.Anglo-Norman Period(1066-1340)
                 b.The Age of Chaucer(1340-1400)

3.  1500 - 1660 : The Renaissance (or Early Modern)
                 a.Elizabethan Age(1558-1603)
                 b.Jacobean Age(1603-1625)
                 c.Caroline Age(1625-1649)
                 d.Commonwealth Period(1649-1660)

4.  1660 - 1785 : The Neoclassical Period
                 a.The Restoration Period(1660-1700)
                 b.The Augustan Age or The Age of Pope(1700-1745)

5.   1785 - 1830 : The Romantic Period

6.  1832 - 1901 : The Victorian period
                 a.The Pre-Raphaelites(1848-1860)
                 b.Aestheticism and Decadence(1880-1910)

7.  1901 - 1939 : The Modern Period
                 a.The Edwardian Period(1901-1910)
                  b.The Georgian Period(1910-1936)

10.  1939- Present: Postmodernism

Some  essential information:  

   1. O'Henry is famous for ---- Short story.

2. The poet of nature is --- William Wordsworth.

3.A Machiavellian character is --- A scheming person.

4.The Poet of the poet's in English literature is --- Edmund Spenser.

5.Poet of sensuousness --- John Keats.

6.The first known poet of English literature is --- Caedman.

7.Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice ' is a --- Tragic Comedy.

8.Winston Churchill was a statesman but awarded --- Nobel Prize in English Literature.

9.Wast Land was written by --- Thomas Stearn Eliot.

10. The greatest dramatist of English Literature is --- William Shakespeare.

Quality of Literature:

1.  All art is the expression of life in forms of truth and beauty.

2.  The untold speech is represented here.

3.  It must represent human weal and woe.

4.  The first significant thing is the essentially artistic quality of all literature.

5.   In the broadest sense , perhaps , literature means simply the written records of the race , including all its history and sciences , as well as its poems and novels ; in the narrower sense literature is the artistic record of life . 

6.  It is the poets inner reflection of mind.

First in English Literature:

1.First Epic.....Beowulf

2.First poet  ...Caedman 

3.First epic poet--John Milton

4.First novel.....Don Quixtote

5.First Drama-- Gorboduc

6.