HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE1. What is
Literature?Literature refers to the practice and profession of
writing. It comes from human interest in telling a story, in
arranging words in artistic forms, in describing in words some
aspects of human experiences.2. Why we read
Literature?PleasureRelaxationKnowledge3. Old English Period469 AD -
1066 AD Three conquests.The Song of Beowulf:
Middle English LiteratureBible translations,Geoffrey Chaucer:
The Canterbury Tales
Renaissance Literature Vernacular Literature.William Caxton.Book
of Common Prayer.Early Modern PeriodElizabethan EraJacobean
LiteratureCaroline and Cromwellian LiteratureRestoration
LiteratureAugustan Literature.Elizabethan EraWilliam
ShakespeareHamlet,Romeo and Juliet,The Merchant of
VeniceMacbethJacobean LiteraturePost-Shakespeare.Dramatist Ben
Jonson: Theory of HumorsBeaumont and FletcherThe Knight of the
Burning Pestle
Caroline and Cromwellian LiteratureCommonwealth.Samuel
Pepys.Great Plague.Great Fire of London.Restoration LiteratureJohn
Milton:Paradise LostThe Country WifePilgrims ProgressAugustan
LiteratureJonathan Swift:A Tale of a TubGullivers Travels18th
CenturyAge of Enlightment.Age of Sensibility.Horace Walpole: The
Castle of OtrantoRomanticismIndustrialism.William Blake: Romantic
AgeOscar WildeMary Shelley: Victorian LiteratureCharles
Dickens.Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlok HolmesEnglish Literature since
1900Modernism: Rudyard Kipling, James Joyce, Virginia
WoolfPost-Modern Literature: Truman CapotePost World War II: J.R.R.
Tolkien
