AP Time Period and Historical Period Assignment

Literature Period (Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will contain

smaller time periods known as

“Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style

Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers

during this time period

450-1066 Old English. (Anglo-Saxon) Period

strong belief in fate• juxtaposition of church

and pagan worlds• admiration of heroic

warriors who prevail in battle

express religious faith and give moral instruction through literature

-oral tradition of literature

- poetry dominant genre

- unique verse form- caesura- alliteration- repetition- 4 beat rhythm

- Christianity helps literacy to spread

- introduces Roman alphabet to Britain

- oral tradition helps unite diverse peoples and their myths

- life centered on ancestral tribes or clans that ruled themselves

- at first the people were warriors from invading outlying areas: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes but later they were an agrarian based society

- Beowulf- Bede- Exeter Book

Example of Literature:

Literature Period (Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will

contain smaller time periods known as “Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style

Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers during this time

period

1066-1500 Middle English Period • plays that instruct the illiterate masses in morals and religioun

• chivalric code of honor- romances

religious devotion

• oral tradition continues

• folk ballads• mystery and

miracle plays• morality plays• stock epithets• kennings

- frame stories

- moral tales

• church instructs its people through the morality and miracle plays

an illiterate population is able to hear and see the literature

• Crusades bring the development of a money economy for the first time in Britain

• trading increases dramatically as a result of the Crusades

• William the Conqueror crowned king in 1066

• Henry III crowned king in 1154 brings a judicial system, royal courts,

juries, and chivalry to Britain

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Luminarium Fabliaux

(Chaucer) The Miller’s

Tale (Chaucer) L’Morte de

Arthur

14th Century Poetry

1. CAPTIVITY 

Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beaute of hem not sustene, So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene. 

And but your word wol helen hastily My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene, Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beaute of hem not sustene. 

Upon my trouthe I sey yow feithfully, That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene; For with my deeth the trouthe shal be sene. Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beaute of hem not sustene, So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene. 

By Geoffrey Chaucerhttp://www.poetseers.org/the_great_poets/british_poets/geoffrey_chaucer/chaucer_poems/1/

Literature Period

(Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will contain

smaller time periods known as “Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers during this time

period

1500-1660 The Renaissance:- 1558-1603

Elizabethan Age- 1561-1753

Metaphysics- 1603-1625 Jacobean

Age- 1625-1649 Caroline

Age- 1649-1669

Commonwealth Period

• world view shifts from religion and after life to one stressing the human life on earth

• popular theme: development of human potential

• popular theme: many aspects of love explored- unrequited love- constant love- timeless love- courtly love- love subject to

change

• poetry- sonnet

• drama- written in

verse- supported by

royalty- tragedies,

comedies, histories

• metaphysical poetry

- elaborate and unexpected metaphors called conceits

• commoners welcomed at some play productions (like ones at the Globe) while conservatives try to close the theaters on grounds that they promote brazen behaviors

• not all middle-class embrace the metaphysical poets and their abstract conceits

• War of Roses ends in 1485 and political stability arrives

• Printing press helps stabilize English as a language and allows more people to read a variety of literature

• Economy changes from farm-based to one of international trade

• William Shakespeare

• Christopher Marlowe

• Metaphysical Poets: John Donne

16th Century Poetry

From fairest creatures

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase  That thereby beauty's rose might never die,  But as the riper should by time decease,  His tender heir might bear his memory:  But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,          Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,  Making a famine where abundance lies,  Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.  Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament  And only herald to the gaudy spring,   Within thine own bud buriest thy content,  And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.    Pity the world, or else this glutton be,    To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

William Shakespeare

http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/william_shakespeare/the_sonnets/1/

17th Century Poetry

John DonneLOVE'S ALCHEMY.

Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,Say, where his centric happiness doth lie.        I have loved, and got, and told,But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,I should not find that hidden mystery.        O ! 'tis imposture all ;And as no chemic yet th' elixir got,        But glorifies his pregnant pot,        If by the way to him befallSome odoriferous thing, or medicinal,    So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,    But get a winter-seeming summer's night.

Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day,Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay?        Ends love in this, that my manCan be as happy as I can, if he canEndure the short scorn of a bridegroom's play?        That loving wretch that swears,'Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds,        Which he in her angelic finds,        Would swear as justly, that he hears,In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres.    Hope not for mind in women ; at their best,    Sweetness and wit they are, but mummy, possess'd.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/alchemy.php

Literature Period

(Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will contain

smaller time periods known as “Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers

during this time period

1660-1798 The Neoclassical Period:

• 1660-1700 The Restoration

• 1700-1745 The Augustan Age. (Age of Pope)

• 1745-1785 The Age of Sensibility. (Age of Johnson)

• emphasis on reason and logic• stresses harmony, stability,

wisdom• Locke: a social contract exists

between the government and the people. The government governs guaranteeing “natural rights” of life, liberty, and property

• satire: uses irony and exaggeration to poke fun at human faults and foolishness in order to- correct human

behavior• poetry• essays• letters, diaries,

biographies• novels

• emphasis on the individual

• belief that man is basically evil

• approach to life: “the world as it should be”

• 50% of the men are functionally literate (a dramatic rise)

• Fenced enclosures of land cause demise of traditional village life

• Factories begin to spring up as industrial revolution begins

• Impoverished masses begin to grow as farming life declines and factories build

• Coffee houses—where educated men spend evenings with literary and political associates

• Alexander Pope

• Daniel Defoe

• Jonathan Swift

• Samuel Johnson

• John Bunyan

17th Century Poetry

A Satirical Elegy by Jonathan Swift

On the Death of a Late FAMOUS GENERAL

His Grace! impossible! what dead!Of old age, too, and in his bed!And could that Mighty Warrior fall?And so inglorious, after all!Well, since he's gone, no matter how,The last loud trump must wake him now:And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,He'd wish to sleep a little longer.And could he be indeed so oldAs by the news-papers we're told?Threescore, I think, is pretty high;'Twas time in conscience he should die.This world he cumber'd long enough;He burnt his candle to the snuff;And that's the reason, some folks think,He left behind so great a stink.

Behold his funeral appears,Nor widow's sighs, nor orphan's tears,Wont at such times each heart to pierce,Attend the progress of his hearse.But what of that, his friends may say,He had those honours in his day.True to his profit and his pride,He made them weep before he dy'd.Come hither, all ye empty things,Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings;Who float upon the tide of state,Come hither, and behold your fate.Let pride be taught by this rebuke,How very mean a thing's a Duke;From all his ill-got honours flung,Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/jonathan_swift/poems/11818

Literature Period

(Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will

contain smaller time periods known as “Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style

Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers during this time

period

1785-1830 The Romantic (Romanticism) Period

• human knowledge consists of impressions and ideas formed in the individual’s mind

• introduction of gothic elements and terror/horror stories and novels

• in nature one can find comfort and peace that the man-made urbanized towns and factory environments cannot offer

• poetry- lyrical

ballads

• evil attributed to society not to human nature

• human beings are basically good

• movement of protest: a desire for personal freedom

• children seen as hapless victims of poverty and exploitation

• Napoleon rises to power in France and opposes England militarily and economically

• gas lamps developed• Tory philosophy that

government should NOT interfere with private enterprise

• middle class gains representation in the British parliament

• Railroads begin to run

• Novelists- Jane Austen- Mary Shelley- Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow

• Poets- Robert Burns- William

Blake- William

Wordsworth- Samuel

Taylor Coleridge

- Lord Byron- Percy Shelley- John Keats

18th Century

The Schoolboy by William Blake (from Songs of Experience, 1794)

I love to rise in a summer morn,When the birds sing on every tree;The distant huntsman winds his horn,And the skylark sings with me:O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn, —O it drives all joy away!Under a cruel eye outworn,The little ones spend the dayIn sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,And spend many an anxious hour;Nor in my book can I take delight,Nor sit in learning’s bower,Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joySit in a cage and sing?How can a child, when fears annoy,But droop his tender wing,And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,And blossoms blown away;And if the tender plants are strippedOf their joy in the springing day,By sorrow and care’s dismay, —

How shall the summer arise in joy,Or the summer fruits appear?Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,Or bless the mellowing year,When the blasts of winter appear?

http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blblakesummer.htm

Literature Period (Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will

contain smaller time periods known as “Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers during this time

period

1832-1900 The Victorian Period

• 1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites

• 1880-1901 Aestheticism and Decadence

• conflict between those in power and the common masses of laborers and the poor

• shocking life of sweatshops and urban poor is highlighted in literature to insist on reform

• country versus city life • sexual discretion (or lack

of it)• strained coincidences• romantic triangles• heroines in physical

danger• aristocratic villains• misdirected letters• bigamous marriages

• novel becomes popular for first time; mass produced for the first time

• “coming of age”• political novels• detective novels:

(Sherlock Holmes)• serialized novels• elegies• poetry: easier to

understand- dramatic

monologues• drama: comedies of

manners• magazines offer

stories to the masses

• literature begins to reach the masses

• paper becomes cheap; magazines and novels cheap to mass produce

• unprecedented growth of industry and business in Britain

• unparalleled dominance of nations, economies and trade abroad

• Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson

• George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Darwin

• George Meredith• Thomas Carlyle• Charlotte Bronte• Emily Bronte• Anne Bronte

Examples

19/20th Century

A Poet to His Beloved William Butler Yeats (1899)

I bring you with reverent handsThe books of my numberless dreams;White woman that passion has wornAs the tide wears the dove-gray sands,And with heart more old than the hornThat is brimmed from the pale fire of time:White woman with numberless dreamsI bring you my passionate rhyme.

http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blyeatslove2.htm

19th Century

Grief Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1844)

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;That only men incredulous of despair,Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight airBeat upward to God’s throne in loud accessOf shrieking and reproach. Full desertnessIn souls as countries lieth silent-bareUnder the blanching, vertical eye-glareOf the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, expressGrief for thy Dead in silence like to death—Most like a monumental statue setIn everlasting watch and moveless woeTill itself crumble to the dust beneath.Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:If it could weep, it could arise and go.

http://poetry.about.com/od/poems/l/blebbrowninggrief.htm

Literature Period (Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will contain

smaller time periods known as “Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style

Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers

during this time period

1900-1980 Modern Period • lonely individual fighting to find peace and comfort in a world that has lost its absolute values and traditions

• man is nothing except what he makes of himself

• a belief in situational ethics—no absolute values. Decisions are based on the situation one is involved in at the moment

• *mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader

• loss of the hero in literature• destruction made possible

by technology

• poetry: free verse

• epiphanies begin to appear in literature

• speeches• memoir• novels• stream of

consciousness• detached,

unemotional, humorless

• present tense• magic realism

• an approach to life: “Seize life for the moment and get all you can out of it.”

• British Empire loses 1 million soldiers to World War I

• Winston Churchill leads Britain through WW II, and the Germans bomb England directly

• British colonies demand independence

• James Joyce, Joseph Conrad

• Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas

• George Orwell, William Butler Yeats Ted Hughes

Philip Larkin

20th Century

Published 1945

Animal FarmBy George Orwell

All that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings.

Throughout the spring and summer they worked a sixty-hour week, and in August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half. Even so, it was found necessary to leave certain tasks undone. The harvest was a little less successful than in the previous year, and two fields which should have been sown with roots in the early summer were not sown because the ploughing had not been completed early enough. It was possible to foresee that the coming winter would be a hard one.

The windmill presented unexpected difficulties. There was a good quarry of limestone on the farm, and plenty of sand and cement had been found in one

of the outhouses, so that all the materials for building were at hand. But the problem the animals could not at first solve was how to break up the stone into pieces of suitable size. There seemed no way of doing this except with picks and crowbars, which no animal could use, because no animal could stand on his hind legs. Only after weeks of vain effort did the right idea occur to somebody-namely, to utilise the force of gravity. Huge boulders, far too big to be used as they were, were lying all over the bed of the quarry. The animals lashed ropes round these, and then all together, cows, horses, sheep, any animal that could lay hold of the rope--even the pigs sometimes joined in at critical moments--they dragged them with desperate slowness up the slope to the top of the quarry, where they were toppled over the edge, to shatter to pieces below. Transporting the stone when it was once broken was comparatively simple. The horses carried it off in cart-loads, the sheep dragged single blocks, even Muriel and Benjamin yoked themselves into an old governess-cart and did their share. By late summer a sufficient store of stone had accumulated, and then the building began, under the superintendence of the pigs.

http://www.george-orwell.org/animal_farm/index.html

Literature Period (Divided by Centuries)

Name of Literature Period (This section might/will

contain smaller time periods known as “Ages”

Content Typical Genre/Style Effects/Aspects of Time Period Historical Context

British Writers

during this time period

1980-Present Contemporary Period(Post Modern Period

Continued)

• concern with connections between people

• exploring interpretations of the past

• open-mindedness and courage that comes from being an outsider

• escaping those ways of living that blind and dull the human spirit

• all genres represented• fictional

confessional/diaries- 50% of contemporary

fiction is written in the first person

• narratives: both fiction and nonfiction

• emotion-provoking• humorous irony• storytelling emphasized• autobiographical essays• mixing of fantasy with

nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader

• too soon to tell • a world growing smaller due to ease of communications between societies

• a world launching a new beginning of a century and a millennium

• media culture interprets values and events for individuals

• Seamus Heaney

• Doris Lessing• Louis de

Bernieres• Kazuo

Ishiguro• Tom

Stoppard• Salman

Rushdie• John Le

Carre• Ken Follett

Requiem for the Croppies

Written in 1966, on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Printed in Door into The Dark, 1969.

"Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/10276092/Seamus-Heaney-his-10-best-poems.html