English literature is literature written in the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
from
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, its
crown dependencies, the
Republic of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. A ...
, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, and the countries of the former
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
.
[ ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines English literature more narrowly as, "the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the ]British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...
(including Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
) from the 7th century to the present day. The major literatures written in English outside the British Isles are treated separately under American literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also inc ...
, Australian literature
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, ...
, Canadian literature
Canadian literature is the literature of a multicultural country, written in languages including Canadian English, Canadian French, Indigenous languages, and many others such as Canadian Gaelic. Influences on Canadian writers are broad both ge ...
, and New Zealand literature
New Zealand literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by the people of New Zealand. It often deals with New Zealand themes, people or places, is written predominantly in New Zealand English, and features Māori culture and the u ...
." However, despite this, it includes literature from the Republic of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. A ...
, "Anglo-American
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
", and discusses post-colonial literature
Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries. It exists on all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especia ...
.
; See also full articles on American literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also inc ...
and other literatures in the English language. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of
Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
by
Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, are called
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
.
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
. However, following the
Norman conquest
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conque ...
of England in 1066, the written form of the
Anglo-Saxon language
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th cen ...
became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society.
[Baugh, Albert and Cable, Thomas. 2002. ''The History of the English Language''. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. pp. 79–81.] The English spoken after the Normans came is known as
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
. This form of English lasted until the 1470s, when the
Chancery Standard
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
(late Middle English), a
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
-based form of English, became widespread.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
(1343 – 1400), author of ''
The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, ...
'', was a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of
vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The
invention of the printing press by
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type, movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its ki ...
in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the
King James Bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
(1611), and the
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through ...
.
Poet and playwright
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
(1564 – 1616) is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and one of the world's greatest dramatists. His plays have been translated into every major
living language
A modern language is any human language that is currently in use. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication (such as French and German) and dead classical languages such as ...
and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. In the nineteenth century Sir
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (n ...
's
historical romance
Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century.
Varieties Viking
These books feature Vikings during the Da ...
s inspired a generation of painters, composers, and writers throughout Europe.
[''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', p. 890.]
The English language spread throughout the world with the development of the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height, it was the
largest empire in history. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, of the world population at the time, During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries these colonies and the
USA
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
started to produce their own significant literary traditions in English. Cumulatively, over the period of 1907 to the present, numerous writers from
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
,
both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the US, and former British colonies have received the
Nobel Prize for works in the English language, more than in any other language.
Old English literature (c. 450–1066)
Old English literature
Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman conquest of England, Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. Th ...
, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses the surviving literature written in
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
in
Anglo-Saxon England
Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom o ...
, in the period after the settlement of the
Saxons
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic
*
*
*
*
peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
and other Germanic tribes in England (
Jutes
The Jutes (), Iuti, or Iutæ ( da, Jyder, non, Jótar, ang, Ēotas) were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nations ...
and the
Angles
The Angles ( ang, Ængle, ; la, Angli) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name is the root of the name ' ...
) c. 450, after the withdrawal of the
Romans
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
, and "ending soon after the Norman Conquest" in 1066. These works include genres such as
epic poetry
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
,
hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies migh ...
,
sermon
A sermon is a religious discourse or oration by a preacher, usually a member of clergy. Sermons address a scriptural, theological, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law, or behavior within both past and present contexts. El ...
s,
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
translations, legal works,
chronicle
A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...
s and riddles.
[ Angus Cameron (1983). "Anglo-Saxon literature" in '']Dictionary of the Middle Ages
The ''Dictionary of the Middle Ages'' is a 13-volume encyclopedia of the Middle Ages published by the American Council of Learned Societies between 1982 and 1989. It was first conceived and started in 1975 with American medieval historian Josep ...
'', vol. 1, pp. 274–88. In all there are about 400 surviving
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
s from the period.
''
Widsith
"Widsith" ( ang, Wīdsīþ, "far-traveller", lit. "wide-journey"), also known as "The Traveller's Song", is an Old English poem of 143 lines. It survives only in the ''Exeter Book'', a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the late-10th c ...
'', which appears in the
Exeter Book
The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Engli ...
of the late 10th century, gives a list of kings of tribes ordered according to their popularity and impact on history, with
Attila
Attila (, ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European traditio ...
King of the
Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...
coming first, followed by
Eormanric
Ermanaric; la, Ermanaricus or ''Hermanaricus''; ang, Eormanrīc ; on, Jǫrmunrekkr , gmh, Ermenrîch (died 376) was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia ...
of the
Ostrogoths
The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic peoples, Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Goths, Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the larg ...
.
It may also be the oldest extant work that tells the
Battle of the Goths and Huns, which is also told in such later Scandinavian works as
''Hervarar's saga'' and ''
Gesta Danorum
''Gesta Danorum'' ("Deeds of the Danes") is a patriotic work of Danish history, by the 12th-century author Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Literate", literally "the Grammarian"). It is the most ambitious literary undertaking of medieval Denmark an ...
''.
Lotte Hedeager argues that the work is far older, however, and that it likely dates back to the late 6th or early 7th century, citing the author's knowledge of historical details and accuracy as proof of its authenticity.
[ She does note, however, that some authors, such as John Niles, have argued the work was invented in the 10th century.][
The '']Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...
'' is a collection of annals
Annals ( la, annāles, from , "year") are a concise historical record in which events are arranged chronologically, year by year, although the term is also used loosely for any historical record.
Scope
The nature of the distinction between ann ...
in Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, from the 9th century, that chronicle
A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...
s the history of the Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
. The poem ''Battle of Maldon
The Battle of Maldon took place on 11 August 991 AD near Maldon beside the River Blackwater in Essex, England, during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Earl Byrhtnoth and his thegns led the English against a Viking invasion. The battle ...
'' also deals with history. This is a work of uncertain date, celebrating the Battle of Maldon
The Battle of Maldon took place on 11 August 991 AD near Maldon beside the River Blackwater in Essex, England, during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Earl Byrhtnoth and his thegns led the English against a Viking invasion. The battle ...
of 991, at which the Anglo-Saxons failed to prevent a Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...
invasion.
Oral tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...
was very strong in early English culture
The culture of England is defined by the cultural norms of England and the English people. Owing to England's influential position within the United Kingdom it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate English culture from the culture of the ...
and most literary works were written to be performed. Epic poems
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
were very popular, and some, including ''Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
'', have survived to the present day. ''Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
'' is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation—not necessarily a nation state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with as ...
status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. The only surviving manuscript is the Nowell Codex
The Nowell Codex is the second of two manuscripts comprising the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, one of the four major Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscripts. It is most famous as the manuscript containing the unique copy of the epic poem ''Beow ...
, the precise date of which is debated, but most estimates place it close to the year 1000. Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
is the conventional title, and its composition is dated between the 8th and the early 11th century.
Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous: twelve are known by name from medieval sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works with any certainty: Cædmon
Cædmon (; ''fl. c.'' 657 – 684) is the earliest English poet whose name is known. A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he wa ...
, Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
, Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great (alt. Ælfred 848/849 – 26 October 899) was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and his first wife Osburh, who bot ...
, and Cynewulf
Cynewulf (, ; also spelled Cynwulf or Kynewulf) is one of twelve Old English poets known by name, and one of four whose work is known to survive today. He presumably flourished in the 9th century, with possible dates extending into the late 8th ...
. Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known, and his only known surviving work ''Cædmon's Hymn
''Cædmon's Hymn'' is a short Old English poem attributed to Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate and unmusical cow-herder who was, according to the Northumbrian monk Bede (d. 731), miraculously empowered to sing in honour of God the Creator. The p ...
'' probably dates from the late 7th century. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
Ruthwell Cross
The Ruthwell Cross is a stone Anglo-Saxon cross probably dating from the 8th century, when the village of Ruthwell, now in Scotland, was part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria.
It is the most famous and elaborate Anglo-Saxon monumental ...
and Franks Casket
The Franks Casket (or the Auzon Casket) is a small Anglo-Saxon whale's bone (not "whalebone" in the sense of baleen) chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in ...
inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
. The poem, ''The Dream of the Rood
''The'' ''Dream of the Rood'' is one of the Christian poems in the corpus of Old English literature and an example of the genre of dream poetry. Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse. ''Rood'' is from the Old English ...
'', was inscribed upon the Ruthwell Cross
The Ruthwell Cross is a stone Anglo-Saxon cross probably dating from the 8th century, when the village of Ruthwell, now in Scotland, was part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria.
It is the most famous and elaborate Anglo-Saxon monumental ...
.
Two Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
poems from the late 10th century are '' The Wanderer'' and '' The Seafarer''. Both have a religious theme, and Richard Marsden
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stron ...
describes ''The Seafarer'' as "an exhortatory and didactic poem, in which the miseries of winter seafaring are used as a metaphor for the challenge faced by the committed Christian ...
Classical antiquity was not forgotten in Anglo-Saxon England, and several Old English poems are adaptations of late classical
Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English ha ...
philosophical texts. The longest is King Alfred
Alfred the Great (alt. Ælfred 848/849 – 26 October 899) was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and his first wife Osburh, who bot ...
's (849–899) 9th-century translation of Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
' ''Consolation of Philosophy
''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' ('' la, De consolatione philosophiae'')'','' often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation,'' is a philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius. Written in 523 while he ...
''.
Middle English literature (1066–1500)
After the Norman conquest
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conque ...
of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th cen ...
became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives, and the Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
dialects of the ruling classes became Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to:
*Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066
* Anglo-Norman language
**Anglo-Norman literature
* Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 10 ...
. From then until the 12th century, Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
. Political power was no longer in English hands, so that the West Saxon literary language had no more influence than any other dialect and Middle English literature was written in many dialects that corresponded to the region, history, culture, and background of individual writers.
In this period religious literature continued to enjoy popularity and Hagiographies
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might ...
were written, adapted and translated: for example, '' The Life of Saint Audrey'', Eadmer
Eadmer or Edmer ( – ) was an English historian, theologian, and ecclesiastic. He is known for being a contemporary biographer of his archbishop and companion, Saint Anselm, in his ''Vita Anselmi'', and for his ''Historia novorum in ...
's (c. 1060 – c. 1126). At the end of the 12th century, Layamon
Layamon or Laghamon (, ; ) – spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman – was an English poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the ''Brut'', a notable work that was the first to present the legend ...
in '' Brut'' adapted the Norman-French
Norman or Norman French (, french: Normand, Guernésiais: , Jèrriais: ) is a Romance language which can be classified as one of the Oïl languages along with French, Picard and Walloon. The name "Norman French" is sometimes used to descri ...
of Wace
Wace ( 1110 – after 1174), sometimes referred to as Robert Wace, was a Medieval Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy (he tells us in the ''Roman de Rou'' that he was taken as a child to Caen), ending his care ...
to produce the first English-language work to present the legends of King Arthur
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...
and the Knights of the Round Table
The Knights of the Round Table ( cy, Marchogion y Ford Gron, kw, Marghekyon an Moos Krenn, br, Marc'hegien an Daol Grenn) are the knights of the fellowship of King Arthur in the literary cycle of the Matter of Britain. First appearing in lit ...
. It was also the first historiography written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...
.
Middle English Bible translations
Middle English Bible translations (1066-1500) covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500. Aside from Wycliffe's Bible, this was not a fertile time for Bible translation. English literature was limite ...
, notably Wycliffe's Bible
Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of English theologian John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. These Bible translati ...
, helped to establish English as a literary language. Wycliffe's Bible
Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of English theologian John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. These Bible translati ...
is the name now given to a group of Bible translations
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. all of the Bible has been translated into 724 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,617 languages, and ...
into Middle English that were made under the direction of, or at the instigation of, John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of O ...
. They appeared between about 1382 and 1395. These Bible translations were the chief inspiration and cause of the Lollard
Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic ...
movement, a pre-Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
movement that rejected many of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
.
Another literary genre, that of Romances, appears in English from the 13th century, with ''King Horn
''King Horn'' is a Middle English chivalric romance dating back to the middle of the thirteenth century. It survives in three manuscripts: London, British Library, MS. Harley 2253; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud. Misc 108; and Cambridge, Cambri ...
'' and ''Havelock the Dane
''Havelok the Dane'', also known as ''Havelok'' or ''Lay of Havelok the Dane'', is a thirteenth-century Middle English romance considered to be part of the Matter of England.''Boundaries in medieval romance'', Neil Cartlidge, DS Brewer, 2008, , 97 ...
'', based on Anglo-Norman originals such as the ''Romance of Horn
''Romance of Horn'' is an Anglo-Norman literature ''romans d'aventure'' ("adventure story") tale written around 1170 by an author apparently named "Thomas".Judith Weiss, "Thomas and the Earl: Literary and Historical Contexts for the ''Romance of Ho ...
'' (c. 1170), but it was in the 14th century that major writers in English first appeared. These were William Langland
William Langland (; la, Willielmus de Langland; 1332 – c. 1386) is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as ''Piers Plowman'', an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem tr ...
, Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
and the so-called Pearl Poet
The "Gawain Poet" (), or less commonly the "Pearl Poet",Andrew, M. "Theories of Authorship" (1997) in Brewer (ed). ''A Companion to the Gawain-poet'', Boydell & Brewer, p.23 (''fl.'' late 14th century) is the name given to the author of ''Sir ...
, whose most famous work is ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of f ...
''.
Langland's ''Piers Plowman
''Piers Plowman'' (written 1370–86; possibly ) or ''Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman'' (''William's Vision of Piers Plowman'') is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative v ...
'' (written c. 1360–87) or ''Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman'' (''William's Vision of Piers Plowman'') is a Middle English allegorical
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...
narrative poem
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be s ...
, written in unrhymed alliterative verse
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of ...
.
''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of f ...
'' is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
. It is one of the better-known Arthurian stories of an established type known as the "beheading game". Developing from Welsh, Irish and English tradition, ''Sir Gawain'' highlights the importance of honour and chivalry. Preserved in the same manuscript with Sir Gawayne were three other poems, now generally accepted as the work of the same author, including an intricate elegiac poem, ''Pearl
A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...
''.[.] The English dialect of these poems from the Midlands
The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the Ind ...
is markedly different from that of the London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
-based Chaucer and, though influenced by French in the scenes at court in ''Sir Gawain'', there are in the poems also many dialect words, often of Scandinavian origin, that belonged to northwest England.
Middle English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
, a London-based form of English, became widespread and the printing press started to standardise the language. Chaucer is best known today for ''The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, ...
''. This is a collection of stories written in Middle English (mostly in verse although some are in prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
), that are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from Southwark
Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...
to the shrine of St Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then ...
at Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England. It forms part of a World Heritage Site. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Justin Welby, leader of the ...
. Chaucer is a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of the vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin.
At this time, literature in England was being written in various languages, including Latin, Norman-French, and English: the multilingual nature of the audience for literature in the 14th century is illustrated by the example of John Gower
John Gower (; c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civ ...
(c. 1330–1408). A contemporary of William Langland
William Langland (; la, Willielmus de Langland; 1332 – c. 1386) is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as ''Piers Plowman'', an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem tr ...
and a personal friend of Chaucer, Gower is remembered primarily for three major works: the ''Mirroir de l'Omme'', ''Vox Clamantis
''Vox Clamantis'' ("the voice of one crying out") is a Latin poem of 10,265 lines in elegiac couplets by John Gower (1330 – October 1408) . The first of the seven books is a dream vision giving a vivid account of the Peasants' Rebellion of ...
'', and ''Confessio Amantis
''Confessio Amantis'' ("The Lover's Confession") is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. Accord ...
'', three long poems written in Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to:
*Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066
* Anglo-Norman language
**Anglo-Norman literature
* Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 10 ...
, Latin and Middle English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes.
Significant religious works were also created in the 14th century, including those of Julian of Norwich (c. 1342 – c. 1416) and Richard Rolle
Richard Rolle ( – 30 September 1349) was an English hermit, mystic, and religious writer. He is also known as Richard Rolle of Hampole or de Hampole, since at the end of his life he lived near a Cistercian nunnery in Hampole, now in Sou ...
. Julian's ''Revelations of Divine Love
''Revelations of Divine Love'' is a medieval book of Christian mystical devotions. It was written between the 14th and 15th centuries by Julian of Norwich, about whom almost nothing is known. It is the earliest surviving example of a book in ...
'' (about 1393) is believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the English language.[
]
A major work from the 15th century is ''Le Morte d'Arthur
' (originally written as '; inaccurate Middle French for "The Death of Arthur") is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Rou ...
'' by Sir Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of '' Le Morte d'Arthur'', the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources. The most popular version of '' Le Morte d' ...
, which was printed by Caxton Caxton may refer to:
Places
* Caxton Street, Brisbane, Australia
* Caxton, Cambridgeshire, a village in Cambridgeshire, UK
** Caxton Gibbet, a knoll near the village
* Caxton Hall, a historic building in London, UK
* Caxton Building, a historic ...
in 1485.[''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' (1996), p. 182.] This is a compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances, and was among the earliest books printed in England. It was popular and influential in the later revival of interest in the Arthurian legends.
Medieval theatre
In the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, drama in the vernacular languages of Europe may have emerged from enactments of the liturgy
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...
. Mystery play
Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the represen ...
s were presented in the porches of cathedrals or by strolling players on feast days
The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context do ...
. Miracle
A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific lawsOne dictionary define"Miracle"as: "A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divin ...
and mystery plays, along with morality play
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
s (or "interludes"), later evolved into more elaborate forms of drama, such as was seen on the Elizabethan stages. Another form of medieval theatre was the mummers' plays, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance
Morris dancing is a form of English folk dance. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers, usually wearing bell pads on their shins. Implements such as sticks, swords and handkerchiefs may ...
, concentrating on themes such as Saint George
Saint George (Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldier ...
and the Dragon
A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...
and Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depic ...
. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actor
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
s travelled from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality.
Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* P ...
in medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
stories in churches as tableaux
The International Conference on Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods (TABLEAUX) is an annual international academic conference that deals with all aspects of automated reasoning with analytic tableaux. Periodically, it jo ...
with accompanying antiphon
An antiphon (Greek ἀντίφωνον, ἀντί "opposite" and φωνή "voice") is a short chant in Christian ritual, sung as a refrain. The texts of antiphons are the Psalms. Their form was favored by St Ambrose and they feature prominently ...
al song. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre.
There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays from the late medieval period. The most complete is the '' York cycle'' of 48 pageants. They were performed in the city of York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
, from the middle of the 14th century until 1569. Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia
The are three medieval mystery plays dating to the late fourteenth century, written primarily in Middle Cornish, with stage directions in Latin. The three plays are (The Origin of the World, also known as , 2,846 lines), (The Passion of Christ ...
.
Having grown out of the religiously based mystery play
Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the represen ...
s of the Middle Ages, the morality play
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
is a genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
of medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment, which represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre. Morality plays are a type of allegory
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...
in which the protagonist
A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...
is met by personification
Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...
s of various moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
attributes who try to prompt him to choose a godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries.
''The Somonyng of Everyman'' (''The Summoning of Everyman'') (c. 1509–1519), usually referred to simply as ''Everyman
The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them.
Origin
The term ''everyman'' was used as early as ...
'', is a late 15th-century English morality play. Like John Bunyan
John Bunyan (; baptised 30 November 162831 August 1688) was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory ''The Pilgrim's Progress,'' which also became an influential literary model. In addition ...
's allegory ''Pilgrim's Progress
''The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come'' is a 1678 Christianity, Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a prog ...
'' (1678), ''Everyman'' examines the question of Christian salvation
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρ ...
through the use of allegorical characters.
English Renaissance (1500–1660)
The English Renaissance
The English Renaissance was a Cultural movement, cultural and Art movement, artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginni ...
was a cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
and artistic movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defi ...
in England dating from the late 15th to the 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. Like most of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later — Renaissance style and ideas were slow in penetrating England. Many scholars see the beginnings of the English Renaissance during the reign of Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...
and the Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...
in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance,.
The influence of the Italian Renaissance can also be found in the poetry of Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), one of the earliest English Renaissance poets. He was responsible for many innovations in English poetry, and alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517 – 19 January 1547), Order of the Garter, KG, was an English nobleman, politician and poet. He was one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry and was the last known person executed at the instan ...
(1516/1517–1547) introduced the sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
from Italy into England in the early 16th century. After William Caxton
William Caxton ( – ) was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer (publisher), printer to be the first English retailer of printed boo ...
introduced the printing press in England in 1476, vernacular literature
Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".
In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin nor Koine Greek. In this context, vernacular literature appeared ...
flourished. The Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
inspired the production of vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
liturgy
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...
which led to the Book of Common Prayer
The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign ...
(1549), a lasting influence on literary language.
Elizabethan period (1558–1603)
Poetry
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known for ''The Faerie Queene'', an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of ...
(c. 1552–1599) was one of the most important poets of the Elizabethan period, author of ''The Faerie Queene
''The Faerie Queene'' is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books IIII were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IVVI. ''The Faerie Queene'' is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 sta ...
'' (1590 and 1596), an epic poem and fantastical allegory
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...
celebrating the Tudor dynasty
The House of Tudor was a royal house of largely Welsh and English origin that held the English throne from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd and Catherine of France. Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and it ...
and Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen".
El ...
. Another major figure, Sir Philip Sidney
''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...
(1554–1586), was an English poet, whose works include '' Astrophel and Stella'', '' The Defence of Poetry'', and ''The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
''The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia'', also known simply as the ''Arcadia'', is a long prose pastoral romance by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the 16th century. Having finished one version of his text, Sidney later significantly ...
''. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as those by Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion (sometimes spelled Campian; 12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for ...
(1567–1620), became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households. John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...
was another important figure in Elizabethan poetry (see Jacobean poetry below).
Drama
Among the earliest Elizabethan plays are ''Gorboduc
Gorboduc ('' Welsh:'' Gorwy or Goronwy) was a legendary king of the Britons as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was married to Judon. When he became old, his sons, Ferrex and Porrex, feuded over who would take over the kingdom. Porrex tried ...
'' (1561) by Sackville and Norton Norton may refer to:
Places
Norton, meaning 'north settlement' in Old English, is a common place name. Places named Norton include: Canada
* Rural Municipality of Norton No. 69, Saskatchewan
*Norton Parish, New Brunswick
**Norton, New Brunswick, a ...
, and Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Although well known in his own time, ...
's (1558–1594) ''The Spanish Tragedy
''The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again'' is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, ''The Spanish Tragedy'' established a new genre in English theatre, the reveng ...
'' (1592). ''Gorboduc
Gorboduc ('' Welsh:'' Gorwy or Goronwy) was a legendary king of the Britons as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was married to Judon. When he became old, his sons, Ferrex and Porrex, feuded over who would take over the kingdom. Porrex tried ...
'' is notable especially as the first verse drama
Verse drama is any drama written significantly in verse (that is: with line endings) to be performed by an actor before an audience. Although verse drama does not need to be ''primarily'' in verse to be considered verse drama, significant portio ...
in English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
to employ blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and P ...
, and for the way it developed elements, from the earlier morality play
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
s and Senecan tragedy
Senecan tragedy refers to a set of ten Ancient Rome, ancient Roman tragedies, probably eight of which were written by the Stoicism, Stoic philosopher and politician Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
Senecan Tragedies
The group comprises:
* ''Hercules (Sen ...
, in the direction which would be followed by later playwrights. ''The Spanish Tragedy
''The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again'' is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, ''The Spanish Tragedy'' established a new genre in English theatre, the reveng ...
'' is an Elizabethan
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...
tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
written by Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Although well known in his own time, ...
between 1582 and 1592, which was popular and influential in its time, and established a new genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
in English literature theatre, the revenge play
The revenge tragedy, or revenge play, is a dramatic genre in which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual injury. The term ''revenge tragedy'' was first introduced in 1900 by A. H. Thorndike to label a class of plays written in t ...
.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
(1564–1616) stands out in this period as a poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
and playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare wrote plays in a variety of genres, including histories (such as ''Richard III'' and ''Henry IV''), tragedies
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
(such as ''Hamlet'', ''Othello'', and ''Macbeth'') comedies
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term origin ...
(such as ''Midsummer Night's Dream'', ''As You Like It'', and ''Twelfth Night'') and the late romances, or tragicomedies. Shakespeare's career continues in the Jacobean period.
Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1558 and 1642.
This is the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. ...
include Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the ...
, and Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont ( ; 1584 – 6 March 1616) was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher.
Beaumont's life
Beaumont was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace Dieu, near Thrin ...
.
Jacobean period (1603–1625)
Drama
In the early 17th century Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
wrote the so-called " problem plays", as well as a number of his best known tragedies
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
, including ''Macbeth
''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those w ...
'' and ''King Lear
''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.
It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane an ...
''. In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
or tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragedy, tragic and comedy, comic forms. Most often seen in drama, dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the ov ...
and completed three more major plays, including '' The Tempest''. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.
After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
(1572–1637) was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era
The Jacobean era was the period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James VI of Scotland who also inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I. The Jacobean era succeeds the Elizabethan era and precedes the Ca ...
. Jonson's aesthetics hark back to the Middle Ages and his characters embody the theory of humours
Humorism, the humoral theory, or humoralism, was a system of medicine detailing a supposed makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Ancient Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers.
Humorism began to fall out of favor in the 1850s ...
, which was based on contemporary medical theory. Jonson's comedies include ''Volpone
''Volpone'' (, Italian for "sly fox") is a comedy play by English playwright Ben Jonson first produced in 1605–1606, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-perform ...
'' (1605 or 1606) and ''Bartholomew Fair
The Bartholomew Fair was one of London's pre-eminent summer charter fairs. A charter for the fair was granted to Rahere by Henry I to fund the Priory of St Bartholomew; and from 1133 to 1855 it took place each year on 24 August within the preci ...
'' (1614). Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher
Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I (1603–25).
They became known as a team early in their association, so much so that their jo ...
, who wrote the popular comedy, ''The Knight of the Burning Pestle
''The Knight of the Burning Pestle'' is a play in five acts by Francis Beaumont, first performed at Blackfriars Theatre in 1607 and published in a book size, quarto in 1613. It is the earliest whole parody (or pastiche) play in English. The pl ...
'' (probably 1607–08), a satire of the rising middle class.
Another popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play
The revenge tragedy, or revenge play, is a dramatic genre in which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual injury. The term ''revenge tragedy'' was first introduced in 1900 by A. H. Thorndike to label a class of plays written in t ...
, which was popularized in the Elizabethan era by Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Although well known in his own time, ...
(1558–1594), and then further developed later by John Webster
John Webster (c. 1580 – c. 1632) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies '' The White Devil'' and ''The Duchess of Malfi'', which are often seen as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and car ...
(?1578–?1632), ''The White Devil
''The White Devil'' (full original title: ''The White Divel; or, The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano. With The Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan'') is a tragedy by English playwright John We ...
'' (1612) and ''The Duchess of Malfi
''The Duchess of Malfi'' (originally published as ''The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy'') is a Jacobean revenge tragedy written by English dramatist John Webster in 1612–1613. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, ...
'' (1613). Other revenge tragedies include '' The Changeling'' written by Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt ''Midleton'') was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jac ...
and William Rowley
William Rowley (c. 1585 – February 1626) was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626 in ...
.
Poetry
George Chapman
George Chapman (Hitchin, Hertfordshire, – London, 12 May 1634) was an English dramatist, translator and poet. He was a classical scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been speculated to be the Rival Poet of Shak ...
(c. 1559 – c. 1634) is remembered chiefly for his famous translation in 1616 of Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
's ''Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...
'' and ''Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...
'' into English verse. This was the first ever complete translations of either poem into the English language. The translation had a profound influence on English literature and inspired John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...
's famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816).
Shakespeare popularized the English sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credi ...
, which made significant changes to Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited w ...
's model. A collection of 154 by sonnets
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...
, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, were first published in a 1609 quarto.
Besides Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, the major poets of the early 17th century included the Metaphysical poet
The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterised by the inventive use of metaphysical conceit, conceits, and by a greater emphasis on the spo ...
s: John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...
(1572–1631), George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devoti ...
(1593–1633), Henry Vaughan
Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695) was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author and translator writing in English, and a medical physician. His religious poetry appeared in ''Silex Scintillans'' in 1650, with a second part in 1655.''Oxfo ...
, Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell (; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend ...
, and Richard Crashaw
Richard Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649) was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature.
Crashaw was the son of a famous A ...
.[.] Their style was characterized by wit and metaphysical conceits, that is far-fetched or unusual similes or metaphors.
Prose
The most important prose work of the early 17th century was the King James Bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
. This, one of the most massive translation projects in the history of English up to this time, was started in 1604 and completed in 1611. This represents the culmination of a tradition of Bible translation into English
Partial Bible translations into English language, languages of the English people can be traced back to the late 7th century, including translations into Old English, Old and Middle English. More than 100 complete translations into English have b ...
that began with the work of William Tyndale
William Tyndale (; sometimes spelled ''Tynsdale'', ''Tindall'', ''Tindill'', ''Tyndall''; – ) was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his executi ...
, and it became the standard Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
of the Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...
.
Late Renaissance (1625–1660)
Poetry
The Metaphysical poets
The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterised by the inventive use of conceits, and by a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrica ...
John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...
(1572–1631) and George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devoti ...
(1593–1633) were still alive after 1625, and later in the 17th century a second generation of metaphysical poets were writing, including Richard Crashaw
Richard Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649) was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature.
Crashaw was the son of a famous A ...
(1613–1649), Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell (; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend ...
(1621–1678), Thomas Traherne
Thomas Traherne (; 1636 or 1637) was an English poet, Anglican cleric, theologian, and religious writer. The intense, scholarly spirituality in his writings has led to his being commemorated by some parts of the Anglican Communion on 10 October ...
(1636 or 1637–1674) and Henry Vaughan
Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695) was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author and translator writing in English, and a medical physician. His religious poetry appeared in ''Silex Scintillans'' in 1650, with a second part in 1655.''Oxfo ...
(1622–1695). The Cavalier poets were another important group of 17th-century poets, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–51). (King Charles reigned from 1625 and was executed in 1649). The best known of the Cavalier poets
The cavalier poets was a school of English poets of the 17th century, that came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Charles, a connoisseur of the fine arts, supported poets who created the art ...
are Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew
Thomas Carew (pronounced as "Carey") (1595 – 22 March 1640) was an English poet, among the 'Cavalier' group of Caroline poets.
Biography
He was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, master in chancery, and his wife Alice, daughter of Sir John Rive ...
and Sir John Suckling. They "were not a formal group, but all were influenced by" Ben Jonson. Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick was not a courtier, but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works make use of allegory and classical allusions, and are influenced by Roman authors Horace, Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
and Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
. John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
(1608–1674) "was the last great poet of the English Renaissance" and published a number of works before 1660, including ''L'Allegro
''L'Allegro'' is a pastoral poem by John Milton published in his 1645 ''Poems''. ''L'Allegro'' (which means "the happy man" in Italian) has from its first appearance been paired with the contrasting pastoral poem, ''Il Penseroso'' ("the melan ...
'',1631; ''Il Penseroso
''Il Penseroso'' ("the thinker") is a poem by John Milton, first found in the 1645/1646 quarto of verses ''The Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin'', published by Humphrey Moseley. It was presented as a companion piece to ''L'Al ...
'', 1634; ''Comus (John Milton), Comus'' (a masque), 1638; and ''Lycidas'', (1638). However, his major epic works, including ''Paradise Lost'' (1667) were published in the Restoration period.
Restoration Age (1660–1700)
Restoration literature includes both ''Paradise Lost'' and the John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, Earl of Rochester's ''Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, Sodom,'' the sexual comedy of ''The Country Wife'' and the moral wisdom of ''Pilgrim's Progress
''The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come'' is a 1678 Christianity, Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a prog ...
.'' It saw Locke's ''Two Treatises on Government,'' the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments and the holy meditations of Robert Boyle, the Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, hysterical attacks on theatres from Jeremy Collier, the pioneering of literary criticism from Dryden, and the first newspapers. The official break in literary culture caused by censorship and radically moralist standards under Cromwell's Puritan regime created a gap in literary tradition, allowing a seemingly fresh start for all forms of literature after the Restoration. During the Interregnum, the royalist forces attached to the court of Charles I of England, Charles I went into exile with the twenty-year-old Charles II of England, Charles II. The nobility who travelled with Charles II were therefore lodged for over a decade in the midst of the continent's literary scene.
Poetry
John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
, one of the greatest English poets, wrote at this time of religious flux and political upheaval. Milton is best known for his epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' (1667). Among other important poems include ''L'Allegro
''L'Allegro'' is a pastoral poem by John Milton published in his 1645 ''Poems''. ''L'Allegro'' (which means "the happy man" in Italian) has from its first appearance been paired with the contrasting pastoral poem, ''Il Penseroso'' ("the melan ...
'', 1631, ''Il Penseroso
''Il Penseroso'' ("the thinker") is a poem by John Milton, first found in the 1645/1646 quarto of verses ''The Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin'', published by Humphrey Moseley. It was presented as a companion piece to ''L'Al ...
'' 1634, ''Comus (John Milton), Comus'' (a masque), 1638 and ''Lycidas''. Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. His celebrated ''Areopagitica'', written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and Freedom of the press#United Kingdom, freedom of the press.
The largest and most important poetic form of the era was satire. In general, publication of satire was done anonymously, as there were great dangers in being associated with a satire.
John Dryden (1631–1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry. Dryden's greatest achievements were in satiric verse in works like the mock-heroic ''MacFlecknoe'' (1682). Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was heavily influenced by Dryden, and often borrowed from him; other writers in the 18th century were equally influenced by both Dryden and Pope.
Prose
Prose in the Restoration period is dominated by Christianity, Christian religious writing, but the Restoration also saw the beginnings of two genres that would dominate later periods, fiction and journalism. Religious writing often strayed into political and economic writing, just as political and economic writing implied or directly addressed religion. The Restoration was also the time when John Locke wrote many of his philosophical works. His two ''Treatises on Government,'' which later inspired the thinkers in the American Revolution. The Restoration moderated most of the more strident sectarian writing, but radicalism persisted after the Restoration. Puritan authors such as John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
were forced to retire from public life or adapt, and those authors who had preached against monarchy and who had participated directly in the regicide of Charles I of England, Charles I were partially suppressed. Consequently, violent writings were forced underground, and many of those who had served in the Interregnum attenuated their positions in the Restoration. John Bunyan
John Bunyan (; baptised 30 November 162831 August 1688) was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory ''The Pilgrim's Progress,'' which also became an influential literary model. In addition ...
stands out beyond other religious authors of the period. Bunyan's ''The Pilgrim's Progress'' is an allegory
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...
of personal salvation and a guide to the Christian life.
During the Restoration period, the most common manner of getting news would have been a broadsheet publication. A single, large sheet of paper might have a written, usually partisan, account of an event.
It is impossible to satisfactorily date the beginning of the novel in English. However, long fiction and fictional biographies began to distinguish themselves from other forms in England during the Restoration period. An existing tradition of ''Romance'' fiction in France and Spain was popular in England. One of the most significant figures in the rise of the novel in the Restoration period is Aphra Behn, author of ''Oroonoko'' (1688), who was not only the first professional female novelist, but she may be among the first professional novelists of either sex in England.
Drama
As soon as the previous Puritan regime's ban on public stage representations was lifted, drama recreated itself quickly and abundantly. The most famous plays of the early Restoration period are the unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege, which reflect the atmosphere at Court, and celebrate an aristocratic machismo, macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. After a sharp drop in both quality and quantity in the 1680s, the mid-1690s saw a brief second flowering of the drama, especially comedy. Comedies like William Congreve (playwright), William Congreve's ''The Way of the World'' (1700), and John Vanbrugh's ''The Relapse'' (1696) and ''The Provoked Wife'' (1697) were "softer" and more middle-class in ethos, very different from the aristocratic extravaganza twenty years earlier, and aimed at a wider audience.
18th century
Augustan literature (1700–1745)
During the 18th century literature reflected the worldview of the Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason): a rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues that promoted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility. Led by the philosophers who were inspired by the discoveries of the previous century by people like Isaac Newton and the writings of Descartes, John Locke and Francis Bacon. They sought to discover and to act upon universally valid principles governing humanity, nature, and society. They variously attacked spiritual and scientific authority, dogmatism, intolerance, censorship, and economic and social restraints. They considered the state the proper and rational instrument of progress. The extreme rationalism and skepticism of the age led naturally to deism and also played a part in bringing the later reaction of romanticism. The Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot epitomized the spirit of the age.
The term Augustan literature derives from authors of the 1720s and 1730s themselves, who responded to a term that George I of Great Britain preferred for himself. While George I meant the title to reflect his might, they instead saw in it a reflection of Ancient Rome's transition from rough and ready literature to highly political and highly polished literature. It is an age of exuberance and scandal, of enormous energy and inventiveness and outrage, that reflected an era when English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish people found themselves in the midst of an expanding economy, lowering barriers to education, and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
Poetry
It was during this time that poet James Thomson (poet), James Thomson (1700–1748) produced his melancholy ''The Seasons (Thomson poem), The Seasons'' (1728–30) and Edward Young (1681–1765) wrote his poem ''Night Thoughts'' (1742), though the most outstanding poet of the age is Alexander Pope (1688–1744). It is also the era that saw a serious competition over the proper model for the pastoral poetry, pastoral. In criticism, poets struggled with a doctrine of ''decorum,'' of matching proper words with proper sense and of achieving a diction that matched the gravity of a subject. At the same time, the mock-heroic was at its zenith and Pope's ''Rape of the Lock'' (1712–17) and ''The Dunciad'' (1728–43) are still considered to be the greatest mock-heroic poems ever written. Pope also translated the ''Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...
'' (1715–20) and the ''Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...
'' (1725–26). Since his death, Pope has been in a constant state of re-evaluation.
Drama
Drama in the early part of the period featured the last plays of John Vanbrugh and William Congreve (playwright), William Congreve, both of whom carried on the Restoration comedy with some alterations. However, the majority of stagings were of lower farces and much more serious and domestic tragedies. George Lillo and Richard Steele both produced highly moral forms of tragedy, where the characters and the concerns of the characters were wholly middle class or working class. This reflected a marked change in the audience for plays, as royal patronage was no longer the important part of theatrical success. Additionally, Colley Cibber and John Rich (producer), John Rich began to battle each other for greater and greater spectacles to present on stage. The figure of Harlequin was introduced, and pantomime theatre began to be staged. This "low" comedy was quite popular, and the plays became tertiary to the staging. Opera also began to be popular in London, and there was significant literary resistance to this Italian incursion. In 1728 John Gay returned to the playhouse with ''The Beggar's Opera''. The Licensing Act 1737 brought an abrupt halt to much of the period's drama, as the theatres were once again brought under state control.
Prose, including the novel
In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of the English essay. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's ''The Spectator (1711), The Spectator'' established the form of the British periodical essay. However, this was also the time when the English novel was first emerging. Daniel Defoe turned from journalism and writing criminal lives for the press to writing fictional criminal lives with ''Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress, Roxana'' and ''Moll Flanders.'' He also wrote ''Robinson Crusoe'' (1719).
If Addison and Steele were dominant in one type of prose, then Jonathan Swift author of the satire ''Gulliver's Travels'' was in another. In ''A Modest Proposal'' and the ''Drapier Letters'', Swift reluctantly defended the Irish people from the predations of colonialism. This provoked riots and arrests, but Swift, who had no love of Irish Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholics, was outraged by the abuses he saw.
An effect of the Licensing Act 1737, Licensing Act of 1737 was to cause more than one aspiring playwright to switch over to writing novels. Henry Fielding (1707–1754) began to write prose satire and novels after his plays could not pass the censors. In the interim, Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) had produced ''Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded'' (1740), and Henry Fielding attacked, what he saw, as the absurdity of this novel in, ''Joseph Andrews'' (1742) and ''Shamela''. Subsequently, Fielding satirised Richardson's ''Clarissa'' (1748) with ''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Tom Jones'' (1749). Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) elevated the picaresque novel with works such as ''Roderick Random'' (1748) and ''Peregrine Pickle'' (1751).
Age of Sensibility (1745–1798)
This period is known as the Age of Sensibility, but it is also sometimes described as the "Age of Johnson". Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". After nine years of work, Johnson's ''A Dictionary of the English Language'' was published in 1755, and it had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship."
The second half of the 18th century saw the emergence of three major Irish authors: Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) and Laurence Sterne (1713–1768). Goldsmith is the author of ''The Vicar of Wakefield'' (1766), a pastoral poem ''The Deserted Village'' (1770) and two plays, ''The Good-Natur'd Man'' (1768) and ''She Stoops to Conquer'' (1773). Sheridan's first play, ''The Rivals'' (1775), was performed at Covent Garden and was an instant success. He went on to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th century with a play like ''The School for Scandal''. Both Goldsmith and Sheridan reacted against the sentimental comedy of the 18th-century theatre, writing plays closer to the style of Restoration comedy.
Sterne published his famous novel ''Tristram Shandy'' in parts between 1759 and 1767. In 1778, Frances Burney (1752–1840) wrote ''Evelina'', one of the first novel of manners, novels of manners. Fanny Burney's novels "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen".
Precursors of Romanticism
The Romantic movement in English literature of the early 19th century has its roots in 18th-century poetry, the Gothic novel and the novel of sensibility. This includes the graveyard poets, from the 1740s and later, whose works are characterised by gloomy meditations on mortality. To this was added, by later practitioners, a feeling for the Sublime (philosophy), 'sublime' and uncanny, and an interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. The poets include Thomas Gray (1716–1771), ''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'' (1751) in and Edward Young (1683–1765), ''The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality'' (1742–45). Other precursors are James Thomson (poet), James Thomson (1700–1748) and James Macpherson (1736–1796). James Macpherson was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation, with his claim to have found poetry written by the ancient bard Ossian.
The sentimental novel or "novel of sensibility" is a genre which developed during the second half of the 18th century. It celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment, Sentimentalism (literature), sentimentalism, and sensibility. Sentimentalism, which is to be distinguished from sensibility, was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction which began in the 18th century in reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan literature, Augustan Age. Among the most famous sentimental novels in English are Samuel Richardson's ''Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded'' (1740), Oliver Goldsmith's ''Vicar of Wakefield'' (1766), Laurence Sterne's ''Tristram Shandy'' (1759–67), and Henry Mackenzie's ''The Man of Feeling'' (1771).
Significant foreign influences were the Germans Goethe, Schiller and August Wilhelm Schlegel and French philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).[J.A. Cuddon, pp. 588–89.] Edmund Burke's ''A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful'' (1757) is another important influence.[''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', pp. 957–58.] The changing landscape, brought about by the Industrial revolution, industrial and British agricultural revolution, agricultural revolutions, was another influence on the growth of the Romantic movement in Britain.
In the late 18th century, Horace Walpole's 1764 novel ''The Castle of Otranto'' created the Gothic fiction genre, that combines elements of Horror fiction, horror and Romance (heroic literature), romance. Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain which developed into the Byronic hero. Her ''The Mysteries of Udolpho'' (1795) is frequently cited as the archetypal Gothic novel.
Romanticism (1798–1837)
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Romanticism arrived later in other parts of the English-speaking world.
The Romantic period was one of major social change in England and Wales, because of the depopulation of the countryside and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial cities, that took place in the period roughly between 1750 and 1850. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces: the British Agricultural Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, that involved the Enclosure of the land, drove workers off the land, and the Industrial Revolution which provided them employment. Romanticism may be seen in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, though it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, as well a reaction against the scientific rationalization (sociology), rationalization of nature. The French Revolution was an especially important influence on the political thinking of many of the Romantic poets.
The landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so much so that the Romantics, especially perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as 'nature poets'. However, the longer Romantic 'nature poems' have a wider concern because they are usually meditations on "an emotional problem or personal crisis".
Romantic poetry
Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a cultural icon in Scotland. The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) was another of the early Romantic poets. Though Blake was generally unrecognised during his lifetime, he is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romanticism, Romantic Age. Among his most important works are ''Songs of Innocence'' (1789) and ''Songs of Experience'' (1794) "and profound and difficult 'prophecies' ", such as "Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion" (1804–c.1820).
After Blake, among the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Robert Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859). However, at the time Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (n ...
(1771–1832) was the most famous poet.
In 1784, with ''Elegiac Sonnets'', Charlotte Smith (writer), Charlotte Smith (1749–1806) reintroduced the sonnet to English literature.
The early romantic poetry, Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the "Preface" to ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). The poems in ''Lyrical Ballads'' were mostly by Wordsworth, though Coleridge contributed "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Among Wordsworth's most important poems are "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", "Resolution and Independence", "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" and the autobiographical epic ''The Prelude''.
Robert Southey (1774–1843) was another of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years, although his fame has been long eclipsed by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) is best known for his ''Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'' (1821). Essayist William Hazlitt (1778–1830), friend of both Coleridge and Wordsworth, is best known today for his literary criticism, especially ''Characters of Shakespeare's Plays'' (1817–18).
Second generation
The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) and John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...
(1795–1821). Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of the three, preferring "the brilliant wit of Alexander Pope, Pope to what he called the 'wrong poetical system' of his Romantic contemporaries". Byron achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe and Goethe called Byron "undoubtedly the greatest genius of our century".
Shelley is perhaps best known for ''Ode to the West Wind'', ''To a Skylark'', and ''Adonais'', an elegy written on the death of Keats. His close circle of admirers included the most progressive thinkers of the day. A work like ''Queen Mab'' (1813) reveals Shelley "as the direct heir to the French and British revolutionary intellectuals of the 1790s". Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian era, Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as later W. B. Yeats.
Though John Keats shared Byron and Shelley's radical politics, "his best poetry is not political", but is especially noted for its sensuous music and imagery, along with a concern with material beauty and the transience of life. Among his most famous works are "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", and "To Autumn". Keats has always been regarded as a major Romantic, "and his stature as a poet has grown steadily through all changes of fashion".
Although sticking to its forms, Felicia Hemans began a process of undermining the Romantic tradition, a deconstruction that was continued by Letitia Elizabeth Landon, as "an urban poet deeply attentive to themes of decay and decomposition".[The Encyclopaedia of Romantic Literature, edited by Frederick Burwick, Nancy Goslee and Diane Hoeveler] Landon's novel forms of metrical romance and dramatic monologue were much copied and contributed to her long-lasting influence on Victorian poetry.
Other poets
Another important poet in this period was John Clare (1793–1864), the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation for the changes taking place in rural England. His poetry has undergone a major re-evaluation and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets.
George Crabbe (1754–1832) was an English poet who, during the Romantic period, wrote "closely observed, realistic portraits of rural life [...] in the heroic couplets of the Augustan literature#Poetry, Augustan age". Modern critic Frank Whitehead has said that "Crabbe, in his verse tales in particular, is an important—indeed, a major—poet whose work has been and still is seriously undervalued."
Romantic novel
One of the most popular novelists of the era was Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (n ...
, whose historical romance
Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century.
Varieties Viking
These books feature Vikings during the Da ...
s inspired a generation of painters, composers, and writers throughout Europe. Scott's novel-writing career was launched in 1814 with ''Waverley (novel), Waverley'', often called the first historical novel.
Jane Austen's works critique the sentimental novel, novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Her plots in novels such as ''Pride and Prejudice'' (1813) and ''Emma (novel), Emma'' (1815), though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.
Mary Shelley (1797–1851) is remembered as the author of ''Frankenstein'' (1818).
Romanticism in America
The European Romantic movement reached America in the early 19th century. American Romanticism was just as multifaceted and individualistic as it was in Europe. Like the Europeans, the American Romantics demonstrated a high level of moral enthusiasm, commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self, an emphasis on intuitive perception, and the assumption that the natural world was inherently good, while human society was corrupt.[George L. McMichael and Frederick C. Crews, eds. ''Anthology of American Literature: Colonial through romantic'' (6th ed. 1997) p 613]
Romantic Gothic literature made an early appearance with Washington Irving's ''The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'' (1820) and ''Rip Van Winkle'' (1819), There are picturesque "local color" elements in Washington Irving's essays and especially his travel books. From 1823 the prolific and popular novelist James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) began publishing his historical romance
Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century.
Varieties Viking
These books feature Vikings during the Da ...
s of frontier and Indian life. However, Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre that first appeared in the early 1830s, and his poetry were more influential in France than at home.
Victorian literature (1837–1901)
Sage writing
During these years, sage writing developed as a new literary genre in which the author sought "to express notions about the world, man's situation in it, and how he should live." John Holloway identified Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), George Eliot (1819–1880), John Henry Newman (1801–1890), and Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) as writers of this type. Foremost among them was Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher who became "the undoubted head of English letters" in the 19th century. Known as the Sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea, the highly prolific author Condition of England question, criticized the Industrial Revolution, preached Great man theory, hero-worship, and The dismal science, rebuked materialism in a series of works written in Carlylese, the name given to his unique style. His influence on Victorian literature was nearly universal; in 1855, Eliot wrote that "there is hardly a superior or active mind of this generation that has not been modified by Carlyle's writings;" with the effect that if his books "were all burnt as the grandest of Sati (practice), Suttees on his funeral pile, it would be only like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest."
John Ruskin (1819–1900) was an Anglo-Scottish art critic and philosopher who wrote in a similar vein, regarding Carlyle as his master. The early part of his career was devoted to aesthetics, championing J. M. W. Turner, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He later turned to ethics, expounding his ideas on educational reform and political economy, which were to have great influence on practices in England and throughout the world. Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was an English poet and critic who is also regarded as a sage writer, famous for his criticism of philistinism.
The Victorian novel
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers, and monthly serialising of fiction also encouraged this surge in popularity, further upheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832". This was in many ways a reaction to rapid industrialization, and the social, political, and economic issues associated with it, and was a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity. Significant early examples of this genre include ''Sybil, or The Two Nations'' (1845) by Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles Kingsley's ''Alton Locke'' (1849).
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the history of English literature. Dickens fiercely satirised various aspects of society, including the workhouse in ''Oliver Twist'', and the failures of the legal system in ''Bleak House''. An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now known almost exclusively for ''Vanity Fair (novel), Vanity Fair'' (1847). The Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. ''Jane Eyre'' (1847), Charlotte Brontë's most famous work, was the first of the sisters' novels to achieve success. Emily Brontë's (1818–1848) novel was ''Wuthering Heights'' and, according to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers," and led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to think that it had been written by a man. ''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'' (1848) by Anne Brontë is now considered to be one of the first Feminism, feminist novels.
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) was also a successful writer and her ''North and South (1855 novel), North and South'' contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south. Anthony Trollope's (1815–1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England. George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially ''Middlemarch'' (1871–72), are important examples of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literature, Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict.
George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his novels ''The Ordeal of Richard Feverel'' (1859), and ''The Egoist'' (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th century but then seriously declined.[''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' (1996), pp. 650–51.] An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), including ''The Mayor of Casterbridge'' (1886), and ''Tess of the d'Urbervilles'' (1891). Hardy is a Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, and like Charles Dickens he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society. Another significant late-19th-century novelist is George Gissing (1857–1903), who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is ''New Grub Street'' (1891).
Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's ''The King of the Golden River'' in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy literature, fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald (1824–1905), the influential author of ''The Princess and the Goblin'' and ''Phantastes'' (1858). William Morris (1834–1896) wrote a series of Chivalric romance, romances in the 1880s and 1890s which are regarded as the first works of high fantasy.
Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel ''The Moonstone'' (1868), is generally considered the first Detective fiction, detective novel in the English language. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was an important Scottish writer at the end of the nineteenth century, author of ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'' (1886), and the historical novel ''Kidnapped (novel), Kidnapped'' (1886). H.G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like ''The Time Machine'' (1895), and ''The War of the Worlds'' (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians, and Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels like ''Kipps'' (1905).
American novel (From Romanticism to realism)
(See also the discussion of American literature under Romanticism above).
By the mid-19th century, the pre-eminence of literature from the British Isles began to be challenged by writers from the former American colonies. A major influence on American writers at this time was Romanticism, which gave rise to New England Transcendentalism, and the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1836 essay ''Nature (essay), Nature'' is usually considered the watershed moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Thomas Carlyle had a strong influence on Emerson, transcendentalism, and American writers generally, particularly his novel ''Sartor Resartus'', of which the impact upon American literature has been described as "so vast, so pervasive, that it is difficult to overstate."
The romantic American novel developed fully with Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1804–1864) ''The Scarlet Letter'' (1850), a stark drama of a woman cast out of her community for committing adultery. Hawthorne's fiction had a profound impact on his friend Herman Melville (1819–1891). In ''Moby-Dick'' (1851), an adventurous whaling voyage becomes the vehicle for examining such themes as obsession, the nature of evil, and human struggle against the elements. By the 1880s, however, psychological and social realism were competing with Romanticism in the novel.
American realist fiction has its beginnings in the 1870s with the works of Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James.
Mark Twain (the pen name used by Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) was the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast—in the border state of Missouri. His regional masterpieces were the novels ''Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876) and ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884). Twain's style changed the way Americans write their language. His characters speak like real people and sound distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and regional accents.
Henry James (1843–1916) was a major American novelist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although born in New York City, he spent most of his adult years in England. Many of his novels center on Americans who live in or travel to Europe. James confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by writing directly about it. His works include ''The Portrait of a Lady'', ''The Bostonians'' (1886), ''The Princess Casamassima'' (1886).
Genre fiction
The premier ghost story writer of the 19th century was Sheridan Le Fanu. His works include the macabre mystery novel ''Uncle Silas'' (1865), and his Gothic novella ''Carmilla'' (1872) tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire. Bram Stoker's horror story ''Dracula'' (1897) belongs to a number of literary genres, including vampire literature, horror fiction, gothic novel and invasion literature.
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant London-based "consulting detective", famous for his intellectual prowess. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring Holmes, which were published between 1887 and 1927. All but four Holmes stories are narrated by Holmes' friend, assistant, and biographer, Dr. Watson. The Lost World (genre), Lost World literary genre was inspired by real stories of archaeological discoveries by imperial adventurers. H. Rider Haggard wrote one of the earliest examples, ''King Solomon's Mines'', in 1885. Contemporary European politics and diplomatic maneuverings informed Anthony Hope's Ruritanian romance, Ruritanian adventure novel ''The Prisoner of Zenda'' (1894).
Children's literature
children's literature, Literature for children developed as a separate genre. Some works become internationally known, such as those of Lewis Carroll, ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ''Through the Looking-Glass''. Robert Louis Stevenson's (1850–1894) ''Treasure Island'' (1883), is the classic Piracy, pirate adventure. At the end of the Victorian era and leading into the Edwardian era, Beatrix Potter was an author and illustrator, best known for her children's books, which featured animal characters. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book ''The Tale of Peter Rabbit'' in 1902. Potter eventually went on to publish 23 children's books and became a wealthy woman.
Victorian poetry
The leading poets during the Victorian period were Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), Robert Browning (1812–1889), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), and Matthew Arnold (1822–1888). The poetry of this period was heavily influenced by the Romantics, but also went off in its own directions. Particularly notable was the development of the dramatic monologue, a form used by many poets in this period, but perfected by Robert Browning. Literary criticism in the 20th century gradually drew attention to the links between Victorian poetry and modernism.
Tennyson was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. He was described by T.S. Eliot, as "the greatest master of metrics as well as melancholia", and as having "the finest ear of any English poet since Milton". Matthew Arnold's reputation as a poet has "within the past few decades [...] plunged drastically."
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was a poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. Arthur Clough (1819–1861) and George Meredith (1828–1909) are two other important minor poets of this era.[.]
Towards the end of the 19th century, English poets began to take an interest in French Symbolist poetry, Symbolism and Victorian poetry entered a decadent ''Fin de siècle, fin-de-siècle'' phase. Two groups of poets emerged in the 1890s, the ''The Yellow Book, Yellow Book'' poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club group, that included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and Irishman William Butler Yeats. Yeats went on to become an important modernist in the 20th century. Also in 1896 A.E. Housman published at his own expense ''A Shropshire Lad''.
Writers of comic verse included the dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W.S. Gilbert (1836–1911), who is best known for his fourteen comic operas, produced in Gilbert and Sullivan, collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', and ''The Pirates of Penzance''.
Novelist Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) wrote poetry throughout his career, but he did not publish his first collection until 1898, so that he tends to be treated as a 20th-century poet. Now regarded as a major poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins's (1844–1889) ''Poems'' were published posthumously by Robert Bridges in 1918.
American poetry
America also produced major poets in the 19th century, such as Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) and Walt Whitman (1819–1892). America's two greatest 19th-century poets could hardly have been more different in temperament and style. Walt Whitman (1819–92) was a working man, a traveler, a self-appointed nurse during the American Civil War (1861–65), and a poetic innovator. His major work was ''Leaves of Grass'', in which he uses a free-flowing verse and lines of irregular length to depict the all-inclusiveness of American democracy. Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), on the other hand, lived the sheltered life of a genteel, unmarried woman in small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. Within its formal structure, her poetry is ingenious, witty, exquisitely wrought, and psychologically penetrating. Her work was unconventional for its day, and little of it was published during her lifetime.
Victorian drama
A change came in the Victorian era with a profusion on the London stage of farces, Victorian burlesque, musical burlesques, extravaganzas and comic operas that competed with productions of Shakespeare's plays and serious drama by dramatists like James Planché and Thomas William Robertson. In 1855, the German Reed Entertainments began a process of elevating the level of (formerly risqué) musical theatre in Britain that culminated in the famous series of comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan and was followed by the 1890s with the first Edwardian musical comedies. The length of runs in the theatre changed rapidly during the Victorian period. As transport improved, poverty in London diminished, and street lighting made for safer travel at night, the number of potential patrons for the growing number of theatres increased enormously. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits and improved production values. The first play to achieve 500 consecutive performances was the London comedy ''Our Boys'', opening in 1875. Its record of 1,362 performances was bested in 1892 by ''Charley's Aunt''.
Several of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas broke the 500-performance barrier, beginning with ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' in 1878, and Alfred Cellier and B.C. Stephenson's 1886 hit, ''Dorothy (opera), Dorothy'', ran for 931 performances. After W.S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde became the leading poet and dramatist of the late Victorian period. Wilde's plays, in particular, stand apart from the many now forgotten plays of Victorian times and have a much closer relationship to those of the Edwardian dramatists such as Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), whose career began in the last decade of the 19th century, Wilde's 1895 comic masterpiece, ''The Importance of Being Earnest'', holds an ironic mirror to the aristocracy and displays a mastery of wit and paradoxical wisdom.
20th century
Modernism (1901–1939)
English literary modernism developed in the early twentieth century out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth. The movement was influenced by the ideas of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), James G. Frazer (1854–1941), Karl Marx (1818–1883) (''Das Kapital'', 1867), and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), among others. The continental art movements of Impressionism, and later Cubism, were also important. Important literary precursors of modernism, were: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881); Walt Whitman (1819–1892); Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867); Rimbaud (1854–1891); August Strindberg (1849–1912).
A major British lyric poet of the first decades of the twentieth century was Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Though not a modernist, Hardy was an important transitional figure between the Victorian era and the twentieth century. A major novelist of the late nineteenth century, Hardy lived well into the third decade of the twentieth century, though he only published poetry in this period. Another significant transitional figure between Victorians and modernists, the late nineteenth-century novelist, Henry James (1843–1916), continued to publish major novels into the twentieth century, including ''The Golden Bowl'' (1904). Polish-born modernist novelist Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) published his first important works, ''Heart of Darkness'', in 1899 and ''Lord Jim'' in 1900. However, the Victorian Gerard Manley Hopkins's (1844–1889) highly original poetry was not published until 1918, long after his death, while the career of another major modernist poet, Irishman W.B. Yeats (1865–1939), began late in the Victorian era. Yeats was one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century English literature.
But while modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
was to become an important literary movement in the early decades of the new century, there were also many fine writers who, like Thomas Hardy, were not modernists. During the early decades of the twentieth century the Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), and Walter de la Mare (1873–1956), maintained a conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism. Another Georgian poet, Edward Thomas (poet), Edward Thomas (1878–1917) is one of the First World War poets along with Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1917), and Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). Irish playwrights George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), J.M. Synge (1871–1909) and Seán O'Casey were influential in British drama. Shaw's career began in the last decade of the nineteenth century, while Synge's plays belong to the first decade of the twentieth century. Synge's most famous play, ''The Playboy of the Western World'', "caused outrage and riots when it was first performed" in Dublin in 1907. George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social issues.
Novelists who are not considered modernists include H. G. Wells (1866–1946), John Galsworthy (1867–1933), (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1932) whose works include ''The Forsyte Saga'' (1906–21), and E.M. Forster's (1879–1970), though Forster's work is "frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian elements". Forster's most famous work, ''A Passage to India'' 1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier novels examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England. The most popular British writer of the early years of the twentieth century was arguably Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems.
In addition to W.B. Yeats, other important early modernist poets were the American-born poet T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) Eliot became a British citizen in 1927 but was born and educated in America. His most famous works are: "Prufrock" (1915), ''The Waste Land'' (1922) and ''Four Quartets'' (1935–42).
Amongst the novelists, after Joseph Conrad, other important early modernists include Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), whose novel ''Pointed Roof'' (1915), is one of the earliest examples of the stream of consciousness (narrative mode), stream of consciousness technique, and D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who published ''The Rainbow'' in 1915—though it was immediately seized by the police—and ''Women in Love'' in 1920. Then in 1922 Irishman James Joyce's important modernist novel ''Ulysses (novel), Ulysses'' appeared. ''Ulysses'' has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".
Modernism (1923–1939)
The modernist movement continued through the 1920s, 1930s, and beyond.
Important British writers between the World Wars, include the Scottish poetry, Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978), who began publishing in the 1920s, and novelist Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), who was an influential Feminism, feminist, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the Stream of consciousness (narrative mode), stream-of-consciousness technique in novels like ''Mrs Dalloway'' (1925) and ''To the Lighthouse'' (1927). T.S. Eliot had begun this attempt to revive poetic drama with ''Sweeney Agonistes'' in 1932, and this was followed by others including three further plays after the war. ''In Parenthesis'', a modernist epic poem based on author David Jones (poet), David Jones's (1895–1974) experience of World War I, was published in 1937.
An important development, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s was a tradition of working class novels actually written by working-class background writers. Among these were coal miner Jack Jones (novelist), Jack Jones, James Hanley (novelist), James Hanley, whose father was a stoker and who also went to sea as a young man, and coal miners Lewis Jones (writer), Lewis Jones from South Wales and Harold Heslop from County Durham.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his famous dystopia ''Brave New World'' in 1932, the same year as John Cowper Powys's ''A Glastonbury Romance''. Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) published his first major work, the novel ''Murphy'' in 1938. This same year Graham Greene's (1904–1991) first major novel ''Brighton Rock (novel), Brighton Rock'' was published. Then in 1939 James Joyce's published ''Finnegans Wake'', in which he creates a special language to express the consciousness of a dreaming character. It was also in 1939 that another Irish modernist poet, W.B. Yeats, died. British poet W.H. Auden (1907–1973) was another significant modernist in the 1930s.
Post–modernism (1940–2000)
Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939, with regard to English literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred". In fact a number of modernists were still living and publishing in the 1950s and 1960, including T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Richardson, and Ezra Pound. Furthermore, Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published little until ''Briggflatts'' in 1965 and Samuel Beckett, born in Ireland in 1906, continued to produce significant works until the 1980s, though some view him as a post-modernist.
Among British writers in the 1940s and 1950s were poet Dylan Thomas and novelist Graham Greene whose works span the 1930s to the 1980s, while Evelyn Waugh, W.H. Auden continued publishing into the 1960s.
Postmodern literature is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is difficult to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. Among postmodern writers are the Americans Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote and Thomas Pynchon.
The novel
In 1947 Malcolm Lowry published ''Under the Volcano'', while George Orwell's satire of totalitarianism, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', was published in 1949. Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were: Anthony Powell whose twelve-volume cycle of novels ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', is a comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century; Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Prize laureate William Golding's Allegory, allegorical novel ''Lord of the Flies'' 1954, explores how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island. Philosopher Iris Murdoch was a prolific writer of novels throughout the second half of the 20th century, that deal especially with sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious.
Scottish writer Muriel Spark pushed the boundaries of realism in her novels. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (novel), ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'' (1961), at times takes the reader briefly into the distant future, to see the various fates that befall its characters. Anthony Burgess is especially remembered for his utopian and dystopian fiction, dystopian novel ''A Clockwork Orange (novel), A Clockwork Orange'' (1962), set in the not-too-distant future. During the 1960s and 1970s, Paul Scott (novelist), Paul Scott wrote his monumental series on the last decade of British rule in India, ''The Raj Quartet'' (1966–1975). Scotland has in the late 20th century produced several important novelists, including the writer of ''How Late it Was, How Late'', James Kelman, who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim situations and Alasdair Gray whose ''Lanark: A Life in Four Books'' (1981) is a dystopian fantasy set in a surreal version of Glasgow called Unthank.
Two significant Irish novelists are John Banville (born 1945) and Colm Tóibín (born 1955). Martin Amis (1949), Pat Barker (born 1943), Ian McEwan (born 1948) and Julian Barnes (born 1946) are other prominent late twentieth-century British novelists.
Drama
An important cultural movement in the British theatre which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or "kitchen sink drama"), a term coined to describe art, novels, film and television plays. The term angry young men was often applied to members of this artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which depicts the domestic lives of the working class, to explore social issues and political issues. The drawing room plays of the post war period, typical of dramatists like Terence Rattigan and Noël Coward were challenged in the 1950s by these Angry Young Men, in plays like John Osborne's ''Look Back in Anger'' (1956).
Again in the 1950s, the Absurdism, absurdist play ''Waiting for Godot'' (1955), by Irish writer Samuel Beckett profoundly affected British drama. The Theatre of the Absurd influenced Harold Pinter (born 1930), (The Birthday Party (play), The Birthday Party, 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia. Beckett also influenced Tom Stoppard (born 1937) (''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'', 1966). Stoppard's works are however also notable for their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays.
An important new element in the world of British drama, from the beginnings of radio in the 1920s, was the commissioning of plays, or the adaption of existing plays, by Radio drama, BBC radio. This was especially important in the 1950s and 1960s (and from the 1960s for television). Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio, including Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard whose "first professional production was in the fifteen-minute ''Just Before Midnight'' programme on BBC Radio, which showcased new dramatists".[.] John Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, with his adaptation of his own novel ''Like Men Betrayed'' for the BBC Light Programme. Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behan and novelist Angela Carter.
Among the most famous works created for radio are Dylan Thomas's ''Under Milk Wood'' (1954), Samuel Beckett's ''All That Fall'' (1957), Harold Pinter's ''A Slight Ache'' (1959) and Robert Bolt's ''A Man for All Seasons (play), A Man for All Seasons'' (1954).
Poetry
Major poets like T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing in this period. Though W.H. Auden's (1907–1973) career began in the 1930s and 1940s he published several volumes in the 1950s and 1960s. His stature in modern literature has been contested, but probably the most common critical view from the 1930s onward ranked him as one of the three major twentieth-century British poets, and heir to Yeats and Eliot.
New poets starting their careers in the 1950s and 1960s include Philip Larkin (1922–1985) (''The Whitsun Weddings'', 1964), Ted Hughes (1930–1998) (''The Hawk in the Rain'', 1957), Sylvia Plath (1932-1962) (''The Colossus and Other Poems, The Colossus'', 1960) and Irishman (born Northern Ireland) Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) (''Death of a Naturalist'', 1966). Northern Ireland has also produced a number of other significant poets, including Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon. In the 1960s and 1970s Martian poetry aimed to break the grip of 'the familiar', by describing ordinary things in unfamiliar ways, as though, for example, through the eyes of a Martian. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher Reid (writer), Christopher Reid.
Another literary movement in this period was the British Poetry Revival was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces performance poetry, performance, sound poetry, sound and concrete poetry. The Liverpool poets, Mersey Beat poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beat generation, American Beats. Other noteworthy later twentieth-century poets are Welshman R.S. Thomas, Geoffrey Hill, Charles Tomlinson and Carol Ann Duffy. Geoffrey Hill (born 1932) is considered one of the most distinguished English poets of his generation,[.] Charles Tomlinson (born 1927) is another important English poet of an older generation, though "since his first publication in 1951, has built a career that has seen more notice in the international scene than in his native England.[.]
Literature from the Commonwealth of Nations
See also: Postcolonial literature, Postcolonial, Australian literature, Australian, Canadian literature, Canadian, Caribbean literature, Caribbean, Indian English literature, Indian, New Zealand literature, New Zealand, Pakistani English literature, Pakistani, African literature, African.[And see former British colonies, Nigeria, Kenya, South African literature, etc] and Migrant literature.
From 1950 on a significant number of major writers came from countries that had over the centuries been settled by the British, other than America which had been producing significant writers from at least the Victorian period. There had of course been a few important works in English prior to 1950 from the then British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
. The South African literature, South African writer Olive Schreiner's famous novel ''The Story of an African Farm'' was published in 1883 and New Zealand literature, New Zealander Katherine Mansfield published her first collection of short stories, ''In a German Pension'', in 1911. The first major novelist, writing in English, from the Indian English literature, Indian sub-continent, R. K. Narayan, began publishing in England in the 1930s, thanks to the encouragement of English novelist Graham Greene. Caribbean literature, Caribbean writer Jean Rhys's writing career began as early as 1928, though her most famous work, ''Wide Sargasso Sea'', was not published until 1966. South Africa's Alan Paton's famous ''Cry, the Beloved Country'' dates from 1948. Doris Lessing from Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was a dominant presence in the English literary scene, frequently publishing from 1950 on throughout the 20th century, and she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.
Salman Rushdie is another post Second World War writers from the former British colonies who Migrant literature, permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame with ''Midnight's Children'' 1981. His most controversial novel ''The Satanic Verses'' 1989, was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. V. S. Naipaul (born 1932), born in Trinidad, was another immigrant, who wrote among other things ''A Bend in the River'' (1979). Naipaul won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
From Nigerian literature, Nigeria a number of writers have achieved an international reputation for works in English, including novelist Chinua Achebe, as well as playwright Wole Soyinka. Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986, as did South African novelist Nadine Gordimer in 1995. Other South African writers in English are novelist J.M. Coetzee (Nobel Prize 2003) and playwright Athol Fugard. Kenyan literature, Kenya's most internationally renowned author is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o who has written novels, plays and short stories in English. Poet Derek Walcott, from St Lucia in the Caribbean, was another Nobel Prize winner in 1992. An Australian literature, Australian Patrick White, a major novelist in this period, whose first work was published in 1939, won in (1973). Other noteworthy Australian writers at the end of this period are poet Les Murray (poet), Les Murray (1938–2019), and novelist Peter Carey (novelist), Peter Carey (born 1943), who is one of only four writers to have won the Man Booker Prize, Booker Prize twice.
Major Canadian novelists include Carol Shields, Lawrence Hill, Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro. Carol Shields novel ''The Stone Diaries'' won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and another novel, ''Larry's Party'', won the Orange Prize for Fiction, Orange Prize in 1998. Lawrence Hill's ''Book of Negroes'' won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best Book Award, while Alice Munro became the first Canadian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro also received the Man Booker International Prize in 2009. Amongst internationally known poets are Leonard Cohen and Anne Carson. Carson in 1996 won the Lannan Literary Award for poetry. The foundation's awards in 2006 for poetry, fiction and nonfiction each came with $US 150,000.
American writers
From 1940 into the 21st century, American playwrights, poets and novelists have continued to be internationally prominent.
Genre fiction in the twentieth century
Many works published in the twentieth century were examples of genre fiction. This designation includes the crime novels, spy novel, historical romance
Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century.
Varieties Viking
These books feature Vikings during the Da ...
, fantasy, graphic novel, and science fiction.
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was an important, and hugely successful, crime fiction writer who is best remembered for her 66 detective novels as well as her many short stories and successful plays for the West End theatre. Along with Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957), Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982), and Margery Allingham (1904-1966), Christie dominated the mystery novel in the 1920s and 1930s, often called “The Golden Age of Detective Fiction.” Together, these four women writers were honored as “The Queens of Crime.” Other recent noteworthy writers in this genre are Ruth Rendell, P.D. James and the Scot, Ian Rankin.
Robert Erskine Childers, Erskine Childers' ''The Riddle of the Sands'' (1903), is an early example of spy fiction. John Buchan (1875–1940), a Scottish diplomat, and later the Governor General of Canada, is sometimes considered the inventor of the Thriller (genre), thriller genre. His five novels featuring the heroic, Richard Hannay, are among the earliest in the genre. The first Hannay novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, was made into a famous thriller movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Hannay was the prototype for the even more famous fictional character, James Bond 007, created by Ian Fleming, and the protagonist in a long line of films. Another noted writer in the spy novel genre was John le Carré.
The novelist Georgette Heyer created the historical romance
Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century.
Varieties Viking
These books feature Vikings during the Da ...
genre. Emma Orczy's original play, ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' (1905), a "hero with a secret identity", became a favourite of London audiences, playing more than 2,000 performances and becoming one of the most popular shows staged in England to that date.
Among significant writers in the fantasy genre were J.R.R. Tolkien, author of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. C.S. Lewis author of ''The Chronicles of Narnia'', and J.K. Rowling who wrote the highly successful ''Harry Potter'' series. Lloyd Alexander winner of the Newbery Honor as well as the Newbery Medal for his ''The Chronicles of Prydain'' pentalogy is another significant author of fantasy novels for younger readers. Like fantasy in the later decades of the 20th century, the genre of science fiction began to be taken more seriously, and this was because of the work of writers such as Arthur C. Clarke (''2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), 2001: A Space Odyssey'') and Michael Moorcock. Another prominent writer in this genre, Douglas Adams, is particularly associated with the comic science fiction work, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Mainstream novelists such Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood also wrote works in this genre.
Known for his macabre, darkly comic fantasy works for children, Roald Dahl became one of the best selling authors of the 20th century, and his best-loved children's novels include ''Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'', ''Matilda (novel), Matilda'', ''James and the Giant Peach'', ''The Witches (novel), The Witches'', ''Fantastic Mr Fox'' and ''The BFG''. Noted writers in the field of comic books are Neil Gaiman, and Alan Moore, while Gaiman also produces graphic novels.
Literary criticism in the twentieth century
Literary criticism gathered momentum in the twentieth century. In this era prominent academic journals were established to address specific aspects of English literature. Most of these academic journals gained widespread credibility because of being published by university presses. The growth of universities thus contributed to a stronger connection between English literature and literary criticism in the twentieth century.
Nobel Prizes in English literature
See also
* British literature
** Theatre of the United Kingdom
** Literature of Birmingham
* English novel
* English poetry
** List of English-language poets
* Irish literature
** Irish theatre
** Literature of Northern Ireland
* Literature in the other languages of Britain
* Scottish literature
** Theatre in Scotland
* Welsh literature in English
** Theatre of Wales
* Women's writing in English
* List of Commonwealth Writers prizes
Notes
References
Bibliography
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External links
The English Literary Canon
British literature – Books tagged British literature
LibraryThing
''Discovering Literature: Shakespeare''
at the British Library
''Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians''
at the British Library
''Discovering Literature: 20th century''
at the British Library
Luminarium: Anthology of Middle English Literature (1350–1485)
Luminarium: 16th Century Renaissance English Literature (1485–1603)
Luminarium: Seventeenth Century English Literature (1603–1660)
Luminarium: Eighteenth Century English Literature (1660–1785)
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
Ed. José Ángel García Landa, (University of Zaragoza, Spain)
{{DEFAULTSORT:English Literature
English-language literature,
English-language culture
History of literature in the United Kingdom