Volume : 4 | Issue : 4 | April 2015 ISSN - 2250-1991

Research Paper English Literature

The Evolution of English Literature – Main

Ritika Sinha UGC NET JRF (Linguistics)

was a gradual transition from the exuberant gaiety and imaginative freedom of the Renaissance to that of artificial cheer,
philosophic melancholy and Puritan sobriety of the Restoration. Gradually, the precision, symmetry and regularity of the
Augustan school were substituted with the Romanticist belief in power of imagination and emotion, reflecting the social
problems of the complex era. The twentieth century literature is further characterized by an interest in experimental
techniques and English literature is continually evolving by a creative interchange with other literatures.

KEYWORDS Literature; English; Period.

Introduction realism towards the end. During the Jacobean age, William
The literature is a reflection of society, the several changes Shakespeare wrote his greatest tragedies; Ben Johnson, John
which have come about in English society, from the earliest Donne, John Fletcher and Francis Bacon were at the height of
to the modern times, have left their mark on English litera- their creative powers; and in 1611 the King James Bible was
ture. Thus the various periods of English literature can be best published. Though rich, the literature of this period was darkly
appreciated with a simultaneous knowledge of English social questioning and preoccupied by the problem of evil. Another
and political history. The development of English literature can feature of the Drama at this time was the development of ex-
be traced back to more than five centuries. It includes contri- travagant courtly entertainment known as the Masque. Com-
butions from a myriad of writers, in almost every major genre edy was best represented by the acid satire of Ben Johnson.
and style of writing, across different time periods. The periods There were two poetic streams; the first poetic stream was
listed below are not mutually exclusive in their timeframes, enriched by the intellectual complexity of John Donne and the
and often overlap. These phases are characterized by certain Metaphysical poets and the second was represented by the
literary figures and literary movements. lucid and graceful verse of Ben Jonson. In prose, Francis Ba-
con and Robert Burton were among the writers who displayed
The Middle English period flexibility in style. The monumental prose achievement of the
era was the great King James version of the Bible.
Middle English was the language which resulted from the
modification of Anglo-Saxon dialects spoken after the Norman Caroline Period (1625-1649)
conquest of 1066. Around 1500’s the ‘London dialect’, used Caroline literature was a decadent carry over from the previ-
by Chaucer became the standard literary language. Chaucer’s ous ages. Melancholy characterized the works of metaphysical
Canterbury tales and Troilus and Cressida which rank among poets. Drama was decadent, romanticism was in decline, clas-
the greatest works of English literature laid the basis for ‘mod- sicism was advancing and scientific temper was growing. The
ern English’. His contemporaries include John Grower, who period includes the later metaphysical poets, the early works
wrote Confessio Amantis and William Langland’s religious sat- of Milton, and the ‘Cavalier poets’. The flamboyant cynicism
ire Piers Plowman. of cavalier poetry was distinctive enough to be considered as
typical of this age. The period was dominated by poets like
The fifteenth century also witnessed the flowering of poetic Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace and Sir John Suckling.
talent in Scotland, by poets called ‘Scottish Chaucerian’ and
included King James I of England, Gavin Douglas and Robert Commonwealth Period
Henryson. The English prose of the period was used in ro- England at this time was ruled by Parliament led by Oliver
mance, travel literature, and in the Wycliffe’s translation of the Cromwell. The Puritans banned theatrical performances in
Bible. The fifteenth century was also the age of medieval dra- 1642, so dramatic writing ceased. Prose however, flourished
ma, miracle and morality plays and of popular lyrics and bal- in the non fictional writings of Thomas Browne, Jeremy Tay-
lads. The late Middle English literature, stimulated by the sub- lor and Isaac Walton. Milton was involved in writing political
stitution of English for French literature in courtly literature, pamphlets in support of the Puritans. Thomas Hobbes pub-
included ballads, cyclic religious drama and romances. lished his political and philosophical study Leviathan in Paris in
1651, and scandalized the exiled royalist court with his ‘athe-
Elizabethan Age (1558-1603) istic’ notions. The later metaphysicals like Vaughan and Mar-
The age was a time of great development. With the defeat of vell were the poets of the period.
Spanish Armada in 1588, the period was marked by commer-
cial expansion, change in outlook combined with growth of The Restoration
nationalist feelings, referred to as the Renaissance. It is one of The forty-year period after the restoration of the monarchy in
the great ages of English literature, especially in Drama, with England in 1660, is characterized by the wit and control of
remarkable writers like Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spencer, Jon- Dryden’s poetry and licentiousness of Rochester’s satires. The
son and Bacon. theatre flourished after the end of the Puritan’s ban of 1642;
Etherege, Congreve, and Dryden developed the distinctive
Jacobean Age (1603-1625) ‘comedy of manners’ called Restoration comedy. Dryden, Ot-
A rich period of English literature, with many of the themes way and other playwrights developed the even more distinc-
and patterns carried over from the preceding Elizabethan age. tive form of tragedy called Heroic drama. Notable writers in
The Jacobean age is marked by a late flowering of Elizabe- prose were Samuel Butler, the religious writer John Bunyan
than writing at the beginning and by growth of cynicism and and the philosopher John Locke.

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Augustan Age to 1901. These six decades saw changes in society and out-
During the reign of Emperor Augustus, many distinguished look, and a huge variety of literary figures. Among the many
Roman writers enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity writers who flourished during the Victorian reign were the
which resulted in an astonishingly fertile literary output, no- novelists Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Hardy
tably by Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. In imitation of the brilliant and Samuel Butler; the poets Tennyson, Browning and Arnold,
literary period, English poets and writers of the first half of and the most prominent essayists were Carlyle, Ruskin and Pa-
the eighteenth century have also been called the Augustans- ter.
Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Dryden, Goldsmith; all imitated
the style and subject matter of this age. Decorum, balance, Edwardian Period
elegant wit, patriotism and concern for society are characteris- The world war I lead to vast changes in the fabric of British
tics of the Augustan age. It can be described as the period of society. The Edwardian period was rich in novelists: Conrad,
highest purity and refinement in a national literature. Kipling, Galsworthy, Wells and Henry James. In the theatre
Barrie, Galsworthy and playwrights of the Celtic Renaissance
Age of Reason such as Lady Gregory, Synge and Shaw produced notable ma-
A term used jointly for Restoration and Augustan age; cover- terial. In poetry; Hard, Keats and Kipling were the chief writ-
ing the final decades of the seventeenth century and the first ers.
half of the eighteenth century. The ideal of reason dominated
intellectual activity in the arts. Its literature is characterized by Modernism
balanced judgement, lack of excess, decorum, restraint and it The First World War is generally considered to be a catalyst
reflected classical qualities. Among the important English writ- that initiated the modern period in literature. The most typ-
ers of the period were Dryden, Addison, Johnson, Pope, Swift ical ‘modernist’ feature of the twentieth century literature is
and Steele. its experimental quality, which is thought to be a response to
the condition of living in a modernised world. Radical-techni-
Neoclassicism cal innovations took place in all three of the major genres; in
This period of English literature lasted from 1660 until about novel, Proust, Kafka, Lawrence, Joyce and Faulkner, all broke
1800. Dryden, Pope, Goldsmith flourished in poetry and in away from the broadly realist nineteenth century tradition; in
prose; Swift, Addison, Johnson, and Gibbon were impressive. poetry, Pound, Eliot, Yeats and W.C.Williams, and in theatre
The novel of the period lacked classical model and thus the Strindberg, Pirandello, Brecht, and Beckett are all celebrated
novelists are excluded from list of neoclassical writers. An ex- for their breaking of old forms and conventions.
ception to the above might be made for Henry Fielding who
held many views in common with the neo-classicists. Post Modernism
This tendency has dominated English literature since 1945,
Romantic Period favouring clarity, irony, scepticism and a no-nonsense tone as
In English literary history, this period covers the time from evident in works of poets such as Philip Larkin, Donald Davie
1789 to 1832, when Scott died and the passage of Reform and John Wain. There has been an adverse reaction against
bill signalled the political preoccupations of the Victorian era. aesthetic and philosophical radicalism in favour of reassertion
The writers of this period are many and varied, but all tend to of traditional modes of expression. The power of English Dra-
share some common features which were a part of the liter- ma in the 1950’s took the form of ‘kitchen-sink drama’, which
ary atmosphere called ‘Romanticism’. Novelists of the period deals with working-class life and social conflict.
include Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen. Essayists like Lamb,
Hazlitt, De Quincy and Hunt are notable for their contributions Conclusion
to the fast developing literary magazines. The publication of Thus, English literature has successfully explored the social
Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads is an important and psychological realities of human condition across various
landmark of the age. There were two ‘generations’ of ‘Ro- phases of its development. Till date English literature is charac-
mantic poets’: ironically many of the first generation, which terized by a continuing interest in experimental technique and
include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, outlived assimilation of other disciplines and literatures. The modern
their younger contemporaries, the second generation Byron, writers continue to reformulate, reinvent and produce remark-
Shelly and Keats who all died young. able work, continuously adding to the diverse and phenome-
nal pool of English literature.
Victorian Period
This is time of the reign of Queen Victoria lasting from 1837

REFERENCES

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and Distributors. | Long, W.J. (2004). English Literature: Its history and its significance for the life of the English-Speaking World. Emereo Publishing. | Moody, W.V. & Lovett,
R.M. (2010). A History of English Literature. Nabu Press. | Peck, J. & Coyle, M. (2013). A Brief History of English Literature (2nd ed.). Palgrave Mavmillam. | Rickett, C. (2009).
A History of English Literature. UBS Publishers’ Distributors Pvt. Ltd. | Taine, H. (2006). History of English Literature. Colonial Press. | | Trivedi, R.D. (2009). A Compendious
History of English Literature. Noida: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd. | | |

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