EARLY PERIODS OF LITERATURE

These periods are spans of time in which literature shared intellectual, linguistic, religious, and artistic influences. In the
Western tradition, the early periods of literary history are roughly as follows below:

A. THE CLASSICAL PERIOD (1200 BCE-455 CE)

I. HOMERIC or HEROIC PERIOD (1200-800 BCE) Greek legends are passed along orally, including
Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. This is a chaotic period of warrior-princes, wandering sea-traders,
and fierce pirates.

II. CLASSICAL GREEK PERIOD (800-200 BCE) Greek writers and philosophers such as Gorgias,
Aesop. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles. The fifth century (499-400 BCE) in particular
is renowned as The Golden Age of Greece. This is the sophisticated period of the polis, or individual
City-State, and early democracy. Some of the world's finest art, poetry, drama, architecture, and
philosophy originate in Athens.

III. CLASSICAL ROMAN PERIOD (200 BCE-455 CE) Greece's culture gives way to Roman power
when Rome conquers Greece in 146 CE. The Roman Republic was traditionally founded in 509 BCE but
it is limited in size until later,. Playwrights of this time include Plautus and Terence. After nearly 500
years as a Republic, Rome slid into dictatorship under Julius Caesar and finally into a monarchial empire
under Caesar Augustus in 27 CE. This later period is known as the Roman Imperial period. Roman
writers included Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. Roman philosophers included Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius.
Roman rhetoricians included Cicero and Quintilian.

IV. PATRISTIC PERIOD (c. 70 AD-455 CE) Early Christian writings such as Saint Augustine,
Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome. This is the period in which Saint Jerome first
compiled the Bible, when Christianity spread across Europe, and the Roman Empire suffered its dying
convulsions. In this period, barbarians attack Rome in 410 AD and the city finally falls to them completely
in 455 CE.

B. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (455 CE-1485 CE)

I. THE OLD ENGLISH (ANGLO-SAXON) PERIOD (428-1066)

The so-called "Dark Ages" (455 AD -799 CE) occur when Rome falls and barbarian tribes move into
Europe. Franks, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Goths settle in the ruins of Europe and the Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes migrate to Britain, displacing native Celts into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Early Old English
poems such as Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer originate sometime late in the Anglo-Saxon
period.

The Carolingian Renaissance (800- 850 CE) emerges in Europe even as great. In central Europe, texts
include early medieval grammars, encyclopedias, etc. In northern Europe, this time period marks the
setting of Viking sagas.

II. THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (c. 1066-1450)

In 1066, Norman French armies invade and conquer England under William I. This spells the end of the
Anglo-Saxon hierarchy and the emergence of the a Twelfth Century Renaissance (c. 1100-1200 CE)
French chivalric romances--such as works by Chretien de Troyes--and French fables--such as the works of
Marie de France and Jeun de Meun--spread in popularity. Abelard and other humanists produce great
scholastic and theological works.

Late or "High" Medieval Period (c. 1200-1485 CE): This often tumultuous period is marked by the
Middle English writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, Christine de Pisan, the Gawain
or Pearl Poet, the Wakefield Master, and William Langland.

C. THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION (c. 1485-1660 CE) (The Renaissance takes place in
the late 15th, 16th, and early 17th century in Britain, but somewhat earlier in Italy and the southern Europe, somewhat later in
northern Europe)

I. Early Tudor Period (1485-1558): The War of the Roses ends in England with Henry Tudor (Henry VII
claiming the throne. Martin Luther's split with Rome marks the emergence of Protestantism, followed by
Henry VIII's Anglican schism, which creates the first Protestant church in England. Edmond Spencer is a
sample poet.

II. Elizabethan Period (1558-1603): Queen Elizabeth saves England from both Spanish invasion and
internal squabbles at home. Her reign is marked by the early work of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kydd, and
Sidney.

III. Jacobean Period (1603-1625): Shakespeare's later work, Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, John Donne.

IV. Caroline Age (1625-1649): John Milton, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, the "Sons of Ben" and
others write during the reign of Charles I and his Cavaliers.

V. Commonwealth Period or Puritan Interregnum (1649-1660): Under Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship,

LATER PERIODS OF LITERATURE

These periods are spans of time in which literature shared intellectual, linguistic, religious, and artistic influences. In the
Western tradition, the later periods of literary history are roughly as follows below:

D. The Enlightenment (Neoclassical) Period (c. 1660-1790)

"Neoclassical" refers to the increased influence of Classical literature upon these centuries. The Neoclassical Period is also
called the "Enlightenment" due to the increased reverence for logic and disdain for superstition. The period is marked by the
rise of Deism, intellectual backlash against earlier Puritanism, and America's revolution against England.

I. Restoration Period (c. 1660-1700): This period marks the British king's restoration to the throne after a
long period of Puritan domination in England. It symptoms include the dominance of French and Classical
influences on poetry and drama. Sample writers include John Dryden, John Lock, Sir William Temple,
and Samuel Pepys, and Aphra Behn in England. Abroad, representative authors from France include Jean
Racine and Molière.

II. The Augustan Age (c. 1700-1750): This period is marked by the imitation of Virgil and Horace's
literature in English letters. The principle English writers include Addison, Steele, Swift, and Alexander
Pope. Abroad, Voltaire is the dominant French writer.

III. The Age of Johnson (c. 1750-1790): This period marks the transition toward the upcoming
Romanticism though the period is still largely neoclassical. Major writers include Dr. Samuel Johnson,
Boswell, and Edward Gibbon who represent the Neoclassical tendencies, while writers like Robert Burns,
Thomas Gray, Cowper, and Crabbe show movement away from the Neoclassical ideal. In America, this
period is called the Colonial Period. It includes colonial and revolutionary writers like Ben Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.

E. ROMANTIC PERIOD (c. 1790-1830): Romantic poets wrote about nature and the imagination in
England. Some Romantics include Coleridge, Blake, Keats, and Shelley in Britain and Johann von Goethe
in Germany. In America, this period is called the Transcendental Period. Transcendentalists include
Emerson and Thoreau. Gothic writings, (c. 1790-1890) overlap with the Romantic and Victorian periods.
Writers of Gothic novels (the precursor to horror novels) include Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, and Victorians
like Bram Stoker in Britain. In America, Gothic writers include Poe and Hawthorne.

F. VICTORIAN PERIOD And The 19th Century (c. 1832-1901): Writing during the period of Queen
Victoria's reign includes sentimental novels. British writers include Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson,
Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, and Jane Austen Pre- Raphaelites
like the Rossettis, William Morris, idealize and long for the morality of the medieval. The end of the
Victorian Period marked by intellectual movements of Asceticism and "the Decadence" in writings of
Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. In America, Naturalist writers like Stephen Crane flourish, as do
early free verse poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

G. MODERN PERIOD (c. 1914-1945): In Britain, modernist writers include W. B. Yeats, Seamus
Heaney, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, In America, the modernist period includes Robert
Frost, Wilfred Owen, and Flannery O'Connor as well as the famous writers of The Lost Generation (also
called the writers of The Jazz Age, 1914-1929) such as Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner.
"The Harlem Renaissance" marks the rise of black writers such as Baldwin and Ellison.

H. POSTMODERN PERIOD (c. 1945 onward): T.S. Eliot, Morrison, Shaw, Beckett, Stoppard, Fowles,
Calvino, Ginsberg, Pynchon, and other modern writers, poets, and playwrights experiment with
metafiction and fragmented poetry. Multiculturalism leads to increasing canonization of non-Caucasian
writers such as Langston Hughes, Sandra Cisneros, and Zora Neal Hurston. Magic Realists such as
Gabriel García Márquez, Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier Günter Grass, and Salman Rushdie flourish with
surrealistic writings embroidered in the conventions of realism.