History of English Literature

The first works written in English were long epic poems, such as Beowulf, which was written over 1,000 years ago in Anglo-Saxon England. After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, most people wrote in French or Latin.
In the 1300's people such as Geoffrey Chaucer began to write again in English. The introduction of printing in the 1400's made books cheaper and more popular. Chaucer's works were mostly long poems. Later, people began to write shorter poems, and plays.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1500's, such poets as Edmund Spenser and playwrights, such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, wrote some of the finest works in the English language (Literature). In the following century, many writers were concerned with religion. John Milton's Paradise Lost and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress were both about religious subjects. In the later 1600's, there was a reaction against these religious works. Poets, such as Alexander Pope, wrote light verse and playwrights, such as William Congreve, wrote bright comedies. In the 1700's, some of the first novels, including Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, were written.
In the late 1700's and early 1800's, the Romantic poets began to write. These poets included Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. They were succeeded by the great Victorian poets Browning and Tennyson. Many great novels were also written in the 1800's by Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters and many others. Towards the end of the 1800's and in the 1900's, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot wrote new kinds of poems and James Joyce wrote a new kind of novel. Other important writers of literature in the 1900's included G. B. Shaw, D. H. Lawrence and W. H. Auden.

01.07.2010