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It begins with the invasion of Celtic England by Germanic tribes c.450 and lasts until the conquest of England by the Norman-French William the Conqueror in 1066. The earliest written works in Old English, were probably composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written.
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Old English literature is mostly chronicle and poetry – lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. The greatest Old English poem is a long epic called Beowulf, whose author is unknown. Major Writers or Works Poetry: Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer Prose: Writings of Alfred the Great.
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The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy
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A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman.
One of four new yeomen of the chamber in Edward III's household is Geoffrey Chaucer, writer of the "Tales" another series of stories told by different narrators that offers a snapshot of late medieval cultural diversity. Perhaps the most surprising thing about these early British works is their graphic content and crude sexual content. -
The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur.
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Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur.
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Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism
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The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer
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Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months
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The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588
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English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene
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Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age
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Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I
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John Donne, England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's
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On the first day of the new year Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary
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Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10
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Samuel Pepys ends his diary, after only writing it for nine years
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Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol, is published and is immediately popular
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The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar.
It was the age of Enlightenment or the age of Reason, a progressive intellectual movement, to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic idea, to celebrate reason, equality and science, call for a reference to order, reason and rules. -
The Age of Sensibility anticipates the Romantic period.In contrast to the Augustan era, the Age of Sensibility focused upon instinct, feeling, imagination, and sometimes the sublime.
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Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre
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English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is published in Lyrical Ballads -
English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin
English author Thomas Babington Macaulay publishes a collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome. -
Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility
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William Butler
23-year-old Irish author William Butler Yeats publishes his first volume of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin -
Bernard Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses, deals with the serious social problem of slum landlords
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James Joyce completes the 15 short stories eventually published in 1914 as Dubliners
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James Joyce's novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins serial publication in a London journal, The Egoist
After years of delay James Joyce's Dubliners, a collection of short stories, is published -
The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her first novel, The Voyage Out
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In George Orwell's fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig, Napoleon, controls the farmyard using the techniques of Stalin
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Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio, with Richard Burton as narrator
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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, is produced at the Edinburgh Festival
