The history of English literature is
very closely related to the history of the English people. It began with the
emergence of the English nation and then onward kept on developing with the
social development of the nation. In the history of the English there had been
several religious and political changes. Several scientific discoveries and
inventions also changed the mode of life. Each of those changes reflected a
change in its literature. As in the history of English people, so in the
history of English literature, there were different phases of progress. Each of
those phases, known as "Age"
or "Period", has been
given a particular name sometimes according to the name of the king or queen,
sometimes after the name of a great writer, and sometimes according to the
spirit of the time. Some of the ages have got more than one name because
different historians have given them different names. Similarly the duration of
a particular age also differs according to the choice of the historians. Apart
from these, some of the ages are subdivided into smaller ages, Though the names
and time-span of the ages of English literature differ from historian to
historian the following list derived from M. H. Abrams is dependable:
1. 450-1066: The Old English Period
or the Anglo-Saxon Period.
2.1066-1400: The Middle English Period
a) Anglo-Norman Period (10664340)
b) The Age of Chaucer (13404400)
3. 1500-1660: The Renaissance Period
a) Elizabethan Age (1558-1603)
b) Jacobean Age (1603-1625)
(c) Caroline Age (1625-1649)
(d) Commonwealth Period (1649-1660)
4. 1660-1785: The Neoclassical Period
a) The Restoration Period (1660-1700)
b) The Augustan Age or The Age of Pope (1700-1745)
c) The Age of Sensibility or The Age of
Johnson (1745-1785)
5. 1798-1832: The Romantic Period
6. 1832-1901: The Victorian Period
i) The Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1860)
ii) Aestheticism and Decadence (1880-1901)
7. 1901-1939: The Modern Period
i) The Edwardian Period (1901-1910)
ii) The Georgian Period (1910-1936)
8.1939---The Postmodern Period
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