This document provides an overview of the key periods in English literature, including the Old English period, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Elizabethan era, 17th century, Restoration period, 18th century, Romantic period, Victorian era, and Modern period. It summarizes some of the defining features of each period as well as influential authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Wordsworth. The document is intended to help readers understand the development of English literature across different historical ages.

2. PRESENTED BY
GHAZANFAR ALI
SUBJECT SPECIALIST (ENGLISH)
QAED ( FORMER GOVT.COLLEGE FOR
ELEMENTARY TEACHERS) NAROWAL

3.  The objectives of this chapter are to enable you
to:
 Create an understanding among students about
various ages of English literature
 Develop comprehension about the salient
features of different ages of literature
 Acquire information about representative authors
of all the ages
 Get knowledge about representative works of
literature

4.  Salient Features of Old Age
 War Themes
 Oral Literature
 Tribal legends
 Verse form

5.  The best piece and representative work of
literature produced in this age is Beowulf.
 Beowulf is the only surviving Anglo-Saxon or
Germanic epic poem, in the oral form of
recitation, incorporating heroic stories.
 This long poem was composed for recitation,
perhaps in the 6thC.
 The author of this poem is unknown.
 The length of the epic is 3,000-line, in a
narrative form and is divided into two parts of
equal length.

6.  ROMANCES
 Romance in English literature originally came
from languages French and Latin, later came
to be known as something written in French.
The basic theme of romance of middle ages is
actions and adventures of knights in the
honour of the Queen. Medieval romance can
be defined as a story of adventure—fictitious
in nature and having supernatural elements
depicted in verse or prose form.

7.  Geoffrey Chaucer, born in 1340 at London,
England, became a public servant to Countess
Elizabeth of Ulster in 1357 and continued
working with the British court throughout his
lifetime.
 He is known as the father of English
literature.
 The Canterbury Tales became his best known
and most acclaimed work in the history and
field of literature.

8.  The word Renaissance means the revival and
rebirth. The age is known as the transition
phase where the effects of middle ages were
shaken off. It started from Italy in the 14th C.
And spread in the north region. In England
this revival in art and literature reached in
16th C.

9.  The Renaissance thinkers and scholars focused
on the following elements.
 Classical Literature
 Classical Art
 Greek Ideals
 Rejection of Medieval modes of thinking and
Romances.
 Political Changes took place
 Humanism became the fashion of the day.
Human became more important than Divine
elements.
 Discovery and occupation of the new lands.
 Building large Ships.

10.  Christopher Marlowe
 Elizabethan poet and Shakespeare’s most
important predecessor in English drama, who
is noted especially for his establishment of
dramatic blank verse.
 Doctor Faustus
 Doctor Faustus tells the story of Marlowe’s
best known character Dr. Faustus, who
decides to sell his soul to the devil Lucifer, in
exchange for power and knowledge, the
typical characteristics of Renaissance.

11.  considered by many to be the greatest dramatist
of all time
 Shakespeare occupies a unique position in
world of literature.
 Other poets, such as Homer and Dante, and
novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and Charles
Dickens, have transcended national barriers; but
no writer’s living reputation can compare to that
of Shakespeare, whose plays, written in the late
16th and early 17th centuries for a small
repertory theatre, are now performed and read
more often and in more countries than ever
before.

12. COMEDIES
All's Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
Comedy of Errors
Love's Labour's Lost
Measure for Measure
Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
Taming of the Shrew
Tempest
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter's Tale

13.  Henry IV, Part I
 Henry IV, Part II
 Henry V
 Henry VI, Part I
 Henry VI, Part II
 Henry VI, Part III
 Henry VIII
 King John
 Pericles
 Richard II
 Richard III

14.  Antony and Cleopatra
 Coriolanus
 Cymbeline
 Julius Caesar
 Hamlet
 King Lear
 Macbeth
 Othello
 Romeo and Juliet
 Timon of Athens
 Titus Andronicus
 Troilus and Cressida

15.  Salient Features of The Age of Milton Political
Unrest.
 Fight between Parliament and Church Revolution
 Continuation of the Renaissance ideals
 His literary works are divided into three groups.
 First, shorter poems at Horton.
 Second Group- Prose Work Second, prose work
inspired by his Puritanism and politics
 Third:Paradise Lost, a great epic deals with the
fall of Man and disobedience of God.

16.  Salient Features of Metaphysical poetry.
 Highly Philosophical
 Exaggeration
 Conceits.
 Playing with words and their meanings
 Far-fetched similes and metaphor.

17.  Salient Features of the age
 Classical model
 Reasons
 Intellectual thoughts
 Urban Models
 Satirical tone
 Philosophical ideas
 Political thoughts and matters
 Sublime and metaphorical language
 Typical classical verse form
 Classical diction

18.  Picaresque Novel
 In English novel started with the picaresque
form that focuses on the short coming of the
society when the protagonist wanders from
place to place.
 Example
 The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Banyan
 Banyan in this first English novel tells the
story of the pilgrim named Christian.

19.  Salient Features of Romantic Age
 Focus on emotions, passion and feelings
 Depiction of rural life
 Intuition and imagination imitating primitive,
medieval and natural tendencies
 Belief in individualism
 Subjectivism
 Common use of language for poetic diction
 William Wordsworth
 Wordsworth (1770-1850) is the mind and soul
behind revolutionary movement of Romanticism.

20.  Salient Features of the Age
 Age of Development and Industrialization
 Material expansion

Age of doubt and hopelessness
 Knowledge accepted as having scientific nature and
evolution
 Philosophical understanding of changing times.
 Mathew Arnold
 Arnold is a great poet of the Victorian age. Through his
poetry he tries to achieve literary milestones. He revolts
against the sentimentality of Romantics. His poetry reflects
doubts in religion and science

21.  Salient Features of the Modern Age
 World War 1 and WW 2 and Echoes of Change
 Cosmopolitan approach to literature
 Realism
 Materialism
 Application of literary critical principles
 Experimentation in literary forms and techniques
with emergence of Symbolism, Stream of
Consciousness, Psychological development of
characters, imagism, Colonialism, Structuralism
and Formalism, Kinds of Feminism etc.