Literary Periods

Front 1

The Classical Period

Back 1

1200 BCE - 455 CE

Includes Classical Greek Period, Classical Roman Period and Patristic Period

Front 2

The Medieval Period

Back 2

455 - 1485 CE

Includes Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period, Middle English Period and Late ("High") Medieval Period

Front 3

The Renaissance and Reformation

Back 3

1485-1660 CE

Includes Early Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline Periods, Commonwealth Period (Puritan Interregnum).

Front 4

The Enlightenment

Back 4

1660-1790 CE

Also called Neoclassical.

Includes The Restoration, Augustan Period, The Age of Johnson. In America, The Colonial Period.

Front 5

Romantic Period

Back 5

1790-1830 CE

In America, called the Transcendental Period.

Blake, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Goethe, Herder, Gothic Novels. Poe, Hawthorne.

Front 6

Victorian and Nineteenth Century

Back 6

1832-1901 CE

Queen Victoria's reign. Dickens, Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Bronte Sisters, Jane Austen

Pre-Raphaelites, Asceticism, Decadence, Oscar Wilde, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Crane

Front 7

Modern Period

Back 7

1914-1945 CE

Yeats, Auden, Woolf, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Flanner O'Connor, Stein, Hemingway, Lost Generation, Harlem Renaissance, Realism

Front 8

Postmodern Period

Back 8

1945 onward

Eliot, Morrison, Shaw, Beckett, Stoppard, Pynchon, Ginsberg, Magical Realism, Multiculturalism, non-Caucasian authors, surrealism with conventions of realism.

Front 9

Classical Greek Period

Back 9

800-200 BCE

Gorgias, Aesop, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, Sophocles

Front 10

Golden Age of Greece

Back 10

Fifth Century BCE (499-400 BCE)

The polis, City-State, early democracy, Athenian glory.

Front 11

Classical Roman Period

Back 11

200 BCE - 455 CE

Rome conquers Greece in 146 CE. Plautus, Terence, Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Lucretius, Cicero, Quintillian.

Front 12

Patristic Period

Back 12

70 CE - 455 CE

Early Christian writings. Augustine, Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, Ambrose and Saint Jerome, compilation of Bible by Jerome.

Barbarians sack Rome in 455 CE.

Front 13

Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period

Back 13

455 CE - 799 CE

"Dark Ages." After fall of Rome. Anglo-Saxon spread, displacing Celts. Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer.

Front 14

Carolingian Renaissance

Back 14

800-850 CE

Early Medieval encyclopedias, grammars. Period of Viking Sagas.

Front 15

Middle English Period

Back 15

1066-1450 CE

Norman French conquer England in 1066, leading to 12th Century Renaissance (1100-1200 CE): chivalric romances, Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, Abelard.

Front 16

Late or "High" Medieval Perdio

Back 16

1200-1485 CE

Middle English writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, "Gawain" or "Pearl" poet, the Wakefield Master and William Langland. Also, Boccacio, Petrarch, Dante, Christine de Pisan

Front 17

Early Tudor Period

Back 17

1485-1558 CE

War of the Roses ends and Henry VII claim throne. Martin Luther and emergence of Protestantism. Henry VIII's Anglican schism. Spenser.

Front 18

Elizabethan Period

Back 18

1558-1603 CE

Queen Elizabeth saves England from Spanish invasion and internal turmoil.

Shakespeare early plays, Marlowe, Kydd, Sidney.

Front 19

Jacobean Period

Back 19

1603-1625 CE

Shakespeare later work, Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Johnson, John Donne.

Front 20

Caroline Age

Back 20

1625-1649 CE

Milton, Herbert, Herrick, Cavalier Poetry, Sons of Ben, reign of Charles I.

Front 21

Commonweath Period (Puritan Interregnum)

Back 21

Under Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship. Milton continues; Marvell, Sir Thomas Browne.

Front 22

The Restoration

Back 22

1660-1700 CE

Restoration of Charles II to throne. French and Classical influences. Dryden, Locke, Pepys, Goldsmith, Gay, Congreve. Racine, Moliére.

Front 23

Augustan Age

Back 23

1700-1750 CE

Transition toward Romanticism, still Neoclassical. Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Gibbon vs. Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, Crabbe. Colonial America: Franklin, Jefferson, Paine.