1. History of English Literature
Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and the Renaissance:
An Overview

2. General Historical Timeline
Britons
Roman Conquest (55 B.C. – 410 A.D.)
Angles, Saxons and Jutes invade
Danish Invasion (King Alfred the Great)
Norman Conquest (1066)
Feudal England (Peasants, Nobility, and Clergy)
Hundred Years’ War ( )
War of the Roses ( ): Lancaster v. York.
Reformation (Henry VIII v. Rome = Church of England)
Counter-Reformation (Queen Mary
Reign of Queen Elizabeth ( )
Defeat of the Spanish “Armada” (1588)
Renaissance (Rebirth of Letters) – Started Italy 14th C., spread to Europe. Interest in Classical Literature (Greek and Roman) and Humanity.
Caxton – Printing Press (1475)

3. General Literary Timeline
Oral Stories
Beowulf, Dream of the Rood, and other A-S poems
Medieval Romances, translated from French or Latin (Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur)
Langland’s Piers the Plowman
English Ballads (songs/chants): Robin Hood
Chaucer (Troilus and Crieseyde, The Canterbury Tales) – First to bring his own voice to English literature and incorporate Heroic Couplet*
First English Bible (14th C.)
Thomas More (Utopia)
Translation, Travel and Lyric poems
The Sonnet
Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene
Miracle Plays
Christopher Marlowe (Doctor Faustus)
Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

4. Beowulf A-S poem Taken from Oral History and Stories
Written down and influenced by Christian Monks
Alliterative Verse
Metaphor and idiom
Understatement
Meant to be read aloud or sung

5. Medieval Romances Translated from French or Latin
Focuses on one Romantic “Hero”
Matters of Britain (King Arthur)
Matters of France (Charlemagne)
Matters of Rome (Alexander the Great)
See: Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Havelok the Dane, etc.

6. Piers the Plowman Written by William Langland (c.1330-c.1400)
Alliterative verse (but in Early Middle English)
Dream Poem
Allegory – using symbols to relate truth
Shows Feudal England
Exaltation of the oppressed peasant

7. Ballads Peasant’s literature (oral)
Story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas (abcb rhyme)
Oral history, written down much later
Robin Hood (The Geste of Robin Hood)

8. Chaucer
1340-c.1400
French influence (The Romaunt of the Rose) - translation
Italian influence (Troilus and Criseyde) - adaption
English originality (The Canterbury Tales) – new and original
Language: Rhymed Stanza; Heroic Couplet (French) = Blank Verse + Rhyming Couplet; Iambic Pentameter

9. Thomas More 1478-1535 Middle Class scholar and lawyer
Executed by Henry VIII because of disagreements
Utopia – More’s vision of an ideal commonwealth
Book 1 – picture of contemporary England
Book 2 – Sketch of More’s ideal

10. Lyrical Poems
Renaissance and Elizabethan Era brought about interest in Classics, Humanism and nationalist feeling
Translations of Italian and French as well as Latin and Greek
Travel Literature
Lyrical Poems
Thousands of lyrical poems
Introduction of the Sonnet

11. The Sonnet 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) 2 kinds:
English Sonnet (Shakespearean) has rhyme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg
Italian (Petrarchan) has octave (two quatrains) forming the proposition followed by sestet (two tercets) forming the resolution. rhyme: abba abba, cde cde (or cdc cdc)
All lines have 10 syllables
Also, Occitan, Spenserian, and Modern Sonnets

12. Edmund Spencer
The Faerie Queene – long poem in 12 books (only 6 finished)
Faerie Queene (Elizabeth I) holds feast of 12 days, each day a stranger in distress asks for help and a knight is assigned to help
Each knight represents a virtue; and war against a vice
Blend of Modernism, Humanism, and Medievalism
Spenserian Stanza: 8 iambic pentameter +1 line of 6 iambic feet; rhyme: ababbcbcc