The history of English literature

English literature had its beginnings while the Anglo-Saxons were still on the Continent. When they conquered the Celts, they brought with them a rich tradition of oral literature steeped in their customs and pagan beliefs and rituals. This literature focused on the telling of the brave and heroic deeds of the warriors possessing attributes they valued and wished to emulate.

The only surviving full-length epic in Old English from that time, «Beowulf», the first major work of English literature.

The other important types of Anglo-Saxon poetry are the lyric and I In riddle. The lyric presents a more personal and emotional form of poetry in which an object or person is described in a rather ambiguous mam in

In the lyrics and riddles, the Anglo-Saxons expressed their terror of the northern winter, and their awareness of the transitory nature of human life.

For the history of the Medieval English literature, the Norman invasion meant the disappearance of almost any record of literary activity for over a century.

The Norman invasion did not stop English literature completely; it only temporarely prevented people from writing it down.

Most medieval literature is now lost. What has survived is varied in form and content and tells us about the vitality of that era in many ways.

I lie greatest writer of the Middle English period was the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. «The Canterbury Tales» (late 1300s) is an unfinished collection of comic and moral stories.

In the 15th century the period of Renaissance started in England. It was marked with the invention of the printing press, together with improved methods of manufacturing paper, made possible the rapid spread of knowledge.

The first major impact of the Renaissance on English literature is observable in the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey, who introduced the sonnet, a verse from that has proved to be both popular and durable.

In the 16th century was the period of Restoration in England. The writers of the era saw a parallel between the new political and social stability of their day and Rome under Caesar, so they wrote epics, satires, elegies, and tragedies just as their Roman predecessors had, and exercised great care in parallelling the form and content of their work with that of «the ancients».

The Romantic Age is a term used to describe life and literature in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many of the writers of the period turned away from the values and ideas of the Age of Restoration.

In general, the Romantic writers placed the individual rather than society, at the centre of their vision. They tended to be optimists who lived in the possibility of progress and improvement.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, England was ruled by Queen Victoria, who was a model of respectability, conservatism, and the domestic virtues.

Most novelists of the period wrote long works with numerous characters The novels of Charles Dickens are noted for their colourful and sometimes eccentric characters. William Makepeace Thackeray created a masterpiece of Victorian fiction in «Vanity Fair» (1847—1848).

English drama was reborn near the end of the Victorian Age.

World War I marked the beginning of the modern era. The literary movement is commonly referred as «modernism». Modem English literature took on pervasive tones of irony and intensity, and expressed moods of sobriety and pathos.

The key writer of the modern period was James Joyce. He often wrote about the people and places he had left behind, and became a principal figure in the development of the 21^st-century novel.