Timeline of British Literary Periods
What is the Norman Conquest?
The Old English period, which began around 450, ended in 1066 with this event.
What is Beowulf?
This Old English epic features a hero who fights the monster Grendel.
Who is Geoffrey Chaucer?
He wrote The Canterbury Tales.
Who is Elizabeth I?
This queen gave her name to the "Golden Age" of English culture.
What is Stratford-upon-Avon?
Shakespeare was born in this town.
What is the Middle English period?
This period lasted from about 1066 to around 1500.
Who are the scops?
These Anglo-Saxon poets performed verse orally.
Who is Thomas Becket?
The pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales travel to the shrine of this saint.
What is Doctor Faustus?
Marlowe wrote this play about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge.
What is Hamlet?
This famous tragedy is about the Prince of Denmark.
What is the Renaissance?
This period includes the reigns of Elizabeth I and the career of Shakespeare.
What is a kenning?
Calling the sea the "whale-road" is an example of this Old English poetic device.
What is Piers Plowman?
This allegorical poem by William Langland follows a dreamer in search of truth.
What is the sonnet?
Wyatt and Surrey brought this 14-line poetic form from Italy to England.
What is the Globe?
Shakespeare's company performed at this famous London theatre.
What is the Neoclassical period?
Pope and Swift wrote in this 18th-century period, also called the "Augustan Age."
Who are the Jutes?
The Angles, the Saxons, and this third Germanic tribe invaded Britain in the 5th century.
What is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?
In this anonymous Arthurian romance, a knight faces a mysterious green challenger.
What is Utopia?
Thomas More wrote this 1516 work about an ideal imaginary society
What is 154?
Shakespeare wrote this many sonnets.
What is Lyrical Ballads?
Wordsworth and Coleridge launched Romanticism in 1798 by publishing this collection.
Who is Layamon?
This poet wrote Brut, the first English-language work to tell the story of King Arthur.
Who is William Caxton?
In 1485, this first English printer published Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
What is The Faerie Queene?
Edmund Spenser wrote this epic poem in honor of Elizabeth I.
What is iambic pentameter?
This meter, with ten syllables per line, is the most common in Shakespeare's verse.