Old/Middle English
This is the linguistic language family which contains languages such as Old English, Frisian, West Saxon, and Anglian.
What is the Germanic Language Family?
He is undoubtedly the most important and influential writer of the English renaissance creating works such as Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard III.
Who is William Shakespeare?
This was the removal of the Cromwell administration and the bringing back of the English monarchs.
What is the English Restoration?
This happened on October 14, 1066 c.e.
What is the Battle of Hastings.
or
What is the Norman Invasion of England.
This life-long civil servant was the fist great poet to write in the English language.
Who was Geoffrey Chaucer?
This epic poem tells the story of a knight who journeys across England to find a monster who will cut off his head. Along the way he resists seduction by a man's wife and makes several wagers with that very man.
What is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?
This form of poetry was popularized by the Italian poet Petrarch and imported to England via translations of Petrarch's works by people like Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard.
What are sonnets?
This is the family of monarchs that ruled England during the bulk of the English Renaissance.
Who are the Tudors?
This type of entertainment was shut down and made illegal in England under the Cromwell administration's puritan laws. It famously saw the closing of the Globe Theater. After the Restoration, it flourished rapidly and liscentiously.
What are plays (or Dramas)?
This happened on January 15th, 1559c.e.
What was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the First?
This late renaissance poet wrote works such as "The Flea," "the Good-Morrow," and a series of Holy Sonnets.
Who was John Donne?
This style of poem has 14 lines and is characterized by a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG.
What is an English (or Shakespearean) sonnet?
These are the opening lines of the most important late Middle English poem:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote,
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
What is The Canerbury Tales?
This Renaissance playwright was an active spy for the British crown and died in his twenties but not until after writing works like Dr. Faustus. Works that were incredibly influential on William Shakespeare.
Who is Christopher Marlowe?
This poet and critic of the restoration period wrote works such as "An Essay on Criticism" and The Rape of the Lock. He is important for giving rise to the role of the critic in literature.
Who was Alexander Pope?
This happened on April 23, 1616c.e.
What is the death of William Shakespeare?
This son of a dissenter, and a dissenter himself, was part of the rise in the popularity of novels during the 1700s.
Who was Daniel Defoe?
This satirical and polemic work by Johnathan Swift proposed the eating of Irish babies to solve the overpopulation problem in Ireland.
Double Points opportunity: Name the satirical novel written by Johnathan Swift which inspired Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky.
What is A Modest Proposal?
What is Gulliver's Travels?
This element/style of Old English literature involved mighty heroes making great boasts, beating monsters in feats of strength, and strong pagan themes.
What are Heroic Epics?
She wrote The Blazing World and an Autobiography.
Who was Margaret Cavendish?
This feminist writer of the Restoration era boycotted marriage arguing that no sane woman should want to subject herself to the institution that basically enslaved them.
Who was Mary Astell?
This important battle in 1588c.e. cemented British dominance of the world's oceans via their navy.
What is the Battle of Gravelines.
or
What is the British defeat of the Spanish Armada?
This French woman wrote stories such a Chevrefoil, Lanfal, and a translation of The Fables of Aesop for the court of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine that combined the Norman French language with Celtic and Anglo-Saxon myths.
Who is Marie de France?
This epic poem written in Middle English was created by William Langland.
What is Piers Plowman?
This form of vernacular literature (literature translated into local languages), popular during the middle ages in Europe, is also called hagiography and was instrumental in the conversation of many pagan German and Scandinavian peoples to Christianity at a time when translating the Bible was considered heretical.
What are Saints' Lives?
This English poet was also a governor of Ireland and famously fled that land after an unruly mob burned down his home with his infant son inside.
Who was Edmund Spenser?
Double Points Opportunity!
These men were all massively influential thinkers and writers in the foundations of the Age of Reason/Enlightenment.
Double Points if you can name 3.
Who were:
Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John Locke, David Hume
This happened in 1688 when King James II was removed from the throne and William of Orange and Charles I's daughter, Mary II, were made rulers of England. It famously happened with little to no bloodshed.
What was the Glorious Revolution?
This woman writer of the Restoration period was the playwright behind Fantomima.
Who was Elizabeth Haywood?
This epic poem written by Edmund Spenser was important for centering Celtic themes making it a uniquely English poem at a time when translations of Italian poetry was more common. Many suspect it was critical of Queen Elizabeth I as well.
What is The Fairie Queene?