English literature

English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, best known for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer was also active as a diplomat and civil servant for several English kings, holding posts such as comptroller in the Customs House, and justice of the peace and knight of the shire in Kent.

Prose and poetry fiction and non-fiction writing written in the English language in the UK. The development of English literature from Old English literature to the present day can be traced through several different literary periods identifiable by their artistic theory, methods, and concerns.

English literature may be considered to begin in 449 with the arrival of the Saxons, although the first surviving fragments of texts date from c. 698. This Old English literature was varied, quick to develop, and remarkably sophisticated, both in poetry and prose; an example of the verse is Beowulf. Old English literature was eclipsed by the Norman conquest of 1066.

The subsequent 400 years, termed the Middle English period, saw the influence of French literature and then that of the Italian Renaissance. During this period, in which poetry was especially popular, the lyric poem and the ballad form were particularly common. Because, for the most part, the ability to record literature was possessed by the church, much secular Old and Middle English literature is likely to have been lost. The most influential Middle English poet was Chaucer.

English Literature was revivified and popularized in a surprisingly short space of time, in the 16th century, as the Renaissance gave writers both ‘new’ models (based on Greek and Roman literature) and renewed confidence that English was a medium capable of producing great works. An important Renaissance writer in English was Sir Thomas More. The development of English literature continued in Elizabethan literature, and, in a more ornate style, in the Jacobean period.

Influential writers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods include the playwrights Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Revenge tragedy of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods was highly popular, and mirrored the rising social and political tensions of the time. However, the period of Caroline literature, immediately prior to the English Civil War (1642–51), is surprisingly nondescript. Many of the great writers of previous generation were either dead or died during the period, while those who would rise to prominence in the period of Restoration literature period were hardly born. In the succeeding period of parliamentary rule, sometimes termed the Commonwealth period, there was a great deal of interesting non-fiction, in the form of religious and political pamphlets and tracts, but the creative writing that existed was written in exile abroad or the new American colonies.

The restoration of King Charles II gave rise to diverse literary works, including the bawdy and explicit Restoration comedy and powerful religious classics from English writers such as John Milton and John Bunyan. Witty and satirical poetry became popular and, with the popularization of classical models and ideals, the literature of the subsequent 100 years is termed Augustan.

Although ridiculed by later artists for its obsession with convention and abandoning of realism, the Augustan period is diverse, and includes the work of writers such as the English Daniel Defoe and the Irish Jonathan Swift.

The earliest examples of Romanticism date from 1726, and this period saw the emergence of, and experimentation with, the novel as a successful form. Major contributors to the development of the novel were not strictly termed ‘Romantics’, but were writing during the same period, and include the English writers Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne. The ‘Romantics’ of the late 18th and early 19th century were promoting an essentially chaotic view of the universe. The neat and ordered world of the Augustan neo-classicists is replaced by a world influenced by the wild forces of nature and man's individual will. The movement was a reaction against over-industrialization and the exploitation of people, and can be seen in increasingly daring literature which sometimes documented experiments with drugs and doubts about the existence of God.

Other developments in early 19th-century literature were less obvious but were equally influential in shaping our modern culture. Novelists, following in the footsteps of English writer Jane Austen, depicted the daily hopes and fears of small communities, without acknowledging the issues of the wider world. The gothic novel became increasingly contemporary and explicit in both themes and tone. An important contribution was made by the ‘social and political novel’ which, abandoning the direct satire of the 18th century, chose to raise awareness of inequality and injustice through realism in art, often serializing believable accounts of contemporary life in periodicals. This method of production created a wider audience for fiction and led to wider literacy within the lower classes of England. Whilst the drama of the period was at first mostly popular melodrama, later the plays of the Irish dramatists George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, although often comic on the surface, addressed serious themes of the period. The 19th century is rich in poetry. The theme of noble ambitions destroyed by human frailty appealed to a period whose concern with outward respectability hid a darker private side; beautifully constructed classical poetry was composed alongside striking experiments in style and structure.

20th century literature is possibly best characterized by its vast increase in readership, book production, and means of distribution. These also make any brief survey difficult and superficial. The century began with the impact of World War I, which soon led to the search for new directions in literature and philosophy, both in the UK, Europe, and the USA. Modernism is concerned with the opportunities and limitations of writing as well as social themes. Major figures include the US-born poet and critic T S Eliot, English writers Virginia Woolf and D H Lawrence, and Irish writer James Joyce. The late 20th century is so recent that it is difficult to sum up. Increased influence from other cultures in Britain has led to the success of the writing of ethnic minorities, including the work of Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth. Postmodernism is a controversial title given to some literature and art, and begins in around 1980. It focuses on the combination of influences from different cultures and periods.