TIMELINE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE - Old English Literature (upto 1300)



Birth of English:

Stage 1.Tribal Germanic peoples from northwest Germany (Saxons and Angles) and Jutland (Jutes) invaded Eastern England around the fifth century AD and the language spoken by them became the origin of English.

Stage 2. Their Old English or Anglo - Saxon language survived and evolved until the Normans conquered the island in 1066. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 greatly influenced the evolution of the language. For about 300 years after this, the Normans used Anglo-Norman, which was close to Old French, as the language of the court, law and administration.

Stage 3. By the latter part of the fourteenth century,  English had replaced French as the language of law and government. However, there remained considerable Anglo-Norman borrowings integrated into the language.

Songs and Sonnets of Elizabethan Period:Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Henry constable, Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton


Sonnet, derived from the Italian word ‘Sonneto’ meaning a little sound or strain, is a poem expressing one main idea or emotion consisting of fourteen decasyllabic lines. the origin of it is Italy in the early 15th century.In the first half of the 16th century the sonnet was introduced in England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. However, such outburst of lyricism in Elizabethan England is shared by almost all the poets of the Elizabethan period including Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare. Among the other writers there is Henry constable, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton etc. Now we will categorically analyse them.

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Objective Questions from English Literature

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