English Literature

The English literature is the Littérature which were written in major part in England in English, unlike the Scottish Littérature (in Scottish English, or Scots), the Welsh Littérature (in English or Welsh), the Irish Littérature (in English, Irish or scots) and the American Littérature.

Literary currents

The first English literary monument is the Beowulf which tells the fight between a warrior of a Germanic tribe and beings monstrous.

The introduction of the language Norman in England to XIe century brought the influence of the Chanson de geste and the Romance literature. Enriched by these models, the English literature took again its rise in XIVe century.

the Tales of Canterbury of Geoffrey Chaucer is the first masterpiece of an English language more or less readable by the current reader.

In XVIe century, Philip Sidney popularized the Sonnet and Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and their contemporaries founded the English theater, tradition taken again in 1660 with the restoration of Stuarts.

Among the first English novels: Pilgrim' S Progress of John Bunyan, and Robinson Crusoé of Daniel Defoe. The English Restoration, with the advent of Charles II of England, is favourable with a literary expansion without precedent ( Voir Littérature of the English Restoration ).

Romantic

Into England, the romantic ones are divided into two schools.

The first, which count inter alia Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) and William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) is called the Lakistes. Their nickname comes from their passion to sing the praises of the landscapes of the England of north, particularly the lakes.

The Cursed seconds or Poets affirm themselves against the company. They count not only poets such John Keats (1795 - 1821) or Lord Byron (1788 - 1824) but also of the writers prosateurs like Mary Shelley (1797 - 1851) and the sisters Brontë. The Cursed Poets are to be brought closer to the first French phase, with the example of Manfred, the hero of Lord Byron in the novel of the same name in 1817, romantic with the cursed destiny.

Postmodernists

Very pessimistic period after the Second world war

Internal bonds

  • English Writers, alphabetically

  • English Writers, by chronological order
  • English Writers by kinds and literary forms

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