An Outline History of English Literature

Here is a detailed outline of the History of English Literature from its beginning from the Classical Period to the Post-Modern Age:

Major Periods Highlights

The Classical Period

(1200 BCE-455 BCE) Homeric or Heroic Period (1200-800 BCE)

Classical Greek Period (800-200 BCE)

Classical Roman Period (200 BCE-455 BCE)

Patristic Period (c.70 CE-455 CE)

The Medieval Period 

(455 CE-1485 CE) The Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period

(423-1066 CE)

The Middle English Period (c.1066-1450 CE)

The Renaissance and Reformation

(1485-1660 CE) Early Tudor Period (1485-1558)

Elizabethan Period (1558-1603)

Jacobean Period(1603-1625)

Caroline Age (1625-1649)

Commonwealth Period/

Puritan Interregnum(1649-1660)

The Enlightenment (Neoclassical) Period

(1660-1790 CE) Restoration Period (1660-1700)

The Augustan Age (1700-1750)

The Age of Johnson (1750-1790)

The Romantic Period

(1790-1830 CE) Romantic poets & Gothic writings

The Victorian Period and the 19th Century

(1832-1901 CE) Sentimental Novels & Intellectual Movements

like Aestheticism and the Decadence.

The Modern Period

(1914-1945 CE) Modernist Writers, Realism, etc.

The Postmodern Period (1945 – onward) Metafiction, Multiculturalism, Magic Poetry, etc.