Ages and Periods in English Literature

Literature is much like fine arts like music, dance, sculpture, painting and so on. The basic purpose of literature is to give aesthetic pleasure through its historic implicitly and explicitly natural words with its beauty of artistic notions.

When we study the history of English literature from the earliest to modern times, we find that it has passed through certain definite phases, each having marked with its particular characteristics. These phases may be termed ages or periods. Which are named after certainly some central literary figures or famous rulers of England. like in English literature, the age of Shakespeare is known as Shakespeare’s age, Jacobean age, Elizabethan age, the age of Dryden, pope’s age the most famous and literary figure among all is the age of Chaucer’s that is embedded with its historical practices of writing. Furthermore, we have the age of Wordsworth, Johnson, Dryden, Milton, Tennyson and hardy as well.

We have the Jacobean period, the age of Queen Annette Georgian period and the Victorian age as well.

Some of the ages are named after some literary movements, as the;

Classical age

The romantic age

While others are named of some historical eras;

Medieval period

Anglo Saxon period

Anglo-Norman period

These literary phases are also named after some literary historians after the centuries like;

Seventeenth-century literature

Eighteenth-century literature

Nineteenth-century literature

Twentieth-century literature

To review it back the phases and periods both naturally overlap each other, and they are not strictly followed, but it is very important to keep them in mind to follow the various characteristics, features, the growth of English literature and especially its distinctions during the various periods of its developments.

To sum up this discussion we are evidence of the literary phenomenon that it takes several of its forms and faces to enhance its quality of being done by professional to stand as the representative of its owner, age, period and at the same time for its different historical movements.