When did ‘English Literature’ begin? This question baffles many a student of literature because the very concept of English literature is a construction of literary history, a concept that has changed with the passage of time. According to a critic, English Literature can be compared to a great tree whose far-spreading and ever-fruitful branches have their roots deep down in the soil of the past. The passing years have left their trace behind in the growth and development of this living tree and in the process have lent a great complexity to the history of the tree.
Though English literature had sprung from the common Aryan root, it has with time, been coloured by influences from other literatures growing up around it, as well as from those of an earlier time. Though the influence of Latin, French, Italian, Greek, and Spanish literatures amongst others has been considerable, English literature still retains its distinctive flavour. The ancestors of the English namely the Teutonic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and some Frisians had spent nearly one hundred and fifty years here. These heathen tribes, after much fighting among themselves for supremacy, settled down, and a slow process of civilization started.
One of the most well-known poems of the Old English period is Beowulf—a narrative poem by an unknown poet, which together with a few other fragments, is all that survives today of the old English epic. This poem brilliantly reflects the thoughts and feelings of the forefathers of the English people when they were still heathen even though the poem may not have been actually put together in its present form until the ninth or the tenth century.
The Anglo-Saxons were first converted to Christianity by the arrival of St. Augustine in 597 AD, and this marked the gradual advent of education, science, and the arts. The process of written literature may have begun as early as the sixth century but at any rate, by the middle of the seventh century the traces of it are clear in the work of Cædmon. This period, till the Norman Conquest in 1066, saw Old English literature flourishing. The Anglo-Saxon or Old English writers produced during this time, a body of literature in prose and verse such as was furnished by no other Teutonic nation either in amount or quality during the same centuries.
With the spread of Christianity, literature underwent a change. The Cædmonian poems started to propagate newer values like the craving for freedom, the exultation in war, the longing for moral goodness, the respect for women—all these and many other things come out in the rendering of The Fall of the Angels, The Temptation of Man, and elsewhere. It is about a century later that an individual poet, by the name of Cynewulf, produces at least four poems, mostly religious, the finest of which is Christ. The rest of Old English poetry is dominated by the elegies and the war poems. The Old English Chronicle is an important work in prose of this period.
In the year 1066, England was invaded by the Normans whose culture was very much different from that of the English. The Norman Conquest brought a new and invigorating influence to bear upon the English genius, though in the immediate present of the eleventh century it seemed an overwhelming disaster for the nation.
For nearly one hundred and fifty years, the race, the language, and the literature of the people were apparently subdued. It seemed as if everything became Norman-French. Only the subjugated classes now used English. However, the continuity of native verse and prose was never really broken, and just as the English race was at last to absorb its foreign conquerors and to gain infinitely more than it had suffered from them, so English language and literature were by the same means enriched to an admirable extent.
The next few years in the history of English literature—the Middle Ages—constitute the age of the Crusades, the Age of “cathedrals, tournaments, old coloured glass, and other splendid things”. It was “an age of contrasts, of faith and of unbelief, of extraordinary saintliness and of strange wickedness, of reverence and of ribaldry”. This period witnessed the rise of the miracle and morality plays. Layamon’s The Brut (1205), a poem of 30,000 lines concerning the history of Britain, and Ormin’s The Ormulum, a series of metrical homilies upon the daily Gospels of the Church, are the notable works of this period.
Until the beginning of the thirteenth century, there was little writing of much importance. The period is marked by a curious reappearance of the Old English alliterative verse. Major poems of this period in this metre include The Pearl, a poem of great beauty and of deep religious feeling composed by an anonymous poet, and Langland’s Piers the Plowman. Then came Chaucer—the morning star of English literature who, in his writings, accumulated elements from the rigidity of the French meters and the flexibility of the English verses to evolve a characteristic language of his own. Chaucer’s work marks the full flowering of English literature in the Middle Ages, and it was he who first raised English poetry to a European position. After the death of Chaucer in 1400, English literature suffered a period of vacuum, during which was produced a great mass of literature of endless variety but of varying value.
The Middle Ages was followed by the most fateful era in the history of the English people—the Reformation or the disruption of the Church. The influence of the Renaissance, while opening up fresh branches of classical learning, more especially that of Greek poetry and philosophy, awakened and stimulated the human mind both to good and to evil.
Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse), thus inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists.
A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, and Shakespeare’s sonnets.
The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love, death, and religious faith marks out Donne and his successors, who are often called metaphysical poets. This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot in an essay of 1921. After his wife’s death, Donne underwent a serious religious conversion and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best-known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).
The seventeenth century saw the rise of a few young men who began to write verses of another kind altogether, whose work was not developed to its full meaning until much later when Dryden and Pope came to the forefront. Meanwhile, one matchless poet, John Milton, living through the greater part of the century, went his own way. He took little notice of prevailing types or subject matter and fused romantic and classical elements into one superb kind of work that is characteristically his. Milton’s poetry has become an English classic. In particular, his Paradise Lost is regarded as the one great epic in English, and its fame has somewhat overshadowed that of Milton’s earlier works.
The eighteenth century witnessed the rise of a group of poets who discarded nearly all forms of metre except the heroic couplet, and satire or didactic poetry gradually usurped almost the whole field. It was Dryden who gave the heroic couplet its “long resounding march and energy divine.” Then came Alexander Pope, whose satires became an instant hit. Dr. Samuel Johnson then came upon the literary scene and, together with Pope, dominated the eighteenth century—the age termed by many critics as “the age of prose and reason.”
The Romantic Revival began in English literature with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads (1798), jointly by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge. This small volume of poems started a revolution in poetry that emphasized an accurate description of nature, shot through with the poet’s own imagination and feeling. Further, there was a love of and interest in vivid human life—more on the individual than on society. Wordsworth wrote of “what is in all men,” about the healing and joy-giving power of nature, the strength, beauty, and pathos of the simplest human affections. The poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, on the other hand, is inimitable and perfect in its own kind, and possesses a distinctive melody. P.B. Shelley, John Keats, and Lord Byron were the other major poets of the Romantic Age.
The rise of Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Matthew Arnold to prominence in the late nineteenth century marked the arrival of the Victorian Age in English literature. This age was marked by a crisis as the age-old faith in religion and the scriptures was challenged by new findings in science. This crisis is faithfully represented by the inherent pessimism in the poetry of Tennyson and, to a lesser extent, in Matthew Arnold.
English literature in the 20th century has been influenced by the two world wars, an intervening economic depression of great severity, and the austerity of life in Britain following the second of these wars. The traditional values of Western civilization came to be questioned seriously by a number of new writers. Traditional literary forms were often discarded, and new ones succeeded one another with bewildering rapidity, as writers sought fresher ways of expressing what they took to be new kinds of experience, or experience seen in new ways. Two of the most remarkable poets of the modern period are William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Eliot achieved immediate acclaim with The Waste Land (1922), the most famous poem of the early part of the century. Eliot’s style was intimately influenced by his study of French poets such as Jules Laforgue and Saint-John Perse. Eliot’s essays, promulgating a style of poetry in which sound and sense are associated, were probably the most influential work in literary criticism in the first half of the century. Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century, evaluation is more difficult, but writers of note include Robert Lowell, Philip Larkin, R.S. Thomas, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney.
From around the mid-1980s, a new movement called Postmodernism has begun in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including literature. Postmodernism shares with Modernism many common characteristics, for example, emphasizing impressionism and subjectivity in writing. Both of these show a preference for fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
But, Postmodernism differs from Modernism in many ways. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history. The fragmentation is generally something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss.
Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn’t lament the idea of fragmentation or incoherence, but rather celebrates that.
Postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. In modern societies, knowledge was equated with science. Science was good knowledge, and narrative was bad, primitive, irrational, and thus associated with women, children, primitives, and insane people. Knowledge, however, was good for its own sake; one gained knowledge, via education, in order to be knowledgeable in general, to become an educated person. In a postmodern society, however, knowledge becomes functional—one learns things not to know them, but to use that knowledge. Further, Postmodernism seems to lead to the formation of religious fundamentalism as a form of resistance to the questioning of the “grand narratives” of religious truth. An example in this context is Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses—a book on postmodern lines that deconstructs such “grand narratives.”
Postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual’s control. By discarding the virtually impossible “grand narratives” like the liberation of the entire working class and by focusing instead on realistic, specific local goals, such as the opening of orphanages in one’s immediate neighbourhood, Postmodernism, though influenced by global trends, offers a way to seek realistic goals within the area of one’s influence, highlighting the concept of “think globally, act locally”
The Story of English Literature: A Journey Through Time
Once upon a time…
A long, long time ago, in a land filled with forests and rivers, people sat around fires and told stories. These people were the Anglo-Saxons, and they were the first to create what we now call English literature.
They did not have paper or books like we do today. Instead, they told stories orally (by speaking). One of these stories was Beowulf, a great poem about a strong warrior who fought monsters. Imagine sitting in a dark hall, listening to an elder tell this exciting tale—it must have been magical!
But then, something happened. A new religion arrived in England—Christianity. The monks who came wrote down stories, making the first written English literature. One such writer was Cædmon, a simple cowherd who became a poet.
A Big Change: The Norman Conquest (1066)
Then came a big storm—the Norman Conquest of 1066. The French invaded England and changed everything. English was no longer the “important” language. The rich people spoke French, and only the poor spoke English. Literature, too, was affected.
For nearly 150 years, English literature was in the shadows. But slowly, it came back. A man named Geoffrey Chaucer changed everything. He wrote The Canterbury Tales, a collection of fun and wise stories told by different people traveling together. His book was like a mirror of life, showing us kings, knights, merchants, and even cheating husbands!
The Golden Age of English Literature: Shakespeare and the Renaissance
Now, let’s fast forward to the 16th century. Something amazing happened—the Renaissance! This was a time of learning, discovery, and new ideas. The printing press was invented, so books could be printed easily.
And then came the biggest name in English literature—William Shakespeare! He wrote plays like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth. His plays were full of life—love, power, revenge, happiness, and sadness. Imagine sitting in the Globe Theatre in London, watching actors perform under the open sky—what an experience!
But Shakespeare was not alone. There were others too:
• Christopher Marlowe, who wrote Doctor Faustus, about a man who sold his soul to the devil.
• Edmund Spenser, who wrote The Faerie Queene, a grand poem praising Queen Elizabeth I.
This was the golden age of English literature.
A Dark Time: Wars and Politics Take Over Literature (17th Century)
But then came trouble. England went through civil wars, political fights, and religious conflicts. Literature became serious.
One great poet, John Milton, wrote Paradise Lost, a grand epic about Satan’s rebellion against God. Some say it is the greatest English poem ever written. But it was not easy to read. Milton used long and difficult sentences, making his poetry like a mountain—hard to climb, but worth the view at the top.
Meanwhile, other writers like John Donne and Andrew Marvell wrote about deep things—love, death, and God.
The Age of Reason: When Literature Became Smart and Sharp (18th Century)
Now, let’s move ahead. Imagine walking in London in the 18th century. The streets are busy, people are drinking tea, and literature is changing.
Writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift used satire (a way of making fun of society). Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels, a book about a man who visits strange lands. It looks like a fun story but is actually a sharp criticism of human foolishness.
This was the Age of Reason. People focused on logic, science, and order. But something was missing—feelings.
The Romantic Age: When Literature Followed the Heart (19th Century)
Then, the Romantic poets arrived, and everything changed. They said, “Enough of reason! Let’s talk about feelings and nature!”
• William Wordsworth wrote about simple things—clouds, trees, rivers—but in a way that made them beautiful.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a spooky poem about a sailor cursed for killing a bird.
• Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley, and John Keats wrote about love, freedom, and dreams.
It was a beautiful, emotional time for literature.
The Victorian Era: A Time of Great Stories
Then came the Victorian Age, named after Queen Victoria. The world was changing—factories, machines, trains, and science were shaping people’s lives. But was this change good? Many writers questioned it.
• Charles Dickens wrote about the struggles of poor people (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations).
• Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, a passionate love story full of ghosts and mystery.
• Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning wrote beautiful poems about hope and loss.
The Victorian era was a mix of progress and doubt.
The Modern Age: A Time of War and Change (20th Century)
Now, imagine a world shaken by two world wars. People were lost, cities were destroyed, and the old ways of thinking did not make sense anymore. Writers tried new styles:
• T.S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land, a difficult poem about the confusion of modern life.
• James Joyce wrote Ulysses, a book with no clear beginning or end, just like life itself.
• George Orwell wrote 1984, a terrifying book about a future where the government controls everything.
Modern literature was bold, strange, and experimental.
Postmodernism: When Literature Broke All the Rules
Now, we are in the postmodern era. Writers have stopped believing in one big truth. Instead, they say, “Everyone has their own truth.”
• Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, a book that mixed reality and fantasy.
• Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and others told magical, strange stories that made readers question reality.
Postmodern literature is wild, playful, and open-ended—there are no fixed rules anymore!
Final Thoughts: What Does This Journey Teach Us?
English literature is like a great river, always flowing, always changing. From ancient warriors to modern rebels, from knights and kings to factory workers and astronauts, literature tells the story of people.
• It began with heroes and battles.
• It grew with love, faith, and wisdom.
• It became bold and questioned everything.
• And today, it is free, open, and full of possibilities.
So, dear student, when you read Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Orwell, remember—you are not just reading books. You are traveling through time, listening to voices from the past, and shaping the future of stories.
Questions with Answers
- When did English literature begin?
Answer: A long, long time ago, before books, before printing presses, before schools and universities, English literature began. The earliest English people, called the Anglo-Saxons, loved telling stories. But they did not write them down. Instead, they would sit around fires and tell stories about brave warriors, powerful kings, and terrible monsters. These stories were passed from one person to another, from one generation to the next.
The most famous of these early stories is Beowulf, a great epic poem about a strong hero who fights a monster called Grendel. It is the oldest surviving English poem. Even though no one knows the name of the poet, this poem is very important because it shows us how people thought and lived in those days.
Later, Christianity came to England, and monks started writing stories and religious poems. One of the first known poets was Cædmon, a simple cowherd who became famous for his religious poetry. This is how English literature slowly moved from oral stories to written texts.
- How did Christianity change English literature?
Answer: Before Christianity, the Anglo-Saxons believed in many gods and told stories about war, bravery, and fate. But when Christian missionaries came to England in 597 AD, they brought new ideas about one God, heaven, hell, sin, and goodness. This changed the themes of English literature.
Instead of just writing about warriors and battles, writers started talking about moral lessons, religious beliefs, and the power of God. One famous poet from this time was Cædmon, who wrote about God’s creation of the world. Another important writer, Cynewulf, wrote religious poems like Christ, which spoke about faith and salvation.
This change in literature helped spread Christianity in England. Even today, many English literary works have Christian themes, showing how deeply religion shaped English storytelling.
- Who is called the “Father of English Poetry”? Why?
Answer: The title of “Father of English Poetry” is given to Geoffrey Chaucer. He lived in the 14th century and is most famous for writing The Canterbury Tales.
Before Chaucer, most English poetry was very serious and formal. But Chaucer made poetry fun, lively, and close to real life. In The Canterbury Tales, he wrote about a group of ordinary people—knights, priests, merchants, and even poor workers—who were traveling together and telling stories. Each character had a different personality, and their stories were funny, wise, or even a little naughty!
Chaucer’s writing was simple and easy to understand. Instead of using Latin or French (which were common among educated people), he used Middle English, the language spoken by ordinary people. Because of this, he helped shape the future of English poetry. That’s why we call him the Father of English Poetry.
- Why is William Shakespeare important?
Answer: Imagine a world without Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, or Macbeth. Imagine a world without famous quotes like “To be or not to be”. That world would be without William Shakespeare, the greatest English playwright.
Shakespeare was born in 1564 in England. During his life, he wrote 39 plays and 154 sonnets, and his works are still performed and read all over the world. His stories are not just about kings and queens—they are about real human emotions: love, jealousy, revenge, ambition, and fear.
• Romeo and Juliet is about young love and family conflict.
• Hamlet is about revenge and madness.
• Macbeth is about power and guilt.
Shakespeare also changed the English language, creating hundreds of new words and phrases that we still use today. His influence is so strong that even after 400 years, people still call him “The Bard of Avon”, meaning the greatest poet of England.
- What is the Romantic Age? Why is it special?
Answer: The Romantic Age (1785–1832) was a time when poets and writers focused on emotions, nature, imagination, and individual feelings. Before this period, literature was more about logic and order. But the Romantics wanted to express passion, beauty, and dreams.
Imagine a world where people wrote poetry about clouds, rivers, mountains, and even the simple joys of life. That’s what the Romantic poets did!
• William Wordsworth wrote about nature and childhood. He believed poetry should be simple and close to real life. His famous poem Daffodils describes happiness from watching flowers.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about mystery and supernatural things. His poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tells the story of a sailor cursed by the sea.
• John Keats, P.B. Shelley, and Lord Byron wrote about love, sadness, beauty, and dreams.
Romantic literature is full of emotion and imagination, which is why it is still loved today.
- What are the main themes of Victorian literature?
Answer: The Victorian Age (1832–1901) was a time of great progress but also great problems. Science, machines, and industries were growing, but many people remained poor and suffered.
Victorian literature reflected these changes.
• Charles Dickens wrote about poor children and hardworking people. His book Oliver Twist shows the hard life of orphans. His novel Great Expectations tells the story of a poor boy who wants to be rich and respected.
• Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë wrote about strong women and deep emotions. Emily’s Wuthering Heights is about love, revenge, and ghosts.
• Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning wrote poems about hope, struggle, and loss.
Victorian literature shows both the success and the suffering of the time. It makes us think about how people lived, worked, and felt during that period.
- How did the World Wars affect literature?
Answer: The two World Wars (1914–1945) changed the world, and literature changed too. Writers no longer believed in old ideas of heroism and glory. Instead, they wrote about pain, loss, and confusion.
• T.S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land, a poem that shows how the world felt broken after the war.
• George Orwell wrote 1984, a novel about a future where the government controls everything.
• Wilfred Owen, a soldier, wrote sad poems about the horrors of war.
War literature is dark, serious, and full of questions about life and death.
- What is Postmodern literature?
Answer: Postmodern literature (after 1950) is very different. It breaks rules and mixes reality with fantasy. Writers say, “Life is confusing, and literature should be confusing too!”
• Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, which mixes history, dreams, and reality.
• Gabriel García Márquez used “magical realism”, where ordinary life has magical elements.
Postmodern books often question everything, play with language, and leave the ending open.
