English Literature — Ages & Periods — Quick Reference

Periods at a Glance

Period	Years	Must-Know Author	Must-Know Work
Old English	450–1066	Anonymous	Beowulf
Middle English	1066–1500	Chaucer	Canterbury Tales
Renaissance	1500–1660	Shakespeare	Hamlet
Restoration	1660–1700	Milton	Paradise Lost
Neo-Classical	1700–1798	Pope, Swift, Defoe	Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe
Romantic	1798–1832	Wordsworth, Keats	Lyrical Ballads
Victorian	1832–1901	Dickens, Tennyson	Oliver Twist
Modern	1901–1945	Eliot, Yeats	The Waste Land
Post-Modern	1945+	Beckett, Orwell	1984, Waiting for Godot

"Father of" Quick List

• English Poetry → Chaucer
• English Prose → King Alfred
• English Novel → Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe, 1719)
• English Essay → Francis Bacon
• English Drama → Christopher Marlowe

Key Dates to Remember

• 450 — Old English begins
• 1066 — Norman Conquest → Middle English starts
• 1719 — Robinson Crusoe (first English novel)
• 1798 — Lyrical Ballads → Romantic Age starts
• 1832 — Victorian Age begins
• 1901 — Modern period begins

Quick Traps

• Father of Poetry = Chaucer (not Shakespeare)
• Father of Novel = Defoe (not Richardson)
• Beowulf = oldest epic (not Canterbury Tales)
• Milton's Paradise Lost = Restoration period (not Renaissance)