poets

• ELIZABETHAN PERIOD


  • THOMAS MOORE - Utopia; executed by Henry VIII
  • PHILIP SIDNEY - ideal courtly poet; Astrophel and Stella, first cycle of sonnets
  • EDMUND SPENSER - Spenserian stanza (nine-line stanza); Spenserian sonnet; The Faerie Queene
  • CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE - first great English dramatist before Shakespeare: Dr. Faustus
  • JOHN DONNE - one of the greatest writers of love poetry; metaphysical poetry; A Valedictorian
  • ANDREW MARVELL - assistant of Milton; To His Coy Mistress
  • WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE - greatest of all dramatists
  • BEN JONSON - Shakespeare's contemporary; Volpone
  • JOHN MILTON - greatest English poet after Shakespeare; Paradise Lost
• RESTORATION PERIOD (Imagination)


  • JOHN LOCKE - school of Empiricism; Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  • THOMAS HOBBES - secular justification; Leviathan
  • GIBBON - The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (greatest historical work in English)
• CLASSICAL TRADITION (Augustan Age)

  • AGE OF DRYDEN - heroic couplet; Absalom and Achitophel
  • William Congreve - ablest writer of comedy; Love 4 Love
  • John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress
  • AGE OF POPE - refined heroic couplet; An Essay on Criticism
  • Jonathan Swift - satirist; Gulliver's Travels
  • Daniel Dafoe - novelist; Robinson Crusoe
  • AGE OF JOHNSON - Dictionary Johnson; Dictionary of the English Language
  • Oliver Goldsmith - Irish Playwright; She Stoops to Conquer
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan - The Rivals
  • Thomas Percy - bishop; Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
  • Samuel Richardson - Pamela (Epistolary)
  • Henry Fielding - English Novel Tradition; Tom Jones
  • Tobias Smollett - The Adventures of Roderick Random (first Picaresque novel)
  • Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions (great 18-century masterpieces)
• THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (movement; nature; emotion)

  • THOMAS GRAY - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
  • WILLIAM BLAKE - engraver; songs of innocence
  • WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - featured coleridge; The Prelude; Lyrical Ballad
  • SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE - leader of Romantic movement; Lyrical Ballad
  • WALTER SCOTT - scottish; Ivanhoe
  • LORD BYRON - Don Juan
  • PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY - Ode To a Skylark
  • JOHN KEATS - "most notable" - T.S. Elliot; I am certain
  • THOMAS DE QUINCEY - Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
• VICTORIAN PERIOD (Rise of the Middle Class)

  • THOMAS MACAULAY - History of England
  • JOHN HENRY NEWMAN - Apology for His Life
  • THOMAS CARLYLE - Sartor Resartus
  • ALFRED LORD TENNYSON - Ulysses (Odysseus)
  • ROBERT BROWNING - Dramatic Monologue
  • MATTHEW ARNOLD - literary critic
  • WILLIAM MORRIS - socialist reformer; The Defence of Guenevere
  • ELIZABETH BROWNING - feminist
  • JANE AUSTEN - Sense and Sensibility (manners)
  • CHARLES DICKENS - moralist; David Copperfield
  • THOMAS HARDY - Jude the Obscure
  • ROBERT STEVENSON - children
  • RUDYARD KIPLING - Victorian Setting; Jungle Book
  • JOSEPH CONRAD - vulnerability of human lives; Heart of Darkness
  • H.G WELLS - science-fantasy; The Time Machine
  • GEORGE BERNARD SHAW - most readable, significant dramatist after shakespeare; Man and Superman
• RECENT CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE


  • D.H. LAWRENCE - Sons and Lovers
  • WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS - Irish Renaissance
  • JAMES JOYCE - Stream of Consciousness; Ulysses
  • VIRGINIA WOOLF - A Room of One's Own
  • GEORGE ORWELL