History of English Literature by Eric Shelman

History of English Literature

In English Literature's beginnings

poems, prose, stories, and histories were recorded orally before mankind evolved to writing everything down

From eighth to fourteenth century

commenced as Old English

Starting with Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon

or commonly known as Old English

which is incomprehensible to the reader of just modern English

There are continuous linguistic developments between the two

Which turned into Middle English 

differing from Old English 

with an addition of a French vocabulary after the Norman conquest

French and Germanic influences competed for mainstream role in English Literature

Both traditions achieved magnificent flowering in England in the Late fourteenth century the end of Middle English 

Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are masterpieces that look back to Old English

by constrast Geoffrey Chaucer, ushers in a new era of English Literature in his

Canterbury Tales

Edmund Spencer considered the greatest lyrical gift of any English poet in the two centuries since Chaucer, was a graduate of Cambridge and by inclination a humanist pedant.

His inspiration comes largely from a desire to rival his classical and Renaissance predecessors.