The Middle English Period

 consist of literature produced in the four and half centuries between the
Norman Conquest of 1066 and about 1500, when the standard literary
language, derived from the dialect of the London area, become recognizable
as “modern English.”

THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD

 The English that was used from 1100 to 1500 is called “Middle English.”
 This Middle English literature corresponds to the medieval period.
 The Norman conquest of England in 1066 traditionally signifies the beginning
of 200 years of the domination of French in English letters.
  Medieval works of literature often center on the inevitability, sadness,
change, loss and death, and the vanity of human grandeur

THE LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD

 The second half produced the first great age of secular literature. The
most widely known of these writings are Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury
Tales, the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Thomas Malory's
Morte d'Arthur

 The greatest poet of that time was Geoffrey Chaucer.

 Chaucer’s “The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” has long been
recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces of English literature.
Geoffrey Chaucer, father of English literature

 Chaucer’s Literary Work

Parliament of Foules
Troilus and Crisedy
The Legend of Good Women
The Canterbury Tales
 The Canterbury Tales is a collection of over 20 stories written in Middle
English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century during the
time of the Hundred Year’s War
 Chaucer’s characters each express different views of reality, creating an
atmosphere of relativism.
The Romantic Period of English Literature 1785-1830

 began in the late 18th century and lasted until approximately 1832.
 Romantic literature can be characterized by its personal nature, its stong
use of feeling, its abundant use of symbolism, and its exploration of nature
and the supernatural.
 In addition, the writings of the Romantics were considered innovative based
on their belief that literature should be spontaneous, imaginative, personal,
and free.
 The Romantic Period produced a wealth of authors including Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Lord Byron.
It was during the Romantic Period that Gothic literature was born. Traits of
Gothic literature are dark and gloomy settings and characters and situations that
are fantastic, grotesque, wild, savage, mysterious, and often melodramatic. Two of
the most famous Gothic novelists are Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelley.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Ann Radcliffe, née Ann Ward, (born July 9, 1764, London, England—died February
7, 1823, London), the most representative of English Gothic novelists. She stands
apart in her ability to infuse scenes of terror and suspense with an aura
of romantic sensibility. Ann Radcliffe was the most popular writer of her day
and almost universally admired. Contemporary critics called her the mighty
enchantress and the Shakespeare of romance-writers. The Mysteries of
Udolpho (1794), by which she became the most popular novelist in England, tells
how the orphaned Emily St. Aubert is subjected to cruelties by guardians,
threatened with the loss of her fortune, and imprisoned in castles but is finally
freed and united with her lover.
Postmodern Period 1945 to present
 literature is marked, both stylistically and ideologically, by a reliance on
such literary conventions as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators,
often unrealistic and downright impossible plots, games, parody, paranoia,
dark humor and authorial self-reference.
 Postmodern authors tend to reject outright meanings in their novels,
stories and poems, and, instead, highlight and celebrate the possibility of
multiple meanings, or a complete lack of meaning, within a single literary
work.

Postmodern literature also often rejects the boundaries between 'high' and 'low'
forms of art and literature, as well as the distinctions between different genres
and forms of writing and storytelling. Here are some examples of stylistic
techniques that are often used in postmodern literature:

 Pastiche: The taking of various ideas from previous writings and literary
styles and pasting them together to make new styles.
 Intertextuality: The acknowledgment of previous literary works within
another literary work.
 Metafiction: The act of writing about writing or making readers aware of
the fictional nature of the very fiction they're reading.
 Temporal Distortion: The use of non-linear timelines and narrative
techniques in a story.
 Minimalism: The use of characters and events which are decidedly common
and non-exceptional characters.
 Maximalism: Disorganized, lengthy, highly detailed writing.
 Magical Realism: The introduction of impossible or unrealistic events into a
narrative that is otherwise realistic.
 Faction: The mixing of actual historical events with fictional events without
clearly defining what is factual and what is fictional.
 Reader Involvement: Often through direct address to the reader and the
open acknowledgment of the fictional nature of the events being described.

Many critics and scholars find it best to define postmodern literature against the
popular literary style that came before it: modernism. In many ways, postmodern
literary styles and ideas serve to dispute, reverse, mock and reject the principles
of modernist literature.
Postmodern writers

 Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot

 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
 William Burroughs Naked Lunch
 J.D. Salinger A Catcher in the Rye
 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five
 Thomas Pynchon Gravitys Rainbow
 John Updike Rabbit Run
 Phillip Roth Portnoy’s Complaint, American Pastoral
 J.M. Coetze Life & Times of Michael K
 Joyce Carol Oates Where are Going, Where Have You Been
 Margaret Atwood The Handmaiden’s Tale
 Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian
 Allen Ginsberg Howl and Other Poems
 Charles Bukowski The Last Night of the Earth Poems
REPORT IN
ENGLISH
Mrs. Rubi B. Dolar

Pelagio, Maria RAFAELA (leader)

Grospe Cherie Anne
Drapiza, Arhela
Rojas, Fevee
Roldan, Christhian
Manaloto, Nicolai
Masangcay, Rica Mae
Zapeda, Bianca Rizzi
9-ALPHA