History of English Literature
Overview
Anglo-Saxon Literature (500-1100)
The Angles and Saxon conquered what is now called England in the 5th and 6th centuries. Christian missionaries taught the English to write. Northumbria soon produced Caedmon and Bede. Heroic poetry of a Christian kind is the chief legacy of Old English literature, notably Beowulf and the Elegies. A considerable prose literature grew up after King Alfred.
Middle English Literature (1100-1500)
Literature in England in this period was not just in English and Latin but in French as well and developed in directions set largely in France. Epic and Elegy gave way to romance and Lyric. English writing revived fully in English after 1360 and flowered in the reign of Richard II (1372-99). It gained a literary standard in London English after 1425 and developed modern forms of verse, prose and of Drama.
The conquest of England in 1066 by William of Normandy displaced English as medium of literature. The language of new rulers was French. Saxons dealing with the King had to learn French and French was the language of court and the law for three centuries.
Four genres of Middle English are: i. 1. Fabliau 2. Lyric 3. Dream Allegory 4. Ballad

Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer is the best story teller and the narrative poet. Chaucer tells his stories in a most effective way. He has the knack of transforming an old tale into a new one in such a manner that its appeal increases manifold and its human interest becomes perennial (lasting/permanent). An important feature of Chaucer's descriptive power is that his individual portrait also represents the type. Initially perhaps the sketches were devised to provide representatives of the chief classes of English society under the higher nobility. The portraits of the pilgrims are not all drawn in the same way. It is true that Chaucer