Origins to Christ (Circa 10,000 BC to AD 35)
The book of Genesis accounts for our first known literature. Interestingly, God created the world, the planets, people, and most everything we know by his Word, with words (we don’t know how He made the angels, wisdom, justice, and other things that would have existed before the world, but it stands to reason that it was in a similar manner). Wisdom worked at his side, and the world was fashioned in six days. Was this creation by God a song, as Tolkien describes the great ones singing in The Silmarillion? Could such song waves be the mysterious waves that charge the atoms of every cell, holding all things together by those first reverberating words?
Regardless, we were made in God’s image, so we should and do love to create with our words. Proverbs reminds us that the fruit of a good tongue is a tree of life, that we can work with our hands or with our words, generally, to earn our keep, and that words well-chosen will bless and heal the hearer and win you the favor of those God has chosen to rule. Words are powerful. This is one reason Christ reminds us to speak honestly; when we speak falsely, we tarnish the image-bearing we and our words should carry, and we become less human, less glorious.
Returning to literature, we note that it stems from the Latin word for letters (littera). So, when do these stories become things written down? That we cannot tell, for so much is destroyed. Yet we know that God created Adam and Eve ready to converse, and that our first generations were mighty in their arts. It stands to reason that literature began in those first generations. The first quoted words uttered by a man that anyone thought worthy of recording form a poem:
“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh:
She shall be called Woman
Because she was taken out of Man.”
(Genesis 2:23)
The world saw cities rise and wickedness increase. Man’s imagination was up to no good; he was led astray by all kinds of fallen angels; literature would have followed suit. But we have no record of this because God sent a flood to cleanse the Earth.
Noah’s sons began to repopulate the Earth, but men fell again into the vanity of their imaginations, led astray by those same fallen angels. Thus, God struck man with the confusion of language at the Tower of Babel. Men scatter across the Earth, but still cling to their false gods. God Almighty had promised that he would not flood the Earth again, so we can now find our first traces of literature wherever civilizations arose. God raised up the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and prophets like Moses (prepares the first five books of the Bible), Elijah, Jeremiah and priests and poets and scribes like Aaron, David, Solomon, Samuel, and Ezra. The stories of God’s dealings with man were carefully treasured, copied, and passed down from generation to generation. But, often, generations would go by with no fear of God in sight. Some generations would forget where they kept a copy of the law. God would send a Gentile nation to judge them. It was common for conquerors to raze cities, destroying everything but the gold and silver of a vanquished foe.
The scriptures were kept by God’s grace, but we find little literary remains before the Greek civilization. In fact, our oldest copy of the Greek Old Testament predates our oldest copy of a Hebrew Old Testament. The very name of God was rendered
obscure due to reliance on the tetragrammaton (yhwh; ironically, de-vowelled in reverence). The world awaited its refreshing, its renewal, in the return of its King. The Word would return—Christ Jesus—to revive, clarify, fulfill, apply, and extend the story that the Jews had been so careful to copy but so troubled in keeping. The letter, which brought death by law, is now free to bring life through faith. Law itself becomes life as lived in love: The Word which spoke words to first create, visits a world of men and words gone wrong, and brings His true, living word again to recreate a new Heavens and new Earth. All things, literature included, take on what Dante would call la vita nuova (the new life).
That gives only the faintest hint at all that took place those many centuries, and the implications of Jesus’ life on letters, but it will have to suffice. Here follows a generic outline of literature by Dr. Kip Wheeler and revised (and still revising) by yours truly.
A. Ancient to Renaissance
In the Western tradition, the early periods of literary history are roughly as follows below:
The Classical Period (1200 BC – AD 455)
I. Homer or Homeric Period (1200-800 BC) Greek legends are passed along orally, including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. This is a chaotic period of warrior-princes, wandering sea-traders, and fierce pirates.
II. Classical Greek Period (800-200 BC) Greek writers, playwrights, and philosophers such as Gorgias, Aesop. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles. The fifth century (499-400 BC) in particular is renowned as The Golden Age of Greece. This is the sophisticated period of the polis, or individual City-State, and early democracy. Some of the world's finest art, poetry, drama, architecture, and philosophy originate in Athens.
III. Classical Roman Period (200 BC- AD 455) Greece's culture gives way to Roman power when Rome conquers Greece in 146 AD. The Roman Republic was traditionally founded in 509 BC, but it is limited in size until later. Playwrights of this time include Plautus and Terence. After nearly 500 years as a Republic, Rome slides into dictatorship under Julius Caesar and finally into a monarchial empire under Caesar Augustus in AD 27. This later period is known as the Roman Imperial period. Roman writers include Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. Roman philosophers include Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius. Roman rhetoricians include Cicero and Quintilian.
IV. Patristic Period (c. AD 70- 455) Early Christian writings appear such as Saint Augustine, Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome. This is the period in which Saint Jerome first compiles the Bible, when Christianity spreads across Europe, and the Roman Empire suffers its dying convulsions. In this period, barbarians attack Rome in AD 410 and the city finally falls to them completely in AD 455. The Empire limps along until Odoacer gives it a final death blow in 476.
The Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Periods (AD 500-1500)
I. The Old English or Anglo-Saxon Period (AD 500-1066)
The so-called "Dark Ages" (AD 455-799) occur when Rome falls and barbarian tribes move into Europe. Franks, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Goths settle in the ruins of Europe and the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes migrate to Britain, displacing native Celts into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Early Old English poems such as Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer originate sometime late in the Anglo-Saxon period. The Carolingian Renaissance (800-850) emerges in Europe. In central Europe, texts include early medieval grammars, encyclopedias, etc. In northern Europe, this time period marks the setting of Viking sagas.
II. The Middle English or End-of-English-Literature-According-To-Tolkien Period (c. AD 1066- 1450) In 1066, Norman French armies invade and conquer England under William I. This marks the end of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy and the emergence of the Twelfth Century
Renaissance (c. AD 1100-1200). French chivalric romances--such as works by Chretien de Troyes--and French fables--such as the works of Marie de France and Jeun de Meun--spread in popularity. Abelard and other humanists produce great scholastic and theological works.
Late or "High" Medieval Period (c. AD 1200-1485): This often tumultuous period is marked by the Middle English writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, the "Gawain" or "Pearl" Poet, the Wakefield Master, and William Langland. Other writers include Italian and French authors like Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, and Christine de Pisan.
The Renaissance and Reformation (c. AD 1500-1660)
(The Renaissance takes place in the late 15th, 16th, and early 17th century in Britain, but somewhat earlier in Italy and the southern Europe, somewhat later in northern Europe.)
I. Early Tudor Period (1485-1558): The War of the Roses ends in England with Henry Tudor (Henry VII) claiming the throne. Martin Luther's split with Rome marks the emergence of Protestantism, followed by Henry VIII's Anglican schism, which creates the first Protestant church in England. Edmund Spenser is a sample poet.
II. Elizabethan Period (the last of the Tudor dynasty, reigns 1558-1603): Queen Elizabeth saves England from both Spanish invasion and internal squabbles at home. Her reign is marked by the early works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kydd, and Sidney.
III. Jacobean Period (1603-1625): Shakespeare's later work, Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, and John Donne.
IV. Caroline Age (1625-1649): John Milton, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, the "Sons of Ben" and others write during the reign of Charles I and his Cavaliers.
V. Commonwealth Period or Puritan Interregnum (1649-1660): Under Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship, John Milton continues to write, but we also find writers like Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Browne.
B. Neoclassical to Contemporary
The Neoclassical or Enlightenment Period (c. 1660-1799)
"Neoclassical" refers to the increased influence of Classical literature upon these centuries. The Neoclassical Period is also called the "Enlightenment" due to the increased reverence for logic and disdain for superstition. The period is marked by the rise of Deism, intellectual backlash against earlier Puritanism, and America's revolution against England.
I. Restoration Period (c. 1660-1700): This period marks the British king's restoration to the throne after a long period of Puritan domination in England. Its symptoms include the dominance of French and Classical influences on poetry and drama. Sample writers include John Dryden, John Lock, Sir William Temple, and Samuel Pepys, and Aphra Behn in England. Abroad, representative authors include Jean Racine and Molière.
II. The Augustan Age (c. 1700-1750): This period is marked by the imitation of Virgil and
Horace's literature in English letters. The principal English writers include Addison, Steele, Swift, and Alexander Pope. Abroad, Voltaire is the dominant French writer.
III. The Age of Johnson (c. 1750-1790): This period marks the transition toward the
upcoming Romanticism though the period is still largely Neoclassical. Major writers include Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, and Edward Gibbon who represent the Neoclassical tendencies, while writers like Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, Cowper, and Crabbe show movement away from the Neoclassical ideal. In America, this period is called the Colonial Period. It includes colonial and revolutionary writers like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.
Romantic Period (c. 1800-1850)
Romantic poets write about nature, imagination, and individuality in England. Some Romantics include Coleridge, Blake, Keats, and Shelley in Britain and Johann von Goethe in Germany. Jane Austen also writes at this time, though she is typically not categorized with the male Romantic poets. In America, this period is mirrored in the Transcendental Period from about 1830-1850. Transcendentalists include Emerson and Thoreau. Gothic writings, (c. 1790-1890) overlap with the Romantic and Victorian periods. Writers of Gothic novels (the precursor to horror novels) include Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, and Victorians like Bram Stoker in Britain. In America, Gothic writers include Poe and Hawthorne.
Victorian Era and The 19th Century (c. 1837-1901)
Writing during the period of Queen Victoria's reign includes sentimental novels. British writers include Elizabeth Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and the Brontë sisters. Pre- Raphaelites, like the Rossettis and William Morris, idealize and long for the morality of the medieval world. The end of the Victorian Period is marked by intellectual movements of Aestheticism and "the Decadence" in the writings of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. In America, Naturalist writers like Stephen Crane flourish, as do early free verse poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
Modern Period (c. 1900-1942)
In Britain, modernist writers include G. K. Chesterton, Shaw, J. R. R. Tolkien, W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, and Wilfred Owen. In America, the modernist period includes Robert Frost and Flannery O'Connor as well as the famous writers of The Lost Generation (also called the writers of The Jazz Age, 1914-1929) such as Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. "The Harlem Renaissance" marks the rise of black writers such as Baldwin and Ellison. Realism is the dominant fashion, but the disillusionment with the World Wars lead to new experimentation.
Postmodern Period (c. 1942 onward)
T. S. Eliot, , Beckett, Fowles, Calvino, C. S. Lewis, Pynchon, and other modern writers, poets, and playwrights experiment with metafiction and fragmented poetry. Magic Realists such as Gabriel García Márquez, Luis Borges, and Salman Rushdie flourish with surrealistic writings embroidered in the conventions of realism. Many writers harken back to older forms and philosophies, energized with new vigor: N. D. Wilson, Seamus Heaney.
No comments:
Post a Comment