Beowulf

The Canterbury Tales

Macbeth

Sonnets become quite popular.

The period starts with French as the official language.

Shakespeare

The oral tradition

People lived in tribes.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Elizabeth I

The last time England was invaded was at the end of this period.

The Black Plague

The Reformation

Missionaries start to covert the people to Christianity.

Epic poetry inspired the retainers and thanes.

Pastoral poetry

The feudal system

Modern English begins with this period.

Alliteration and kenning were important in the poetry.

Sir Lancelot

Sir Lancelot

The most literature was written during this period.

The use of clues to hint at what is going to happen later in the plot.

A struggle or clash between opposing characters, forces, or emotions.

The vantage point from which a writer tells a story.

Writing style that tries to depict the random flow of thoughts, emotions, memories, and associations running through a character's mind.

A play, novel, or other narrative depicting serious and important events, in which the main character comes to an unhappy end.

A figure of speech that combines apparently contradictory or incongruous ideas.

The literal, dictionary definition of a word.

A kind of particularly cutting irony, in which praise is used tauntingly to indicate its opposite in meaning.

A Latin phrase that literally means "seize the day"-that is, "make the most of present opportunities".

In a literary work, a moment of sudden insight or revelation that a character experiences.

A two-word phrase that describes an object through metaphors.

A fourteen-line poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, that has one of several rhyme schemes.

A song or songlike poem that tells a story,

A long narrative poem recounting the deeds of heroic figures.

Poems which are usually written to teach or to state an informative lesson.

A poem of mourning.

A story in which the characters, setting, and events stand for abstract or moral concepts.

A type of autobiography that usually focuses on a single time period or historical event.