ABSTRACT
Literary history attempts to group various texts, based on similarities in structure, content, or narrative characteristics, and attribute them to a specific historical period. The following basic overview focuses primarily on English and American literature, but also weaves in movements, authors, and works of international significance from world literature, in order to provide a wider background. This chapter makes no claim to be complete and can only give a summary, not a concise list of all the works and authors that have shaped literature to this day. https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">
Ancient world
3000 BC–AD 400
Old English
400–1066
Middle English
1066–1450
Renaissance and humanism
1450–1660
Colonial period
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Eighteenth century
eighteenth century
Romanticism and transcendentalism
1800–1850
Realism and naturalism
1850–1900
Modernism
World War I-World War II
Postmodernism
second half of the twentieth century
Ethnic voices
Postcolonial literature
