ABSTRACT
From its medieval roots on a remote island to its international reach today, English literature speaks to the history of the English language and its lands, as well as their joint expansion across the globe. The primary eras of English literature—medieval, Renaissance, long eighteenth century, romanticism, Victorian, and modern—capture the zeitgeist of these times through their most popular forms, including medieval Arthurian romances, Renaissance theater, eighteenth-century wit and satire, Victorian novels, and modernist reimaginings of previous forms. The breadth of English literature also expands beyond these dominant tropes, with a panoply of contrasting voices challenging the prevailing modes of the day. Also, no literary era ends on a certain day, at a certain hour, and so the following categories reflect general trends and possibilities, with an understanding of the limits of categorizing the human imagination to specific years, decades, or even centuries.
