English literature-What is English literature?
June 6th, 2008 -- Posted in What, Why | No Comments »English literature-What is English literature?
The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S. Naipaul is Trinidadian. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world.
The first works in English, written in the Anglo-Saxon dialect now called Old English, appeared in the early Middle Ages. In the late medieval period (1200-1500), the ideals of courtly love entered England and authors began to write romances, either in verse or prose. Especially popular were tales of King Arthur and his court. England’s first great author, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 -1400), wrote in Middle English. His most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a variety of genres.
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