English Poetry: The History Of English Poetry

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2 History of the English Poetry
According to (en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/English poetry), the dating of the Earliest English Poetry is difficult and controversial because the earliest surviving English poetry was transmitted orally. The term English Poetry is ambiguous because it may mean the Poetry is written in England or the Poetry written in the English language. The earliest Anglo-Saxon poetry was composed in the 17th Century.
The Anglo-Norman conquest of England started in 1111, and French became the language of high culture, courts, parliament, and aristocracy. After some time, the English language regained its prestige and it replaced French and Latin in parliament and courts of law. Chaucer was the main literary figure of the 14th Century …show more content…

John Donne was the most famous Metaphysical Poet. Other members of this group were ‘George Herbert’, ‘Thomas Traherne’, ‘Henry Vaughan’, ‘Andrew Marvell’, and ‘Richard. John Milton in his ‘Comus’ also fell into this group. As compared to Metaphysical Poets ‘The Cavalier poets’ that include ‘Ben Jonson’, ‘Richard Lovelace’, ‘Robert Herrick’, ‘Edmund Waller’, ‘Thomas Carew’ and ‘John Denham’, wrote in a lighter, elegant and artificial style. At the end of the 18th Century, the Metaphysical Poets, went out of favor and began to be read again in the Victorian …show more content…

It was a period of political, social and economic change. Rapid industrialization and mechanization led to the prolonged economic growth. ‘Alfred’, ‘Lord Tennyson’, ‘Robert Browning’, ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning’, ‘Matthew Arnold’ and ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins’ were the important poets of this period. Tennyson was the Spencer of this age and his ‘Idylls of the Kings’ can be read as the Victorian version of ‘The Faerie Queen’. Dramatic Monologue is the greatest innovation of ‘Robert Browning’ and he used it in his novel ‘The Ring and the Book’. Matthew Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’ was considered as the precursor of the modernist revolution. Hopkins’s unusual style left a considerable impact on the poets of the 1940s. English Poets began to take an interest in French symbolism towards the end of the century. ‘Charles Swinburne’, ‘Oscar Wilde’, ‘Arthur Symons’, ‘Ernest Dowson’, ‘Lionel Johnson’ and ‘William Butler Yeats’ were the important poets towards the end of the

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