English language history

prof.Abdelhamid Fouda

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👉The English language is split into three large time periods, each represented by a main author or work:

Old English (Beowulf)

Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer)

And Modern English (William Shakespeare)

👉The oldest surviving English text is Caedmon’s Hymn of Creation.

👉When King Henry VIII had England’s monasteries burned down in 1535, many of the

oldest texts written in English also went up in flames.

👉 The first novel wasn’t written in English (critics usually give that honor to Cervantes’ Don Quixote), but the first extremely successful novel was: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

👉Works written in English have won twenty-six Nobel Prizes in Literature, more than any other language. Of those twenty-six, nine were won by authors from the United Kingdom.

👉 Bede- the father of English learning. The first Historian.

👉Caedmon- the first English poet.

👉Cynewulf- first writer to sign his works.

👉Alfred- first prose writer in English.

👉Chaucer- father of English literature

👉 Dryden- father of English criticism

👉Bacon- father of English esaay.