What is Early Modern English Literature?

Literary works from the Early Modern Period of English (1485-c.1667), especially The King James Bible (1611) and Shakespeare’s plays and poetry (c.1590-c.1612), shaped the Modern English language spoken today and remain highly influential in its literature.

Thomas Malory’s collection of tales of King Arthur (the first English language bestseller), printed as Le Morte D’Arthur by William Caxton in 1485, marks a transition from Middle English to Early Modern English. Caxton produced it less than ten years after printing Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but there had been a discernible shift to an early form of Modern English between the two famous books.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

King James Bible, 1 Corinthians 13: 2

That is, modern English speakers may read Malory’s tales of King Arthur with some difficulty but without the need for a “translation.” (Be that as it may, countless editions with modernized vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation have been published in the centuries since Caxton’s first printing of Le Morte D’Arthur, and they are readily available for those who want an easier path to reading the stories of the knights of the Round Table.)

What is Puritan Literature?

After the high literary era of Shakespeare and King James, the English Puritans, whose radical religious movement sought strict moral discipline and the purification of society, seized power during the English Civil War and ruled England through Oliver Cromwell’s military regime from 1649 to 1660.

Although the movement frowned on secular literature and banned the performance of plays, the Puritans produced some remarkable authors, John Milton foremost among them with his profoundly influential depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost.

Puritanism would also inspire a number of English colonists to settle New England, which brought a new branch of literature in English to North America; in fact, the first published English poet of the new world would be one of those Puritans in America: Anne Bradstreet.

Milton and Bradstreet represent Puritan literature at its best, but the Puritans in England were religious radicals who censored literary works and stopped the production of secular plays. The prolific creation of great secular literature during the Early Modern Tudor and Stuart dynasties, culminating in the career of Shakespeare, would effectively be brought to a halt for about eleven years, until the restoration of Charles II to the English throne and the beginning of our next literary period—Restoration Literature.

What are Representative Works of Early Modern English Literature?

No updated translations will be necessary for the curious reader of Early Modern English literature as it is necessary with Old English and, to a lesser extent, Middle English. Although spelling remains loose, the vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation of Early Modern English makes it digestible for the modern reader.

One oddity of Early Modern English for contemporary readers, however, might be the use of “thee,” “thou,” “thy,” “thine,” and “thyself,” which are more intimate forms of the pronouns “you,” “your,” and “yourself.” (The familiar second-person pronouns were the English equivalent of the “Tu” form in Romance languages, such as “tú” in Spanish.)

Although it now sounds strange to our ears, the use of “thee” allows for the expression of intimacy.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,/My love as deep. The more I give to thee,/The more I have, for both are infinite.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene 2, ll. 141-142

A word of caution: Edmund Spenser deliberately used an archaic sounding English (and a lot of extra ‘e’s) to make his allegorical epic The Fairie Queene sound more old-fashioned and stately when he wrote it for Queen Elizabeth.

What if some little paine the passage have,/That makes fraile flesh to feare the bitter wave?/Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,/And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave?/Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,/Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Canto IX, stanza 40, ll. 355-360

The elegance and variety of diction, syntax, and style in works from the Early Modern English period may demand you have a good dictionary at hand. (Misterdoctorcoachguy recommends Merriam-Webster’s dictionary.)

That elegance and variety, nevertheless, makes works from this period, especially Shakespeare and the King James Bible, essential for anyone who wants to think like a reader.

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Representative Works of Early Modern English Literature

Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur; Edmund Spenser’s Fairie Queene; The King James Bible; William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the sonnets; “Tom O’Bedlam;” John Donne’s Holy Sonnets; John Milton’s Paradise Lost; Anne Bradstreet’s Tenth Muse; John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity”