SOME LITERARY FIGURES TO REMEMBER
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321): Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, is one of most influential European works of literature. Dante is also called the “Father of the Italian language”.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400): considered the Father of English Literature Best known for Canterbury Tales (1475).
John Milton (1608 – 1674): English poet Best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse – telling the Biblical story of man’s fall. Also wrote Areopagitica (1644) in defense of free speech.
William Blake (1757 –1827): English mystic and romantic poet, wrote Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience Also hand-painted many of his works.
William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850): English romantic poet from Lake District, many poems related to natures, such as his Lyrical Ballads Samuel.
Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834): English romantic poet. Author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kublai Khan.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822): English romantic poet Famous works include Queen Mab and Prometheus Unbound.
John Keats (1795 – 1821): English Romantic Poet, best known for his Odes, such as Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Grecian urn, Ode to Melancholy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882): American Transcendentalist poet and writer.
Alfred Tennyson (1809 – 1892): Popular Victorian poet, wrote Charge of the Light Brigade, Ulysses, and In Memoriam A.H.H.
Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892): American poet Wrote Leaves of Grass, a ground breaking new style of poetry.
Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886): American female poet Led secluded lifestyle, and left legacy of many short vivid poems, often on themes of death and immortality.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941): Indian poet Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature for his work – Gitanjali.
Robert Frost (1874 – 1963): Influential American poet, one of most highly regarded of the Twentieth Century. Most famous work ‘The Road Not Taken’ (1916).
