A Comprehensive Timeline: Literary Periods, Movements, and Trends (Classical - Present)
I. The Classical Period (1200 BCE - 455 CE) Homeric or Heroic Period (1200-800 BCE) Archaic period (800-500 BCE) Epic (c. 5th c. BCE, Homer, Hesiod, Mythic past) Lyric [Ode, Elegy, epigram] (7th - 5th c. BCE, Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar) Classical Greek Period (500-323 BCE) Tragedy (5th c. BCE, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) Comedy (4th c. BCE, Aristophanes & Menander) historiography [political, military, systematic History] (5th-4th c. BCE, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon) Philosophical prose [dialogues, treatises, dialectics] (5th-4th c. BCE, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato) Classical-Hellenistic Rhetoric & Oratory (3rd c. BCE) (Gorgias, Isocrates, Demosthene s) Hellenistic period (323-31 BCE) Pastoral poetry (3rd c. BCE, Theocritus & Virgil) Satire and Parody (5th - 3rd c. BCE, Roman adaptations of Aristophanes) Didactic poetry (7th - 3rd c. BCE, Hesiod) Mythography & Antiquarian prose (5th - 2nd c. BCE, collection of myths, local histories, customs) biogr...