One of the main differences between English literature and classical literature is that while ancient writers started from oral tradition, literature in England rests on a foundation of knowledge of the classics. English readers and writers were familiar with classical epic, drama, lyric poetry, and novels and were influenced by those models, especially in the early modern period.
Our earliest works of English poetry include oral-traditional works such as Beowulf that were influenced by Norse...
One of the main differences between English literature and classical literature is that while ancient writers started from oral tradition, literature in England rests on a foundation of knowledge of the classics. English readers and writers were familiar with classical epic, drama, lyric poetry, and novels and were influenced by those models, especially in the early modern period.
Our earliest works of English poetry include oral-traditional works such as Beowulf that were influenced by Norse sagas and similar epic poetry. From this period, we also have preserved lyric poems found in the Exeter Book, practical gnomic and mnemonic verse, religious poems, and Anglo-Saxon riddles. The Norman conquest brought with it much of the Arthurian tradition and lyric poems within the context of courtly romance. In the English vernacular, religious literature also flourished, including traditions of mystery and miracle plays and long religious and secular poems such as those of Chaucer and Gower.
The early modern period brought a rediscovery of the classical tradition and deep connections with European humanism. Elizabethan theater included tragedies, comedies and plays in mixed genres while poets wrote both longer poems such as The Faerie Queen and shorter lyrical works, including many iconic sonnets. In the Jacobean period, metaphysical poetry was a major innovation. The novel also began in with translations and imitations of ancient novels but grew to include many of the great works of the new spirit of bourgeois individualism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In addition to the novel, Augustan poetry and Restoration comedy were among the most important genres of the eighteenth century, which was a great age of satire. The Gothic novel marks the transition to the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century literary movements ranged from Romanticism through realism, naturalism, and decadence.
Overall, I don't see there being one single paradigm shift or single trajectory, but rather many different types of innovation and shifts in taste.
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