What is English literature?
The term '''English literature''' means [[literature]] written in the [[English language]]. English is a language known by many millions of people. They can read literary works from any country in an English translation. English literature began in [[Old English]] with the [[epic poem]] [[Beowulf]], which dates from sometime between the 8th to the 11th centuries. It is not written in language people can understand today, but there are several good translations into modern English. It is the most famous work in Old English, despite being set in [[Scandinavia]]. The poem is written with no [[rhyme]]s but with [[alliteration]].<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/art/alliterative-verse Alliterative verse at Encyclopaedia Britannica.]</ref> The next important landmark is the works of the poet [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] (c. 1343–1400), especially ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''. That is in [[Middle English]], from 1066 to the middle/late 1400s. Chaucer introduced into English poetry [[rhyme royal]], which is a seven-line stanza rhymed ababbcc.<ref>James Wilson Bright, Raymond Durbin Miller, The Elements of English Versification, Boston 1910. s. 113.</ref><ref>[https://www.britannica.com/art/rhyme-royal Rhyme royal at Encyclopaedia Britannica.]</ref> Modern English literature began in the 16th century. [[Thomas Wyatt]] and [[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey]] wrote the first English [[sonnet]]s.<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/art/sonnet Sonnet at Encyclopaedia Britannica.]</ref> Howard also invented [[blank verse]].<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/art/blank-verse Blank Verse at Encyclopaedia Britannica.]</ref> [[Edmund Spenser]] wrote ''The Faerie Queene'', a long epic poem, while [[Philip Sidney]] wrote a sequence of sonnets Astrophel ''and Stella''. The next stage is [[Thomas Kyd]], [[Christopher Marlowe]], [[Ben Jonson]], [[William Shakespeare]] and [[John Milton]], sometimes described as [[Early Modern English]] (1470 to 1650). Shakespeare is the author of the most famous sentence written in English: ''To be, or not to be, that