Taine's narrative laid the ground for the periodization that has dominated English literary history ever since: the Anglo‐Saxon era; the medieval period, from 1066 to the early 16th century; the Renaissance, sometimes now referred to as the ‘early modern’ period, from the Reformation to the Restoration; the ‘classical’ period, from the 1660s to the 1780s, often known as the Enlightenment (a reference to the philosophical tenor...