Medieval literature

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Medieval and Renaissance literature
Early medieval
Matter of Rome Matter of France Matter of Britain Byzantine
Medieval
Hebrew Persian Arabic By century 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th
European Renaissance
15th century
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History of literature by era
Ancient (corpora)
Bronze Age Ancient Egyptian Akkadian Elamite Hattic Hittite Hurro-Urartian Luwian Lydian Sumerian Ugarit Classical Ancient Greek Ancient Hebrew Ancient Prakrit Aramaic Classical Chinese Classical Latin Parthian Phrygian Old Persian Old Tamil Sanskrit Syriac
Early medieval
Arabic Armenian Bactrian Byzantine Greek Coptic Gandhari Prakrit Geʽez Georgian Japanese Kannada Maharashtri Prakrit Pre-Proto-Mongolic Old Church Slavonic Old English Old German Old Khmer Old Malay Old Turkic Norse Pali Sabaic Saka Sogdian Tibetan Tocharian Welsh
Medieval by century
10th 11th 12th 13th 14th
Early modern by century
15th 16th 17th
Modern by century
18th 19th
Contemporary by century
20th 21st
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Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages (that is, the one thousand years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire ca. AD 500 to the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th, 15th or 16th century, depending on country). The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works. Just as in modern literature, it is a complex and rich field of study, from the utterly sacred to the exuberantly profane, touching all points in between. Works of literature are often grouped by place of origin, language, and genre.