As a secondary-level English teacher, Hege Abrahamsen has taught all levels of language and literature, including advanced placement courses. Hege Abrahamsen currently serves as an English teacher at Norwalk High School in Norwalk, Connecticut, where she helps to prepare students for college.

1. How Do We Define English
Literature?
By Hege Abrahamsen

2. Introduction
 As a secondary-level English teacher,
Hege Abrahamsen has taught all
levels of language and literature,
including advanced placement
courses. Hege Abrahamsen currently
serves as an English teacher at
Norwalk High School in Norwalk,
Connecticut, where she helps to
prepare students for college.

3. About English Literature
 Traditionally, English literature refers to works
created in English by inhabitants of the British
Isles. However, many modern educators and
scholars have expanded this definition to
include all works written in English, including
those by authors from the British Diaspora.
Although the academic definition often
includes all works penned after the fifth
century, typically most secondary-level
educators teach only pieces written after
1500, as this date is generally accepted as
the beginning of the modern English
language.

4. Conclusion
 Study of English literature most often
begins with the Elizabethan era, which
featured humanism and the cultural
values of the Renaissance. Later
movements include Jacobean literature,
which had a darker tone, and
neoclassicism, which emphasized order
and reason. Later came the Romantics,
such as Jane Austen, and the Victorians,
including Dickens and the Brontë sisters.
Literature then progressed into the
modern era and continues to bring new
writers to the fore.