Literary Periods
Terms
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- 1650-1750
- COLONIAL
- 1750-1800
- REVOLUTIONARY/AGE OF REASON
- 1800-1860
- ROMANTICISM
- 1840-1860
- TRANSCENDENTALISM
- 1855-1900
- REALISM
- 1900-1950
- MODERNISM
- 1920s
- HARLEM RENAISSANCE
- 1950 - Present
- POSTMODERNISM
- 1970s - Present
- Contemporary
-
Writings of Twain, Bierce, Crane
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (some say 1st modern novel)
Regional works like: The Awakening. Ethan Frome, and My Antonia (some say modern) -
REALISM
1855-1900 -
Essays & Poetry of W.E.B. DuBois
Poetry of McKay, Toomer, Cullen
Poetry, short stories and novels of Hurston and Hughes
Their Eyes Were Watching God -
HARLEM RENAISSANCE
1920s -
Sermons, diaries, personal narratives
Written in plain style -
COLONIAL
1650-1750
-
Political pamphlets
Travel writing
Highly ornate style
Persuasive writing -
REVOLUTIONARY/AGE OF REASON
1750-1800 -
Character sketches
Slave narratives
Poetry
Short stories -
ROMANTICISM
1800-1860 -
Poetry
Short Stories
Novels
*Hold readers’ attention through dread of a series of terrible possibilities
*Feature landscapes of dark forests, extreme vegetation, concealed ruins with horrific rooms, depressed characters< -
TRANSCENDENTALISM
1840-1860 -
Novels and short stories
Objective narrator
Does not tell reader how to interpret story
Dialogue includes voices from around the country -
REALISM
1855-1900 -
In Pursuit of the American Dream--Admiration for America as land of Eden
Optimism
Importance of the Individual -
MODERNISM
1900-1950 -
Allusions to African-American spirituals
Uses structure of blues songs in poetry (repetition)
Superficial stereotypes revealed to be complex characters -
HARLEM RENAISSANCE
1920s -
Mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader
No heroes
Concern with individual in isolation
Social issues as writers align with feminist & ethnic groups -
POSTMODERNISM
1950 to present -
Anti-heroes
Concern with connections between people
Emotion-provoking
Humorous irony -
CONTEMPORARY
1970s-Present - 449-1066
- Anglo Saxon Period
- 1066-1485
- Medieval Period
- 1485-1660
- Renaissance Period
- 1660-1798
- Neoclassical Period/Age of Reason/Enlightenment
- 1660-1700
- The Restoration
- 1798-1832
- The Romantic Period
- 1832-1901
- Victorian Period
-
A conquest philosophy/warrior society survival/ warfare dominated
Allegiance to a lord or leader-in return the lord provided his warriors with gifts/loot - materialistic society
-
Anglo Saxon Period
(449-1066)
-
A name to carry on after he died/ fame is important/strong belief in fate
Strong sense of revenge - "a man price" could pay for the man to not kill
Oral literature -
Anglo Saxon Period
(449-1066)
-
Moral expressed
God is the center of all
Primary purpose is to educate
Humans are not important except as souls
Clerically inspired and written
- Medieval Period (1066-1485)
-
The human becomes the major subject of literature.
Humanism -
Renaissance Period
(1485-1660) - “God as Clockmaker†/ Strong belief in Deism – world and universe represent the clock- God got it started- reasonable solution to evil on earth is that we are responsible for our own actions
- Neoclassical Period/Age of Reason/Enlightenment (1660-1798)
-
Favored innovation rather than tradition - respect for the life of the common man
Literature is described as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."
External nature became a persistent subject of poetry. Nature was used not for i -
The Romantic Period
(1798-1832) -
Rules become more important
Industrial revolution at its peak/social problems arise from the new industrial conditions
Passions must be controlled/manners and morals extremely important
Pride in the growing power of England
-
Victorian Period
(1832-1901) -
Existentialism/ existential loneliness/total alienation of individual
Individual responsible for self and own acts
See inside character’s mind/ see characters as individuals
Writing bits and pieces/ shows the world of chaos after w -
Modern Period
(1914-1965) - Christopher Marlowe, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sydney, Williams Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Johnson, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell
-
Renaissance Period
(1485-1660) - Alexander Pope, Anne Finch, Mary Montagu, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson
- Neoclassical Period/Age of Reason/Enlightenment (1660-1798)
- Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel T. Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats
-
The Romantic Period
(1798-1832) - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Houseman, Rossetti, Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, and Joseph Conrad
-
Victorian Period
(1832-1901) - James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Hopkins, Yeats, Auden, Spender, Smith, Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, and Peter Shaffer
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Modern Period
(1914-1965) - Bradford, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Edwards
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Colonial Period
(1620-1765) - Phyllis Wheatley, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Crevecoeur, William Cullen Bryant
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Revolutionary
(1765-1830)
- Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Cooper, Melville, Whitman
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The Romantic Period
(1830-1865) - William Dean Howells, Mark Twin, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather
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The Realistic Period
(1865-1915) - John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neil, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H. D. , Amy Lowell, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston
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Modern Period
(1915-1945) - Saul Bellow, Carson McCullers, Robert Penn Warren, Bernard Malamud, John Updike, Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooke, Theodore Roethke, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove
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Postmodern/ Contemporary Period
(1946- Present)