English Literature Revision: Literary Eras
Eras in History:
The Middle English Period (Medieval Period)
Years: 1066-1485 (roughly)
Content:
- plays that instruct the illiterate masses in morals and religion
- chivalric code of honour/romances
- religious devotion
Style/Genres:
- oral tradition continues
- folk ballads
- mystery and miracle plays
- morality plays
- stock epithets
- kennings
- frame stories
- moral tales
Effect:
- church instructs its people through the morality and miracle plays
- an illiterate population is able to hear and see the literature
Historical Context:
- Crusades bring the development of a money economy for the first time in Britain
- trading increases dramatically as a result of the Crusades
- William the Conqueror crowned king in 1066
- Henry III crowned king in 1154 brings a judicial system, royal courts, juries, and chivalry to Britain
A Sampling of Key Literature and Authors:
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
Domesday Book
L’Morte de Arthur
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Renaissance
Years: 1485-1660
The Elizabethan Period: the reign of Elizabeth I, 1586-1603
Jacobean Period: the reign of James I of England, 1603-1625
Content:
- world view shifts from religion and after life to one stressing the human life on earth
- popular theme: development of human potential
- popular theme: many aspects of love explored
- unrequited love
- constant love
- timeless love
- courtly love
- love subject to change
Style/Genres:
- poetry
- the sonnet
- metaphysical poetry
- elaborate and unexpected metaphors called conceits
- drama
- written in verse
- supported by royalty
- tragedies, comedies, histories
Effect:
- commoners welcomed at some play productions (like ones at the Globe) while conservatives try to close the theatres on grounds that they promote brazen behaviours
- not all middle-class embrace the metaphysical poets and their abstract conceits
Historical Context:
- War of Roses ends in 1485 and political stability arrives
- Printing press helps stabilize English as a language and allows more people to read a variety of literature
- Economy changes from farm-based to one of international trade
A Sampling of Key Literature and authors:
William Shakespeare
Thomas Wyatt
Ben Jonson
Christopher Marlowe
Andrew Marvell
Robert Herrick
The Neoclassical Period
Years: 1660-1798
The Restoration: the reign of Charles II, 1630 - 1660 (after his restoration to the throne in 1630 following the English Civil War and Cromwell)
The Age of Enlightenment (the Eighteenth Century)
Content:
- emphasis on reason and logic
- stresses harmony, stability, wisdom
- Locke: a social contract exists between the government and the people. The government governs guaranteeing “natural rights” of life, liberty, and property
Style/Genres:
- satire
- poetry
- essays
- letters, diaries, biographies
- novels
Effect:
- emphasis on the individual
- belief that humanity is basically evil
- approach to life: “the world as it should be”
Historical Context:
- 50% of males are functionally literate (a dramatic rise)
- Fenced enclosures of land cause demise of traditional village life
- Factories begin to spring up as industrial revolution begins
- Impoverished masses begin to grow as farming life declines and factories build
- Coffee houses—where educated men spend evenings with literary and political associates
Key Authors:
Alexander Pope
Daniel Defoe
Jonathan Swift,
Samuel Johnson
John Bunyan
John Milton
The Romantic Period
Years: 1798 – 1832
Content:
- human knowledge consists of impressions and ideas formed in the individual’s mind
- introduction of Gothic elements and terror/horror stories and novels
- in nature one can find comfort and peace that the man-made urbanized towns and factory environments cannot offer
Style/Genres:
- poetry
- lyrical ballads
Effects:
- evil attributed to society not to human nature
- human beings are basically good
- movement of protest: a desire for personal freedom
- children seen as hapless victims of poverty and exploitation
Historical Context:
- Napoleon rises to power in France and opposes England militarily and economically
- Tory philosophy that government should NOT interfere with private enterprise
- middle class gains representation in the British parliament
- railroads begin to run
Key Authors:
Jane Austen
Mary Shelley
Robert Burns
William Blake
William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lord Byron
Percy Shelley
John Keats
Content:
- emphasis on reason and logic
- stresses harmony, stability, wisdom
- Locke: a social contract exists between the government and the people. The government governs guaranteeing “natural rights” of life, liberty, and property
Style/Genres:
- satire
- poetry
- essays
- letters, diaries, biographies
- novels
Effect:
- emphasis on the individual
- belief that humanity is basically evil
- approach to life: “the world as it should be”
Historical Context:
- 50% of males are functionally literate (a dramatic rise)
- Fenced enclosures of land cause demise of traditional village life
- Factories begin to spring up as industrial revolution begins
- Impoverished masses begin to grow as farming life declines and factories build
- Coffee houses—where educated men spend evenings with literary and political associates
Key Authors:
Alexander Pope
Daniel Defoe
Jonathan Swift,
Samuel Johnson
John Bunyan
John Milton
The Romantic Period
Years: 1798 – 1832
Content:
- human knowledge consists of impressions and ideas formed in the individual’s mind
- introduction of Gothic elements and terror/horror stories and novels
- in nature one can find comfort and peace that the man-made urbanized towns and factory environments cannot offer
Style/Genres:
- poetry
- lyrical ballads
Effects:
- evil attributed to society not to human nature
- human beings are basically good
- movement of protest: a desire for personal freedom
- children seen as hapless victims of poverty and exploitation
Historical Context:
- Napoleon rises to power in France and opposes England militarily and economically
- Tory philosophy that government should NOT interfere with private enterprise
- middle class gains representation in the British parliament
- railroads begin to run
Key Authors:
Jane Austen
Mary Shelley
Robert Burns
William Blake
William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lord Byron
Percy Shelley
John Keats
The Victorian Period
Years: 1832-1900
Content:
- conflict between those in power and the common masses of labourers and the poor
- shocking life of workhouses and urban poor is highlighted in literature to insist on reform
- country versus city life
- sexual discretion (or lack of it)
- strained coincidences
- romantic triangles
- heroines in physical danger
- aristocratic villains
- misdirected letters
- bigamous marriages
Genres/Styles:
- novel becomes popular for first time; mass produced for the first time
- bildungsroman
- political novels
- detective novels (Sherlock Holmes)
- serialized novels (Charles Dickens)
- elegies
- poetry: easier to understand
- dramatic monologues
- drama: comedies of manners
- magazines offer stories to the masses
Effect:
- literature begins to reach the masses
Historical Context:
- paper becomes cheap; magazines and novels cheap to mass produce
- unprecedented growth of industry and business in Britain
unparalleled dominance of nations, economies and trade abroad
Key Authors:
Charles Dickens
Thomas Hardy
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Robert Louis Stevenson
George Eliot
George Eliot
Oscar Wilde
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Charles Darwin
Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte
Robert Browning
The Modern Period
Years: 1900-(subject to debate)
Content:
- Breakdown of social norms
- Realistic embodiment of social meanings
- Separation of meanings and senses from the context
- Despairing individual behaviours in the face of an unmanageable future
- Spiritual loneliness
- Alienation
- Frustration when reading the text
- Disillusionment
- Rejection of history
- Rejection of outdated social systems
- Objection to traditional thoughts and traditional moralities
- Objection to religious thoughts
- Substitution of a mythical past
- Two World Wars' effects on humanity
Genres/Styles:
- poetry: free verse
- epiphanies begin to appear in literature
- speeches
- memoirs
- novels
- stream of consciousness
Effect:
- Literature attempts to search for ‘truths’ and discover the deep ideas and meanings behind
Historical Context:
- British Empire loses 1 million soldiers to World War I
- Winston Churchill leads Britain through WW II, and the Germans bomb England directly
- British colonies demand independence
Key Authors:
James Joyce
The Modern Period
Years: 1900-(subject to debate)
Content:
- Breakdown of social norms
- Realistic embodiment of social meanings
- Separation of meanings and senses from the context
- Despairing individual behaviours in the face of an unmanageable future
- Spiritual loneliness
- Alienation
- Frustration when reading the text
- Disillusionment
- Rejection of history
- Rejection of outdated social systems
- Objection to traditional thoughts and traditional moralities
- Objection to religious thoughts
- Substitution of a mythical past
- Two World Wars' effects on humanity
Genres/Styles:
- poetry: free verse
- epiphanies begin to appear in literature
- speeches
- memoirs
- novels
- stream of consciousness
Effect:
- Literature attempts to search for ‘truths’ and discover the deep ideas and meanings behind
Historical Context:
- British Empire loses 1 million soldiers to World War I
- Winston Churchill leads Britain through WW II, and the Germans bomb England directly
- British colonies demand independence
Key Authors:
James Joyce
Virginia Woolf
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Joseph Conrad
D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
Graham Greene
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
George Orwell
William Butler
William Butler
Yeats Bernard Shaw
The Post Modern Period
Years: 1945(ish) – present
It is very difficult to determine the exact beginning or evolution of modernism into the realm of postmodernism. It is a general assumption that postmodernism started after WW2 in a time of great social, political and cultural upheaval. What is important is the term postmodernism is revealing in the sense that it is not a new movement, devoid of links with modernism but a reaction to it. Below is a list of characteristics displayed within post-modern literature, all of which are contrasted to modern literature.
Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West, Postmodernism rejects Western values and beliefs as only a small part of the human experience and often rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture, and norms.
Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life, Postmodernism is suspicious of being "profound" because such ideas are based on one particular Western value systems.
Whereas Modernism attempts to find depth and interior meaning beneath the surface of objects and events, Postmodernism prefers to dwell on the exterior image and avoids drawing conclusions or suggesting underlying meanings associated with the interior of objects and events.
Whereas Modernism focused on central themes and a united vision in a particular piece of literature, Postmodernism sees human experience as unstable, internally contradictory, ambiguous, inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished, fragmented, discontinuous, "jagged," with no one specific reality possible. Therefore, it focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged" world.
Whereas Modern authors guide and control the reader’s response to their work, the Postmodern writer creates an "open" work in which the reader must supply his own connections, work out alternative meanings, and provide his own (unguided) interpretation.
A Sampling of Key Authors:
Margaret Atwood
The Post Modern Period
Years: 1945(ish) – present
It is very difficult to determine the exact beginning or evolution of modernism into the realm of postmodernism. It is a general assumption that postmodernism started after WW2 in a time of great social, political and cultural upheaval. What is important is the term postmodernism is revealing in the sense that it is not a new movement, devoid of links with modernism but a reaction to it. Below is a list of characteristics displayed within post-modern literature, all of which are contrasted to modern literature.
Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West, Postmodernism rejects Western values and beliefs as only a small part of the human experience and often rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture, and norms.
Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life, Postmodernism is suspicious of being "profound" because such ideas are based on one particular Western value systems.
Whereas Modernism attempts to find depth and interior meaning beneath the surface of objects and events, Postmodernism prefers to dwell on the exterior image and avoids drawing conclusions or suggesting underlying meanings associated with the interior of objects and events.
Whereas Modernism focused on central themes and a united vision in a particular piece of literature, Postmodernism sees human experience as unstable, internally contradictory, ambiguous, inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished, fragmented, discontinuous, "jagged," with no one specific reality possible. Therefore, it focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged" world.
Whereas Modern authors guide and control the reader’s response to their work, the Postmodern writer creates an "open" work in which the reader must supply his own connections, work out alternative meanings, and provide his own (unguided) interpretation.
A Sampling of Key Authors:
Margaret Atwood
Martin Amis
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jorge Louis Borges
William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
Albert Camus
Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis
Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Vladimir Nabokov
George Orwell
George Orwell
Sylvia Plath
Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Salman Rushdie
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Jeanette Winterson
Comments
Post a Comment