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"Isms", or Literary Movements: A Brief Study

This document provides a brief overview of major literary movements ("isms") throughout history, including Classicism, the Medieval/Dark Ages period, the Enlightenment/Renaissance, Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. For each movement, it lists some defining characteristics and examples of influential authors from that period.

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kiran khalid
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977 views

"Isms", or Literary Movements: A Brief Study

This document provides a brief overview of major literary movements ("isms") throughout history, including Classicism, the Medieval/Dark Ages period, the Enlightenment/Renaissance, Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. For each movement, it lists some defining characteristics and examples of influential authors from that period.

Uploaded by

kiran khalid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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“Isms”, or

Literary Movements
A brief study
These are a few literary
movements (“isms”) of interest
 Classicism
 Medieval/Dark ages
 Enlightenment\renaissance
 Neo-classicism
 Romanticism
 Realism
 Modernism
 Post Modernism
Classicism
 Rome & Greece
 Homer—Greek The Iliad ; The Odyssey
 Virgil—Latin(Rome) ; The Aeneid

Classical work mentions mythology. Mythic


gods define rules of behavior
Dark Ages—Medeival Period
 Clerics
 Not much written
Enlightenment--Renaissance
 Appeal to reason
 Science, politics & art explode
 Earth not the center of the universe
 Newton, Rousseau, DesCartes,
 Locke Treatise on Government
 Hobbes Leviathan
Neo-Classicism
 Hearkens back to the classical era
 Mythology & religious references provide
grandiose background
Romanticism
(transcendentalism)
 Rejects reason
 Experience is best teacher
 Truth found in nature
 Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Blake (British)
 J.F. Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Irving,
Whitman (the greatest) (Americans)
Realism & Naturalism
 Rejects the warm & fuzzy aspects of
romanticism
 Tells it how it is without adornment
 Highly detailed
 Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris
Modernism
 Struggle of humankind in an industrial
world
 Fear induced by WWI
 Laments reduction of humanity
 Longs for the peaceful aspects of the past
 Stein, Anderson, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald
Post Modernism
 Considers the human struggle without
lamentation
 Meta narrative—mechanisms of the story
apparent to reader
 Baudrillard’s simulacra
 Holden Caulfield is the poster child
Contemporary Literature
 No common themes
 Highly popular
 Twilight, Harry Potter

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