Contextualize the text from a historical and cultural point of view.

15 20 lines
The Renaissance
Shakespeare lived and wrote during a remarkable period of English
history, a time of relative political stability and great development, 1485 1649. Science made it possible to navigate, explorers set out to find a new
world. The ideas of the Renaissance are strongly influenced by the concept of
humanism.
The aim was to restore human values from antiquity by
reintroducing the philosophies, language and literature of the ancient Greece
and Rome. One of the major developments in English literature at this time is
in drama. Some of Shakespeares plays reflect historical and political
tensions, others deal with common life experiences which are described in
comedy as well as tragedy. During this period poetry was another important
literary genre.
Enlightenment 1650 - 1800
The novel was written during the Enlightenment era, a period of
scientific awakening, a time of unprecedented optimism in the potential of
knowledge and reason to understand and change the world. It was believed
that the use of reason and science could improve the human condition. This
period saw the rise of the political pamphlet and essay but the leading genre
of the Enlightenment became the novel. The hero of the novel was the
average man, the middle-class man, with a pragmatic common sense, and
literature became very instructive; writers aimed to educate readers through
their stories, criticizing the flaws of society and individuals. Most of the
writers of this time wrote political pamphlets, but the best came from the
pens of Defoe and Swift. The novel writing was influences by travel
literature, biographies, memoirs, diaries.
Romanticism (1789-1832)
(S. Coleridge , J. Austen, J. Keats, W. Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville)

The author belongs to Romanticism, the literary period between 1789

1832, approximately. It was an age greatly marked by the industrial
development with serious consequences on peoples lives, and the French
Revolution of 1789, the focus of which was to create political and social
freedom, equality, brotherhood and democracy. As a result, Romantics were
enthusiastic about nature and especially appreciated areas in nature which
had not been touched by human intervention. Simple rural life, which had
not been influenced or ruined by the Industrial Revolution and in which man
still lived in harmony with nature, was seen as ideal. Romanticism saw a shift
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from faith in reason to faith in senses, feelings, imagination. Poetry and

novels are the most common genres. All these reflected in the works of the
most prominent romantic writers, including.

Victorian Age (1837-1901)

(Dickens, L. Carroll, Hardy)

The author belongs to Victorian age, a period starting before the

middle of the 19th century, when the reign of Queen Victoria began, a time
characterized by changes in the political life, expansion of the British Empire,
continuation of the industrialization. Religious ideas were challenged by
Darwins theory of evolutionism. It was a time of great energy and the poets
and novelists of the period were very productive as they sought to chronicle
their exciting age and provide it with a high moral tone and a refined taste in
literature and arts.
The Victorian era was the great age of the English novelrealistic,
thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. It was the ideal form to
describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. They describe
life as people experienced it giving an impression of the life of the poor in
industrialized cities in England in the middle of the 19th century

Realism (1861 1914 , 65 90 pt Am.)

(H. James 1881 father of British modernism ; M. Twain)

Born at the end of the Civil war, the literary period in which
wrote, aimed to recreate reality in literature. The years following the war
symbolized a time of healing and rebuilding. In literature this was a time of
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upheaval. As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the
increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism
and urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a
relative rise in middle-class affluence provided a fertile literary environment
for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture.
Realists are concerned with the effect of the work on their reader and
the reader's life, a pragmatic view. Pragmatism requires the reading of a
work to have some verifiable outcome for the reader that will lead to a better
life for the reader. This lends an ethical tendency to realism while focusing on
common actions and minor catastrophes of middle class society.

Modernism (1914 1950)

(J. Conrad, J. Joyce, G.B. Shaw, V. Woolf, F.S. Fitzgerald am, E. Hemingway am, E.
ONeill am, W. Faulkner am, T.S. Elliot am)

Modernism was a literary movement that lasted approximately from

1914-1950. Modernism began the breaking of traditional writing styles that
we know today. During this period, artists began to develop their own
individual styles
New technology and the horrifying events of both World Wars (but
specifically World War I) made many people question the future of humanity:
What was becoming of the world? Writers reacted to this question by turning
toward Modernist sentiments. Gone was the Romantic period that focused on
nature and being. Modernist fiction spoke of the inner self and
consciousness. Instead of progress, the Modernist writer saw a decline of
civilization. Instead of new technology, the Modernist writer saw cold
machinery and increased capitalism, which alienated the individual and led
to loneliness. To achieve the emotions described above, most Modernist
fiction was cast in first person. Whereas earlier, most literature had a clear
beginning, middle, and end (or introduction, conflict, and resolution), the
Modernist story was often more of a stream of consciousness, creating the
feeling that the story is going nowhere. Irony, satire, and comparisons were
often employed to point out society's ills.
Post modernism (1950 - )
(Golding 1954)

The text belongs to postmodernism, a postwar cultural movement,

started around 1950, that reacted against tendencies in modernism, and was
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typically marked by revival of historical elements and techniques.

Postmodernist society is characterized by changes to institutions and
creations and with social and political results and innovations, globally but
especially in the West.
Postmodern authors tend to depict the world as having already
undergone countless disasters and being beyond redemption or
understanding. Postmodern literature reflects late modern society by
showing the individuals inability to establish a personal identity based on a
historical or social background, let alone family and work. Postmodern
literature is, to a great extent, a play on words which reflects the
meaninglessness of the late modern world, which is seen as fragmented,
disoriented, chaotic, but this leads neither to despair nor to any wish to reestablish order. The binary contrasts of good/evil, true/false, real/unreal and
order/chaos have been abolished. The world is pure surface, it is what it
appears to be. Hence each individual creates his or her own world and
identity through the pictures which he or she sees in literature and other art
forms or in the so-called world. The Great Narratives, which began to be
questioned in Modernism, are rejected in Postmodernism. There is no
acknowledgment of a universal truth.