Literary Movements

Classicism NeoClassicism Romanticism Realism Naturalism Modernism Postmodernism Definitions taken from www.MerriamWebster.com

Standard Met in Lesson

ELARL1 The student demonstrates comprehension by identifying evidence in a variety of texts representative of different genres and using this evidence as the basis for interpretation. (Strand 1) The student identifies, analyzes, and applies knowledge of the structures and elements of fiction from around the world and provides evidence from the text to support understanding; the student: A. Locates and analyzes such elements as language and style, character development, point of view, irony, and structures in works of world fiction from different time periods.

Classicism

the principles or style embodied in the literature, art, or architecture of ancient Greece and Rome adherence to traditional standards (as of simplicity, restraint, and proportion) that are universally and enduringly valid

Classical Writers

Homer Aristotle Sophocles Honore de Balzac Joseph Conrad John Steinbeck

MAGIC by: Ovid

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back, you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid, Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring water; to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar; graves at my command Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth By my so potent art.
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

NeoClassicism

1. a regard for tradition and reverence for the classics, with an accompanying distrust of innovation 2. a sense of literature as art--that is, as something "artificed" or "artificial," made by craft; hence the value put on "rules," conventions, "decorum," the properties of received genres. 3. a concern for social reality, and the communal commonplaces of thought which hold it together. 4. a concern for "nature"--or the way things are (and should be). This relates back to the distrust of innovation and inherent conservatism of neoclassicism. The artistic rules of old, for instance, Pope describes as having been "discovered, not devised" and are "Nature methodized"; so too, "Nature and Homer" are "the same" (Essay on Criticism 88ff., 135). This belief in "nature" implies a conviction that there is a permanent, universal way things are (and should be), which obviously entails fundamental political and ethical commitments. 5. a concern with "pride" as the root of threats to the above. We might see pride as in part standing for individual self assertion against the status quo ("nature").

(http://www.english.uga.edu/~232/voc/neoclassicism.voc.html)

NeoClassicist Writers

Restoration Age (1660-1700), in which Milton, Bunyan, and Dryden were the dominant influences Augustan Age (1700-1750), in which Pope was the central poetic figure, while Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett were presiding over the sophistication of the novel Age of Johnson(1750-1798), which, while it was dominated and characterized by the mind and personality of the inimitable Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose sympathies were with the fading Augustan past, saw the beginnings of a new understanding and appreciation of the work of Shakespeare, the development, by Sterne and others, of the novel of sensibility, and the emergence of the Gothic school

Sound and Sense By Alexander Pope

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar; When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

Romanticism

a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms

Romantic Writers

Samuel Coleridge William Wordsworth William Blake Jane Austen Sir Walter Scott Mary Wollstonecraft

THE SICK ROSE by: William Blake

O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

Realism

the theory or practice of fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization

Realist Writers

Kate Chopin Gustave Flaubert Mark Twain Henry James Anton Chekhov

SHE, AT HIS FUNERAL by: Thomas Hardy

They bear him to his resting-place-In slow procession sweeping by; I follow at a strangers space; His kindred they, his sweetheart I. Unchanged my gown of garish dye, Though sable-sad is their attire; But they stand round with griefless eye, Whilst my regret consumes like fire!

Naturalism
The subject matter: a. The subject matter deals with those raw and unpleasant experiences which reduce characters to "degrading" behavior in their struggle to survive. These characters are mostly from the lower middle or the lower classes - they are poor, uneducated, and unsophisticated. b. The milieu is the commonplace and the unheroic; life is usually the dull round of daily existence. But the naturalist discovers those qualities in such characters usually associated with the heroic or adventurous acts of violence and passion leading to desperate moments and violent death. The suggestion is that life on its lowest levels is not so simple as it seems to be. c. There is discussion of fate and "hubris" that affect a character; generally the controlling force is society and the surrounding environment.

Naturalism
The concept of a naturalistic character: a. characters are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, chance, or instinct; but they have compensating humanistic values which affirm their individuality and life - their struggle for life becomes heroic and they maintain human dignity. b. the Naturalists attempt to represent the intermingling in life of the controlling forces and individual worth. They do not dehumanize their characters. Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 6: American Naturalism - A Brief Introduction." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL:http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap6 /6intro.html (provide page date or date of your login).

Naturalist Writers

Emile Zola (founder) Theodore Dreiser Edith Wharton Guy de Maupassant Jack London

"Phaedra" By Edith Wharton

NOT that on me the Cyprian fury fell, Last martyr of my love-ensanguined race; Not that my children drop the averted face When my name shames the silence; not that hell Holds me where nevermore his glance shall dwell Nightlong between my lids, my pulses race Through flying pines the tempest of the chase, Nor my heart rest with him beside the well. Not that he hates me; not, O baffled gods -Not that I slew him! -- yet, because your goal Is always reached, nor your rejoicing rods Fell ever yet upon insensate clods, Know, the one pang that makes your triumph whole Is, that he knows the baseness of my soul.

Modernism

modern artistic or literary philosophy and practice; especially : a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression

Modern Writers

James Joyce Virginia Woolf T.S. Eliot William Faulkner Samuel Beckett William Carlos Williams Tennessee Williams

A Sort of Song By William Carlos Williams

Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. -- through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.

Postmodernism

of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature) of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language

Postmodern Authors

Toni Morrison Margaret Atwood T.C. Boyle Ray Bradbury Tim OBrien Flannery OConnor Vladimir Nabokov

The Moment By Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you, the birds take back their language, the cliffs fissure and collapse, the air moves back from you like a wave and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way round.