Advanced Placement English Literature & Composition LITERARY PERIODS AND APPROACHES This supplement provides some general information about how American and British literary movements and writing styles have changed through the centuries. It is notable that each period tends to evolve from and react to the previous one. American literature prior to the 20 th century tends to shadow tendencies in British literature. For example, the later Romantic movement that originated in England in the late 18 th century may be seen to have served as a model and inspiration for American writers in the early to mid-19 th century. Included here first is a table timeline that places American and British literature side-by-side for comparison. Listed for each century are names of periods, a listing of approaches or movements, and some representative authors. The second part of this handout offers a kind of glossary which describes many literary movements and some of the important ideas behind them. Please note that dates are approximate and descriptions are fairly general. I. Literature Timeline 1500s 1600s 1700s 1800s American Literature Native American oral tradition; myths, songs, and stories Begin Colonial period in early 1600s (Also known as Age of Faith ); writers tended to focus on colonization/propaganda and religious issues in diaries, journals, travel writing, and poetry; John Smith, William Bradford, John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather Begin Revolutionary period mid- 1700s (also known as Neoclassical Period or Age of Reason ); neoclassicism, deism, rationalism; Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Phillis Wheatley, Begin Romantic period early to mid-1800s; Romanticism (including transcendentalism); Washington Irving; William Cullen Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, British Literature Renaissance (1485-1660) continues: This was an era of political, religious, and literary flowering. Notable figures include Shakespeare and Spenser; begins reign of Tudors Early 1600s: Cavalier and Metaphysical poets connect Elizabethan period to Restoration and neoclassical/augustan satirists. Notable writers include Herrick, Herbert, Donne, Lovelace, and Milton. Neoclassical period continues. Primarily known as age of satire and revival of classical form. Major authors are Pope, Swift, Defoe, Addison and Steele, and Johnson. Romantic period often dated as starting in 1798 with publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Other notables include Keats, Shelley, and Byron. Romance continues. Victoria comes to throne in 1837 and rules through early 20 th century. Major authors of Victorian period include Dickens, Wilde, Tennyson and Hardy. Literature characterized by evaluation of social issues, but also included religious/scientific questioning as Darwin and others pose questions regarding man s origins and geologic evolution.
2 1900s-Early 2000s Emily Dickinson Begin Realistic period near end of century; Realism and local color writing; Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Brett Hart, Ambrose Bierce, E.A. Robinson Continue Realistic period in early years; Realism (including Naturalism) Harlem Literary Renaissance 1920s and 1930s; W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay Southern Literary Renaissance 1920s-50s; William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O Connor, Begin Modernism by early 1920s; William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Crowe Ransom, Ezra Pound Begin Postmodernism by Early 20 th century Britain sees rise of Modernist writers, including Eliot, Yeats, Shaw, Joyce, Woolf and Auden. II. Literary Movements and Some Ideas Behind Them Renaissance (1500s) Religious Ideologies Connected to The Age of Faith (1600s/1700s) Calvinism is the name applied to the religious doctrines of John Calvin, which emphasized the omnipotence of God and the salvation of the elect by God's grace alone. These were accepted by Puritans and included five basic tenets: Original sin, predestination, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints. Antinomianism is a term used to describe a religious sect or group of believers whose principles go against the established orthodoxy. It basically means against the law, and has been used by many religious groups as a way of discrediting theological adversaries. Deism is the belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation. Although deism appealed to the individualism and optimism of many eighteenth-century American political and social thinkers, it was popular only among upperclass intellectuals. American deists ranged from the moderate anti-clericism, rational morality, and political liberalism of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to the much less common militant deism of Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine, who called for an abolition of traditional religion. The one unifying factor in the different versions of deism was a readiness to question traditional
3 revealed religion. Deists generally subscribed to the watchmaker theory the idea that God created the world, but established requisite properties for it to continue to exist and run without intervention or divine control. Rationalism and Neo-Classicism (1700s) Rationalism posits that reliance on reason is the best guide for belief and action. Rationalists believe that the exercise of reason, rather than experience, authority, or spiritual revelation, provides the primary basis for knowledge. In mid-18 th century America this belief coincided nicely with growing dissatisfaction with England during the Revolutionary period. American writers, Paine in particular, questioned the validity of the time-honored notion of the divine right of kings. Neoclassicism or New classicism refers to an 18 th century tendency to model writing forms on classical example (ancient Greek, Roman). In Britain this period was also referred to as the Augustan Age and included a renewed emphasis on the essay and the art of satire. Pope and Swift are among the most exemplary writers from this group. Romanticism (Late 1700s/1800s) Later Romanticism in English and American literature flourished in the mid-late 18 th Century through the later 19 th Century. This literary period is often dated as starting with the publication of Lyrical Ballads (William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge) in 1798, or with the preface to its second edition in 1800. Romantic writing moved away from rationalist and neoclassical traditions. Romanticism in general: 1) Values intuition over science, emotion over intellect, the ideal over the real, and imagination over reason 2) Explores themes of libertarianism 3) Delights in Nature, unspoiled rural settings and people; often views Nature as a teacher 4) Often focuses on the exotic, gothic, or supernatural themes American Romanticism is often classified as either Dark (Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, etc) or Light ( the Fireside poets and earlier poets, and the Transcendentalists) Romance. Romantic literature gets its name from its thematic and stylistic connections to Arthurian stories that were originally written in French, a Romance language. Transcendentalism (Mid-1800s) To transcend means to go beyond. Transcendentalism refers to a philosophical and literary movement that is generally connected with 19 th century European and American thinkers. In literature it is most often associated with the American Transcendentalists (notably Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman), who tended to place particular emphasis on: 1) The belief that humanity transcends the corporeal 2) The notion of a divine spark that connects humanity with the Over-Soul 3) The idea of Nature as a teacher and place of spiritual connection 4) The importance of Self-Reliance 5) The realization that Democracy, as good as it is, is still flawed Realism (Late 1800s/Early 1900s) Realism refers to a literary approach in which the writer depicts characters and events as they actually are, without idealizing or romanticizing them. 1) Is a reaction to Romanticism 2) Focuses less upon expressive, emotional responses tends to value reason over intuition
4 3) Uses common characters (from everyday life) 4) Places less importance on traditional plot. Since life is without symmetry, realistic stories may not employ chronological sequencing of events or have a pat ending 5) Searches for scientific/psychological truths, rather than ideal truths Naturalism (Early 1900s) Naturalism, a subset of realism, represents a movement in fiction begun in later nineteenth century France and carried on in late nineteenth/early twentieth century America by writers like Stephen Crane and Jack London. Influenced by Darwinism (science) and Marxism (socioeconomics), naturalism focused on natural, social, and economic determinism. In short writing that adheres to principles of naturalism: 1) Renders its characters, settings, and themes as objectively and truthfully as science handles its subject matter 2) Often employs objective, detached narration and meticulous detail 3) Demonstrates a pervading notion that actions and destinies of humans are controlled by social, economic, biological, and natural forces 4) Often suggests that human free will is weak and ineffectual 5) Draws characters from lower classes and may spare little of the sordid details of unhappy existence Impressionism Originally applied to works of nineteenth century French painters, impressionism deals with the attempt to convey an impression gained from direct observation of nature. Eschewing continuous brushstrokes, these artists sought to break light into its component parts by using successive, discontinuous dabs of color. Impressionistic writing attempts to use precision of language to render subjective experience with all its complexities. Though most often associated with lyric poetry, impressionism has commonalities with naturalistic prose and may be seen in stories like Crane s The Open Boat. The Harlem Literary Renaissance (U.S./1920s-30s) Authors of the Harlem Renaissance broke with earlier ethnic writers whose work mimicked white standards. Instead, they took the then-enormous liberty of rejecting the formulaic, Eurocentric notions of theme, content, and form in favor of writing in the style, idiom, vernacular, and cadences of their communities. The Renaissance group was on a mission -- to shuck off Uncle Tom. These writers searched for a unifying cultural identity and boldly proclaimed the advent of a new cultural aesthetic, a rebirth of ethnic pride on new soil. From such characteristic works as Zora Neale Hurston s Their Eyes Were Watching God to Langston Hughes jazz-tinged, documentary-style poetry, the Harlem writers dared to capture the urban African American experience in all its truth, pain, humor, sense of exile, and vibrant beauty. Harlem Renaissance writers personified courage, dignity, and audacity through the simple, poetic expression of the tribulations of an oppressed people, by those people, and for those people. Their daring and innovative excavation of both ghetto sufferings and the creative riches of the African American communal journey profoundly inspired black revolutionary writers and thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s, including James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. The Southern Literary Renaissance (U.S./1920s-50s) The Southern Renaissance refers roughly to the period between the two world wars when Southern writers were far enough in time from the Civil War and slavery to regard their region with some degree of objectivity through the techniques of international modernism, such as stream of consciousness, complex points of view, and jarring juxtapositions.
5 The writers of the Southern Renaissance tended to address two essential themes in their works. The first was the burden of the past in a land that had suffered military and economic defeat, social opprobrium, and the legacy of racism. In some ways, this response resembles the defensiveness of antebellum writers, but the burden is the complex legacy of shame and guilt which makes history become an individual's fate. The second major theme of the Southern Renaissance, the individual's relationship to his or her community, is closely linked to the burden of the past. In Northeastern American literature, identity is proudly and defiantly individual in the Puritan and Transcendental traditions. In contrast, the Southern individual's identity or honor is based on his or her standing in his community, and that standing is largely based on the family, whose standing, in turn, is determined by the burden of the Southern past. Although its burdens can be great, this emphasis on the societal over the individual can lead to the positive sharing, caring, values of community and to heroic Southern stoicism, in which individuals face decline and defeat with a public face of bravery, fortitude, and nobility. Today, when most people think of Southern literature, they call to mind the authors of the Southern Renaissance, like William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Katherine Anne Porter, and Robert Penn Warren. Modernism (Early-Mid-1900s) Applied to literature of the early 20 th century as it rejected the traditional and romantic, modernism reflects more of a set of characteristics than a cohesive movement. Modernist literature (notably works by several authors we have read, including Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and William Faulkner in particular) tends to go beyond concerns of the realists by breaking the bonds of chronological narration, often using multiple narrative points of view, unconventional metaphor, and meaning that is dislocated from its normal context. In such literature internal monologue often takes precedence over external action. Some other characteristics of modernist works include: 1) Borrowing from other cultures/languages 2) Relying upon etanarrative and stream of consciousness 3) Venturing into mundane considerations 4) Establishing as heroes despairing individuals who are unable to cope with past, present, or future 5) Rejecting history and substituting a mythical past Post-Modernism (Mid-1900s and Beyond ) As applied to literature and other arts, the term post-modernism is notoriously ambiguous, implying either that modernism has been superseded or that it has continued into a new phase. Postmodernism may be seen as a continuation of modernism's alienated mood and disorienting techniques and at the same time as an abandonment of its determined quest for artistic coherence in a fragmented world: in very crude terms, where a modernist artist or writer would try to wrest a meaning from the world through myth, symbol, or formal complexity, the postmodernist greets the absurd or meaningless confusion of contemporary existence with a certain numbed or flippant indifference, favoring self-consciously depthless works of pastiche or disconnection. The term cannot usefully serve as an inclusive description of all literature since the 1950s or 1960s, but is applied selectively to those works that display most evidently the moods and formal disconnections described above. It seems to have little relevance to modern poetry, and limited application to drama outside the absurdist tradition, but is used widely in reference to fiction, notably to the novels and stories of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, William S. Burroughs, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, Peter Ackroyd, Julian Barnes, Jeanette Winterson, and many of their followers.