Lit mov booklet part-4
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1. The document outlines four major literary movements: Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. 2. It provides a brief overview of the historical context and origins of each movement, from Neoclassicism originating in 1660 to Naturalism emerging in the late 19th century. 3. The characteristics of each movement are summarized, such as Neoclassicism emphasizing order and restraint while Romanticism celebrated imagination and emotion.
Lit mov booklet part-4
- 1. Part 4 Literary Movements Objectives: By the end of this part, you will be able to: 1. To list the main literary movements in the west. 2. To identify the historical setting of each movement. 3. To describe the main characteristics of the literature in each movement. 4. To name the main figures in each movement. 5. To discuss the main ideas in pre20th century movements Activities: Online Activities for this part: 1. DF-2 Realism 2. Quiz-4 Main Literary Movements 3. DF-3 Naturalism 4. Quiz-5 Neoclassicism & Romanticism MLM Page 46 46
- 2. Part (4(: Literary Movements Major Literary Movements 1. Neoclassicism 2. Romanticism 3. Realism 4. Naturalism Neoclassicism Neoclassicism (c. 1660–1798) is a major literary movement. It is inspired by the rediscovery of classical works of ancient Greece and Rome that emphasized balance, restraint, and order. Neoclassicism roughly coincided with the Enlightenment, which espoused reason over passion. Major writer are Edmund Burke, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift. Romanticism Romanticism (c. 1798–1832) is a major literary movement. A literary and artistic movement that reacted against the restraint and universalism of the Enlightenment. The Romantics celebrated spontaneity, imagination, subjectivity, and the purity of nature. Major writer are Jane Austen, William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth. Realism Realism (c. 1830–1900) is a major literary movement. It is a late-19th-century literary movement that aimed at accurate detailed portrayal of ordinary, contemporary life. Major writer are Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, and Leo Tolstoy Naturalism Naturalism (c. 1865–1900) is a major literary movement. A literary movement that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. Major writer are Émile Zola, Theodore Dreiser, and Stephen Crane. MLM Page 47 47
- 3. Neoclassicism In England, Neoclassicism flourished roughly between 1660, when the Stuarts returned to the throne, and the 1798 publication of Words- worth’s Lyrical Ballads, with its theoretical pref- ace and collection of poems that came to be seen as heralding the beginning of the Romantic Age. Regarding English literature, the Neoclassical Age is typically divided into three periods: the Restoration Age (1660–1700), the Augustan Age (1700–1750), and the Age of Johnson (1750– 1798). Neoclassical writers modeled their works on classical texts and followed various esthetic values first established in Ancient Greece and Rome. Seventeenth-century and eighteenth- century Neoclassicism was, in a sense, a resur- gence of classical taste and sensibility, but it was not identical to Classicism. In part as a reaction to the bold egocentrism of the Renaissance that saw man as larger than life and boundless in potential, the neoclassicists directed their atten- tion to a smaller scaled concept of man as an individual within a larger social context, seeing human nature as dualistic, flawed, and needing to be curbed by reason and decorum. In style, neoclassicists continued the Renaissance value of balanced antithesis, symmetry, restraint, and order. Additionally, they sought to achieve a sense of refinement, good taste, and correctness. Their clothes were complicated and detailed, and their gardens were ornately manicured and geo- metrically designed. They resurrected the classi- cal values of unity and proportion and saw their 5 5 6 MOVEMENT ORIGIN c. 1660 MLM Page 48 48
- 4. Romanticism Romanticism as a literary movement lasted from 1798, with the publication of Lyrical Ballads to some time between the passage of the first Reform Bill of 1832 and the death of Words- worth in 1850. With political revolution on the Continent and the industrial revolution under- way, the period witnessed the breakdown of rigid ideas about the structure and purpose of society and the known world. During this period, emphasis shifted to the importance of the individual’s experience in the world and one’s subjective interpretation of that experi- ence, rather than interpretations handed down by the church or tradition. Romantic literature is characterized by sev- eral features. It emphasized the dream, or inner, world of the individual and visionary, fantastic, or drug-induced imagery. There was a growing suspicion of the established church and a turn toward pantheism (the belief that God is a part of the created world rather than separate from it). Romantic literature emphasized the individ- ual self and the value of the individual’s experi- ence. The concept of ‘‘the sublime’’ (a thrilling emotional experience that combines awe, mag- nificence, and horror) was introduced. Feeling and emotion were viewed as superior to logic and analysis. For the romantics, poetry was believed to be the highest form of literature, and novels were regarded as a lower form, often as sensationalistic 7 0 5 MOVEMENT ORIGIN c. 1789 MLM Page 52 52
- 5. Realism The realist movement in literature first devel- oped in France in the mid-nineteenth century, soon spreading to England, Russia, and the United States. Realist literature is best repre- sented by the novel, including many works widely regarded to be among the greatest novels ever written. Realist writers sought to narrate their novels from an objective, unbiased perspec- tive that simply and clearly represented the factual elements of the story. They became mas- ters at psychological characterization, detailed descriptions of everyday life, and dialogue that captures the idioms of natural speech. The real- ists endeavored to accurately represent contem- porary culture and people from all walks of life. Thus, realist writers often addressed themes of socioeconomic conflict by contrasting the living conditions of the poor with those of the upper classes in urban as well as rural societies. In France, the major realist writers included Honore´ de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, E´ mile Zola, and Guy de Maupassant, among others. In Rus- sia, the major realist writers were Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. In Eng- land, the foremost realist authors were Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope. In the United States, William Dean Howells was the foremost realist writer. Naturalism, an offshoot of Realism, was a literary movement that placed even greater emphasis on the accurate representa- tion of details from contemporary life. In the United States, regionalism and local color fiction 6 5 4 MOVEMENT ORIGIN c. 1860 MLM Page 56 56
- 6. Naturalism Naturalism applies scientific ideas and princi- ples, such as instinct and Darwin’s theory of evolution, to fiction. Authors in this movement wrote stories in which the characters behave in accordance with the impulses and drives of ani- mals in nature. The tone is generally objective and distant, like that of a botanist or biologist taking notes or preparing a treatise. Naturalist writers believe that truth is found in natural law, and because nature operates according to con- sistent principles, patterns, and laws, truth is consistent. Because the focus of Naturalism is human nature, stories in this movement are character- driven rather than plot-driven. Although Natu- ralism was inspired by the work of the French writer E´ mile Zola, it reached the peak of its accomplishment in the United States. In France, Naturalism was most popular in the late 1870s and early 1880s, but it emerged in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and remained in vogue up to World War I. The fundamental naturalist doctrine is pre- sented in Zola’s 1880 essay ‘‘Le roman experimen- tal’’ (meaning ‘‘the experimental—or experiential— novel’’). In it, Zola claims that the naturalist writers subject believable characters and events to experimental conditions. In other words, these writers take the known (such as a character) and introduce it into the unknown (such as an unfamiliar place). Another major principle of 5 3 4 MOVEMENT ORIGIN c. 1860 MLM Page 60 60
- 7. Main Literary Movements 1. Surrealism 2. Symbolists 3. Aestheticism 4. Gothic fiction 5. Magic realism 6. Metaphysical poets 7. Literature of the Absurd 8. Angry Young Men 9. Lost Generation Surrealism (1920s–1930s): An avant-garde movement, based primarily in France, that sought to break down the boundaries between rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious, through a variety of literary and artistic experiments. The surrealist poets, such as André Breton and Paul Eluard, were not as successful as their artist counterparts, who included Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and René Magritte. Symbolists (1870s–1890s): A group of French poets who reacted against realism with a poetry of suggestion based on private symbols, and experimented with new poetic forms such as free verse and the prose poem. The symbolists—Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine are the most well known—were influenced by Charles Baudelaire. In turn, they had a seminal influence on the modernist poetry of the early 20th century. Aestheticism (c. 1835–1910): A late-19th-century movement that believed in art as an end in itself. Aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater rejected the view that art had to posses a higher moral or political value and believed instead in “art for art’s sake.” Gothic fiction (c. 1764–1820): A genre of late-18th-century literature that featured brooding, mysterious settings and plots and set the stage for what we now call “horror stories.” Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, set inside a medieval castle, was the first major Gothic novel. Later, the term “Gothic” grew to include any work that attempted to create an atmosphere of terror or the unknown, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. MLM Page 81 81
- 8. Characteristics of Modern Literary Movements Characteristics of Neoclassicism 1. It emphasis upon the classical values of objectivity, rationality, decorum, balance, harmony, proportion, and moderation. 2. It adheres to the Aristotelian ideas of “Probability” and the “Unities”: action, time, and place. 3. The neoclassical writers reaffirmed literary composition as a rational and rule- bound process, requiring a great deal of craft, labor, and study. 4. The neoclassicists tended to insist on the separation of poetry and prose, the purity of each genre, and the hierarchy of genres. 5. Two of the concepts central to neoclassical literary theory and practice were imitation and nature, which were intimately related. Characteristics of Romanticism 1. Romanticism has an intense focus on human subjectivity and its expression. 2. It holds an exaltation of nature, which was seen as a vast repository of symbols. 3. It gives a great role to “imagination” as a more comprehensive and inclusive faculty than reason. 4. The Romantics often insisted on artistic autonomy and attempted to free art from moralistic and utilitarian constraints. 5. The Romantics exalted the status of the poet as a genius. 6. The most crucial human faculty for such integration was the imagination, which most Romantics saw as a unifying power, one which could harmonize the other strata of human perception such as sensation and reason. The “classic” and the “romantic” as two different styles of poetry. The Classic Style of Poetry. The Romantic Style of Poetry. 1. It is characterized by formal perfection. 2. The poetry is deficient in emotion and imagination. 3. It is exclusively a poetry of the city. 4. It has no love for the beauties of nature. 5. Imitation of the ancients is the general rule. 6. In this poetry, there is much reflection and 1. All romantic literature is subjective. 2. Romantic poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful passions. 3. The romantic is extraordinarily alive to the wonder, mystery and beauty of the universe. 4. A romantic is a dissatisfied individual. 5. Zest for the beauties of the external world MLM Page 113 113
- 9. The Classic Style of Poetry. The Romantic Style of Poetry. philosophical comment on man and his life. 7. With a few exceptions, the poetry of the age is written in only one metre, the Heroic couplet . 8. It is a great age of satiric, argumentative and reflective poetry. characterises all romantic poetry. 6. Love of Nature leads, by an easy transition, to the love of those who live in her lap. 7. Not only do the Romantics treat of the common man, they also use his language for their purposes. 8. Their interest in the past leads the romantics to experiment with old metres and poetic forms. Characteristics of Realism: 1. the use of descriptive and evocative details. 2. avoidance of what was fantastical, imaginary, and mythical 3. adhering to the requirements of probability, and excluding events which were impossible or improbable 4. inclusion of characters and incidents from all social strata, dealing not merely with rulers and nobility 5. focusing on the present and choosing topics from contemporary life rather than longing for some idealized past 6. emphasizing the social rather than the individual (or seeing the individual as a social being) 7. refraining from the use of elevated language, in favor of more colloquial idioms and everyday speech, as well as directness and simplicity of expression. Characteristics of Psychoanalytic Criticism 1. The unconscious governs our behavior, the unconscious is the ultimate source and explanation of human thought and behavior 2. Freud postulated that we bear a form of “otherness” within ourselves: we cannot claim fully to comprehend even ourselves, why we act as we do, why we make certain moral and political decisions, why we harbor given religious dispositions and intellectual orientations. 3. Even when we think we are acting from a given motive, we may be deluding ourselves; and much of our thought and action is not freely determined by us but driven by unconscious forces which we can barely fathom. 4. Moreover, far from being based on reason, our thinking is intimately dependent upon the body, upon its instincts of survival and aggression. MLM Page 114 114