THE HISTORY

OF
LITERATURE
WHAT IS LITERATURE MAJOR PERIODS IN HISTORY
- a body of written works. The

name has traditionally been

applied to those imaginative

aesthetic excellence of their centuries, up until now. This

execution. Literature may be has been taught along the

classified according to a variety invention of organized

of systems, including language, education and is heavily

national origin, historical period, supported by philosophical

genre, and subject matter. and mythological ideas.

Important Figures:
 - Encyclopedia Britannica      - Plato
     - Sophocles
     - Homer
450-1066: Anglo-Saxon
(Old English) Literature
 - Mostly poems passed

down through word of mouth

from ancient ancestors.

Much of the literature

during this time was of

religious origin or purpose.

Important Figures: 
     - King Alfred
     - Bede the Venerable
     - Caedmon

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1066-1500: Middle English Literature
- The transitional period between

Anglo-Saxon and modern English

literature. This time period saw a

flowering of secular literature, including

ballads and allegorical poems.

Important Figures:
    - King Alfred
    - Bede the Venerable
    - Caedmon
1300-1600: The Renaissance
- Characterized by the influence of the

Classics 

- Optimistic forward-thinking approach

to the potential of humans

Important Figures:
     - William Shakespeare
     - Christopher Marlowe
     - John Milton
1660-1785: Neoclassicism
- Neoclassical literature was defined by

common sense, order, accuracy, and

structure.

Important Figures:
     - Voltaire Candide
     - Alexander Pope
     - Samuel Johnson

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1650 - 1730: Puritan Literature/Puritan
Plain Style (United States)
- Puritan literature focuses on how God

influences the writers'. The use of irony,

humor, hyperbole, and other literary

devices that can change how the

reader interprets the text are avoided.

Important Figures:
     - Anne Bradstreet 
     - Edward Taylor 
     - Jonathan Edwards

1730-1800: The Age of Reason 

Enlightenment, a movement marked by

the emphasis on science rationality

rather than religious tradition.

Important Figures:
     - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
     - Diderot
     - Marquis de Sade

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1800-1850: Romanticism
- An artistic and intellectual movement

that started in the late 18th century

Western Europe and spread to America.

A main idea of the movement was the

idea that neither theism nor deism can

adequately answer the question of

man’s relationship with God.

Important Figures:
     - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
     - Lord Byron
     - John Keats

1830-1900: The Victorian Period

Victoria, during the industrial revolution.

Tended to be idealized portraits of

difficult lives which hard work,

perseverance, love, and luck win out in

the end

Important Figures:
     - Emily Bronte
     - Charles Dickens 
     - Robert Burns

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1830-1865: American Renaissance
- American literature that came of age

as an expression of a national spirit.

These works made use of native dialect,

history, landscape, and characters to

explore uniquely American issues. Some

regard works during the American

Renaissance as some of the best

American fiction ever written.

Important Figures:
     - Emily Dickinson
     - Walt Whitman
     - Herman Melville

1820-1830: Transcendentalism
- A philosophy or system of thought

based on the idea that humans are

essentially good, and humanity's

deepest truths can be formulated

through insight rather than logic, and

that there is an essential unity to all of

creation.

Important Figures:
     - Ralph Waldo Emerson
     - Henry David Thoreau Walden 
     - Henry David Thoreau

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1855-1900: American Realism &
Regionalism
- A literary movement that attempted to

portray an accurate, detailed picture of

ordinary, contemporary life. One of its

main ideas was that the character is

more important than action and plot:

complex ethical choices are often the

subject.

Important Figures:
     - Jack London
     - Theodore Dreiser 
     - Edith Wharton

1890-1930: Modernism
- Modernism uses ideas and methods

which are very different from those used

in the past its main characteristics were

stylistic innovations – disruption of

traditional syntax and from – and an

obsession with primitive attitudes

Important Figures:
     - Henry James
     - Joseph Conrad
     - T.S. Elliot

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1830-1900: The Lost Generation
- The generation of writers, usually

soldiers, who published in the years

following WWI. These authors are said to

be disillusioned by the large number of

casualties of the First World War, cynical

and disdainful, of the notions of their

elders and ambivalent of their gender

ideals.

Important Figures:
     - F. Scott Fitzgerald
     - Ernest Hemingway 
     - Gertude Stein

1918-1930: The Harlem Renaissance

American culture, particularly in the

creative arts, and the most influential

movement in African American literary

history. Embracing literary musical,

theatrical, and visual arts, participants

sought to reconceptualize “the Negro”.

Important Figures:
     - Langston Hughes
     - Claude McKay
     - Zora Neale Hurston

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1945-Present: Postmodernism
- Unlike modernism, post-modernism has

no crisis of belief in traditional authority.

The angst that comes with modernism

has been replaced with an "everything

and anything goes" attitude. Since the

post-modernism is still ongoing, the

period's definition is dynamic

Important Figures:
     - Michel Foucault
     - William Gass 
     - Philip Dick

1950-1960: The Beat Generation

that came to prominence in the late

1950s and early 1960s and the cultural

phenomena they wrote about and

inspired (later sometimes called

"beatniks”). This literature highlighted

the core values of the movement:

spontaneity, open emotion, visceral

engagement in gritty worldly

experiences.

Important Figures:
     - Allen Ginsberg Howl
     - William S. Burroughs 
     - Jack Kerouac

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1958-1965: Confessional Poetry
- Defined as “the poetry of the

personal”. It often dealt with subject

matter that previously had not been

openly discussed in American poetry.

Private experiences with and feelings

about death, trauma, depression and

relationships were addressed in this

type of poetry.

Important Figures:
     - Robert Lowell
     - Sylvia Plath 
     - Anne Sexton

1930s-Present: Magic Realism

elements are blended into a realistic

atmosphere to access a deeper

understanding of reality. These magical

elements are explained like normal

occurrences that are presented in a

straightforward way that allows the

"real" and the "fantastic" to be

accepted in the same stream of

thought.

Important Figures:
     - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
     - Laura Esquivel
     - Franz Kafka

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1950s-Present: Postcolonial
Literature
- Literature by and about authors from

former European colonies, mainly from

Africa, Asia, South America and the

Carribean. This literature aims to

challenge Eurocentric assumptions

through intense examination of culture

and identity.

Important Figures:
     - Chinua Achebe
     - Salman Rushdie
     - Derek Walcott

1960’s-Present: Metafiction
Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-

consciously addresses the devices of

fiction, constantly reminding the reader

that he or she is reading a fictional

work. Characters who express

awareness that they are in a work of

fiction. (also known as breaking the

fourth wall.)

A work of fiction within a fiction.

Important Figures:
     - Thomas Pynchon
     - Tim O’Brien
     - Douglas Adams

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