Praxis 0041 - Periods and Genres

Terms in this set (45)

a type of drama which was popularized by the great Norwegian playwright Henrick Ibsen; the situation faced by the protagonist is present by the author as a representative instance of a contemporary social problem

a short poem, often written by an anonymous author, comprised of short verses intended to be sung or recited

Shakespearean sonnet

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

a short composition printed in prose paragraphs, yet containing the striking imagery, calculate rhythmic effects, and other devices of poetry

a document organized in paragraph form that can be long or short in the form of a letter, dialogue, or discussion

types of novels

allegorical, autobiographical, dystopian, fantasy, novella, historical, science fiction, bildungsroman, gothic, pastoral, picaresque, problem, sociological, stream of consciousness

Figurative work whose surface narrative carries a secondary and often metaphorical meaning. (everything represents something else)

Greek/Hellenistic

authors include Homer, Sophocles, Euripedes; notable works include 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey'

humanism vs gods; tragic hero (flaw, hubris, reversal of intention); morality; chorus; in medias res; unities (place, action, time); catharsis; oral tradition, treatment of women, didactic; deus ex machina; no imagination; determinism; man's nature is not good; dramatic

themes: political, moral, religion/tragedy

authors include Virgil, Horace, Ovid; notable works: 'The Aeneid' and 'Metamorphosis'

Old English/Anglo-Saxon

Years: 449-1066
Themes:
strong belief in fate
juxtaposition of church and pagan worlds
admiration of heroic warriors who prevail in battle
express religious faith and give moral instruction through literature

Style/Genres:
oral tradition of literature
poetry dominant genre
unique verse form
caesura
lliteration
repetition
4 beat rhythm

Historical Context:
life centered around ancestral tribes or clans that ruled themselves
at first the people were warriors from invading outlying areas: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes
later they were agricultural

Key Literature/Authors:
Beowulf Bede

Middle English/Medieval

Years: 1066-1485
Themes:
plays that instruct the illiterate masses in morals and religioun
chivalric code of honor
romances
religious devotion

Style/Genres:
oral tradition continues
folk ballads
mystery and miracle plays
morality plays
stock epithets
kennings
frame stories
moral tales

Key Literature/Authors:
Domesday Book
L'Morte de Arthur
Geoffrey Chaucer

Age of Enlightenment

used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority; they believed that human reason could be used to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny and to build a better world; their principal targets were religion (embodied in France in the Catholic Church) and the domination of society by a hereditary aristocracy.

heroic couplet; neoclassicism - rebirth of classical (Greek/Roman) ideals; growth of literacy; modern novel is child of printing press; the essay; scribbling women; dictionaries; restoration; Horace - literature should teach/inspire; didactic conflicts; moral conflicts, satirical; nature autonomous; mind autonomous

theme: didactic novel; moral novel; satirical novel, age of Enlightenment

books/authors: Jefferson, Franklin, Tartuffe; Moliere; Voltaire; Candide; Alexander Pope; Jonathon Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Fantomina; Eliza Haywood; Aphra Behn; History of the Nun; Emma; Jane Austen, Rousseau, Voltaire, Locke, Paine

Puritan/Colonial Literature

1650-1750
Themes:
errand into the wilderness
be a city upon a hill
Christian utopia

Genre/Style:
sermons, diaries
personal narratives
captivity narratives
jeremiads
written in plain style
books/authors:
Sinners in the Angry Hands...; Jonathan Edwards; In Reference to Her...; Anne Bradstreet; Smith, Winthrop

includes authors such as Jefferson, Paine, Henry; notable work: 'Common Sense'

Transcendentalism

Intuition and individual conscience "transcend" experience and thus are better guides to the truth than sense and reason.
Respects individual spirit and natural world.
Emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century; Authors/Works: Emerson and Thoreau; notable work: "Self-Reliance" and "Civil Disobedience"

British Romanticism

Years: 1798 - 1832
Themes:
human knowledge consists of impressions and ideas formed in the individual's mind , introduction of gothic, in nature one can find comfort and peace that the man-made urbanized towns and factory environments cannot offer

Style/Genres:
poetry, lyrical ballads
Key Literature/Authors:
Novelists: Jane Austen, Mary Shelley
Poets: Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats,

British Victorian

Years: 1832-1900
Themes:
conflict between those in power and the common masses of laborers and the poor
shocking life of sweatshops and urban poor is highlighted in literature to insist on reform
country versus city life
sexual discretion (or lack of it)
strained coincidences
romantic triangles, heroines in physical danger
Genres/Styles:
novel becomes popular for first time; mass produced for the first time
bildungsroman: "coming of age"
political novels, detective novels: (Sherlock Holmes), serialized novels, elegies
poetry: easier to understand
dramatic monologues
drama: comedies of manners
magazines offer stories to the masses

Key Literature/Authors:
Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy , Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Darwin, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Browning

truthful representation of reality of common, contemporary (often middle class) life or "verisimilitude"

accurate portrayal of life and reality; problems and conflicts that reader can identify with; more psychological; less plot; characters are important; vernacular language; conflict between social and human emotional needs; fictions concerns itself with ethical issues; values individual; satire - not grim/somber; middle class society; not aristocratic, historical novel; reaction again

theme: woman question, sexuality

book/authors: Anna Karenina; Tolstoy; The Awakening; Chopin; Dickinson, Longfellow, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain

(sub-genre of realism)
1880-1900

Themes:
dominant themes: survival fate violence taboo
nature is an indifferent force acting on humans
"brute within" each individual is comprised of strong and warring emotions such as
greed, power, and fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent world.
Genre/Style:
short story, novel
characters usually lower class or lower middle class
fictional world is commonplace and unheroic; everyday life is a dull round of daily existence
characters ultimately emerge to act heroically or adventurously with acts of violence, passion, and/or bodily strength in a tragic ending
books/authors: Jack London; Call of the Wild; Steinbeck, Crane, Wharton

modern thought, character, or practice; accurate portrayal; loss of plot; non-linear; questions of certainty of social order, religion, morality; stresses chaos; calling up of past, truth in personal experience; interior monologue; interwoven symbols; protagonist because of anti-hero; denouement; absurdism

themes: position of women, sense of loss; chaos, loss of humanity

books/authors: Mrs. Dalloway; Virginia Woolf, The Picture of Dorian Gray; Oscar Wilde; Portrait of Artist as a Young Man; James Joyce; WWI Poets (Owen, Eliot, Yeats); Pound, Faulkner, Hemingway

a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual and his or her conditions of existence — as a starting point for philosophical thought; authors include Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka

began in 1660 when the English monarchy, Scottish monarchy and Irish monarchy were restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the English Civil War; authors include Defoe, Swift, Pope

Began as a reaction to the renaissance period. Writers drew on what were considered to be classical virtues—simplicity, order, restraint, logic, economy, accuracy, and decorum—to produce prose, poetry, and drama. Literature was of value in accordance with its ability to not only delight, but also instruct.
(usually that of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome)

an overindulgence in emotion, especially the conscious effort to induce emotion in order to enjoy it; authors include Austen, Bode, and Stern

Harlem Renaissance

refers to the flowering of African American cultural and intellectual life during the 1920s and 1930s; includes authors Hurston, Hughes, and Cullen

Elizabethan Era

is associated with Queen Elizabeth I reign (1558-1603) and is often considered to be the golden age in English history; authors include Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Spenser

The eighteenth century in English literature

The period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope (~1690 - 1744).

Also called the Neoclassical Age, and the Age of Reason
Swift, Pope, Defoe, Dryden

Protestant Reformation

a Christian reform movement in Europe; notable authors include Calvin and Luther

loosely defined movement in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design in later nineteenth-century Britain; used slogan "Art for Art's Sake;" authors include Wilde, Keats, and Rosetti

Southern Literature

is defined as American literature about the Southern US or by writers from this region; characteristics include a focus on a common history, the significance of family, a sense of community and one's role within it, the region's dominant religion and the burdens/rewards religion often brings, issues of racial tension, land and the promise it brings, a sense of social class and place, and the use of the Southern dialect; authors include Twain, O'Connor, Gaines, and Gibbons

Metaphysical Poetry

a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them, and whose work was characterized by inventiveness of metaphor; include Donne, Marvel, Herbert

British Renaissance

Years: 1485-1660
Themes:
world view shifts from religion and after life to one stressing the human life on earth
popular theme: development of human potential
popular theme: many aspects of love explored
unrequited love, constant love, timeless love, courtly love, love subject to change

Style/Genres:
poetry
sonnet
drama
written in verse
supported by royalty
tragedies, comedies, histories
metaphysical poetry
elaborate and unexpected metaphors called conceits

Key Literature/Authors:
William Shakespeare, Donne, Cavalier Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Christopher Marlowe, Andrew Marvell

American Modernism

1900-1946
Themes:
dominant mood: alienation and disconnection
people unable to communicate effectively
fear of eroding traditions and grief over loss of the past
Genre/Style:
highly experimental
allusions in writing often refer to classical Greek and Roman writings
use of fragments, juxtaposition, interior monologue, and stream of consciousness
writers seeking to create a unique style
Authors: Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemmingway, Frost and Fitzgerald

American Romantic/Renaissance

1800-1855
Themes:
writing that can be interpreted 2 ways, on the surface for common folk or in depth for
philosophical readers
sense of idealism
focus on the individual's inner feelings
emphasis on the imagination over reason and intuition over facts
urbanization versus nostalgia for nature
burden of the Puritan past

Genre/Style:
literary tale
character sketch
slave narratives,
political novels
poetry
transcendentalism

Authors: Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Irving, Dickinson, Beecher-Stowe, Poe, Alcott,

British Neoclassical Period

Years: 1660-1798
Themes:
emphasis on reason and logic
stresses harmony, stability, wisdom
Locke: a social contract exists between the government and the people. The government governs guaranteeing "natural rights" of life, liberty, and property

Style/Genres:
satire: uses irony and exaggeration to poke fun at human faults and foolishness in order to correct human behavior
poetry
essays
letters, diaries, biographies
novels
Key Literature/Authors:
*Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, John Bunyan,

British Modern/post Modern

Years: 1900-1980
Themes:
lonely individual fighting to find peace and comfort in a world that has lost its absolute values and traditions
man is nothing except what he makes of himself
a belief in situational ethics—no absolute values. Decisions are based on the situation one is involved in at the moment
mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader
loss of the hero in literature
destruction made possible by technology

Genres/Styles:
poetry: free verse
epiphanies begin to appear in literature
speeches
memoir
novels
stream of consciousness
detached, unemotional, humorless
present tense
magic realism

Key Literature/Authors:
James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas, Nadine Gordimer, George Orwell, William Butler Yeats, Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf

British Contemporary

(Post Modern Period Continued)
1980-Present
Themes:
concern with connections between people
exploring interpretations of the past
open-mindedness and courage that comes from being an outsider
escaping those ways of living that blind and dull the human spirit

Genres/Styles:
all genres represented
fictional confessional/diaries
50% of contemporary fiction is written in the first person
narratives: both fiction and nonfiction
emotion-provoking
humorous irony
storytelling emphasized
autobiographical essays
mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader

Key Literature/Authors:
Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing, Louis de Bernieres, Kazuo Ishiguro, Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie. John Le Carre, Ken Follett

American Realism

1855- 1900
Themes:
common characters not idealized (immigrants, laborers)
people in society defined by class
society corrupted by materialism
emphasizes moralism through observation

Style:
novel and short stories are important
prefers objective narrator
dialogue includes many voices from around the country does not tell the reader how to
interpret the story

Key Authors:Henry James, William Dean Howells
Mark Twain, Stephen Crane

American Postmodernism

1946-Present
Themes:
people observe life as the media presents it, rather than experiencing life directly
popular culture saturates people's lives
absurdity and coincidence

Genre/Style:
mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader
no heroes
concern with individual in isolation
detached, unemotional
usually humorless
narratives
metafiction
present tense
magic realism

key authors: JD Salinger, Harper Lee, Sinclair Lewis, Truman Capote, Eudor Welty

American Contemporary

(continuation of Postmodernism)
1980s-Present
Themes:
identity politics
people learning to cope with problems through communication
people's sense of identity is shaped by cultural and gender attitudes
emergence of ethnic writers and women writers

Style:
narratives: both fiction and nonfiction
anti-heroes
concern with connections between people
emotion-provoking
humorous irony
storytelling emphasized
autobiographical essays
Key authors: Maya Angelou, Amy Tan, Alice Walker,

novel that hides behind fiction but is about real life

•A 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.

magical realism

magical elements blend to create a realistic atmosphere that accesses a deeper understanding of reality. The story explains these magical elements as normal occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of thought.

is a play which attempts to explain or explore what were/are considered Christian mysteries, such as the nature of sin, the difference between men and women

play that contains the instance of a miracle such as Christ restoring the sight to the blind.

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