Info of time periods (ENG exam Jan)

What is literature?

• Universality -> Theme resonates in time and place

• Carries tradition of writing, genre, and thought, are built upon

• Meaning and influence does not diminish + Grows with time

Theme

Central idea of a work of literature/They bridge an entire literary work or a story

Individuals vs. Society → "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains."

humans possess freedom at birth, society, creates artificial restrictions (chains) that limit freedom, leading to corruption and dependence

How do we recognize themes in a story?

can be found through context of story background, character development, plot analysis, symbolism, repotition, plot twists

Plot Structure and Freytag's Pyramid

Gustav Freytag made 19th century, as a description of a structure writers use. It is an attempt to boil story down into its most fundamental components.

Exposition/Introduction

major story elements to build world, usually ends with inciting incident to start main story (setting/characters)

Rising Action

majority of it as it is the conflict up till climax (smth happens to complicate plot)

Climax

learn fate of characters (peak/ turning point) / often where underlying themes lay

Falling Action

aftermath of climax

Resolution

Denouement, where story ties loose ends of climax/falling action

Inciting Incident

the event that starts the main conflict of the story.

Symbolism

A device in literature where an object represents an idea.

The Period of the Renaissance and Renaissance Literature

14th to 17th century

The Renaissance, which means "rebirth," was a period of cultural, artistic, and intellectual revival in Europe that began in Italy in the 14th century and reached England in the late 15th and 16th centuries

-Beginning a series of thinkers, writers, and artists sought to reclaim that lost world.

Ad Fontes

The rallying cry behind the whole Renaissance was Ad Fontes (to the sources) the desire to go back and find where all the goodness, truth, and beauty had come from

The Period of the Enlightenment

Enlightenment writers, thinkers, and artists challenged people to "grow up" out of the childhood of the medieval and the Renaissance

-Heroic individualism

Order of time Periods

Renaissance Period

Enlightenment Period

Romantic Period

Modern Period

Post-Modern

The Dark Satanic Mills

William Blake's term for oppressive factories during industrial revolution

Romanticism

response to Enlightenment.

-emphasized the irrational/imaginative/personal, etc and the transcendental.

Sturm und Drang

"Storm and Stress." The exaltation of emotion and a reliance on human experience -> german romantic phrase

Modernism

-capture the effects of increased individualism, increased secularism, and increased spiritual alienation on the human soul and society as a whole

The Wasteland

-Eliot saw in the poisoned, exploded countryside and the obliterated cities the point towards which the whole broader project of modernity had been leading towards.