Renaissance to Postmodernism: Literary, Artistic, and Cultural Key Concepts

Renaissance Years

1485-1660

Renaissance Characteristics

Revival of Greek and Roman ideas; focus on humanism (value of humans), secularism (non-religious thought), individualism (importance of the individual), anthropocentric perspective (humans as center of existence).

Renaissance Historical Events

Fall of Constantinople (scholars brought classical texts); Age of Exploration; Gutenberg's printing press; Protestant Reformation.

Renaissance Writers

Dante; Petrarch; Machiavelli; Boccaccio; Cervantes; Shakespeare.

Renaissance Poetry Forms

Sonnets; Spenserian stanzas; blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter); odes; dramatic monologues; pastoral (rural life); elegiac (about loss).

Renaissance Social Changes

Shift from feudalism to trade economies; growth of middle class; wealthy patrons like the Medici supported the arts.

Renaissance Art Features

Realism, perspective, human emotion; artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael.

Neoclassicism Years

1660-1798 (literature); late 1700s-early 1800s (art/architecture).

Neoclassicism Meaning

"New classicism," revival of Greek and Roman ideals.

Neoclassicism Characteristics

Emphasis on harmony, clarity, order, reason, moral lessons; heroic couplets (two rhyming lines); satire; didactic writing (teaches a lesson).

Neoclassicism Historical Events

Restoration of Charles II (1660); Glorious Revolution (1688); Enlightenment (reason and science); Reading Revolution (growth of literacy).

Neoclassicism Writers

Alexander Pope; Samuel Johnson; John Dryden.

Metaphysical Poetry

Complex, witty comparisons (conceits); themes of love, religion, mortality; philosophical and intellectual style (John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell).

Cavalier Poetry

Polished, elegant style; themes of loyalty, duty, honor, carpe diem (seize the day); often light and personal (Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew).

Neoclassical Theatre

Followed strict rules of "three unities" (time, place, action); aimed for verisimilitude (truth-likeness, realistic behavior); taught moral lessons.

Romanticism Years

1790-1830.

Romanticism Characteristics

Focus on emotion, imagination, individuality, appreciation of nature, supernatural themes, folk traditions, spontaneity instead of strict rules.

Romanticism Historical Influences

American Revolution; French Revolution; Industrial Revolution; Napoleonic Wars.

Romantic Writers

John Keats; Mary Shelley; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Edgar Allan Poe; William Wordsworth; Lord Byron.

Romantic Literature Themes

Passion, idealism, melancholy (sad beauty), glorification of nature, rebellion against rigid order.

Romantic Social Impacts

Response to pollution and harsh city life; inspired reform movements like abolition and suffrage.

Romantic Arts

Intense, dramatic, imaginative; rise of museums and theaters for public culture.

Victorian Years

1837-1901.

Victorian Characteristics

Industrialization, strict class and gender roles, British imperial power, growth of middle/working class rights.

Victorian Writers

Alfred Tennyson; Robert Browning; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Matthew Arnold; Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Victorian Literature Themes

Industrial and social change, women's empowerment, struggles of faith vs. doubt, realism, and love.

Victorian Historical Events

Poor Law Amendment Act (1834, workhouses); Married Women's Property Acts (legal rights for women); Crimean War (1853-56); Great Exhibition (1851).

Victorian Culture

Popular theatre (melodrama), music halls, novels, journalism ("New Journalism" focusing on crime/scandal), sports and leisure (croquet, tennis, cycling).

Victorian Social Change

Education Act (1870) expanded schooling; child labor reform; high literacy rates.

Realism Years

Mid-19th to early 20th century.

Realism Definition

Accurate, truthful representation of everyday life and ordinary people.

Realism Characteristics

Character-driven stories, authentic and detailed settings, focus on middle/lower classes, moral and ethical issues.

Realism Themes

Social class struggles, human behavior, real social problems.

Realist Writers

Mark Twain; Anton Chekhov; Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Kate Chopin; John Steinbeck; Robert Frost; Carl Sandburg.

Realism Historical Context

Industrialization, urbanization, Revolutions of 1848, rise of socialism and political reform, invention of photography.

Realism in Art

Attention to detail, contemporary subject matter, rejection of idealized beauty; artists like Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Rosa Bonheur, Winslow Homer.

Modernism Years

1890-1950.

Modernist Characteristics

Experimentation, innovation, breaking traditional forms, fragmentation, subjectivity, stream of consciousness writing.

Modernist Poetry Styles

Imagism (clear, sharp images), free verse, collage-like structures, impersonality, intertextuality (texts referencing each other).

Modernist Themes

Alienation, isolation, loss of faith, effects of industrial/urban life, psychology and inner mind.

Modernism Historical Events

World War I; Great Depression; World War II; rise of middle class; societal disillusionment.

Modernist Writers

T.S. Eliot; Ezra Pound; W.B. Yeats.

Modernist Social Context

Experimentation in art and culture; secularism; reinterpretation of religious traditions.

Postmodernism Years

1950-Present.

Postmodernism Characteristics

Rejection of absolute truth; skepticism; relativism (truth depends on perspective); irony; parody; playfulness.

Postmodernist Poetry Styles

Fragmentation; metafiction (stories about storytelling); unreliable narrators; pastiche (mixing styles); magical realism; temporal distortion (non-linear time).

Postmodernism Themes

Uncertainty; meaninglessness (nihilism); consumerism; blurred line between reality and fiction.

Postmodernism Historical Context

Vietnam War; Civil Rights Movement; Digital Revolution (computers, internet); globalization; rise of mass media.

Postmodern Writers

John Ashbery; Kenneth Goldsmith; Adrienne Rich; Audre Lorde; Langston Hughes (later works).

Postmodern Social Context

Blurring of "high" art and "popular" culture; influence of mass media on identity; culture turned into products (commodification).