ENGLISH- UNSEEN POETRY AO3+ AO4

Literary movements, typicality and context from each decade.

1066-1485

Middle English- Medieval

1485-1600

Renaissance- Elizabethan

1600-1700

Restoration Period (Neoclassical)- Jacobean

1650s

Metaphysicals- cavalier

1700-1783

Enlightenment- 18th Century

1783-1832

Romantic- Georgian

1832-1900

Victorian- Fin de siecle

1900s- 1945 (ish)

Modernism- Edwardian

1945- onwards

Postmodernism- Elizabeth II

Context of Middle English

• Population = uneducated, plays educated illiterate in morals and religion.

• Allegories

• Folk Ballads

• Increase in trade due to crusades.

• William the Conquer crowned.

• Henry III crowned in 1154- brought in royal courts, juries and chivalry.

Context on Renaissance

• Tudor and Period

• Focus on religion and the afterlife changed to human living life on earth (science).

• aspects of love explored- unrequited, constant, timeless, courtly, changing.

• “Flowery” time love.

• Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnets.

• Drama- tragedies, comedies and histories.

• Class divide in theatres.

• Wars of the Rose ended in 1485= political stability.

• Creation of printing press- illiteracy decreases, English becomes a more stable language.

• Economy changes from agriculture to international trades.

Context on Restoration (Neoclassical)

• Increase in satire

• Revival of classical themes and styles in literature and art.

• Emphasis on reason and order in writing.

• Interregnum- time of confusion.

• 50% of males are literate.

• Less traditional village life.

Context on Metaphysicals

• Conceits- elaborated and extended metaphors

• Satirical writings

• In response to the interregnum.

• Cavalier Poets- all about partying and Carpe Diem

Context on Romantic

• Industrial revolution beginning.

• More poor people as less farming

• Reactions to the industrial revolution and French revolution.

• Napoleon’s rise to power and opposition to England’s military and economy.

• individual freedom, individual liberty and emotion.

• More gothic genre

• Evil is due to society not human nature

• Children seen as victims of poverty and exploitation.

• Rise of Capitalism

• Creation of railroads.

Context on Victorian

• Societal realism

• Stability and pride in the Empire.

• Attempts to change workhouses and poverty

• Sexual discretion and suppression.

• Heroines in physical danger, upper class villains (damsel in distress).

• Novels mass produced

• Bigamy

• Coming of age.

• Elegies- reflective poems

• Literature reaching masses due to cheaper papers, mass production.

• Emphasis on grief and death die to Prince Albert dying- Victoria in constant mourning.

Context on Modernism

• Edwardian

• Fin de Siecle- end of a century

• Anxiety and change- questioning society.

• Huge period of change due to the Industrial Revolution

• WWI

• Breaking down of social norms

• Modernism in theory, a reaction to WWI- is an ideology

• Realistic and meaningful embodiment of society

• frustration, loneliness and disillusionment

• Rejection of past history and expression

• Change of consciousness.

• Free verse poetry

• Epiphanies

• Searching for truths, investigating deeper meanings.

• 1 million British soldiers lost in WWI

Context of Postmodernism

• WWII

• Elizabeth II

• Reaction to Modernism and WWII

• rejecting Western values and beliefs, rejecting norms and culture

• Suspicious of being ignorant to the truth

• Dwells on exterior images, avoids drawing conclusions and findings meanings.

• Sees human experience as unstable, contradictory and fragmented.

• readers take own interpretations and alternative meanings of Postmodernist work.

• Bleak, sometimes satirical and dystopian.

Typicality in Middle English

• Margery Kemp- the Book of Margery Kemp- Lost for 500 years, all about the life of a woman in medieval England (autobiography).

• Anonymous poem- Beowulf- Oldest surviving long story in Old English

Typicality in Renaissance

• William Shakespeare- Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth.

• Thomas Wyatt- Whoso List to Hunt, they Flee from me.

• Christopher Marlowe- Dido, the Massacre at Paris.

Typicality in Restoration

• John Donne- The Flea, the Good-Morrow, Death Be Not Proud.

• Andrew Marvell- To His Coy Mistress.

• John Milton- Paradise Lost- written in blank verse

Typicality in Romantic

• Jane Austen- Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma.

• Mary Shelley- Frankenstein, The Last Man

• William Blake- A Poison Tree

• William Wordsworth- The Prelude

• Lord Byron- She walks in Beauty

Typicality in Victorian

• Robert Louis Stevenson- Jekyll and Hyde, Treasure Island

• Thomas Hardy- Mayor of Casterbridge, At An Inn

• Charlotte Bronte- Jane Eyre, Villette.

• Charles Dickens- Oliver Twist, Great Expectations.

Typicality in Modernism

• Virginia Wolf- Mrs Dalloway, Orlando.

• Bernard Shaw- The Music-cure, Saint Joan, Geneva, the Millionairess.

• T.S Elliot- The Wasteland, Four Quartets.

Typicality in Postmodernism

• Margaret Atwood- The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace.

• Sylvia Plath- the Applicant, Mirror, Ariel.

• George Orwell- 1984

• Bret Easton Ellis- Less Than Zero, the Rule of Attraction, American Psycho.