Literary Periods

Classical (2000BC-0)

• Myths

• Fundamental religious texts

• Centred on royalty, nature and beauty

• The Bible, Torah, Horace Odes and Epodes, Greek Drama

Medieval (500-1500)

• Latin for educated people

• Christian morality

• Chivalry

• Women as property, courtly love

• Class divide and wealth

• Whoso list, Divine Comedy

Renaissance (1550-1650)

• Elizabethan, Jacobean and Cavalier:

• Birth of the novel

• Myth and heroes

• Cavalier poets alongside metaphysics with carpe diem mentality, valuing material wealth and infidelity

• The Scrutiny

Elizabethan (1550-1600)

• Arranged marriages

• Religion

• Social class divide

• Drama and poetry

• Liz I on the throne but women still subservant

• Sonnet 116, The Flea

Jacobean (1600-1650)

• Painful love

• Metaphysical = juxtaposed images

• Science and maths

• Passion mixed with intellect and philosophy with sensuality

• To His Coy Mistress, Othello

Neo-Classicism (1650-1800)

• Restoration and Enlightenment:

• Using science to understand nature - Decartes, Newton

• Exploration

• Restoration of the monarchy after Cromwell

Restoration (1660-1688)

• Charles I loved comedy and poetry for performance

• Turbulence in changing leadership

• Religion continues to dominate

• Libertinism and nihilism was common

• Absent from Thee

Enlightenment (1688-1800)

• Science and Logic

• The rise of academies, discovery and rationalism,

• Progress and liberty for women

• Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe

Romantic (1790/1800-1850)

• Nature, Morality and inner beauty

• Fantastical imagery questioning reality

• Idealisation

• Personal experiences

• Odes and poetry becoming popular

• Garden of Love, Ae fond kiss, She walks in Beauty, La Belle Dame, Pride and Prejudice, Lyrical Ballads and Wordsworth, Blake’s Poems of Innocence/Experience

Victorian

• Restricted realism

• Queen Victoria = melancholy and acceptance of death

• Victoria believes women belonged in the home

• Religion prominent in some work

• Satire in restriction

• Industrial revolution

• Societal expectation + rigidity lead to facades

• Pre-Raphelite movement including William Morris and Rosetti

• Remember, The Ruined Maid, At an Inn, Dickens

Modernism (1900/1920-1960)

• Political disgruntlement against government

• Stream of consciousness and internal monologues

• Free structure expresses deep emotion

• Isolation and unhappiness

• Rejection of the past and representing reality and love in new ways

• Progression for women but restrictions remain (Feminist movements, contraception)

• Rebecca, Streetcar named Desire, Revolutionary Road setting

Post-Modernism/Contemporary (1960-present)

• Disillusionment and no single truth or structure

• Parodies and pastiche

• Meta-fictional writing

• Variety of meaning

• Simulacra

• Revolutionary Road, Feminine Gospels, Catcher in the rye

Post-post modernism

• Little restriction and variation in literature

• Equal rights

• Love has a variety of meaning

• Increasing fear and confusion after 9/11 and developing technology