Literary Periods and Movements

Vocabulary flashcards covering major literary periods and movements from 500 AD to the present, including characteristics, dates, and representative authors.

Medieval (500-1500)

Includes secular literature such as ballads, chivalric romances, and religious plays, as well as epic and elegiac poetry; notable authors and works include Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Chaucer, and Dream of the Rood.

Renaissance/Elizabethan (1500-1600)

A period where English Literature, especially drama, flourished under Queen Elizabeth’s reign and was influenced by court life; authors include Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, John Milton, and Edmund Spenser.

Metaphysical poets/Cavalier poets (1633-1680)

17th century poets who combined direct language with ingenious images, paradoxes, and conceits; key figures include John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and George Herbert.

Enlightenment (late 1600-late 1700)

Primarily associated with non-fiction writing such as essays and philosophical treatises; associated with writers like Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau, Henry James, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift.

Romantic (late 1700-late 1800)

A reaction against the restraint of the Enlightenment that celebrated spontaneity, imagination, nature, and feeling over reasoning; includes authors like Austen, Blake, Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley.

Victorian (1830-1900)

Characterized by strict conservatism, clashes between religion and science, and social reform; includes the Bronte sisters, Dickens, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville.

Realism (1800-1900)

Focuses on an honest portrayal of ordinary life over sensationalism or exaggeration; includes authors like Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, and Frederick Douglass.

Transcendentalism (1820-1840)

A philosophy asserting that people and nature are inherently good and that religion and philosophy are derived from the essence of humanity; includes Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman.

Naturalism (1850-1900)

A form of detailed realism suggesting that social conditions, heredity, and environment are forces in shaping human character; includes Stephen Crane, Emile Zola, and W.E.B. Dubois.

Moderns (1914-1945)

Period influenced by the ideas of Darwin and Karl Marx, technological changes, and stream of consciousness, often doubting objective reality; authors include T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, and Virginia Woolf.

Aestheticism (1835-1910)

The belief in art as an end in itself, rejecting the view that art must possess moral or political value; associated with Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburn.

Harlem Renaissance (1918-1930)

A movement of African-American literature, art, and music during the 1920’s; key figures include Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen.

Lost Generation (1918-1930)

A generation of writers maturing during WWI whose work embodies disillusionment; includes Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Postmodernism (1950-)

A period that erodes distinctions between classes and values and features metafiction and epiphanies; includes J. D. Salinger, Ray Bradbury, Sylvia Plath, and Salman Rushdie.

Contemporary (1970-)

Literature characterized by anti heroes and a focus on relationships and emotion; features authors such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, and Tim O'Brien.