British Literature: Victorian to Contemporary Periods

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers key movements, literary terms, and historical concepts from the Victorian period through to contemporary British and postcolonial literature.

Early Victorian Period

A time marked by industrialisation, political reforms, and a transition from Romanticism to Victorian values.

Mid-Victorian Period

Known as 'The Age of Equipoise,' it was a time characterized by stability and progress.

The Late Victorian Period

Known as 'The Age of Umber,' it was characterized by doubt, uncertainty, and a decline of confidence.

The Chartist Movement

A campaign advocating for universal male suffrage.

Condition of England novels

Works that addressed social injustices and economic disparities during the Victorian era.

The Great Exhibition

Held at the Crystal Palace, it was a presentation of Britain’s best achievements.

The Cambridge Apostles

A debating group at Cambridge University of which Alfred Tennyson was a member.

Euphony

The musicality of a poem, a technique common for Alfred Tennyson.

Pre-Raphaelite Movement

A group of artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti, who sought to revive early Renaissance art.

Arts and Crafts Movement

A movement advocating for a return of handcrafted beauty in response to industrial mass production, led by figures like William Morris.

Heteroglossia

A term referring to the coexistence of multiple perspectives in a text.

The Broad Church

A middle ground in the Church of England that sought to make the church relevant to a large number of people.

The Oxford Movement

Led by John Henry Newman, it sought to revive Catholicism within the Church of England.

Inscape

A term by Gerald Manley Hopkins referring to the unique essence of each thing.

Bildungsroman

A coming-of-age novel.

The Fabian Society

An organisation dedicated to advancing democratic socialism through gradual reform rather than revolution.

Aestheticism

A movement whose advocates believed beauty was the highest goal of art, independent of ethical and social concerns.

Decadence

An artistic focus on indulging in artificiality, dandyism, and exotic experiences.

The Yellow Book

A key British journal influential enough that its yellow cover led to the 1890s being called the 'Yellow Decade.'

Modernism

An artistic reaction against Victorian realism where writers experimented with form, perspective, and subjectivity.

Epiphany

A moment of sudden realisation, often used at the end of James Joyce's short stories.

Gyre

The concept of a historical cycle developed by W.B. Yeats.

Bloomsbury group

A group of progressive writers and intellectuals who rejected Victorian traditions, including Virginia Woolf and John Keynes.

Edwardian fiction

A bridge between Victorian and modernist fiction that shifted focus toward psychological depth and complex human relationships.

Focalisation

A technique developed by Henry James that controls the reader's access to information by filtering events through a specific character's consciousness.

Greeneland

The fictional world of Graham Greene characterized by despair, corruption, and moral ambiguity.

The Angry Young Men Movement

A 1950s movement of working- and lower-middle-class writers voicing disillusionment with the British class structure.

Theatre of Absurd

A post-WWII dramatic style expressing the belief that human existence is fundamentally lacking in inherent meaning or purpose.

Pinter Pause

A pause in a play used by Harold Pinter to build tension and create a sense of anxiety.

The Movement

A group of postwar poets, including Philip Larkin, who favored clarity, rationality, and plain language over political theory.

Magic realism

A narrative style that incorporates myth, fable, and social commentary into realistic structures.

Hybridity

A concept from Homi Bhabha describing the cultural space occupied by those who live between cultures.

Windrush Generation

Caribbean migrants who brought their voices into British culture in the post-war era.

Flyting

A poetic verbal duel.