Schools
Agrarians: 20th c. associated with regional and/or pastoral literature; more usually a group of American regional writers in south (esp. Nashville – Vanderbilt Univ.) published The Fugitive magazine – John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allan Tate, et al. Often associated the New Criticism.
Black Mountain School: 1950s -1960s Charles Olson and Robert Creeley – Black Mountain College in North Carolina - projective verse poetry (free verse, projects voice through propulsive quality of breathing – aka “breath verse).
Bloomsbury Group: named for residential district near central London; 20th c writers and thinkers led by Virginia Woolf pursuing the pleasures of beautiful objects and human interaction. Also Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Clive Bell.
Cavalier Lyricists: Robert Herrick, Sir John Suckling, Thomas Carew – followers of Charles I of England – light-hearted lyric poets.
Celtic Renaissance: 1880s – 1890s - preservation of Gaelic language, Irish writers: W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge, Lady Gregory, George Moore. Irish Literary Theater
Cockney School: derogatory term for a group of 19th c writers including Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and John Keats – alleged “poor taste in diction and rhyme.” (Rhyming vista-sister)
“Courtly Makers”: 1500s, court poets of the reign of Henry VIII who introduced “new poetry” of Italy and France to England – esp. the sonnet: Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey (who also introduces blank verse!). Tottel’s Miscellany (1557) is a collection of their works.
Cyperpunk: Science fiction based upon cybernetics, robotics, and advanced computing. Dates from c. 1975 – especially works by Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner and Total Recall), William Gibson (Neuromancer), and Thomas Pynchon.
Decadents: late 19th – early 20thc French (also English and American) writers who held that art was superior to nature and saw beauty in decay. France: Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire; England: Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley
Frankfort School: Marxist social theorists, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer – economics, politics, sociology
Geneva School: 20th c – George Poulet, Marcel Raymond, J. Hillis Miller – a literary work as a series of existential expressions of author’s individual consciousness
Graveyard School: 18c poets who wrote on death and immortality, Gothic Romanticism; Thomas Grey “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” + William Cullen Bryant “Thanatopsis”
Hartford Wits/Connecticut Wits: Connecticut writers during American Revolution; Timothy Dwight, Joel Barlow, John Trumbull
Kit-Kat Club: 1703-1733 in London, founded by Whigs to ensure a Protestant succession to English throne – Addison, Steele (essays and magazines); Congreve.
Knickerbocker Group: New York, early American – first half of 19th c. especially Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper
Lake School/Lake Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey – more “pious” writers – lived in Lake District of England; beginning of 19th c. – Romantics.
The Literary Club (aka “Dr. Johnson’s Circle”): formed in London in 1764 with Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds + Burke and Goldsmith. Free and spirited discussion of books and writers.
Little Theater Movement: late 19th c. movement to emphasize production of significant plays beyond box-office successes. J.M. Synge (Ireland); Henrik Ibsen, J. M. Barrie
Local Color Writing: 19th c. American - esp. in the West, South: Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris – associated with Regionalism
Lost Generation: American writers, born c. 1900, served in WWI and reacted against older, Victorian writers – Hemingway, Pound, Gertrude Stein. Associated with Paris in 1920s.
Magical Realism: invasion of realism by supernatural forces. 20th c. movement – Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass.
Metaphysical Poets: 17th c. British poets – John Donne, Crashaw, Cowley – rebelled against Petrarchan traditions – more psychological analysis of love and religion. (Milton also called them “Fantastic Poets”)
The Movement: mid-1950s, British literary movement with Philip Larkin, Kinsley Amis, Donald Davie – middle class values.
Muckrakers: American writers between 1902-1911 exposing dishonesty in business and government (Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle; Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens)
New Criticism: John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren – 1930s criticism movement among American critics – the work of art is considered in and of itself. see the Fugitives…
New Formalism: mid 20th c. - production of verse with traditional rhythms, structures, meters, etc. Howard Nemerov, Richard Wilbur, Robert Pinsky, Antony Hecht
New York School: American poets – 1950 -1970; urbanity, wit, learning, spontaneity – Frank O’Hara (!) and John Ashbery.
Oxford Reformers: early Renaissance humanist scholars – John Colet, Erasmus, Thomas More; reformers of church and state based upon humanist ideals. More’s Utopia.
Pre-Raphaelitism (aka The Fleshly School): estab. 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman Hunt – protesting prevalent methods of painting. Preferred simple devotion/adherence to nature found in Italian painting before Raphael. This extends to literature with Christina Rossetti and William Morris.
Satanic School: used by Southey in Vision of Judgment for Lord Byron, Shelley, Leigh Hunt, etc. Irregular lives and radical ideas - contrasted with the Lake School…
Saturday Club: mid-19th c. literary and scientific people around Boston and Cambridge, MA: Emerson, Louis Agassiz, Longfellow, Whittier – came together for good conversation.
School of Donne: the Metaphysical Poets
School of Night: Elizabethan poets, dramatists, scholars; Sir Walter Ralegh, Christopher Marlowe; may have been atheists, studied natural sciences, philosophy, and religion.
School of Spenser: Giles and Phineas Fletcher, William Browne – 17th c. poets influenced by Spenser.
Scriblerus Club: c. 1714, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Arbuthnot; organized to satirize literary incompetence.
Silver-Fork School: 19th c. English novelists known for overweening gentility and etiquette – Frances Trollope, Benjamin Disraeli, Lady Caroline Lamb.
Transcendental Club: centered upon Boston, beginning in 1836, included Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Thoreau.
Tribe of Ben/Sons of Ben: Poets of reign of Charles I of England – imitators of lyric poetry of Ben Jonson, especially Robert Herrick and included the Cavalier Poets.
University Wits: London c. 1580, dramatists with Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene – cultivated blank verse.