English 12 AP / Ms. Sutton
Senior Research Paper: Part 1
Literary Movement
Below are a few resources to get you started as you explore different literary movements,
schools, time periods, etc. You are not limited to the topics listed on these pages. If you find
something else, show it to me first, and I’ll most likely approve it.
The first part of your senior project will be a 4-page paper on a specific movement, time period,
or school that interests you.
The other parts will include: the author, the author’s life, literary criticism of the author’s work.
You might also want to include the time period in history, political events, sources for the author,
influences of the author, literary firsts or literary landmarks, tangential topics of interest. The
total paper when completed over the course of the school year will be 16 pages long.
While your overall paper will require a thesis, this first part will end up becoming part of a larger
work. It may not be possible to write a thesis at this time. I think you should consider this part of
a work in a progress. Maybe think of it as a “report” on the movement.
DUE DATES:
Works Cited page in MLA format (3 sources required): DUE Monday, Oct. 22, 2012
Page 1 of paper including internal citations: DUE Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012
Completed 4 page paper with works cited page: Due Friday, Nov. 16, 2012
Middle Ages:
A broad period from 500 to 1500 AD which includes Chaucer, romance, drama and verse.
Renaissance:
A period of "rebirth" from roughly the 14th through the 16th Centuries. Some links here
also refer to the 17th century. Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, More, and Donne are a few of the
authors of this period.
Eighteenth Century: [including the Neo-Classical Period (1660-1792)]
This includes the Regency Period in England (King George IV).
Gothic Period:
This period crosses from the late 18th Century to the early 19th and mixes into the
Romantic Period with Gothic Romances. See one of the Authors list for writers who have been
included in this genre.
Romantic Period:
From the late 18th Century to the late 19th, the Romantic period flourished with authors
including Jane Austen, William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, and William Wordsworth.
Victorian Period:
During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901) in England, literature reflected the impact
of and struggles brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Bronte, George Eliot, Tennyson,
Dickens, and Wilde are a few of the represented authors.
Post Colonial:
Here find links to materials covering postcolonial theory, literatures and authors from the
Caribbean, India, and South Africa after Colonial rule. There is limited country information
available as well.
http://lib.westfield.ma.edu/engper.htm
EARLY PERIODS OF LITERATURE
These periods are spans of time in which literature shared intellectual, linguistic, religious, and
artistic influences. In the
Western tradition, the early periods of literary history are roughly as follows below:
A. THE CLASSICAL PERIOD (1200 BCE - 455 CE)
I. HOMERIC or HEROIC PERIOD (1200-800 BCE) Greek legends are passed along orally,
including Homer's
The Iliad and The Odyssey. This is a chaotic period of warrior-princes, wandering sea-traders,
and fierce pirates.
II. CLASSICAL GREEK PERIOD (800-200 BCE) Greek writers, playwrights, and philosophers
such as Gorgias,
Aesop, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles. The fifth century (499-400 BCE) in
particular is
renowned as The Golden Age of Greece. This is the sophisticated period of the polis, or
individual City-State, and
early democracy. Some of the world's finest art, poetry, drama, architecture, and philosophy
originate in Athens.
III. CLASSICAL ROMAN PERIOD (200 BCE-455 CE) Greece's culture gives way to Roman
power when Rome
conquers Greece in 146 CE. The Roman Republic was traditionally founded in 509 BCE, but it
is limited in size
until later. Playwrights of this time include Plautus and Terence. After nearly 500 years as a
Republic, Rome slides
into dictatorship under Julius Caesar and finally into a monarchial empire under Caesar
Augustus in 27 CE. This
later period is known as the Roman Imperial period. Roman writers include Ovid, Horace, and
Virgil. Roman
philosophers include Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius. Roman rhetoricians include Cicero and
Quintilian.
IV. PATRISTIC PERIOD (c. 70 CE-455 CE) Early Christian writings appear such as Saint
Augustine, Tertullian,
Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome. This is the period in which Saint Jerome first
compiles the Bible,
when Christianity spreads across Europe, and the Roman Empire suffers its dying convulsions.
In this period,
barbarians attack Rome in 410 CE and the city finally falls to them completely in 455 CE.
B. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (455 CE-1485 CE)
I. THE OLD ENGLISH (ANGLO-SAXON) PERIOD (428-1066)
The so-called "Dark Ages" (455 CE -799 CE) occur when Rome falls and barbarian tribes move
into Europe. Franks,
Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Goths settle in the ruins of Europe and the Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes migrate to
Britain, displacing native Celts into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Early Old English poems such
as Beowulf, The
Wanderer, and The Seafarer originate sometime late in the Anglo-Saxon period.
The Carolingian Renaissance (800- 850 CE) emerges in Europe. In central Europe, texts
include early medieval
grammars, encyclopedias, etc. In northern Europe, this time period marks the setting of Viking
sagas.
II. THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (c. 1066-1450 CE)
In 1066, Norman French armies invade and conquer England under William I. This marks the
end of the AngloSaxon hierarchy and the emergence of the Twelfth Century Renaissance (c. 1100-1200 CE).
French chivalric
romances--such as works by Chretien de Troyes--and French fables--such as the works of
Marie de France and
Jeun de Meun--spread in popularity. Abelard and other humanists produce great scholastic and
theological
works.
Late or "High" Medieval Period (c. 1200-1485 CE): This often tumultuous period is marked by
the Middle English
writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, the "Gawain" or "Pearl" Poet, the Wakefield Master, and William
Langland. Other
writers include Italian and French authors like Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, and Christine de
Pisan.
C. THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION (c. 1485-1660 CE)
(The Renaissance takes place in the late 15th, 16th, and early 17th century in Britain, but
somewhat earlier in Italy
and southern Europe, somewhat later in northern Europe.)
I. Early Tudor Period (1485-1558): The War of the Roses ends in England with Henry Tudor
(Henry VII) claiming
the throne. Martin Luther's split with Rome marks the emergence of Protestantism, followed by
Henry VIII's
Anglican schism, which creates the first Protestant church in England. Edmund Spenser is a
sample poet.
II. Elizabethan Period (1558-1603): Queen Elizabeth saves England from both Spanish invasion
and internal
squabbles at home. The early works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kydd, and Sidney mark
Elizabeth's reign.
III. Jacobean Period (1603-1625): Shakespeare's later work, Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, and
John Donne.
IV. Caroline Age (1625-1649): John Milton, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, the "Sons of Ben"
and others write
during the reign of Charles I and his Cavaliers.
V. Commonwealth Period or Puritan Interregnum (1649-1660): Under Cromwell's Puritan
dictatorship, John
Milton continues to write, but we also find writers like Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Browne.
LATER PERIODS OF LITERATURE
These periods are spans of time in which literature shared intellectual, linguistic, religious, and
artistic influences. In the
Western tradition, the later periods of literary history are roughly as follows below:
D. The Enlightenment (Neoclassical) Period (c. 1660-1790)
"Neoclassical" refers to the increased influence of Classical literature upon these centuries. The
Neoclassical Period
is also called the "Enlightenment" due to the increased reverence for logic and disdain for
superstition. The period
is marked by the rise of Deism, intellectual backlash against earlier Puritanism, and America's
revolution against
England.
I. Restoration Period (c. 1660-1700): This period marks the British king's restoration to the
throne after a
long period of Puritan domination in England. Its symptoms include the dominance of French
and Classical
influences on poetry and drama. Sample writers include John Dryden, John Lock, Sir William
Temple,
Samuel Pepys, and Aphra Behn in England. Abroad, representative authors include Jean
Racine and
Molière.
II. The Augustan Age (c. 1700-1750): This period is marked by the imitation of Virgil and
Horace's literature
in English letters. The principal English writers include Addison, Steele, Swift, and Alexander
Pope.
Abroad, Voltaire is the dominant French writer.
III. The Age of Johnson (c. 1750-1790): This period marks the transition toward the upcoming
Romanticism
though the period is still largely Neoclassical. Major writers include Dr. Samuel Johnson,
Boswell, and
Edward Gibbon who represent the Neoclassical tendencies, while writers like Robert Burns,
Thomas Gray,
Cowper, and Crabbe show movement away from the Neoclassical ideal. In America, this period
is called
the Colonial Period. It includes colonial and revolutionary writers like Ben Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson,
and Thomas Paine.
E. ROMANTIC PERIOD (c. 1790-1830)
Romantic poets write about nature, imagination, and individuality in England. Some Romantics
include Coleridge,
Blake, Keats, and Shelley in Britain and Johann von Goethe in Germany. Jane Austen also
writes at this time,
though she is typically not categorized with the male Romantic poets. In America, this period is
mirrored in the
Transcendental Period from about 1830-1850. Transcendentalists include Emerson and
Thoreau. Gothic
writings, (c. 1790-1890) overlap with the Romantic and Victorian periods. Writers of Gothic
novels (the precursor
to horror novels) include Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, and Victorians like Bram Stoker in Britain. In
America, Gothic
writers include Poe and Hawthorne.
F. VICTORIAN PERIOD And The 19th Century (c. 1832-1901)
Writing during the period of Queen Victoria's reign includes sentimental novels. British writers
include Elizabeth
Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and the
Brontë sisters. PreRaphaelites, like the Rossettis and William Morris, idealize and long for the morality of the
medieval world. The
end of the Victorian Period is marked by intellectual movements of Aestheticism and "the
Decadence" in the
writings of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. In America, Naturalist writers like Stephen Crane
flourish, as do early
free verse poets like Walt Whitman and common measure poets like Emily Dickinson.
G. MODERN PERIOD (c. 1914-1945?)
In Britain, modernist writers include W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Dylan Thomas, W. H.
Auden, Virginia Woolf,
and Wilfred Owen. In America, the modernist period includes Robert Frost and Flannery
O'Connor as well as the
famous writers of The Lost Generation (also called the writers of The Jazz Age, 1914-1929)
such as Hemingway,
Stein, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. "The Harlem Renaissance" marks the rise of black writers such
as Baldwin and
Ellison. Realism is the dominant fashion, but the disillusionment with the World Wars lead to
new experimentation.
H. POSTMODERN PERIOD (c. 1945? onward)
T. S. Eliot, Morrison, Shaw, Beckett, Stoppard, Fowles, Calvino, Ginsberg, Pynchon, and other
modern writers,
poets, and playwrights experiment with metafiction and fragmented poetry. Multiculturalism
leads to increasing
canonization of non-Caucasian writers such as Langston Hughes, Sandra Cisneros, and Zora
Neal Hurston. Magic
Realists such as Gabriel García Márquez, Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Günter Grass, and
Salman Rushdie
flourish with surrealistic writings embroidered in the conventions of realism.
This is a list of modern literary movements: that is, movements after the Renaissance. These
terms, helpful for curricula or anthologies, evolved over time to group certain writers who are
often loosely related. Some of these movements (such as Dada and Beat) were defined by the
members themselves, while other terms (the metaphysical poets, for example) emerged
decades or centuries after the periods in question. Ordering is approximate, as there is
considerable overlap.
These are movements either drawn from or influential for literature in the English language.
Amatory fiction: Romantic fiction written in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Notable authors: Eliza Haywood, Delarivier Manley
Cavalier Poets: 17th century English royalist poets, writing primarily about courtly love, called
Sons of Ben (after Ben Jonson).
Notable authors: Richard Lovelace, William Davenant
Metaphysical poets: 17th century English movement using extended conceit, often (though not
always) about religion.
Notable authors: John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell
The Augustans: An 18th century literary movement based chiefly on classical ideals, satire and
skepticism.
Notable authors: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift
Romanticism: 1800 to 1860 century movement emphasizing emotion and imagination, rather
than logic and scientific thought. Response to the Enlightenment.
Notable authors: Victor Hugo, Lord Byron and Camilo Castelo Branco
Gothic novel: Fiction in which Romantic ideals are combined with an interest in the supernatural
and in violence.
Notable authors: Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker
Lake Poets: A group of Romantic poets from the English Lake District who wrote about nature
and the sublime.
Notable authors: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
American Romanticism: Distinct from European Romanticism, the American form emerged
somewhat later, was based more in fiction than in poetry, and incorporated a (sometimes almost
suffocating) awareness of history, particularly the darkest aspects of American history.
Notable authors: Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Pre-Raphaelitism: 19th century, primarily English movement based ostensibly on undoing
innovations by the painter Raphael. Many were both painters and poets.
Notable authors: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti
Transcendentalism: 19th century American movement: poetry and philosophy concerned with
self-reliance, independence from modern technology.
Notable authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau
Dark romanticism: 19th century American movement in reaction to Transcendentalism. Finds
man inherently sinful and self-destructive and nature a dark, mysterious force.
Notable authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, George Lippard
Realism: Late-19th century movement based on a simplification of style and image and an
interest in poverty and everyday concerns.
Notable authors: Gustave Flaubert (A Sentimental Education – two old friends
remembering the best time they never had), William Dean Howells, Stendhal, Honoré de
Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Frank Norris and Eça de Queiroz
Naturalism: Also late 19th century. Proponents of this movement believe heredity and
environment control people.
Notable authors: Émile Zola, Stephen Crane
Symbolism: Principally French movement of the fin de siècle based on the structure of thought
rather than poetic form or image; influential for English language poets from Edgar Allan Poe to
James Merrill.
Notable authors: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Valéry
Stream of consciousness: Early-20th century fiction consisting of literary representations of
quotidian thought, without authorial presence.
Notable authors: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce
Modernism: Variegated movement of the early 20th century, encompassing primitivism, formal
innovation, or reaction to science and technology.
Notable authors: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H.D., James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Fernando
Pessoa
The Lost Generation: It was traditionally attributed to Gertrude Stein and was then popularized
by Ernest Hemingway in the epigraph to his novel The Sun Also Rises, and his memoir A
Moveable Feast. It refers to a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris and other
parts of Europe from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the
Great Depression.
Notable Authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Waldo Pierce
Dada: Touted by its proponents as anti-art, dada focused on going against artistic norms and
conventions.
Notable authors: Guillaume Apollinaire, Kurt Schwitters
First World War Poets: Poets who documented both the idealism and the horrors of the war and
the period in which it took place.
Notable authors: Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke
Stridentism: Mexican artistic avant-garde movement. They exalted modern urban life and social
revolution.
Notable authors: Manuel Maples Arce, Arqueles Vela, Germán List Arzubide
Los Contemporáneos: A Mexican vanguardist group, active in the late 1920s and early 1930s;
published an eponymous literary magazine which served as the group's mouthpiece and artistic
vehicle from 1928-1931.
Notable authors: Xavier Villaurrutia, Salvador Novo
Imagism: Poetry based on description rather than theme, and on the motto, "the natural object is
always the adequate symbol."
Notable authors: Ezra Pound, H.D., Richard Aldington
Harlem Renaissance: African American poets, novelists, and thinkers, often employing
elements of blues and folklore, based in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the
1920s.
Notable authors: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Surrealism: Originally a French movement, influenced by Surrealist painting, that uses
surprising images and transitions to play off of formal expectations and depict the unconscious
rather than conscious mind.
Notable authors: Jean Cocteau, Dylan Thomas
Southern Agrarians: A group of Southern American poets, based originally at Vanderbilt
University, who expressly repudiated many modernist developments in favor of metrical verse
and narrative. Some Southern Agrarians were also associated with the New Criticism.
Notable authors: John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren
Oulipo: Mid-20th century poetry and prose based on seemingly arbitrary rules for the sake of
added challenge.
Notable authors: Raymond Queneau, Walter Abish
Postmodernism: Postwar movement skeptical of absolutes and embracing diversity, irony, and
word play.
Notable authors: Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon, Alasdair Gray
Black Mountain Poets: A self-identified group of poets, originally based at Black Mountain
College, who eschewed patterned form in favor of the rhythms and inflections of the human
voice.
Notable authors: Charles Olson, Denise Levertov
Beat poets: American movement of the 1950s and 1960s concerned with counterculture and
youthful alienation.
Notable authors: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey
Hungryalist Poets: A literary movement in postcolonial India (Kolkata) during 1961-65 as a
counter-discourse to Colonial Bengali poetry.
Notable poets:Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury, Binoy Majumdar, Samir
Roychoudhury
Confessional poetry: Poetry that, often brutally, exposes the self as part of an aesthetic of the
beauty and power of human frailty.
Notable authors: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Alicia Ostriker
New York School: Urban, gay or gay-friendly, leftist poets, writers, and painters of the 1960s.
Notable authors: Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery
Magical Realism: Literary movement in which magical elements appear in otherwise realistic
circumstances. Most often associated with the Latin American literary boom of the 20th century.
Notable authors: Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz, Günter Grass, Julio Cortázar
Postcolonialism: A diverse, loosely connected movement of writers from former colonies of
European countries, whose work is frequently politically charged.
Notable authors: Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie,
Giannina Braschi, Wole Soyinka
:Prakalpana Movement: This ongoing movement launched in 1969 based in Calcutta, by the
Prakalpana group of Indian writers in Bengali literature, who created new forms of Prakalpana
fiction, Sarbangin poetry and the philosophy of Chetanavyasism, later spreads world wide.
Notable authors: Vattacharja Chandan, Dilip Gupta.
Spiralism: A literary movement founded in the late 1960s by René Philoctète, Jean-Claude
Fignolé, and Frankétienne centered around the idea that the universe is interconnected,
unpredictable, and governed by chaos.
Notable authors: Frankétienne
Spoken Word: A postmodern literary movement where writers use their speaking voice to
present fiction, poetry, monologues, and storytelling arising in the 1980s in the urban centers of
the United States.
Notable authors: Spalding Gray, Laurie Anderson, Pedro Pietri, Piri Thomas, Giannina
Braschi.
New Formalism: A late-20th and early 21st century movement in American poetry advocating a
return to traditional accentual-syllabic verse.
Notable authors: Molly Peacock, Brad Leithauser, Timothy Steele, Mary Jo Salter.
Performance Poetry: This is the lasting viral component of Spoken Word and one of the most
popular forms of poetry in the 21st century. It is a new oral poetry originating in the 1980s in
Austin, Texas, using the speaking voice and other theatrical elements. Practitioners write for the
speaking voice instead of writing poetry for the silent printed page. The major figure is American
Hedwig Gorski who began broadcasting live radio poetry with East of Eden Band during the
early 1980s. Gorski, considered a post-Beat, created the term Performance Poetry to define and
distinguish what she and the band did. Instead of books, poets use audio recordings and digital
media along with television spawning Slam Poetry and Def Poets on television and Broadway.
Notable authors: Hedwig Gorski, Bob Holman, Marc Smith.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_movements