Zusammenfassung der Ressource
CONTEXT - UNSEEN POETRY
- RESTORATION PERIOD
1660-1785
- Charles II restored to the throne
following an 11 year
Commonwealth period, when
England was governered by
Parliament directed by Puritan
Oliver Cromwell
- Resulted in
changes in
literature,
science,
culture
- Premium placed on
the importance of
human reason - an
unchanging, uniquely
human characteristic.
- AGE OF REASON or
AGE OF
ENGLIGHTENMENT
- Observation
of human
nature and
nature itself
- Unchanging and constant
- Also known as the
NEOCLASSICAL PERIOD
- Emphasis put on
classical Greek and
Roman literature
- Literature
considered a tool
for the
advancement of
knowledge
- Writers often observed
nature in attempts to
express their beliefs
- AGE OF SATIRE
- Most popular literary
tool utilised by
writers of the time -
with the help of
satire, writers were
better able to educate
the public through
literature -
- FUNCTION: to acknowledge
a problem in society and
attempt to reform the
problem in a comical
manner while still
educating the public
- POETS OF THE PERIOD
- Alexander Pope,
Thomas Gray, John
Dryden
- RENAISSANCE PERIOD
1550-1660
- Return of classical
thought
- Rise of
HUMANISM
- Asserted the value of man, his
dignity, his lack of limitations
- Shift in emphasis from
contemplative life of the
Medieval man to INVOLVED
LIFE OF RENAISSANCE MAN:
well rounded, active,
involved in the world
around him
- Provided society with a
pervasive and overarching
sense of humanity
- Mimicked change in culture - turning
away from religious thinking, placing
importance on classical thought
- Created new
philosophies
from the
teachings of
PLATO and
ARISTOTLE
- Some NEOPLATONISTS
believed in a link between
attaining knowledge of
science, and a
relationship between God
or the divine
- Sexual love seen
as the presence
of spiritual
bonds, arising
from new found
knowledge of
Platonic love
- New World view -
similar to that of the
Middle Ages e.g belief
in the Chain of Being
- JUXTAPOSES HUMANISM
- "Man's lack of
limitations" -
complicates his place
within the chain of being
- THE REFORMATION
- Systematic corruption in the
church - Protestants desired
reformation. Europe was no
longer united.
- Placed importance on the
role of the INDIVIDUAL -
religious guidance was
now found in the Bible
rather than in the
instituition of the church
- Led to greater biblical
influence in modern
literature - Biblical
allusions and symbols used
by Donne, John Milton,
Andrew Marvell
- Gutenburg's Printing Press
- Increased literacy and
made the majority of
literature more
accessible
- POETS OF THE PERIOD
- Shakespeare, Donne,
George Herbert,
Christopher Marlowe,
Andrew Marvell
- ROMANTICISM
1785-1832
- Western Europe -
INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
- Moved away frm the emphasis on the
importance of an empirical, material
worldview and looked to nature and
the imagination as sources of insight
- Writers expressed a great
reverence for nature and
believed that intuition,
emotion, and imagine were
more instructive than reason
- ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL
THOUGHT AND
PERSONAL FEELING
- Poet seen as an
individual distinguised
from him fellows by the
intensity of his
perceptions
- Romantic definitions
of poetry
- Wordsworth: "the
spontaneous overflow of
powerful feeling"
- Best poetry = most intense
- Placed great emphasis on
the workings of the
unconscious mind, dreams
and reveries, the
supernatural, the childlike
and primitive view of the
world - clarity and intensity
had not be restricted by
civilised "reason".
- POETS OF THE PERIOD
- Blake, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Shelley, Keats,
Byron
- VICTORIAN PERIOD
1836-1901
- Britain emerged from war with France as
the world's predominant power - a
period of great wealth, vitality and
self-confidence - growth of British
empire. At home - rapid social change
and fierce intellectual controversy
- Period characterised by
juxtaposition between
new industrial wealth
and new urban poverty
- Religion: clash between
climax of Evangelical
revival and a severe set
of challenges to faith
- Romantic idealism challenged by
the growing prestige of empirical
science
- REALISM - one of the
great artistic
movements of the
era.
- Expanding horizons of
education and literacy,
combined with greater
questioning of religion and
politics
- The Communist Manifesto,
The Origin of Species -
catalysts for political and
religious controversies
- Economic growth,
technological discovery,
industrialisation
- Increased literacy rates =
reading had become a
pastime
- Standard literacy more or less universal by
the end of the 19th century due to
compulsory education and technological
advancement in printing
- THEMES: crisis of faith, urbanisation, morality,
social class and the economy, the plight of the
working class, the domestic life of women,
the rise of prostitution
- Transformation of nature from inspirational
and benevolent to malignant and competitive
- POETS OF THE PERIOD
- Elizabeth Browning,
Tennyson, Oscar Wilde,
Thomas Hardy
- MODERNIST PERIOD
1901-1945
- Characterised by the
systematic rejection of
social and literary norms
- Oppose all major ideals
and conventions with
unrelenting pessimism,
directly contradicting the
optimistic Victorians
- Claim that past movements are
disconnected from the realities
of the human condition
- Attempt to convey the
complexities of a world
apparently on the brink of
destruction though
experimentation
- Risk literary
incoherence to express
the fragmentation of
the modern world
- Emergence of a hectic city life
coupled with the sense of
human decay drove modernists
to seek a unifying philosophy
- FEATURES IN LITERATURE:
Open form, free verse,
discontinuous narrative,
intertextuality, classical
allusions, fragmentation,
parallax, unconventional use
of metaphor, borrowings
from cultures and languages
- THEMES: Breakdown of social
norms and cultural sureties,
Freudian dissection of human
consciousness, dislocation of
meaning and sense from its
normal context, disillusionment,
products of the metropolis, stream
of consciousness, overwhelming
technological changes of the 20th
century, loss of faith in democracy
and freedom
- POETS OF THE PERIOD
- Ezra Pound, TS Eliot,
James Joyce, WB Yeats
- POST-MODERN PERIOD
1945-PRESENT
- Spans from the end of
modernism to modern
day
- Refer to work as "containing
postmodern thought" rather than
being "part of postmodernism"
- Came after Second World War
- Tend to treat their
subject ironically or
satirically through parody
and pastiche
- Often inverts
traditional narration
- Commonly discards
one-dimensional
paradigms and insists
that no way of seeing
things is the correct way
- Laws of nature, science,
religion and politics are
often deconstructed to
reveal the flaws and
contradictions of
civilisation
- Retained
modernism's
pessimism and
avent-garde
predilection