UNIT 5 PART A LITERARY MOVMENTS

ABSURDISM, and its more specific companion term Theatre of the Absurd, refers to the
works of a group of Western European and American dramatists writing and producing plays
in the 1950s and early 1960s. The term ‘‘Theatre of the Absurd’’ was coined by critic Martin
Esslin, who identified common features of a new style of drama that seemed to ignore
theatrical conventions and thwart audience expectations. The writers most commonly
associated with Absurdism are Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur
Adamov, Harold Pinter, and Edward Albee.

BEAT MOVEMENT The roots of the Beat literary movement go back to 1944 when Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs met at Columbia University in New York. It
was not until the 1950s that these writers and other ‘‘Beats’’ would be recognized as a
movement and as a generation of post-World War II youths whose attitudes and lifestyles
were far removed from typical Americana.

BILDUNGSROMAN is the name affixed to those novels that concentrate on the

development or education of a central character. German in origin, ‘‘bildungs’’ means
formation, and ‘‘roman’’ means novel. Traditionally, this growth occurs according to a
pattern: the sensitive, intelligent protagonist leaves home, undergoes stages of conflict and
growth, is tested by crises and love affairs, then finally finds the best place to use his/her
unique talents.

CHICK LITERATURE Chick Lit usually takes the form of novels and short stories, but
sometimes personal memoirs are included. Works in this category usually focus on the
escapades of single women in their twenties and thirties working in high profile jobs in
urban settings.

CLASSICISM both as an art style and as the first theory of art was defined by the ancient
Greeks, emulated by the Romans, and then continued to appear in various forms across the
centuries. In its varying formulations Classicism affirms the superiority of balance and
rationality over impulse and emotion. It aspires to formal precision, affirms order, and
eschews ambiguity, flights of imagination, or lack of resolution. In his Poetics, for example,
Aristotle stressed the unities of time, place, and action.

Although the terms CLASSICISM AND NEOCLASSICISM are somewhat interchangeable

(and often used as such), Neoclassicism refers specifically to the literary periods in history
that produced art inspired by the ancients. It is often defined as the Classicism that
dominated English literature during the Restoration Age, which lasted from the restoration of
the monarchy in 1660 to 1798.

CONFESSIONAL POETRY
A form of poetry in which individual poets reveal intimate, sometimes shocking information
about themselves. Confessional poetry has its roots in the early nineteenth century, in such
poems as William Wordsworth’s ‘‘Nutting’’ (1800), although the movement that is defined as
Concrete Poetry did not take hold until the midtwentieth century. The term was coined by
critic [Link], who used it in a review of Robert Lowell’s 1959 collection Life Studies.
Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, W. D. Snodgrass, and John Berryman wrote poetry in the
confessional vein.
CYBERPUNK
A form of science fiction that emerged in the 1980s, mixing elements taken from hard-boiled
detective fiction and current events with traditional science fiction themes and the
emergence of the Internet. Settings for Cyberpunk works tend to be in the near future, with
principled loners battling against corporate entities bent on controlling people’s thoughts and
ideas. The phrase was coined by a short story titled ‘‘Cyberpunk,’’ which was published by
Bruce Bethke in 1983.

During the eighteenth century, THE ENLIGHTENMENT emerged as a social, philosophical,

political, and literarymovement that espoused rational thought and methodical observation
of the world. The term ‘‘Enlightenment’’ refers to the belief by the movement’s contributors
that they were leaving behind the dark ignorance and blind belief that characterized the
past.

AGE OF JOHNSON/ AGE OF SENSIBILITY

The period in English literature between 1750 and 1798, named after the most prominent
literary figure of the age, Samuel Johnson. Works written during this transitional period
between Neoclassicism and Romanticism are noted for their emphasis on sensibility, or
emotional quality. These works mark a shift from the rational works of the Age of Reason,
or neoclassical period, toward the emphasis on individual feelings and subjective responses
so notable in the Romantic period. Significant writers during the Age of Johnson include the
novelists Ann Radcliffe and Henry Mackenzie, dramatists Richard Sheridan and Oliver
Goldsmith, and poets William Collins and Thomas Gray.

EPIC THEATER
A theory of theatrical presentation developed by twentieth-century German playwright
Bertolt Brecht and outlined in his 1930 essay ‘‘The Modern Theater Is the Epic Theater.’’
Brecht created a type of drama that the audience could view with complete detachment. He
used what he termed ‘‘alienation effects’’ to create an emotional distance between the
audience and the action on stage. Among these effects are: short, self-contained scenes
that keep the play from building to a cathartic climax; songs that comment on the action;
and techniques of acting that prevent the actor from developing an emotional identity with
his role.

EXPRESSIONISM arose in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a
response to bourgeois complacency and the increasing mechanization and urbanization of
society. At their most popular between 1910 and 1925, expressionist writers distorted
objective features of the sensory world using Symbolism and dream-like elements in their
works illustrating alienating and often emotionally overwhelmed sensibilities. In literature,
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche emphasized cultivating individual willpower and
transcending conventional notions of reasoning and morality. His Thus Spake Zarathustra
(1885), a philosophic prose poem about the ‘‘New Man,’’ had a profound influence on
expressionist thought.

GRAPHIC NOVEL
A combination of the artwork traditionally associated with comic books with the booklength form of
the novel, developed at the end of the twentieth century. Visually, the graphic novel follows the style
of comic books, with stories told in multiple panels per page, often with word balloons containing
dialogue and narrative added in caption boxes. Even in cases in which the graphic novel might be
about characters from a continuing series or is a compilation of several issues of a regular series, it is
designed to stand alone. Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin’s 1971 book Blackmark is often considered the
first graphic novel. REPRESENTATIVE
HARLEM RENAISSANCE was a period between World War I and the Great Depression
when black artists and writers flourished in the United States. Harlem was the definite
epicenter of black culture during this period and home to more blacks than any other urban
area in the nation in the years after World War I.

HOLOCAUST LITERATURE
Literature influenced by or written about the Holocaust of World War II. Such literature
includes true stories of survival in concentration camps, of escape, and of life after the war,
as well as fictional works and poetry. Representative works of Holocaust literature range
from autobiographies, including Anne Frank’s 1952 The Diary of a Young Girl and Elie
Wiesel’s 1958 Night to novels such as Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel The Painted Bird; Saul
Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet, from 1970; William Styron’s 1979 novel Sophie’s Choice; and
Arthur Miller’s 1964 play Incident at Vichy. Other examples of Holocaust literature are the
poetry of artists such as Czeslaw Milosz and the 1986 graphic novel Maus, by Art
Spiegelman.

MAGIC REALISM is a literary movement associated with a style of writing or technique

that incorporates magical or supernatural events into realistic narrative without questioning
the improbability of these events. This fusion of fact and fantasy is meant to question the
nature of reality as well as call attention to the act of creation. The movement is generally
claimed to have begun in the 1940s with the publication of two important novels: Men of
Maize by Guatemalan writer Miguel Angel Asturias and The Kingdom of This World by Cuban
writer Alejo Carpentier.

MANGA
These are popular illustrated books that began in Japan and spread to world-wide
acceptance. Manga developed during the U.S. occupation of Japan after World War II,
during which Western cartoon styles became fused with the Japanese artistic traditions. An
early example of Manga, Astro Boy, created in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka, continued as a long-
running series. Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon, begun in 1991, is a well-known example of
‘‘shojo manga,’’ which are written by women and usually read by girls.

METAPHYSICAL POETRY
The poetry produced by a group of seventeenth-century English writers who were later
called the Metaphysical Poets, after Samuel Johnson used label over a century later.
Distinguishing characteristics include an emphasis on the relationship between oneself and
God and a willingness to find a new, plain-speaking style for expressing this relationship
poetically. The group includes John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and Thomas
Traherne. Marvell’s 1681 poem ‘‘To His Coy Mistress’’ is a well-known example of
metaphysical poetry.

MODERNISM: ‘‘On or about December 1910 human nature changed.’’ The great
modernist writer Virginia Woolf wrote this in her essay ‘‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’’ in
1924. ‘‘All human relations shifted,’’ Woolf continued, ‘‘and when human relations change
there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.’’ This change,
whether in art, technology, philosophy or human behavior, is generally called Modernism.
Modernism designates the broad literary and cultural movement that spanned all of the
arts and even spilled into politics and philosophy. Modernism’s roots are in the rapidly
changing technology of the late nineteenth century and in the theories of such late
nineteenth-century thinkers as Freud, Marx, Darwin, and Nietzsche.
NEGRITUDE
A literary movement based on the concept of a shared cultural bond among black Africans,
wherever they may live in the world. Negritude traces its origins to the former French
colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. Negritude poets, novelists, and essayists generally
stress four points in their writings: black alienation from traditional African culture can lead
to feelings of inferiority; European colonialism and Western education should be resisted;
black Africans should seek to affirm and define their own identity; and African culture can
and should be reclaimed.

NEOCLASSICISM flourished roughly between 1660, when the Stuarts returned to the
throne, and the 1798 publication of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, with its theoretical preface
and collection of poems that came to be seen as heralding the beginning of the Romantic
Age. Regarding English literature, the Neoclassical Age is typically divided into three periods:
the Restoration Age (1660–1700), the Augustan Age (1700–1750), and the Age of Johnson
(1750– 1798). Neoclassical writers modeled their works on classical texts and followed
various aesthetic values first established in Ancient Greece and Rome.

NEW CRITICISM
A movement in British and American literary criticism, dating from the late 1920s to the
1960s. New Criticism stressed close textual analysis in the interpretation of works of
literature. The name comes from the 1941 book The New Criticism by poet and critic John
Crowe Ransom, in which Ransom described emerging trends in English and U.S. literary
criticism. The New Critics devalued the context in which literature is created, such as the
historical period or the author’s biography.

POSTCOLONIALISM refers broadly to the ways in which race, ethnicity, culture, and
human identity itself are represented in the modern era, after many colonized countries
gained their independence. However, some critics use the term to refer to all culture and
cultural products influenced by imperialism from the moment of colonization until the
twenty-first century. Postcolonial literature seeks to describe the interactions between
European nations and the peoples they colonized. The literature and art produced in these
countries after independence became the subject of ‘‘Postcolonial Studies,’’ an area of
academic concentration, initially in British universities. This field gained prominence in the
1970s and has been developing ever since. Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said’s
critique of Western representations of the Eastern culture in his 1978 book, Orientalism, is a
seminal text for postcolonial studies and has spawned a host of theories on the subject.

POSTMODERNISM is the name given to the period of literary criticism that developed
toward the end of the twentieth century. Just as the name implies, it is the period that
comes after the modern period. But these are not easily separated into discrete units with
specific dates as centuries or presidential terms are limited. Postmodernism came about as a
reaction to the established modernist era, which itself was a reaction to the established
tenets of the nineteenth century and before.

REALIST MOVEMENT in literature first developed in France in the mid-nineteenth century,

soon spreading to England, Russia, and the United States. Realist literature is best
represented by the novel, including many works widely regarded to be among the greatest
novels ever written. Realist writers sought to narrate their novels from an objective,
unbiased perspective that simply and clearly represented the factual elements of the story.
They became masters at psychological characterization, detailed descriptions of everyday
life, and dialogue that captures the idioms of natural speech.
THE RENAISSANCE. Many historians locate the Renaissance from the mid-fifteenth until
the early seventeenth century. There are, however, a few writers from other time periods
whom historians and critics commonly associate with the Renaissance. The European
Renaissance produced some of history’s greatest writers and works of literature. The
Renaissance started in Italy, then spread slowly east to other European countries, most
notably France, Spain, and finally, England.

The Renaissance (from the French word for ‘‘rebirth’’) refers to the emergence and new
interest in classical Greek and Roman texts and culture that took place between the Middle
Ages and the modern period. Many Renaissance works survive into the twenty-first century
as some of the most celebrated in history. Early writers such as Desiderius Erasmus and
Thomas More staged direct attacks on the Church and society with works such as Erasmus’s
The Praise of Folly and More’s Utopia. These writers helped open doors for later ones,
including William Shakespeare, who some critics consider the greatest dramatist and poet of
all time.

REVENGE TRAGEDY
A dramatic form begun during the Elizabethan period that reached its peak from the 1590s
to the 1630s, following the success of Thomas Kyd’s 1589 play Spanish Tragedy. Typically,
the protagonist of such plays, directed by the ghost of his murdered father or son, retaliates
against the villain. Notable features of the revenge tragedy include violence, bizarre criminal
acts, intrigue, insanity, a hesitant protagonist, and the use of soliloquy. Perhaps the best
known example is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, written between 1599 and 1601. Extreme
examples of revenge tragedy, such as John Webster’s 1614 play The Duchess of Malfi, are
labeled Tragedies of Blood.
REPRESENTATIVE
ROMANTICISM as a literary movement lasted from 1798, with the publication of Lyrical
Ballads to some time between the passage of the first Reform Bill of 1832 and the death of
Wordsworth in 1850. During this period, emphasis shifted to the importance of the
individual’s experience in the world and one’s subjective interpretation of that experience,
rather than interpretations handed down by the church or tradition. Romantic literature is
characterized by several features. It emphasized the dream, or inner, world of the individual
and visionary, fantastic, or drug-induced imagery. There was a growing suspicion of the
established church and a turn toward pantheism (the belief that God is a part of the created
world rather than separate from it). Romantic literature emphasized the individual self and
the value of the individual’s experience. The concept of ‘‘the sublime’’ (a thrilling emotional
experience that combines awe, magnificence, and horror) was introduced. Feeling and
emotion were viewed as superior to logic and analysis.

THEATER OF CRUELTY
A term used to denote a group of theatrical techniques that are meant to eliminate the
psychological and emotional distance between actors and audience. This concept,
introduced in the 1930s in France, was intended to inspire a more intense theatrical
experience than conventional theater allowed. The cruelty to which the movement name
refers is not aggression or violence, but rather the heightened actor/audience involvement in
the dramatic event. The Theater of Cruelty was theorized by Antonin Artaud, in his 1932
manifesto Le Theatre et son double (The Theatre and Its Double). His movement was short-
lived, considered by some to be an attempt to accomplish the impossible. Ataud’s
experimental play Les Cenci, produced in 1932, is considered a fine example of the Theater
of Cruelty.
TRANSCENDENTALISM was a religious, philosophical, and literary movement, which
arose in New England in the middle of the nineteenth century. Critics generally cite 1836 to
1846 as the years when the movement flourished, although its influence continued to be felt
in later decades, with some works considered part of the movement not being published
until the 1850s. Transcendentalism began as a religious concept rooted in the ideas of
American democracy.

When a group of Boston ministers, one of whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson, decided that
the Unitarian Church had become too conservative, they espoused a new religious
philosophy, one which privileged the inherent wisdom in the human soul over church
doctrine and law.

Among Transcendentalism’s followers were writers Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,

Margaret Fuller, and Walt Whitman; educator Bronson Alcott; and social theorists and
reformers Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing. Authors Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allen Poe also felt the influence of
Transcendentalism.

Important works from the movement include Emerson’s essays “Nature”, ‘‘The American
Scholar,’’ and ‘‘Self Reliance’’; Thoreau’s “Walden; or Life in the Woods”; Fuller’s “Woman in
the Nineteenth Century”; and Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. Novels such as Melville’s “Moby
Dick” and Hawthorne’s “The Blithedale Romance” also had transcendentalist leanings.