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Literary movements are a way to divide literature into categories of similar philosophical, topical, or aesthetic features, as opposed to divisions by genre or period. Like other categorizations, literary movements provide language for comparing and discussing literary works. These terms are helpful for curricula or anthologies.
- The Harlem Renaissance. Origins: In the early part of the 20th century, African Americans, faced with legal segregation, rampant racism, lack of economic opportunities, and unchecked violence, began moving to Northern states in large numbers, and New York’s Harlem was particularly popular.
- Dada. Origins: Dadaism is an art and literary movement that began in Zürich around 1915 as a reaction against traditional, realist (and capitalist) aesthetics.
- Postmodernism. Origins: Postmodernism is even less well-defined than modernism, and in fact the two are very similar. It may have emerged in the 1940s, but you can see examples of it as it is now defined much further back than that.
- The Beat Generation. Origins: According to Allen Ginsberg himself, “the phrase “Beat Generation” rose out of a specific conversation with Jack Kerouac and John Clellon Holmes in 1950-51 when discussing the nature of generations, recollecting the glamour of the ‘lost generation.'”
The Complete Guide to Literary Movements | Power Poetry. As long as people have written, there have been movements informing their stylistic choices. These movements usually reflect global events like wars, changes of social structure, or shifts in power.
Jan 15, 2021 · Many modernist writers sought to create work that represented not simply a moment or a region (as in Realistic fiction) but a larger, universal truth that transcended personal experience. (Examples of this literary movement in this module include William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law.”)
Jun 7, 2021 · Last updated: Jun 7, 2021 • 5 min read. Modernism was a literary movement that lasted from the late nineteenth century to around the mid-twentieth century, and encapsulated a series of burgeoning writing techniques that influenced the course of literary history.
In this post, we’ll take a literary journey through time to trace the development of 9 key movements in literature, including the books and authors that defined each era. A Brief History of Western Literary Movements. Here is a brief history of major post-Renaissance literary movements, from the Augustans of the 1700s to the postmodern present.
Literature History. Henry Augustin Beers was a literature historian and professor at Yale who lived at the turn of the 19th century. He wrote intensely detailed histories of American and English literature, covering the periods up until what were his modern times. We have collected those works below. Literary Period Introductions.
