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 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. By Region: Italian Renaissance Northern Renaissance *French Renaissance *German Renaissance *English Renaissance The Renaissance, also known as Rinascimento (in Italian), was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ... In education, a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses and their contents offered by an institution such as a school or university. ... Anthology may also mean a Alien Ant Farm album ANThology, see Anthology (AAF Album) An anthology is a collection of literary works, originally of poems, but in recent years its usage has broadened to be applied to collections of short stories and comic strips. ...

These are movements either drawn from or influential for literature in the English language. Open Directory Project: Literature World Literature Electronic Text Archives Magazines and E-zines Online Writing Writers Resources Libraries, Digital Cataloguing, Metadata Distance Learning Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Classicism in Literature The Universal Library, by Carnegie Mellon University Project Gutenberg Online Library Abacci - Project Gutenberg texts matched with Amazon... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Cavalier Poets Cavalier poets is a broad description of a school of poets, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War. ...

• 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 (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy. ... Court of Love in Provence in the 14th Century (after a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris). ... The phrase Sons of Ben is a mildly problematic term applied to followers of Ben Jonson, in English poetry and drama in the first half of the seventeenth century. ... Benjamin Jonson (June 11, 1572 – August 6, 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. ... Richard Lovelace (1618 - 1657) was an English poet and nobleman, born in Woolwich, today part of south-east London. ... William Davenant Sir William Davenant (February, 1606 - April 7, 1668), also spelled DAvenant, was an english poet and playwright. ... Wilsons School The Metaphysical poets were a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them. ...

• 17th century English movement using extended conceit, often (though not always) about religion.
  • Notable authors: John Donne, George Herbert

The Augustans In literary terms, a conceit is a device used in order to make a story more accessible to the audience. ... John Donne (pronounced Dun; 1572 – March 31, 1631) was a major English poet and writer, and perhaps the greatest of the metaphysical poets. ... George Herbert (April 3, 1593 – March 1, 1633) was an English poet and orator. ... Augustan literature is a style of English literature whose origins correspond roughly with the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II. In contemporary critical parlance, it refers to the literature of 1700 up to approximately 1760 (or, for some, 1789). ...

• An 18th century literary movement based chiefly on classical ideals, satire and skepticism.
  • Notable authors: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift

Romanticism (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Classicism door in Olomouc, The Czech Republic. ... Satire is a literary technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ... Occams razor non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem or plurality should not be posited without necessity is a central tenet of skeptical thought. ... Alexander Pope (May 22, 1688 – May 30, 1744) is considered one of the greatest English poets of the eighteenth century. ... Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer who is famous for works like Gullivers Travels and A Tale of a Tub. ... Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in the history of ideas that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ...

• 18th to 19th century movement emphasizing emotion and imagination, rather than logic and scientific thought. Response to the Enlightenment.
  • Notable authors: Victor Hugo, Lord Byron

Gothic novel Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Enlightenment may refer to: Enlightenment (concept), a concept in mysticism, philosophy and psychology For the Hindu religious concept of enlightenment, see moksha For the Buddhist religious concept, see Bodhi, Satori For the Yoga concept of enlightenment, see Yogic Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment, a period in European history For the... Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (February 26, 1802–May 22, 1885) was a French author, designer, and artist. ... Lord Byron, English poet Lord Byron (1803), as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824) was the most widely read English language poet of his day. ... Strawberry Hill, an English villa in the Gothic revival style, built by seminal Gothic writer Horace Walpole The gothic novel is an English literary genre, which can be said to have been born with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. ...

• Fiction in which Romantic ideals are combined with an interest in the supernatural and in violence.
  • Notable authors: Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker

Lake Poets The supernatural (Latin: super- exceeding + nature) comprises forces and phenomena which are beyond the realm of current scientific understanding, and which may actually directly contradict conventional scientific understandings. ... Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley née Godwin (August 30, 1797 – February 1, 1851) was an English novelist who is perhaps equally famous as the wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. ... Abraham Bram Stoker (November 8, 1847–April 20, 1912) was an Irish writer, best remembered as the author of the influential horror novel Dracula. ... The Lake Poets were Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth. ...

• 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 Crinkle Crags as seen from the adjoining fell of Cold Pike. ... The deepest visible-light image of the universe, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. ... The sublime (from the Latin sublimis (exalted)), refers in aesthetics to the quality of transcendent greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual or artistic. ... William Wordsworth, English poet William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English poet who with Samuel Taylor Coleridge launched the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads. ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, 1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and as one of the Lake Poets. ...

• 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 ... Pre-Colonial America For details, see the main Pre-Colonial America article. ... Washington Irving Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. ... Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. ... The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. ...

• 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 British literature is literature from the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. ... Self-portrait by Raphael. ... Dante Gabriel Rossetti (May 12, 1828 - April 10, 1882) was an English poet, painter and translator. ... Christina Georgina Rossetti (December 5, 1830 - December 29, 1894) was an English poet and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ... // Transcendentalism was the name of a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that advocates that there is an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical and empirical and is only realized through a knowledgeable intuitive awareness that is conditional upon the individual. ...

• 19th century American movement: poetry and philosophy concerned with self-reliance, independence from modern technology.
  • Notable authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

Realism Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. ... Self-Reliance is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. ... Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a famous American essayist and one of Americas most influential thinkers and writers. ... Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, pacifist, tax resister and philosopher who is famous for Walden (available at wikisource) on living simply amongst nature and Civil Disobedience (available at wikisource) on resistance to civil government. ... Realism is commonly defined as a concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary. ...

• Late-19th century movement based on a simplification of style and image and an interest in poverty and everyday concerns.
  • Notable authors: Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Frank Norris

Symbolism Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850) was a French novelist. ... Leo Tolstoy, pictured late in life Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy   listen? (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й; commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910; August 28, 1828 – November 7, 1910, O.S.) was a Russian novelist, social reformer, pacifist, Christian anarchist, vegetarian, moral thinker and an influential member... Benjamin Franklin Norris (March 5, 1870 - October 25, 1902) was an American novelist during the Progressive Era, the United States first important naturalist writer. ...

• 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 Allen Poe to James Merrill.
  • Notable authors: Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry

Stream of consciousness Fin de siècle is French for End of the Century. The term turn-of-the-century is sometimes used as a synonym, but is more neutral (lacking some or most of the connotations described below), and can include the first years of a new century. ... Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809–October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor and critic. ... poet James Merrill, age 30, in a 1957 publicity photograph for The Seraglio James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 - February 6, 1995) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American writer, increasingly regarded as one of the most important 20th century poets in the English language. ... Stéphane Mallarmé (March 18, 1842 – September 9, 1898) was a French poet and critic. ... Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (Sète, October 30, 1871 – Paris, July 20, 1945) was a French author and poet of the Symbolist school. ... In psychology and philosophy stream of consciousness, introduced by William James, is the set of constantly changing inner thoughts and sensations which an individual has while conscious, used as a synonym for stream of thought. ...

• Early-20th century fiction consisting of literary representations of quotidian thought, without authorial presence.
  • Notable authors: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce

Modernism Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was a British author and feminist, who is considered to be one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ... James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (February 2, 1882 – January 13, 1941) was an expatriate Irish writer and poet, widely considered a significant writer of the 20th century. ... Le Corbusiers Villa Savoye, 1929-30: The modern style is noted for its rigorous geometrical forms. ...

• Variegated movement of the early 20th century, encompassing primitivism, formal innovation, or reaction to science and technology.
  • Notable authors: T.S. Eliot, H.D.

Dada (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... This article is about primitivism. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... // What is science? There are different theories of what science is. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... H.D. in the mid 1910s Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania – September 27, 1961, Zürich), prominently known only by her initials H.D., was an American poet, novelist and memoirist. ... Cover of the first edition of the publication, 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 Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 9, 1918) was a poet, writer, and art critic. ... Kurt Schwitters (June 20, 1887 - January 8, 1948) was a German painter who was born in Hannover, Germany. ... World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ...

• 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

Imagism Siegfried Sassoon, 1916 Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (September 8, 1886 – September 1, 1967) was an English poet and author. ... A statue of Rupert Brooke in Rugby Rupert Brooke (August 3, 1887 – April 23, 1915) was an English poet best know for his idealistic poems of First World War. ... Ezra Pound, one of the prime movers of Imagism. ...

• Poetry based on description rather than theme, and on the motto, "the natural object is always the adequate symbol."
  • Notable authors: Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington

Harlem Renaissance In literature (as well as many works of nonfiction), a theme is a main idea of the story, or the message the author is conveying. ... Ezra Pound in 1913. ... Richard Aldington (July 8, 1892 – July 27, 1962) was an English writer and poet. ... The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African-American and culture based in the African-American community forming in Harlem in New York City (USA). ...

• 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 The Color Purple by Alice Walker African American literature is literature written by, about, and sometimes specifically for African Americans. ... For other uses, see blues (disambiguation) Blues is a vocal and instrumental music form which emerged in the African-American community of the United States. ... Folklore is the ethnographic concept of the tales, legends, or superstitions current among a particular population, a part of the oral history of a particular culture. ... Harlem is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, long known as a major African American cultural and business center. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. ... Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America as the Roaring Twenties. // Events and trends Technology John T. Thompson invents Thompson submachine gun, also known as Tommy gun John Logie Baird invents the first working mechanical television system (1925) Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to... Langston Hughes, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1936 Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, and newspaper columnist. ... Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891–January 28, 1960) was an African-American folklorist and author. ... Surrealism is a philosophy, a cultural and artistic movement, and a term used to describe unexpected juxtapositions. ...

• 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 The unconscious mind (or subconscious) is the aspect (or puported aspect) of the mind of which we are not directly conscious or aware. ... Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ... Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (July 5, 1889 – October 11, 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, and filmmaker. ... Dylan Marlais Thomas, (Swansea, October 27, 1914 – November 9, 1953 in New York City) was a Welsh poet and writer. ... The Southern Agrarians or Vanderbilt Agrarians were a group of 12 American Traditionalist writers and poets from the Southern United States who joined together to publish the Agrarian manifesto, a collection of essays entitled Ill Take My Stand in 1930. ...

• 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 Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (colloquially known as Vandy) is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational university in Nashville, Tennessee. ... Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line or stanza regardless of the number of syllables that are present. ... Narrative is a term which has several and changing meanings. ... New Criticism was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the early twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. ... John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 - July 3, 1974) was an United States poet, essayist, and social commentator. ... Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 - September 15, 1989) was an American poet and writer. ... Oulipo stands for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, which translates roughly as workshop of potential literature. It is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians, and seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. ...

• Mid-20th century poetry and prose based on seemingly arbitrary rules for the sake of added challenge.
  • Notable authors: Raymond Queneau, Walter Abish

Postmodernism (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Raymond Queneau (February 21, 1903 - October 25, 1976) was a French poet and novelist. ... Walter Abish (born December 24, 1931) is a famous Jewish-American author. ... Postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. ...

• Postwar movement skeptical of absolutes and embracing diversity, irony, and word play.
  • Notable authors: Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon

Black Mountain Poets As a warranted generalization, contemporary literature can be defined as any literature, in any form or medium, produced in present day (post 1960). ... Diversity is the presence of a wide range of variation in the qualities or attributes under discussion. ... ... Jorge Luis Borges (bôr′hĕs) (/ˈxoɾ.xe luˈis ˈboɾ.xes/ in IPA) (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer who is considered to be one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. ... Thomas Pynchon pictured in his high school yearbook. ... The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called the Projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered around Black Mountain College. ...

• 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 From the time of its founding by John Rice in 1933, Black Mountain College, located near Asheville, North Carolina, was known as one of the leading progressive schools of art in the United States. ... Charles Olson (27 December 1910 - 10 January 1970) was an important 2nd generation American modernist poet who was a crucial link between earlier figures like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and such later avant garde groups as the Beats and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. He... Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923 - December 20, 1997) was a British born American poet. ... The term beat generation was introduced by Jack Kerouac in approximately 1948 to describe his social circle to the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early novel about the beat generation, titled Go, in 1952, along with a manifesto of sorts in the New York Times Magazine: This is...

• American movement of the 1950s and '60s concerned with counterculture and youthful alienation.
  • Notable authors: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg

Confessional poetry // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the baby-boom from returning... The 1960s, or The Sixties, in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... In sociology, counterculture is a term used to describe a cultural group whose values and norms are at odds with those of the social mainstream, a cultural equivalent of a political opposition. ... Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and one of the most prominent members of the Beat Generation. ... Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco. ... A confessional poet traffics in intimate, and perhaps derogatory, information about him or herself, in poems about illness, sexuality, despondence and the like. ...

• 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

New York School Robert Lowell Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Jr. ... A self-portrait circa 1951. ... The New York School was an informal group of American poets and painters active in 1950s New York City. ...

• Urban, gay or gay-friendly, leftist poets, writers, and painters of the 1960s.
  • Notable authors: Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery

Magical Realism Urban culture is the culture of cities. ... In politics, left-wing, political left, leftism, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the American sense of the word), or with opposition... Francis Russell OHara (June 27, 1926–July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, was a key member of what was known as the New York School. ... John Ashbery (born July 8, 1927) is one of the most influential and innovative American poets of the 20th century. ... Magic Realism (or Magical Realism) is an illustrative or literary technique in which the laws of cause and effect seem not quite to apply in otherwise real world situations. ...

• 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

Postcolonialism Latin America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ... Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel José García Márquez (born March 6, 1928) is a Colombian novelist, journalist, publisher, and political activist. ... Octavio Paz on the cover of his Selected Poems (1988) Octavio Paz (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature. ... Post-colonialism refers to the intellectual field opened up by Edward Saids book Orientalism. ...

• 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