Literary Movements

Question 1

Puritan Age

Answer 1

Earliest English speaking settlers came for religious freedom. Much of the literature was religious

Question 2

Neo-Classical Age

Answer 2

Named for the classical age of Ancient Greece. Concerned with philosophy and politics, the common man’s responsibilities to himself and to his country, democracy, self-education.

Question 3

Romanticism

Answer 3

Upper classes, sometimes titles, unusual settings, unusual occurrences - supernatural events - not the same as “romance novels”. Man’s relation to the natural world, God back in nature.

Question 4

Realism

Answer 4

Idealism of romantic age gone. Tries to recreate the actualities of real life. More likely to deal with middle classes. Questioned literary status quo. Rather skeptical re:future.

Question 5

Naturalism

Answer 5

Intensification of Realism. Lower classes, man as natural animal, nature as powerful, survival of the fittest.

Question 6

Modernism

Answer 6

Challenged the conventions of literature, less tidy endings, less closure.