Literary Periods & Movements

Tracing the evolution of literature through time scholars often group works from a certain timeframe together and label it as a period or movement.  The movements or periods listed here where not mutually exclusive in their timeframes, they overlap, liberally. In some cases a single author can even be claimed by more than one movement. Classifing art, an art in itself, often ends up more fluid like this. Each introduction (listed below) includes a broad overview of the movement or period, examples of key works, and a list of major authors.

Following is an attempt in classification of literature by Henry Augustin Beers, 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. Following is a glimpse of his classification of literature. undergraduate students of literature need to study each of the movements and periods in depth: look forward for the detailed articles in www.bunpeiris.org.

Literary PeriodsRenaissance LiteratureThe Enlightenment Romanticism Transcendentalism Victorian Literature Realism Naturalism Modernism Bloomsbury Group Existentialism Beat Generation

Literary History From the Conquest to Chaucer 1066-1400 From Chaucer to Spenser 1400-1599 The Age of Shakespeare 1564-1616 The Age of Milton 1608-1674 From the Restoration to the Death of Pope 1660-1744 The Death of Pope to the French Revolution 1744-1789 The French Revolution to the Death of Scott 1789-1832 From the Death of Scott to the Present Time 1832-1893 Appendix

American Literature Preface The Colonial Period 1607-1765 The Revolutionary Period 1765-1815 The Era of National Expansion 1815-1837 The Concord Writers 1837-1861 The Cambridge Scholars 1837-1861 Literature in the Cities 1837-1861 Literature Since 1861 Appendix

Here is a wonderful infographic created by online-literature. It captures some of the major literary periods & movements from the medieval period stretching between 500 to 1500 to the post modernist era that started in the late sixties of last century and is still going on till today. This timeline also chronicles important events that marked the trajectory of literary history together with the popular authors in each of these eras (from Beowulf to Samuel Beckett).

This infograph helps you to remember the literary movements and periods  together with the major works of literature and authors.

Above timeline is reproduced herein by the kind courtesy of “The Literarure Network.”