Modernism, poetry and the term modernism, with or without capitalization, has inspired a vast literature of definition, commentary, and contentious discussion. Nuanced, scholarly distinctions dividing proto- or early modernism from high modernism and from spin-offs like Anglo-American modernism fill library… Read More ›
The poetic writing that is here identified as écriture shares a provenance with language-centered writing in the United States and Canada: the “language games” of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s logical positivism and the objectivist heritage in poetry associated with Louis Zukofsky among… Read More ›
Named for King Edward VII, this era begins in the late 19th century, when Edward was Prince of Wales, and lasts through the first decade of the 20th century, covering the fin de siècle culture of England and the British… Read More ›
This German word has been adopted in English literary criticism to refer to a novel of transition, the plot of which follows a protagonist from childhood or adolescence to adulthood. Novels of this sort frequently follow the outline of the… Read More ›
Borrowed from the ideas of Carl Jung and developed by Joseph Campbell and Northrup Frye, an archetype is a pattern of characteristics that can be deployed in many different ways without losing its coherence. Both character and plot can draw… Read More ›
Titled after its bright cover, the periodical called The Yellow Book appeared to much fanfare in March 1894. It would soon gain notoriety due to its connection with decadent British writers and artists of the day. Published by John Lane,… Read More ›
The 19th-century Oxford Movement sought to reform the English church, reconstituting it on High Church principles. The movement formally began in July 1833 with a sermon by Oxford professor of poetry John Keble on national apostasy. Keble attacked threats to… Read More ›
The label “Newgate fiction” applied to novels mainly of the 1830s depicting low-life characters and settings distinguished by a focus on crime. The authors Edward Bulwer-Lytton and William Harrison Ainsworth wrote the majority of Newgate fiction. The name for the… Read More ›
Also known as rhetorical criticism and New Criticism, formalism constitutes one of the many lenses through which critics view and interpret literature. A formalist critic pays attention to the form of a literary work, including aspects such as plot, character,… Read More ›
Didactic literature, from the Greek didaktikos, or skillful in teaching, refers to literature that overtly demonstrates a truth or offers a lesson to readers. Not a subtle approach, didacticism delivers a specific and pointed message and was present in the… Read More ›
The word chivalry derives from the French term cheval, or horse, and those practicing chivalry in medieval times possessed highly developed horseback-riding skills. Dressed in armor during times of battle and known as knights, from a term that originally meant… Read More ›
The Chartist movement, or Chartism, refers to an English social-reform movement from 1838 to 1848, based on the belief that Parliamentary legislation could correct economic and social exploitation. In 1837, the London Working Men’s Association submitted a program titled the… Read More ›
Transcendentalism is a philosophical and religious way of thinking that manifested itself in particular, if not necessarily uniform, ways. Though some of its ideas about individualism and nature can be traced to the late eighteenth century and to European thinkers… Read More ›
Southwestern humor is geographically misnamed, as its most prominent writers (not all of them Southwesterners) resided in states and territories as far east as Georgia and as far north as Tennessee. It is sometimes called “frontier” humor because its plots… Read More ›
The Romantic view of the poet as a rebellious visionary whose work cuts across the grain of popular taste does not take into account the other strain in nineteenth-century poetry that confirmed cultural norms and rewarded writers who appealed to… Read More ›
The coining of this term has generally been credited to the American psychologist William James, older brother of novelist Henry James. It was originally used by psychologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe the personal awareness… Read More ›
Though the term metalanguage—a language that describes or analyzes another language— was in use well before the 1960s, it was around this time that theorists including Roman Jakobson (Linguistics and Poetics [1960]) and Roland Barthes (Mythologies [1957] and Elements of… Read More ›
Feminist literary criticism has its origins in the intellectual and political feminist movement. It advocates a critique of maledominated language and performs “resistant” readings of literary texts or histories. Based on the premise that social systems are patriarchal—organized to privilege… Read More ›
The struggle for women to gain the right to vote was fought not only in the political arena but in literature. Although the suffrage movement can be dated to the mid-19th century, its literature as a distinct category is generally… Read More ›
The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of authors in the later 1840s through the close of the 1890s who espoused a distinctive artistic philosophy. In form, Pre-Raphaelite short stories exhibit a highly finished style that refl ects and embodies the aesthetic… Read More ›
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