Literary periods
Medieval (500-1500)
In the beginning of the medieval period, which lasted from approximately 500-1500 A.D., not a lot of books were written, but literature was passed by word of mouth. During this period a lot of different languages were spoken in Britain, for example Celtic, Old English, Latina and a certain dialect of French called Anglo-Norman. During the medieval period the language of the upper class was French, which meant that French was the language of worldly education and literature in Britain. The language of the Church, however, was Latin, so a big part of learning also took place in Latin. An international figure of the medieval period was king Arthur, about whom stories were written in Celtic, Latin, French, …show more content…
Important works of this time are ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy in 1891, and ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ by Henry James in 1881, James creates a sense of really describing thing by the minute. In realist books the psychology of the main characters was more important than the plot of the book. Social Realism was a subgenre of Realism, which is thought of as the literary equivalent of Marxism and extreme socialism. The social and political situation was almost the same as in the Victorian era, but the women’s right movement became larger, and the first world war happened and …show more content…
But there are of course still a few linking ideas, such as the idea that every story has already been told before, so nothing can be totally original anymore, and it also focuses on narrative techniques, such as paradox or an unreliable narrator. It is sometimes seen as a movement against the Enlightenment thinking. There was of course a lot going on in the world with the cold war, and masses of people being scared of the world being entirely destroyed by a bomb, but also the current political problems, such as climate change, and still fear of war. Examples of Postmodern works are ‘American Psycho’ by Bret Easton Ellis from 1991, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller from
Medieval (500-1500)
In the beginning of the medieval period, which lasted from approximately 500-1500 A.D., not a lot of books were written, but literature was passed by word of mouth. During this period a lot of different languages were spoken in Britain, for example Celtic, Old English, Latina and a certain dialect of French called Anglo-Norman. During the medieval period the language of the upper class was French, which meant that French was the language of worldly education and literature in Britain. The language of the Church, however, was Latin, so a big part of learning also took place in Latin. An international figure of the medieval period was king Arthur, about whom stories were written in Celtic, Latin, French, …show more content…
Important works of this time are ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy in 1891, and ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ by Henry James in 1881, James creates a sense of really describing thing by the minute. In realist books the psychology of the main characters was more important than the plot of the book. Social Realism was a subgenre of Realism, which is thought of as the literary equivalent of Marxism and extreme socialism. The social and political situation was almost the same as in the Victorian era, but the women’s right movement became larger, and the first world war happened and …show more content…
But there are of course still a few linking ideas, such as the idea that every story has already been told before, so nothing can be totally original anymore, and it also focuses on narrative techniques, such as paradox or an unreliable narrator. It is sometimes seen as a movement against the Enlightenment thinking. There was of course a lot going on in the world with the cold war, and masses of people being scared of the world being entirely destroyed by a bomb, but also the current political problems, such as climate change, and still fear of war. Examples of Postmodern works are ‘American Psycho’ by Bret Easton Ellis from 1991, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller from