The Literary Eras

Bessemerbiblioteket

Antiquity

The Renaissance

Enlightenment

Realism

Modernism

Post-modernism

Medieval times

You can view history as a linear thing,

a TIME LINE.

Cause - Effect

Thesis - Antithetis - Synthesis

The conqueror writes the history.

You can also think of time as a pendulum,

that swings between ideas, ideals and identities.

Keep in mind:

Reading and Writing are "markers of civilization"

Reading and Writing are

the human urge to convey complex ideas and experiences between people.

We communicate because

we are social animals.

That doesn't mean that animals don't communicate!

What does this frog "say"?

Bees do a waggle dance to describe where pollen can be found

What was the first word ever spoken?

One theory says that speech developed when people had to work together when hunting large prey.

Another theory claims it might have been the sound for mother. (mamma, mama)

In the olden days most people died

of poor dental hygiene?!

Medieval times

Monk in a scriptorium

ca . 500 - 1500

The feudal system

Lords

Peasantry

Vassals

Code of chivalry

To live one's Life so that it is worthy of respect and honor by

 

Fair Play

Nobility

Valor

Honor

Courtesy

Loyalty

We call Medieval times the "Dark ages"

- why?

The average life expectancy was

only about 28 years

Literacy

Religious

Hocus Pocus

Superstition

 

Only those with wealth and power could read.

 

Only those with wealth and power could afford to own a book.

Beowulf

ca. 700-1000

The next era has something to do with washing your clothes?

The Renaissance

Ca. 1400 - 1700

Gutenberg - 1450s

The Printing press

Suddenly books could be copied at a rapid rate which brought down the cost of books.

"A renaissance man"

The Ambassadors - Holbein

"Memento mori" to ward off hubris

Leonardo Da Vinci

1452-1519

The Virtuvian Man 1492

Da Vinci

Shakespeare

1564-1616

 The catholic church becomes worried?

Baroque movement

ca.1600 - 1700

 

thought of as a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, theater, and Music.

 

The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Catholic Church.

Baroque - strange, over the top, religious!

The Castle of Versailles

Stiftsbibliotek - Admont

The Enlightenment

1700s

The era of reason

The enlightenment is

concerned with the brain and its faculties!

Reason, intellect, deduction!

Voltaire

1694-1778

The seeds planted by the Enlightenment

 

led to scientific and technological

 

advances, but also to ideas about

 

rationalism and reason.

 

 

Our modern take on romanticism

 

 

 

 

Would be foreign for the people who lived during the Romantic era.

Longing

Passion

Desire

Extacy

Horror
Terror

Rage
Madness

Anguish

 

The Romantic era

1800s

Friheten på barrikaderna - Delacroix 1830

American revolution (1775-1783)

French revolution (1789-1799)

Industrialism

Industrialism led to big Changes for

how our society is structured.

Slums - crowded, stinking, unhygienic!

Escapism:

 

Wanting to escape from your reality!

Beer street and gin Alley - Hogarth

The ideals of the Romantic era

Emotion and Heart

The metaphysics and the soul

Escapism

Back to nature
"The cult of sensitivity" - the depiction of Life from a female and Child perspective.
(Rousseau - Emile)

Truth as Beauty in art, literature and philosophy.

 

 

Sturm und drang

Storm and longing

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The first Best seller

 

Sold in 13 million copies in Europe

upon its release.

Lord Byron

1788-1824

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know."

-Lady Caroline Lamb

Childe Harold's pilgrimage 1812-1818

A Rainy summer....1816

Villa Diodati, Genève

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

1797-1851

Frankenstein - 1818

All our modern genres stem from the Romantic era: Science fiction, horror, detective novels, biographies, paranormal, fantasy.

"Feuilletones"

The Brothers Grimm
Jacob (1785-1863) Wilhelm (1786-1859)

 

"Disneyfication"

Realism and naturalism

Realism concerned itself with how life was structured socially, economically, politically, and culturally in the mid-nineteenth century. This led to unflinching, sometimes "ugly" portrayals of life's unpleasant moments .

 

Stop dreaming, see Life as it is!

The stone breakers - Courbet

The Gleaners - Courbet

Waiting for the ferry - Knight

Realism in literature

 

The authors strived to present Life truthfully and avoided supernatural, exotic

or implausible elements.

 

Naturalism pushed the envelope even further and included social conditions, hereditary and environmental aspects as

something that shaped human existence.

Influenced by Darwin's Theory of evolution.

 

Realism has something to do with a blue soap dish?

A blue soap dish

 

Details, details, details!

 

 

In Gustave Flauberts

"A simple heart"

A blue soap dish is mentioned, just as a detail. It is has nothing to do with the plot of the story.

However, we as modern readers can easily miss what the soap dish is meant to convey: possibly something to do with the consumerism of the time, increasing urbanisation and the rise of the bourgeois.

 

Charles Dickens

1812-1870

During the Victorian era (1837-1901) reading becomes a pasttime for the common citizen. The language of literature changed to sound more like people actually spoke.

Please sir, I want some more?

Modernism and postmodernism

The 1900s

The World becomes smaller

Steam Engines, Trains, Planes

We understand it better.

 

We have microscopes and telescopes.

Two World wars in one century

Two and a half wars - The Cold war!

Literacy increases

Universal schooling

 

Reading becomes a way to

make social change

 

Reading helped boost

the economic and scientific boom

in developed countries during the 1900s

 

 

The role of the author/artist changes

from an intellectual superior

to a person who wants to experience life

and write about it.

 

They want to challenge even the format of art itself.

 

Does a book need covers?

Does a painting need to hang from a wall?

 

 

Ceci n'est pas une pipe - Magritte

Berndnaut Smilde - Nimbus cloud

Our World becomes even smaller

We can carry the World in our pocket!

We are experiencing unrest and upheaval

due to an unbloody revolution

between industrialism and the next era to come.

And the future?

What will coming generations call our era?

The era of economism

The era of information

The Plastic era

The era of recycling

What do you Think it will be called?

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By besskirsi

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