A History of European Literature

1. A History of European Literature Brittany Aves

2. Periods of Literature: • Renaissance: 1400’s-1600’s • Enlightenment: 1650- 1800 • Romanticism: 1798 – 1870 • Realism/Naturalism: 1850-1914 • Victorian Period: 1832- 1901 • Modernism: 1870’s – 1965 • Post-Modernism: 1965- Present (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

3. Renaissance (1400’s-1600’s) • The Renaissance was a period of transition that left behind the medieval ways of the past and launched society towards a modern world. • At this time, people were concerned with individualism, as well as self and societal improvement. • Many writers produced pieces that catered to wealthy patrons who commissioned their work. • Johannes Gutenberg created the printing press in 1440, allowing for mass production of pamphlets and novels. • This gave people an increased opportunity to read publications of various authors like Petrarch and Boccaccio. (Wheeler, Kagan)

4. Renaissance Works of Note • Petrarch: Canzoniere, Trionfi • Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron • Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince • John Milton: Paradise Lost • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote • Dante Alighieri: Divina Commedia • Sir Thomas More, Utopia • William Shakespeare: King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet • Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard) "ParadiseLost,"Stanford University Libraries

5. Renaissance • Authors of Renaissance literature presented many revolutionary ideas during this period in history (1485- 1680 C.E.) that focused on the central topics of humanism, classicism and secularism. • Humanism: People were intrigued by the idea of human power. Humanistic works focused on human traits and abilities. • Classicism: Authors drew on antiquity, were inspired by the works of the philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome. • Secularism: Dealt with issues of politics and personal concern outside of the realm of religion. (Wheeler, Kagan)

6. Renaissance Men • Erasmus: Known as the “Christian Gentleman” (Eder, 46) embodied the essential traits of the Renaissance humanist. Erasmus translated the bible into new Greek and Latin editions and was an opinionated critic of the religious figures of the time. He criticized those who abused their religious power, and satirized the overall hypocrisy of the age. Many historians hypothesize that Erasmus planted the seeds for Martin Luther’s radical protestant reformation. • Petrarch: Considered to be the first modern writer. Known for his sonnets and other works, which evaluated life and the human condition. (Eder, Kagan)

7. Renaissance Men • Machiavelli: The author of The Prince, Machiavelli was likely a sarcastic author, rather than the brutal figure he is perceived to be. He penned the words “The end justifies the means” in his political ‘how-to’ that suggested that rulers merely rule without moral judgment. • Boccaccio: Contemporary of Petrarch, known for the Decameron, a collection of stories that provide a commentary on the human condition. • Petrarch: Considered to be the first modern writer. Known for his sonnets and other works, which evaluated life and the human condition. (Eder, Kagan)

8. Enlightenment (1650- 1800) • The enlightenment was a period of great change in policies and beliefs politically, economically, and socially. • Philosophes criticized the status quo. • They produced many theories in literature for the betterment of humankind. • A ‘print culture’ emerged, the volume of printed material dramatically increased. • Key areas of discussion during this period include: • Human nature • The relationship between government and its people • Property • Natural laws and rights • Organized religion (Eder, Kagan)

9. Enlightenment Works Of note • Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan • Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract, Emile, and Confessions. • Denis Diderot: Encyclopedie • Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women • Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels • Voltaire: Candide • Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations • Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe • Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws • John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

10. Enlightenment thinkers • Rousseau: Developed the idea of the Noble Savage, and pushed for individualism, as well as individual human rights. His influence was profound, and his distrust of civilization in general led to new educational and political practices across Europe. • Voltaire: Staunch deist, advocate of human rights and fighter of injustice. He adamantly fought rigid religion and governmental abuse of power. He opposed censorship and was a fierce critic of society. • Smith: Smith advocated a “Laissez-faire” system of economics in which the government should stay out of the day to day economic affairs, allowing for natural regulation in the free market economy. (Eder, Kagan)

11. Enlightenment Thinkers • Newton: Synthesized Kepler and Galileo’s ideas into his Laws of Motion, pioneered physics and calculus. • Locke: Locke believed in the idea of a social contract; that the government has a duty to its people, and if the government is not able to do what is required, it should be altered by the people. Also influential, his term “Tabula Rasa,” a phrase that represented the idea that people are born a ‘blank slate,’ and over time are altered to become good or evil depending on their environment. Locke believed that people achieve equality as a result of their rights, not their abilities. He believed that humans should have the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. (Eder, Kagan)

12. Enlightenment Thinkers • Hobbes: Hobbes believed that, in order for the government to reach its potential, citizens of the state ought to give up some rights, in return for protection. He believed in an absolute monarchy with one state religion, in order for any country to be strong and unified. • Wollstonecraft: British writer, thought to be the first feminist. • Montesquieu: Political conservative, anti-aristocracy, brought forth the idea for the separation of powers in the government, his ideas were extremely influential in the writing of the American constitution later on. His book, Spirit of the Laws, was possibly the most influential book of the century. (Eder, Kagan)

13. Important Enlightenment Quotes • “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” -Rousseau • “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think; therefore I am”)-Descartes • “Knowledge is power” - Bacon • "Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.“- Diderot • “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”- Voltaire • “No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions”- Locke • “When America, the Negro countries…and so forth were discovered, they were to them [the Europeans], countries belonging to no one, since they counted the inhabitants as nothing.”- Kant (Eder, Kagan)

14. Romanticism (1798 – 1870) • The term, “Romanticism” was originally used to describe literature in 17th century Europe that writers saw as unrealistic, filled with emotions, or over the top in its stylistic tendencies. • Many people have come to used the terms “romantic” and “gothic” interchangeably to describe this type of literature. Romantic is the broad literary period/ category, gothic literature is a subset of this movement. • This movement, centered in Germany, played off of the type of material often seen in medieval romances. • Many romantic novels delved into dramatic new subject matter, often focusing on a character who lived on the edge of, or outside of normal society. (Kagan, Hauser)

15. romanticism • Romantic-style literature caught on first in Germany and England. In contrast to the systematic view, used by Enlightenment thinkers, who saw the universe as a machine; romanticism saw the world as organic, like a tree full of life. • This genre disregarded previous rules for form and technique, giving free reign to the reader’s imagination. • English writers believed that their writing was enhanced by following whatever whim their creative impulses felt. • The movement took longer, however to catch on in France. It was not until 1816 that a French writer, Henri Beyle, self-identified as a romantic writer that the style began to take hold. (Kagan, 643-648)

16. Romanticism Key ideals and identifying factors of the romantic literary movement: • Emphasis on emotion • Idealized nature • Importance of the individual • Emphasis on imagination • Dramatic/ bold subject matter • Often uses a ‘dark’ aura to build suspense Elements of gothic literature: • Evil characters • Evil actions or events • Spooky or lonely setting • Appearances of ghosts or spirits • Mood of horror or terror • Magical, mysterious, or supernatural occurrences • Subjects such as guilt, punishment and penance. (Hauser)

17. Romanticism Works Of note • Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto • Victor Hugo: Les Miserables • Mary Shelley: Frankenstein • Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Lyrical Ballads • Lord Byron: Don Juan, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage • William Wordsworth: The Prelude • Fredrick Schlegel: Lucinde • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, Faust • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology of Mind (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

18. Realism/Naturalism (1850-1914) • Gave a look into the dull verities of bourgeois life. • Used a pseudo-scientific perspective to bring objectivity to the hypocrisy and brutality of the time. • Rejected the idealization that was used previously in the Romantic movement, instead turning to the dark reality of the middle class way of life. • Realist writers often broached the subject of the flaws of society, exhibiting “alcoholism, prostitution, adultery, labor strife” (Kagan, 807) and other topics that had not previously been brought to light. • Writers like Zola and Ibsen worked to uncover the unpleasant immorality of the middle-class. (Kagan)

19. Realism Works Of note • Emile Zola: L’Assommoir • Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace • Claude Bernard: Introduction to the Study of Experimental Science • Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment • Charles Dickens: The Adventures of Oliver Twist • George Bernard Shaw: Mrs. Warren’s Profession • Two pieces of particular importance were Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert and A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen. (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

20. Madame Bovary Madame Bovary, the original ‘realistic’ novel, depicts a woman who is unsatisfied in her search for love, both in and outside of her marriage. This novel pours through the tragic personal details of a promiscuous bourgeois woman’s life. Ultimately, Madame Bovary finds that she feels too hopeless to carry on and chooses to commit suicide. This grim novel embodies the spirit of the realism movement, free from the pretense of heroism or civility- diverging completely from the idealized literature of the past. (Hawthorne)

21. A Doll’s House A Doll’s House tells the tale of Nora Helmer, a seemingly helpless wife, extremely dependent on her husband Torvald and her domestic life. In reality, her entire life is a ruse to cover up the fact that she is doing all kinds of desperate things to repay a loan on which she forged her father’s signature (without her husband’s knowledge.) As the plot develops, her façade crumbles. When Torvald realizes that Nora deceived him for such a long time, he becomes enraged and calls her unfit to raise his children. When they find out that there will, in fact, be no consequences for her forgery, he tries to take it all back. Unfortunately, he had revealed himself to be a selfish, hypocrite with no regard for her position in the matter. Nora, unimpressed, leaves Torvald, on a journey to find herself and become a woman, rather than a ‘doll’ without any illusion of independence. (Allen, Kashdan)

22. Victorian Period 1832- 1901 • A form of English realism. • Often critiqued the cruel reality that middle class members of society had to face. • The period of English history between the passage of the first Reform Bill (1832) and the death of Queen Victoria (reigned 1837–1901). • This period has a double-edged connotation; it is remembered for its strict social, political, and sexual conservatism, but at the same time, it saw prolific literary activity and significant social reform. (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

23. Victorian Works Of note • William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair • Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island • Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest • George Eliot: Middlemarch • Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights • Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre • Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations • Gerard Manley Hopkins: Pied Beauty • Anthony Trollope: Chronicles of Barsetshire • Lord Alfred Tennyson: The Charge of the Light Brigade (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

24. Modernism (1870’s – 1965) • Modernism, like realism, provided critique of morality of the middle class society. • Unlike realism, however, Modernism focused on aesthetics, rather than societal issues. • Modernism mirrored the upheaval seen in society as a result of WWI. • Proponents of Modernism toyed with new forms and styles of writing, including a technique called stream of consciousness. • Developed by Marcel Proust, the ‘stream of consciousness’ style allowed the author to explore all of the facets of their thought process without any suggested formatting rules. (Wheeler, Kagan)

25. Modernism-Stream of Consciousness “Novelists have always satisfied our curiosity about human motivation by revealing the private thoughts of their characters, but the classic novel contained this information within an objective description of their actions and interactions. The avantgarde novelists of the early 20th century believed that they could get closer to reality not by ‘telling’ but by ‘showing’ how it is experienced - subjectively.” -Author David Lodge, regarding the unique literary technique

26. Modernism-an example of stream of Consciousness Writing • "Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else. Maybe it was the city, being in the city, that made him feel how queer everything was and that it was something else. Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the names of the things. The names were tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex and oid or they were duroid (sani) or flexsan (duro), but everything was glass (but not quite glass) and the thing that you touched (the surface, washable, crease-resistant) was rubber, only it wasn't quite rubber and you didn't quite touch it but almost. The wall, which was glass but turned out on being approached not to be a wall, it was something else, it was an opening or doorway--and the doorway (through which he saw himself approaching) turned out to be something else, it was a wall. And what he had eaten not having agreed with him."(opening paragraph of "The Door" by E.B. White. The New Yorker, 1939)

27. Modernism Works Of note • Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own, Mrs. Dalloway • James Joyce: Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake • Marcel Proust: Remembrance of Things Past • George Orwell: Animal Farm • Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Warden of the Tomb • William Butler Yeats: The Tower • Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness • Alfred Doblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz • William Golding: Lord of the Flies • Albert Camus: The Stranger (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

28. Post-Modernism – 1965- Present • Literary and societal response to the elitism of high modernism, as well as the horrifying events of WWII. • Characterized by a strange mix of high and low culture. • Fragmentation, paradox, and narrators that are difficult to define are common. The style of writing evokes the absence of tradition in a modern consumer-driven, technologically based society. • Authors began to use a jumble of various ingredients, known as pastiche, that had not been seen as appropriate for literature before, in order to create a more complex story, filled with allusions to events and style of other literary works that took a certain level of education to recognize or even begin to appreciate. (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline)

29. Post-Modernism Works Of note • Rahld Dahl: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory • Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books • Alan Moore: Watchmen • Dmitry Galkovsky: The Infinite Deadlock • Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum • Vladimir Nabokov: Mother Night • John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman • VenediktErofeev: Moscow-Petushki • Walter Abish: How German Is It • Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas • George Perec: Life: A User’s Manual • Italo Calvino: If on a winter’s night a traveler (Wheeler, Lit. Timeline, Rickard)

32. Works Cited • Allen, Rodney. "A Doll's House: A Historical Introduction." Seminar English II. R. J. Reynolds High School, Winston Salem. Feb.-Mar. 2012. Lecture. • Eder, James M., and Seth A. Roberts. Barron's AP European History. 6th ed. Hauppauge, NY: Barrons Educational Series, 2012. Print. • Hauser, Kathryn. "The Classic Gothic, Romantic Novel: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." AP English Literature. Career Center High School, Winston Salem. Jan.-Feb. 2014. Lecture. • Hawthorne, Melanie. "Madame Bovary." Magill’s Survey Of World Literature, Revised Edition(2009): 1-2. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. • Jalic Inc. Literary Periods and Movements Graphical Timeline. Digital image. Online- literature.com. The Literature Network, 2011. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. • Kagan, Donald, Steven E. Ozment, and Frank M. Turner. The Western Heritage: Since 1300. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print. • Kashdan, Joanne G. "A Doll’s House." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. • "Literature Timeline." Literature Timeline. Tappan Zee High School English Department, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.

33. Works Cited • Lodge, David. "1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Best Stream-of-Consciousness Novels." Theguardian.com/us. The Guardian, 19 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. • The Mcclatchy Company. "Paradise Lost" 2011. "The American Enlightenment: Treasures from the Stanford University Libraries", Palo Alto, CA. EbscoHost. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. • Nordquist, Richard. "Stream of Consciousness." About.com Grammar & Composition. About.com, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. • Rickard, John, Ph.D., M.A., B.A. Literary History Timeline. Bucknell.edu. Bucknell University, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. • Viault, Birdsall S. Modern European History. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. Print. • Wheeler, L. K., Dr. Periods of Literature. Web.cn.edu. Dr. Kip Wheeler, Carson-Newman University, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. • White, E. B. "The Door." The New Yorker 25 Mar. 1939: 17. The New Yorker Archive. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.