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LITERARY PERIODS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Classical Period: Greece / Classical Period: Rome / Medieval Period
Time frame? / 2000 BC – 146 BC / 753 BC to 476 AD / 476 AD to 1500 AD
Region of origin? / Greece / Rome / Western Europe
What did the period emphasize? /
  • early forms of democracy (Athens)
  • individual freedoms
  • power of rational thought
  • ideals of beauty and justice
  • development of alphabet
  • drama festivals/competitions
  • athletic competitions (Olympics)
  • trade by sea
  • citizenship and its rights, protection and duties
  • support of sculptors, architects, and potters (statues, great buildings and vases)
  • Support of writers (supported by the 9Muses – goddesses of arts and sciences)
/
  • Military strength and use of the army for building and expansion projects
  • Absolute rule by the paterfamilias who decided all for the family
  • Middle class developed made up of plebians who were civil servants and merchants, tradesmen, etc.
  • Joining the army for 25 years was a way to escape poverty
  • Women could own property, appear in public, and control their own money
  • Invented concrete and perfected the arch
  • Construction of roads all over the empire
  • Public entertainment in the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum
/
  • Economic system called feudalism where lords granted lands in exchange for loyalty and military service. The lord’s estate, the manor, was a self-sufficient community. Peasants called serfs worked the manor lands.
  • Church was a civilizing force that guided conduct. Cathedrals were built as expressions of faith and sites for pilgrimages.
  • Castles were built for protection from constant warfare. Knights followed a code of conduct known as chivalry.
  • Towns and cities grew. Guilds, organizations of skilled workers, gained great influence.
  • Universities were founded.

Major historical and/or social influences? /
  • Trojan War
  • Independent city states such as Athens, Sparta (major military state), Thebes and Corinth
  • Persian Wars (city states vs. Persians)
  • Pericles rules Athens during Golden Age (461 -429 BC)
  • Peloponnesian War (between Sparta and Athens who lost in 404 BC)
  • Alexander the Great defeated Greek city states (334 -323 BC)
  • Romans take over Greek lands (146 – 30 BC)
/
  • Largest empire of Western Civilization
  • Longest period of peace (Pax Romana)
  • Influence of Latin in the development of Italian, French, and Spanish
  • Spread of Christianity (official religion in 391 AD)
  • Roman law – right to equal treatment under the law, innocent until proven guilty, burden of proof rests with accuser
  • Punic Wars – gained control of the Mediterranean Sea
  • Conquests and rule (46 -44 BC) by Julius Caesar
  • Caesar Augustus (Octavius) first emperor who ushered in a golden age of art, architecture, and literature
  • Art forms (frescoes, bas-relief and mosaic)
  • Fall of Rome mainly from being overrun by Germanic tribes from the north
/
  • Collapse of the Western Roman Empire which created a collection of tribal kingdoms.
  • Trade, communication, and many cities died out.
  • Rise of Christianity in the form of the Roman Catholic Church, both as a religious and political force.
  • Rise of power of Charles Martel (Franks) and later his grandson, Charlemagne
  • William of Normandy (William the Conqueror) invaded England in 1066.
  • Crusades – wars to free Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Pope Urban II called for these holy wars beginning in 1095.
  • Spread of the Black Death, the bubonic plague, with one of the most severe occurring between 1347-1352.
  • The Great Schism where rival popes ruled in Rome and France.
  • Hundreds Years’ War (1337-1453) England against France (Joan of Arc)

Major writers? /
  • Homer (Iliad and Odyssey)
  • Aesop (fables)
  • Philosophers (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle)
  • Aeschylus (The Persians)
  • Sophocles (Oedipus)
  • Euripides (The Trojan Women)
  • Aristophanes (The Frogs)
/
  • Virgil (Aeneid)
  • Ovid (Metamorphoses)
  • Plautus (playwright)
  • Terence (playwright)
  • Horace (poet – odes)
  • Cicero (philosophy)
  • Livy (history)
  • Tacitus (history)
/
  • Beowulf (Anonymous)
  • The Song of Roland (Anonymous) French
  • Song of My Cid (Anonymous) Spanish
  • Chretien de Troyes (Perceval)
  • Marie de France (The Lay of the Were-Wolf)
  • Dante (The Divine Comedy:
one part called “The Inferno.”
  • Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales)

Characteristics of the literature? /
  • mythology (stories of gods/goddesses)
  • poetry – epic (Homer) and lyric (Sappho)
  • drama (tragedy and comedy)
/
  • Imitated the Greek format of epic poetry, lyric poetry, tragedies and comedies
  • Emphasized what it meant to be Roman: duty, discipline, integrity, and dignity.
/
  • Oral traditions – traveling poet-musicians or troubadours told of heroic deeds, human joys and sorrows.
  • These epic songs/poems, called romances, told of a young hero often on a quest for an object like the Holy Grail or some truth.

Renaissance
(Neoclassical) / Enlightenment
(Age of Reason) / Romanticism
Time frame? / 1300 - 1700 / 1700-1789 / 1800-1840
Region of origin? / Italy and then spread west into England / Europe / Europe
What did the period emphasize? /
  • The “rebirth” of the study of the classical learning of Greece and Rome
  • Development of the scientific method
  • Humanism – celebrated human beauty and potential
/
  • Focused on the concerns of all men – from government to personal happiness
  • Equality of all men
  • Championed science and reason
/
  • Rejected science and reason and emphasized nature in an idealized form, emotion, and individual experience
  • Political and social change
  • Spread of nationalism – devotion to one’s nation rather than to a ruler

Major historical and/or social influences? /
  • The concept of the “nation” with powerful monarchs (Elizabeth I, 1558 - 1603)
  • Age of Discovery – explorers travel and discover the world (Christopher Columbus 1492, Magellan, 1522)
  • Galileo – idea that earth was not the center of the universe
  • Protestant Reformation – religious reform started by Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the cathedral door in Wittenberg
  • Johann Gutenberg – printing press with moveable type
  • Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo – painting and sculpture
/
  • American Revolution 1776
  • French Revolution 1789
/
  • Rise and fall of Napoleon Boneparte
  • Successful revolutions leading to the independence of Greece and Belgium
  • Artists focused on the dramatic and imaginative as well as individual feelings and beliefs as subject matter
  • Beethoven – used classical forms but to express Romantic ideals such as passion and the dramatic

Major writers? /
  • Italy – Giovanni Boccaccio, “Federigo’s Falcon”
  • Spain - Miguel de Cervantes, DonQuixote
  • France – Moliere, The Miser
  • England – Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
/
  • John Locke – concept of tabula rasa (clean slate) that all are born with the same potential
  • Mary Wollstonecraft – women had as much potential as men
  • Jean Jacques Rousseau – concept of government by the consent of the governed
  • Voltaire – each individual has rights
/
  • Arthur Schopenhauer – philosopher who believed the world is understood as people perceive it through their senses.
  • William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge – Lyrical Ballads
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust
  • Heinrich Heine – The Lorelei

Characteristics of the literature? /
  • Precursors to the novel
  • Lyric poetry – Shakespeare’s sonnets
  • Drama
/
  • Essays/treatises
  • Philosophy
  • Newspapers
  • Encyclopedias
/ Characteristics of all forms: emphasis on emotion, imagination, the individual, and nature.
Realism / Modernism / Contemporary
(Post-Modernism)
Time frame? / 1840-1900 / 1890-1945 / 1945 - present
Region of origin? / Europe / Europe/United States / Globally
What did the period emphasize? /
  • Scientific discoveries and inventions (light bulb, photography, Darwin’s theory of evolution)
  • Imperialism of major European nations (colonization)
  • Mass production
/
  • Technological advances in science and invention: (ie.) Thomas Edison – light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), Louis Pasteur (concept of germs), Marie Curie (radioactivity), Albert Einstein (physics)
  • Other inventions: automobile, radio, airplane
/
  • Vast advances in science and technology: television, computers, genetics, nuclear energy, etc.
  • Space Exploration
  • Philosophy: Existentialism

Major historical and/or social influences? /
  • Industrial Revolution
  • Growth of factories and poor working class/child labor
  • Expansion of railroads
  • Attempts at reform: suffrage, freedom of slaves in English and French lands and serfs in Russia
  • Unification of Germany and Italy
  • Free public education (by end of period)
  • Discovery by Louis Pasteur that bacteria caused disease.
/
  • World War I
  • Great Depression
  • Rise of Fascism and Nazism
  • Communism
  • World War II
  • Holocaust
  • Women’s Suffrage
  • Ideas of Sigmund Freud
/
  • End of Colonialism in Africa, Latin America, and Asia
  • Cold War
  • United Europe
  • Middle East as a hot spot
  • Nuclear Age

Major writers? /
  • Guy de Maupassant (“Old Milon”)
  • Anton Chekhov (“A Problem”)
  • Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist)
  • Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
  • Henrik Ibsen (A Doll’s House)
  • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (The Communist Manifesto)
  • Charles Darwin (The Origin of the Species)
/
  • Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
/
  • Albert Camus (“The Guest”) –Algeria
  • Yasunari Kawabata (“The Jay”) – Japan
  • Naguib Mahfouz (“Half a Day”) - Egypt
  • J.D. Salinger ( The Catcher in the Rye) – U.S.A.
  • Chinua Achebe (“Dead Men’s Path”) – Nigeria
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez (“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”) - Colombia

Characteristics of the literature? /
  • Examined real life as it is (rejection of Romanticism and its idealism)
  • Addressed social and political issues
  • Emphasis on development of the novel
  • Drama that was realistic in content, staging and language
/
  • Literary world becomes more connected in a global way than ever before esp. interaction between Western world and nations of Asia
  • Themes emphasized despair, alienation, disillusionment, lack of values and direction
  • Form of works reflected the content. For example, poetry abandoned traditional forms of meter, rhyme, stanzas for free verse
  • Themes were implied, not directly stated, creating a sense of uncertainty – readers were on their own to draw conclusions.
  • Stream of Consciousness – rapid and jumbled flow of a character’s thoughts and feelings are presented as it occurs
/
  • Theater of the Absurd
  • Surrealism
  • Magical Realism
  • Apartheid literature
  • Postcolonial writing in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean
  • Eastern European and Russian dissidents