Contextualize the text from a historical and cultural point of view.

15 – 20 lines

The Renaissance

Shakespeare lived and wrote during a remarkable period of English history, a time of
relative political stability and great development, 1485 - 1649. Science made it possible to
navigate, explorers set out to find a new world. The ideas of the Renaissance are strongly
influenced by the concept of humanism. The aim was to restore human values from antiquity
by reintroducing the philosophies, language and literature of the ancient Greece and Rome.
One of the major developments in English literature at this time is in drama. Some of
Shakespeare’s plays reflect historical and political tensions, others deal with common life
experiences which are described in comedy as well as tragedy. During this period poetry was
another important literary genre.

Enlightenment 1650 - 1800

The novel was written during the Enlightenment era, a period of scientific awakening, a
time of unprecedented optimism in the potential of knowledge and reason to understand and
change the world. It was believed that the use of reason and science could improve the human
condition. This period saw the rise of the political pamphlet and essay but the leading genre of
the Enlightenment became the novel. The hero of the novel was the average man, the middle-
class man, with a pragmatic common sense, and literature became very instructive; writers
aimed to educate readers through their stories, criticizing the flaws of society and individuals.
Most of the writers of this time wrote political pamphlets, but the best came from the pens of
Defoe and Swift. The novel writing was influences by travel literature, biographies, memoirs,
diaries.

Romanticism (1789-1832)
(S. Coleridge , J. Austen, J. Keats, W. Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville)

The author belongs to Romanticism, the literary period between 1789 – 1832,
approximately. It was an age greatly marked by the industrial development with serious
consequences on people’s lives, and the French Revolution of 1789, the focus of which was to
create political and social freedom, equality, brotherhood and democracy. As a result,
Romantics were enthusiastic about nature and especially appreciated areas in nature which had
not been touched by human intervention. Simple rural life, which had not been influenced or
ruined by the Industrial Revolution and in which man still lived in harmony with nature, was
seen as ideal. Romanticism saw a shift from faith in reason to faith in senses, feelings,
imagination. Poetry and novels are the most common genres. All these reflected in the works of
the most prominent romantic writers, including………………………….

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 Victorian Age (1837-1901)
(Dickens, L. Carroll, Hardy)

The author belongs to Victorian age, a period starting before the middle of the 19th
century, when the reign of Queen Victoria began, a time characterized by changes in the
political life, expansion of the British Empire, continuation of the industrialization. Religious
ideas were challenged by Darwin’s theory of evolutionism. It was a time of great energy and the
poets and novelists of the period were very productive as they sought to chronicle their exciting
age and provide it with a high moral tone and a refined taste in literature and arts.
The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted,
crowded with characters, and long. It was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to
entertain the middle class. They describe life as people experienced it giving an impression of
the life of the poor in industrialized cities in England in the middle of the 19th century

Realism (1861 – 1914 , 65 – 90 pt Am.)

(H. James 1881 – father of British modernism ; M. Twain)

Born at the end of the Civil war, the literary period in which …………… wrote, aimed to
recreate reality in literature. The years following the war symbolized a time of healing and
rebuilding. In literature this was a time of upheaval. As the United States grew rapidly after the
Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and
urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-
class affluence provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding
these rapid shifts in culture.
Realists are concerned with the effect of the work on their reader and the reader's life, a
pragmatic view. Pragmatism requires the reading of a work to have some verifiable outcome
for the reader that will lead to a better life for the reader. This lends an ethical tendency to
realism while focusing on common actions and minor catastrophes of middle class society.

Modernism (1914 – 1950)

(J. Conrad, J. Joyce, G.B. Shaw, V. Woolf, F.S. Fitzgerald am, E. Hemingway am, E. O’Neill am, W. Faulkner
am, T.S. Elliot am)

Modernism was a literary movement that lasted approximately from 1914-1950.

Modernism began the breaking of traditional writing styles that we know today. During this
period, artists began to develop their own individual styles
New technology and the horrifying events of both World Wars (but specifically World
War I) made many people question the future of humanity: What was becoming of the world?
Writers reacted to this question by turning toward Modernist sentiments. Gone was the
Romantic period that focused on nature and being. Modernist fiction spoke of the inner self
and consciousness. Instead of progress, the Modernist writer saw a decline of civilization.
Instead of new technology, the Modernist writer saw cold machinery and increased capitalism,
which alienated the individual and led to loneliness. To achieve the emotions described above,
most Modernist fiction was cast in first person. Whereas earlier, most literature had a clear
beginning, middle, and end (or introduction, conflict, and resolution), the Modernist story was
often more of a stream of consciousness, creating the feeling that the story is going nowhere.
Irony, satire, and comparisons were often employed to point out society's ills.
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 Post modernism (1950 - )
(Golding 1954)

The text belongs to postmodernism, a postwar cultural movement, started around 1950,
that reacted against tendencies in modernism, and was typically marked by revival of historical
elements and techniques. Postmodernist society is characterized by changes to institutions and
creations and with social and political results and innovations, globally but especially in the
West.
Postmodern authors tend to depict the world as having already undergone countless
disasters and being beyond redemption or understanding. Postmodern literature reflects late
modern society by showing the individual’s inability to establish a personal identity based on a
historical or social background, let alone family and work. Postmodern literature is, to a great
extent, a play on words which reflects the meaninglessness of the late modern world, which is
seen as fragmented, disoriented, chaotic, but this leads neither to despair nor to any wish to re-
establish order. The binary contrasts of good/evil, true/false, real/unreal and order/chaos have
been abolished. The world is pure surface, it is what it appears to be. Hence each individual
creates his or her own world and identity through the pictures which he or she sees in literature
and other art forms or in the so-called world. The Great Narratives, which began to be
questioned in Modernism, are rejected in Postmodernism. There is no acknowledgment of a
universal truth.