1. Post-Enlightenment Movements
More Literary History!
Post-Enlightenment Movements

2. Where we were: Rationalism
A movement around the idea that knowledge can be obtained by reason alone
Think: The Enlightenment

3. Themes of Rationalism:
Self-knowledge and self-control
Reason and scientific observation
Rule of law and order
Man’s ability to perfect himself and society, and freedom from restrictive laws

4. Romanticism
In contrast with logic and reasoning (RATIONALISM), Romanticism felt
that reason was
limited.

5. Romanticism ( )
Reaction to the Industrial Revolution as well as a revolt to The Enlightenment, which had rationalized nature
English society undergoing a major paradigm shift, so early Romantics yearned for a “simpler past”
Validated strong emotion and focused on the individual rather than society
In America, movement delayed from roughly 1830 up to the Civil War. American literature championed the romantic novel.

6. Challenging Traditional Structure
Traditional rules loosened
High-brow language replaced with language more natural to how people speak
Poetry: rhymed stanzas gave way to blank verse: unrhymed but rhythmic style
Popular themes included “country life” or pastoral poetry as well as mythological and fantastical settings

7. Romanticism FEELING INTUITION IMAGINATION …all trump reason
Valued nature…unspoiled, beautiful, wild…
Focused on everyday objects, reading great feeling into them… Let’s TRY IT!

8. Activity 
1. Describe the next image as a Rationalist. 2. Describe the next image as a Romanticist.

10. Realism ( )
Focused on depictions of contemporary life and society as it was, or is
Attention to detail, and an effort to replicate the true nature of reality in a way that novelists had never attempted.
Belief that the novel’s function is simply to report what happens, without comment or judgment.

11. Transcendentalism (1830-1860)
Belief that knowledge could be arrived at not just through the senses, but through intuition and contemplation of the internal spirit.
Skeptical of all established religions, believing that Divinity resided in the individual

12. Victorian ( )
Adult literacy increases and as a result, the novel becomes popular
Publication often made in installments to make texts more affordable
Novels were often idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue was rewarded and wrongdoers punished
Subjects tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart
Famous works: Dicken’s Oliver Twist and Great Expectations; Charlotte & Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre

13. Naturalism (1870-1920) An outgrowth of Realism
Sought to go further and be more explanatory than Realism by identifying underlying causes for a person’s actions or beliefs.
Belief that certain factors, such as heredity and social conditions, were unavoidable determinants in one’s life.
Ex: A poor immigrant could not escape their life of poverty because their preconditions were the only formative aspects in his or her existence that mattered.