A literary movement is a period of time when numerous authors produced works with similar subjects, approaches, patterns, or sensibilities. Literary movements are often shaped by social, political, cultural, and economic conditions of the time.

Here are 5 literary movements that shook the world.

Early Modernism and its contradicting theories about reality and art

In the 1900s, the industrial development surge caused a shift in literary awareness, producing such styles as Virginia Woolf’s non-objective stream of consciousness and Emmanuel Kant’s approach to portraying “the thing in itself.” The Modernists attempted to communicate that reality is very difficult to portray through art. They had a mistrust of authority and a desire to break away from traditional Western literary conventions.

High modernism began in the 1920s. This is considered the Golden age of modernist literature. Notable works from this period include Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

The Freedom of Romanticism

The Romantic era of literature began in 1798 and ended in 1832. This period saw the celebration of imagination, spontaneity, subjectivity, and the allure of nature in literature. The Romantic era began as a revolt against the stringent scientific approach and limitations of the Age of Enlightenment. It was also, in part, a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Romantics in the UK include William Blake, John Keats, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In America, Romantic literature was produced by Herman Melville, John Greenleaf Whittier, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Cullen Bryant.

The English Renaissance’s Poetry and Drama

AD 1500-AD 1660 is probably the most famous period in English literature. This was the time of Shakespeare – possibly the most well-known author who ever lived – as well as Francis Bacon, John Milton, John Donne, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and Walter Raleigh. This period is known as the English Renaissance, which was a particularly strong era for poetry and drama.

Variety in Middle English Literature

Before the English Renaissance, there was the medieval period. In literature, the period between AD 500 and AD 1500 is known as the Middle English era. The three main categories of literature from this period are religious, courtly love, and Arthurian. Famous works in Middle English literature include Beowulf, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These works are commonly studied in high school level literature.

The Beat Generation and Upbeat Literature

The 1950s and ‘60s saw the rise of the bohemian movement, which was all about sex, alternative sexualities, drugs, jazz music, poetry readings in coffeehouses, interest in Eastern religions, spiritual liberation, anti-materialism, and a search for enlightenment. Notable works from the Beat writers include Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. The phrase “Beat generation” was first used by Kerouac in a conversation with John Clellon Holmes to characterize a subversive, anti-conformist youth subculture in New York.