English Literature Throughout History: A Brief Overview (part 4)
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This article is the last part of our series about the history of English literature here on the blog. In this series, we travel through ten literary periods, starting from 450 AC until now. We’ll focus mostly on British authors in this series, but be mindful that many great non-British writers have also made significant contributions to the advancement of English literature.
In this blog, you’ll learn about two more literary periods. The first of these periods is the Modern Period, which began after the start of the First World War in 1914 on the 28th of July. The second period is the Postmodern Period which began around the end of the Second World War.
1. The Modern Period (1914 - ….)
The modern period in literature was greatly influenced by the First World War and the Industrial Revolution. Irish poet William Butler Yeats’ 1919 poem called ‘The Second Coming’ has a verse that represents the chaos of war and is often used to illustrate the core feeling of the modernist movement. The verse reads: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.
Five defining elements of literature from this period were experimentation, absurdity, symbolism, individualism and formalism. These elements are explained here below:
- Individualism was shown in literature by focusing predominantly on the experience of one person instead of societal events as a whole.
- Experimentation in literature was seen in poetry going against traditional rhyme or rhythm, and instead expressing the poetic writing in free verse.
- Absurdity in literature meant that stories would take surrealist or nonsensical turns. The increase in absurdity eventually fuelled the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ movement, of which a well-known example is Beckett’s play ‘Waiting for Godot’.
- Symbolism in literature was seen by leaving ‘blank spaces’ in writing to make it possible for the reader to make meaning of the text with their own personal interpretations. An example of this is using metaphors, objects, or symbols in texts which are not explicitly explained within the text.
- Formalism in literature was seen in the creation of creative and original ‘forms’. What the writing looked like visually played a role it previously hadn't. An example of this is poets spreading out their words and phrases on a page instead of one phrase neatly following one another. To illustrate this, see the E.E. Cummings poem below:
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2. The Postmodern Period (1945 - ….)
There is no exact consensus on when the postmodern period in literature began, but we can say that it likely began somewhere in the years around when the Second World War ended. Its characteristics, embracing meaninglessness and chaos fully, were a reaction to the horrific wars and destruction of the times.
Other elements that defined postmodernism were a sense of playfulness, like irony and black humour, and the use of fragmentation in literature. Intertextuality was also on the rise during this time. This occurs when writing is in direct ‘dialogue’ with other texts, for instance, with the use of ‘pastiche’ (i.e. imitation of another author’s style).
Some notable postmodern works are Joseph Heller’s novel ‘Catch-22’, Anthony Burgess’ novel ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and the previously noted play ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett.
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I hope you enjoyed reading this last part of our series on English literary periods! If you enjoy this topic and want to learn more, you can read all other parts of this series via the following links: part 1, part 2, and part 3. And finally, I invite you to continue the conversation on English literature on our lively blog: you can find the dedicated discussion topic here!