List of literary movements

Literary movements are a way to divide literature into categories of similar philosophical, topical, or aesthetic
features, as opposed to divisions by genre or period. Like other categorizations, literary movements provide
language for comparing and discussing literary works. These terms are helpful for curricula or anthologies.[1]

Some of these movements (such as Dada and Beat) were defined by the members themselves, while other
terms (for example, the metaphysical poets) emerged decades or centuries after the periods in question. Further,
some movements are well defined and distinct, while others, like expressionism, are nebulous and overlap with
other definitions. Because of these differences, literary movements are often a point of contention between
scholars.[1]

The list
This is a list of modern literary movements: that is, movements after the Renaissance. Ordering is approximate,
as there is considerable overlap.
 Notable
Movement Description
authors
Richard
17th-century English royalist poets, writing primarily about courtly love, Lovelace,
Cavalier Poets
called Sons of Ben (after Ben Jonson) William
Davenant
John Donne,
Metaphysical 17th-century English movement using extended conceit, often (though not George
poets always) about religion. Herbert,
Andrew Marvell
Eliza Haywood,
Romantic fiction popular around 1660 to 1730; notable for preceding the Delarivier
Amatory fiction
modern novel form and producing several prominent female authors [2] Manley, Aphra
Behn
Alexander
18th-century literary movement based chiefly on classical ideals, satire and
The Augustans Pope, Jonathan
skepticism
Swift

A precursor to the romantic movement, Sturm und Drang is named for a play Johann
by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. Sturm and Drang literature often features a Wolfgang von
Sturm und Drang protagonist which is driven by emotion, impulse and other motives that run Goethe,
Friedrich
counter to the enlightenment rationalism.[3][4]
Schiller
Mary Shelley,
Victor Hugo,
19th-century (1800 to 1860) movement emphasizing emotion and
Lord Byron,
Romanticism imagination, rather than logic and scientific thought. Response to the
Camilo Castelo
Enlightenment
Branco Adam
Mickiewicz
Edgar Allan
Poe, Nathaniel
19th-century American movement in reaction to Transcendentalism. Finds Hawthorne,
Dark romanticism man inherently sinful and self-destructive and nature a dark, mysterious Herman
force Melville, Edwin
Arlington
Robinson
Washington
Distinct from European Romanticism, the American form emerged Irving,
American somewhat later, was based more in fiction than in poetry, and incorporated a Nathaniel
Romanticism (sometimes almost suffocating) awareness of history, particularly the Hawthorne,
darkest aspects of American history Ambrose
Bierce
Ann Radcliffe,
Bram Stoker,
Fiction in which Romantic ideals are combined with an interest in the
Gothic novel Harper Lee,
supernatural and in violence
Edgar Allan
Poe
William
Wordsworth,
A group of Romantic poets from the English Lake District who wrote about
Lake Poets Samuel Taylor
nature and the sublime
Coleridge,
Robert Southey
Dante Gabriel
19th-century, primarily English movement based ostensibly on undoing Rossetti,
Pre-Raphaelitism
innovations by the painter Raphael. Many were both painters and poets Christina
Rossetti
Transcendentalism 19th-century American movement: poetry and philosophy concerned with Ralph Waldo
self-reliance, independence from modern technology Emerson,
 Henry David
Thoreau
Gustave
Flaubert,
William Dean
Howells,
Stendhal,
Late-19th-century movement based on a simplification of style and image
Realism Honoré de
and an interest in poverty and everyday concerns
Balzac, Leo
Tolstoy, Fyodor
Dostoevsky,
Frank Norris,
Eça de Queiroz
Émile Zola,
Stephen Crane,
Late 19th century. Proponents of this movement believe heredity and Guy de
Naturalism
environment control people Maupassant,
Theodore
Dreiser

Verismo is a derivative of naturalism and realism that began in post- Giovanni

unification Italy. Verismo literature uses detailed character development Verga, Luigi
Verismo based on psychology, in Giovanni Verga's words 'the science of the human Capuana,
Matilde Serao,
heart.[5]'
Grazia Deledda
Maxim Gorky,
Socialist realism is a subset of realist art which focuses on communist Nikolai
Ostrovsky,
values and realist depiction.[6] It developed in the Soviet Union and was
Mikhail
Socialist realism imposed as state policy by Joseph Stalin in 1934,[7] though authors in other Sholokhov, Lu
socialist countries and members of the communist party in non-socialist Xun, Takiji
counties also partook in the movement Kobayashi,
Mike Gold
Gabriel García
Márquez,
Octavio Paz,
Literary movement in which magical elements appear in otherwise realistic
Günter Grass,
Magical realism circumstances. Most often associated with the Latin American literary boom
Julio Cortázar,
of the 20th century
Sadegh
Hedayat, Malay
Roy Choudhury
In the mid 19th century, decadence came to refer to moral decay, and was
attributed as the cause of the fall of great civilizations, like the Roman Joris-Karl
empire. The decadent movement was a response to the perceived Huysmans,
decadence within the earlier Romantic, naturalist and realist movements in Gustav
Decadent
Flaubert,
movement France at this time.[8] The decadent movement takes decadence in literature
Charles
to an extreme, with characters who debase themselves for pleasure,[9] and Baudelaire,
the use of metaphor, symbolism and language as tools to obfuscate the Oscar Wilde
truth rather than expose it[10]

Principally French movement of the fin de siècle, symbolism is codified by Stéphane

the Symbolist Manifesto in 1886, and focused on the structure of thought Mallarmé,
Symbolism Arthur
rather than poetic form or image;[11] influential for English language poets
Rimbaud, Paul
from Edgar Allan Poe to James Merrill
Valéry
Filippo
Codified in 1909 by the Manifesto of Futurism, futurism avoids being Tommaso
Futurism intellectual and using fixed syntax or style, makes use of irony and analogy, Marinetti, Mina
and is to be written intuitively or from inspiration[12] Loy, Jaroslav
Seifert
Stream of Early-20th-century fiction consisting of literary representations of quotidian Virginia Woolf,
consciousness thought, without authorial presence James Joyce
Ezra Pound, T.
S. Eliot, H.D.,
James Joyce,
Variegated movement of the early 20th century, encompassing primitivism,
Modernism Gertrude Stein,
formal innovation, or reaction to science and technology
Fernando
Pessoa, Knut
Hamsun
Franz Kafka,
Alfred Döblin,
Part of the larger expressionist movement, literary and theatrical Gottfried
Expressionism expressionism is an avant-garde movement originating in Germany, which Benn,[13]
rejects realism in order to depict emotions and subjective thoughts[13] Heinrich Mann,
Oskar
Kokoschka
Ezra Pound,
Poetry based on description rather than theme, and on the motto, "the
Imagism H.D., Richard
natural object is always the adequate symbol."
Aldington
Siegfried
First World War British poets who documented both the idealism and the horrors of the war Sassoon,
Poets and the period in which it took place Rupert Brooke,
Wilfred Owen
F. Scott
The term 'Lost Generation' is traditionally attributed to Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald,
was then popularized by Ernest Hemingway in the epigraph to his novel The Ernest
The Lost Sun Also Rises, and his memoir A Moveable Feast. It refers to a group of Hemingway,
Generation American literary notables who lived in Paris and other parts of Europe from Ezra Pound,
the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Waldo Pierce,
Great Depression John Dos
Passos
Kurt
Touted by its proponents as anti-art, dada focused on going against artistic
Dada Schwitters,
norms and conventions
Subimal Mishra
Manuel Maples
Mexican artistic avant-garde movement. They exalted modern urban life and Arce, Arqueles
Stridentism
social revolution Vela, Germán
List Arzubide
A Mexican vanguardist group, active in the late 1920s and early 1930s; Xavier
Los
published an eponymous literary magazine which served as the group's Villaurrutia,
Contemporáneos
mouthpiece and artistic vehicle from 1928 to 1931 Salvador Novo
African American poets, novelists, and thinkers, often employing elements Langston
Harlem
of blues and folklore, based in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in Hughes, Zora
Renaissance
the 1920s Neale Hurston
The Jindyworobak movement originated in Adelaide, South Australia during
Jindyworobak the great depression. It sought to preserve uniquely Australian culture from Rex Ingamells,
movement external influence by incorporating Australian aboriginal languages and Xavier Herbert
mythology and unique Australian settings[14][15]
Jean Cocteau,
José María
Originally a French movement, influenced by Surrealist painting, that uses Hinojosa
Surrealism surprising images and transitions to play off of formal expectations and Lasarte, André
depict the unconscious rather than conscious mind Breton, Sadegh
Hedayat, Mário
Cesariny
Southern A group of Southern American poets, based originally at Vanderbilt John Crowe
Agrarians University, who expressly repudiated many modernist developments in favor Ransom,
 of metrical verse and narrative. Some Southern Agrarians were also Robert Penn
associated with the New Criticism Warren
Jorge Luis
Borges,
Thomas
Postwar movement skeptical of absolutes and embracing diversity, irony, Pynchon,
Postmodernism
and word play Alasdair Gray,
Samir
Roychoudhury,
Kurt Vonnegut

The absurdist movement is derived from absurdist philosophy, which argues Jean-Paul
that life is inherently purposeless and questions truth and value. As such, Sartre, Samuel
Absurdism asburdist literature and theatre of the absurd often includes dark humor, Beckett, Albert
Camus, Gao
satire, and incongruity.[16]
Xingjian
Charles Olson,
A self-identified group of poets, originally based at Black Mountain College,
Black Mountain Denise
who eschewed patterned form in favor of the rhythms and inflections of the
Poets Levertov,
human voice
Robert Creeley
Jamaica
Kincaid, V. S.
Naipaul, Derek
Walcott,
A diverse, loosely connected movement of writers from former colonies of Salman
Postcolonialism
European countries, whose work is frequently politically charged Rushdie,
Giannina
Braschi, Wole
Soyinka,
Chinua Achebe
Shakti
Chattopadhyay,
Malay Roy
Choudhury,
Binoy
A literary movement in postcolonial India (Kolkata) during 1961–65 as a Majumdar,
Hungryalist Poets
counter-discourse to Colonial Bengali poetry Samir
Roychoudhury,
Debi Roy,
Sandipan
Chattopadhyay,
Subimal Basak
This ongoing movement launched in 1969 based in Calcutta, by the
Vattacharja
Prakalpana Prakalpana group of Indian writers in Bengali literature, who created new
Chandan, Dilip
Movement forms of Prakalpana fiction, Sarbangin poetry and the philosophy of
Gupta
Chetanavyasism, later it had spread worldwide
Jack Kerouac,
Allen Ginsberg,
American movement of the 1950s and 1960s concerned with counterculture William S.
Beat poets
and youthful alienation. Burroughs, Ken
Kesey, Gregory
Corso
Spalding Gray,
Laurie
A postmodern literary movement where writers use their speaking voice to Anderson,
present fiction, poetry, monologues, and storytelling arising from Beat Hedwig Gorski,
Spoken Word poetry, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights movement in the urban Pedro Pietri,
centers of the United States.[17] The textual origins differ and may have Piri Thomas,
been written for print initially then read aloud for audiences Giannina
Braschi,
Taalam Acey
 Performance This is the lasting viral component of Spoken Word and one of the most Beau Sia,
Poetry popular forms of poetry in the 21st century. It is a new oral poetry originating Hedwig Gorski,
in the 1980s in Austin, Texas, using the speaking voice and other theatrical Bob Holman,
elements. Practitioners write for the speaking voice instead of writing poetry Marc Smith,
for the silent printed page. The major figure is American Hedwig Gorski who David Antin,
began broadcasting live radio poetry with East of Eden Band during the early Taalam Acey
1980s. Gorski, considered a post-Beat, created the term Performance
Poetry to define and distinguish what she and the band did from
performance art. Instead of books, poets use audio recordings and digital
media along with television spawning Slam Poetry and Def Poets on
television and Broadway
Robert Lowell,
Confessional Poetry that, often brutally, exposes the self as part of an aesthetic of the
Sylvia Plath,
poetry beauty and power of human frailty
Alicia Ostriker
Frank O'Hara,
New York School Urban, gay or gay-friendly, leftist poets, writers, and painters of the 1960s
John Ashbery
Raymond
Queneau,
Mid-20th-century poetry and prose based on seemingly arbitrary rules for the
Oulipo Walter Abish,
sake of added challenge
Georges Perec,
Italo Calvino
René
A literary movement founded in the late 1960s by René Philoctète, Jean- Philoctète,
Spiralism Claude Fignolé, and Frankétienne. Spiralism defines life at the level of Jean-Claude
relations (colors, odors, sounds, signs, words) and historical connections Fignolé,
Frankétienne
The Misty Poets were Chinese poets who resisted state artistic restrictions Bei Dao, Gu
Misty Poets imposed during the Cultural Revolution. They made use of metaphors and Cheng, Shu
hermetic imagery and avoided objective facts.[18] Ting, Yang Lian

John Brunner,
The New Wave is a movement in science fiction produced in the 1960s and M. John
1970s and characterized by a high degree of experimentation, both in form Harrison,
and in content, a "literary" or artistic sensibility, and a focus on "soft" as Norman
New Wave
opposed to hard science. New Wave writers often saw themselves as part of Spinrad,
science fiction
the modernist tradition and sometimes mocked the traditions of pulp science Barrington J.
fiction, which some of them regarded as stodgy, adolescent and poorly Bayley,
written.[19] Thomas M.
Disch
Molly Peacock,
Brad
A late-20th and early 21st century movement in American poetry advocating Leithauser,
New Formalism
a return to traditional accentual-syllabic verse Timothy
Steele, Mary
Jo Salter

References
1. Milne, Ira Mark (2009). Literary Movements for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and
Criticism on Literary Movements (2 ed.). Detroit: Gale. pp. xi–xii. ISBN 978-1-4144-3719-4.
2. Backscheider, Paula R.; Richetti, John J. (1996-01-01). Popular Fiction by Women, 1660-1730:
An Anthology (https://books.google.com/books?id=JZthQgAACAAJ). Clarendon Press.
ISBN 9780198711360.
3. Leidner, Alan C. Sturm Und Drang: The German Library. 14. New York: The Continuum
Publishing Company, 1992
4. "Sturm und Drang". Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Springfield, MA: Merriam-
Webster, Incorporated. 1995.
 5. Giger, Andreas (August 2007). "Verismo: Origin, Corruption, and Redemption of an Operatic
Term". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 60 (2): 271–315.
doi:10.1525/jams.2007.60.2.271 (https://doi.org/10.1525%2Fjams.2007.60.2.271).
6. Korin, Pavel, “Thoughts on Art”, Socialist Realism in Literature and Art. Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1971, p. 95.
7. "1934: Writers' Congress" (https://web.archive.org/web/20131208100515/http://soviethistory.or
g/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1934writers&Year=1934). Seventeen Moments in
Soviet History. Archived from the original (http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject
&SubjectID=1934writers&Year=1934) on 8 December 2013. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
8. Desmarais, Jane (2013). Edited by Jane Ford, Kim Edwards Keates, Patricia Pulham.
"Perfume Clouds: Olfaction, Memory, and Desire in Arthur Symon's London Nights (1895)".
Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Siècle: Libidinal Lives: 62–82.
9. Huneker, James (1909). Egoists, a Book of Supermen: Stendahl, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole
France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello.
ISBN 0404105254 – via Kindle Edition.
10. "The Differences between Symbolism and Decadence" (https://wildedecadence.wordpress.co
m/2014/03/03/the-differences-between-symbolism-and-decadence/). Oscar Wilde and the
French Decadents. 2014-03-03. Retrieved 2017-01-23.
11. Conway Morris, Roderick The Elusive Symbolist movement article – International Herald
Tribune, March 17, 2007.
12. Clough, Rosa Trillo (1942). Looking Back on Futurism. New York: Cocce Press. pp. 53–66.
ISBN 9781258532314.
13. Richard Murphy, Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of
Postmodernity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999, p. 43.
14. "Jindyworobak movement" (https://www.britannica.com/art/Jindyworobak-movement).
Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 13 August 2018.
15. Smith, Ellen (1 May 2012). "Local Moderns : The Jindyworobak Movement and Australian
Modernism". Australian Literary Studies. 27 (1): 1–17. doi:10.20314/als.927d4ae36b (https://do
i.org/10.20314%2Fals.927d4ae36b). ISSN 0004-9697 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0004-969
7).
16. Cornwell, Neil (2006), The Absurd in Literature, New York, NY: Manchester University Press,
ISBN 978-0-7190-7409-7
17. Folkways, Smithsonian. "Say It Loud" (http://www.folkways.si.edu/explore_folkways/spoken_w
ord.aspx). Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
18. "A Brief Guide to Misty Poets" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100412152855/http://www.poets.
org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5663). Poets.org. Archived from the original (http://www.poets.org/v
iewmedia.php/prmMID/5663) on 2010-04-12. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
19. Moorcock, Michael. "Play with Feeling." New Worlds 129 (April 1963), pp. 123-27.

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