This site is being tweaked a little bit now. I'm taking what once was just my British Literature Blogsite and am going to turn it into a showcase of my education with Literature. So as a result it is time to take my page tabs from being 'Age of Enlightenment, Romanic Period, Victorian Era, and The Modern Age' and shift all of the page tabs into this one. So I do apologize for this being such a huge page, but bear with me. I have to if I want to add more tabs.
Age of Enlightenment
The focus of this Age is intellect, scientific and cultural life. This period took place in the 18th Century, though some state that part of the 17th Century could also be considered within the Age of Reason. Not many people have agreed upon the beginning date of the Age of Enlightenment - much like you'll find out about the other Ages I will be talking about - some scholars use the beginning of the 18th Century for the purpose of convenience. However, the Enlightenment could trace it's orgins to Decartes' Discourse on Method which was published in 1637. Others argue it is to begin with Britain's Revolution of 1688 or the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica which appeared in 1687.
Reason was the primary source of legitimacy and authority. For these reasons it's also referred to as the Age of Reason. The Age of Reason developed simultaneously in Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the American Colonies. Some authors inspired by this age include, Thomas Jefferson, author of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the Polish-Lithuanian Constitution of May 3, 1791.
This, however, wasn't a single movement or principle of thought. These philosophies were often mutually contradictory or divergent. The Age of Enlightenment wasn't a set of ideas, but more a set of values and a way to live. A way of thinking critically and questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, with a strong belief in rationality and science.
Enlightenment came into use for the English during the mid-18th Century, though the term was used in other countries earlier. It was a common term by 1784 when Immanuel Kant published his essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?" According to Kant enlightenment meant, "Mankind's final coming of age, the emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error".
Some People of Note for the Age of Enlightenment include:
Francis Bacon
John Locke
Montesquieu
Benjamin Franklin
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Immanuel Kant
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
Alexander Hamilton
Mary Wollstonecraft
The closing of the Age of Enlightenment eludes people just as much as its beginning. Some state the French Revolution of 1789 to end the age. Others say that it is the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars of 1804-15 is convenient for the closing date of Enlightenment.
A lot of the information found here can be attributed to Wikipedia as less formal study has taken place over the Age of Enlightment. Our main focus had been on the Romantic Period, Victorian Era, and the Modern Age.
The Romantic Period
The Romantic Period was a shift from the light of reason.
Romanticism takes the language of poetry and changes it to that of the common man. No longer is poetry to be for only fellow intellectuals. With this era poetry is shifted into the coloring of imagination and doesn't have to be pure visual truth. This took the place of the Age of Reason because their poetry was that of a painting - static, reflective, and tangible. Whereas Romantic poetry takes the form of music - dynamic, fluid, ever-changing, and deeply emotional. The focus isn't so much on the real, permanent, or visual but what feels emotionally real. What individuals feels and what touches them on emotional levels brings the truth through the raw emotions of people and their personal experiences. It's what the artist brings to the table in Romanticism, not just what is reflected back into reality that counts.
Elements of the Romantic Period:
The Lyrical Ballads
Lines from Tintern Abbey
The French Revolution
Edmund Burke
Mary Wollstonecraft
Anna Barbauld
The Gothic Genre
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Mary Shelley
The Byronic Hero
Exam Responses
The Victorian Age
The Victoria Age set about a new era that brought focus to the logical. People were beginning to become politically aware of their surroundings and focus on realism instead of just the romantic notion that the Romantic era brought into play during its reign.
Elements of the Victorian Age:
Timeline
Themes and expanded Timeline
Queen Victoria
Child Labor
Industrial Revolution
Charles Dickens
Victorian Women
Robert Browning
Exam Responses
The Modern Age
The Modern Age
Reached its peak in Europe between 1900-1920s.
Literary expression of the tendencies of modernism. Tends to revolve around the themes of individualism, the randomness of life, mistrust of institutions (government, religion), and the disbelief of absolute truths, and involve a literary structure that depars from conventionality and realism.
Elements of the Modern Era:
Theme Expansion of Modern Era
Pre-Modern vs Modern
The Wasteland
Virginia Woolf
George Orwell
Tom Stoppard
Exam Responses
