Throughout the history of literature, there have been different currents shared by its authors. These are the literary movements, sets of currents, genres and styles that have marked a period and group of writers at different moments in the history of the arts.
There have been many literary movements that have existed since each era has its preferences regarding literature, just as different currents have also existed at the same time and variations from country to country.
Next Let’s see what the main literary movements have been in addition to talking about what its main characteristics are.
The different literary movements are known as historical and aesthetic trends that are part of the history of literature Each of these movements is made up of a group of writers or works, grouped together because the specialized public considers that they share a style or common traits can be extracted. Thus, it is normal that when referring to a renowned writer or a famous work, it is included in literary movements such as, for example, Modernism, Classicism, Baroque.
There have been many literary movements throughout history and even have presented variations depending on the region where they were popularized There were extremely popular, long-lasting and influential ones and, practically always, they were accompanied by similar currents in other arts and fields of knowledge apart from literature, such as painting, sculpture, music or philosophy.
Although there have been literary movements that emerged from the union of writers, who came together to share a common style or objective, in most cases these movements have been created a posteriori. That is to say, It often happens that the writers that we associate today with a certain artistic movement were not aware that they belonged to it but they have been specialists and later literary critics who have interpreted their works, found common characteristics and put them into the same literary movement.
Characteristics of literary movements
Before talking about the main literary movements, it is important to take into account what the most distinctive characteristics of this type of artistic currents are:
1. They serve to organize the history of literature
Literature experts group writers and works that share certain traits under the name of a particular literary movement. It should be said, however, that Sometimes it has happened that movements were formed by groups of writers who came together expressly to create a new artistic current We have an example of this with surrealism, whose artists were very aware of sharing ideas and applying the same techniques in the world of the arts.
In the history of literature it is normal to attribute to artistic movements a specific time period and geographical location; However, these factors are not necessarily strict.
Some movements are made up of writers who shared a style or characteristics, but who did not live in the same time or place It also happens that the same author may have followed several currents throughout his life, beginning his life as a writer following a specific literary trend and then evolving into a very different one.
3. They are appreciated in hindsight
Many literary movements can only be appreciated in retrospect, once that current has come to an end. The reason for this is that, unlike other forms of art, literature is an extremely slow one: books must be written, edited, published and, once they are on the market, made known to be read and, hopefully , appreciated. If they acquire sufficient importance, these works will become the focus of interest of literary critics who will organize them into movements
The problem is that this recognition can occur a long time after the work has been published, sometimes after several centuries. For this reason, many movements have been named and recognized much later, when literary experts found common traits in a set of authors.
4. Purpose and certain characteristics
Literary movements differ among themselves by their conception of literature, their purpose and the specific way in which they use language. Each movement is characterized by a particular style or way of writing the works
5. They cover different genres
There is no literary movement that has not experimented with various genres. In addition to the narrative, in most of them also It plays with poetry, dramaturgy and the didactic genre, among others
What are the main literary movements?
As we said, there are many literary movements that have existed. These have varied over time and have also presented their particularities depending on the country where they were successful. It is not possible to talk about absolutely all the literary movements that have existed and their particularities, but it is possible to talk about the most important ones, those whose authors and works have contributed significantly to History
However, it is worth mentioning that the classification that we are going to see is very focused on Western literature, the artistic movements that one would expect to study in high school language and literature class. As one might suppose, in other places in the world such as China, Japan, India, the Arab countries or the Slavic world have had their particular literary movements, which if we took into account would greatly enrich the list.
These that we will see below have been the main Western literary movements.
1. Renaissance (15th-16th centuries)
Renaissance literature had love, mythology and nature as its main themes One of the notable aspects of the Renaissance authors was their marked anthropocentrism and constant vindication of the values of the Greco-Latin authors.
Some examples of works from this movement are:
“Macbeth”, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
“Don Quixote of La Mancha”, by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
“The Divine Comedy”, by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
2. Baroque (17th century)
During the Baroque, one of the most outstanding literatures was Spanish. Baroque authors were characterized by the abundant use of figures and literary devices having love, disappointment, lies and death as recurring themes.
Some of the most notable works of this period, mostly in Spanish, are:
“Fuenteovejuna” (YEAR), by Lope de Vega (1562-1635)
“The Trickster of Seville”, by Tirso de Molina (1583-1648)
“Life is a dream”, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681)
3. Neoclassicism (18th century)
Neoclassicism was a movement that He set his sights on ancient times, obsessed by the apparent perfection of classical Rome and Greece The authors of this movement were characterized by the predominance of reason and their interest in transmitting values such as harmony, beauty and order. This movement emerged as a contrast to the Baroque, seen as irregular and imperfect.
Some notable neoclassical works are:
“Erudite and curious letters”, by Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijoo (1676-1764)
“The Yes of the Girls”, by Leandro Fernandez de Moratín (1760-1828)
“The Prairie of San Isidro”, by Ramón de la Cruz (1731-1794)
4. Romanticism (17th-19th centuries)
romantic literature He valued the sensitivity of the author above all, especially in poetry The Romantics distanced themselves from the rational and cosmopolitan world, exactly what the authors of Realism did value.
Romanticism stands out for talking about legends, myths, traditions and other aspects of the imagination of people, being the seed for nationalisms as we know them today. The stories in which the interiority of the characters was shown were also recurrent.
Some works from this movement are:
“Les Misérables”, by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
“The Misadventures of Young Werther”, by Johann W. von Goethe (1749-1832)
The literature of Realism It was marked by the philosophical ideals of the French Enlightenment and was directly opposed to romantic postulates Realist writers conceived literature as an art capable of faithfully representing reality, and to do so they used narrative, especially the novel. If something defines Realism, it is the use of precise, meticulous, objective language that is totally detached from the emotional.
Some notable works of Realism are:
“Madame Bovary”, by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
“Crime and Punishment”, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
“War and Peace”, by Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910)
6. Surrealism (20th century)
Surrealism was a meeting point for poets and playwrights more than storytellers. Surrealist writers sought to reproduce in their works a state of meaninglessness and spontaneity when creating, something very well represented in other arts bathed in Surrealism such as painting or cinema. The writers of this movement sought to reproduce in their works mysterious connections resulting from unbridled creativity.
The surrealists valued what sane people would not value: madness, delirium, the rupture of forms… They practiced the technique of the exquisite corpse and automatic writing. They are credited with being among the first to practice what we know today as “artistic performances.” in addition to making extremely innovative combinations for his time, such as combining poetry with painting.
One of the most notable works of Surrealism is the “Manifesto of Surrealism”, written by the French author André Breton (1896-1966). The title of this work may seem pretentious at first, but Breton is certainly credited with being the father of this movement in terms of its literary version.
7. Modernism (19th-20th centuries)
Modernist literature emerged in Latin America, but became especially influential in Spain. So much so that the movement became known as “The return of the caravels”, since its way of writing, with classicist and baroque features, was later imitated in Spain. The modernists had the intention of renewing the literary language and introduced a certain preciousness in its forms and themes especially in poetry.
Some notable modernist works are:
“The Blue Poem Book”, by Rubén Darío (1867-1916).
“Platero and I”, by Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958).
“Ismaelillo”, by José Martí (1853-1895).
8. Magical Realism (XX-XXI centuries)
The literature of Magical Realism He intended to incorporate the fantastic and the marvelous into the stories, without emphasizing their astonishing nature The followers of this movement, still in force today, tell stories in a realistic and everyday way. One of the exponents of Magical Realism is without a doubt the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014), with his work “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, a work that earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
