LITERARY MOVEMENT
OVERVIEW
AP English Literature and Composition
Literary Movements

Metaphysical Poetry
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Augustans
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Romantic Poetry
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The Symbolists
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Modernism
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The Harlem Renaissance
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Post Modernism
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The Beats
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Confessional Poets
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New York School of Poets
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Black Arts Movement
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Black Mountain Poets
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Some that don’t fit:

Emily Dickinson

Robert Frost

W. H. Auden

Elizabeth Bishop

Adrienne Rich

Seamus Heaney
Metaphysical Poetry: Poets
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John Donne (1572-1631)
George Herbert (1593-1633)
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Metaphysical Poetry: Definition
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Metaphysical poetry broke with Renaissance
tradition of writing love poetry that placed the
loved one on a pedestal.
These poets wrote introspective meditations on love,
death, God, and human frailty. These are much
more realistic poems about sexual relationships.
These poems are famous for their difficulty and
obscurity
 For
that reason, they are often chosen for the AP test.
Metaphysical Poetry: Look for
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Wit, irony, paradox.
 Pairing dissimilar things in a clever analogy.
 Example: using astronomy & math to illustrate deep love for a wife.
Elaborate stylistic maneuvers (more about this later)
Huge shifts in scale.
 Example: talking about ants and then planets.
Talking about the deep philosophical issues:
 Passage of time
 Difficulty of being sure
 Fearful qualities that death inspires
 This may seem like a cliché (ex: time heals wounds)
Augustans
John Dryden (1631-1700)
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
A Quick Definition
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Augustan poetry is best known for its
rhymed, heroic-couplet satire.
And then black night. That blackness was sublime.
I felt distributed through space and time:
One foot upon a mountaintop. one hand
Under the pebbles of a panting strand,
One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain,
In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain.
(Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire. Canto One. 147-153)
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Reading these heroic couplets aloud
helps many people with comprehension.
The Augustan poets were inspired by
ancient writings.
They translated Greek and Roman epics
into English using heroic couplets.
They also wrote their own original poetry
based on classical styles.
What to look for in Augustan
Poetry
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Wit, irony and paradox are as important
for these guys as they were for the
metaphysical poets.
But these guys also care about brevity.
Their poems might be long, but their
observations are often short and to-thepoint.
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Common topic: human frailty.
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They often mock human behavior.
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Augustans were likely to place
ridiculously boring plots (ex: the cutting of
a noble maiden's hair in Rape of the
Lock), in the form of heroic epic poetry for
comic effect.
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Augustans included references to current
events.
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Pope’s epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton
mentioned the on-going battle between
religion and science.
Dryden's poem “Mac Flecknoe” makes fun of
another poet of his day and takes sides in
political debates of the day.
Romantic Poetry
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English Romantic Poets
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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
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Percy Shelley (1792-1822)
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John Keats (1795-1821)
American Romantic Poets
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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Related Prose
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European Romantic Prose
–
Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe
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Victor Hugo: Les Miserables
American Romantic Prose
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Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
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R.W. Emerson: “The Poet” (essay that
inspired W. Whitman to write poetry)
–
Henry David Thoreau: “Walking” (an essay)
A Quick Definition
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Romantic poets broke away from earlier
ideas about poetry by writing in “the real
language of men” about “common life”
(Wordsworth).
Emotional and enthusiastic poetry.
Embraces the large, impressive forces of
nature and the human imagination.
These are on the AP exam quite often.
How to Recognize Romantic Poetry
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Natural imagery saves the individual from
crowded, industrial city.
The imagination allows the individual to
escape society's control, authority, and
fear of death.
The sublime (extreme, as impressively
big, obscure or scary) is emphasized,
rather than simply being beautiful
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Also, perhaps most importantly,
transcendence (exceeding usual limits of
understanding) in the ordinary things of
life is the ultimate goal.
–
Example: Keats turns looking at an old urn
into a meditation on life and death in “Ode
on a Grecian Urn.”
The Symbolists

Representative French Symbolist Poets:

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898)

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Symbolist-influenced poets who
wrote in English:
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Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Related Prose

French Symbolist Prose
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
Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907): A Rebours
(Against the Grain)
English Symbolist Prose

Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray
A Quick Definition:
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
Some people consider the Symbolists as a link
between the Romantics and modernism (which we'll
learn about next).
They want the transcendence (a much deeper
understanding of something by looking at something
relatively simple), but they took this in a direction
intended to gratify the senses.
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This led to the sexual nature of the modernists.
Many symbolist poems seem obscure on the first few
readings, but getting better at analyzing their
symbols and associations will help you interpret
poems by Yeats or Eliot, which are often on the AP
exam.
What to look for in Symbolist
Poetry:
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Many deal with the crepuscular (dusk and dawn), or
with the time between waking and sleeping.
Dreams (or dream states) are important to many of
these works because dreams allow us opportunities
to explore the relationships between states.
Synaesthesia (using one sense to describe another)
is popular with the Symbolists. Ex: Rimbaud
attributes colors and sounds to different vowels in
the poem "Voyelles.“
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The French symbolists were good at using words
with multiple meanings. So the poems may say a lot
more than you might first think, considering their
short length.
Many of these poets were drawn to the properties
of music, and we see some mellifluous (having a
smooth rich flow) word choice and rhythms.

Symbolists are often associated with the "art for
art's sake" movement. The art is more important
than the "message."
MODERNISM
Representative Modernist Poets
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Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
e. e. cummings (1894-1962)
Related Modernist Prose
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James Joyce (1882-1941): A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): Mrs. Dalloway
William Faulkner (1897-1962): As I Lay Dying
Kate Chopin (1851-1904): The Awakening
Modernism

The 20th century saw a lot of change:
 Einstein’s
theories of physics.
 Two world wars and the millions who died.
 Incredible advances in technology that aided in killing
millions of people.
 Changes in art forms: abstract art, surrealism, etc.
(Picasso, Dali, etc.)
Modernist Literature

So it’s not surprising that 20th century writers
questioned what came before them and were
willing to experiment with new forms with even
more daring than the symbolists before them.
What to look for in Modernist poetry
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Allusions.
Many times human experiences are reduced to
fragments.
 e.
e. cummings poems may seem like random phrases
thrown together.

The influence of Cubism
 Picasso
picture (Guitar, Bottle, Bowl of Fruit and Glass
on Table)
 Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird” comes in 13 sections, each one referring to a
blackbird in some way
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From the influence of the emerging fields of
psychology and sociology…
Poems from this era are often concerned with how
an individual relates to his environment (Eliot’s
“Prufrock”)…
Or how the environment helps create the individual
(Stevens’s “The Snowman”)
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Due to the influence of movements such as fascism
and socialism that saw human beings not as
individuals but as servants of the state…
Some Modernist poems erase individuality and
focus on machines or other inanimate objects
instead, or they contain imagery of brutality
(example: “The Yachts” by William Carlos Williams)
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Representative Poets
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Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
Related Prose
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Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960): Their Eyes Were
Watching God
Nella Larsen (1891-1964): Passing
Richard Wright (1908-1960): Black Boy and Native
Son
Ralph Ellison (1913-1994): Invisible Man
The Harlem Renaissance: Definition
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Mostly in the first half of the 20th century, after
World War I, during the movement of African
Americans to northern industrial cities (called the
Great Migration)
Many of them lived (sometimes due to necessity) in
the same neighborhoods – Harlem, in New York
City, was one of the most famous of these
neighborhoods

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Jazz, poetry, painting, dance, and folklore
flourished and took on many similar concerns to
those of the modernists
Harlem Renaissance poetry (esp. that of Langston
Hughes) can be thought of as a branch of
modernism
What to look for in Harlem
Renaissance literature:

Content directly related to African American
concerns of the time.
 Ex:
Dunbar’s “Frederick Douglass” is about his
continuing influence, long after his death

Many HR poems rely on repetitive structure, similar
to blues lyrics (ex: Dunbar’s “Sympathy”) or on
fragmented structure similar to jazz improvisation
(ex: Hughes’s “Montage of a Dream Deferred”)
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Several of these poets, especially Langston Hughes,
sought a new American idiom (a style or form of
artistic expression that is characteristic of an
individual, a period or movement ) alongside other
African American artists such as blues singer Bessie
Smith.
Others combined European forms like the sonnet with
a content and a tone more related to African
American concerns, such as McKay’s “If We Must Die.”
POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism: a definition
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Is it really just an extension of
Modernism?
Or is it something new?
A different approach (from the
Modernists) seems to be evident in the
second half of the 20th century.
If not a different approach, then different
goals.
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If Einstein's theory of relativity (measuring
the relationships between time & space)
helped define modernism...
Then Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is
the emblem of postmodernism. It holds
that one cannot know both the speed and
the location of an object simultaneously.
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The point: there is always chance or chaos
in any scientific inquiry.
Don't call me that!
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But most artists who fit the postmodern
definition reject being called
“postmodern.”
Instead, they prefer different labels:
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The Beats
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Confessional Poets
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The Black Arts Movement
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The Black Mountain School
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The New York School of Poets.
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Each group has a different focus, but they
have these things in common:
Parody, irony, and narrative instability.
Allusions are just as likely to be made to
pop. culture as they are to the classics.
Strictly binary concepts (hot and cold,
black and white) often collapse. Here,
ideas that spread across a spectrum,
rather than fit strictly into one box or the
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There is no real center. The Internet is a
good example of a postmodern invention.
The surface is often more interesting to
postmodern artists than any ideas of
depth. The following quote is attributed to
Andy Warhol, a kind of patron saint of
postmodernism and a notorious wig
wearer:
“Wear a wig and people notice the wig.
Wear a silver wig and people notice the
THE BEATS
The Beats: Poets
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)
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Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
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Gregory Corso (1930-2001)
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Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
The Beats: Related Prose
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William S. Burroughs (1914-1997): Naked
Lunch
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969): On the Road
The Beats: a definition
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After World War II, the Beats practiced
their brand of hallucinagenic, visionary,
anti-establishment art.
There were many locations that had Beat
movements, but the hotspots were New
York City, San Francisco, Tangiers,
Prague, and Mexico City.
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The Beats were good at creating and
perpetuating myths about their lives.
Buddhism was important to many of them
(especially Gary Snyder).
As were many tenets of William Blake's
version of Romanticism, such as the
importance of the individual, the
imagination freed from society's
constraints, and the yearning for
transcendence.
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In Ferlinghetti's “The Changing Light,” a
reader can feel the deep connection
Beats often felt to nature, even as the
speaker of this poem is describing a city
scene.
In Corso's “Marriage,” the oppositional
stance the Beats took toward the
suburban bourgeoisie is in bold relief.
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Ginsberg's “America” shares much of the
same satirical tone, but Ginsberg was
also capable of writing angry, ranting,
Whitmanesque masterpieces like “Howl”
and a tender, meditative elegy for his
mother in “Kaddish.”
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“First thought, best thought” describes the
aesthetic ideal of the Beat poet. Moved
by jazz improvisation and Buddhist ideas
of impermanence, these poets
considered themselves the chroniclers of
their age.
Politics directly informs many of their
poems, either through specific references
to members of the government or specific
references to issues important to them,
CONFESSIONAL POETS
Representative Confessional Poets
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John Berryman (1914-1972)
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
Anne Sexton (1928-1967)
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Related Confessional Prose

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
A Definition of Confessional Poetry
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The confessional poets took the first-person pronouns
(I, me, my) seriously.
They explored intimate content in their poetry:
Love affairs
Suicidal thoughts
Fear of failure
Violent thoughts toward family members
Etc.
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The confessional poets revealed the private doubts
and anxieties that were behind their public faces.
But they were not just sharing personal stories.
These were also poets who were serious about their
art.
NEW YORK SCHOOL OF
POETS
Representative New York School
Poets
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Barbara Guest (1920-2006)
Kenneth Koch (1925-2002)
Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)
John Ashbery (b. 1927)
A Definition of New York School
Poetry
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They felt connected to the abstract expressionist
school of painters.
Many of these poets also wrote art criticism.
Similarities:
 Like
Beats, spontaneous.
 Like confessional, very frank

But NYS were more ironic and more interested in
the surreal combination of high art and allusions to
popular art.

Many of their poems seem to be lists of things one
may find on a walk through the city.
 Ex:
a billboard advertising tourism to a natural
paradise may be visible above a traffic jam –
something the poet sees & irony.

These poets are often trying to get us to see the
world in a new and different way.
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They also liked to juxtaposition uncommon objects.
They liked to combine
 The
serious with the silly
 The profound with the absurd
 The highly formal with the casual
BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT
Representative Black Arts
Movement Poets
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Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
Amiri Baraka (aka Leroi Jones) (b. 1934)
Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934)
Ntozake Shange (b. 1948)
A Definition of Black Arts
Movement

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These poets are often associated with members of
the Black Power movement who grew frustrated
with the pace of changes enacted by the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
These poems are often politically charged, even
aggressive, challenges to the white establishment.
BLACK MOUNTAIN POETS
Representative Black Mountain
Poets
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Charles Olson (1910-1970)
Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
Robert Creeley (1926-2005)
A Definition of Black Mountain
Poetry
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These poets taught at the same place (Black
Mountain College in Black Mountain, NC)
But that’s about all they have in common.
 Examples:
 Olson:
archeology and history of Gloucester, MA
 Levertov: tackling political issues head on.
OTHER IMPORTANT POETS
Some that don’t fit the above
categories:
Emily Dickinson
 Robert Frost
 W. H. Auden
 Elizabeth Bishop
 Adrienne Rich
 Seamus Heaney

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
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Basically isolated from others during the
transcendental period.
Shares some attributes with the compressed wit and
irony of the metaphysical poets
Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Active during modernism, but was more concerned
with traditionally minded verse forms and a locally
colored content that cloaked a profound
philosophical vein.
W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
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He wrote the first half of his poems as an English
citizen before WWII.
He wrote the second half of his poems as an
American citizen after WWII.
He is a giant of 20th-century literature
He is similar to the modernists, but he really is
above labels.
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

Sometimes placed with confessional poets because
of her friendship with Robert Lowell, but Bishop is
more reticent than the confessional poets.
Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

An important feminist and political poet, she has
some background with the confessional poets, but
she has taken the role of the poet in society so
seriously that she has transcended the personal and
become a kind of icon.
Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

Heaney uses rural imagery to take on issues of
identity, from the postcolonial confusion about what
it means to be Irish to the late-twentieth-century
confusion about what it means to be a poet.