Contextualize the text from a historical and cultural point of view.

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1.The Renaissance (1485 1649)
Shakespeare lived and wrote during a remarkable period of English history, a
time of relative political stability and great development, 1485 1649= the
Renaissance .
The Renaissance in England coincided with the reign of Elizabeth I, who
was Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until 1603, so it is often referred to as
the Elizabethan period. Elizabeth I was a powerful, resolute monarch who
returned England to Protestantism, quelled a great deal of internal
turmoil, and unified the nation.
A number of important historical events contributed to making England a
powerful nation during this period (for example, science made it possible to
navigate, explorers set out to find a new world).Historical developments which
shaped the direction of Elizabethan Literature include: the invention of the
printing press to England, the growth of a wealthy middle class of people
who had the time to write and read, and the opening up of education to
the laity, rather than being an exclusive domain of the clergy.
The ideas of the Renaissance are strongly influenced by the concept of
humanism. The aim was to restore human values from antiquity by reintroducing
the philosophies, language and literature of the ancient Greece and Rome.
The arts flourished under Elizabeth I. Her personal love for poetry, music,
and drama helped to establish a climate in which it was fashionable for the wealthy
members of the court to support the arts. Theatres such as the Globe and the
Rose were built and writers such as Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas
Kyd and William Shakespeare wrote comic and tragic plays. Edmund
Spensers, The Faerie Queene was created to flatter the Queen. Another
innovative writer of the period was Sir Phillip Sydney. The new literary style
borrowed heavily from classical Greek writing.
During this period poetry was an important literary genre. A form of sonnet
called either the Shakespearian sonnet or the Elizabethan sonnet became
fashionable.
Also, one of the major developments in English literature at this time is in
drama. Some of Shakespeares plays reflect historical and political tensions, others
deal with common life experiences which are described in comedy as well as
tragedy.
2. Enlightenment (1660 1798)
1. Swift
In England, Neoclassicism or Rationalism (a literary movement during the
Enlightenment era) flourished roughly between 1660, when the Stuarts returned to
the throne, until the publication of Lyrical Ballads, (1798) that marked the full
emergence of Romanticism.
The
Stuart dynasty ended with the death of Queen Anne (in 1714), and the Hanover
dynasty began with king George I (a German and protestant king).
The Glorious Revolution had limited the power of the monarch in favor of
the Parliament. The power of Parliament and the prime minister continued to grow.
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The 1st prime minister was Robert Walpole that based his policy on mercantile
expansion.
During this time, there were 2 important political parts: the Whigs and the
Tories that consolidated their position and alternated in government. Also, the
Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions made the economy booming and the
British trade with the rest of the world grew enormously. Consequently, urbanization
grew.
The neoclassical period can be divided into 3 subsets: The Restoration, The
Augustan Age and the Age of Sensibility.
The Augustan Age (1700-1745), derives its name from the literary period
of Vergil and Ovid under the Roman Emperor Augustus.
The period was characterized by the spirit of Enlightenment, a time of
scientific awakening and of unprecedented optimism in the potential of knowledge
and reason to understand and change the world. It was believed that the use of
reason and science could improve the human condition. This period saw the rise of
the political pamphlet and essay but the leading genre of the Enlightenment
became the novel.
The hero of the novel was the average man, the middle-class man, with a
pragmatic common sense. Literature became very instructive. Writers aimed to
educate readers through their stories, criticizing the flaws of society and individuals.
Most of the writers of this time wrote political pamphlets, but the best came from
the pens of Defoe and Swift. The novel writing was influenced by travel literature,
biographies, memoirs and diaries. Also, other important literary figures of the period
were Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne.

2.Defoe

In England, Neoclassicism or Rationalism (a literary movement during the

Enlightenment era) flourished roughly between 1660, when the Stuarts returned to
the throne, until the publication of Lyrical Ballads, (1798) that marked the full
emergence of Romanticism.
The Stuart dynasty ended with the death of Queen Anne (in 1714), and the
Hanover dynasty began with king George I (a German and protestant king).
The Glorious Revolution had limited the power of the monarch in favor of
the Parliament. The power of Parliament and the prime minister continued to grow.
The 1st prime minister was Robert Walpole that based his policy on mercantile
expansion.
During this time, there were 2 important political parts that consolidated their
position and alternated in the government (the Whigs and the Tories).
Another historical event of the century was the colonial expansion . After
the 7 years of war Britain won control of Quebec, Canada and India.
Also, the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions made the economy
booming and the British trade with the rest of the world grew enormously.
Consequently, urbanization grew.
The neoclassical period can be divided into 3 subsets: The Restoration, The
Augustan Age and the Age of Sensibility.
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The Augustan Age (1700-1745), derives its name from the literary period
of Vergil and Ovid under the Roman Emperor Augustus.
The period was characterized by the spirit of Enlightenment, a time of
scientific awakening and of unprecedented optimism in the potential of knowledge
and reason to understand and change the world. It was believed that the use of
reason and science could improve the human condition. This period saw the rise of
the political pamphlet and essay but the leading genre of the Enlightenment
became the novel.
The hero of the novel was the average man, the middle-class man, with a
pragmatic common sense. Literature became very instructive. Writers aimed to
educate readers through their stories, criticizing the flaws of society and individuals.
Most of the writers of this time wrote political pamphlets, but the best came from
the pens of Defoe and Swift. The novel writing was influenced by travel literature,
biographies, memoirs and diaries. Also, other important literary figures of the period
were Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne.

3. Romanticism (1789-1832)

(S. Coleridge , J. Austen, J. Keats, W. Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville)

A. Austen, Coleridge, Keats.

The author belongs to British Romanticism, the literary period between

1789 1832, approximately. It was an age greatly marked by the industrial
development with serious consequences on peoples lives, and the French
Revolution of 1789, the focus of which was to create political and social freedom,
equality, brotherhood and democracy. As a result, Romantics were enthusiastic
about nature and especially appreciated areas in nature which had not been
touched by human intervention. Simple rural life, which had not been influenced
or ruined by the Industrial Revolution and in which man still lived in harmony
with nature, was seen as ideal.
Romanticism saw a shift from faith in reason to faith in senses, feelings,
imagination.
There was a turn towards pantheism and the concept of the sublime was
introduced.

Poetry and novels are the most common genres. For the romantics, poetry
was believed to be the highest form of literature, while novels were the lower form,
often as sensationalistic. This period saw the flowering of some of the greatest
poets in the English language: the first generation of William Blake, S.T Coleridge,
W. Wordsworth, followed by Byron, Shelley and Keats.
Most novels of the time were written by women and were therefore widely
regarded as a threat to serious, intellectual culture. Despite this, some of the most
famous British novelists wrote during this period, including Jane Austen.
Unlike the other Romantic-era writers (e.g.Wordsworth and Coleridge),
Austens works are very little impacted by the French Revolution and revolutionary
rhetoric. On the other hand, a preoccupation of her novels is English Regency
Society, a time thats often described as being very focused on civility and good
manners between people.

B.Melville, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson.

The author belongs to American Romanticism, the period that dominated the
literary scene from around 1830 to 1865 that marks the end of the Civil War and
the rise of Realism.
American Romanticism developed later than British Romanticism and it was
an age of great westward expansion, of the increasing gravity of the slavery
question, of an intensification of the spirit of embattled sectionalism in the South,
and of a powerful impulse to reform in the North. Its culminating act was the trial by
arms of the opposing views in a civil war, whose conclusion certified the fact of a
united nation dedicated to the concepts of industry and capitalism and
philosophically committed to egalitarianism.
In literature it was America's first great creative period. Emerging as new writers of
strength and creative power were the novelists Hawthorne, Simms and Melville; the poets Poe,
Holmes, Longfellow, Dickinson and Whitman.
Because of the historical events during the romanticism period the literary themes
were: imagination, emotional intensity, escapism, individuality, common man as
hero, nature as a source of spirituality and looking to the past for wisdom.
Whitman, beginning with the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, was the
ultimate expression of a poetry organic in form and romantic in spirit, united to a
concept of democracy that was pervasively egalitarian.
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At the end of the Civil War a new nation had been born, and it was to demand
and receive a new literature less idealistic and more practical, less exalted and
more earthy, less consciously artistic and more honest than that produced in the
age when the American dream had glowed with greatest intensity and American
writers had made a great literary period by capturing on their pages the enthusiasm
and the optimism of that dream.

4.Victorian Age (1837-1901)

(Dickens, L. Carroll, Hardy)

The author belongs to Victorian age, a period starting when the reign of
Queen Victoria began. Because it spans over 6 decades, the year 1870 is often
used to divide the era into early Victorian and late Victorian. The early Victorian
era marked the emergence of a large middle-class society for the first time in the
history of the Western world. Along with it, came a spread of so-called family
values and an elaborate code of manners to distinguish one class from another.
The Victorian period was characterized by changes in the political life,
expansion of the British Empire, continuation of the industrialization. Religious ideas
were challenged by Darwins theory of evolutionism. It was a time of great energy
and the poets and novelists of the period were very productive as they sought to
chronicle their exciting age and provide it with a high moral tone and a refined taste
in literature and arts.
It was the period when the novel began its rise in popularity. The availability of cheap paper made
mass publication possible.
Socialized novels and magazines were popular with the mases. Contrived plot twists such as strained
coincidences and romantic triangles were often utilized.
This time also was a heightened conflict between the rich and the poor. In poetry, elegies were extremely
popular.

5.Realism (1861 1914 , 60 90 pt Am.)

(H. James 1881 father of British modernism ; M. Twain)

Born at the end of the Civil war, the literary period in which wrote,
aimed to recreate reality in literature. The years following the war symbolized a
time of healing and rebuilding. In literature this was a time of upheaval. As the
United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy
and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding
population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence
provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding these
rapid shifts in culture.
Realists are concerned with the effect of the work on their reader and the
reader's life, a pragmatic view. Pragmatism requires the reading of a work to have
some verifiable outcome for the reader that will lead to a better life for the reader.
This lends an ethical tendency to realism while focusing on common actions and
minor catastrophes of middle class society.

Modernism (1914 1950)

(J. Conrad, J. Joyce, G.B. Shaw, V. Woolf, F.S. Fitzgerald am, E. Hemingway am,
E. ONeill am, W. Faulkner am, T.S. Elliot am)

Modernism was a literary movement that lasted approximately from 19141950. Modernism began the breaking of traditional writing styles that we know
today. During this period, artists began to develop their own individual styles
New technology and the horrifying events of both World Wars (but specifically
World War I) made many people question the future of humanity: What was
becoming of the world? Writers reacted to this question by turning toward Modernist
sentiments. Gone was the Romantic period that focused on nature and being.
Modernist fiction spoke of the inner self and consciousness. Instead of progress, the
Modernist writer saw a decline of civilization. Instead of new technology, the
Modernist writer saw cold machinery and increased capitalism, which alienated the
individual and led to loneliness. To achieve the emotions described above, most
Modernist fiction was cast in first person. Whereas earlier, most literature had a
clear beginning, middle, and end (or introduction, conflict, and resolution), the
Modernist story was often more of a stream of consciousness, creating the feeling
that the story is going nowhere. Irony, satire, and comparisons were often employed
to point out society's ills.

Post modernism (1950 - )

(Golding 1954)

The text belongs to postmodernism, a postwar cultural movement, started

around 1950, that reacted against tendencies in modernism, and was typically
marked by revival of historical elements and techniques. Postmodernist society is
characterized by changes to institutions and creations and with social and political
results and innovations, globally but especially in the West.
Postmodern authors tend to depict the world as having already undergone
countless disasters and being beyond redemption or understanding. Postmodern
literature reflects late modern society by showing the individuals inability to
establish a personal identity based on a historical or social background, let alone
family and work. Postmodern literature is, to a great extent, a play on words which
reflects the meaninglessness of the late modern world, which is seen as
fragmented, disoriented, chaotic, but this leads neither to despair nor to any wish to
re-establish order. The binary contrasts of good/evil, true/false, real/unreal and
order/chaos have been abolished. The world is pure surface, it is what it appears to
be. Hence each individual creates his or her own world and identity through the
pictures which he or she sees in literature and other art forms or in the so-called
world. The Great Narratives, which began to be questioned in Modernism, are
rejected in Postmodernism. There is no acknowledgment of a universal truth.