MEPX
Chapter 7 of 10All chapters

Chapter 7 of 10

Movements

What each was reacting to.

From Romanticism to Realism

Romantic writers put feeling, nature and the individual first. Realists answered with ordinary life and social conditions described without idealisation.

  • The nineteenth-century novel grew with mass literacy and serial publication.
  • Naturalism pushed realism towards determinism.

Modernism and after

Modernists fragmented form after the upheavals of the early twentieth century. Postmodern writing turned to self-awareness, pastiche and doubt about grand narratives.