literary aesthetics & periods

Aesthetics & Periods*	Examples	View of Communication	View of Authenticity	Art Stresses
Romanticism early 19th Century	Wordsworth & Whitman. Sir Walter Scott novels. Poetry by Shelley, Keats, some elements of Yeats.	Artist must escape social conventions of restrictive society to truly communicate.	Authenticity is a matter of self-expression.	Sincerity, spontaneity, expression of feeling.
Realism late 19th Century (applies almost exclusively to fiction)	Henry James's middle period, George Eliot, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells.	Artist must escape soft-headed romantic delusions and create an objective "common ground" where communication happens.	Authenticity is a matter of self-knowledge.	Sobriety, objectivity, believability.
Naturalism late 19th - early 20th Century	Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Theodore Drieser.	Artist must reveal the harsh realities underlying conventional morality and traditional social structures.	Authenticity is based on empirical observation.	Detailed description, detached tone.
Modernism early 20th Century	James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner.	Artist must create new artistic conventions to escape tawdry commonplaces and the mediocrity of the mass marketplace.	Authenticity is a function of stylistic innovation.	Technical innovation, formal precision.
PostModernism late 20th Century	Pynchon, Joanna Russ, Nabokov, Don Dellillo, Pulp Fiction, The Simpsons.	Communication is inherently wasteful, chancy, and prone to misinterpretation.	Skeptical of authenticity.	Irony, parody, humor and absurdity.

* These are broad generalizations intended to give a general overview, and there are exceptions to each example. Also, please note that
that these aesthetics do not simply replace one another. Later aesthetics incorporate elements and concerns of earlier ones.

Aesthetics & Periods	Characteristic Literature	Characteristic Techniques	View of the Self & society	View of Truth
Romanticism early 19th Century	Cultivates the natural and vernacular in search of authentic feelings uncorrupted by society and social convention.	Emulates forms of vernacular literature. Concerned with classes of people other than the aristocracy. Stresses the artist's superior sensitivity.	Self is misunderstood, exiled from society, but hopes to return and liberate society by overthrowing out-dated conventions.	Truth is discovered by a kind of revelation when a person of superior sensitivity escapes confining social mores, often by encountering or reflecting on Nature.
Realism late 19th Century	Mirrors public discourse (newspapers, "common" sense, etc.) in effort to promote plausibility. Disguises its fictionality.	Emphasizes consistent characters and seeks to make language relatively unobtrusive. Concerned with middle classes.	Self may be dissatisfied, but eventually finds a home in society by attaining self- knowledge.	Truth is discovered by attending to empirical surroundings and avoiding pretension.
Naturalism late 19th - early 20th Century	Mimics contemporaneous scientific ideas (Darwinism, thermodynamics, racial theory) & objective tone.	Observes characters as if they were rats in a maze. Characters' class trajectory is usually downward.	Self is a thin layer of social & linguistic conventions prone to degenerate into an instinct-driven animal.	Truth is ugly--a function of natural laws indifferent to humanity, usually only recognized on the brink of becoming a corpse.
Modernism early 20th Century	Attempts to reinvigorate high culture by expressing "universal" themes in innovative forms.	Creates new forms, but also emphasizes the artist's awareness of traditional culture.	Self is alienated from society and expects to remain so, but finds solace in art.	Truth is personal, tentative, and fleeting--moments of insight won through rigorous artistic labor.
PostModernism late 20th Century	Gleefully incorporates material from pop culture, makes no effort to disguise that it is art.	Parodies itself. Plays with multiple plot lines, chops up time, and emphasizes chance and contingency.	Attacks the very idea of a monadic or coherent self. Views self as fragmented, a function of larger linguistic & social systems.	Truth was a charming idea.