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Newton's "Principia" is Published, Popularizing Enlightenment Ideas
Newton’s Principia, completed in 1687, is the foundation of the entire science of physics. This mechanistic view of the universe, a universe governed by a set of unchanging laws, raised the ire of the Church fathers. However, the mode of inquiry which both Bacon and Newton pioneered became much more influential than the Church’s teachings. The Enlightenment would see these ideas applied to every segment of life and society, with huge ramifications for citizens and rulers alike. -
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Literary Movements in Europe
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Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" is Published, Later Influencing Romantic Literature
This novel is seen as one of the first examples of Romanticism. It was a direct response to the movement which preceded it, the "Enlightenment." Romantic authors sought to describe the indescribable and valued feelings and emotions over logic and fact. -
Balzac's "Le Père Goriot" is Published, Establishing Realism in Europe
Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality", realism is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Honoré de Balzac is the most prominent representative of 19th century realism in fiction through the inclusion of specific detail and recurring characters. His La Comédie humaine, a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was essentially a history of his countrymen. -
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" is Published, Being a Seminal Work in Existentialism
Existentialism is the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling living human individual. Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash. -
Zola's "La Fortune des Rougon" is Published, Seperating Realism From Naturalism
Naturalism was an outgrowth of literary realism, a prominent literary movement in mid-19th-century France and elsewhere. Naturalistic writers were influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.They often believed that one's heredity and social environment largely determine one's character.Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola.It follows the lives of two branches of a fictional family living during the 2nd French Empire. -
James Joyce's "Ulysses" is Published, Popularizing Modernist Literature
Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Possibly the most famous work came in 1922 with the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses which chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904.
