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René Descartes
René Descartes, (born March 31, 1596, La Haye, Touraine, France—died February 11, 1650, Stockholm, Sweden), French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher.
he is most famous for having written a relatively short work, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations On First Philosophy), published in 1641, in which he provides a philosophical groundwork for the possibility of the sciences. (Enlightenment) -
John Milton
John Milton, (born December 9, 1608, London, England—died November 8, 1674, London), English poet, pamphleteer, and historian, considered the most significant English author after William Shakespeare.
Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest epic poem in English. Together with Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, it confirms Milton’s reputation as one of the greatest English poets. (Enlightenment) -
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Enlightenment
The Enlightenment, known in French as the Siècle des Lumières (or Century of Lights), was a high period of intellectual proliferation in the domains of art and science. Many ideas put out by Enlightenment thinkers paved the way for how we perceive the world today. -
Voltaire
Voltaire, pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet, (born November 21, 1694, Paris, France—died May 30, 1778, Paris), one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty.
His famed works include the tragic play Zaïre, the historical study The Age of Louis XIV and the satirical novella Candide. (Enlightenment) -
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerland—died July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France), Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation.
He wrote the philosophical treatises A Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1755) and The Social Contract (1762); the novels Julie; or, The New Eloise (1761), among others. (Enlightenment) -
William Blake
William Blake (November 28, 1757 - August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is now considered seminal in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. Among his most recognized works we can find: Poetical Sketches; Songs of Innocence; Songs of Experience; “The Tyger”; “A Poison Tree”; “A Cradle Song”; “The Angel”; etc. (Romanticism) -
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth, (born April 7, 1770, Cockermouth, Cumberland, England—died April 23, 1850, Rydal Mount, Westmorland), English poet whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the English Romantic movement. The collection, which contained Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," introduced Romanticism to English poetry. Wordsworth also showed his affinity for nature with the famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." (Romanticism) -
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (born October 21, 1772, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, England—died July 25, 1834, Highgate, near London), English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher. His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic movement, and his Biographia Literaria (1817) is the most significant work of general literary criticism produced in the English Romantic period. (Romanticism) -
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Romanticism
Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century.
Romanticism is characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It is a reaction to the ideas of the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature. -
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole. Many of Poe’s works, including “The Tell-Tale Heart”; “The Fall of the House of Usher”; "The Black Cat"; "The Raven" became literary classics. (Romanticism) -
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert, (born December 12, 1821, Rouen, France—died May 8, 1880, Croisset), novelist regarded as the prime mover of the realist school of French literature and best known for his masterpiece, Madame Bovary (1857), a realistic portrayal of bourgeois life, which led to a trial on charges of the novel’s alleged immorality.(Realism) -
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells ( March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920) was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters". He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, as well as for his own prolific writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Traveler from Altruria. (Realism) -
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as Poems and Ballads, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. (Aesthecism) -
Walter Pater
Walter Pater, in full Walter Horatio Pater, (August 4, 1839, Shadwell, London, England— July 30, 1894, Oxford, Oxfordshire), English critic, essayist, and humanist whose advocacy of “art for art’s sake” became a cardinal doctrine of the movement known as Aestheticism. His essays on Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, and others were collected in 1873 as Studies in the History of the Renaissance (later called simply The Renaissance). (Aesthecism) -
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Realism
Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution. Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, and not avoiding unpleasant or sordid aspects of life. -
Henry James
Henry James OM (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American author, who became a British subject in the last year of his life. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language.
Examples of such novels include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. (Realism) -
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde, in full Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, (born October 16, 1854, Dublin, Ireland—died November 30, 1900, Paris, France), Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose reputation rests on his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art’s sake. (Aesthecism) -
Vernon Lee
Vernon Lee, pseudonym of Violet Paget, (Oct. 14, 1856, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France— Feb. 13, 1935, San Gervasio Bresciano, Italy), English essayist and novelist who is best known for her works on aesthetics. Her collections of essays Belcaro (1881), a work on aesthetics, and Euphorion (1884), which includes essays on William Shakespeare and Renaissance Italy, reveal her scholarship, always enlivened by wit and imagination. (Aesthecism) -
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was an english novelist and short-story writer of Polish descent, whose works include the novels Lord Jim (1900), The Secret Agent (1907) and the short story “Heart of Darkness” (1902). He is considered an early modernist, though his works contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors, and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by his works. (Modernism) -
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Aestheticism
Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic Movement) is an intellectual and art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts. This meant that art from this particular movement focused more on being beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning — "art for art's sake". -
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier rendered as Remembrance of Things Past), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. (Modernism) -
Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. His Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895) realistically depicts the psychological complexities of battlefield emotion and has become a literary classic. He is also known for authoring Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. (Realism) -
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Modernism
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction. Modernists experimented with literary form and expression. This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. -
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes (June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel Nightwood (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature. She also published A Book (1923), a collection of poetry, plays, and short stories, which was later reissued, with the addition of three stories, as A Night Among the Horses (1929), Ladies Almanack (1928), and Ryder (1928). (Modernism) -
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, screenplays, poetry, essays, and a play. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, with works that included The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom! (Modernism)
