Contemporary

Romanticism is one of the earliest movements that we have looked at. Some of the characteristics of the Romantic Movement are that it values feeling and intuition over reason, values imagination, shuns civilization and loves nature, and praises individual freedom and the worth of the individual. Transcendentalism is a movement that followed Romanticism. Transcendentalists believe that everything in the world, including human beings is a reflection of the Divine Soul, and that people can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit that is revealed in nature or in their own souls. The transcendentalists also believed that spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality. After the Transcendentalism movement, it’s the Realism movement. The Realism movement is basically a rejection of Romanticism. Almost all of the beliefs of Realists are opposite from that of the Romantics. The Realists rejects the idealized hero of the Romantic Movement, and they focus on ordinary people. They avoid using very florid language, and uses everyday speech patterns. Modernism is another movement. The Modernists rejects the traditional themes, subjects, and forms of earlier literature, and also rejects sentimentality and artificiality.