Literary Movements
Discover the main literary movements
Portuguese Renaissance
Golden age of Portuguese literature with Camões, Sá de Miranda and Gil Vicente; confluence of medieval influences and Renaissance humanists.
English Renaissance (Elizabethan)
English literary flourishing in the Elizabethan era; Shakespeare, Marlowe, Sidney, and Spenser are its central figures.
La Pléiade
Group of French poets led by Ronsard and Du Bellay who advocated for the renewal of the French language and literature based on classical models.
Spanish Golden Age
Period of greatest flourishing of Spanish literature with Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Góngora, Quevedo, and Calderón.
Northern Renaissance
Nordic and Germanic expression of Renaissance humanism, with influences from the Protestant Reformation in literature and vernacular language.
Mannerism
Transitional style between the Renaissance and Baroque, characterized by artificiality, formal sophistication, and expressive tension.
Conceptism
Spanish Baroque current based on the play of concepts, witticisms, and intellectual paradoxes; represented by Quevedo and Gracián.
Culteranismo / Gongorism
Spanish baroque current of elaborate language, latinate and of dense sensory imagery; initiated by Góngora.
Marinism
Italian baroque current of excessive ornamentation and surprising imagery, initiated by Giambattista Marino.
Portuguese and Brazilian Baroque
Iberian expression of Baroque with Padre António Vieira in prose and Gregório de Matos in Brazilian poetry; strong religious and satirical presence.
Metaphysical poets
Group of English poets combining intellectual argument, unusual imagery, and emotional intensity; John Donne is the central figure.
German Baroque
German baroque literature marked by the context of the Thirty Years' War; Andreas Gryphius stands out in lyric poetry and drama.
Shofu haikai
Haiku school founded by Matsuo Basho, which elevated the form to poetry of philosophical depth and contemplation of nature.
Neoclassicism
Return to Greco-Roman models in reaction to the Baroque; valorization of reason, order, balance and formal clarity in literature and the arts.
Encyclopedism
French intellectual movement associated with Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie; it influenced the prose of ideas and literary criticism of the Enlightenment.
Augustan Age
English poetry of the 18th century with a classical Latin inspiration; Pope, Dryden and Swift cultivated satire, the heroic-comic and the formal ode.
Sturm und Drang
German pre-Romantic literary movement of exaltation of feeling, individual genius, and revolt against neoclassical norms; Goethe and Schiller in their early phase.
Literary Rococo
Literary expression of the Rococo style, characterized by lightness, grace, gallantry, and frivolous love themes; parallel to Rococo in the decorative arts.
German Romanticism
Philosophical and literary strand of Romanticism with Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Hölderlin, and Kleist; strong philosophical dimension and interest in folklore and myth.
English Romanticism
English Romanticism with two generations of poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge in the first; Byron, Shelley and Keats in the second.
French Romanticism
French Romanticism with Hugo, Lamartine, Musset and Vigny; marked by historical drama, lyric poetry and historical novel.
Italian Romanticism
Italian Romanticism with Leopardi in poetry and Manzoni in prose; linked to the Risorgimento and the ideal of national unification.
Portuguese Romanticism
Romanticism in Portugal introduced by Almeida Garrett and Alexandre Herculano; historical, patriotic, and sentimental themes; Camilo Castelo Branco in the novel.
Brazilian Romanticism
Romanticism in Brazil across three generations: Indianism (Gonçalves Dias), Ultra-Romanticism (Álvares de Azevedo), and Condorism (Castro Alves).
Ultra-Romanticism
Darkest and most sentimental phase of Iberian Romanticism; exaltation of suffering, death, impossible love, and poetic Satanism.
Transcendentalism
American philosophical and literary movement that valued intuition, nature, and the immanent divinity; Emerson and Thoreau in prose, Whitman in poetry.
Indianism
Brazilian romantic current that idealized the indigenous as a symbol of national identity; Gonçalves Dias in poetry and José de Alencar in prose.
Romantic nationalism
Use of literature to build national identities; collection of folklore, vernacular languages, and medieval epics as cultural affirmation.
Japan Romantic School
Japanese literary school of European influence that valued sentiment, aesthetic beauty, and individualism in reaction to naturalism.
Condorism
Third generation of Brazilian Romanticism, with social and libertarian poetry, associated with the abolition of slavery; Castro Alves is the central figure.
Naturalism
Current of Realism that applies scientific methods to literature, exploring heredity and environment as determinants of human behavior; Zola is the main theorist.
Coimbra Question
Portuguese literary polemic that opposed the realist generation (Antero de Quental, Eça) to Castilho's romanticism; a landmark of Portuguese cultural renewal.
Generation of 1870
Generation of Portuguese intellectuals and writers associated with the 1871 Casino Conferences; Antero de Quental, Eça de Queirós, Ramalho Ortigão, and Oliveira Martins.
Verism
Italian version of literary Realism/Naturalism; Giovanni Verga is the main representative, focusing on the lives of Sicilian peasants.
Russian Realism
Great Russian realist tradition with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Chekhov; deep psychological analysis and social criticism.
Literary Positivism
Influence of philosophical positivism in literary criticism and production; valorization of determinism, science, and objective social analysis.
Decadentism
Fin de siècle literary movement marked by pessimism, aestheticism, artifice, and fascination with decadence and the morbid; related to Symbolism.
Aestheticism
English art for art's sake movement, which places beauty above any moral or social function; Oscar Wilde is its most representative figure.
Pre-Raphaelitism
English artistic and literary brotherhood that sought pre-Raphaelite medieval purity; Dante Gabriel Rossetti cultivated both painting and poetry.
Fin de siècle
European cultural climate of the late 19th century marked by pessimism, crisis of values, and the search for new aesthetic forms.