Literary Movements
Discover the main literary movements
1888–1911
Catalan Modernisme
Catalonia
Movement of Catalan cultural renewal contemporary to European symbolism; Joan Maragall is its main poet.
1854–20th century
Félibrige
Provence / France
Revitalization movement of the Occitan/Provençal language and literature; founded by Frédéric Mistral, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904.
1890–1910
Viennese Modernism
Austria
Late 19th-century Viennese cultural flourishing with Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, and Karl Kraus; atmosphere of crisis and aesthetic renewal.
1890–1910
Young Vienna
Austria
Viennese literary circle associated with Wiener Moderne; gathered writers such as Hofmannsthal and Schnitzler around a symbolist and decadentist aesthetic.
1880–1920
Majorcan School
Balearic Islands / Spain
Catalan poetic current from Mallorca with a classicist and symbolist tendency; Costa i Llobera and Joan Alcover are its main representatives.
1906–1930
Novecentism
Catalonia / Portugal
Classicist reaction to Symbolist modernism; in Spain/Catalonia it values serenity and balance, in Portugal it is associated with Pessoa and the Renascença Portuguesa.
1909–1944
Futurism
Italy
Avant-garde movement that celebrates speed, the machine, war, and technological modernity; founded by Marinetti with the 1909 Futurist Manifesto.
1912–1930
Russian Futurism
Russia
Russian poetic avant-garde that breaks with tradition and experiments with language; Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov and the cubo-futurists are its central figures.
1916–1924
Dadaism
Switzerland / Europe
Anti-art movement born in Zurich that rejects conventional logic and aesthetics; uses absurdity, chance, and provocation as artistic strategies.
1905–1930
Expressionism
Germany / Europe
Movement that distorts reality to express inner states and intense emotions; Georg Trakl and Gottfried Benn in German poetry.
1912–1917
Imagism
United Kingdom / USA
Anglophone poetic school valuing precise imagery, direct language, and verse experimentation; Ezra Pound and H.D. are central figures.
1913–1930
Literary Cubism
France
Application of pictorial cubism to literature; Apollinaire and his calligrams are the best-known expression of this formal experimentation.
1910–1925
Acmeism
Russia
Russian poetic school that reacts against symbolism in favor of clarity, concreteness, and precision; Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam are its greatest names.
1908–1920
Unanimism
France
French literary movement that conceives the human group as a collective soul; Jules Romains is its main theorist and practitioner.
1916–1930
Creationism
Chile / France
Hispanic poetic movement founded by Vicente Huidobro that proposes the poem as an autonomous creation and not an imitation of reality.
1918–1925
Ultraism
Spain / Argentina
Hispanic literary avant-garde influenced by Futurism and Dadaism; celebrates pure metaphor and formal renewal; influenced the young Borges.
1880–1915
Spanish American Modernismo
Latin America
First major autonomous literary movement in Latin America; Rubén Darío is its central figure; radical renewal of the Spanish poetic language.
1915–1945
Portuguese and Brazilian Modernism
Portugal / Brazil
Radical literary renewal in Portugal (Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Almada) and Brazil (Modern Art Week of 1922, Oswald and Mário de Andrade).
1902–1922
Brazilian Pre-Modernism
Brazil
Period of Brazilian literary transition between Naturalism/Parnassianism and the Modernism of 1922; Euclides da Cunha and Lima Barreto are references.
1898–1915
Generation of '98
Spain
Generation of Spanish writers marked by the national crisis after the defeat of 1898; Unamuno, Machado, and Azorín reflect on Spanish identity.
1905–1940
Bloomsbury Group
England
London intellectual and literary circle that included Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey; associated with Anglophone modernism and cultural liberalism.
1920s–1930s
Harlem Renaissance
USA
African-American cultural and literary blossoming centered in Harlem, New York; Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston are central figures.
1930s–1960s
Négritude
France / Antilles / Africa
Literary and philosophical movement of affirmation of African and Afro-descendant identity and culture; Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon-Gontran Damas.
1900–1930
Mahjar literature
North America / South America
Arabic diaspora literature produced by Syrian and Lebanese emigrants; Khalil Gibran is its best-known name in the Western world.
1919–1930
New Culture Movement
China
Chinese cultural modernization movement associated with the May Fourth Movement; promoted vernacular (baihua) literature over classical.
1930s
Objectivism (poetry)
USA
American poetic school that values the poem as an object and the precision of perception; Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen are its main representatives.
1948–1951
CoBrA
Northern Europe
Artistic and literary movement in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam; spontaneous, expressive, and experimental poetry associated with gestural painting.
1898–1915
Spanish Modernismo
Spain
Spanish strand of Hispanic modernism, contemporary to the Generation of '98; Juan Ramón Jiménez is its most representative figure.
1940s–1960s
Literary Existentialism
France / Europe
Literary expression of philosophical existentialism; Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir explore freedom, anguish, and the absurdity of the human condition.
1950s–1970s
New York School
USA
Group of American poets influenced by abstract expressionism and surrealism; Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch are central figures.
1950s
Black Mountain poets
USA
American poetic school associated with Black Mountain College; Charles Olson, Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan experiment with projective verse and breath rhythm.
1950s–1960s
Beat Generation
USA
American counterculture literary movement that rejects conventional values; Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs explore freedom, spirituality, and marginality.
1920s–1930s
Lost Generation
USA / Europe
Generation of American writers marked by World War I and European exile; Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos.
1947–1967
Group 47
Germany
Post-war German literary group that brought together the main German-language writers; Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass are its most prominent names.
1950s
Hussards
France
Group of right-wing French writers who opposed Sartrean existentialism; Roger Nimier and Michel Déon cultivated an ironic and elegant style.
1950s–1970s
Nouveau roman
France
French avant-garde school that eliminated psychological characters and conventional plot in favor of objective description; Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, and Butor.
1970s–1980s
Misty Poets
China
Chinese post-Cultural Revolution poetic movement using metaphor and ambiguity to resist socialist realism; Bei Dao and Shu Ting are central figures.
1980s–1990s
Beijing School
China
Avant-garde Chinese literary movement that emerged in Beijing in the context of post-Mao reforms; explores cultural identity and modernity.
1936–1960s
Progressive Writers' Movement
India / Pakistan
South Asian Marxist-inspired literary movement that produced literature in Urdu, Hindi, and other languages; Faiz Ahmed Faiz is its most celebrated poet.
1920s–1950s
Scottish Renaissance
Scotland
Movement for the revival of Scottish literature in English and Scots; Hugh MacDiarmid is its central figure.