Literary Movements
Discover the main literary movements
Sestigers
Generation of Afrikaans writers in the 60s who modernized Afrikaans literature, introducing experimentalism and critique of apartheid.
Thirties Generation
Generation of left-wing political engagement British poets of the 30s; W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Louis MacNeice are their central figures.
New African Literature
Emergence of modern African literatures in European and vernacular languages; Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o are fundamental references.
Black Arts Movement
African-American cultural movement of affirmation of black identity; Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez in poetry.
Jazz poetry
Poetic form that incorporates jazz rhythms, structures, and improvisation; Langston Hughes is its precursor, the Beat Generation continued the tradition.
Antipoetry
Poetic movement created by Nicanor Parra that subverts lyrical conventions with irony, colloquialism, and black humor; marked influence on contemporary Hispanic poetry.
Infrarealism
Mexican avant-garde poetic movement founded by Roberto Bolaño and Mario Santiago; rupture with the literary establishment and valorization of the marginal.
Nadaism
Colombian literary avant-garde of provocation and nihilism; Gonzalo Arango led this movement of rejection of bourgeois values and literary tradition.
Latin American Boom
Editorial and literary phenomenon that projected Latin American fiction internationally; García Márquez, Cortázar, Vargas Llosa and Fuentes are its protagonists.
Magic realism
Literary style that integrates fantastic elements into everyday reality in a natural way; García Márquez is its most famous representative.
Neobaroque
Contemporary return to baroque exuberance, complexity, and artifice; Severo Sarduy theorized this current in Latin American literature.
Armorial Movement
Brazilian cultural movement by Ariano Suassuna that seeks erudite art rooted in the popular culture of the Northeast.
Marginal Literature
Literary production from Brazilian peripheries by authors from the margins; Ferréz and other writers from the margins assert experiences excluded from canonical literature.
Novísimos
Generation of Spanish poets from Castellet's anthology (1970); influenced by mass culture, cinema, and avant-garde movements; Pere Gimferrer and Leopoldo María Panero.
The Other Sentimentality
Granada Spanish poetic movement for the renewal of love lyrics with critical consciousness and historical materialism; Luis García Montero.
Postism
Spanish post-war avant-garde combining humor, ludism, and formal experimentation as a response to surrealism.
Generation of '50 (Latin America)
Generation of Latin American poets who modernized Hispanic lyricism; Ernesto Cardenal, Roberto Fernández Retamar and others.
Generation of '50 (Spain)
Generation of Spanish poets of social and testimonial poetry in reaction to the Franco dictatorship; Blas de Otero, Gabriel Celaya and José Hierro.
Generation of '60 (Latin America)
Latin American poetic generation marked by the Cuban revolution and social movements; influenced by surrealism, the beat, and anti-poetry.
Tropicalism
Brazilian cultural movement of fusion between Brazilian musical and literary tradition and international avant-gardes; Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil in music, Torquato Neto in poetry.
Southern Gothic
American literary subgenre set in the Southern US; uses the grotesque, decay, and the supernatural to explore issues of race, identity, and history; Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor.
Native American Renaissance
Flourishing of Native American literature from the 70s onwards; N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sherman Alexie.
Transgressive fiction
Literary movement that explores taboos, violence, and marginality in a provocative way; Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis are references.
Slam poetry / Spoken word
Poetic form of competitive oral performance born in Chicago; values voice, rhythm, and political and social engagement.
Universalist Regionalism
Literary current that departs from the regional and particular to reach the universal; João Guimarães Rosa and Grande Sertão as a paradigmatic model.
Afrofuturism
Cultural and literary movement combining science fiction, fantasy, and African-American perspectives; explores alternative futures from Black identities.
Decolonial literature
Critical and literary current that questions colonial legacies in culture and literature; articulates historically silenced voices and perspectives.
Literary Postmodernism
Literary current that questions grand narratives, uses metafiction, intertextuality, and irony; Pynchon, DeLillo, Calvino, and Perec are references.
Autofiction
Hybrid literary genre that combines autobiography and fiction; Serge Doubrovsky coined the term, and authors like Karl Ove Knausgård have popularized the form.
New Sincerity
Postmodern reaction to irony and cynicism; values genuine feeling and emotional commitment; David Foster Wallace is its most associated figure.
Flarf poetry
American poetic movement that uses internet research and low-quality material to create deliberately absurd and provocative poetry.
Conceptual writing
Current that applies conceptual strategies to literary writing, such as the transition and reprocessing of existing texts; Kenneth Goldsmith is the central figure.
Contemporary literature
Contemporary, plural, and globalized literary production, without a dominant school; marked by diversity of voices, hybrid genres, and digital circulation.
Ecopoetry
Poetic movement that places ecology and the relationship with nature at the center of writing; literary response to contemporary environmental crises.
Diaspora literature
Set of literatures produced by diasporic communities; explores identity, belonging, exile, and cultural hybridity; Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Adichie.
Sumerian and Akkadian poetry
Oldest poetic tradition in the world; includes the Epic of Gilgamesh, hymns to deities, and laments; written in cuneiform in Sumerian and Akkadian languages.
Ancient Egyptian poetry
Egyptian poetic tradition including hymns to gods, funerary texts like the Book of the Dead, and love poetry from the New Kingdom; documented on papyri and temple walls.
Hellenistic poetry
Poetic school flourishing in Alexandria under the Ptolemies; Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius of Rhodes cultivated learned, bucolic, and epic forms of great formal refinement.
Late Latin and Christian poetry
Latin poetry from the period of imperial decline and the rise of Christianity; includes liturgical hymns, patristic poetry, and authors such as Prudentius, Paulinus of Nola, and Venantius Fortunatus.
Muwashshah and Zajal
Strophic poetic forms born in Al-Andalus of great importance to medieval Iberian lyric poetry; the muwashshah is learned and in Arabic or Hebrew, the zajal is popular and dialectal; Ibn Quzman is the greatest name of zajal.