LABIANO, KRISHIANNE LOUISE C.

, ENG 411, I- LLB

Mapping out the evolution of literature through time, intellectuals often group works
from a certain timeframe and label it as a period or movement. The following are literally
movements compared and contrasted to some other movements and applied to some literary
piece where we can understand how authors showcase their artistic medium during a certain
period.

Romanticism, originated in the late 18th century, is an artistic and intellectual movement
that stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical art forms, and rebellion
against social conventions. A development during the Romantic era, Gothic literature is marked
by a preoccupation with gloom, mystery, and terror. Gothic and romantic writing are closely
related chronologically and share some themes and characteristics. Most importantly, Gothic as
well as Romanticism is considered as definitive shift from neoclassical ideals of logic and
reason, toward romantic belief in emotion and imagination for both are engrossed with the
individual, the human mind and thus with interior mental process.

Authors for the duration of the Southern Gothic Literary Movement, especially William
Faulkner, wrote about mental debilities, supernatural hysterics, and ludicrous stories that
featured delusional characters. "A Rose for Emily" reveals a well-known townswoman, Emily
Grierson. Prior to her father's death, Emily forms an odd personality that comes to many
peoples' surprise. The strange personality that Emily develops reflects the Southern Gothic
mood of spookiness and delusion. Emily begins developing affection for a dead man and had
the whole town in muddle with her estranged personality. "A Rose for Emily" exhibits the tight-
knit atmosphere of the townsfolk and reflects the impression of Southern Hospitality. Emily
was regarded as a caring woman to all people of the town, and the unexpected shift of
personality produced town-wide concern for Emily.

The Modernist Movement instigated around 1900 and lasted until around 1965. The
movement was characterized by numerous cultural shocks that challenged traditional values
and ways. Modernists abandoned romantic optimism and instead saw the deterioration and
separation of the individual and were heavily influenced by the World Wars. Authors
demonstrated this with gaudy imagery. Modernism in "A Rose for Emily" calls the advent of
new generations and ideas in the town itself and shifting of old ways and new ways. The town
represents to the forces of modernism in conflict with the Old South, and Miss Emily, whose
actions are relentlessly Old South, conquests the forces of modernism until her death. However,
instead of describing positive changes, the story stresses on the mental decay of Emily Grierson
and her modification: from town popularity and admiration to isolation and alienation. William
Faulkner contributes to the mood by sternly depicting the dreadful conditions of Emily's sanity,
both physically and mentally.

Modernist works are categorized by a high degree of experimentation. Modernist

characters are most often estranged people searching vainly for meaning and love in their lives.
As with their surroundings, modernist authors reformed their way of writing. Economic
development and technology expanded affecting life during this time to change drastically. The
authors of the Harlem Renaissance were diverse stylistically for American writers began to
examine the unconscious impulses that affect human behavior. The Harlem Renaissance is an
African American cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s and was focused in the
Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Variously known as the New Negro movement, the
New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro Renaissance, the movement rose toward the end of
World War I in 1918, bloomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then distraught in the mid-1930s.
Harlem Renaissance was marked the first time and mainstream publishers and critics took
African American literature earnestly. It attracted momentous attention from the nation at large.
Millions of black farmers and sharecroppers relocated to the urban North in pursuit of
opportunity and freedom from oppression and racial resentment. Thousands of these
immigrants settled in Harlem, an NYC neighborhood that swiftly became the cultural center of
African-American life. Their cultural customs and new urban awareness inspired the people
and their creativity. Worldly and race-conscious black people nurtured each other’s artistic,
musical, and literary talents. Unfortunately, the H.R. got in to an early end by the economic
collapse of the Great Depression. Numerous writers who had gathered round in Harlem were
involuntarily scattered and took jobs other than their passion to support themselves.
Nevertheless, their work planted seeds that remain to spawn important writing from the
African-American perspective.

The Jazz Age or sometimes called the Roaring Twenties was the cultural movement that
instigated in the 1918 with the end of World War I and persisted until 1929, ending with the
Stock Market Crash. The Jazz Age was “the utmost, gaudiest spree in history” for young people
at this age are rebelling against past tradition, actively seeking out fun and freedom and
experimenting with fashion. The Roaring 20's" was the period marked by economic prosperity,
social-mobility, liberal behavior, and most of all jazz music. Coming to represent the decade as a
whole, Jazz was the single most discussed musical genre of the United States during the 1920s.
It was a non-European music which made impact on composers of modernist music. It
provided a much-desired musical link to cultures for it is thought to be “primitive”, whether
those of the African continent or the American South. It seemed to be one of the most effective
customs in which American composers might gain long-desired recognition in Western Europe.
The vogue for jazz among American concert composers had ongoing implications profoundly
affecting the musical language of Americans for decades to come.

The realm we live in, every so often, drives us to respond in certain ways. Major
happenings occur, governments amend or repeal laws and artists counters by writing novels,
songs, poems, creating paintings, sculpting, designing fashion and living spaces, cosmetically
expressing themselves. All of these reactions and many more can be considered artistic. What
could be the next literary movement after post-modernism?