List of Literary Movements Amatory fiction . Romantic fiction written in the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable authors: Eliza Haywood, Delarivier Manley Cavalier Poets . 17th century English royalist poets, writing primarily about courtly love, called Sons of Ben (after Ben Jonson). Notable authors: Richard Lovelace, William Davenant Metaphysical poets . 17th century English movement using extended conceit, often (though not always) about religion. Notable authors: John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell The Augustans . An 18th century literary movement based chiefly on classical ideals, satire and skepticism. Notable authors: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift Romanticism . 1800 to 1860 century movement emphasizing emotion and imagination, rather than logic and scientific thought. Response to the Enlightenment. Notable authors: Victor Hugo, Lord Byron and Camilo Castelo Branco Gothic novel . Fiction in which Romantic ideals are combined with an interest in the supernatural and in violence. Notable authors: Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker Lake Poets . A group of Romantic poets from the English Lake District who wrote about nature and the sublime. Notable authors: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge American Romanticism . Distinct from European Romanticism, the American form emerged somewhat later, was based more in fiction than in poetry, and incorporated a (sometimes almost suffocating) awareness of history, particularly the darkest aspects of American history. Notable authors: Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pre-Raphaelitism . 19th century, primarily English movement based ostensibly on undoing innovations by the painter Raphael. Many were both painters and poets. Notable authors: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti Transcendentalism . 19th century American movement: poetry and philosophy concerned with self-reliance, independence from modern technology. Notable authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau Dark romanticism . 19th century American movement in reaction to Transcendentalism. Finds man inherently sinful and self-destructive and nature a dark, mysterious force. Notable authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, George Lippard Realism . Late-19th century movement based on a simplification of style and image and an interest in poverty and everyday concerns. Notable authors: Gustave Flaubert, William Dean Howells, Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Frank Norris and Eça de Queiroz Naturalism . Also late 19th century. Proponents of this movement believe heredity and environment control people. Notable authors: Émile Zola, Stephen Crane Symbolism . Principally French movement of the fin de siècle based on the structure of thought rather than poetic form or image; influential for English language poets from Edgar Allan Poe to James Merrill. Notable authors: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Valéry Stream of consciousness . Early-20th century fiction consisting of literary representations of quotidian thought, without authorial presence. Notable authors: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce Modernism . Variegated movement of the early 20th century, encompassing primitivism, formal innovation, or reaction to science and technology. Notable authors: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H.D., James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Fernando Pessoa The Lost Generation . It was traditionally attributed to Gertrude Stein and was then popularized by Ernest Hemingway in the epigraph to his novel The Sun Also Rises, and his memoir A Moveable Feast. It refers to a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris and other parts ofEurope from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Notable Authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Waldo Pierce Dada . Touted by its proponents as anti-art, dada focused on going against artistic norms and conventions. Notable authors: Guillaume Apollinaire, Kurt Schwitters First World War Poets . Poets who documented both the idealism and the horrors of the war and the period in which it took place. Notable authors: Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke Stridentism . Mexican artistic avant-garde movement. They exalted modern urban life and social revolution. Notable authors: Manuel Maples Arce, Arqueles Vela, Germán List Arzubide Los Contemporáneos . A Mexican vanguardist group, active in the late 1920s and early 1930s; published an eponymous literary magazine which served as the group's mouthpiece and artistic vehicle from 1928-1931. Notable authors: Xavier Villaurrutia, Salvador Novo Imagism . Poetry based on description rather than theme, and on the motto, "the natural object is always the adequate symbol." . Notable authors: Ezra Pound, H.D., Richard Aldington Harlem Renaissance . African American poets, novelists, and thinkers, often employing elements of blues and folklore, based in the Harlem neighborhood ofNew York City in the 1920s. Notable authors: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston Surrealism . Originally a French movement, influenced by Surrealist painting, that uses surprising images and transitions to play off of formal expectations and depict the unconscious rather than conscious mind. Notable authors: Jean Cocteau, Dylan Thomas Southern Agrarians . A group of Southern American poets, based originally at Vanderbilt University, who expressly repudiated many modernist developments in favor of metrical verse and narrative. Some Southern Agrarians were also associated with the New Criticism. Notable authors: John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren Oulipo . Mid-20th century poetry and prose based on seemingly arbitrary rules for the sake of added challenge. Notable authors: Raymond Queneau, Walter Abish Postmodernism . Postwar movement skeptical of absolutes and embracing diversity, irony, and word play. Notable authors: Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon, Alasdair Gray Black Mountain Poets . A self-identified group of poets, originally based at Black Mountain College, who eschewed patterned form in favor of the rhythms and inflections of the human voice. Notable authors: Charles Olson, Denise Levertov Beat poets . American movement of the 1950s and 1960s concerned with counterculture and youthful alienation. Notable authors: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey Hungryalist Poets . A literary movement in postcolonial India (Kolkata) during 1961-65 as a counter-discourse to Colonial Bengali poetry. Notable poets:Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury, Binoy Majumdar, Samir Roychoudhury Confessional poetry . Poetry that, often brutally, exposes the self as part of an aesthetic of the beauty and power of human frailty. Notable authors: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Alicia Ostriker New York School . Urban, gay or gay-friendly, leftist poets, writers, and painters of the 1960s. Notable authors: Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery Magical Realism . Literary movement in which magical elements appear in otherwise realistic circumstances. Most often associated with the Latin American literary boom of the 20th century. Notable authors: Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz, Günter Grass, Julio Cortázar Postcolonialism . A diverse, loosely connected movement of writers from former colonies of European countries, whose work is frequently politically charged. Notable authors: Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie, Giannina Braschi, Wole Soyinka Poetry is the expression of a thought, an idea, a concept or a story in a structured form which has a flow and a music created by the sounds and syllables in it. Acrostic: Acrostic poetry is one that contains certain letters, which are usually placed at the beginning of each line. These letters form a message or word when they are read in a sequence. Ballad: This type of poetry is short and narrative and is made up of stanzas of two to four lines. Ballads usually have a refrain. They also deal mostly with folklore or popular trends though some also originate from a wide range of subject matter. The verses in ballads are straight-forward and seldom have any detail. Apart from that, ballads always possess graphic simplicity and force. Blank Verse: A blank verse is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. This form is a little like the rhythms of speech. Burlesque: In this kind of poetry a subject that is serious in nature is treated as humor. Cinquain: A cinquain is short poem that is made up of five lines that are usually unrhymed. These five lines contain two, four, six, eight and two syllables respectively. Clerihew: This type of poetry is made up of a comic verse that has two couplets and a specific rhyming scheme. Didactic Poetry: Didactic poems are poems that are written in order to instruct or teach. Epic: This type of poem is long and narrative in nature. It talks about the adventures of a hero. Epics usually deal with the history and traditions of a nation. Epigram: Practiced by poets like Robert Frost, William Blake and Ben Jonson, epigrams are short poems that possess satire. This type of poetry ends with a stinging punchline or humorous retort. Common forms of epigrams are written as a couplet. Epitaph: A short poem with rhyming lines written on a tombstone in praise of a deceased person is called an epitaph. Elegy: This type of poetry is sad and thoughtful in nature. They talk about the death of an individual. Free Verse: Like the name suggests, free verse is poetry that is irregular. This type of poetry has content which is free from the traditional rules of using verse. Ode: A poem that is written in praise of a place,