1) Why “movements” are central for CUET PG
Movements are the bridge concept CUET uses to test:
- chronology (periodisation),
- author grouping,
- formal tendencies (e.g., “fragmentation” → Modernism),
- ideological contexts (e.g., Enlightenment rationalism; postcolonial critique),
- and critical vocabulary.
Movements help you answer multi-step MCQs quickly: if you can identify a movement, you can often infer the author, time-frame, typical forms, and themes.
2) Periodisation as a skill (not a list)
A movement is not just a date range. It is:
- a cluster of aesthetic practices (style, form),
- tied to historical shifts (revolutions, industrialisation, colonialism),
- and defined by dominant debates (reason vs imagination; tradition vs rupture).
CUET often asks movement questions in these ways:
- “Which movement best fits X feature?”
- “Which author belongs to X movement?”
- Match movement ↔ key traits/works.
- Assertion–Reason about movement principles.
3) Major English literary movements (high-yield)
A) Renaissance / Humanism (c. 1500–1660)
Core idea: re-engagement with classical learning + human-centred inquiry. Literary outcomes:
- flourishing of drama and lyric,
- blank verse in drama,
- tension between Christian order and human ambition.
Key names: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson; Sidney; Spenser.
Interlink: tragedy/comedy; soliloquy; blank verse; imitation (classical models).
B) Neoclassicism / Augustan Age (c. 1660–1798)
Core idea: order, decorum, reason; art as “imitation of nature” (in a normative sense). Forms: satire; heroic couplet; mock-epic; essays. Key names: Dryden, Pope, Swift, Johnson.
Interlink: satire; imitation; Enlightenment.
C) Enlightenment (overlaps 18th c.)
Not only a literary movement—an intellectual climate:
- reason, empiricism, progress narratives,
- critique of superstition, but also contradictions (imperial rationality).
Interlink: “Enlightenment” as a term in your syllabus; also postcolonial critique of Enlightenment universalism.
D) Romanticism (c. 1798–1837)
Core shifts:
- imagination and emotion valued over neoclassical reason,
- nature as spiritual/ethical resource,
- interest in the common person, folk, ballads,
- “organic form,” spontaneity (but crafted).
Key names: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron.