COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FEATURES OF MEDIEVAL,
RENAISANCE, CLASSICAL AND ROMANTIC AGE
Writers belonging to a particular age reflect
the prevalent features of their contemporary society in their writings. The
most salient features of 4 different ages have carefully been extracted and
presented below in order to facilitate the understanding of general tendencies
of the writers of their time.
FEATURES OF MEDIEVAL AGE
- Chivalry
- Romance
- Ignorance
- Love for combats
- Prevalence of superstitions
- Emphasis on temporal things
- Decay of mighty institutions of church
- Humanism– All are human beings – High or low, rich or poor
- Custom of pilgrimage
- Religious controversies
- Intellectual abnormality
- Political deformity
- Moral laxity
- Use of allegory (a story having two shades of meaning) in literary works
FEATURES
OF RENAISSANCE AGE
- Love for love
- Love for travel
- Love for music
- Love for nature
- Love for mankind
- Love for adventure
- Love for knowledge
- Love for super nature
- Love for supreme knowledge
- Love for worldly power and pelf
- Love for worldly pleasures
- Age of pomp and show
- Aloofness from ethics
- A spirit of revolt
- Spirit of fight
- Self-assigned tasks
- Lavishly spent of money
- Reverence for Latin and Greek classics
FEATURES OF CLASSICAL AGE
- Age of reason
- Aim – Correction
- Subject – Mankind
- Respect for art
- Literature – Art
- Prolong study– Long poems
- Universal themes
- Themes – Social problems
- Professional approach
- Heroic couplets
- Love for city life– Hustle and bustle
- Concrete ideas
- Preference to reality, reason and judgement
- Traditional writers
- Harmony and balance
FEATURES OF ROMANTIC AGE
- Love for nature
- Love for beauty
- Love for super nature
- Love for rural life – Solitude
- Hate for city life
- Common language of common folk
- Common matters
- Use of imagination
- Escapism
- Maximum use of figures of speech
- Focus – Passions, feelings and emotions
- Themes – Soul problems
- Micro study
- Sensational and emotional approach
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