Key characteristics of the Victorian Age 

• Liberalism.
• Imperialism at its highest.
• New middle class leading to a growing number of readers.
• The novel the leading form of literature.
• Topics such as moral and religious values, role of women and social aspects.
• The serialized novel published in newspapers and periodicals.

Key characteristics of the Renaissance 

• The Elizabethan Period (1533-1603).
• The Shakespearean/English sonnet.
• Humanism.
• Society based on freedom not equality.
• App. 10,000 new words.
• New verse form (The English sonnet), metres, themes and genres in poetry.
• The English language gradually replacing Latin as the language of education.

• Urbanised and industrialised England.
• Desire for individual freedom as a reaction against the alienation of an industrial society.
• Rise of female writers.
• Focus on purity, nature and childhood in particualr in poetry.
• Focus on the supernatural, the gothic.

• More of a European than a British movement.
• Loss of tradition.
• Experimentation and freedom.
• Disintegration and fragmentation in writing style.
• Stream of consciousness.
• Multiple points of view.
• Rejection of history.

• Different poetical movements such as The Movement and the Liverpool Poets
• Post-colonial writers.
• Intertextuality.
• Pastiche.
• No ultimate truth.
• Black humour/parody.
• Fragmentation.

• Social realism as themes in novels, plays and poems.