UGC-NET Help Group

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UGC-NET Help Group is a group of Wikimedians that intends to help students prepare for UGC-NET examination for various subjects. We are starting with English.

Participants[edit]

English[edit]

This page covers topics which would be helpful in building foundational knowledge of English Literature for the UGC-NET exam. It is notable that English Literature is quite a wide area of study,so the students should also browse through the past question papers for practice. In addition to the topics mentioned and discussed below, the students should also spend time doing comprehensive study of the text books recommended. As for this page, several links have been provided here for helpful articles, books and pages, click on the words highlighted blue (hyperlinks) to access them.

British Literature[edit]

Below we have provided links to download the books recommended to prepare for this exam. Since a large portion of the questions in Paper II are from this section, students should pay extra focus to it.

American Literature[edit]

A working knowledge of American Literature is helpful in this exam.

Significant figures of English Literature[edit]

Geoffrey Chaucer[edit]

Below is provided the list of the most famous and important works of Geoffrey Chaucer and his contemporaries. By clicking on the titles you can access their Wikipedia page as well.

William Langland[edit]

John Gower[edit]

Edmund Spenser[edit]

Philip Sidney[edit]

Shakespeare[edit]

A large chunk of this page is dedicated to Shakespeare's work since he is one of the most famous writers to have ever lived.The following content has been divided into four sections for convenience. It includes Shakespearean tragedies, problem plays, romances and histories. The students can access the respective texts as well by clicking on the links provided.

Shakespearean Tragedies[edit]

Hamlet[edit]

Students are advised to go through the soliloquies of Hamlet.

  • A rendition to the "To be or not to be" soliloquy is found in the movie Haider (external link no. 3)

King Lear[edit]

Macbeth[edit]

There are high chances that questions directly from the dialogues and soliloquy of the characters might be asked in the exam, so focus on them while reading Shakespeare's dramas.

Othello[edit]

Shakespearean Problem Plays[edit]

Anthony and Cleopatra[edit]

Troilus and Cressida[edit]

All's Well That Ends Well[edit]

Shakespearean Romances[edit]

Measure for Measure[edit]

As You Like It[edit]

The Comedy of Errors[edit]

Love's Labour Lost[edit]

The Merchant of Venice[edit]

A Midsummer's Night Dream[edit]

Much Ado About Nothing[edit]

The Tempest[edit]

Twelfth Night[edit]

The Two Gentlemen of Verona[edit]

Cymbeline[edit]

The Winter's Tale[edit]

Shakespearean Histories[edit]

King John[edit]

Edward III[edit]

Richard II[edit]

Henry IV Part I[edit]

Henry IV Part II[edit]

Henry V[edit]

Henry VI Part I[edit]

Henry VI Part II[edit]

Henry VI Part III[edit]

Richard III[edit]

Henry VIII[edit]

Christopher Marlowe[edit]

Mentioned below are the names of the most famous plays by Marlowe. By clicking on the titles you will be able to access their Wikipedia articles. Reading the full text of Doctor Faustus is advised.

-full text of Doctor Faustus on Wikisource- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_Doctor_Faustus


Below are mentioned the most significant writers of the Augustan Age. Students should read the texts of at least those which have been provided.

Alexander Pope[edit]

Daniel Defoe[edit]

Jonathan Swift[edit]

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele[edit]

Addison and Steele worked together mainly on the magazine The Spectator.

Victorian English Literature[edit]

  • Moby_Dick

Charles_Dickens[edit]

Students are advised to read the following works of Dickens, focus specially on the plot, timeline and the characters. Clicking on the title will bring its Wikipedia article to you.

Thomas Hardy[edit]

The most renowned works of Thomas Hardy are mentioned below. The complete text on Wikisource of each of the mentioned works of Hardy have also been included along with the Wikipedia article on the novels.

Under the Greenwood Tree[edit]
Far from the Madding Crowd[edit]
The Return of the Native[edit]
The Woodlanders[edit]
The Mayor of Casterbridge[edit]
Tess of the d'Urbervilles[edit]
Jude the Obscure[edit]

George Eliot[edit]

Reading the texts mentioned below is advised. Special focus on the plot, characters and timeline of the novels is advised.

Bronte Sisters[edit]

The Bronte/Bell sisters created novels which would be recognized as classics. Read the texts focusing on their plots.

- full text of Jane Eyre on Wikisource- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre_(1st_edition)

- full text of Wuthering Heights on Wikisource- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wuthering_Heights_(unsourced_edition)

Jane Austen[edit]

Developing an understanding of Austen's work and biographical details is advised. The same advise stays relevant for other Victorian writers as well.

Linguistics[edit]

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context, as well as an analysis of the social, cultural, historical, and political factors that influence language. The following topics are relevant for preparation for the exam, click on the topics to access their Wikipedia pages directly:

Pedagogy[edit]

Since the exams checks the candidate's fitness for becoming an assistant professor, being skilled in the theoretical as well as practical aspects of pedagogy is advised. Click on the topics mentioned to access their Wikipedia pages.

Literary Devices and Figures of Speech[edit]

Remembering the definition of each is advised. Students should also practice enough to be able to recognize the figures of speech from examples.

  1. Allegory
  2. Alliteration
  3. Allusion
  4. Anaphora
  5. Aporia
  6. Antitheis
  7. Apostrophe
  8. Bathos
  9. Caesura
  10. Conceit
  11. Diacope
  12. Egotistical Sublime
  13. Epizeuxis
  14. Imagery
  15. Irony
  16. Juxtaposition
  17. Kenning
  18. Litotes
  19. Metaphor
  20. Metonymy
  21. Onomatopoeia
  22. Oxymoron
  23. Pathetic Fallacy
  24. Paradox
  25. Personification
  26. Prolepsis
  27. Simile
  28. Synecdoche
  29. Synesthesia
  30. Transferred Epithet
  31. Zeugma

Most Common Feet in Metrical Compositions[edit]

Remembering the definitions of the most common feet as well as practicing enough to be able to recognize them in poetry is advised.

  1. Iambic
  2. Anapaest
  3. Trochee
  4. Dactyl
  5. Spondee

Types of Novels[edit]

These are the most famous types of novels. Click on the topics to access their Wikipedia articles.

  1. Realistic novel
  2. Romance novel
  3. Epistolary novel
  4. Picaresque novel
  5. Genre Fiction
  6. Historical novel
  7. Regional novel
  8. Non-fiction novel
  9. Bildungsroman
  10. Roman a these
  11. Roman a clef
  12. Roman-fleuve
  13. Graphic novel

Literary Theory[edit]

Understanding of these literary theories is crucial for a good foundation in literary critical analysis. Click on the following link to access the PDF version of Beginning Theory by Peter Barry- https://www.perlego.com/book/1526255/beginning-theory-an-introduction-to-literary-and-cultural-theory-fourth-edition-pdf Additionally, click on the topics below to access the Wikipedia articles on them.

  1. New Criticism
  2. Formalism
  3. Structuralism
  4. Post-structuralism
  5. Modernism
  6. Post-modernism
  7. Reader-response theory
  8. Psychoanalytic theory
  9. Archetypal theory
  10. Marxism
  11. Feminism
  12. Post-colonialism
  13. New-historicism
  14. Queer theory
  15. Eco-criticism

Important texts of Literary Theory[edit]

These books and the related authors are important for the preparation of this exam.

Cultural Studies[edit]

Reading these texts to form a basic understanding of Cultural Studies is advised.

  1. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
  2. Introduction to Cultural Studies
  3. Culture and Society
  4. The Long Revolution
  5. Introducing Cultural Studies

English in India[edit]

Understanding of this period in Indian history introduces to the student the impact of colonization on Indian education from the colonial to the post-colonial era.

  1. Charter Act of 1813
  2. English Education Act
  3. Raja Ram Mohan Roy
  4. William Bentinck
  5. Thomas Babington Macaulay
  6. Minute on Education
  7. Wood's Dispatch
  8. Hunter Commission
  9. Indian Universities Commission

Literary Movements[edit]

A detailed understanding of the literature as well as culture is required. In addition, students should also focus on the economic, political and social aspects associated with the literary movements.

Renaissance[edit]

Renaissance Literature[edit]

Renaissance literature refers to European literature which was influenced by the intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with the Renaissance. The literature of the Renaissance was written within the general movement of the Renaissance, which arose in 14th-century Italy and continued until the 16th century while being diffused into the rest of the western world. It is characterized by the adoption of a humanist philosophy and the recovery of the classical Antiquity. It benefited from the spread of printing in the latter part of the 15th century.

University Wits[edit]

The University Wits is a phrase used to name a group of late 16th-century English playwrights and pamphleteers who were educated at the universities (Oxford or Cambridge) and who became popular secular writers. Prominent members of this group were Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe from Cambridge, and John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele from Oxford. Thomas Kyd is also sometimes included in the group, though he is not study any university.

Metaphysical Poets[edit]

The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterised by the inventive use of conceits, and by a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrical quality of their verse. These poets were not formally affiliated and few were highly regarded until 20th century attention established their importance.

Cavalier Poets[edit]

The cavalier poets was a school of English poets of the 17th century, that came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Charles, a connoisseur of the fine arts, supported poets who created the art he craved. These poets in turn grouped themselves with the King and his service, thus becoming Cavalier Poets.

Sons of Ben[edit]

Sons of Ben were followers of Ben Jonson in English poetry and drama in the first half of the seventeenth century. These men followed Ben Jonson's philosophy and his style of poetry. Unlike Jonson, they were loyal to the king.

Age of Reason[edit]

The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state.

Kit Kat Club[edit]

The Kit-Cat Club (sometimes Kit Kat Club) was an early 18th-century English club in London with strong political and literary associations. Members of the club were committed Whigs. They met at the Trumpet tavern in London and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.

Scriblerus Club[edit]

The Scriblerus Club was an informal association of authors, based in London, that came together in the early 18th century. They were prominent figures in the Augustan Age of English letters. The nucleus of the club included the satirists Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Other members were John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell. The group was founded in 1714 and lasted until the death of the founders, finally ending in 1745. Pope and Swift are the two members whose reputations and work have the most long-lasting influence. Working collaboratively, the group created the persona of Martinus Scriblerus, through whose writings they accomplished their satirical aims. Very little of this material, however, was published until the 1740s. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer occasionally joined the club for meetings, though he is not known to have contributed to their literary output. He, along with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, contributed to the literary productions of the Club

Graveyard Poets[edit]

The "Graveyard Poets", also termed "Churchyard Poets", were a number of pre-Romantic English poets of the 18th century characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality, "skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms" elicited by the presence of the graveyard. Moving beyond the elegy lamenting a single death, their purpose was rarely sensationalist. As the century progressed, "graveyard" poetry increasingly expressed a feeling for the "sublime" and uncanny, and an antiquarian interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. The "graveyard poets" are often recognized as precursors of the Gothic literary genre, as well as the Romantic movement.

Romantic Age[edit]

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, chess, social sciences, and the natural sciences.[failed verification] It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism, and nationalism.

Romantic Poetry[edit]

Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century, and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850.

William Wordsworth[edit]

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge[edit]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (/ˈkoʊlərɪdʒ/; 21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including "suspension of disbelief". He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism.

William Blake[edit]

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".

John Keats[edit]

John Keats (/kiːts/; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.

Lord Byron[edit]

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English peer, who was a poet and politician. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement and is regarded as one of the greatest English poets. He remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular.

Percy Bysshe Shelley[edit]

Percy Bysshe Shelley (/bɪʃ/ (listen) BISH; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. Harold Bloom calls him “a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem.” A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats.

Victorian Era[edit]

In the history of the United Kingdom, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the Belle Époque era of Continental Europe.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood[edit]

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" modelled in part on the Nazarene movement.

The group sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art.

Aestheticism[edit]

Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic Movement) is an intellectual and art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts. This meant that art from this particular movement focused more on being beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning — "art for art's sake". It was particularly prominent in England during the late 19th century, supported by notable figures such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.

Fireside Poets[edit]

The fireside poets – also known as the schoolroom or household poets – were a group of 19th-century American poets associated with New England. These poets were very popular among readers and critics both in the United States and overseas. Their domestic themes and messages of morality presented in conventional poetic forms deeply shaped their era until their decline in popularity at the beginning of the 20th century.

Oxford Movement[edit]

The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church members of the Church of England which eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of some older Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy and theology. They thought of Anglicanism as one of three branches of the "one holy, catholic, and apostolic" Christian church. By the 1840s many participants decided that the Anglican Church lacked grace, and converted to Roman Catholicism.

Realism[edit]

Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and can be in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization.

Naturalism[edit]

In philosophy, naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual ones) operate in the universe. Adherents of naturalism assert that natural laws are the only rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural world, and that the changing universe is at every stage a product of these laws.

Impressionism[edit]

Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.

Symbolism[edit]

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through metaphorical images and language mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realism.

Imagism[edit]

Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It has been described as the most influential movement in English poetry since the Pre-Raphaelites.

Surrealism[edit]

Surrealism was a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dada. The movement is best known for its visual artworks and writings and the juxtaposition of distant realities to activate the unconscious mind through the imagery. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes, sometimes with photographic precision, creating strange creatures from everyday objects, and developing painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself

Modernism[edit]

Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.

Georgian Poetry[edit]

Georgian Poetry refers to a series of anthologies showcasing the work of a school of English poetry that established itself during the early years of the reign of King George V of the United Kingdom.

The Georgian poets were, by the strictest definition, those whose works appeared in a series of five anthologies named Georgian Poetry, published by Harold Monro and edited by Edward Marsh, the first volume of which contained poems written in 1911 and 1912. The group included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, Siegfried Sassoon and John Drinkwater. It was not until the final two volumes that the decision was taken to include female poets.

Lost Generation[edit]

The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort that came of age during World War I. "Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in the early postwar period.

Harlem Renaissance[edit]

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater and politics centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after The New Negro, a 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke.

War Poet[edit]

A war poet is a poet who participates in a war and writes about their experiences, or a non-combatant who writes poems about war. While the term is applied especially to those who served during the First World War, the term can be applied to a poet of any nationality writing about any war, including Homer's Iliad, from around the 8th century BC as well as poetry of the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, the Crimean War and other wars.

Black Mountain Poets[edit]

The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid-20th-century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

New Apocalyptics[edit]

The New Apocalyptics were a poetry grouping in the United Kingdom in the 1940s, taking their name from the anthology The New Apocalypse (1939), which was edited by J. F. Hendry (1912–1986) and Henry Treece. There followed the further anthologies The White Horseman (1941) and Crown and Sickle (1944).

Their reaction against the political realism of much of the Thirties poetry drew for support upon D. H. Lawrence (Apocalypse, 1931), surrealism, myth, and expressionism.

Stream of Consciousness[edit]

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which [sic] pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855 in the first edition of The Senses and the Intellect, when he wrote, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness (on the same cerebral highway) enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense"

Post-Modernism[edit]

Kitchen Sink Drama[edit]

Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism which depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called "well-made plays".

Angry Young Men[edit]

The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working- and middle-class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading figures included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer in order to promote Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger. It is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose Angry Young Man was published in 1951.

Beat Generation[edit]

The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s.

Black Arts Movement[edit]

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement, active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride.

Existentialism[edit]

Existentialism (/ˌɛɡzɪˈstɛnʃəlɪzəm/ or /ˌɛksəˈstɛntʃəˌlɪzəm/) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on the lived experience of the thinking, feeling, acting individual. In the view of the existentialist, the individual's starting point has been called "the existential angst" (or, variably, existential attitude, dread, etc.), or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or anxiety in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.

Theatre of the Absurd[edit]

The Theatre of the Absurd (French: théâtre de l'absurde [teɑtʁ(ə) də lapsyʁd]) is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of theatre the plays represent. The plays focus largely on ideas of existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down.

Agitprop[edit]

It gave rise to agitprop theatre, a highly politicized theatre that originated in 1920s Europe and spread to the United States; the plays of Bertolt Brecht are a notable example. Russian agitprop theater was noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule. Gradually, the term agitprop came to describe any kind of highly politicized art.


External links[edit]

https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/how-english-language-evolved-inkhorn-controversy-shakespeare-phrases-in-use-today/#:~:text=The%20evolution%20of%20spoken%

https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/the-history-and-significance-of-dictionaries

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