Rousseau criticized Thomas Hobbes for asserting that since man in the "state of nature... has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue". On the contrary, Rousseau holds that "uncorrupted morals" prevail in the "state of nature"

an imagined reality that is radically different in its nature and functioning from the world of our ordinary experience.

Deep interest in nature, not as a center of beautiful scenes but as an informing and spiritual influence of life.

-middle-class Victorian values

• art as a vehicle for pleasure and instruction
  -A time of rapid and twisting economic and social changes
  -Industrialization: England as the leading industrial power, with an empire that occupied more than a quarter of the earth’s surface

Naturalism is sometimes claimed to give an even more accurate depiction of life than realism
But naturalism is not only, like realism, a special selection of subject matter and a special way of rendering those materials; it is a mode of fiction that was developed by a school of writers in accordance with a particular philosophical thesis.

Transition from art as a vehicle for pleasure and instruction towards a belief in "art for art's sake".
Ezra Pound provided British Modernism with its paradigmatic motto: "make it new."

Modernization: the transformation of culture and society brought about by embracing a combination of new ways of thinking (e.g. secularization) & new technology (e.g. steam engine).

A number of key thinkers that have influenced the novels of the 20th century: Charles Darwin
Karl Marx
Sir James Frazier
Sigmund Freud
Max Planck

A Künstlerroman, meaning "artist's novel" in English, is a narrative about an artist's growth to maturity. It could be classified as a sub-category of Bildungsroman which is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood in which character change is important. The term comes from the German words Bildung ("education") and Roman ("novel").

Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds.