Table 1.

Comparison of the characteristics of romanticism, realism, and modernism.

	Background	Features	Represent
Romanticism	From the end of the 18th century to the 1830s, people were deeply disappointed with the “realm of reason” envisioned by enlightenment thinkers and struggled to find new spiritual sustenance	(1) Content: no longer deliberately highlights the rationality of human beings, but deeply explores the emotional world of human beings (2) Style: mainly imaginative ideas and ups and downs	“Notre Dame de Paris” by Hugo, France: “Prometheus Liberated” by Shelley, England: “Germany, a Winter's Fairy Tale” by Heine Deutsche
Reality Lord	After the 1830s, the social contradictions in European and American capitalist countries became increasingly acute	Pays attention to social issues, typically reproduces social features, deeply analyzes the nature of social life, and exposes and criticizes social evils	French Balzac's “Human Comedy”; Russia's Leo Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina”, etc.
Modernism	The two world wars, the capitalist world economic crisis in the 1930s, and serious social problems showed the social spiritual crisis	Concentrated self-expression: bizarre creative techniques: Blurred story background, unclear causal relationship, language style deviating from biography	The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway and Waiting for Godot by Beckett