Literary context
The literary traditions, genres, movements, and previous works that provide context for understanding a particular text. Literary context includes awareness of conventions, influences, and how a work relates to literary history.
Real World
T.S. Eliot's *The Waste Land* cannot be fully understood without awareness of Modernism's rejection of Victorian optimism and its fragmented, allusive style — itself a response to the literary tradition Eliot was deliberately breaking from.
Exam Focus
Avoid listing context facts; instead, explain how the literary tradition or movement shaped a specific structural, stylistic, or thematic choice in the text.
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