American literaturetime periods

Native American Literature

Pre-1620 – 1840 Native Americans

dominated the New World

Oral tradition of songs and stories

Origin myths – floods, earth-diver, trickster stories

Focuses on the natural world, the sacred world, and the importance of land and peace

Puritan/colonialism

1620 – 1750 Focuses on

historical events, daily life, moral attitudes (like Puritanism), and political unrest

Sermons and poems were common

Authors: William Bradford,

Of Plymouth… Anne Bradstreet,

To My Dear… Cotton Mather Edward Taylor,

Huswifery William Byrd Jonathan

Edwards, Sinners…

Rationalism 1750 – 1815 Explains & justifies the

Revolution What does “American”

mean? Nationalism &

patriotism increase after the War of 1812, which removed the last British troops

Age of Reason: valued reason over faith; questioned their traditions

Almanacs, newspapers, magazines

Authors: Thomas Paine,

The Crisis Benjamin

Franklin Thomas

Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

Romanticism & transcendentalism 1800-1855 Philosophical attitude

that celebrates individualism, nature, imagination, emotions

Rebellious spirit of westward expansion

Respect for the individual and the pursuit of truth

Authors: Washington

Irving Walt Whitman Nathaniel

Hawthorne Herman Melville Ralph Waldo

Emerson Henry David

Thoreau

Realism 1850 –1900 Turbulent period of Civil

War, industrial invention Examines and conveys

harsh realities of life & human frailty

Writing accurately portrays the Local color: habits &

speech of people = regional culture

physical landscape human struggles to

overcome war, natural disasters, family problems

Authors: Mark Twain

(local color) Ambrose Bierce

& Stephen Crane (realities of war)

Willa Cather Kate Chopin

Naturalism (A part of Realism) 1880 – 1940 An extension of Realism Focused on grim reality of

life Observed characters like

scientists observe animals –watching them live, struggle, and die

Contrasts Transcendentalism; Naturalists viewed nature as indifferent, sometimes cruel

Characters are helpless victims of the environment and their human nature/heritage

Authors: Jack London Frank Norris Theodore Dreiser James T. Farrell

modernism 1900 –1950 20th century: wars,

increased population, the Depression, commercialism

Themes of alienation, change, the threat to the individual and to the American Dream

Use of symbolism, irony, and understatement

Stream of consciousness writing

Harlem Renaissance: African-American lit. flourishes

Authors: Ernest Hemingway F. Scott Fitzgerald T. S. Eliot Langston Hughes

& Zora Neale Hurston (Harlem Renaissance)