PERIODS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

1650 – present day

Pre-Colonial/ Native American[ 1600]

CHARACTERISTICS

•1ST Americans

•Creation & Origin Myths

•Legends

•Storytelling

•Oral Tradition

Pre-Colonial/ Native American

Writers & Works

•How the World was Made

•Sky Tree

Colonial(Puritans & Age of Reason)

[1600-1800]

CHARACTERISTICSPURITANS[1600-1700]• Sermons

• Personal Narratives• Plain Style

• Authority of Bible & church

Colonial(Puritans & Age of Reason)

[1600-1800]

CHARACTERISTICSAGE OF REASON

[1700-1800]• Political pamphlets

• Ornate Style• Persuasive Writing

• Patriotism

COLONIAL

HISTORY

PURITAN

Person’s fate determined by God• All are corrupt & must be saved by Christ• Settlement of British Colonies in America

AGE OF REASON• Revolutionary War • Instructive in values

COLONIALPURITAN

• William Bradford• Mary Rowlandson• Jonathan Edwards• Anne Bradstreet

• The Crucible (Arthur Miller-1950)

AGE OF REASON• Thomas Jefferson• Benjamin Franklin

• Thomas Paine• Patrick Henry

ROMANTICISM[1800-1860]

CHARACTERISTICS• VALUE FEELING & INTUITION OVER

REASON• IMAGINATION

• MYSTERY• SLAVE NARRATIVES

• POETRY• SHORT STORIES

ROMANTICISM

HISTORY

Expansion of magazines, np, and book publishing

• Slavery debates

• Industrial Revolution: “old ways” of doing things are now irrelevant

ROMANTICISM

WRITERS• Washington Irving

• William Cullen Bryant• Paul Laurence Dunbar• Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Edgar Allan Poe • Emily Dickinson• Herman Melville

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ Anti-Transcendentalism

CHARACTERISTICSTRANSCENDENTALISM

[1840-1860]• “American Renaissance”

• Self-Reliance• Individualism

• Inner-Light• Idealist• Utopia

• Intuition

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ Anti-Transcendentalism

CHARACTERISTICS

ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM

• “Dark Romanticism”

• Symbolism

• Sin, Pain, & Evil

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM

WRITERSTRANSCENDENTALISM• Ralph Waldo Emerson• Henry David Thoreau• Nathaniel Hawthorne*

ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM• Edgar Allan Poe*

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM

CHARACTERISTICS

• “Verisimilitude”

• “Local Color”

• Ordinary People

• Real-life, Every-day events

• Objective Narrator

• Open Interpretation

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM

HISTORY

[1860-1900]

• Civil War & post Civil War

• Influence of Sigmund Freud & Charles Darwin

• Demand for “truer” type of lit. that does not idealize people or places

• Completion of Transcontinental Railroad

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM

WRITERS• Walt Whitman• Mark Twain

• Ambrose Bierce• Stephen Crane

• Frederick Douglas• Kate Chopin

• Edith Wharton• Edwin Arlington Robinson

MODERNISM

CHARACTERISTICS

• Pessimism• “American Dream”

• Imagism• Lost Generation• Beat Generation

• Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness

• Plays, Poetry, Novels

MODERNISM

HISTORY[1900-1950]

• WWI & WWII• “Jazz Age”/ “Roaring 20’s”

• Harlem Renaissance• The Great Depression

• Karl Marx• rise of youth culture

MODERNISM

WRITERS• F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Robert Frost• T.S. Elliot

• John Steinbeck• William Faulkner• Langston Hughes

• W.E.B. DuBois• Ezra Pound

• William Carlos Williams• Arthur Miller*

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY

CHARACTERISTICS[1950 ]

• Mix of fantasy w/ non-fiction• Media culture interprets values

• Narratives• Anti-Heroes

• Emotion-Provoking• Humorous Irony

• Storytelling• Autobiographies

• Individual Isolation• Social Issues (ethnic & feminist)

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY

HISTORY• Post WWII prosperity

• New century & millennium• Space exploration

• Korean War• Vietnam War

• Gulf War• WTC/ 9-11• Iraqi War

• Advances in technology

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY

WRITERS• Arthur Miller

• Toni Morrison• Sylvia Plath• J.D. Salinger• “Beat Poets”

• Maya Angelou• Alice Walker

…and the rest is unwritten…