american lit

• American Literature


  Literature written or produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies
• During its early history, America was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States
• American colonies


  • Also called "Thirteen Colonies or Colonial America"
  • The 13 British colonies that were established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in what is now a part of the eastern United States
• American literature's tradition begins as linked to the broader tradition of English literature
• However, unique American characteristics and the breadth of its production usually now cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition
• Periods in American Literature

  • Puritan / Colonial (1650 - 1750)
  • Revolutionary / Age of Reason (1750 - 1800)
  • Romanticism (1800 - 1860)
  • American Renaissance (1840 - 1869)
  • Realism (1855 - 1900)
  • The Moderns (1900 - 1950)
  • Harlem Renaissance (1920s)
  • Postmodernism(1950 to Present)
• Puritan or Colonial Period


  • The Age of Faith
  • Instructive and reinforces the authority of the bible and church
• Genre/Style of Puritan/Colonial Period

  • Sermons
  • Diaries
  • Personal Narratives
  • All written in plain style
• Mary Rowlandson


  • A colonial American woman who was captured during an attack by native americans ransom for 11 weeks and 5 days after being released, she wrote the "A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rownlandson" Also known as "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God"
  • Published in 1682
  • Captivity and Biography
• Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God

  • A sermon written by British colonial Christian theologian Jonathan Edwards
  • Preached to his congregation in Northampton Massachusetts
  • The preaching of this sermon was the catalyst for the first great awakening
• Revolutionary Age (1750 - 1800)


  • The age of reason
  • Patriotism Grew among people. wherein pride became dominant and people created common agreement about issues
• Genre/Style of Revolutionary Age

  • Political Pamphlets
  • Travel Writing
  • Highly ornate style and persuasive writing
• Benjamin Franklin


  • Published his first almanac on December 19, 1732. Under the pseudonym of Richar ond Saunders
  • Almanac contained all sorts of interesting information such as the calendar, weather predictions, sayings, poems, and demographics
  • It was the most-read secular book in the colonies
• Romanticism (1800 - 1860)


  • Feeling and intuition are more valued than reasoning
  • Consists of journeys away from the corruption of civilization and limits of rational thought toward the integrity of nature and freedom of the imagination
  • Helped instill proper behavior for men and women
• Genre/Style of Romanticism


  • Character sketches
  • Slaves Narratives
  • Poetry
  • And short stories
• Rip Van winkle


  • A short story by Washington Irving, Published in the Dutch culture of pre-revolutionary war, New York state
  • The story of Rip Van Winkle is based on a German folktale
  • Follows a Dutch American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, drinks their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains
• Walt Whitman


  • An American poet and essayist. and journalist
  • Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse
  • Wrote the "Leaves of Grass"
• American Renaissance


  • Transcendentalism
  • Transcendentalist: True reality is spiritual; idealist; self-reliance; and individualism
  • Anti-transcendentalists: Used symbolism to great effect; sins, pain, and evil exist
• Genre/Style of American Renaissance

  • Poetry
  • Short story
  • And novel
• The transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand
• Transcendentalism


  • An American literary, philosophical, religious, and political movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity and urged that each person finds
  • Emerson and Thoreau sought this relationship in solitude amidst nature and in their writing
• The scarlet letter


  • A romance work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne which he published in 1850
  • The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced books in America
• Edgar Allan Poe


  American short story writer, poet-critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre
• The masque of the Red Death

  • A short story published in 1842
  • The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague, known as the Red Death, by hiding in his abbey
  • Genre: Gothic Fiction and Horror
• The black cat


  • A short story published in 1843
  • It is a study of the psychology of guilt. In this story, a murderer carefully conceals his crime and believes himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelled by a nagging reminder of his guilt
  • Genre: Gothic Fiction and Horror
• Realism


  • Civil War and Postwar
  • Social Realism: Aims to change a specific social problem
  • Aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it
• Genre/Style of Realism


  • Novel
  • Short story
  • And objective narration
• Samuel Langhorne Clemens "Mark Twain"


  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel condemning the institutionalized racism of the pre-civil War South and is among the most celebrated works of American fiction
• The moderns


  • The American Dream
  • Admiration for America as the land of Eden
  • Optimism and importance of the individual
• Genre/Style of The Moderns

  • Novels
  • Plays
  • Poetry
  • Use of inner monologue and stream of consciousness
• The Great Gatsby


  • A 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922
  • Considered as one of the greatest novels ever written
• Harlem Renaissance


  • African-American
  • Uses the structure of blues songs in poetry (repetition)
  • Superficial stereotypes revealed to be complex characters
• Genre/Styles of Harlem Renaissance

  • Gave birth to gospel music
  • Blues and jazz transmitted across America via radio and phonographs
• Postmodernism


  • Destroyed the distinction between classes of people
  • Insisted that values are not permanent but only "local" or "historical"
  • Mixing fantasy with nonfiction, blurs lines of reality for the reader, and is usually humorless
• Genre/Style of Postmodernism


  • Narratives
  • Metafiction
  • Magic realism