American Literature

• American literature


  One of the superpowers of our present global community
• America has made its mark in literature
• Forms of precolonial American literature


  • Creation stories
  • Legends
  • Songs
  • Tales
  • Riddles
  • Proverbs
  • Fairy tales
  • Epics
• Precolonial American literature


  • Shaped by religious and political factors
  • Diverse oral tradition among more than 500 Native American tribal cultures
  • Variety attributed to each tribe having its own religion, worshipping sacred persons, deities, animals or plants
  • Political and social order of tribes varied, including councils, theocracies, and early forms of democracies
• Before European settlers arrived in North America, there was a diverse oral tradition of literature among more than 500 Native American tribal cultures
• English colonists


  Brought about the written aspect of American literature
• Notable texts of this time


  • Narratives from John Winthrop
  • William Bradford
  • Captain John Smith
• Early accounts of the colonists' exploits in the New World


  • Became part of the American fabric
  • Provided documentation for their countrymen back in England
• Puritanism


  The religious movement that aimed to lead individuals to the light of God's salvation
• Puritan works


  • Served to transform the colonized
  • Ensured that the colonizers themselves would walk the right path
• Prominent names of Puritan literature


  • Thomas Hooker
  • Jonathan Edwards
  • Roger Williams
  • Edward Taylor
  • Edward Johnson
  • Anne Bradstreet
  • Cotton Mather
  • Michael Wigglesworth
• American Revolution


  • Onset
  • Occurrence
  • Aftermath
• Intellectuals


  Molded the identity of the new country
• Thomas Jefferson


  Later became President of the United States
• Theater scene and the novel


  • On the rise in the 18th century
• Playwrights


  • William Dunlap
  • Royall Tyler
• Earliest American novelists


  • William Hill Brown
  • Charles Brockden Brown
• American writers who won critical acclaim for the European literary scene


  • Washington Irving
  • James Fenimore Cooper
• Washington Irving


  Wrote the story "Rip Van Winkle"
• James Fenimore Cooper


  Wrote the novel "The Last of the Mohicans"
• Transcendentalism


  Literary movement in the 19th century espousing social reformation and moral excellence
• Romanticism


  Literary movement in the 19th century that originated in Europe and was brought to America
• The division and tension caused by the Civil War


  Led to the creation of realistic, passionate works
• Realistic, passionate works


  • Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (anti-slavery)
  • William Gilmore Simms's The Sword and the Distaff (pro-slavery)
• After the Civil War, regional literatures caught the attention of a national audience that sought the rebuilding of their fractured America
• Writers whose works transcended their regional confines


  • Mark Twain
  • Bret Harte
  • George W. Cable
  • Henry Timrod
• American fiction in the 19th century


  Went from the realism of William Dean Howells to the psychological mastery of Henry James and Edith Wharton
• Poetry in the 19th century


  Revolutionized by Emily Dickinson
• Poetry in the early 20th century


  Continued to push the boundaries of the genre by Ezra Pound and E.E. Cummings
• Other powerful poets


  • Robert Frost
  • Carl Sandburg
• Fictionists in the early 1900s


  Drew from several ideas like the Marxian social theory and the new psychology
• Eugene O'Niell


  Led the way for writers of drama
• African-American writers in the aftermath of World War I


  Came to the forefront
• Among the most exceptional African-American writers


  • Langston Hughes
  • Paul Lawrence Dunbar
  • Countee Cullen
• Literary criticism in America


  A movement largely influenced by the poet Ezra Pound
• Critics who pioneered the highly analytical study of several different literary genres


  • Edmund Wilson
  • Allen Tate
  • Robert Penn Warren
  • Malcolm Cowley
• Novelists of the 1960s and '70s


  Depicted the hollow, tense life of the contemporary America that they knew
• Novelists of the 1960s and '70s

  • Saul Bellow
  • Hortense Calisher
  • John Updike
  • William Burroughs
  • Joyce Caril Oates
• Poets of the beat generation


  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • Gregory Corso
  • Allen Ginsberg
• In the subsequent decades, the political and social backdrop of the American nation provided plenty of materials for writers to work with