American

• Superpowers of the present global community


  • America
  • Literature
• Before European settlers arrived in North America, there was a diverse oral tradition of literature among more than 500 Native American tribal cultures
• Native American literature


  • Shaped by religious and political factors
  • Took the form of creation stories, legends, songs, tales, riddles, proverbs, fairy tales, and epics
• The coming of the English colonists brought about the written aspect of American literature
• Notable texts during colonial times

  • Narratives from John Winthrop, William Bradford, and Captain John Smith
• John Winthrop


  First governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the chief figure among the Puritan founders of New England
• William Bradford


  One of the pilgrims who sailed from Southampton, England in 1620 on the Mayflower to settle in the land granted, helped define the Puritan settlement and endeavor at Plymouth Plantation, elected governor 30 times
• Captain John Smith


  English soldier, author, and adventurer, played a crucial role in establishing the Virginia colony at Jamestown, England's first permanent settlement in North America
• A great deal of American literature during colonial times advanced the tenets of Puritanism
• Prominent names of Puritan literature

  • Thomas Hooker, Jonathan Edwards, Roger Williams, Edward Johnson, Cotton Mather, Edward Taylor, Anne Bradstreet, Michael Wigglesworth
• The historical period of American Revolution brought about the rise of intellectuals who molded the identity of the new country
• Pioneers of American literature during the Revolution

  • Philip Freneau, Thomas Paine, Francis Hopkinson
• Writings of Founding Fathers

  • Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson
• The theater scene and the novel were also on the rise in the 18th century
• Playwrights


  • William Dunlap, Royall Tyler
• Early American novelists


  • William Hill Brown, Charles Brockden Brown
• Writers of the 19th century


  • Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville
• The division and tension caused by the civil war led to the creation of realistic, passionate works
• Civil War era writers

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Gilmore Simms, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, George W. Cable, Henry Timrod
• In the 19th century, American Fiction went from the realism of William Dean Howells to the psychological mastery of Henry James and Edith Wharton
• Poetry was revolutionized by Emily Dickinson and in the early 20th century, Ezra Pound and E.E. Cummings continued to push the boundaries of the genre
• Other powerful poets


  • Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg
• In the 1900s, fictionists drew from several ideas like the Marxian social theory and the new psychology
• Prominent 20th century fictionists

  • Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe
• Prominent 20th century dramatists

  • Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Maxwell Anderson, Philip Barry
• In the aftermath of World War I, African-American writers came to the forefront
• Exceptional African-American writers


  • Langston Hughes, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Countee Cullen
• The 20th century marked the rise of literary criticism in America – a movement largely influenced by the poet Ezra Pound
• Prominent literary critics


  • Edmund Wilson, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Malcolm Cowley
• In the 1960s and '70s, novelists depicted the hollow tense life of the contemporary America
• Prominent novelists of the 1960s and 70s

  • Saul Bellow, Hortense Calisher, John Updike, William Burroughs, Joy Caril Oates
• Prominent poets of the Beat Generation

  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg
• Writers depicting events like presidential elections and the Vietnam War

  • Truman Capote, James Michener, Don DeLillo, Peter Taylor
• In the 1980s and 1990s, minorities continued to make their voices heard in renowned works
• Prominent minority writers


  • Toni Morrison, Alice Walker (African-American), Sandra Cisneros, Rudolfo Anaya (Latino), Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday (Native American)
• James Russell Lowell


  American poet, critic, essayist, editor, and diplomat, highly influential man of letters in his day
• Lowell published Conversations on Some of the Old Poets in 1845, a collection of critical essays that included pleas for the abolition of slavery
• Lowell wrote about 50 antislavery articles for periodicals from 1845 to 1850
• Lowell's Biglow Papers, which he began to serialize on June 17, 1846, expressed his opposition to the Mexican War as an attempt to extend the area of slavery
• Robust


  Strong and healthy