American Authors

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American Authors
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William Williams EDCI 4314
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• - The topic of this presentation will be American
  Poets.
• The goal of this presentation is to expose
  students to some American Authors and samples of
  their work (either short poems or parts of poems,
  stories, or novels)
• This presentation is directed towards students in
  American Literature, which usually entails those
  students in the eleventh grade English classes.
• In order to fully experience this presentation
  students will need the following skills
• ability to use a computer mouse
• ability to read and comprehend material

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American Authors
Whitman, Walt
Eliot, T.S.
Dickinson, Emily
Frost, Robert
Poe, Edgar Allan
Morrison, Toni
Thoreau, Henry David
OConnor, Flannery
Twain, Mark
Fun Quiz
Other Authors
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe, son of Actress Eliza Poe and
Actor David Poe Jr., born 19th of January 1809,
was mostly known for his poems and short tales
and his literary criticism. He has been given
credit for inventing the detective story and his
psychological thrillers have been influences for
many writers worldwide. Edgar and his brother
and sister were orphaned before Edgar's third
birthday and Edgar was taken in to the home of
John and Fanny Allan in Richmond, Va. The Allans
lived in England for five years (1815-1820) where
Edgar also attended school. In 1826 he entered
the University of Virginia. Although a good
student he was forced to gambling since John
Allan did not provide well enough. Allan refused
to pay Edgar's debts and Edgar had to leave the
University after only one year. In 1827 Edgar
published his first book, "Tamerlane and other
poems" anonymously under the signature "A
Bostonian". The poems were heavily influenced
from Byron and showed of a youthful
attitude. Later Poe moved to Baltimore to live
with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and his first cousin
Virginia. In 1832 he won a 50 prize for his
story "MS. Found in a Bottle" in the Baltimore
Saturday Visiter. In 1835 Poe brought his aunt
and cousin to Richmond where he worked with
Thomas Willis White at the Southern Literary
Messenger. He also married his cousin Virginia,
only thirteen years old.
American Authors
Examples of his Writing
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TO HELEN
The Raven
American Authors
Edgar Allan Poe
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TO HELEN by Edgar Allan Poe, 1831 Helen, thy
beauty is to meLike those Nicean barks of
yore,That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,The
weary, wayworn wanderer boreTo his own native
shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam,Thy
hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs
have brought me homeTo the glory that was
GreeceAnd the grandeur that was Rome.Lo! in
yon brilliant window-nicheHow statue-like I see
thee stand,The agate lamp within thy hand!Ah,
Psyche, from the regions whichAre Holy
Land!-THE END-
Edgar Allan Poe
American Authors
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The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered,
weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore -- While I nodded,
nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As
of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber
door. " 'T is some visitor, " I muttered,
"tapping at my chamber door Only this and
nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was
in the bleak December And each separate dying
ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I
wished the morrow -- vainly I had sought to
borrow From my books surcease of sorrow -- sorrow
for the lost Lenore-- For the rare and radiant
maiden whom the angels name Lenore Nameless
here for evermore.
American Authors
Edgar Allan Poe
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Toni Morrison
While teaching at Howard, Morrison began to
write fiction. After leaving teaching she
worked as an editor at Random House, first in
Syracuse, New York, then in New York City. Her
first novel, The Bluest Eye, an expansion of
an earlier short story, was published in 1970,
and she attracted immediate attention as a
promising writer. This was followed by the
novel Sula (1973), about a woman who refuses
to conform to community mores. Morrison's next
novel, Song of Solomon (1977), was hailed by
critics as a major literary achievement. It
tells the story of a character named Milkman
Dead, who in his search for his family's lost
fortune discovers instead his family history.
Tar Baby (1981), about a tense romance between
a man and a woman, was equally well received.
Beloved (1987 Pulitzer Prize, 1988) is
regarded by many as Morrison's most successful
novel.
Born in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison was christened
Chloe Anthony Wofford and grew up during the
Great Depression of the 1930s in a poor and
close-knit family. In 1949 she entered Howard
University, where she became interested in
theater and joined a drama group, the Howard
University Players. Morrison went on to earn
an M.A. degree in English at Cornell
University in 1955. She subsequently taught at
Texas Southern University from 1955 to 1957
and then at Howard University from 1957 to
1964. While at Howard she met and married
Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect. The
couple had two children and then divorced in
1964.
Summary of The Bluest Eye
American Authors
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The Bluest Eye is split into an untitled prelude
and four large units, each
named after a season. The four larger units begin
with "Autumn" and end in
"Summer," with each unit being split into smaller
sections. The first section of
each season is narrated by Claudia MacTeer, a
woman whose memories frame
the events of the novel. At the time that the
main events of the plot take
place, Claudia is a nine-year-old girl. This
device allows Morrison to employ
a reflective adult narrator without losing
the innocent perspective of a child.
Claudia MacTeer lives with her parents
and her sister in the humble MacTeer
family house in Lorrain, Ohio. The year
is 1939. The novel's
focus, however, is on a girl named Pecola
Breedlove. Pecola, we are
told in the prelude, will be raped by her father
by novel's end. The prelude
frames the story so that the reader knows from
the beginning that Pecola's
story ends tragically. The Breedloves are poor,
unhappy, and troubled. Their
story seems in many ways to be deterministic,
as they are often the victims of
forces over which they have no control.
Their situation is a powerful contrast
to the MacTeers, who are of slender
means but have a strong family unit. The
MacTeers also seem to have much
stronger agency, and are never really
passive victims in the way that the
Breedloves are.
American Authors
Toni Morrison
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THOREAU'S EARLY YEARS Henry Thoreau was born in
1817 in Concord, where his father, John, was a
shopkeeper. John moved his family to Chelmsford
and Boston, following business opportunities. In
1823 the family moved back to Concord where John
established a pencil-making concern that
eventually brought financial stability to the
family. Thoreau's mother, Cynthia Dunbar, took
in boarders for many years to help make ends
meet. Thoreau's older siblings, Helen and John,
Jr., were both schoolteachers when it was
decided that their brother should go to
Harvard College, as had his grandfather before
him, they contributed from their teaching
salaries to help pay his expenses, at that time
about 179 a year. Harvard put heavy emphasis
on the classics--Thoreau studied Latin and Greek
grammar or composition for three of his four
years. He also took courses in mathematics,
English, history, and mental, natural, and
intellectual philosophy. Modern languages were
voluntary, and Thoreau chose to take Italian,
French, German, and Spanish. He was never happy
about the teaching methods used at Harvard--Ralph
Waldo is supposed to have remarked that most of
the branches of learning were taught at Harvard,
and Thoreau to have replied, "Yes, all of the
branches and none of the roots"--but he did
appreciate the lifelong borrowing privileges at
Harvard College Library for which his degree
qualified him.
Henry David Thoreau
THOREAU'S EARLY YEARS Henry Thoreau was born in
1817 in Concord, where his father, John, was a
shopkeeper. John moved his family to Chelmsford
and Boston, following business opportunities. In
1823 the family moved back to Concord where John
established a pencil-making concern that
eventually brought financial stability to the
family. Thoreau's mother, Cynthia Dunbar, took
in boarders for many years to help make ends
meet. Thoreau's older siblings, Helen and John,
Jr., were both schoolteachers when it was
decided that their brother should go to
Harvard College, as had his grandfather before
him, they contributed from their teaching
salaries to help pay his expenses, at that time
about 179 a year. Harvard put heavy emphasis on
the classics--Thoreau studied Latin and Greek
grammar or composition for three of his four
years. He also took courses in mathematics,
English, history, and mental, natural, and
intellectual philosophy. Modern languages were
voluntary, and Thoreau chose to take Italian,
French, German, and Spanish. He was never happy
about the teaching methods used at Harvard--Ralph
Waldo is supposed to have remarked that most of
the branches of learning were taught at Harvard,
and Thoreau to have replied, "Yes, all of the
branches and none of the roots"--but he did
appreciate the lifelong borrowing privileges at
Harvard College Library for which his degree
qualified him.
American Authors
His Writing
Thoreau and the Transcendentalist movement in New
England grew up together.
The Transcendentalists assumed a universe divided
into two essential parts, the soul and nature.
Emerson defined the soul by defining nature "all
that is separated from us, all which Philosophy
distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature
and art, all other men and my own body, must be
ranked under this name, NATURE." A belief in the
reliability of the human conscience was a
fundamental Transcendentalist principle, and this
belief was based upon a conviction of the
immanence, or indwelling, of God in the soul of
the individual. "We see God around us because He
dwells within us," wrote William Ellery Channing
in 1828 "the beauty and glory of God's works are
revealed to the mind by a light beaming from
itself."
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Walden
All day long the red squirrels came and went, and
afforded me much entertainment by their
manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily
through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow
crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the
wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful
speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable
haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a
wager, and now as many paces that way, but never
getting on more than half a rod at a time and
then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression
and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in
the universe were fixed on him,--for all the
motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary
recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much
as those of a dancing girl,--wasting more time in
delay and circumspection than would have sufficed
to walk the whole distance,--I never saw one
walk,--and then suddenly, before you could say
Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young
pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding all
imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking
to all the universe at the same time,--for no
reason that I could ever detect, or he himself
was aware of, I suspect.
Henry David Thoreau
American Authors
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Flannery (Mary) O'Connor was a young woman with
a morbid curiosity. This curiosity is what helped
her become such a greater writer during her time.
She was born in Savannah, Georgia on March
25, 1925. She lived a very happy life with two
wonderful parents who worked very hard for
everything they had. Her father was a realtor
owner and later worked for Dixie Construction
Company. Several years later he took a job as a
real estate appraiser for the Federal Housing
Administration in Atlanta. Flannery's mother
stayed at home in order to give her the best at
home life possible. Flannery lived the
majoriy of her life in Milledgeville, Georgia on
the family's farm. She went to grammar school at
St. Vincent and Sacred Heart Parochral, but
didn't enjoy school much until her high school
years. After high school (1942-45), she went to
Georgia State College for Women. Flannery was an
intellegent student and was enrolled in an
accelareted three year program. During those
years she involved herself in many activities.
These activities focused mainly around her
passion, writing. She was part of the yearbook,
newspaper, and editor of the Englis literary
magazine at the college. She graduated in 1945
with a bachelor's of arts in social science.
O'Connor deceided to further extend her education
by going to the University of Iowa. There she
began to attend writer's workshops and wrote the
first of her short stories. While at the
universtiy, she wrote her first novel, Wise
Blood. This novel took five years to complete,
but she was very pleased with the finished
product. In December of 1950 her life
changed dramatically. She suffered her first
attack from lupus, the disease that her father
had died from years before. She was forced to
return home to Milledgeville to get help from her
mother. Even though she was ill, she continued to
write three hours a day and occassionally
lectured to colleges in the South about writing.
Her life was cut short due to the disease she
died on August 3, 1964, of lupus at the age of
39. Today she is honored as distinguished
graduate from Georgia State as well as a
wonderful author.
Flannery OConnor
Flannery (Mary) O'Connor was a young woman with
a morbid curiosity. This curiosity is what helped
her become such a greater writer during her time.
She was born in Savannah, Georgia on March
25, 1925. She lived a very happy life with two
wonderful parents who worked very hard for
everything they had. Her father was a realtor
owner and later worked for Dixie Construction
Company. Several years later he took a job as a
real estate appraiser for the Federal Housing
Administration in Atlanta. Flannery's mother
stayed at home in order to give her the best at
home life possible. Flannery lived the
majority of her life in Milledgeville, Georgia on
the family's farm. She went to grammar school at
St. Vincent and Sacred Heart Parochial, but
didn't enjoy school much until her high school
years. After high school (1942-45), she went to
Georgia State College for Women. Flannery was an
intelligent student and was enrolled in an
accelerated three year program. During those
years she involved herself in many activities.
These activities focused mainly around her
passion, writing. She was part of the yearbook,
newspaper, and editor of the English literary
magazine at the college. She graduated in 1945
with a bachelor's of arts in social science.
O'Connor decided to further extend her education
by going to the University of Iowa. There she
began to attend writer's workshops and wrote the
first of her short stories. While at the
university, she wrote her first novel, Wise
Blood. This novel took five years to complete,
but she was very pleased with the finished
product. In December of 1950 her life
changed dramatically. She suffered her first
attack from lupus, the disease that her father
had died from years before. She was forced to
return home to Milledgeville to get help from her
mother. Even though she was ill, she continued to
write three hours a day and occasionally lectured
to colleges in the South about writing. Her life
was cut short due to the disease she died on
August 3, 1964, of lupus at the age of 39. Today
she is honored as distinguished graduate from
Georgia State as well as a wonderful author.
American Authors
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Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, for nearly half a
century known and
celebrated as "Mark Twain," was born in Florida,
Missouri, on November 30,
1835. He was one of the foremost American
philosophers of his day he was the
world's most famous humorist of
any day. During the later years of his life
he ranked not only as
America's chief man of letters, but likewise as
her best known and best loved citizen.
The beginnings of that life were
sufficiently unpromising. The family
was a good one, of old Virginia and
Kentucky stock, but its
circumstances were reduced, its environment
meager and disheartening.
The father, John Marshall Clemens -- a lawyer by
profession, a merchant by
vocation -- had brought his household to
Florida from Jamestown, Tennessee,
somewhat after the manner of
Judge Hawkins as pictured in The Gilded Age.
American Authors
His Work
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The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County In compliance with
the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me
from the East, I called on
good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and
inquired after my friend's
friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to
do, and I hereunto append the
result. I have a lurking suspicion that
Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth that my
friend never knew such a
personage and that he only conjectured that, if
I asked old Wheeler about
him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim
Smiley, and he would go to
work and bore me nearly to death with some
infernal reminiscence of
him as long and tedious as it should be useless
to me. If that was the
design, it certainly succeeded.
American Authors
Mark Twain
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Walt Whitman
Born into a working class family in West Hills,
New York, a village near Hempstead, Long Island,
on May 31, 1819, just thirty years after George
Washington was inaugurated as the first
president. Walt loved living close to the East
River, where as a child he rode the ferries back
and forth to New York City, imbibing an
experience that would remain significant for him
his whole life he loved ferries and the people
who worked on them, and his 1856 poem eventually
entitled "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" explored the
full resonance of the experience.
A couple of poems written
American Authors
Song of Myself
A Sight In Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
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A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GRAY AND DIM.
A SIGHT in camp in the daybreak gray
and dim, As from my tent I emerge
so early sleepless, As slow I walk
in the cool fresh air the path near by the
hospital tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought
out there untended lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample
brownish woolen blanket, Gray and
heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the
nearest the first just lift the
blanket Who are you elderly man so
gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair,
and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step- and who are you my
child and darling? Who are you
sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third- a face nor child nor old, very
calm, as of beautiful
yellow-white ivory Young man I
think I know you- I think this face is the face
of the Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here
again he lies.
Walt Whitman
American Authors
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SONG OF MYSELF 1 I
CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I
assume you shall assume, For every atom
belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe
and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease
observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue,
every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air, Born here of parents born here
from parents the same, and their parents
the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in
perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till
death. Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are,
but never forgotten, I harbor for good
or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Walt Whitman
American Authors
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Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst,
Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. Emily lived
secluded in the house she was born in, except for
the short time she attended Amherst Academy and
Holyoke Female Seminary, until her death on May
15, 1886 due to Bight's disease.
Emily Dickinson's was the most wholly private
literary career of any major American writer. One
of her poems, a valentine, appeared in the
Amherst College Indicator in February 1850, and
another valentine was published in the
Springfield Republican, a newspaper, in February
1852.
American Authors
Her Writing
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Emily Dickinson - I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
(280) I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And
Mourners to and fro Kept treading -- treading
-- till it seemed That Sense was breaking
through -- And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -- Kept beating --
beating -- till I thought My Mind was going
numb -- And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul With those same Boots
of Lead, again, Then Space -- began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being,
but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange
Race Wrecked, solitary, here -- And then a
Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and
down -- And hit a World, at every plunge, And
Finished knowing -- then --
Emily Dickinson - Safe in their Alabaster
Chambers (216) Safe in their Alabaster
Chambers -- Untouched my Morning And
untouched by Noon -- Sleep the meek members of
the Resurrection -- Rafter of satin, And Roof
of stone. Light laughs the breeze In her
Castle above them -- Babbles the Bee in a
stolid Ear, Pipe the Sweet Birds in ignorant
cadence -- Ah, what sagacity perished here!
The Dickinson Homestead
Emily Dickinson
American Authors
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American Authors
Robert Frost
1874 - Born on March 26 in San Francisco, first
child of Isabelle Moodie and William Prescott
Frost Jr. Named after Confederate General Robert
E. Lee.
1883 - Frost hears voices when left alone and is
told by mother that he shares her gift for
"second hearing" and "second sight." Father
continues to drink as his health deteriorates.
1963 - Awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry.
Suffers another embolism on January 7. Dies
shortly after midnight on January 29. Private
memorial service for friends and family is held
in Appleton Chapel in Harvard yard, and public
service is held at Johnson Chapel, Amherst
College. Ashes are interred in the Frost family
plot in Old Bennington.
His Writing
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THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Two roads diverged in a
yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel
both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked
down one as far as I could To where it bent in
the undergrowth Then took the other, as just as
fair, And having perhaps the better
claim, Because it was grassy and wanted
wear Though as for that the passing there Had
worn them really about the same, And both that
morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden
black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet
knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I
should ever come back. I shall be telling this
with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one
less traveled by, And that has made all the
difference.
American Authors
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Whose woods
these are I think I know. His house is in the
village though He will not see me stopping
here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My
little horse must think it queer To stop without
a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen
lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives
his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some
mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy
wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark
and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles
to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I
sleep.
Robert Frost
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T.S. Eliot
American Authors
Some poems he wrote
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Waste Land
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse A
persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo. Let
us go then, you and I, When the
evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats Of
restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious
argument Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit. In the
room the women come and go Talking of
Michelangelo.
American Authors
T. S. Eliot
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The Waste Land Part 1 - Burial of the
Dead April is the cruellest month,
breeding Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in
forgetful snow, feeding A little life
with dried tubers. Summer surprised us,
coming over the Starnbergersee With a
shower of rain we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten
And drank coffee, and talked for an
hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus
Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were
children, staying at the arch-duke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the
winter.
American Authors
T. S. Eliot
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Other Poets
James Langston Hughes 1902 - 1967
John Gneisenau Neihardt (1881-1973)
William Carlos Williams 1883 1963
American Authors
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Quiz on American Authors
Who wrote The Waste Land? Who attended a
Seminary? Who rode ferries across the East
River? Who heard voices when left alone? Which
American Poet has the same name as your teacher?
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American Authors