American Literature

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American Literature

• A Year in Review

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Unit 1 Colonial Period (Native Americans,
Explorers, and Puritans)

• Time Period Beginnings 1750
• Basics of Literary Time Period
• Native Americans were the first settlers in North
  America
• Colonists from Europe did not begin arriving
  until the late 1500s
• Religious reformers called Puritans sailed from
  England on the Mayflower in 1620

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Background on Native Americans

• Native American Myths
• Explain customs, institutions, or religious rites
• Natural landmarks
• Events beyond
• peoples control
• Use oral tradition

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Background on Puritans

• Puritans
• Pilgrims, or Separatists, wanted to withdraw from
  the Church of England
• Puritans wanted to reform or purify the church
  from within they wanted to create a theocracy
• Human beings exist for the glory of God
• Predestination (John Calvin)- Gods elect vs. the
  damned
• Thought they could accomplish good only through
  continual hard work and self-discipline
• Great Awakening-series of religious revivals
• Early 1700s, Puritanism was in a decline
• In 1720, religious revivals, known as The Great
  Awakening, were led by ministers, such as
  Jonathan Edwards
• This was done in hopes of reviving the Puritan
  ways and beliefs
• It did little to revive old-fashioned Puritanism

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Literature of the Time Period

• Native American Tradition myths, folktales, etc.
• Explorers Accounts
• Slave Narratives
• Religious writings
• Southern Writers

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Writers and Works of the Period

• Native Americans
• The Earth on Turtles Back
• When Grizzlies Walked Upright
• Explorers
• Christopher Columbus Journal of the First
  Voyage to America
• William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation
• Puritans
• Edward Taylor Huswifery
• Anne Bradstreet To My Dear and Loving Husband
• Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an
  Angry God
• The Crucible (written in the 1950s, but about
  Puritans in the 1600s)

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Unit 2 Revolutionary Period (Age of
Reason-Rationalists)

• Time Period 1750-1800
• Basics of Literary Time Period
• Deists-believed God created the world and set it
  up to run without Him on a daily basis
• Valued logic and reason over faith
• Science will further human progress
• Unlike Puritans, little care was given to the
  afterlife or cleansing of sins
• Believed that people are by nature good, not
  evil. Could become perfect
• Values rationality, order, and balance
• Believes the universe is orderly and good

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Writers and Works of the Period

• Benjamin Franklin
• The Autobiography
• Poor Richards Almanack
• Speech in the Convention
• Thomas Jefferson
• Declaration of Independence
• Thomas Paine
• The Crisis, Number 1
• Patrick Henry
• Speech in the Virginia
• Convention

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Persuasive Techniques (Rhetorical Devices)
Literary Term Definition
Repetition Restating an idea using the same words
Rhetorical question Asking a question whose answer is self-evident
Parallelism Repeating grammatical structure
Allusion Reference to a well-known/existing piece of literature, history, etc.
Alliteration Repetition of initial consonant sounds
Simile Comparison of two unlike items by using like or as
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Common Universal Themes in American Literature

• American Individualism- the colonists who first
  arrived in America were seeking freedom to
  practice their individual religions
• American Dream-the idea that anyone in America
  can achieve prosperity through hard work,
  perseverance, and determination
• Cultural Diversity-individuals of diverse
  backgrounds are accepted in the U.S. (melting
  pot)
• Tolerance-acceptance of others beliefs
  (religious beliefs are often illustrated with
  American literature)

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Unit 3 Romantic Period (Romantics,
Transcendentalists, and Dark Romantics)

• Time Period 1800-1870
• Basics of the Literary Time Period
• Emphasized imagination, feeling, and intuition
• over reason (fiction popularized as opposed
  to non-
• fiction of the Revolutionary period)
• The 5 Characteristics of the Literature (Stories,
  Poems, and Novels)
• Imagination and Escapism
• Individuality
• Nature was seen as a source of spirituality
• Looked to the past for wisdom
• Emphasized common man as a hero

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Background on Romanticism

• Characteristics of the American Romantic hero
• young, or possesses youthful qualities
• Innocent and pure of purpose
• Sense of honor
• Knowledge of people and life
• Loves nature
• Quests for some higher truth

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Fireside Poets

• Couplet 2 line poem
• Quatrain 4 line poem
• Cinquain 5 line poem
• Characterization reveals personality traits of
  a character (Direct and Indirect)
• Represented a literary coming of age with the
  first generation of acclaimed American poets
• Used American settings
• Some of the most read and most beloved poets
• Wrote poems that were usually told around the
  fire

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Transcendentalism Background

• Everything in the world and God are 1
• So God is in everything
• So Everything in the world (nature) contains
  laws and meanings of existence
• So each soul also contains the soul of the world
  and all the world is connected to God (the over
  soul connects us all)

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Dark Romanticism Background

• Can be referred to as anti-transcendentalism
• Thought transcendentalists were too optimistic
• Focused on the perceived darkness of the human
  soul
• Felt humans were inherently selfish
• Began the gothic movement
• Imagery use of language to evoke a picture or
  concrete sensation of a person, thing, place, or
  experience
• Gothic Style (Poe) remote settings, violent
  acts, tormented characters, and often
  supernatural elements
• Allegory story/poem that can be read on one
  level for its literal meaning and on a second
  level for its symbolic meaning
• Paradox statement that appears
  self-contradictory, but that reveals a kind of
  truth

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Writers and Works of the Period

• Romantics
• Washington Irving (A.K.A. the father of American
  literature -
• Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
  and The Devil and
• Tom Walker
• James Fennimore Cooper First American novelist
  wrote about Natty Bumppo (character was
  considered the first American hero)
• Herman Melville Moby Dick
• William Cullen Bryant - Thanatopsis
• Dark Romantics-Reflected the darker side of life
• Edgar Allen Poe - The Raven and The Fall of
  the House of Usher
• Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter and The
  Ministers Black Veil
• Emily Dickinson Because I Could Not Stop for
  Death and I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died

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Writers and Works of the Period (Continued)

• Transcendentalism Reflected spirituality and
  optimism
• Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature and
  Self-Reliance
• Henry David Thoreau Walden and Civil
  Disobedience
• Walt Whitman - I Hear America Singing

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Unit 4 Realism

• Time Period 1850-1914
• Basics of the Literary Time Period
• Style of writing developed in the 19th century
• Depicts life accurately without idealizing,
  romanticizing, or filtering it through personal
  feelings
• Focuses on ordinary people suffering the harsh
  realities of everyday life our common course
• Subjects include poor factory workers and corrupt
  politicians

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Writing Techniques

• Objective Point of View- reader follows the
  action without understanding any characters
  thoughts about the events
• Third-Person Limited- the narrator relates the
  inner thoughts and feelings of a single character
• Flashback-interrupts chronological presentation
  of events to relate to an earlier time
• Situational Irony- outcome of an action or
  situation is very different from what one expects

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Background

• Regionalism
• Emphasizes a specific geographical setting
• Reproduces a speech of people in a certain area
• Also shows behavior and attitudes of people
  living in a certain area
• Naturalism
• Humans are subject to the laws of nature and
  controlled by instinct
• Fate determined by environment, heredity, chance,
  or by uncontrollable forces
• Characters have limited choices and motivations
• we are all fighting a losing battle
• Dissected human behavior with complete
  objectivity (like scientists)

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Writers and Works of the Period

• Mark Twain Huck Finn
• Stephan Crane An Episode of War
• Kate Chopin The Story of an Hour, Desirees
  Baby
• Owl Creek Bridge
• Bret Harte The Outcasts of Poker Flat
• Jack London To Build a Fire
• Abraham Lincoln The Gettysburg Address
• Paul Laurence Dunbar Douglass, We Wear the
  Mask

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Unit 5 Modernism

• Time Period 1914-1946
• Basics of the Literary Time Period
• Two World Wars and a Great Depression marked this
  era.
• The devastation of WWI brought an end to
  optimism. People were left feeling uncertain and
  disillusioned they did not trust the ideas and
  values that once characterized our country.
• The quest for new ideas occurred in the world of
  literature, and modernism was born.

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Modernism Key Points (Cont.)

• Modernist authors sought to capture the essence
  of modern life in both the form and the content
  of their work.
• Modernists constructed their works out of
  fragments. Poets abandoned traditional forms and
  meters, in favor of free verse.
• Themes of their works were usually implied,
  rather than directly stated, making readers draw
  upon their own conclusions.
• Modernist works demanded more from readers.

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• Imagism (1909-1917) demanded hard, clear
  expression, concrete images, and the language of
  everyday speech their models came from the Greek
  and Roman classics, Chinese and Japanese poetry,
  and the free verse of the French poets. (Poets
  H.D., Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams)
• Expatriates writers who settled in Paris after
  WWI, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest
  Hemingway
• Writer Gertrude Stein created the phrase lost
  generation to describe those who were
  disillusioned by WWI she influenced the ideas of
  those writers who had settled in Paris.
• Writers began using stream of consciousness
  attempting to recreate the natural flow of a
  characters thoughts. (William Faulkner and
  Katherine Anne Porter were known for this.)

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Modernism Key Points (Cont.)

• Poets also sought to stretch old boundaries
  E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Wallace
  Stevens, Marianne Moore, etc.
• Harlem Renaissance African Americans from the
  South created their own renaissance in Harlem it
  began in 1921 (Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes,
  Zora Neal Hurston
• Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer)
• Major themes in the early 20th century loss of
  innocence in people and pursuit of the American
  Dream

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Writers and Works of the Period

• F. Scott Fitzgerald Great Gatsby
• T.S. Elliot The Love Song of J. Alfred
  Prufrock
• Earnest Hemingway In Another Country
• Eudora Welty A Worn Path
• Poets Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, E.E.
  Cummings, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, and
  Langston Hughes

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Unit 6 Postmodernism

• Time Period 1946 Present
• Basics of the Literary Time Period
• WWII and Holocaust was hurting the meaning of
  life
• Influenced by the growth of informational
  technology
• Loss of trust in authors irrational thoughts
• Less confidence that work is unique culture
  continually copies itself
• Interest in work as process and how it evolves
• Loss of belief that work is immortal
• Belief that fine art can be a cartoon
• Works consisting of dialogue alone
• Works that blend fiction and non-fiction
• Experimentation of the physical appearance of a
  work
• Essence of contemporary life in works
• Impersonal and commercial nature of todays work

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Writers and Works of the Period

• Arthur Miller The Crucible
• J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye
• Flannery OConnor The Life You Save May Be
  Your Own
• Naomi Shihab Nye Mint Snowball
• Alice Walker Everyday Use
• Carson McCullers The Mortgaged Heart
• Sylvia Plath Mirror
• Gwendolyn Brooks The Explorer
• Tim OBrien Ambush

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The End!

• I hope youve learned plenty about American
  Literature, and perhaps, you can now reflect upon
  the significance of this history and how it
  continues to shape the ideas, culture, and
  literature of today.