PERIODS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 1650 present day PreColonial

PERIODS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 1650 – present day

Pre-Colonial/ Native American [ 1600] CHARACTERISTICS • 1 ST Americans • Creation & Origin Myths • Legends • Storytelling • Oral Tradition

Pre-Colonial/ Native American Writers & Works • How the World was Made • Sky Tree

Colonial (Puritans & Age of Reason) [1600 -1800] CHARACTERISTICS PURITANS [1600 -1700] • Sermons • Personal Narratives • Plain Style • Authority of Bible & church

Colonial (Puritans & Age of Reason) [1600 -1800] CHARACTERISTICS AGE OF REASON [1700 -1800] • Political pamphlets • Ornate Style • Persuasive Writing • Patriotism

COLONIAL HISTORY PURITAN Person’s fate determined by God • All are corrupt & must be saved by Christ • Settlement of British Colonies in America AGE OF REASON • Revolutionary War • Instructive in values

COLONIAL PURITAN • William Bradford • Mary Rowlandson • Jonathan Edwards • Anne Bradstreet • The Crucible (Arthur Miller-1950) AGE OF REASON • Thomas Jefferson • Benjamin Franklin • Thomas Paine • Patrick Henry

ROMANTICISM [1800 -1860] CHARACTERISTICS • VALUE FEELING & INTUITION OVER REASON • IMAGINATION • MYSTERY • SLAVE NARRATIVES • POETRY • SHORT STORIES

ROMANTICISM HISTORY Expansion of magazines, np, and book publishing • Slavery debates • Industrial Revolution: “old ways” of doing things are now irrelevant

ROMANTICISM WRITERS • Washington Irving • William Cullen Bryant • Paul Laurence Dunbar • Nathaniel Hawthorne • Edgar Allan Poe • Emily Dickinson • Herman Melville

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ Anti. Transcendentalism CHARACTERISTICS TRANSCENDENTALISM [1840 -1860] • “American Renaissance” • Self-Reliance • Individualism • Inner-Light • Idealist • Utopia • Intuition

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ Anti. Transcendentalism CHARACTERISTICS ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM • “Dark Romanticism” • Symbolism • Sin, Pain, & Evil

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ ANTITRANSCENDENTALISM WRITERS TRANSCENDENTALISM • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Henry David Thoreau • Nathaniel Hawthorne* ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM • Edgar Allan Poe*

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM CHARACTERISTICS • “Verisimilitude” • “Local Color” • Ordinary People • Real-life, Every-day events • Objective Narrator • Open Interpretation

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM HISTORY [1860 -1900] • Civil War & post Civil War • Influence of Sigmund Freud & Charles Darwin • Demand for “truer” type of lit. that does not idealize people or places • Completion of Transcontinental Railroad

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM WRITERS • Walt Whitman • Mark Twain • Ambrose Bierce • Stephen Crane • Frederick Douglas • Kate Chopin • Edith Wharton • Edwin Arlington Robinson

MODERNISM CHARACTERISTICS • Pessimism • “American Dream” • Imagism • Lost Generation • Beat Generation • Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness • Plays, Poetry, Novels

MODERNISM HISTORY [1900 -1950] • WWI & WWII • “Jazz Age”/ “Roaring 20’s” • Harlem Renaissance • The Great Depression • Karl Marx • rise of youth culture

MODERNISM WRITERS • F. Scott Fitzgerald • Robert Frost • T. S. Elliot • John Steinbeck • William Faulkner • Langston Hughes • W. E. B. Du. Bois • Ezra Pound • William Carlos Williams • Arthur Miller*

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY CHARACTERISTICS [1950 ] • Mix of fantasy w/ non-fiction • Media culture interprets values • Narratives • Anti-Heroes • Emotion-Provoking • Humorous Irony • Storytelling • Autobiographies • Individual Isolation • Social Issues (ethnic & feminist)

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY HISTORY • Post WWII prosperity • New century & millennium • Space exploration • Korean War • Vietnam War • Gulf War • WTC/ 9 -11 • Iraqi War • Advances in technology

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY WRITERS • Arthur Miller • Toni Morrison • Sylvia Plath • J. D. Salinger • “Beat Poets” • Maya Angelou • Alice Walker

…and the rest is unwritten…