Passage Identification
Practice
{
Identify the movement, sub-movement or subgenre if applicable, and textual evidence to
support how you know
Native
American
1400(ish) 1607
Romanticism
1800-1855
Gothic
Transcendentalism
Modernism
1916-1939
Jazz Age
Harlem Renaissance
New Poetics
Enlightenment
1607-1800
Realism
1865-1915
Contemporary
1939-now
Age of Faith
1607-1750
Age of Reason
1750-1800
Civil War
Frontier
Confessional Poets
Beat Poets
Characteristics of Native
American Literature
Animals typically represent humans
 Told through oral tradition
 Patriarchal dominance
 Focus on nature
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How nature can benefit others
 Land = strength
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Myths and stories are usually cyclical
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creation, trickster, hero’s journey, consequence
{
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Focus on God and the Bible
Sermons are popular
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everything relates back to God
Diaries, narratives, poetry
Anne Bradstreet – her house
burned down
Simple and plain writing style
Instructive

Age of Reason
Strictly non-fiction
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Tells you how to live
Pamphlets, essays, speeches,
documents, biographies,
autobiographies, narratives
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Persuasive & argumentative
Government, state, colonies
Highly ornate writing style
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Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine
Political writing
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Inward reflection
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{
Johnathan Edwards – you will burn in
the fiery depths…
Everyday trials of the colonies
Symbolism
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Age of Faith
Big fancy words and run-on
sentences
Instructive
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The goal was to tell people how to
achieve success and instruct people
on how to think
Characteristics of the
Enlightenment
{
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Fictionalized
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Transcendentalism
Fiction & non-fiction
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allen Poe
Edgar Allen Poe
Emily Dickinson
Emphasis on imagination and
emotions
Use of the supernatural
Dark landscapes
Unreliable narrators
Combines horror and romance
Themes of good and evil or good
vs. evil
Poetry and essays
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
Poems
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{
Short stories
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Gothic Literature
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Emphasis on nature
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Walt Whitman
Henry David Thoreau
Finding the beauty in nature
Find the meaning of life
Self-reliance, individualism,
and intuition
Confident self-identity,
spiritual progress, and social
justice
Characteristics of
Romanticism
{

Civil War Realism
Non-fiction
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
Dialectical
Fictional stories
Jack London

Frederick Douglass
Slave songs
Focus on the violence and
brutality of war
Frontier
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Theme of survival
Kate Chopin
Mark Twain
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Reflects war themes
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Slave narratives
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{
“Hillbilly”-esque
Humorist
Descriptive of everyday
events and locations
Focus on the average citizen
Anti-materialism
Westward expansion
Characteristics of Realism
Characteristics of Modernism
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Themes of death, alienation, disillusionment, wealth, war
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The “American Dream” originates
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William Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
Break from tradition in writing and customs
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Women are working
African Americans are popular writers
Poetry has multiple meanings and interpretations
 Jazz Age & Harlem Renaissance & New Poetics
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Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. DuBois
Robert Frost, e. e. cummings, William Carlos Williams
Stream of consciousness
 Psychoanalysis and Marxism Literary Theories
 Escape a ‘perfect hero’ for a hero with flaws
 World War I
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Contemporary Characteristics
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Largest movement and most inclusive and diverse
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AKA: post-modernism
Stray from conventional grammar and Standard English
 References to the past
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Multiple meanings and multiple realities
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Historical references
John Updike – 50s
Still big on psychoanalysis
More female authors
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Joyce Carol Oates
More multi-cultural and ethnic literature
 Confessional & Beat Poets
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Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsburg,
Gregory Corso
Old themes and characteristics are repeated
“The road to Sandy Bar—a camp that, not having as yet
experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat,
consequently seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants—
lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day’s severe
travel. In that advanced season the party soon passed out of the
moist, temperate regions of the foothills into the dry, cold, bracing
air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the
Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her
intention of going no farther, and the party halted. The spot was
singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater
surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite,
sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that
overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot
for a camp, had camping been advisable.”
“The road to Sandy Bar—a camp that, not having as yet
experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat,
consequently seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants—
lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day’s severe
travel. In that advanced season the party soon passed out of the
moist, temperate regions of the foothills into the dry, cold, bracing
air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the
Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her
intention of going no farther, and the party halted. The spot was
singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater
surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite,
sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that
overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot
for a camp, had camping been advisable.”
Realism – Frontier Realism
- descriptive detail
- emigrants – people moving all over “Westward expansion”
“St. Midas's School is half an hour from Boston in a Rolls-Pierce
motor-car. The actual distance will never be known, for no one,
except John T. Unger, had ever arrived there save in a Rolls-Pierce
and probably no one ever will again. St. Midas's is the most
expensive and the most exclusive boys' preparatory school in the
world. John's first two years there passed pleasantly. The fathers of
all the boys were money-kings, and John spent his summer visiting
at fashionable resorts. While he was very fond of all the boys he
visited, their fathers struck him as being much of a piece, and in his
boyish way he often wondered at their exceeding sameness.”
“St. Midas's School is half an hour from Boston in a Rolls-Pierce
motor-car. The actual distance will never be known, for no one,
except John T. Unger, had ever arrived there save in a Rolls-Pierce
and probably no one ever will again. St. Midas's is the most
expensive and the most exclusive boys' preparatory school in the
world. John's first two years there passed pleasantly. The fathers of
all the boys were money-kings, and John spent his summer
visiting at fashionable resorts. While he was very fond of all the
boys he visited, their fathers struck him as being much of a piece,
and in his boyish way he often wondered at their exceeding
sameness.”
Modernism
- no sub-movement
- mention of cars
- mention of wealth and money
- disillusionment
“when I was growing up, I was proud/ of my English, my
grammar, my spelling,/ fitting into the group of smart children,/
smart Chinese children, fitting in,/ belonging, getting in line./ …
when I was growing up, I hungered/ for American food, American
styles/ coded: white and even to me, a child/ born of Chinese
parents, being Chinese/ was feeling foreign, was limiting/ was unAmerican./ … when I was growing up and a white man wanted/
to take me out, I thought I was special,/ an exotic gardenia,
anxious to fit/ the stereotype of an oriental chick./…”
“when I was growing up, I was proud/ of my English, my
grammar, my spelling,/ fitting into the group of smart children,/
smart Chinese children, fitting in,/ belonging, getting in line./ …
when I was growing up, I hungered/ for American food,
American styles/ coded: white and even to me, a child/ born of
Chinese parents, being Chinese/ was feeling foreign, was
limiting/ was un-American./ … when I was growing up and a
white man wanted/ to take me out, I thought I was special,/ an
exotic gardenia, anxious to fit/ the stereotype of an oriental
chick./…”
Contemporary – Confessional
Poets
- poetry
- female author
- multi-cultural literature
- fitting in, adjusting, becoming ‘American’
“Nature’s first green is gold,/ Her hardest hue to hold./ Her early
leaf’s a flower;/ But only so an hour./ Then leaf subsides to lead/ So
Eden sank to grief,/ So dawn goes down to day./ Nothing gold can
stay.”
“Nature’s first green is gold,/ Her hardest hue to hold./ Her early
leaf’s a flower;/ But only so an hour./ Then leaf subsides to lead/
So Eden sank to grief,/ So dawn goes down to day./ Nothing gold
can stay.”
Modernism – New Poetics
- poetry
- American Dream
- wealth and money
“The woman decided that she wanted some bark from one of the
roots of the Great Tree—perhaps as a food or as a medicine, we
don’t know. She told her husband this. He didn’t like the idea. He
knew it was wrong. But she insisted, and he gave in. So he dug a
hole among the roots of this great sky tree, and he bared some of its
roots. But the floor of the Sky World wasn’t very thick, and he broke
a hole through it. He was terrified, for he had never expected to
find empty space underneath the world.”
“The woman decided that she wanted some bark from one of the
roots of the Great Tree—perhaps as a food or as a medicine, we
don’t know. She told her husband this. He didn’t like the idea. He
knew it was wrong. But she insisted, and he gave in. So he dug a
hole among the roots of this great sky tree, and he bared some of its
roots. But the floor of the Sky World wasn’t very thick, and he
broke a hole through it. He was terrified, for he had never expected
to find empty space underneath the world.”
Native American
- creation myth
- patriarchal; woman is responsible for the downfall; woman was
wrong; man was right
- use of nature for survival; benefits of nature
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness.”
Enlightenment – Age of
Reason
- logical
- constitution
- focus on government and equality
- formal, heightened, over-the-top language
- non-fiction
“My love is such that rivers cannot quench,/ Nor ought but love
from thee, give recompense./ Thy love is such I can no way repay,/
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray./ Then while we live, in
love let’s so persevere/ That when we live no more, we may live
ever.”
“My love is such that rivers cannot quench,/ Nor ought but love
from thee, give recompense./ Thy love is such I can no way repay,/
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray./ Then while we live, in
love let’s so persevere/ That when we live no more, we may live
ever.”
Enlightenment – Age of Faith
- poetry
- instructional; how to live, how to pray
- spiritual; faith based
“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber
as from society. I am not solitary while I read and write, though
nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the
stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate
between him and vulgar things.”
“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber
as from society. I am not solitary while I read and write, though
nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the
stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate
between him and vulgar things.”
Romanticism –
Transcendentalism
- being alone; self-reliant
- focus on the beauty of nature
- more simplistic writing