EOCT Review
By time periods/Literary genres of
study
TIME PERIODS OF AMERICAN
LITERATURE
Periods of American Literature
• A literary period is an artistic attitude of shared
characteristics. These characteristics may include
the style of writing, the genre, or the subject
matter. The work of a certain literary period
may be a response to historical events, but it is
not the same as the historical period.
Periods of American Literature
• American fiction began with the oral histories of
Native American and the writings of early explorers
and settlers of North America and extended through
the Colonial and Romantic eras. Literary output
increased with the start of the Westward Expansion
and Industrial Age. The two world wars of the
twentieth century impacted the styles and themes of
American fiction in profound ways. The beliefs and
values of the Cold War, Civil Rights and Electronic eras
continue to influence experimental as well as traditional
writers of contemporary American fiction.
Periods of American Literature
The chart below gives an overview of the important movements and periods in American literature. Study the approximate dates and
characteristics of each so that you are able to classify a work of literature based on its style and content.
Literary
Movement
Time
Period
Characteristics of
the Movement
Representative Writers
Native American
Period
Pre-16201840
Celebrates the natural word
Oral tradition; original authors
and words are largely unknown
Colonial Period
1620-1750
Focuses on historical events,
daily life, moral attitudes
(Puritanism), political unrest
William Bradford, Anne
Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards,
Edward Taylor
Revolutionary Period
and Nationalism
1750-1815
Celebrates nationialism and
patriotism and examines
what it means to be
“American”
Political writings by Thomas
Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and
Thomas Jefferson, Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison
Romanticism and
Transcendentalism
1800-1855
Celebrates individualism,
nature, imagination,
emotions
Washington Irving, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville,
Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry
David Thoreau
Periods of American Literature
Literary
Movement
Time
Period
Characteristics of
the Movement
Representative Writers
Realism
1850-1900
Examines realities of life,
human frailty; regional
culture (local color)
Mark Twain, William Dean
Howells, Henry James, Kate
Chopin
Naturalism
1880-1940
Views life as a set of natural
laws to be discovered
Theodore Dreiser, Jack London,
Frank Norris, Stephen Crane,
James T. Farrell
Modern Period
1900-1950
Themes of alienation,
disconnectedness;
experiments with new
techniques, use of irony and
understatement
T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Ernest Hemingway, Langston
Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston,
Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos,
William Faulkner, John Steinbeck
Postmodern Period
1950-present
Nontraditional topics and
structures; embrace of
changing reality
Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol
Oats, J.D. Salinger, Kurt
Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon,
Theodore Roethke, John Barth,
the Beat poets