Literary Movements in
American Literature
Mrs. Hernandez
PURITANISM (1620s – 1783)
• Forms of writing:
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histories
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diaries
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chronicles
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poetry
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sermons:
1. explanation of biblical quotation
2. interpretation
3. application to the life of the Puritans
WRITERS OF THE PURTIAN
PERIOD
• Poetry:
Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672)
Michael Wigglesworth (1631 – 1705)
Edward Taylor (1645 – 1729)
• Diaries/Chronicles/Histories:
William Bradford (1590 – 1657)
John Winthrop (1588 – 1649)
Cotton Mather (1663 – 1728)
Edward Johnson (1598 – 1672)
Mary Rowlandson (c.1636 – c.1678)
• Sermons:
Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758)
HISTORICAL EVENTS
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1620 - Mayflower, Puritans found Plymouth Plantation
1630 - arrival of Arbella
Massachusetts Bay Colony founded
1636 - Harvard University founded near Boston
1650 - Bradstreet, Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In
America
1662 - Wigglesworth, The Day of Doom
1704 - first newspaper ~> in Boston
1741 - Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God”
1741-61 – The Great Awakening
Influences on America
• Puritan influence on American Values:
· Urge to succeed and exceed
· Belief that hard work necessary for
happiness
· Conviction that Americans are the
chosen people
Enlightenment 1750-1800
• Rational approach to the world, belief in
progress
- Pragmatism – truth measured by practical
experience, law of nature
- Deism – God created the world but has no
influence on human lives
- Idealism – conviction of the universal sense of
right and wrong; belief in essential goodness of
man
- Interest in human nature
Writers of the Enlightened
Period
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Political Pamphlets
Philosophical / Religious Tracts:
Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809)
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
Alexander Hamilton (1757 – 1804
Historical Events
• 1773 - Boston Tea Party
• 1775-83 – American Revolution
• 1776, 4 July – Declaration of
Independence
• 1783 - Treaty of Paris
• 1787-88 - Federalist Papers: Alex.
Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
• 1789 - American Constitution
• 1789-1799 - French Revolution
ROMANTICISM (1820s –
1861)
• Explored what it meant to be an American, an American
artist
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Looked at American government and political
problems
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The problems of war and Black slavery
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Emerging materialism and conformity
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Influence of immigration, new customs and traditions
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Sexuality; relationships between men and women
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The power of nature
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Individualism, emphasis on destructive effect of
society on individual
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Idealism
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Spontaneity in thought and action
Characteristics of American Literary
Romanticism
1. INDIVIDUALISM
– Popularized by the frontier tradition
– Jacksonian democracy
– Supported Abolitionism
2. IMAGINATION
– Reaction against the earlier age’s emphasis
on Reason
– Abandonment of literary tradition in favor of
experimentation
– “Organicism”: every idea held within it an
inherent structure
3. EMOTION
– Feeling is now considered superior to
rationality as the mode of perceiving and
experiencing reality
– Intuition leads one to truth
– Truth/reality are now highly subjective
4. NATURE
– The means of knowing Truth
• God reveals himself solely through
Nature
• Nature becomes a moral teacher
– The actual subject matter of the
Romantics
5. DISTANT SETTINGS
– Both in terms of time and place
– Used to comment on attitudes of the time
period
The Fireside Poets
America’s First Literary Stars
What are the Fireside Poets?
• First group of American poets to rival
British poets in popularity in either
country.
• Notable for their scholarship and the
resilience of their lines and themes.
• Preferred conventional forms over
experimentation.
• Often used American legends and scenes
of American life as their subject matter.
Who were the Fireside Poets?
• Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
• William Cullen
Bryant
• James Russell
Lowell
• Oliver Wendell
Holmes
• John Greenleaf
Whittier
Lasting Impact
• Longfellow remained the most popular American poet
for decades. When Poe criticized him, he was all but
ostracized. Longfellow remains the only American
poet to be immortalized by a bust in Westminster
Abbey’s Poets’ Corner
• They took on causes in their poetry, such as the
abolition of slavery, which brought the issues to the
forefront in a palatable way.
• Through their scholarship and editorial efforts, they
paved the way for later Romantic writers like Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt
Whitman.
Writers of the Romantic Period
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James Fennimore Cooper (1789 – 1851)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864)
Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850)
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Herman Melville (1819 – 1891)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811- 1896)
• Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888)
Poetry:
• “The Boston Brahmins”
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
Historical Events
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1812 – War with England
1815-50 – Westward Expansion
1846-48 – Mexican War
1849 – California gold rush
1861-1865 – Civil War
1863 - Gettysburg Address
1863 – Emancipation Proclamation
REALISM (1860s – 1890s)
• life presented with fidelity
• fidelity in presenting the inner workings of the mind
• the analysis of thought and feeling
• function of environment in shaping the character
• set in present or recent past
• commonplace characters
• exposed political corruption, economic inequity,
business deception, the exploitation of labor, women
rights problems, racial inequity
• described the relationship between the economic
transformation of America and its moral condition
American Regionalism,
Realism, and Naturalism
1860-1920(ish)
Why did Realism develop?
• The Civil War
• The urbanization and industrialization of
America
• As a reaction to Romanticism
• Increasing rates of democracy and literacy
• The emerging middle class
• Upheaval and social change in the latter
half of the 19th century
What is Realism?
• A faithful representation of reality in
literature, also known as “verisimilitude.”
• Emphasis on development of believable
characters.
• Written in natural vernacular, or dialect.
• Prominent from 1860-1890.
Characteristics of Realism
• Reaction against Romanticism and
Neoclassicism
• Factual is more important than the
intellectual or the emotional
• Treats nature objectively, but views it as
orderly
• Tells the stories of everyday people
• Use of details more important than plot
• In diction, seeks to use natural language
• Atheistic
• Life is driven by fate
Realist Writers
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Mark Twain
William Dean Howells
Henry James
Edgar Lee Masters
Why did Regionalism develop?
• Dual influence of Romanticism and
Realism
• The Civil War and the building of a
national identity
• An outgrowth of realism with more focus
on a particular setting and its influence
over characters
What is Regionalism?
• Often called “local color.”
• Focuses on characters, dialect, customs,
topography, and other features specific to
a certain region (eg. the South)
• Coincided with Realism and sharing many
of the same traits.
• Prominent from 1865-1895.
Regionalist Writers
• Kate Chopin—South
• Mary E. WilkinsFreeman—New
England
• Mark Twain—West
• Willa Cather—
Midwest
Why did Naturalism develop?
• The swell of immigrants in the latter half of the
19th century, which led to a larger lower class
and increased poverty in the cities
• The prominence of psychology and the theories
of Sigmund Freud
• Pessimism in the wake of the Civil War and
Reconstruction
• Publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the
Species
What is Naturalism?
• Applied scientific principles of objectivity and
detachment to the study of human beings.
• Influenced by Darwinism (natural selection) and
psychology (Freud)
• Posited that men were governed by heredity and
environment.
• Often depict man in conflict with nature, society,
or himself.
• Prominent from 1880-1920(ish)
Distinctions of Naturalism
• Views life from a deterministic, mechanistic point
of view.
• Makes people the subjects of scientific case
studies.
• Tone is often coldly scientific.
• Uses great masses of details; their informal
arrangement reflects the chaotic state of society
and nature.
• In diction, sometimes seems to seek out the ugly
word for its own sake.
• Likely to present nature as chaotic.
• Studies society dispassionately to correct the evils
found there.
• Drops artificial concepts of plot and action for a
"slice of life."
• Main characters are usually low on the social
scale; often morally frail
Naturalist Writers
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Stephen Crane
Ambrose Bierce
Jack London
Edwin Arlington
Robinson
• Katherine Anne
Porter
• Charlotte Perkins
Gilman
• Edith Wharton
Points to Remember…
• Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism are
intertwined and connected.
• Their influence has dominated most
literature created since 1920, though the
movement itself is dated to roughly that
point.
• They are truly American modes of writing.
Realism Continued….
• introduction of a new kind of characters:
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industrial workers and rural poor
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ambitious businessman and
vagrants
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prostitutes
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unheroic soldiers
Writers of the Realist Period
• Mark Twain (1835–1910)
• Henry James (1843 – 1916)
• William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920)
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“Local Color”
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 – 1909)
Kate Chopin (1851 – 1904)
Bret Harte (1836 – 1902)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935)
Historical Events
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1860 – Abraham Lincoln elected President
1861-65 – Civil War
1863, 1 Jan – Emancipation Proclamation:
slavery abolished
1865 – 13th Amendment (abolition of
slavery)
1869 – first transcontinental railroad
1870s – few individuals take control of big industries:
steal, railroad, oil, meat-packing
• 1859 – Darwin’s The Origin of Species
• 1870 – Darwin's Descent of Man
NATURALISM (1890s ~>
1950s)
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Trend rather than a movement; never formalized nor dominated by the
influence of a single writer
A more extreme, intensified version of realism
Shows more unpleasant, ugly, shocking aspects of life
Objective picture of reality viewed with scientific detachment
Determinism – man’s life is dominated by the forces he cannot control:
biological instincts, social environment
No free will, no place for moral judgment
Pessimism
Disillusionment with the dream of success; collapse of the
predominantly agrarian myth
Struggle of an individual to adopt to the environment
Society as something stable, its predictability unabled one to present a
universal human situation through accurate representation of particulars
Faith in society and art
Writers of the Naturalist Period
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Henry Adams (1838 – 1918)
Hamlin Garland (1860 – 1940)
Frank Norris (1870 – 1902)
Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)
Theodore Dreiser (1871 – 1945)
Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937)
Jack London (1879 – 1916)
Sinclair Lewis (1885 – 1951)
Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968)
John Steinbeck (1902 – 1968)
Historical Events of the Naturalist
Period
• 1898 – Spanish-American War
• 1901 - Theodore Roosevelt elected
President
• 1903 - first powered airplane flight
MODERNISM (1914-1945)
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Construction out of fragments, collage
technique, montage of images (cinema)
The ideal of art is to regain the whole (like in
The Waste Land)
Work structured as a quest for the very
coherence it seems to lack at the surface; order
found in art (Porter), religion (Eliot)
Sense of discontinuity, harmony destroyed in
WWI
Omission: of explanations, interpretations,
connections, summaries, continuity
Arbitrary beginning, advancement without
explanation, end without resolution
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Shifts in perspective, voice and tone
Experimentation with time:
flashback, leaps to the future
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Rhetoric understated, ironic
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Symbols and images instead
statements
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Use of myth –escape from
dramatic present, Christianity also a
myth (Faulkner)
Important Characteristics of Narrative
•Alienation—Self is separate and
distinct from society which is
frequently antagonistic to
differences
•Fragmentation– Disintegration or
breakdown of norms of thought,
behavior, or social relationship
•Stream of consciousness
•Complex allusions
•Juxtaposition and multiple points
of view
•Use of extended metaphors
•Use of extended symbolism
•New types of symbolism allusive in style and an interest
in rarified mental states
Important Characteristics of Poetry
•Open form
•Use of free verse
•Juxtaposition of ideas
rather than detailed
explanations
•Use of allusions and
multiple associations of
words
•Unconventional use of
metaphor
•Importance given to sound
to convey the “music of ideas”
•Imagism
Writers of the Modern Period
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Prose
Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946)
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
John Dos Passos (1896 – 1970)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)
William Faulkner (1897 – 1962)
Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941)
Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980)
Zora Neale Hurston (1901?–1960)
Thomas Wolfe (1900 – 1938)
Nathaniel West (1903 – 1940)
Willa Cather (1873 – 1947)
Henry Miller (1891 – 1980)
Anais Nin (1903 – 1977)
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Poetry:
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965)
William Carlos William (1883 – 1963)
Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)
Historical Events of the Modern
Period
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1914-18 – World War I
1917 – US enters the War, Russian Revolution
1918 – worldwide flu epidemic
Jan 1919 – Prohibition (18th Amendment)
1920 – women given the vote (19th Am.)
1920s – Henry Ford’s assembly-line, cars become affordable
1921 – Sacco-Vanzetti case
1924 – Immigration Act, quota systems: 1921, 1924.
1927 – first non stop solo flight across Atlantic
1928 – Mussolini’s comes to power in Italy
1929 – first motion picture with sound
stock market crash, Depression begins
1932 – F. Delano Roosevelt becomes President
1933 – 18th Amendment repealed
1933 – Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany
1936-39 – Spanish Civil War
1941, 7 Dec – Pearl Harbor
1945, 6 Aug – Hiroshima atomic bomb
Influential thinkers:
Sigmunt Freud (1856 – 1939)
Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)
1848 – Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto
POST-WWII (1945 - )
• http://home.comcast.net/~bbedingfield/Agn
ieszka/LiteraryPeriods.htm