What is literature???
Literature is any piece of writing that is
valued as work of art.
For example novels, poems, short stories,
plays…
American Literature
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Colonial Period (1607-1775)
Revolutionary Period (1775-1789)
Romantic Period (the 19 century)
Realism (since the 1860s)
Lost Generation (the 1920s, 1930s)
Literature between the World Wars (1918-1939)
Beat Generation (the 1950s)
Modern Literary Movements (since 1945)
Afro-American Literature
Jewish Literature
Ethnic Literature
American Drama
Colonial Period
The literature of this period was strongly
influenced by religion of the authors
(Puritanism) and was often informative of
how to survive in the wild, uncivilised
country. Sometimes the texts were just
descriptions of the hard life and
colonisation process in America of the
17th century.
Writers of Colonial Period
Descriptive and
biblical literature:
• Capt. John Smith
• Cotton Mather
• William Bradford
Poetry:
• Anne Bradstreet
• Edward Taylor
Revolutionary Period
This period was marked by the War of Independence.
4 July 1776 – Declaration of Independence
1777 – Battle at Saratoga (the first victory over the
British)
1781 – the end of the war
1783 – Britain recognizes the USA as a sovereign state
1789 – the U.S. Constitution comes in force
1789 – G. Washington becomes the first U.S. president
Literature of Revolutionary Period
- merely political character
- pamphlets, essays, declarations,
speeches etc.
• Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of
Independence)
• Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard´s
Almanach)
From the War of Independence to
the Civil War (1789-1861)
• Shifting the frontier westbound (pioneers)
• Growing self-awareness, pride and
patriotism
• The period of slavery
• The beginning of American Romantism
Literature of the period (1789-1861)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom´s Cabin)
• Washington Irving (Life of George Washington)
• James Feninmore Cooper (The Last of the
Mohicanes, The Pioneers, The Prairie, The
Pathfinder, The Deerslayer)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson – Transcedentalist
Movement; the greatest essayist (The American
Poet, The Friendship…)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
• Herman Melville – a symbolist (Moby Dick)
• Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven, The Pit and
the Pendulum, The Black Cat, The Fall of
the House of Ushers)
• Walt Whitman (O Captain! My Captain! ,
Leaves of Grass – written in free verse)
• Emily Dickinson – mentally ill, lived worked
and died in Amherst (Bolts of Melody)
The Gilded Age - Realism, „Local
Color“, American Humour
• Mark Twain (Life on Mississippi, The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, The
Prince and the Pauper,…)
• Henry James (Washington Square, Daisy Miller)
• Edit Wharton (The Age of Innocence)
• Jack London – Naturalist (The Call of the Wild,
The Sea-Wolf)
• Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy)
• Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio)
Literature between the Wars
• The Lost Generation (e.g.E.Hemingway,
Francis Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos
Passos, William Faulkner)
• Robert Frost – a poet (New Hampshire)
• Carl Sandburg – a realistic poet (Good
Morning, America)
• e.e.cummings – an experimental poet
Modern American Literature
• Henry Miller – a guru of hippies (Sexus, Plexus,
Nexus)
• Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
• Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead)
• Jack Kerouac (On the Road, Lonesome
Traveler)
• Williams Boroughs (The Naked Lunch)
• William Styron (Sophia´s Choice, The Long
March)
• Truman Capote (In Cold Blood)
• E.L.Doctorow (Ragtime)
• Allan Ginsberg – a guru of the Beat Generation
(Kaddish and Other Poems)
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the
Mind)
• Gregory Nunzio Corso (The Happy Birthday of
Death)
• Jewish writers: Bernard Malamud, I.B.Singer,
Saul Below, Philip Roth, Jerome David Salinger,
Joseph Heller
• Black writers: James Langston Hughes, LeRoi
Jones (Amiri Baraka), James Baldwin, Toni
Morrison, Alex Haley
American Theatre
• Eugene O´Neil (The Emperor Jones,
Desire Under the Elms)
• Tennesee Williams (A Streetcare named
Desire, Glass Menagerie)
• Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman)