A Dreadfully Oversimplified Description of Some of America’s Literary Movements
COLONIAL PURITANISM - 1600’s
1. Sovereignty of God
2. Predestination: An omniscient God knows from the beginning who will be saved. (Not believed by all Christians)
3. Providence: God directly intervenes in the world.
4. Natural depravity: Since Adam, all people are born in sin and deserve damnation.
5. Election: Through God's mercy, some are saved, but by grace alone, not by their own efforts.
6. Evil is inner: man needs to reform himself rather than institutions like church or government.
7. God is revealed in the Bible. (The High Church places emphasis on tradition, and the Broad Church places emphasis on
reason.)
NEOCLASSICISM
1. Appeal to reason
2. Objective viewpoint
3. Suspicion of unconventional
4. Clear and ordered expression and form
5. Emphasis on content and idea
6. Emphasis on measurable and determined
7. Importance of universal thoughts and ideas--derived from Rome and Greece
8. Love of human accomplishments in taming and controlling nature
9. Acceptance of tradition
10. Influence of science and deism
ROMANTICISM – 1845 ish
1. Emotional rather than rational appeal
2. Subjective rather than objective
3. Emphasis on the individual
4. Dissatisfaction with known
5. Experimentation with musicality and color in expression
6. Emphasis on feeling and emotion
7. Simplicity--the common man
8. Love of external nature in its wild and primitive state (primitivism)
9. Emphasis on immeasurable and undetermined
10. Rejection of tradition
GOTHIC
1. Elements of horror or terror
2. Remote setting
3. Written in the Romantic style
4. Focuses on the dark, irrational side of the imagination
TRANSCENDENTALISM
1. A benevolent God
2. A transcendent God operating by a natural method (nature) instead of by direct divine intervention
3. Freedom of human will
4. Humans are innately good. (God is in every person.)
5. All people are equal.
6. Evil is a result of corrupt institutions, not of man's natural depravity.
7. Man is perfected by education.
8. God is revealed in nature.
9. Humanitarian aid to man is the best service to man and God.
10. Distrust of traditional Christianity.
PRAGMATISM
1. Appeal to reason
2. Mechanistic--whatever works is right.
3. Man is essentially animal, a product of evolution
4. Application of scientific principles to improve humans and their environment
5. Adaptation to environment
6. Progress through education
7. Rational group effort
8. Emphasis on action
REALISM
1. Humans have a choice.
2. Human are responsible for their destiny.
3. Each individual has worth and morality.
4. Each individual also has flaws.
5. Verisimilitude
6. Consequent recognition of the individual as both good and evil
7. Antithetical to naturalism
8. God (if there is one) intervenes in the universe in a just manner.
NATURALISM – 1900ish
1. People have no choice--life's course is inevitable.
2. Heredity and environment control people's lives.
3. Regardless of worth or morality, the end is the same.
4. An indifferent God (if there is one) rules the universe.
5. Pessimistic
6. Concentrates on the "lower" aspects of life
LOCAL COLOR
1. Focused on characterization, often reflecting stereotypes of a particular region rather than plot
2. Emphasizes regional customs, dialect, and settings
3. Linked inextricably to its setting
4. Blend of Romanticism and Realism
MODERNISM – 1914 (WWI)
1. United States’ traumatic “coming of age” characterized by disillusionment and alienation
2. Modernization and industrialization of daily life
3. Experimentation with form, style, and structure
4. Social awareness
5. Influenced by historical context including the Harlem Renaissance, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression
EXISTENTIALISM
1. Life is absurd.
2. Man has little choice, only to exist.
3. Life is despairing and to be dreaded.
4. Moments of individual and irrevocable choice are the only moments of "real" truth.
5. Quest is for self, struggle for identity.
6. Trouble assertion of freedom
7. Opposition to society
8. Redefinition of communication--deconstruction of language, etc.
POSTMODERNISM
1. Unconventional narrators
2. Subversive chronology
3. Glorification of popular culture
4. Parody, satire
5. Sometimes characterized by incoherence and discontinuity
6. Attempts to deconstruct modern life