American Literature Notes:
Early American Period
through Romantic Period
This powerpoint is available at my website and
there may be a link to it on my lesson plans also.
Please keep your notebook open to add
notes on various items as we proceed
through them.
I. Colonial Period (pre-1600 to 1760)
Note: 1 through 7 is a quick overview of this section.
1. Begins with oral literature of Native Americans
2. No written literature among the more than 500 tribes before
Europeans came
3. Native American stories show deep respect for nature
4. Nature contains special forces
5. Main characters may be animals or plants
6. The focus was on society more than the individual person
7. This period was God-centered for the Puritans
A. The literature of Exploration
1. The written record of Jamestown (founded 1607) is mainly
that of John Smith
a. John Smith was an incurable romantic
b. He stretched the truth in his
stories
c. Pocahontas is the most
famous one
2. Later in the 1600’s, pirates, adventurers, & explorers opened the
way for a second wave of settlers at Plymouth
a. Their literature consisted of
diaries, journals, ships’ logs, and
reports
b. Because England
eventually took control
of the colonies, the
best known colonial
literature is English.
c. Today we are
“discovering” the literature
of many minorities who
came here at the same time.
B. The Puritans of New England (the North)
1. Puritans were probably the most intellectual colonists of any in history
a. Between 1630-1690 many university graduates came here
b. Most educated people of that time were wealthy and not willing
to risk the wilderness life
2. Puritan writing
a. Mostly religious because they
were a “God-centered” society
b. We learn a lot about them from
their sermons
c. Puritan Themes were (1) life as a test, (2) failure leads to damnation, and
(3) success leads to heavenly bliss
d. To the Puritans, the world was an arena where God and Satan
constantly fought
3. Links between Puritanism and Capitalism
a. Both rest on ambition, hard work, striving for success
b. Puritans felt earthly success was a
sign that they were one of the “elect”
(bound for heaven) / Today many
Americans applaud material success
too.
4. The Puritans believed everything that happened was “God’s will”
Here is a passage from William Bradford’s Of Plymouth
Plantation describing what happened to a sailor (not a
Pilgrim) on the Mayflower during the passage to the New
World.
And I may not omite hear a spetiall worke of Gods
providente. Ther was a proud and very profane
yonge man, one of the sea-men, of a lustie, able body,
which made him the more hauty; he would allway be
contemning the poore people in their sicknes, and
cursing them dayly with greevous execrations, and
did not let to tell them, that he hoped to help to cast
halfe of them over board before they came to their
jurneys end, and to make mery with what they had;
and if he were by any gently reproved, he would
curse and swear rnost bitterly.
But it plased God before they came halfe seas over, to
smite this yong man with a greeveous disease, of which
he dyed in a desperate maner, and so was him selfe the
first that was throwne overbord.
5. To the Puritans, history was symbolic of them
triumphing over the New World.
6. The “Separatists” (Puritans who “separated”
themselves from the Old World to avoid
persecution) interpreted the Bible literally. Many
Americans today do the same.
7. The Puritans believed in public
education, which is why you are
sitting in this room right now!
C. The Cavaliers of the middle and southern colonies (the South)
1. Their society was aristocratic (favoring the
upper class) and secular (not connected
with religion)
a. Unlike the Puritans, they
supported the King of England
b. They believed in education
for the wealthy and upper
classes only
c. Many early settlers
were drawn there
because of economic
opportunities, not
religious freedom
2. This type of society was different from the Puritan society of the North
a. Even though many were poor farmers, they
believed in the Old World idea of an upper class
supported by slavery
b. Wealthy southern whites did not perform manual labor
c. Puritan emphasis on hard work, education,
and earnestness was rare
d. Church was only the focus for a genteel social life, unlike the North
II. The Revolutionary Period (1760-1820)
Note: 1 through 8 is a quick overview of this section.
1. Military victory over England brought hope of a great new literature
2. Excellent political writings, but no great new literature came
3. American books were considered second-class in England
4. The not-yet-invented invented “American style” became a national obsession
5. Unfortunately, we were still so culturally tied to England that we simply copied the
styles being written there (art, music, writing, etc.)
6. American authors also had a small audience because many Americans were
still reading English authors
7. Lack of adequate copyright laws in America hurt – why pay an unknown
American writer for a book when you could print an unauthorized copy of a
foreign one and not get penalized? This hurt both American and English authors.
8. This period was Reason-Centered instead of God centered
A. The American Enlightenment
1. This was marked by reasoning
over tradition, and scientific inquiry
instead of unquestioning religious
dogma
2. Writers and thinkers were
devoted to justice, liberty, and
equality
3. Benjamin Franklin is a good example
a. Poor Richard’s Almanack
b. The Autobiography
B. The Political Pamphlet
1. Over 2,000 pamphlets were published during the revolution
2. They thrilled patriots and threatened loyalists
3. Very dramatic; often read aloud to excite public audiences
4. American soldiers read them in camps; British loyalists burned them
5. Thomas Paine
a. Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies in
first 3 months of publication
Published in 1776, Common Sense
challenged the authority of the British
government and the royal monarchy.
The plain language that Paine used
spoke to the common people of
America and was the first work to
openly ask for independence from
Great Britain.
Common Sense came before the Revolutionary War.
“IN the following pages I offer nothing more than simple
facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no
other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he
will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession . . . .”
B. The Crisis is a collection of articles written by Thomas Paine during the
American Revolutionary War.
After the colonists in America decided
that they were going to attempt a move
towards freedom from British rule,
they found themselves faced with
several problems. Many of these
problems dealt directly with the threat
of a British invasion to stamp out such
a revolution. However, a major
problem was an internal one. The
feelings regarding independence were
mixed throughout the colonies and
divided among classes. The Patriots
found themselves among many
devoted British loyalists who were
totally against any ideas of secession.
b. “The Crisis” encourages colonists to
fight England for freedom and contains
the following famous lines:
“These are the times that try men’s
souls . . .” and “The summer soldier
and the sunshine patriot will,
in this crisis, shrink from the service
of his country . . .”
6. Political pamphlets had to be easily understood
7. In order to have an informed electorate, the
founding fathers encouraged public education
8. One indication of a vigorous literary life in
the colonies was the large number of
newspapers
a. More newspapers read in America then than anywhere else in the world
b. Immigration required simple style
in papers; clarity was important
C. Neoclassicism became popular in writing (neo = new; classicism = classics)
Many American writers tried to copy the classical style; especially the
epic (a long, narrative poem telling the deeds of a legendary hero)
Therefore, no new “American style” in writing had yet emerged.
Ironically, the first truly “American style” came in furniture design.
D. Fiction – the first important American fiction writers used American subjects,
historical perspectives,
themes of change,
and nostalgic tones.
1. Washington Irving took his story ideas from European folk tales
a. Legend of Sleepy Hollow
b. Rip Van Winkle
2. James Fenimore Cooper took his story ideas from America; the ironic and
tragic destruction of the wilderness which had drawn us here in the first place
a. The Last of the Mohicans
b. The Leatherstocking tales where the Hero is Natty Bumppo:
The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James
Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo, known by
European settlers as "Leatherstocking," 'The Pathfinder", and "the trapper" and
by the Native Americans as "Deerslayer," "La Longue Carabine" and
"Hawkeye".
1823 – The Pioneers, 1826 – The Last of the Mohicans,
1827 – The Prarrie, 1840 – The Pathfinder, 1841 – The Deerslayer,
III. The Romantic Period in Poetry (1820-1860)
Note: 1 through 8 is a quick overview of this section.
1. Began in Germany, then spread to France and England
2. It reached America about twenty years later
3. Because the American Romantic movement coincided with the westward
movement and the discovery of a distinctive American voice in literature, it
nurtured masterpieces of the American Renaissance
4. Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration and the spiritual and
aesthetic dimension of nature
5. Romantics believed that art, instead of science, could best express universal
truth
6. The development of the self became a major theme (the importance of the
individual over society)
7. The American Romantic poets tried to imitate the European style
8. The romantic period was emotion-centered.
Some characteristics of romanticism: love of nature; sympathetic interest in the past,
especially the medieval; mysticism; individualism; emotion over reason.
A. Transcendentalism
1. Based on belief in the unity of
the world and God
2. The soul of each person was
thought to be identical with the
world (a smaller version of it –
microcosm)
3. The idea of self-reliance and individualism came through the
identification of the individual with God
4. It was intimately connected with Concord, Massachusetts
a. Far enough from Boston to be
“rural” (25 miles west)
b. First rural artists’ colony
c. First place to offer a spiritual and cultural
alternative to American materialism
d. Because they believed in individualism,
they never published a manifesto (public
declaration of principles and intentions)
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson
a. He was the “original” transcendentalist
b. His most famous essay is “Self-Reliance”
“Self-Reliance” contains the most solid statement of
one of Emerson's repeating themes: the need for
each individual to avoid conformity and follow his
or her own instincts and ideas. Emerson's ideas are
considered a reaction to a commercial identity; he
calls for a return to individual identity.
“There is a time in every man's education
when he arrives at the conviction that envy is
ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he
must take himself for better for worse as his
portion; that though the wide universe is full
of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can
come to him but through his toil bestowed on
the plot of ground which is given him to till.”
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place
the divine providence has found for you, the society of your
contemporaries, the connection of events.”
“Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist.”
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has
simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on
the wall.”
“. . . if you would be a man
speak what you think today in
words as hard as cannon balls,
and tomorrow speak what
tomorrow thinks in hard
words again, though it
contradict every thing you said
today.”
“Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood!
Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be
misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus,
and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure
and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
6. Henry David Thoreau
a. He was a protégé of Emerson
b. Wrote Walden
Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's sojourn
in a cabin near Walden Pond, amidst woodland
owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo
Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.
By living there for two years and writing about
it, he hoped to isolate himself from society to
gain a more objective understanding of it.
Walden emphasizes the importance of self-reliance, solitude, contemplation, and
closeness to nature in transcending the "desperate" existence that, he argues, is the
lot of most humans.
In the first section, called “Economy,” Thoreau explains that material things
are not what is important in life and that most of us spend our entire lives
chasing after them and driving ourselves crazy in the process.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had
to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
In the final section of Walden, entitled “Conclusion,” Thoreau sums up what
he has learned in his two years at the pond.
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it
hard names. It is not so bad as you are.”
“There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we
tolerate incredible dullness.”
c. Ties between Thoreau and Hartland
John Robert Crouse, Sr., was born January 1,
1874 in Hartland, Michigan.
After graduation from the University of Michigan
in 1897 he joined his father, J.B. Crouse, and his
uncle, H.A. Tremaine, in a harmonious business
relationship that continued for two decades.
They were then operating the Fostoria
Incandescent Lamp Company in Ohio.
In 1901 they created the National Electric Lamp Association (eventually
merging with General Electric) of which Nela Park in Cleveland became
the headquarters.
Returning home to his boyhood roots of Hartland, Mr. Crouse set out to
design his vision for a social and educational experiment for the
improvement of rural life.
In 1931 Mr. Crouse conceived the plan for the Hartland Area Project.
The objective was to bring the privilege of music, drama, handicrafts, library service, health and
welfare work to the residents of the rural area surrounding Hartland.
His faith in humanity and his desire for the enrichment of life has endowed the Hartland
Area with the Cromaine (District) Library, the Music Hall, Waldenwoods, Community Life
newspaper, and in earlier days the Hartland Area Crafts.
Community
Life; PO BOX
282; Hartland,
MI 48353.
7. Walt Whitman: Romantic poet
a. Poet, largely self-taught; wrote much in free verse
Blank verse = no set rhyme; set rhythm
Free verse = no set rhyme; no set rhythm
b. Wrote Leaves of Grass
It is a book of poetry originally
published in 1855, then republished
several times, the last edition coming
out in 1891. Each time it was
published more poems were added.
The voice of Walt Whitman finally became the new “American style” in
poetry, although most romantic poets still followed the style of Europeans.
Here is a sample poem from Leaves of Grass
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in
the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
B. Harvard poets
1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Song of Hiawatha
The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
based on the legends of the Ojibway
Indians.
The Song unfolds a legend of Hiawatha
and his lover, Minnehaha.
The story begins this way:
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Gitche Gumee is Lake Superior
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Nokomis is the hero Hiawatha’s
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
grandmother and the narrator is
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
telling how the hero came to be.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Longfellow is popular for 3 reasons:
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
1. First, he had the gift of easy rhyme.
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
2. Second, he wrote on obvious themes
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
3. Third, his poems are easily understood
2. Oliver Wendell Holmes – “Old Ironsides”
He was an American physician, professor, lecturer and author.
In September of 1830, Holmes read a short article in the Boston
Daily Advertiser about the renowned 18th century frigate USS
Constitution, which was to be dismantled by the Navy. Holmes was
moved to write "Old Ironsides" in opposition of the ship's scrapping.
The patriotic poem was published in the Advertiser the very next day
and was soon printed by papers in New York, Philadelphia and
Washington. It not only brought the author immediate national
attention, but the eight-stanza poem also generated enough public
sentiment that the historic ship was preserved.
OLD IRONSIDES
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
September 16, 1830
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered bulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
C. Emily Dickinson
Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful
family with strong community ties, she lived a
mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she
studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years
in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount
Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to
her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an
eccentric by the locals, she became known for
her penchant for white clothing and her
reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even
leave her room. Most of her friendships were
therefore carried out by correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her
nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work
that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the
publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems
are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically
lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization
and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and
immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Term: slant rhyme (sometimes called off rhyme or half
rhyme)
A partial or imperfect rhyme. Example: cold – world
Example in a Dickinson poem:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
gossamer fabric
tulle fabric
tippets on arms
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
IV. The Romantic Period – Fiction (1820-1860)
Note: 1 through 4 is a quick overview of this section.
1. This was the age of the “Romance,” which was not a love story
2. Typical Romantic protagonists are haunted, alienated people
3. The typical romantic story of this period has these four characteristics:
a. The setting is in the past in a far away place
b. The story has “larger-than-life” main characters
c. The good guy wins (and often becomes a hero); the bad guy loses
d. The stories have “full-information” endings
4. The American Romantic prose writers tried to create a new American style
A. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet
Letter (also developed short story)
B. Herman Melville – Moby Dick
C. Edgar Allan Poe – Developed detective story and short story
V. The Realistic Period (1860-1900)
The realists wanted to show life as it really is. Here is an example in art.
Congratulations! You are now up to the realistic age in American literature!
(page 406 in your textbook)