Explorers (1492-1620)
History
 Columbus trained a Taino Indian (Diego Colon) as a translator

Columbus found a combination of Native, European, and African people
 conquered region by force
 smallpox, measles, and typhus decimated the Native population
 genocide was replaced with slavery as many of the work force died
 many Natives adopted European technology and fought back
Culture
 huge varieties of languages, social customs/organizations, creative expression, and oral literature
 relied on oral traditions
 trickster tales, jokes
 naming and grievances chants
 dream songs
 translation into words left out a lot of information
Roles of Writing
 influencing policy makers at home
 justifying actions
 bearing witness to direct and indirect actions of Europeans
 recorded also hideous consequences and enslavement of survivors
Exploration Narratives
 Journal

Dairy o Christopher Columbus - Journal of the First Voyage to America o Garcia Lopez de Cardenas - Boulders Taller than the Great Tower of Seville o John Smith - The General History of Virginia o William Bradford - Of Plymouth Plantation

Puritans (1620-1750)
History
 first "American" colonies are established

Salem Witch trials took place
 came because of religious persecution

Plymouth Plantation was 1st settlement
 chartered the Mayflower to sail for America
 Calvinists came later
Literature of 1700
 only about 250 works published
 reflects religious, security, and cultural concerns of colonial life
 printing presses in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis
Types of Writing
 Sermons
 poetry
 letters

Journals and Diaries
 Histories

Narratives the purpose was to provide spiritual insight and instruction
Style
 short words
 direct statements
 references to ordinary, everyday objects
Byproducts of Puritan Belief
 living a virtuous, self-examined life
 virtues of industriousness, temperance, sobriety, and simplicity
 working hard will keep you from temptations
 education was highly valued (Harvard 1636 to train ministers)
Authors
 Anne Bradstreet - To My Dear and Loving Husband, Upon the Burning of My House

Jonathan Edwards - Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Edward Taylor - Huswifery
 Cotton Maher - Pillars of Salt, The Wonders of the Invisible World
 John Winthrop - Model of Christian Charity

Hannah Duston - The Captivity Narrative of Hannah Duston
 Mary Rowlandson - A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

The Age of Reason (1750-1800)
History

Revolutionary War

Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence
 religious, intellectual, and economic horizons expanded

Isaac Newton and John Locke in favor of accepting individuals to puzzle through and understand universe
 lured Europeans with greater economic possibilities
 caused Natives to be pushed out and indentured laborers and African slaves suffered the consequences
Social and cultural Enlightenment
 assumed people are good instead of evil
 the way to improve society was to improve the individual
 a perfect society is possible
 reason is better than faith
Literature types

Nonfiction, political
 Pamphlets

Speeches

Almanacs
 Newspapers

Biographies

Narratives

Poetry
Authors

Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography, Poor Richard's Almanack
 Thomas Paine - Common Sense, The Crisis

Patrick Henry - Speech to Virginia Convention

Phyllis Wheatley - Poems on various subjects
 Olaudah Equiano - The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur - Letters from an American Farmer

Romanticism (1800-1860)
History

Industrialization

War of 1812 o Andrew Jackson became a heroic national myth representing strength and optimism o This led the literature to concentrate on ordinary people

California Gold Rush o Cities grew, transportation to interior more common
“Renaissance Writers”

Melville, Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson helped to forge a stable national literary perspective o They influenced many 19 th and 20 th Century writers
 During the 1820’s writers and critics called for nationalistic literature to separate from Britain

Saw themselves (writers/critics) in conversation with Europe

Difficult times to establish and American Literature (slavery, tariffs, federal works project)
 Worked to represent ordinary Americans coming to grips with country’s contradictions

Was difficult to be a poet/novelist and often required another job to support family
 Women couldn’t enter that sphere because of those problems
Basic Romantic Characteristics

NOT about love

Romantics believed that imagination could discover truths that reason and logic could not

Nature is very important

5 I’s of Romanticism o Intuition o Imagination o Inspiration o Individuality o Idealism

The American Hero (stereotypical character found in American Literature from now on) o Young (or at least acts young) o Innocent and pure o Sense of honor higher than society’s honor o Has knowledge of people and life based on a deep understanding, not based on education o Loves nature o Quests for a higher truth (First American Hero – created by James Fennimore Cooper: Natty
Bumppo)
Authors
 Nathaniel Hawthorne—The Scarlet Letter
 Walt Whitman—Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself
 Washington Irving—The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
 James Fenimore Cooper—The Last of the Mohicans

William Cullen Bryant—Thanatopsis


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—A Psalm of Life
 Harriet Beecher Stowe—Uncle Tom’s Cabin
 Emily Dickinson—lots of poetry
 Frederick Douglass—Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dark Romanticism (American Gothic Literature)
 peering into the darkness at the supernatural
 saw the potential of evil in the individual
 led to the threshold of the unknown—the shadowy region where the fantastic, the demonic and the insane reside.

Characteristics o Use of the supernatural o Characters with both evil and good characteristics o Dark landscapes-castles or large family estates o Depressed and confused characters o A damsel in distress—a beautiful female who is dead or in the process of dying
Authors

Edgar Allan Poe—The Raven, The Black Cat, The Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum

Herman Melville—Moby Dick

Transcendentalism (1840 -1860)

Coexists with Romanticism
 Founded by Abolitionists, Utopian Society, and Women’s Suffrage Movements
Beginning
 Transcendental Club in Boston 1836
 Magazine: The Dial
 Brook Farm: communal living experiment (Emerson, Fuller, Alcott, Thoreau)
Basic Beliefs
 Propose a higher belief in higher reality than found in sense experience/higher kind of knowledge through human reason

Individuals capable to discover higher truth through intuition

Rejection of strict religious attitudes

Humans/nature innately good

Humanity godlike, only good exists

Focus on positive

Intuition not reason highest human faculty

Rejection of materialism

Simplicity leads to spiritual greatness
 Nature source of truth and inspiration

Non-conformity, individuality, self-reliance
The Oversoul
 Semi-religious feelings towards nature
 Direct connection between universe and individual soul
 God is in all objects (animate/inanimate)

Purpose of life union with “Oversoul” (individual + God + Nature)
Literature objective

Reached a larger and more educated audience

Used to argue reform and need of resolving cultural conflicts

Emerson influenced Whitman, Hawthorne, Fuller, and Melville

Reforms came about literature’s ability to point out people’s plight (slaves, Native Americans, poor immigrants)

Seneca Falls Convention, 1848, first national suffrage meeting o Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) o Margaret Fuller (The Great Lawsuit, 1843) o Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts, 1854)
 Hypocrisy of northern states outlawing slavery, yet abetting south to recapture slaves

Authors

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Nature, Self-Reliance
 Henry David Thoreau—Walden, Life in the Woods
 Louisa May Alcott—Little Women

Realism (1860 – 1914)
History
 Civil War 1861 - 1865
 Reconstruction
 From 1865 – 1914 United States transformed from civil war to imperial nation (overseas possessions)
 1869 transcontinental railroad was completed
 Settlers moved to the inland of the US

Prospectors took their chance at finding natural minerals (gold, oil)
 Industrialization on East Coast helped fuel Western Expansion

European and East Asians in fluxed Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco

Frederick Jackson Turner closed the frontier in 1893

Americans went to Samoa, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Philippines, and Cuba

Western expansion was felt the most by Native Americans

Railroad monopolies attempted to eliminate homesteaders along the frontier

Gould, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Morgan, Hill, and Rockefeller were a few of the wealthiest trying to control expansion through corrupt actions

Government officials in cities became corrupt

Factory workers suffered the most
 Unionization failed for factory workers as well as for farmers
 American population became more heterogeneous (Asians, Europeans, etc)
Influences on Literature
 Reflects dramatic diversification of American experience (ethnic and regional)
 Newspaper of regional and ethnical backgrounds flourished
 New diversity resulted in suspicion, antagonism, and cultural paranoia => urban vs rural, labor vs management, immigrant vs native
 Authors spoke about social, economic, and political injustices (muckrakers) o Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris, Lincoln Steffen

“literature of argument” => spirit of reform to sociology, philosophy, and economics o Helen Hunt Jackson, Charlotte Perkins, Thorstein Veblen, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois
American Realism

Accurate representation of life through concrete descriptive details

William Dean Howells => portrayals of ordinary, middle class characters

Henry James and Edith Wharton => focus on refined mental states (psychological realism)

Mark Twain => vernacular dialect and colloquialism of ordinary characters using humor

Regional => “local color” writing

Attempt to capture distinct language, perspectives, and geographical settings

Sarah Winnemucca offered Native alternative

American Naturalism

Concentrated on lower-class and marginalized people
 Strong belief in social determinism o Charles Darwin o Frank Norris o Stephen Crane represent life scientifically rather than providentially o Theodore Dreiser o Jack London
 Nature dominates characters, random events, strong prey on weak, protagonist are not smart enough to overcome adversity
Basic Tenants
 Feelings of disillusionment

Frequent subject matter: o Ordinary, everyday people o Slums of rapidly growing cities o Factories replacing farmlands o Poor factory workers o Corrupt politicians

Represented the manner and environment of everyday life and ordinary people as realistically as possible (regionalism)

Sought to explain behavior (psychologically/socially)
Authors

Mark Twain—Huckleberry Finn

Ambrose Bierce—An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Kate Chopin—The Awakening, The Story of an Hour
 Jack London—The Call of the Wild, To Build a Fire
 Stephen Crane—Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Modernism (1914 – 1945)
History
 World War I (1914 – 1918)
 Roaring Twenties
 The Jazz Age
 Harlem Renaissance
 The Great Depression (1929 – World War II)

World War II (1939 – 1945
 The US emerged as a world power during 1914 – 1945

America was involved in WWI (1917 – 1918)

In 1920’s “Red Scare” (suspicion about foreign control over labor union activities)

America prospered and then fell apart after the stock market crash of 1929

Found its unity during WWII
 country struggled with rapid modernization
 rapid advances in technology (telephone, phonograph, movies, electrical lighting, radio)
 automobile changed America more than any other invention

Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” offered social security, unemployment insurance, welfare support, government creation of utility and public work jobs
Terminology
 “modernism” is response to contradictions and pressure of contemporary life
 authors struggled to define current literature and to translate American themes/preoccupations into international style
 social and cultural changes of interwar period focused around Sigmund Freud (psychological theories),
W.E.B. DuBois (social and racial writing), and Karl Marx (economic and political programs)
 science and art rivaled because of differing views
 many authors were sympathetic to Communist cause

“high modernism” is representing ways modernity was transforming traditional culture by experimenting, adapting, and altering literary styles and forms => antagonism between popular and serious literature
Modernist prose and poetry
 short precise, subjective, and suggestive
 fragments and disjointed perspective instead of cohesive or coherent patterns
 favor question over pat explanation
 reject artificial literary order and assurances of objective truth

T.S. Eliot => referred to classical or mythic narratives through o Allusion o Foreground self-reflexive o Continue asking questions

Individual experience over objective truth
 Pop culture
 Mixing colloquialism and dialects without interpretive narrator
 Modernists scorned themselves, accused commercially successful writers (Fitzgerald, Hemingway)

Basic Characteristics

Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American Dream (the independent, self-reliant individual will triumph)
 Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and form over the traditional
 Interest in the inner workings of the human mind
Authors
 Lorraine Hansberry—A Raisin in the Sun
 F. Scott Fitzgerald—The Great Gatsby

William Faulkner—The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, A Rose for Emily
 Robert Frost—Poetry

T.S. Eliot—The Waste Land, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

John Steinbeck—Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath

Langston Hughes—Poetry

Zora Neale Hurston—Their Eyes Were Watching God

Ernest Hemingway—For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea

E.E. Cummings--Poetry

Post Modernism (1945 – present)
History
 Cold War (1946 – 1989) o Ideological struggle between US and USSR
 Korean War (1950 – 1953)
 Vietnam War (1954 – 1975)
 The Red Scare (1950’s)
 9/11
 The War on Terror

US emerged as strongest world power o Were successful on building up on their victories of the war

Overseas powers of Britain and France dissolved (some violently)

USSR had suffered too much damage from WWII to keep up with US

Kennedy’s “New Frontier” challenged the prosperous and complacent to provide for underprivileged and socially marginalized o Desegregation in South o Civil and voting rights realized by Lyndon Johnson in late 1960’s (“Great Society”)
Social History

After WWII: cultural homogeneity and political unity o Women returned to being housewives after the war, not all of them accepted it easily o African American soldiers expected better treatment upon return from war

1950’s o dedicated to stability at home to bolster American cause abroad o NATO and United Nations were founded to control containment of communism o USSR built nuclear weapons, policy was formulated to deter adversaries economically o G.I. Bill introduced to educate returning soldiers o Highways and interstates were built to offer higher mobility to businessmen
 1960’s o cultural revolution after Kennedy assassination resulted in urban and campus violence o gave rise to movements for betterment of women, blacks, and Native Americans
Art and Literature
 Political struggles resulted in aesthetic reactions
 Right after WWII: cultural conforming and nationalist ambition o Responded by closing ranks and writing on assumed collective identity

1960 and 1970’s: unfulfilled Kennedy administration promise plus Vietnam War prompted cultural introspection o rejected conformity and searched for ways to represent previously excluded minority voices

1980’s to present: diversity and inclusivity became aesthetic ideals and political goals
Literature

1950’s

o reflects cultural preoccupations of stability and conformity to respond to aesthetic project of modernism o reflection of what was perceived as general, regardless of gender, class, ethnicity, or regional identity o works of literature had to speak to everyone (Ernest Hemingway) o some used regional specificity to make statement about race, history, and national identity
(William Faulkner) o “Death of the Novel” pointed to dependence of novels on character, plot, and symbols
 1960’s o Philip Roth was skeptical of such assumption
Poetry
 Followed the same path as literature
 1950’s experimented with formal openness, thematic inclusiveness of non-mainstream perspectives
Authors
 Alice Walker—The Color Purple

Sylvia Plath—The Bell Jar

Maya Angelou—Poetry, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, And Still I Rise

Anne Sexton—Poetry

Tennessee Williams—A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Harper Lee—To Kill a Mockingbird

Carson McCullars—The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding

Sandra Cisneros—The House on Mango Street

Arthur Miller—The Crucible
 Amy Tan—The Joy Luck Club
 Allen Ginsberg--Poetry

John Irving— A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules