American Experience
Historical and Literary Eras
Colonial History (1607-1775)
Meanwhile, in England…
King Charles I beheaded, 1649
Commonwealth, 1649-1660
King Charles II restored to throne, 1660
Act of Uniformity, 1662
King George III’s reign, begins 1760
•
•
•
•
•
•
1607 Entrepreneurs establish first permanent English settlement at
Jamestown, VA
1620 Separatists (Plymouth Colony)
1628 Puritans (Massachusetts Bay Colony)
1754 Colonists propose Grand Council for defense, expansion, and Native
American affairs
1763 French and Indian War ends, France loses to England, France gives up
claim to colonies
1765-1770, After the War, England raises taxes (Stamp Act and Townshend
Acts)
Colonial Literature
•
•
•
•
•
•
Religious, Protestant, frequently Calvinist
Religion based in faith; knowledge is deadly
Thought man could not improve; preoccupied by notions of total depravity
(man’s inclination to evil more than good) and unconditional election (man’s
inflexible route towards damnation, in most cases, or salvation, in a few)
Advocated for theocracy
Concerned with colonists’ relationship to God, each other, and England
Genres include: more private mediums—sermons, historical narratives (halffact, half-fiction), and poetry
Revolutionary/Early National
History (1775-1828)
Meanwhile, in France…
French Revolution begins, 1789
French Republic, 1792
King Louis XVI executed, 1793
Bonaparte’s Empire, 1804-1815
King Louis XVII restored to the throne under a constitutional
monarchy, 1815
•
1775 American Revolutionary War begins
•
1776 Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence
•
1781 American Revolutionary War ends
•
1787 U.S. Constitution
•
1789 George Washington elected president
•
1803 Louisiana Purchase, France sells U.S. 828,000 square miles of land
•
1807 Fulton’s steamboat
•
1814 War of 1812 ends, U.S. and England negotiate peace
•
1820 Missouri Compromise between pro- and anti- slavery factions
Revolutionary/Early National
Literature
•
•
•
•
•
•
Nominally religious
Religion based in reason; knowledge is powerful
Thought man could improve
Advocated for republicanism or democracy
Concerned with colonists’ relationship to the Deity, each other, and their colony
or nation
Genres include: more public mediums—declarations, pamphlets, newspapers,
journals, autobiographies of famous personalities, poems of famous deeds
Romantic History (1828-1865)
Meanwhile, in Europe…
First Industrial Revolution
Immigration Wave begins
Marx and Engels publish The Communist
Manifesto, 1848
Revolution sweeps continent, 1848
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1828 Andrew Jackson, “People’s President,” elected
1830 Cooper’s locomotive
1844 Morse’s telegraph
1846 Oregon Treaty, U.S. and England divide Oregon territory
1846 U.S. annexes Texas from Mexico
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Mexico gives up Alta California and Nuevo
Mexico
1848 Seneca Falls, Women’s Rights Convention
1861 American Civil War begins
1862 Homestead Acts encourage Americans to settle the west
1863 Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
Romantic Literature
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Supernatural elements
Enchanted
Original impulse (resists the notion that man is defined by his time or place)
Meaning is uncovered/discovered
Setting, external nature, is beautiful or sublime, inspires consideration or awe,
and stimulates reflection on the mind and heart of man
Main character goes on an adventure to find self-knowledge—wanders, rebels,
tests his limits
About representative man > men
Genres include: short story, novel, poetry, etc.
Realist/Naturalist History (18651929)
Meanwhile, in Europe and elsewhere…
Reaction against imperialism and Rise of nationalism
WWI between Allies (U.K., France, Belgium, Italy, Serbia, Montenegro,
Japan, and Russia) and Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary,
and Turkey), 1914-18
Soviet Union (Stalin), 1922
Third Reich (Hitler), 1933
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1865 American Civil War ends, Reconstruction follows
1876 Bell’s telephone
1890 Wounded Knee Massacre
1903 Wright brothers’ plane
1908 Ford’s car
1917 U.S. enters WWI after sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania
1920 Nineteenth Amendment, Women granted the right to vote
1920 Recession
1920 Radio popular
1920-23 Jazz Age/Prohibition
1929 Stock Market crashes, Great Depression ensues
Realist/Naturalist Literature
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Fatalistic/Deterministic
Disenchanted
Historical impulse (accepts the notion that man is defined, at least largely, by
his time and place)
Meaning is revealed
Setting, external nature, is, as Victorian English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson
says, “red in tooth and claw,” and no fit subject for musing
Open adventures replaced by scripted trajectories
About men > representative man
Genres include: short story, novel, poetry, etc.
Modernist History (1929-1945)
Meanwhile, in Europe and elsewhere…
WWII between Allies (U.K., U.S., France, and the Soviet Union)
and Axis (Germany, Italy, and Japan), 1939-45
•
•
•
•
•
•
1930 Sound film becomes popular
1933 Roosevelt passes New Deal laws
1934 Gertrude Stein returns to America after a thirty-year absence
1941 U.S. enters WWII after Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor
1945 Allies firebomb Dresden.
1945 U.S. drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Modernist Literature
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sometimes mystical, occult, or esoteric
Sometimes associated with “high” art
Suspicious of traditional meaning
Literature is a perfected product/unified artifact
Represents a deliberate and radical break with the bases of western culture
Literature is experimental, sometimes lacks coherence, stability, durability
Features literary techniques like fragmented utterances, stream of
consciousness, and automatic writing
Main characters are alienated, often expatriates or exiles; some are
emasculated or impotent (literally or metaphorically)
Genres include: short story, novel, poetry, etc.
Postmodern History (1945)
Meanwhile, in Europe….
India gains independence from Britain, 1947
United Nations establishes state of Israel, 1948
Germany builds Berlin Wall, 1959
Catholics and Protestants begin fight in Northern Ireland, 1969
Polish trade movement, Solidarity, suppressed, 1981
Germany takes down Berlin Wall, 1989
Hong Kong returns to Chinese rule, ends British rule, 1997
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1954 Plessy vs. Ferguson declares school segregation unconstitutional
1959 Alaska and Hawaii join the U.S.
1963 Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech
1969 Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon
1972 U.S. Troops leave Vietnam
1987 Reagan and Gobachev sign INF treaty
1990 Americans with Disabilities Act
1990-91 Persian Gulf War/“Operation Desert Storm”
2001 World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks
2003-2011 Iraq War, also known as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” under Bush or
“Operation New Dawn” under Obama
Postmodern Literature
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Not mystical, occult, or esoteric
Sometimes associated with “low” or “pop” art
Lack of traditional meaning; meaning is created (and re-created ad infinitum)
Literature is a process/an amalgam
Represents a more deliberate and radical break with the foundations of
western culture
Literature is more playful, zany, even becomes absurd
Genres include: short story, novel, poetry etc.
From a Literary Perspective
Where Do They Fit?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Poe’s short stories, pub. starting in 1833
Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, pub. 1884, set 1830s-40s
Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, pub. 1937, set 1920s
Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, pub. 1925
Miller’s Death of a Salesman, pub. 1949
Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, pub. 1951
What the Romantics and the Realists Gave
America:
Original and Historical impulses
• “nature” or “natural”
• “should, could, or would be”
• both mythically old and
magically new
• idealistic or enchanted
• primacy of interior realities
• e.g. man’s mind, heart, or
spirit upon itself
•
•
•
•
•
•
“artifice” or “artificial”
“is”
here-and-now
pragmatic or disenchanted
primacy of exterior realties
e.g. time, place, circumstance or
convention upon men
and, or, /, vs.?
Original
Historical
What is the relationship between these impulses—between
what Fr. Arrupe calls the “imaginati[ve]” and the “practical,”
and Melville calls “fancy” and “fact”? What is their effect on
the American Dream?