Eras in
American Literature
Before We Start
• Fold your paper into 2 columns
• Topic: Eras in American Literature
• Label – left column: Q’s, right column:
Notes
• Summary box at the bottom
The Puritans, the Rationalists, and the Revolution
•Captain John Smith, charter member of the Jamestown
colony, chronicled his new world in a volume known as
True Relation
–Typical of the style of writing during the early period of
America
–Concerned more with facts than literary style
–Mostly historical
•Puritans, band of religious zealots who braved the
Atlantic to establish a new order in America
–Believed that each person should seek a direct personal
relationship with God
–Strive to live without sin to ensure a path to salvation in the
afterlife
–Much of their reading focused on the Bible
–Writings tend to be nonfiction historical accounts or diaries
that focused on religious observation
•Poet Anne Bradstreet
•Minister Jonathan Edwards
The Puritans, the Rationalists, and the Revolution
•Captivity stories
–Tales of settlers being abducted and tortured by native
Americans
–Wildly exaggerated, if not completely fabricated
–Fed the colonists’ desire for exciting tales of an exotic new
land and their perception of Native Americans as a people to be
feared.
•The Age Of Reason
–Pamphlets and essays influenced popular opinion
–Complete faith in human intellect
–Valued reason above all
–Believed that people were essentially good and capable of
creating an ideal society
•The Rationalists
–Benjamin Franklin
–Thomas Paine
–Thomas Jefferson
Topic: Eras in Am. Lit
Q’s
• How did Puritan beliefs
influence their writing
and the society?
• In what ways did the
Rationalists shape our
country?
Notes
• Puritans
– nonfiction historical
accounts or diaries focused
on religious observation
– Jonathan Edwards, Cpt.
John Smith, Anne
Bradstreet
• Rationalists
– Reason
– People good & able to
create ideal society (utopia)
– Ben Franklin, Thomas
Paine, Thomas Jefferson
American Romanticism
• Rebelled against the ideas of the Age of
Reason
• Valued emotion, imagination, and
intuition
• Found inspiration in nature
• The Fireside Poets
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
– James Russell Lowell
– John Greenleaf Whittier
American Renaissance
•Very different thinking
about religion, human
nature, and the future
•Americans were
discussing how best to
organize American society
–Better public education
–End to slavery
–Women’s rights
•Writers
–Nathaniel Hawthorne
–Herman Melville
–Edgar Allan Poe
–Washington Irving
–James Fenimore Cooper
•Poets
–Emily Dickinson
–Walt Whitman
•Transcendentalists
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
–Henry David Thoreau
–Believed that to live
more satisfying life, you
had to go beyond
everyday reality by
immersing yourself in
nature
–Optimistic, putting
faith in the power of the
individual
–People could be
happy and good if they
felt a personal
connection to nature
Topic: Eras in Am. Lit
Q’s
• Why was nature such
an important part of
Romanticism and
Transcendentalism?
• Compare Romanticism
to Transcendentalism.
Notes
•
•
•
Romanticism
– Rebelled against
Rationalists
– Imagination, creativity
– Nature
– Longfellow, Holmes,
Whittier
Renaissance
– How to organize society
– Hawthorne, Melville, Poe
Transcendentalists
– People could be happy and
good if they felt a personal
connection to nature
The Civil War and Realism
•Writings about slavery
–1850 Fugitive Slave Act – imposed
punishment on anyone who helped a
person trying to escape in the
southern states
–Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
–Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick
Douglass
–The life story of Sojourner Truth
–Walt Whitman celebrated the bravery
of American soldiers
Realists, Regionalists, and Naturalists
• Stephen Crane - The Red Badge Of Courage
– Tried to describe life as accurately as possible
– Lives of ordinary people from a neutral point of view
• Henry James
– Psychological novel
• Fascinated with people’s behavior
• Explored thinking and motivation behind the actions of
characters
• Mark Twain – Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
– Regionalist - focused on the reality of life in specific parts of
the country
• Jack London – The Call The Wild
– Naturalist – focused on the forces of society or nature that
are beyond a person’s control but influence life
Topic: Eras in Am. Lit
Q’s
• How did the Civil War
affect writing?
• Compare and contrasts
Realists, Regionalists,
and Naturalists.
Notes
• Civil War
– Not much significant
literature
• Realists, Regionalists,
and Naturalists
– Focus on reality,
forces of nature, and
people’s behavior.
– Jack London
– Mark Twain
Modernism
•Spirit of changing growth reflected in which
of the early twentieth century
–The Roaring Twenties
•T.S. Eliot , Ezra Pound, e e cummings, and
Marianne Moore
–Broke from tradition
–Modern style that was more impersonal
–Used symbolism to a greater degree
–Influenced by European modernist artists the
•Picasso and Matisse
Modernism
•The Harlem Renaissance
–Explosion in human rights
–Migrated to northern cities in the nineteen
twenties
–Came together to influence each other’s work
–Focused on the reality of black life including
history, racism, and identity
•Langston Hughes
•James Weldon Johnson
•Countee Cullen
•Zora Neale Hurston
•Richard Wright
Modernism
•Following the Great
Depression, Americans
core beliefs about
themselves in the world
began to change
–The American Dream
changed
•Americans were cynical but
the government
•Began to question traditional
ways of thinking about
politics and culture
•Stream of consciousness
writers
–William Faulkner
–Katherine Anne Porter
•Influenced by Freud
•Psychology
•Reality of American life
–Sinclair Lewis – small town
–Ernest Hemingway –
disillusionment with
American ideas
–F. Scott Fitzgerald –
consequences of living the
American Dream,
questioning societies
definition of success and
progress
•The Great Gatsby
Topic: Eras in Am. Lit
Q’s
• Give an example of the
symbolism used by
writers in the 20’s.
• In what ways did the
writers of the Harlem
Renaissance change
people’s perceptions of
African Americans?
Notes
• Roaring 20’s
– Break from tradition
– Symbolism
– Modernist influence
• Harlem Renaissance
– Focus on black life, civil
rights, racism
– Langston Hughes
– Malcolm X
• Modernism
– New American Dream
– Stream of Consciousness
– Hemmingway, Fitzgerald
Great Names in American Literature
•Washington Irving
•James Fenimore Cooper
•Ralph Waldo Emerson
•Nathaniel Hawthorne
•Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
•Edgar Allan Poe
•Harriet Beecher Stowe
•Henry David Thoreau
•Frederick Douglass
•Herman Melville
•Walt Whitman
•Emily Dickinson
•Louisa May Alcott
•Mark Twain
•Henry James
•Kate Chopin
•Edith Wharton
•Stephen Crane
•Theodore Dreiser
•Willa Cather
•Robert Frost
•William Carlos Williams
•Sinclair Lewis
•Eugene O’Neill
•Ezra Pound
•TS Eliot
•Katherine Anne Porter
•Zora Neale Hurston
•F. Scott Fitzgerald
•Ernest Hemingway
•Thomas Wolfe
•Langston Hughes
•John Steinbeck
•Robert Penn Warren
•W.H. Auden
•Richard Wright
•Eudora Welty
•Tennessee Williams
•Ralph Ellison
•Arthur Miller
•Robert Lowell
•J.D. Salinger
•Jack Kerouac
•Joseph Heller
•James Baldwin
•Allen Ginsberg
•Anne Sexton
•Toni Morrison
•Sylvia Plath