FROM THE EARLY TIMES TO NOW
American Literature

 Theme of inclusion
 Theme of exclusion
 Paradox
 The frontier
 Individualism : the American Hero
 The virgin land
American Literature

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
Declaration of Independance, 1776.
Periods of American Literature

1. Major Periods of American Literature
Pre-Colonial Period
ca. 1620
Colonial Period
ca. 1620 - 1800
The American Renaissance
ca. 1800 - 1865
Realism and Naturalism
ca. 1865 - 1914
Modernism
ca. 1914 - 1945
Contemporary Literature
ca. since 1945
The Pre-Colonial Period ( - ca.
1620)

 Settlement about 28,000 years ago (from Southern
Asia via South Sea islands)
 Another wave of migration about 14,000 years ago (via
the Bering Straight)
 1492: -- 18 mio. people in North America; 5 mio. of
them in what is now the United States
 300 cultural groups in North America, 200 languages
spoken
 no cultural/linguistic homogeneity, shifting alliances
and enmities
Central Aspects of Native American
Thought and Cultural Practice

1. The power of words
2. The significance of dreams
3. Personality (of all elements of creation)
4. Dualism
5. Father Sky and Mother Earth
6. The four world quarters
7. Syncretic religion
8. Hierarchy (spirit world - humans - animals plants - physical geography - natural elements)
 9. Goal of harmony
 10. Anonymity (literary text is the cultural property of
the whole tribe)
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Sample of Pre-Columbian American Literature:
“Song of Creation”

I have made the sun!
I have made the sun!
Hurling it high
In the four directions
To the east I threw it
To run its appointed course.
I have made the moon!
I have made the moon!
Hurling it high
In the four directions
To the east I threw it
To run its appointed course.
Pima Indians (Pre-Columbian)
Pre-Colonial Period (– ~ 1620)

Characteristics
• oral literature: song-poems, tales, legends, tales, ritual drama;
spoken texts accompanied by dance or performance;
• texts passed on from one generation to the next for
purposes of historiography, education, celebration
Cultural
Context
• literature as a communal text (audience response; no individual
authorship);
• assumption of harmony and correspondence in the universe
Historical • much linguistic and cultural diversity;
Context
• rivalries and wars between different tribes
Authors
and
Works
• songs, poems and tales recorded in the 19th and 20th
century and translated into English (available in
numerous anthologies)
The Colonial Period ( - ca. 1620)
Characteristics
• religious and historical writing; sermons; journals and accounts
of life in the New World (e.g. "captivity narratives");
• political writing, especially in the 1770s;
• autobiography (starting with Benjamin Franklin);
• first American novels in the late 18th century (epistolary novel)
Cultural
Context
• 17th century: Puritanism in New England; colonial inferiority
complex toward England; contrast: popular culture and lack of
literacy in the Southern colonies;
• 18th century: birth of the "American Dream" ("from rags to
riches"); search for a national identity; decline of Puritanism

Historical • 1730s: "Great Awakening" (religious revival movement)
Context
• 1776: Declaration of Independence
Authors
and
Works
• John Winthrop (sermon “A Model of Christian Charity”)
• Ann Bradstreet (poetry)
• Phillis Wheatley (first African-American poet)
• Benjamin Franklin (autobiography, essays)
• Royall Tyler, The Contrast (1790, first American play)
• Charles Brockden Brown (early novel)
The American Renaissance (~ 1800 - 1865)
Characteristics
• influence of English romanticism, but search for truly American
topics and settings;
• celebration of American landscapes and values; short story and
novel are most important; essay established as an American genre
Cultural
Context
• struggle for cultural independence from Europe;
• desire to define a national identity of the U.S. and to establish a
national culture;
• Transcendentalism: romantic philosophy and mode of writing that
values intuition as a guide to what lies underneath the surfaces

Historical • massive immigration & diversification;
Context
• westward expansion / “Frontier”;
• slavery, abolitionist movement;
• 1861-65: Civil War
Authors
and
Works
• Edgar Allan Poe (poetry, short stories);
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter;
• Herman Melville, Moby Dick;
• Walt Whitman (free verse, democratic, national poet);
• Emily Dickinson (unconventional poetry)
Realism (~ 1865-1914)
Cultural
Context
South: devastation after the Civil War,
• struggle with Southern heritage and race division;
North: growing industrialization and urbanization;
• mass immigration;
• westward expansion (completed in the 1890s);
• discussion of the position of African Americans
• Women rights
Isolation vs Imperialism
http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/asset/akh10_int_expansion/

Historical 1865 - 13th Amendment passes, permanently outlawing slavery
1866 - Civil Rights Act of 1866
Context
1866 - Ku Klux Klan founded 1870
1870 - 15th Amendment
1903- The 1903 Silent Film by Edwin
Porterhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc7wWOmEGGY
1908 - October. Henry Ford introduces the Model T. It sells for about $850
1914 - WWI
Authors
and
Works
• Henry James (fiction; psychological realism);
• Kate Chopin (woman-centered fiction);
• Stephen Crane (naturalist fiction);
• Samuel Clemens [Mark Twain], Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Realism -Characteristics

From Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition
 “The faithful representation of reality”;
 Representation of middle-class life; events and social
conditions as they actually are, without idealization;
 Focus on the truthful treatment of the common, average,
everyday life;
 Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on
verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot;
 Character is more important than action and plot;
 Complex ethical choices are often the subject;
 Characters appear in their real complexity of
temperament and motive;
Realism -Characteristics

From Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition
 They are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their
social class, to their own past;
 Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the
interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class. (See Ian
Watt, The Rise of the Novel);
 Events will usually be plausible;
 Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone
may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact;
 Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important:
overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century
progresses., "the redemption of the social world lay with the
individual" (75-76).
Romanticism -Characteristics

Characteristics:
 Characters and setting set apart from society;
 Static characters--no development shown
 Universe is mysterious; irrational; incomprehensible
 Good receive justice; nature can also punish or reward
 universals rather than learned truths
 Plot arranged around crisis moments; plot is important
 Plot demonstrates
 romantic love
 honor and integrity
 idealism of self
 Supernatural foreshadowing (dreams, visions)
Realism -Characteristics

 Emphasis on psychological, optimistic tone, details, pragmatic, practical,
slow-moving plot
 Rounded, dynamic characters who serve purpose in plot
 Characters dictate plot; ending usually open.
 Plot=circumstance
 Empirically verifiable (world of science)
 Time marches inevitably on; small things build up. Climax is not a crisis,
but just one more unimportant fact.
 Realists--show us rather than tell us
 Representative people doing representative things
 Events make story plausible
 Insistence on experience of the commonplace
 Humans are in control of their own destiny and are superior to their
circumstances
Realism -Characteristics

 Other Views of Realism
 "The basic axiom of the realistic view of morality was that there could be no
moralizing in the novel [ . . . ] The morality of the realists, then, was built upon
what appears a paradox--morality with an abhorrence of moralizing. Their
ethical beliefs called, first of all, for a rejection of scheme of moral behavior
imposed, from without, upon the characters of fiction and their actions. Yet
Howells always claimed for his works a deep moral purpose. What was it? It
was based upon three propositions: that life, social life as lived in the world
Howells knew, was valuable, and was permeated with morality; that its
continued health depended upon the use of human reason to overcome the
anarchic selfishness of human passions; that an objective portrayal of human
life, by art, will illustrate the superior value of social, civilized man, of human
reason over animal passion and primitive ignorance" (157). Everett Carter,
Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1954).
Realism -Characteristics

 "Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events
which are apparently the most ordinary and uninteresting, in
order to extract from these their full value and true meaning. It
would apprehend in all particulars the connection between the
familiar and the extraordinary, and the seen and unseen of
human nature. Beneath the deceptive cloak of outwardly
uneventful days, it detects and endeavors to trace the outlines
of the spirits that are hidden there; those measure the changes
in their growth, to watch the symptoms of moral decay or
regeneration, to fathom their histories of passionate or
intellectual problems. In short, realism reveals. Where we
thought nothing worth of notice, it shows everything to be rife
with significance."
-- George Parsons Lathrop, 'The Novel and its Future," Atlantic
Monthly 34 (September 1874):313 24.
Realism -Characteristics

 “Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the
truthful treatment of material.” --William Dean
Howells, “Editor’s Study,” Harper's New Monthly
Magazine (November 1889), p. 966.
 "Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen
by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted
by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm."
--Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Realism -Characteristics

 Context and Controversy
 In its own time, realism was the subject of controversy;
debates over the suitability of realism as a mode of
representation led to a critical exchange known as the
realism war. (Click here for a brief overview.)
 The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed
in the twentieth century. Howellsian realism fell into
disfavor, however, as part of early twentieth century
rebellion against the "genteel tradition." For an account of
these and other issues, see the realism bibliography and
essays by Pizer, Michael Anesko, Richard Lehan, and
Louis J. Budd, among others, in the Cambridge Guide to
Realism and Naturalism.