American
Literature
Lecture Notes!!
FYI
~Genre(s)= Type of Classification
~Look at Historical Genres
~8 Genres (or historical periods)
I. Colonial Period
(1620-1732)
Puritan-Calvinist writing
(Religious)
a. John Winthrop
Winthrop’s Journal (1649)
b. Ben Franklin (1732) Begins
publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack
-Autobiography of Ben Franklin
-orders his day according to a strict
discipline
-Manage time efficiently
-Set Goals
II. Revolutionary Period
(1760’s-1787)
~ 1776-Independence Day
~ 1787-Constitution adopted
Writing switches from religious to political
(1765)
a. Thomas Paine
Pamphlet “Common Sense” (1775)
-American Independence
b. 1776- “Declaration of Independence”Thomas Jefferson
-Started the University of Virginia
-believed in creating an intellectual elite
III. Early National Period
(1800-1830)
A. Washington Irving
1.“Rip Van Winkle”-1819-1820
2.“Legend of Sleepy Hollow”-1819-1820
B. Noah Webster (1828)
-1ST. American Language Dictionary
C. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- poet
“Paul Revere’s Ride”
IV. American Renaissance
(1830-1860)
~ A. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Poet/prose writer
“Transcendentalist”
Nature (1836)
~ B. Henry David Thoreau
(1) Walden (1854)
(2) “Civil Disobedience”
~ C. Emily Dickinson
Wrote 1400 poems-1850-1860
IV. American Renaissance
(1830-1860) Cont.
Death was a focus of her poems. Ex: “I heard a fly
buzz…”
D. Edgar Allan Poe
1830’s-1840’s creator of “Gothic Horror”
“The Tell-Tale Heart”
E. Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1850) Scarlet Letter
F. Herman Melville
(1851) Moby-Dick
G. Walt Whitman
(1855) Leaves of Grass
H. Harriet Beecher Stowe
(1850) Uncle Tom’s Cabin
V. Post Civil War
Literature (1865-1910)
Writing switches from romantic to realism
a. Mark Twain
- Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
- Adventures of Huck Finn(1884)
b. Henry James (elitist, wealthy)
-dual citizenship in England and the United States.
-Turn of the Screw
-Portrait of a Lady
c. Regional Writers (1880’s-1900)
-Laura Ingals Wilder (KS)
-Little House on the Prairie
-Willa Cather (NE)
-“Wagner Matinee”
-My Antonia
-Kate Chopin (LA)-1st feminist
-“A pair of Silk Stockings”
Awakening=her novel
-Jack London- Novels-Call of the Wild, White
Fang (Yukon Territory)
d. Stephen Crane (1895) The Red Badge of Courage
Realism, Naturalism, and French Impressionism
VI. Post WWI Literature
(1920’s-1930’s)
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Realism Disillusionment
A. Poets
-T.S. Eliot “The Waste Land”
-Robert Frost, ee cumings
B. Novelists
1.Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms
2.William Faulkner- wrote in dialect “The
Stream of Consciousness”
-The Sound And The Fury (1929)
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
(1925)
C. 30’s- Depression
-John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
(1939)
VII. Post WWII Period
(1940s-Present)
A. Playwrights
~Tennessee Williams
Glass Menagerie (1944)
Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
~Arthur Miller (1940’s)
The Crucible
Death of A Salesman
B. Other Novelists
1. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
2. Truman Capote (1965) In Cold Blood
C. Poets
1. Feminists
~ Elizabeth Bishop
~Sylvia Plath
~Anne Sexton
VII. Post WWII Period
(1940’s-present) Cont.
2. African American
~Gwendolyn Brooks
(50’s-on)
~Maya Angelou
~Lucille Clifton
~Alice Walker
~Toni Morrison
VIII. Science Fiction
(1940’s-present)
(acknowledge two forerunners to SF: Jules Verne
(French) and H.G. Wells (British)
4 American Founding Fathers
1. Isaac Asimov
2. Robert Heinlein
3. Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
3 Types of Science Fiction
1. Altered past-time travel machine
2. Intruded upon present
3. Extrapolated future