Periods of American Literature: 1607-1776: Colonial Period 1765-1790: The Revolutionary Age 1775-1828: The Early National Period

1828-1865: The Romantic Period (Also known as: The American Renaissance or The Age of Transcendentalism) 1865-1900: The Realistic Period 1900-1914: The Naturalistic Period 1914-1939: American Modernist Period 1920s: Jazz Age, Harlem Renaissance 1920s, 1930s: The "Lost Generation" 1939-present: The Contemporary Period 1950s: Beat Writers 1960s, 1970s: Counterculture In addition, American Literature recognizes works of: African-American Writers Native American Writers Asian-American Writers

RE-SETTLEMENT PERIOD (< 1620s) CHARACTERISTICS Oral literature relaying on performance Most texts collected and written down in the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century Distinguishable by form, content, and style - thus correspond to the most fundamental features of literature Types of oral narratives: Origin and Emergence Stories, Historical Narratives, Culture Hero Stories, Trickster Tales WRITERS anonymous HISTORICAL EVENTS 1452 - Gutenberg invents a printing press 1492, 12 Oct. - Columbus discovers America, landing on an island in the Bahamas 1507 - Martin Waldseemuller, geographer, names the new land "America" for Vespucci 1603 - Elizabeth I dies; James I becomes king of England 1607 - Capt. John Smith founds Jamestown in Virginia 1584 - Walter Ralegh lands on "island" of Roanoke; names it "Virginia" for Queen Elizabeth

PURITANISM (1620s 1783) CHARACTERISTICS v Forms of writing: - histories - diaries - chronicles - poetry - sermons: 1. explanation of biblical quotation 2. interpretation 3. application to the life of the colony v Role of sermons: > new argument in the ongoing theological debates > a part of the political process (Election Days.) > scaring the congregation back into religious life (jeremiads) Chronicles - describe the earthly in terms of the eternal Literal truth substituted with potential symbolic lesson No novels they divert peoples attention from work Writing should have a practical purpose Belief in America being the promised land and Americans being the chosen people Frequent religious references Often plain style so that common people can understand Sermons: Jonathan Edwards (1703 1758) WRITERS HISTORICAL EVENTS 1620 - Mayflower, Puritans found Plymouth Plantation 1630 - arrival of Arbella Massachusetts Bay Colony founded 1636 - Harvard University founded near Boston 1650 - Bradstreet, Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America 1662 - Wigglesworth, The Day of Doom 1704 - first newspaper ~> in Boston 1741 - Johnson, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God 1741-61 The Great Awakening Cotton Mather (1663 1728) Puritan influence on American Values: Edward Johnson (1598 1672) Mary Rowlandson (c.1636 c.1678) Urge to succeed and exceed Belief that hard work necessary for happiness Cult of money -> money indicator Conviction that Americans are the chosen people

Poetry: Anne Bradstreet (1612 1672) Michael Wigglesworth (1631 1705) Edward Taylor (1645 1729) Diaries/Chronicles/Histories: William Bradford (1590 1657) John Winthrop (1588 1649)

v v v v v

v v

ENLIGHTENMENT (2nd half 18th century) The Age of Reason

CHARACTERISTICS v Rational approach to the world, belief in progress v Pragmatism truth measured by practical experience, law of nature v Deism God created the world but has no influence on human lives v Idealism conviction of the universal sense of right and wrong; belief in essential goodness of man v Interest in human nature WRITERS Political Pamphlets Philosophical / Religious Tracts: Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790) Thomas Paine (1737 1809) Thomas Jefferson (1743 1826) Alexander Hamilton (1757 1804) HISTORICAL EVENTS 1773 - Boston Tea Party 1775-83 American Revolution 1776, 4 July Declaration of Independence 1783 - Treaty of Paris 1787-88 - Federalist Papers: Alex. Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison 1789 - American Constitution 1789-1799 - French Revolution

ROMANTICISM (1820s 1861) The American Renaissance

CHARACTERISTICS Explored what it meant to be an American, an American artist Looked at American government and political problems The problems of war and Black slavery Emerging materialism and conformity Influence of immigration, new customs and traditions William Cullen Bryant (1794 1878) Sexuality; relationships between men and women The power of nature Individualism, emphasis on destructive effect of society on individual Idealism Spontaneity in thought and action Not an optimistic vision of America; pictures of human frailty, weakness, limitation Writers spoke not directly but obliquely, ambiguously Christianity a valuable source of symbols Stories built around dreams Stories of emblematic pilgrimages or journeys Hero seems to represent a general type of person Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811- 1896) Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862) Herman Melville (1819 1891) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 1882) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 1864) Margaret Fuller (1810 1850) Emerson, Nature (1836) Poe, The Raven (1845) Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) Melville, Moby Dick (1851) Stowe, Uncle Toms Cabin (1852) Thoreau Walden (1854) Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849) Prose: Washington Irving (1783 1859) James Fennimore Cooper (1789 1851) 1812 War with England 1815-50 Westward Expansion 1846-48 Mexican War 1849 California gold rush 1861-1865 Civil War 1863 - Gettysburg Address WRITERS HISTORICAL EVENTS

v v v

Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

Belief that evil is merely the absence of good Through the symbolism of writing, portrayal of the reality beyond whats visible, thus putting into practice the central notion of Transcendental thought. Critique of formalized church, faith must come from within

Louisa May Alcott (1832 1888)

Poetry: The Boston Brahmins Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 1894) James Russell Lowell (1819 1891)

TRANSCENDENTALISM (1835 1860) A New England movement rooted in Romanticism and post-Kantian idealism. Basically religious, emphasized role and importance of individual conscience and value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller. Critical of formalized religion. All constructive practical activity, great literature viewed as an expression of the divine spirit. An ambition to achieve vivid perception of the divine as it operates in common life which would lead to personal cultivation. Insistence on authority of individual conscience A trust in the individual, democracy, possibility of continued change for the better A need to see beyond what is before our eyes, to see a deeper significance, a transcendent reality Intellectual eclecticism; a vague conception of the God-like nature of human spirit Nature conceived of not as a machine but as an organism, symbol and analogue of the mind Spontaneous activity of the creative artist seen as the highest achievement

Walt Whitman (1819 1892) Emily Dickinson (1830 1886)

GOTHIC ROMANCE: More interest in action than in the development of character Action often fantastic, allegorical, interest in the supernatural, terror, madness Characters have mysterious origins; tend to be ideal, exaggerated, more types Suspense and mystery involving fantastic and supernatural, interest in light and shade Interest in evil, its origins Descriptions of various mental states often verging on the abnormal

REALISM (1860s 1890s) CHARACTERISTICS WRITERS Prose: v v life presented with fidelity fidelity in presenting the inner workings of the mind the analysis of thought and feeling function of environment in shaping the character set in present or recent past colloquial speech commonplace characters exposed political corruption, economic inequity, business deception, the exploitation of labor, women rights problems, racial inequity described the relationship between the economic transformation of America and its moral condition introduction of a new kind of characters: industrial workers and rural poor v ambitious businessman and vagrants prostitutes unheroic soldiers Local Color Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 1909) Kate Chopin (1851 1904) Bret Harte (1836 1902) 1869 1870s Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 1935) 1859 Darwins The Origin of Species Poetry: 1870 Darwin's Descent of Man 1865 13th Amendment (abolition of slavery) first transcontinental railroad few individuls take control of big industries: steal, railroad, oil, meat-packing Mark Twain (18351910) Henry James (1843 1916) William Dean Howells (1837 1920) 1860 Abraham Lincoln elected President 1861-65 Civil War 1863, 1 Jan Emancipation Proclamation: slavery abolished HISTORICAL EVENTS

v v v v v v v

Edward Arlington Robinson (1869 1935) Robert Frost (1874 1963) Carl Sandburg (1878 1967) James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Frost The Road Not Taken (1916)

rise of what critic Warner Berthoff calls the literature of argument works in sociology, philosophy, psychology.

REGIONAL WRITING (local color) desire to preserve distinctive ways of life before industrialization dispersed or homogenized them coming to terms with the harsh realities of the new times rapid growth of magazines creating a new, largely female audience for short fiction immortalizing linguistic features many colorists women describing a patriarchal society from female perspective

CHARACTERISTICS

NATURALISM (1890s ~> 1950s) WRITERS Prose: Henry Adams (1838 1918) Hamlin Garland (1860 1940) Frank Norris (1870 1902) Stephen Crane (1871 1900) Theodore Dreiser (1871 1945) Edith Wharton (1862 1937) Jack London (1879 1916) Sinclair Lewis (1885 1951) Upton Sinclair (1878 1968) John Steinbeck (1902 1968) Poetry: Edgar Lee Masters (1869 1950)

HISTORICAL EVENTS

v v v v v v v v v v v

Trend rather than a movement; never formalized nor dominated by the influence of a single writer A more extreme, intensified version of realism Shows more unpleasant, ugly, shocking aspects of life Objective picture of reality viewed with scientific detachment Determinism mans life is dominated by the forces he cannot control: biological instincts, social environment No free will, no place for moral judgment Pessimism Disillusionment with the dream of success; collapse of the predominantly agrarian myth Struggle of an individual to adopt to the environment Society as something stable, its predictability unabled one to present a universal human situation through accurate representation of particulars Faith in society and art

1898 Spanish-American War 1901 - Theodore Roosevelt elected President 1903 - first powered airplane flight

Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Lewis, Dreiser Babbitt (1922) An American Tragedy (1925)

CHARACTERISTICS Construction out of fragments, collage technique, montage of images (cinema) Prose

MODERNISM (1914-1945) WRITERS

HISTORICAL EVENTS 1914-18 World War I 1917 US enters the War, Russian Revolution 1918 worldwide flu epidemic Jan 1919 Prohibition (18th Amendment) 1920 women given the vote (19th Am.) 1920s Henry Fords assembly-line, cars become affordable 1921 Sacco-Vanzetti case 1924 Immigration Act, quota systems: 1921, 1924.

v The ideal of art is to regain the whole (like in The Waste Land) Work structured as a quest for the very coherence it seems to lack at the surface; order found in art (Porter), religion (Eliot) Sense of discontinuity, harmony destroyed in WWI Omission: of explanations, interpretations, connections, summaries, continuity Arbitrary beginning, advancement without explanation, end without resolution Shifts in perspective, voice and tone Experimentation with time: flashback, leaps to the future Rhetoric understated, ironic Symbols and images instead statements Use of myth escape from dramatic present, Christianity also a myth (Faulkner) World of random possibilities Search for truth Subject often the literary work itself (the only meaningful activity is the search for meaning carried out in art) Opposition to mass culture, belief that art is for the elites References to literary, historical, philosophical, religious past to remind the reader of old, lost coherence Secularization of religion, erosion of religious belief, lose of mystery Nitze declared God was dead and man was on his own Undermining of the belief in history as a linear concept (Darwin) Distrust of family bonds, family no longer the safe haven (Freud) Anti-female tendency, new woman, a flapper a carrier of chaos; Widespread male anxiety about a female takeover some writers (Lawrence, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) believe that women conspired with the new technology to render their male contemporaries socially and even sexually impotent Fragments of popular culture, dream imagery Parodies Use of language previously considered improper: colloquial, slang, uneducated

Gertrude Stein (1874 1946) Ernest Hemingway (18991961) John Dos Passos (1896 1970) F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 1940) William Faulkner (1897 1962) Sherwood Anderson (18761941) Katherine Anne Porter (1890 1980) Zora Neale Hurston (1901?1960) Thomas Wolfe (1900 1938) Nathaniel West (1903 1940) Willa Cather (1873 1947) Henry Miller (1891 1980) Anais Nin (1903 1977)

1927 first non stop solo flight across Atlantic 1928 Mussolinis comes to power in Italy 1929 first motion picture with sound stock market crash, Depression begins 1932 F. Delano Roosevelt becomes President 1933 18th Amendment repealed 1933 Hitlers dictatorship in Germany 1936-39 Spanish Civil War 1941, 7 Dec Pearl Harbor 1945, 6 Aug Hiroshima atomic bomb

Poetry: Thomas Stearns Eliot (18881965) William Carlos William (1883 1963) Wallace Stevens (1879 1955)

Influential thinkers: Sigmunt Freud (1856 1939) Carl Jung (1875 1961) Karl Marx (1818 1883) 1848 Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto

Imagists: Ezra Pound (1885 1972) H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886 1961) Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925) Marianne Moore (1887 1972) Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919) Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920) Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)

Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar (1923) Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925)

e.e. cummings (1894 1962) Archibald MacLeish (1892 1982) Hart Crane (1899 1932)

Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929) Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel (1930) Faulkner, Light in August (1932)

Fugitives: John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936) Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937)

Directness, compression, vividness ~> significance of short story First person narration, one characters point of view (truth does not exist objectively) A nave or marginal person as narrator (a child, an outsider) to convey the reality of confusion Alienation of the individual Experimental, self conscious manipulation of form Stream of consciousness, interior monologue Psychological influences: Freud, Young Fascination with machines Vision of social breakdown, society in decay Faith in art

Allen Tate (1899 1979)

Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) West, The Day of the Locust (1939)

Drama: Eugene ONeill (1888 1953) Thorton Wilder (1897 1975)

Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952 )

POST-WWII (1945 - ) WRITERS PROSE Southern writers: Eudora Welty (1909 - 2001) Flannery OConnor (1925 1964) Carson McCullers (1917 1967) Truman Capote (1924 1984) Walker Percy (1916 - 1990) William Styron (b. 1925) Confessional Poets: Robert Lowell (1917 1977) Sylvia Plath (1932 1963) John Berryman (1914 1972) Theodore Roethke (1908 1963) New York writers: Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005) Philip Roth (b. 1933) Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986) J.D. Salinger (b. 1919) Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson (1910 1970) Robert Creeley (b. 1926) Robert Duncan (1919 - 1988) Denise Levertov (1923 - 1997) Middle America writers: John Updike (b. 1932) Norman Mailer (b. 1923) Joseph Heller (b. 1923) New York Poets: Frank OHara (1926 1966) John Ashbery (b. 1927) Kenneth Koch (b. 1925) James Schuyler (1923 - 1991) The Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac (1922 1969) Afro-American Poets: Langston Hughes(19021967) Afro-American Writers: Richard Wright (1908 1960) Ralph Ellison (1914 - 1994) James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) Alice Walker (b. 1944) DRAMA Arthur Miller (1915-2005) Post-Modernism: Tennessee Williams (1911-83) Edward Albee (b. 1928) Countee Cullen (1903 1946) LeRoy Jones [Amiri Baraka] (b. 1934) Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - 2000) Wright, Native Son (1940) Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (1948) Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949) Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Caf Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) Ginsberg, Howl (1956) Anne Sexton (1928 1974) POETRY The Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg (1926 1997) Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) HISTORICAL EVENTS 1945, 6 Aug Hiroshima bomb 1950-53 Korean War 1950-54 McCarthys era 1954 end of school segregation 1960s Civil Rights movement 1960 J. F. Kennedy President 1962 Cuban missile crisis 1963, Nov 22 JFK assassination 1964-75 Vietnam War 1965 Malcolm X assassination 1968 Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated 1969 first man on the Moon 1972-74 Watergate Scandal 1974 Richard Nixons resignation 1981 Ronald Reagan President

ARACTERISTICS thern writers:

otesque

cination with extreme and perverse congruities of character and scene

ltivation of verbal effect

oblem of the situation of the Blacks in the outh

nse of history

engagement with the public and social appenings Beat Generation:

piration from Whitman, Buddha, eastern ligion, drugs

ontaneity, opposition to constricting forms poetic or political

etorical shock

nguage of drug subculture, Black music, zz milieu

erences to mythical religion

mic touches

ST-MODERNISM

xploration of fantasies and extremities of experience self-conscious style the mirror effect story within the story parodies of other literary styles, formal and linguistic experimentation irony, grotesque black humor employing elements of cruelty and shock to make readers see the ugly, the awful in a new way novel an independent art form creating its own universe, its own rules stresses artificiality of its worlds literature a game between an author and a reader participation exaggeration, repetition, unexpected view point, dislocation disruption of cause-and-effect narration, structure episodic (feeling of artificiality) characters two-dimensional, flat, grotesque, alien use of popular culture first person narration can be an animal celebration of chaos, acceptance of entropy (world moving towards inert uniformity and disintegration, a measure

e of myth, fantasy, fairy tale

(1951)

ONeill, Long Days Journey Into Night (1956) Kerouac, On the Road (1957) Updike, Rabbit, Run (1960) Heller, Catch-22 (1961) Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962) Albee, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) Bellow, Herzog (1964) Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) Barthelme, Snow White (1967) Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (1968) Vonnegut, Slau

of the lack of order in a system, that includes the idea that the lack of order increases over a period in time) doubt if literature can reflect any reality, even disintegrating one less confidence in art and hence the artist nave childlike narration myth, religion, history presented as arbitrary constructs of the human mind moral relativity interest in the problems of literary creation

Vladimir Nabokov (1899 1977) Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937) John Barth (b. 1930) Donald Barthelme (1931 - 1989) William Burroughs (1914 - 97) William Gaddis (1922 - 1998) Robert Coover (b. 1932) Joseph Heller (b. 1923) Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Sam Shepard (b. 1943) David Mamet (b. 1947) August Wilson (b. 1945) David Hwang (b. 1957)

Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)

Asian American Writers Maxine H. Kingston (b. 1940) Amy Tan (b. 1952) Jade Snow Wong (b. 1922) Frank Chin (b. 1940) John Okada ( 1923 - 1971)

Periods of English Literature A Note on the Naming of Periods:

Periods in literature are named for rulers, historical events, intellectual or political or religious movements, or artistic styles. Most literary periods therefore have multiple names. What's worse, some of these names are debated. Is the later 17th Century the Baroque era? The term baroque is an intractable term derived from art criticism, though it may usefully be applicable to some writers as well. Is the early 17th Century the Shakespearean era? Is it the Mannerist era? How widely do we wish to apply the term Elizabethan period? Other questions arise. Does Romanticism begin with Wordsworth? With Blake? In addition, Romanticism has various dates according to the national literature we refer to. In the separate art forms -- music, painting, and even some literary genres -- the dates may vary yet more. Recent histories of literature and the latest Norton Anthology of English Literature offer the latest examples of terms applied to literary periods. My best advice is to use the relatively neutral names that refer to monarchs, political periods, and whole centuries. Then when you wish to emphasize what you are talking about, rather than by habitual use of the terms, use the more specialized artistic and intellectual adjectives. In the following table, I attempt to categorize some of the references generally used by English and American students of English literature, and to provide examples of chief works or authors for each period. I've avoided simply naming the Centuries, and I've not taken terms like Victorian to refer merely to the rulers -- although I do prefer to date Queen Victoria's death, with the changes it symbolized, as the start of the Modern era. Whereas Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 until her death in 1901, many scholars select 1830 as the beginning of the Victorian Period, and for two good reasons. In 1830, the world's first public railway system opened between Liverpool and Manchester, enhancing the trade and industrial development particular to the Victorian era. Also in that year, the Reform Parliament opened, which was to pass the Reform Bill of 1832, a bill which would far increase the power of the English middle class and thereby affect British class structure. This list is far less detailed than it might be, and omits details for periods surrounding the Renaissance.

Time Span, Terms, Movements, Examples 600-1200 Old English (Anglo-Saxon) 1200-1500 Middle English Beowulf Geoffrey Chaucer

1500-1660 The English Renaissance

1500- Tudor Period 1558 1558- Elizabethan 1603 Period

Humanist Era

Thomas More, John Skelton Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare

High Renaissance

1603- Jacobean Period Mannerist Style (1590-1640) 1625 other styles: Metaphysical Poets; Devotional Poets 1625- Caroline Period 1649 Baroque Style, 1649- The 1660 Commonwealth and later, Rococo Style & The Protectorate

Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, Emilia Lanyer John Ford, John Milton Milton, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Hobbes John Dryden

1660- The Restoration 1700 1700- The Eighteenth 1800 Century The Enlightenment; Neoclassical Period; The Augustan Age 1785- Romanticism The Age of

Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson William

1830

Revolution

Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Jane Austen, the Bronts

1830- Victorian 1901 Period

Early, Middle and Late Victorian

Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson G.M. Hopkins, H.G. Wells, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot Ted Hughes, Doris Lessing, John Fowles, Don DeLillo, A.S. Byatt

1901- Modern Period 1960

The Edwardian Era (1901-1910); The Georgian Era (1910-1914)

1960- Postmodern and Contemporary Period

LITERARY PERIODS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS PERIODS

Genre/Style
Sermons, diaries, personal narratives Written in plain style

Effect/ Aspects
Instructive Reinforces authority of the Bible and church

Historical Context
A persons fate is determined by God All people are corrupt and must be saved by Christ

Examples
Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation Rowlandson's "A Narrative of the Captivity" Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Though not written during Puritan times, The Crucible & The Scarlet Letter depict life during the time when Puritan theocracy prevailed.

PURITAN/COLONIAL 1650-1750

REVOLUTIONARY/AGE OF REASON 1750-1800

Political pamphlets Travel writing Highly ornate style Persuasive writing

Patriotism grows Instills pride Creates common agreement about issues National mission and the American character

Tells readers how to interpret what they are reading to encourage Revolutionary War support Instructive in values

Writings of Jefferson, Paine, Henry Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac Franklin's "The Autobiography"

ROMANTICISM 1800-1860

Character sketches Slave narratives Poetry Short stories

Value feeling and intuition over reasoning Journey away from corruption of civilization and limits of rational thought toward the integrity of nature and freedom of the imagination Helped instill proper gender behavior for men and women Allowed people to reimagine the American past

Expansion of magazines, newspapers, and book publishing Slavery debates Industrial revolution brings ideas that the "old ways" of doing things are now irrelevant

Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" Poems of Emily Dickinson Poems of Walt Whitman

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE/

Poetry Short Stories

Transcendentalists: *True reality is spiritual

Today in literature we still see portrayals of alluring antagonists whose evil characteristics

Poems and essays of Emerson & Thoreau Thoreau's Walden

TRANSCENDENTALISM 1840-1860 (Note overlap in time period with Romanticism -- some consider the antitranscendentalists to be the "dark" romantics or gothic)

Novels AntiTranscendentalists *Hold readers attention through dread of a series of terrible possibilities *Feature landscapes of dark forests, extreme vegetation, concealed ruins with horrific rooms, depressed characters

*Comes from18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant * Idealists * Self-reliance & individualism * Emerson & Thoreau AntiTranscendentalists: * Used symbolism to great effect *Sin, pain, & evil exist * Poe, Hawthorne, & Melville

appeal to ones sense of awe Today in literature we still see stories of the persecuted young girl forced apart from her true love Today in literature we still read of people seeking the true beauty in life and in nature a belief in true love and contentment

Aphorisms of Emerson and Thoreau Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Black Cat"

REALISM 1855-1900 (Period of Civil War and Postwar period)

Novels and short stories Objective narrator Does not tell reader how to interpret story Dialogue includes voices from around the country

Social realism: aims to change a specific social problem Aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it

Civil War brings demand for a "truer" type of literature that does not idealize people or places

Writings of Twain, Bierce, Crane The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (some say 1st modern novel) Regional works like: The Awakening. Ethan Frome, and My Antonia (some say modern)

THE MODERNS 1900-1950

Novels Plays Poetry (a great resurgence after deaths of Whitman & Dickinson) Highly experimental as writers seek a unique style Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness

In Pursuit of the American Dream-*Admiration for America as land of Eden *Optimism *Importance of the Individual

Writers reflect the ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and Karl Marx (how money and class structure control a nation) Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century Rise of the youth culture WWI and WWII Harlem Renaissance

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Poetry of Jeffers, Williams, Cummings, Frost, Eliot, Sandburg, Pound, Robinson, Stevens Rand's Anthem Short stories and novels of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Thurber, Welty, and Faulkner Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun & Wright's Native Son (an outgrowth of Harlem Renaissance-- see

below) Miller's The Death of a Salesman (some consider Postmodern)

HARLEM RENAISSANCE (Parallel to modernism) 1920s

Allusions to AfricanAmerican spirituals Uses structure of blues songs in poetry (repetition) Superficial stereotypes revealed to be complex characters

Gave birth to "gospel music" Blues and jazz transmitted across American via radio and phonographs

Mass AfricanAmerican migration to Northern urban centers African-Americans have more access to media and publishing outlets after they move north

Essays & Poetry of W.E.B. DuBois Poetry of McKay, Toomer, Cullen Poetry, short stories and novels of Hurston and Hughes Their Eyes Were Watching God Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner's Song Feminist & Social Issue poets: Plath, Rich, Sexton, Levertov, Baraka, Cleaver, Morrison, Walker & Giovanni Miller's The Death of a Salesman & The Crucible (some consider Modern) Lawrence & Lee's Inherit the Wind Capote's In Cold Blood Stories & novels of Vonnegut Salinger's Catcher in the Rye Beat Poets: Kerouac, Burroughs, & Ginsberg Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

POSTMODERNISM 1950 to present Note: Many critics extend this to present and merge with Contemporary -- see below)

Mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader No heroes Concern with individual in isolation Social issues as writers align with feminist & ethnic groups Usually humorless Narratives Metafiction Present tense Magic realism

Erodes distinctions between classes of people Insists that values are not permanent but only "local" or "historical"

Post-World War II prosperity Media culture interprets values

CONTEMPORARY 1970s-Present (Continuation of postmodernism)

Narratives: both fiction and nonfiction Anti-heroes

Too soon to tell

People beginning a new century and a new millennium Media culture interprets values

Poetry of Dove, Cisneros, Soto, Alexie Writings of Angelou, Baldwin, Allende,

Concern with connections between people Emotion-provoking Humorous irony Storytelling emphasized Autobiographical essays

Tan, Kingsolver, Kingston, Grisham, Crichton, Clancy Walker's The Color Purple & Haley's Roots Butler's Kindred Guest's Ordinary People Card's Ender's Game O'Brien The Things They Carried Frazier's Cold Mountain