PERIODS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 1650 – present day

Pre-Colonial/ Native American [  1600] CHARACTERISTICS 1ST Americans Creation & Origin Myths Legends Storytelling Oral Tradition

Pre-Colonial/ Native American Writers & Works Earth on a Turtle’s Back

Colonial (Puritans & Age of Reason) [1600-1800] CHARACTERISTICS PURITANS [1600-1700] Sermons Personal Narratives Plain Style Authority of Bible & church

Colonial (Puritans & Age of Reason) [1600-1800] CHARACTERISTICS AGE OF REASON [1700-1800] Political pamphlets Ornate Style Persuasive Writing Patriotism

COLONIAL HISTORY PURITAN Person’s fate determined by God All are corrupt & must be saved by Christ Settlement of British Colonies in America AGE OF REASON Revolutionary War Instructive in values

The Crucible (Arthur Miller-1950) COLONIAL PURITAN William Bradford Mary Rowlandson Jonathan Edwards Anne Bradstreet The Crucible (Arthur Miller-1950) AGE OF REASON Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin Thomas Paine Patrick Henry

VALUE FEELING & INTUITION OVER REASON ROMANTICISM [1800-1860] CHARACTERISTICS VALUE FEELING & INTUITION OVER REASON IMAGINATION MYSTERY SLAVE NARRATIVES POETRY SHORT STORIES

ROMANTICISM HISTORY Expansion of magazines, np, and book publishing Slavery debates Industrial Revolution: “old ways” of doing things are now irrelevant

ROMANTICISM WRITERS Washington Irving William Cullen Bryant Paul Laurence Dunbar Nathaniel Hawthorne Edgar Allan Poe Emily Dickinson Herman Melville

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ Anti-Transcendentalism CHARACTERISTICS TRANSCENDENTALISM [1840-1860] “American Renaissance” Self-Reliance Individualism Inner-Light Idealist Utopia Intuition

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ Anti-Transcendentalism CHARACTERISTICS ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM “Dark Romanticism” Symbolism Sin, Pain, & Evil

TRANSCENDENTALISM/ ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM WRITERS TRANSCENDENTALISM Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Nathaniel Hawthorne* ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM Edgar Allan Poe*

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM CHARACTERISTICS “Local Color” Ordinary People Real-life, Every-day events Objective Narrator Open Interpretation Slave Narratives Fate and circumstance is beyond man’s control

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM HISTORY [1860-1900] Civil War & post Civil War Influence of Sigmund Freud & Charles Darwin Demand for “truer” type of lit. that does not idealize people or places

REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM WRITERS Walt Whitman Mark Twain Ambrose Bierce Stephen Crane Frederick Douglas Kate Chopin Edith Wharton Edwin Arlington Robinson

Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness MODERNISM CHARACTERISTICS Pessimism “American Dream” Imagism Lost Generation Beat Generation Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness Plays, Poetry, Novels

“Jazz Age”/ “Roaring 20’s” MODERNISM HISTORY [1900-1950] WWI & WWII “Jazz Age”/ “Roaring 20’s” Harlem Renaissance The Great Depression Karl Marx rise of youth culture

HARLEM RENAISSANCE 1920s Literary movement parallel to Modernism. It focused on African American thought and community. Civil rights and equality were major themes of Harlem Renaissance writing. During this period African Americans were for the first time recognized as artists, writers and musicians.

William Carlos Williams MODERNISM WRITERS F. Scott Fitzgerald Robert Frost T.S. Elliot John Steinbeck William Faulkner Langston Hughes W.E.B. DuBois Ezra Pound William Carlos Williams Arthur Miller*

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY CHARACTERISTICS [1950 ] Mix of fantasy w/ non-fiction Media culture interprets values Narratives Anti-Heroes Emotion-Provoking Humorous Irony Storytelling Autobiographies Individual Isolation Social Issues (ethnic & feminist)

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY HISTORY Post WWII prosperity New century & millennium Space exploration Korean War Vietnam War Gulf War WTC/ 9-11 Iraqi War Advances in technology

POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY WRITERS Arthur Miller Toni Morrison Sylvia Plath J.D. Salinger “Beat Poets” Maya Angelou Alice Walker

…and the rest is unwritten…