1. What Makes American Literature American?

2. In one sense, anything written in America is American
In one sense, anything written in America is American. But in a deeper way, literature is “American” because it says something fundamental about our identity as Americans.

3. Become familiar with words like BELIEFS, HERITAGE, LIBERTY, DIVERSITY, IMMIGRATION, SELF-RELIANCE, FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUALISM

4. What is the relationship between literature and place?

5. Europeans imagined America before they knew it
Europeans imagined America before they knew it. Columbus envisioned a fabled land of gold and spices. Ponce de Leon dreamt that Florida was the home of the Fountain of Youth. Puritans escaping persecution planned to build a City on a Hill where freedom would reign.

6. Meanwhile, Native Americans told stories inspired by the natural world in which they dwelled. To dwell in a place is to live in it fully, to merge its real life with the imaginative life you live there.

7. As you read, think and use words like these environment, natural, resources, urban, frontier, range, rural, wilderness, landscape, region

8. How does Literature shape and reflect society?

9. Literature is a product of the society from which it springs, reflecting the values, concerns, and spirit of a people.

10. Literature can act as a force that changes or shapes a society
Literature can act as a force that changes or shapes a society. Novels, stories, plays, poems, and literary nonfiction made by writers can entertain, inform, persuade, challenge and move readers, both singly and in great numbers.

11. Writers are the entertainers who amuse, the critics who confront, the teachers who share wisdom, and sometimes the visionaries who lead the way to the future.

12. Words to become familiar with are humorist, regionalism, storytelling, myth, satire, vernacular, persona, social critic, visionary

13. In 1492, North America was already populated by several hundred Native American tribes. More than 12,000 years before Christopher Columbus reached North America, nomadic peoples had migrated across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia and settled across the continent.

14. These people spoke different languages and had very different cultures, but the Europeans called them by one name: “Indians”.

15. In the centuries after Columbus, more and more Europeans ventured to the New World. Among them were explorers, fortune seekers, missionaries, and those fleeing religious persecution. There were also enslaved Africans who made the journey against their will.

16. Individuals from these groups wrote accounts of their experiences, creating the first written literature of North America.

17. Although no original Native American written texts exist, archeologists have deduced a great deal from artifacts, and folklorists have recorded a rich variety of oral Native American songs, legends, and myths.

18. Native Americans usually but not always greeted the earliest European settlers as friends.

19. They instructed the newcomers in their methods of agriculture and woodcraft and introduced them to maize (corn), beans, squash, maple sugar, snowshoes, toboggans, and birch-bark canoes.

20. If it had not been for the help of these first Americans, even more Europeans would have succumbed to the bitter northeastern winters.

21. Essential Questions: 1. What is the relationship between literature and place?

22. #2 What makes American Literature American?

23. #3 How does literature shape or reflect society?