1. PERIODS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
1650 – present day

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

3. Pre-Colonial/ Native American
Writers & Works
How the World was Made
Sky Tree

4. Colonial Puritan Terms [1600-1700]
Plain Style – communicates ideas as clearly as possible; non-ornate; focus is on message, not ability of writer
personal and historical narratives – these are true stories of a person’s life or of historical event told in a story form
Providence – divine care of guidance and a foresight of God over the creatures of the earth
Sermon – a discourse or speech delivered for the purpose of religious instruction

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

6. COLONIAL HISTORY PURITAN Person’s fate determined by God
All are corrupt & must be saved by Christ
Settlement of British Colonies in America
Religious freedom
Prospect of new life and new land

7. Colonial Puritan Authors
William Bradford – Of Plymouth Plantation
Mary Rowlandson – A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson
Jonathan Edwards – “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Anne Bradstreet – “Upon the Burning of our House” and “To My Dear and Loving Husband”

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

9. COLONIAL
HISTORY
AGE OF REASON
Revolutionary War
Instructive in values

10. Colonial Age of Reason Authors
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine
Patrick Henry

11. VALUE FEELING & INTUITION OVER REASON
ROMANTICISM [ ]
CHARACTERISTICS
VALUE FEELING & INTUITION OVER REASON
IMAGINATION
MYSTERY
SLAVE NARRATIVES
POETRY
SHORT STORIES

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

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

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

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

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

17. REALISM/ REGIONALISM/ NATURALISM
CHARACTERISTICS
“Verisimilitude”
“Local Color”
Ordinary People
Real-life, Every-day events
Objective Narrator
Open Interpretation

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

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

20. 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

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

22. 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*

23. 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)

24. 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

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

26. …and the rest is unwritten…