1. Brief Survey of American Literature

2. Some Basic Characteristics of American Literature
Short history but great achievement
Began with oral myths, legends, tales
Poetry, fiction, drama, essay all highly developed
Female, ethnic literature came into the centre recently
Drawn immense interest from Chinese readers

3. Outline of American Literature
Beginnings to 1700
From colonies to nation:
The Romantic period: 1820—1865
The Realism and Naturalism: 1865—1914
The Modern period: 1914—1945
Contemporary literature: since 1945
Cf. Norton Anthology of American Literature, the 7th edition, 2007.

4. 1. Beginnings to 1700

5. Great mixing of peoples from the whole Atlantic basin
Bloody conflicts between Native Americans (or American Indians) and European explorers and settlers who had both religious and territorial aspirations
- Native American oral literature / oral tradition
- European explorers’ letters, diaries, reports, etc., such as Christopher Columbus’s letters about his voyage to the “New world”.
- Anglo (New England) settlers’ books, sermons, journals, narratives, and poetry

6. Native American / American Indian oral literature / oral tradition
creation stories（起源神话）
trickster tales（恶作剧者传奇）
rituals / ceremonies（典仪）
songs / chants（曲词）

7. Anglo Settlers’ Writings
Highly religious and pragmatic
- John Smith, founder of Jamestown, Virginia; Pocahontas
- John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”: “… We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us…”
- William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation ( , pub. 1856)
- Anne Bradstreet ( ), The Tenth Muse (1650), the first volume of poems published by a resident of the New World
- Edward Taylor ( ), Preparatory Meditations ( , pub. 1939, 1960)
- Mary Rowlandson ( ), A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)

8. From Colonies to Nation
2. American Literature
From Colonies to Nation

9. Jonathan Edwards ( ), whose passionate sermons helped revive religious fervor during the “Great Awakening”（大觉醒运动, 1730s-1740s)
Benjamin Franklin ( )
Thomas Paine ( )
Thomas Jefferson ( )
Olaudah Equiano (1745?-1797)
Philip Freneau ( )
Phillis Wheatley ( )
Hannah Webster Foster ( )

10. Enlightenment and establishment of the nation

11. Benjamin Franklin a second-generation immigrant of English descendent
Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, statesman, and diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time.
Benjamin Franklin recorded his early life in his famous book The Autobiography.
Benjamin Franklin
( )

12. Benjamin Franklin
He was the first great self-made man in America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age
supported the cause of independence,, and aided Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence.
Practical yet idealistic, hard working and enormously successful.
the Scottish philosopher David Hume called him America's "first great man of letters”.

13. Major Works Franklin’s place in literature owes much to his
almanac and autobiography:
Poor Richard’s Almanac (1732)
（穷理查格言历书）
Published from 1732 to 1758 under the name of Richard Saunders
Full of proverbs which teach people thrift, carefulness, and independence

14. Poor Richard’s Almanac
“lost time is never found again”
“a penny saved is a penny earned”
“God helps those that help themselves”
“Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”

15. The Autobiography
First published in Paris in March of 1791 entitled “Memoires De La Vie Privee”
The first English translation, "The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin. Originally Written By Himself, And Now Translated From The French," was published in London in 1793.
Faithful Puritan account of the colorful career of America’s first self-made man.
The writing process lasted for 40 years, yet the book was still not completed when he died。

16. 13 virtues followed by Franklin
Temperance 节制（饮食）
Silence 沉默
Order 条理
Resolution 决心
Frugality 节俭
Industry 勤劳
7. Sincerity 真诚
8. Justice 公正
9. Moderation 温和
10. Cleanliness 整洁
11. Tranquility 平静
12. Chastity 贞洁
13. Humility 谦卑

17. Thomas Paine ( )
Political Pamphlets during the revolutionary period:
- Common Sense (1776) urges immediate independence from Britain
- Crisis ( ) shore up the soldiers’ spirits

18. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) Third president of US (1801-9)
Advocated religious freedom
Major drafter and writer of The Declaration of Independence (1776)
Author of Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) 《弗吉尼亚州笔记》 for religious freedom（宗教自由），white superiority（白人种族优越论）

19. More literature during the revolution

20. Olaudah Equiano (1745?-1797)
Black writer of autobiography: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)
- about the cruel slave trade
- promoting the abolition campaign in England

21. Philip Freneau ( )
“Poet of American Revolution”: poems of patriotism and nationalism
Poems in praise of nature and the American Indian’s way of life (“noble savage”), a part of American romantic tradition

22. Phillis Wheatley ( )
First black woman poet who published poems in the literary history of the United States

23. First American novelists
Charles Brockden Brown ( ), Wieland (1798)
William Hill Brown ( ), The Power of Sympathy (1789)
Hannah Webster Foster ( ), woman novelist who wrote The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton; A Novel; Founded on Fact. By a Lady of Massachusetts (1797)

24. 3. The Romantic period 1820—1865

25. Romanticism
As an approach in literary creation, romanticism is ever present in literature of all times.
As a literary movement, it occurred and developed in Europe and America at the turn of the 19th century
Under the historical background of the Industrial Revolution around 1760 and the French Revolution(1789—1799)

26. Romantic vs. Neoclassic (1)
Neoclassicism:
- reason, order, elegant wit
- rationalism of enlightenment in 18th-cent.
Romanticism:
- passion, emotion, natural beauty
- imagination, mysticism, liberalism (freedom to express personal feelings)

27. Romantic vs. Neoclassic (2)
Innovation:
- subjects: common life; the supernatural; the far away and the long ago
- style: common language really used by men; poetic symbolism
Strong traditionalism:
-distrust of radical innovation
-respect for classical writers
-upper-class subjects
-elevated style: poetic diction

28. Romantic vs. Neoclassic(3)
Good poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
- unforced and free composition out of the inherent organic “laws” of the poet’s imagination
Poetry is an “art” that needs long studied and practiced skills to achieve “correctness”
- observe stylistic decorum
- respect established / artificial “rules” of poetry

29. Romantic vs. Neoclassic(4)
Subject matter: nature; central human experiences and problems
Feelingful meditation; thinking
Subject matter: human beings
Poetry is an imitation of human life, “a mirror held up to nature”
Art for humanity’s sake: for instruction and aesthetic pleasure

30. Romantic vs. Neoclassic(5)
Subject matter: personal experiences of the poet, often the social nonconformists or outcasts
Subject matter and objects: what human beings possess in common – representative characteristics and widely shared experiences, thoughts, feelings and tastes.

31. Romantic vs. Neoclassic(6)
Human beings are endowed with limitless aspiration toward the infinite good
Highest art – an endeavour beyond finite human possibility
Human beings are limited
- attack human “pride”
- Great Chain of Being
- submitted to “rules” or conventions in subjects, structure, diction, e.g. heroic couplet

32. The American Romanticism
stretched from the end of the 18th century to the end of the Civil War
was extremely influential, and best represented by the New England poets and novelists
Both imitative and independent
One of the most important periods in the history of American literature, usually called the Renaissance of American literature

33. Early Romanticism Henry Wadsworth Longfellow James Russell Lowell
John Greenleaf Whittier
James Fenimore Cooper
Washington Irving
William Cullen Bryant

34. New England Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Margaret Fuller

35. High Romanticism Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Edgar Allan Poe

36. Early romantic writers

37. Washington Irving ( )
The first American writer internationally acclaimed, most famous for his book The Sketch Book ( ) including
- “Rip Van Winkle”
- “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

38. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
The Leather-stocking series皮袜子/皮裹腿系列小说 (Natty Bumppo wearing long deerskin leggings)
- The Pioneers (1823) 《开拓者》
- The Last of the Mohicans (1826)《最后的莫希干人》
- The Prairie (1827)《大草原》
- The Pathfinder, (1840)《探路人》
- The Deerslayer (1841)《猎鹿人》

39. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
The first important American romantic poet of international reputation famous for poems like
- “Thanatopsis” (1817)《死亡随想曲》
- “The Yellow Violet” (1814)《黄色的堇香花》
- “To a Waterfoul” (1815)《致水鸟》

40. New England Poets Conservative and imitative:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ( )
- The Song of Hiawatha《海华沙之歌》（1855）
- “I Shot an Arrow” 我射出一支箭
- “A Psalm of Life” 生命颂 / 生之礼赞
Oliver Wendell Holmes ( )
James Russell Lowell ( )
John Greenleaf Whittier ( )
- Snow-Bound (1866) (New England idyllic scene)

41. New England Transcendentalism

42. Transcendentalism
The term “transcendentalism” is derived from the Latin verb transcendere meaning, to rise above, or to pass beyond the limits.
Transcendentalism has been defined as the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of knowing truth intuitively, or of reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor.

43. Transcendentalism
As the leader of this movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson interpreted transcendentalism as “whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought,” and as “idealism as it appears in 1842.” He believed that the transcendental law was the “moral law” through which man discovered the nature of God as a living spirit.

44. Three Sources
It was a system of thought that originated from three sources.
First, American Unitarianism. It represented a thoughtful revolt against orthodox Puritanism. Unitarianism believed God as one being, rejecting the doctrine of trinity, stressing the divinity in human nature. It laid the foundation for the central doctrines of transcendentalism.

45. Three Sources
Secondly, the idealistic philosophy from France and Germany exerted enormous impact on American intellectuals.
Thirdly, oriental mysticism as revealed in Hindu and Chinese classics reached America in English translations.
As a result, New England Transcendentalism blended native American tradition with foreign influences.

46. Development
Ralph Waldo Emerson published Nature in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America.
“The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Spirit is present everywhere.” This new voice led American Romanticism to a new and mature period, the period of New England Transcendentalism.
This was the most significant development of American literature in the mid-19th century.

47. Development
The Concord club was the first and most famous of a series of forums that served during the next few decades as social gathering points. It became the movement's magnetic center.
They advocated their views and principles in various magazines. Besides, they even published their journal, The Dial ( ).

48. Major Transcendentalist Figures
Ralph Waldo Emerson ( )
Nature (1836)
The American Scholar (1837)
Divinity School Address (1838)
Essays: First Series (1841)
Essays: Second Series (1844)
H. D. Thoreau ( )
Walden (1854)
“Civil Disobedience” (1849)
Margaret Fuller ( )
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
Editor of The Dial ( )

49. High Romanticism

50. Whitman and Dickinson: Romantic & Modern Poets
1. Both passionate in expressing emotions
2. Unconventional in poetic forms and images
Walt Whitman ( )
- Leaves of Grass (1855, 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871, 1876, 1881, 1889, )
Emily Dickinson ( )
- Slant rhymes, capitalizations, dashes
- uncertainty

51. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter (1850)《红字》
The House of Seven Gables (1851)《带有七个尖角阁的房子》
The Blithedale Romance (1852)《福谷传奇》
The Marble Faun (1860)《玉石雕像》

52. Herman Melville (1819-1891) Typee (1846) Moby-Dick (1851)
The Piazza Tales (“Beneto Cereno” “Bartleby the Scrivener”) (1856)
The Confidence Man (1857)
Billy Budd (1924, posthumously published)

53. Moby-Dick

54. Moby-Dick

59. Billy Budd

60. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) “art for art’s sake” Horror story
Science fiction
Detective story
Psychologically thrilling tale
Poems
Literary criticism

61. 4. The Realism and Naturalism
1865—1914

62. REALISM Mid-19th-century French movement in literature.
Emphasized the use of Scientific Method: a method of observation and hypothesis to suggest solutions to problems.
Today, it generally means the surface details of things that appear life-like, or theatre that seeks to give the appearance of everyday reality. 62

63. The Local Color Movement (1865-1880)
The second half of the 19th century saw America becoming increasingly self-conscious. Americans wanted to know what their country looked like, and how the varied races which made up their growing population lived and talked. 63

64. Local Color
A kind of fiction that came to prominence in the USA in the late 19th century, and was devoted to capturing the unique customs, manners, speech, folklore, and other qualities of a particular regional community, usually in humorous short stories. The most famous of the local colorists was Mark Twain; others included Bret Hart, Kate Chopin, and Sarah Orne Jewett.
(Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms)

65. Mark Twain (1835-1910) Innocents Abroad (1869) The Gilded Age (1873)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
The Prince and the Pauper (1882)
Life on the Mississippi (1883)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
The Man That Corrupted Hadleydburg (1900)

66. Bret Harte ( )
Editor, beginning in 1868, of The Overland Monthly, San Francisco, in which he published the stories “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” and the poem “Plain Language from Truthful James,” also known as “The Heathen Chine.” 66

67. Local Color Women Novelists
Kate Chopin ( )
- The Awakening (1899)
Sarah Orne Jewett ( )
- Deephaven (1877)
- A Country Doctor (1884)
- The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)

68. Characteristics of Realistic Writing
The purpose of writing is to instruct and to entertain.
The subject matter of Realism is drawn from "our experience,” —it treated the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the probable.
The style of Realism
Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation,
de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation.
rejects the omniscient point of view. 68

69. Realistic Techniques Plots emphasizing the norm of daily experience
Ordinary characters, studied in depth
Complete authorial objectivity
Responsible morality; a world truly reported
Settings thoroughly familiar to the writer 69

70. Theorist of American Realism
William Dean Howells ( )
Editor of Atlantic Monthly, writer of Criticism and Fiction (1891) in which he championed realism, of the novel The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)

71. Henry James (1843-1916), master of psychological realism
Writer of Daisy Miller (1879), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), The Golden Bowl (1904)
International themes: Contrasting American and European cultures
The first to use Third-person limited point of view第三人称有限视角, “center of consciousness”

72. What is the difference between Realism and Naturalism?72

73. American Naturalism
An extension or continuation of Realism with the addition of pessimistic determinism. 73

74. American Naturalism
Includes all the characteristics of Realism, as well as the following:
The characters (who are representative of humankind) must be seen as biological phenomena whose behaviors are strictly determined by HEREDITY and ENVIRONMENT (influence of Darwin).
Highly deterministic (fatalistic), life is portrayed as brutal and ugly, where characters have no sense of free will.
Donald Pizer,
Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966. 74 74

75. Subject Matter of Naturalism:
Raw and unpleasant experiences which reduce characters to "degrading" behavior in their struggle to survive.
Characters are mostly from the lower middle or the lower classes—poor, uneducated, and unsophisticated.
Milieu is the commonplace and the unheroic.
Life is usually the dull round of daily existence. 75

76. Subject Matter of Naturalism:
There is discussion of fate and “hubris” that affect a character.
Generally the controlling force is society and the surrounding environment. 76

77. Authors of Naturalism Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915)
Frank Norris ( )
Stephen Crane ( )
Theodore Dreiser ( )
Jack London ( )
Upton Sinclair ( )
The progression toward Naturalism, according to Frank Norris:
Realism was the literature of the normal and the representative - "the smaller details of everyday life, things that are likely to happen between lunch and supper.
"Romanticism, according to Norris, was concerned with "variations from the type of normal life," and in its desire to penetrate beneath the surface of experience and derive large generalizations on the nature of life. It explores "the unplumbed depths of the human heart, and the mystery of sex, and the problems of life, and the unsearched penetralia of the soul of man.
"Naturalism abstracts the best from Realism and Romanticism - detailed accuracy and philosophical depth 77 77

78. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Black educator and writer famous for his Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
Up from Slavery (1901), an autobiography

79. Frank Norris ( )
The Octopus (1901), dealing with the raising of wheat in California and the struggles of the ranchers against the railroad

80. Stephen Crane (1871-1900) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

81. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) Sister Carrie (1900)
Jennie Gerhardt (1911)
The Financier (1912)
The Titan (1914)
The Stoic (1947)
The Genius (1915)
An American Tragedy ( 1925)

82. Jack London (1876-1916) The Call of the Wild (1903)
The Sea-Wolf (1904)
White Fang (1906)
Martin Eden (1909), a semi-autobiographical novel

83. Upton Sinclair ( )
Muckraker writer
The Jungle (1906)

84. 5. The Modern period
1914—1945

85. Modernism Background:
- commercialization, industrialization (mass production): threatens individualism; sense of despair
- wars: loss of belief and certainty
- society is becoming worse
- the world is incomprehensible
- there are no solutions to problems: more questions than answers
- breakdown of traditional values

86. Characteristics of modern literature (1)
Attitude towards what is significant
- Antihero vs. hero
Gertrude stein: 站在街头无所事事的士兵比在山上英勇冲锋的士兵更值得文学的关注
Focus of description
- internal, subjective, psychological world
Ulysses: 800 pages about 18 hours

87. Characteristics of modern literature (2)
subject matter: internal consciousness / unconsciousness, antihero; strong sense of loss, alienation, loneliness, rootlessness, fragmentation, anxiety, obscurity, absurdity
Stylistic innovations—disruption of traditional syntax and form
Techniques: stream-of-consciousness, juxtaposition of fragmentation, ambiguity, uncertainty

88. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, 1917)
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table ……

89. The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, 1922)
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
四月是最残忍的月份，从
死去的土地上养育丁香，混合
记忆与欲望，让
春雨催生干枯的根芽。

90. 冬天令我们温暖，遗忘的雪
覆盖在地上，从干枯的根里
滋养小小的生命。
夏天令我们震惊，斯丹卜吉希
一场暴雨来了；我们全都躲进柱廊，
等候雨过天晴，走进霍夫大公园，
喝着咖啡，聊上一个小时。
“我不是俄国人，我从立陶宛来，是个德国人。”
当我们小时候，住在大公家里，
他是我表哥，带我出去滑雪，
我害怕了。他说，玛丽玛丽
抓紧了啊。我们滑下去了。
在山里我们感到自由。
我在大半个晚上阅读，冬天去了南方。

91. Picasso’s Guernica (1937) 91 91

92. Modern Poetry
Chicago poets: Carl Sandburg ( ), Hart Crane ( )
Imagist poets
T.S. Eliot ( )
Robert Frost ( )
Wallace Stevens ( )
The Fugitives / Agrarians

93. Imagism ( )
U.S.: Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), John Gould Fletcher, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams
England: F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington, D.H. Lawrence

94. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
The Waste Land (1922) 《荒原》
The Four Quartets ( )《四个四重奏》
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)《大教堂谋杀案》

95. The Fugitives / Agrarians
Poets, novelists, critics (the New Criticism)
- John Crowe Ransom
- Robert Penn Warren
- Allen Tate
- Cleanth Brooks

96. Modern Drama Social criticism - Elmer Rice, The Adding Machine (1923)
- Clifford Odets (leftist playwright), Waiting for Lefty (1935)
Symbolism & Expressionism
- Eugene O’Neill ( )

97. Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) Emperor Jones (1920) The Hairy Ape (1921)
Desire Under the Elms (1924)
The Iceman Cometh (1939)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1940)

98. Modern Fiction Women writers Fiction about small-town people
The Lost Generation writers
Southern writers
Leftist writers
Black writers

99. Modern Women Novelists
Gertrude Stein ( ), “writers’ writer”
- Three Lives (1909)
Edith Wharton ( )
Willa Cather ( )

100. Edith Wharton (1862-1937) Novel of manners 风俗小说
The House of Mirth (1905)
The Custom of the Country (1913)
The Age of Innocence (1920)

101. Willa Cather (1873-1947) Frontier life on the western prairies
O, Pioneers! (1913)
My Antonia (1918)

102. Sinclair Lewis ( )
Main Street (1920)
Babbitt (1922)

103. Sherwood Anderson ( )
Winesburg, Ohio (1919), stories of small-town people
The Triumph of the Egg (1921), stories and poems
Death in the Woods and Other Stories (1933)

104. The Lost Generation F. Scott Fitzgerald Ernest Hemingway
John Dos Passos

105. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) This Side of Paradise (1920)
Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
Tales of Jazz Age (1922)
The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Tender Is the Night (1934)
The Last Tycoon (1941)

106. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

107. John Dos Passos (1896-1970) Three Soldiers (1921)
Manhattan Transfer (1925)
U.S.A. trilogy
- The 42nd Parallel (1930)
(1932)
- The Big Money (1936)

108. Southern Novelist: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
His mythical Yoknapatawpha County
The Sound and the Fury (1929), the stream-of-consciousness device
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
Light in August (1932)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

109. Leftist Writer
John Steinbeck ( )
- The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

110. Black Writers Harlem Renaissance 哈莱姆文艺复兴 Jean Toomer (1894-1967)
- Cane (1923)
Richard Wright ( )
- Native Son (1940), a “protest novel”
Zora Neale Hurston ( )
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)《他们眼望上苍》
Langston Hughes ( ), “Harlem laureate poet”

111. 6. Contemporary literature
since 1945

112. Main trends Post-modernism (more sense of absurdity and uncertainty)
- beat generation, black humor, new journalism
Rise of ethnic literature

113. Contemporary Fiction The Beat Generation The Black Humor
The Non-fiction / New Journalism novels
War Novels
Southern Writers
Black Writers
Jewish American writers
Native American writers
Chinese American writers

114. The Beat Generation
- Jack Kerouac ( )’s novel On the Road (1957)

115. The Black Humor Joseph Heller (1923-1999), Catch-22 (1961)
John Barth (1930- )
Thomas Pynchon (1937- )
Kurt Vonnegut (1922- ), Slaughter-House Five (1969)

116. Non-fiction / New Journalism novels
Truman Capote ( ), In Cold Blood (1966)
Tom Wolfe (1930- )
Norman Mailer ( ), The Armies of the Night (1968)
Joan Didion (1934- )

117. War Novels Norman Mailer (1923-2007), The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Irwin Shaw ( ), The Young Lions (1948)
James Jones ( ), From Here to Eternity (1951)
Herman Wouk (1915- ), The Winds of War (1971)

118. Southern Writers Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980)
Flannery O’Connor ( )’s novel Wise Blood (1952), short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
Eudora Welty ( )
Robert Penn Warren ( )’s novel All the King’s Men (1946) won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He received Pulitzer Prizes for poetry twice. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.

119. Black Writers Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), Invisible Man (1952)
James Baldwin ( ), Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Martin Luther King, Jr. ( ), “I Have a Dream”
Malcolm X ( ), The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964) which was told to Alex Haley, writer of Roots (1976)
Leroy Jones (1934- ), a poet

120. Black Women Writers
Lorraine Hansberry ( )’s play A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
Alice Walker (1944- ), The Color Purple (1982)
Toni Morrison (1931- ) who won the Nobel Prize in 1993, The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987)

121. Jewish American Writers
Norman Mailer
I.B. Singer ( ), Nobel Prize winner in 1978
Saul Bellow ( ), Nobel Prize Winner in 1976
Bernard Malamud ( )
Philip Roth (1933- )
J.D. Salinger ( )
Henry Roth ( ), Call It Sleep (1934)

122. Saul Bellow (1915-2005), Dangling Man (1944)
The Adventures of Augie March (1953)获全国图书奖
Seize the Day (1956)
Henderson the Rain King (1959)
Herzog (1964)获全国图书奖
Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970)获全国图书奖
Humboldt’s Gift (1975) 获普利策奖

123. Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) Novels The Assistant (1957)
The Fixer (1966) 获全国图书奖
The Tenants (1971)
Short Stories
The Magic Barrel (1958), short story collection,获全国图书奖

124. Philip Roth (1933- ) Goodbye, Columbus (1959)获全国图书奖
Portnoy’s Complaint (1969)
The Ghost Writer (1979)
The Counterlife (1986)获全国图书批评界奖
Sabbath’s Theater (1995)获全国图书奖
American Pastoral (1997) 获普利策奖

125. J.D. Salinger ( )
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) 《麦田里的守望者》

126. Native American Writers
N. Scott Momady (1934- ), The House Made of Dawn《晨曦之屋》 (1968)获普利策奖
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ), Ceremony《仪式》 (1977)
Louise Erdrich (1954- ), Love Medicine (1984)《爱药》先后获得包括全国图书评论界奖在内的5项小说奖

127. Chinese American Writers
Maxine Hong Kingston 汤亭亭(1940- ), Woman Warrior (1976)《女勇士》获非小说类全国图书评论奖, China Man (1980)全国图书奖
Amy Tan谭恩美(1952- ), Joy Luck Club (1989)《喜福会》
Gish Jen任碧莲(1955- ), Typical American (1991) 《典型的美国佬》

128. Other Novelists John Updike (1932-2009)
prolific writer famous for his rabbit series novels and a novella
多产作家，以兔子五部曲闻名
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

129. John Updike (1932-2009) Rabbit, Run (1960) Rabbit, Redux (1971)
Rabbit Is Rich (1981)获普利策奖、全国图书奖、全国书评家协会奖
Rabbit at Rest (1990)获普利策奖
Rabbit Remembered (2001), novella

130. Contemporary Poetry Beat Generation poetry Confessional poetry
Other poets

131. Beat Generation poetry
Allen Ginsberg ( ), Howl (1956)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti ( ), A Coney Island of the Mind (1958)《心灵中的柯尼岛》

132. Confessional Poetry自白派诗歌
描述诗人自己的真实生活，尤其是一些私密的心理和生理的体验，如性经验、心理痛苦和疾病、试用毒品的感受、自杀冲动等。
Robert Lowell ( ), Life Studies (1959) 获全国图书奖
Allen Ginsberg
Ann Sexton ( ), Live or Die (1966)获普利策奖
Sylvia Plath ( ), Collected Poems (1981)获普利策奖
John Berryman ( ), 77 Dream Songs (1964) 获普利策奖

133. Other Poets Marianne Moore (1887-1972) Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- )
Adrienne Rich (1929- )
Charles Olson ( )
John Ashberry ( )
Frank O’Hara ( )

134. Contemporary Drama Tennessee Williams (1914-1983)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1948)
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Arthur Miller ( )
Death of a Salesman (1949)
Edward Albee (1928- )
The Zoo Story （1958）
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)

135. Nobel Prize Winners Sinclair Lewis 1930 Eugene O’Neill 1936
Pearl Buck 1938 赛珍珠 The Good Earth《大地》
T.S. Eliot 1948
William Faulkner 1950
Ernest Hemingway 1954
John Steinbeck 1962
Saul Bellow 1976
Isaac Bashevis Singer 1978
Toni Morrison 1993