1. English 11: American Literature
Mr. Cooper

2. AIM: What is American Literature?
Define: AMERICA
Name 20 American Authors
Name 5 American literary movements
Can’t do it, can you?

3. Define: AMERICA

4. Define: AMERICA

5. Define: AMERICA

6. Definition
“America” is a country founded on a constitution, a system of fundamental laws and principles that govern us
Is that really a definition of this country, though?
Perhaps through analysis of American literature, we can define ourselves within America’s own story.

7. Native Americans Arrived 40,000 – 20,000 BCE
How could Columbus have discovered America? People were already here!
“oral tradition” – stories passed on by word of mouth
Emphasis on respect for nature / animals
Lots of figurative language

8. Colonialism & Puritanism 1600-1800
Diaries and histories, emphasizing connection between God and everyday lives
Religion is a personal, inner experience
Plain style of writing
Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

9. The Revolutionary Period 1750-1800
Political Pamphlets
Speeches & Rhetoric
“The Declaration of Independence”
“Speech to the Virginia Convention” (Give me liberty, or give me death!)
“The Crisis” (Thomas Paine)

10. Romanticism 1800-1860 Valued feeling, idealism
The power of the imagination – especially poetry
“unspoiled nature”
Individualism
Gothic style – think Edgar Allan Poe

11. Transcendentalism
Everything in the world is a reflection of “The Divine Soul”
They love nature because it’s spiritual
They hate conformity
Henry David Thoreau: Walden, “Civil Disobedience”
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Self Reliance”, Nature

12. Civil War & American Realism 1850-1900
Realism: the opposite of Romanticism
Civil War causes feelings of disillusionment
Presents everyday life and ordinary people as realistically as possible
“Regionalism”
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Kate Chopin: “The Story of an Hour”

13. Modernism 1900-1950 Loss of faith in the “American Dream”
More disillusionment!
Experimental styles favored over traditional literature
“inner workings of the human mind”
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot
The poetry of Langston Hughes
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

14. Postmodernism & Contemporary 1950 - Present
Media and information technology
Sense that culture constantly duplicates itself – nothing is unique
No real definitive style; a lot more variety
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

15. Where do we begin? In the beginning, of course!
Let’s read an excerpt from “The Iriquois Constitution” (textbook page 21)
Serves as a basis of the United States Constitution hundreds of years later