Annotated Timeline of The American Literary

Movement

American Literature Overview1. Puritan/Colonial (1650-1750)2. Revolutionary/Age of Reason (1750-

1800)3. Romanticism (1800-1860)4. American Renaissance/

Transcendentalism (1840-1860)5. Realism (1855-1900)6. The Moderns (1900-1950)7. Harlem Renaissance (1920s)8. Post-Modernism (1950 to present)9. Contemporary (1970s-Present)

Puritan/Colonial Period (1650-1750)

OVERVIEW OF PURITAN/COLONIAL PERIOD

• Genre/Style: Sermons, religious tracts, diaries, personal narratives, religious poems.

• Effect/Aspects: Instructive, reinforces authority of the Bible and the church. Very little imaginative literature was produced.

• Historical Context: Puritan settlers fled England where they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs, and came to New England to have religious freedom.

Puritan/Colonial Period (1650-1750)

• Anne Bradstreet– She was the first North American to publish

a book of poems, the first Woman and the first Puritan in North America to publish! Born and educated in England, Anne Bradstreet was the daughter of an earl's estate manager.

– Anne married Simon Bradstreet when she was just 16! Two years later she and her husband left Europe and moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

– Her writing is characterized by the Puritan Plain Style (short words, direct statements, and references to ordinary, everyday objects and events).

Puritanism: Beginnings to 1750

• Writing style: plain

• Theocracy: the church is the gov. God all important

• Hymns, histories, diaries, journals

• Hard work is important

Puritan/Colonial Period (1650-1750)

Cotton Mather– No timeline of American

colonial literature would be complete without mentioning Cotton Mather, the master scholar. Third in the four-generation Mather dynasty of Massachusetts Bay, he wrote at length of New England in over 500 books and pamphlets.

Puritan/Colonial Period (1650-1750)

Edward Taylor – Taylor was a Puritan through and

through. His every action proved it. He was born in England, and left for Massachusetts in his early twenties, attended Harvard College in preparation for the ministry, and spent the remaining 58 years of his life in a town 100 miles west of Boston. It was in the wilderness, and he served there as both minister and town physician.

Puritan/Colonial Period (1650-1750)

Fundamental Puritan Beliefs:

– Taylor believed:

– Sinfulness and damnation of man

– Salvation for an elect few

– Redeeming grace of omnipotent God

– He wanted a church that was purified of all Roman Catholic and Anglican embellishments

– He, along with other educated men of his time, believed in evil spirits, devils, and witches.

Revolutionary Period/Age of Reason (1750-1800)

Overview of Revolutionary Period/Age of Reason

• Genre/Style: Political Pamphlets, Travel Writing, and highly ornate persuasive writing.

• Effect/Aspects: Patriotism and pride grows, creates unity about issues, and creates American character.

• Historical Context: Encouraged Revolutionary War support.

Revolutionary Period/Age of Reason (1750-1800)

Benjamin Franklin– Benjamin Franklin, “practical yet idealistic,

hard-working and enormously successful,” was a second-generation immigrant who lived in Boston Massachusetts. Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, Mr. Franklin was the most famous and respected private figure of his time. He was the first great self-made man in America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that he helped to loosen up through his excellent example.

Abigail Adams (1744-1818)• She wrote letters that

campaigned for women’s rights. Her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, published The Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail During the Revolution, which were just what they said they were, letters written by Abigail and her husband.

Age of Reason

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

• Jefferson is best known for writing the Declaration of Independence, the document came about as people started thinking for themselves and realized they wanted to be free from England’s rule.

Age of Reason

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) Paine wrote mostly pamphlets that would spur ideas and immediate action. In the document "The American Crisis," Paine wrote about the oppression that America suffered from Britain, and propelled America into a war with Britain.

Age of Reason

Romanticism1800-1850

After the “Age of Reason” came to an end, the people of America were tired of reality; they wanted to see life as more than it was. This was the Era of Romantics. The main medium that presented itself at that time were short stories, poems, and novels. During this era, as appose to the “Age of Reason” the imagination dominated; intuition ruled over fact.

Gothic literature was also introduced at this time, which is a sub-genre of Romanticism, this genre included stories about characters that had both good and evil traits. Gothic literature also incorporated to use of supernatural elements.

Authors of

the

Romanticism

Washington Irving

Nathaniel

Hawthorne

Edgar Allen Poe

Herman Melville

Romanticism

• Genre/Style: Character Sketches, Slave Narratives, Poetry, and short stories.

• Effect/Aspects: Integrity of nature and freedom of imagination.

• Historical Context: Publishing expands and industrial revolution brings new ideas.

Washington Irving (1789-1851)• Irving was the first

“famous” American author; he’s also known as the “Father of American Literature.” He wrote travel books, short stories, and satires. Some of his works include; Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and Devil and Tom Walker.

Romanticism

Romanticism

Herman Melville– Herman Melville was a descendant of an old,

wealthy family that fell suddenly into poverty upon the death of the father. In spite of his aristocratic upbringing, proud family traditions, and hard work, Melville found himself in poverty with no college education.

– At 19 he went to sea. His interest in sailors' lives grew naturally out of his own experiences, and most of his early novels grew out of his voyages.

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

• In his time Melville was not entirely recognized, however, in the more recent years he has been considered one of the most top rated novelist of all time. He is most well known for his epic novel Moby Dick.

Romanticism (1800-1860)Edgar Allan Poe

– Edgar Allan Poe was a southerner with a darkly metaphysical vision mixed with elements of realism, parody, and burlesque (caricature or parody).

– He refined the short story genre and created detective fiction.

– Many of his stories foreshadow the genres of science fiction, horror, and fantasy so popular today.

Edgar Allen PoePoe had an unpleasant childhood that made him despise the world, and his works reflected his work. He is credited for creating the modern short story, and the detective story. He also challenged two long-standing theories, one, a poem had to be long, and two, a poem had to teach you something. Some of his works include, "The Raven", "Bells", "Annabel Lee", and "Dream."

Romanticism

Transcendentalism1840-1855

This movement pushed America from the elaborate and fantasy like writings displayed in the period Romanticism, into a period of literature that stressed individualism, and mature and self-reliance. It also stressed the fundamental idea of a unity between God and the world, that each person was a microcosm for the world.

Unlike many European groups, the Transcendentalists never issued a manifesto. They insisted on the differences in each individual.

Authors of the

Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

[Sarah] Margaret

Fuller

American Renaissance/Transcendentalism

• Genre/Style: Poetry, Short Stories, and Novels.

• Effect/Aspects: Idealists, individualism, and symbolism.

• Historical Context: People still see stories of persecuted young girls forced apart from her true love.

American Renaissance/ Transcendentalism

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow– One of the most important Boston poets

was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow, a professor of modern languages at Harvard, was the best-known American poet of his day. He was responsible for the misty, historical, legendary sense of the past that joined American and European traditions.

American Renaissance/ Transcendentalism

• Walt Whitman– Born on Long Island, New York, Walt

Whitman was a part-time carpenter, whose brilliant, pioneering work expressed the country's democratic spirit. Whitman was mostly self-taught, he left school at the age of 11 to go to work. His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains "Song of Myself," the most amazingly original poem ever written by an American.

Realism 1865-1915

This literary movement took place during the Civil War; at a time when a war and people wanted to see things how they were, so Realism came about.

Realism also came about as a reaction to Romanticism, in which there were heroic characters, and adventures, with strange and unfamiliar settings. In response Realism authors tried to write truthfully and objectively about ordinary characters in ordinary situations.

Realism (1855-1900)

• Genre/Style: Novels, Short Stories, Objective Narrator, and does not tell reader how to interpret the story.

• Effect/Aspects: Social and Aesthetic realism.

• Historical Context: Civil War brought demand for a more true type of literature.

Realism (1855-1900)• Mark Twain

– Samuel Clemens, also known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri.

– Ernest Hemingway's well-known statement, that all of American literature comes from one great book: Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;shows Twain’s high place in the tradition.

– Twain's style, based on strong, realistic, everyday American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation for their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the heart of the country, and he captured its distinctive and humorous slang and iconoclasm.

Realism (1855-1900)

• Stephen Crane– Wrote The Red

Badge of Courage

– Realism is often called "the faithful representation of reality”, and Crane writes about the war as if he were there, even though he never saw battle.

Realism (1855-1900)• Jack London

– Jack London was a poor, self-taught worker from California. He became instantly famous from his first collection of stories, The Son of the Wolf (1900), set mainly in the Klondike region of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon.

Modernism 1915-1946

Modernism is one of the most experimental types of writing styles. Modernist authors used fragments, stream of consciousness, and interior dialogue. The main thing that authors were trying to achieve with Modernism was a unique style that would stand out.

During this period Technology was taking incredible leaps and two World Wars took place. The younger generation began to take over the main stage, and many of them protested what was going on in the world.

Authors of the

Modernism

Ernest Hemingway

F. Scott Fitzgerald

John Steinbeck

Robert Frost

The Moderns (1900-1950)

• Genre/Style: Novels, Plays, Poetry, experiments in writing styles, interior monologue, and stream of consciousness.

• Effect/Aspects: Pursuit of American Dream, Admiration for America, Optimism, and Individual Importance.

• Historical Context: Writers reflected the ideas of Darwin and Karl Marx, during WWI and WWII.

The ModernsT.S. Elliot

– Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a wealthy family with ancestry in the northeastern United States. He received the best education of any major American writer of his generation at Harvard College, the Sorbonne, and Merton College of Oxford University. He studied Sanskrit and Oriental philosophy, which influenced his poetry.

The ModernsErnest Hemingway

– Ernest Hemingway came from the Midwest United States. He was Born in Illinois and spent childhood vacations in Michigan on hunting and fishing trips. He volunteered for an ambulance unit in France during World War I, but was wounded and hospitalized for six months.

Contemporary 1946-present

In the years since the Modernism period, American authors have begun to write from a plethora of genres. Americans have realized that the best way to go is have many authors writing what ever it is they are best at.

Some Authors of

the Contemporary

Period

J. D. Salinger

Stephen King

Joyce Carol Oates

Robert Jordan

J. D. Salinger• Salinger studied at NYU, and

Columbia University. After which he decided to devote his life to his writing. His writing career was interrupted by World War I, where he served in the U.S. Army. His most well known work was his novel Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, a novel about a high school student who tries to run away from his life that he thinks is “phony.” Contemporary

Stephen King (b.1947)

• King writes novels that both frighten and intrigue. Some of his major works are; Carrie published in 1974; The Shining, publishing in 1998; Salem's Lot, published in 1993; The Stand, published in 1991, and The Dark tower Series.

Contemporary

Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938)Oates received a type

writer at the age of fourteen and trained herself to write novel after novel through high school and college. She earned an M.A. in English at the University of Wisconsin. Some of her works include; Blonde, published in 2000; Wonderland, published in 1971; and The Tattooed Girl, published in 2003.

Contemporary

Robert Jordan (b.1948)-• He went to the Citadel,

the Military College of South Carolina, where he received a degree in physics. Jordan’s main area of expertise is in the genre of fantasy. He is currently in the process of writing a series of novel entitled The Wheel of Time.

Contemporary