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Survey of American LiteratureJunior EnglishMrs. MontgomeryOrigins of the American TraditionPuritanism1620-1750Native American LiteratureOral traditionIroquois Constitution: Dekanawida, Huron who established the Iroquois LeagueMessage of unity: Great Law of PeaceSongSong of the Sky Loom: Pueblo people of the Southwest; interdependence with nature

Early American WritingReligion dominant influence/presence Types of writingNonfictionSermons (Puritan intellectuals and ministers: Cotton Mather & Jonathan Edwards)Impact of European Enlightenment (late 17th century)empirical (study of the natural world) evidence + human experience = one needs to feel/experience God, not just intuit his existence from ones belief or from the Bible; result: Great Awakening (1734)Colonial histories: John Smiths General history of Virginia, New England, and the Summer IslesTexts: The New England Primer (first textbooks produced in American; circa 1690) sold into the 19th centuryPersonal diariesPoetryTo My Dear and Loving Husband (Anne Bradstreet)

Great Awakening: origination with Jonathan Edwardss Northampton congregation, then spread to Boston then throughout the coloniescalled for a return to stricter church membership requirements and proof of an awakening/conversion (He was removed from the pulpit in 1750)

Locke and Newton: Empirical inquiry (the study of human experience and the natural world) was the means to true knowledgeEmpirical study rather than medieval theories of innate knowledge derived from God; Locke = we are blank slates who build up knowledge from sense impressions

4Puritan beliefsPuritan EthicCommunity serviceImportance of communityGoal: city upon a hill (Biblical reference) - a selfless, harmonious community directed by GodStrict moral proprietyOriginal sin: all people are born sinful and must be saved by divine graceHard workPredestination (Gods elect) Material and social successes are signs of salvationSofate cannot be changed by force of will & watch for proof of salvation (being among the elect)Puritans were on a grand historical and religious mission to purify the Christian church by establishing a city upon a hill as a model for the world5What did Puritans write about?Explores story of spiritual strugglesEvents are emblems (allegories) of the progress of souls or of Gods designExpressed both:official Puritan views & beliefsJonathan Edwards sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God struggles with orthodoxy and conformityAnne Bradstreet critical of distorted view of womenThe Age of Reason/Enlightenment1750-1800The Thinking behind the ConstitutionPhilosophers during the Age of Reason/Enlightenment were concerned with the perfection of the human being through reason/scienceEnlightenmentIsaac Newton: through reason people could discover the principles that guarantee social and political harmonyJoseph Addison discovery of natural laws can ensure peace and tranquilityThomas Hobbes, certain natural rights exists and cannot be turned over to a sovereignJohn Locke - to preserve natural rights, people must balance the power of the sovereign against the power of Parliament, retain the right to rebel against oppressionJean-Jacques Rousseau (French philosopher) - governments are instituted as asocial contract between the people and the governmentDidnt reject, but questioned the heavy reliance on spirituality of the PuritansRomantic movement (18th and 19th century): championed democratic ideals & rights of the individualEncouraged by discoveries in the natural sciences (Newton), Neoclassicists: Addison, Hobes, Locke, Rousseau8Literature of the Revolutionary PeriodArticulation of Independence and LibertySpeechesPatrick Henry speech in the Virginia Convention (Give me liberty or give me death)DeclarationThe Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson)Letters (John & Abigail Adams)PamphletsCommon Sense and Crisis (Thomas Paine)PoetryPhillis Wheatly To S.M. a Young African Painter, on Seeing His WorksChristianity, American independence, abolition of slaveryThe New England Renaissance1800-1865Romantics rejected the scientific and rational emphasis of the previous time period. They were more interested in emotion, nature as a reflection of the divine, etc.

Cultural & Literary MovementsRomanticism (18th & 19th centuries)Valued private, subjective experience (emotions & creativity)Metaphysical truths: A higher form of reason different from ordinary understanding of the physical world of sense perceptionNature not just evidence of the operation and regularity and laws and life more than practical advancement of social systems of organizationNature: repository and stimulus for intuition of higher truths in the individualsHighest authority: individual conscience rather than authority and external controlTranscendentalism (a variation of European Romanticism)Established American writers as distinct literary forcePractical implicationsGoal of these writers: pursuit of forging new groundHenry David Thoreau (Walden articulated American individualism)Utopian communitiesHawthorne and Poe collectively responsible for the development of the modern short story: a brief fictional work designed to create in the reader a single dominant impression

(Alcott and Hawthorne later became disillusioned with these efforts & wrote about them)Hawthorne satirical The Blithedale Romance (based on Brook Farm utopian community)Louisa May Alcott satirical short story Transcendental Wild Oats (based on Fruitlands)13A change in thinkingMaterial success less important (Irving)Dismissed tradition and social convention (it may violate the individual conscience)Celebrated the self, rather than deny it; self-awareness not selfish but a way to understand the universeThe soul of the individual was a microcosm of the larger worldStudy the self to know the universe and its God (self-realization, self-expression, self-reliance were coined)Respect for multiple, divergent viewpointsOptimisticNature/human nature is benevolent and good Emerson & Thoreau

Knickerbockers writersWashington Irving critical of material success and social advancement

14The flip sideHuman nature is darkNathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (sin)Herman Melville (evil and obsession)Edgar Allan Poe (psychology of madness and terror)

Social Purpose: Writers wanted to change society through literatureLive simple life in nature (Walden)Better yourself by changing your thinking and lifestyle (Emerson)Fireside poets (Schoolroom poets) wrote about slavery)Idealized, romantic, morally uplifting views of the nationCreated a popular interest in poetryEmily Dickinson Focus on a vivid present/uncertain futurePoems about time, isolation and deathSome humorPrecise/ compressed

Transcendental writers not popular (700 copies of Waldens 1st edition, most unsold and returned to Thoreau who sold them himselfSome popular: James Fenimore Cooper Last of the MohicansMelville: Typee and OmooNot possible to make a living in American as a professional writer, copyright laws enacted in the states in 1841, no international copyright protection until 1891 (American books sold legally in England w/o paying royalties to American author; English books sold in American w/o royalties to the English author, cheaper to publish a book from abroad since royalties made American books too pricey, they sold them w/o claims to royalties1619th CenturyRobert DiYanni, Pace University claims: These three writersEmerson, Whitman, and Dickinsonhave been the primary and seminal influences on the American poets of the twentieth century:

Emerson for his philosophical perspective;Whitman for his public celebration of the American themes of democracy, idealism, solidarity, equality, and love of nature;

Dickson for her finely discriminating probings of the soul in a spare poetic style, original in its elliptical syntax, its metaphorical daring, and its unconventional rhythm and rhyme.

Slavery & the Civil WarNewspapersThe Liberator (William Lloyd Garrison)Freedoms Journal (John Russwurm & Samuel Cornish)The North Star (Frederick Douglass)Speeches & DebatesSenatorial candidates Stephen Douglas & Abraham LincolnSlavery in Massachusetts (Henry David Thoreau)NovelsUncle Toms Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)Clotel (William Wells Brown, 1st African American to publish a novel)Our Nig (Harriet E. Wilson, 1st African-American woman to publish a novel)Spirituals (African + European music in poetic text, Biblical imagery emphasis on suffering and hope)Slave narrative/autobiographyFrederick DouglassWar literature: (Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane)Attempts to restore national identity and hope for unity; Key Question: Heroic (honorable, courageous) soldier or human (panicked, accidental hero,) soldierApologists for slavery: slaver owners treat their valuable property well

19Realism1865-1919After the Civil War, writers rejected the idealized version of life romantic writers offered and concentrated on getting the facts right. Many writers of this time period started their careers as journalists

I hear American singing, the varied carols I hear. Walt WhitmanAbandonment of Romanticism, New England, scholarly, moralistic gentlemen; Adoption of writers from a variety of regions Regionalism (local color) writing emergesCharacters more diverse (varied, unsavory)Local dialect/regional diversityDime novels (cheap, popular)Tall tales (legend of the Wild West)WritersSamuel Clemens (western boom towns, Mississippi River valley)Bret Harte (West) George Washington Cable (Louisiana bayou country)Joel Chandler Harris (African American in the South)Edward Eggleston & James Whitcomb Riley (Hoosiers of backwoods Indiana)Sarah Orne Jewett & Mary Wilkins Freeman (backwoods New England)RealismPortraits from life; grim depictions of realties; unsentimentalAmbrose Bierce (Chickamauga, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge)Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) Individual quest for freedomDean Howells (Novels: The Rise of Silas Lapham, Annie Kilburn, A Hazard of New Fortunes, Quality of Mercy) breakdown of traditional values ; misery of the poor in urban AmericaPsychological Realism: exploration of the interior lives of characters)Charlotte Perkins Gilman (The Yellow WallpaperHenry James (Portrait of a Lady, The turn of the Screw)NaturalismRefinement of RealismBased on theories of the French novelist Emile ZolaZola inspired by naturalists Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley: peoples actions and beliefs resulted not from free will but from the arbitrary, outside forces of heredity and environmentNovelists could write scientific fiction that demonstrated the exact causes of human behavior.Premier American example: Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage and A Man Said to the Universe)Crane: Because humans are pawns manipulated by cruel and indifferent forces of nature & society, humans must unite in kindness and compassion to counter these forcesFrank Norris (McTeague and The Octopus)Jack London (The Call of the Wild)Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie; An American Tragedy)Modernism1919-1945New Forces in the 20th centuryTechnology (electric lights)Culture (mass merchandising)Mass media (TV, movies)Transportation (automobiles, airplanes)Communication (telephone anywhere in the world)Medicine (antibiotics, anesthesia)War (weapons of mass destruction: atomic, nuclear)Architecture (suburban housing, skyscrapers)Work (labor unions, women in the work force)Population (explosion)Politics (ideologies of Communism and Fascism)

Remember the old verities and truths of the heart. William Faulkner 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance address However the world might change, some thingssuch as the human capacity for courage, compassion, sacrifice, honor, and prideremain the same. (The American Tradition 476)Before the WarTraditional, regional, portraits of life throughout the country: RegionalismEdgar Lee Master Spoon River Anthology (Illinois)Edwin Arlington Robinson (poet)Jack London (North country)Impact of WWIThe Lost Generation (participants in the war)John Dos PassosErnest Hemingwaye.e. CummingsGertrude SteinEmerging society : chaotic, destructive, meaninglessThe real American had been lost, distorted; feeling of dislocation or alienation, cut off from the pastIndividuals dominated by environs and dehumanized by work conditions in modern industry, urban living conditions in cities for poor immigrantsQuestioned tenets of American dream (Horatio Alger stories & Benjamin Franklins autobiography: hard work, industry, self-reliance = a piece of the dream for anyone; ideals of individualism and free-market capitalism questioned)Writers adopted socialist or communist ideals (Karl Marx, German political theorist argued that the exploitation of the workers would lead to the collapse of capitalism and establishment of states in which workers controlled the means of production.)Sympathetic to socialist ideals - even joining in fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War 1936-37. Disillusioned with Stalins socialism that led to purges of political opponents and his treaty with Hitler.

Rebellion of the YoungNew York become center of literary sceneHome to publishing houses, newspapers, magazinesHome to avant-garde, bohemian writers, artists, intellectuals (esp. in Greenwich Village)Eugene ONeillThomas WolfeAlgonquin Round TableDorothy ParkerRobert BenchleyGeorge S. KaufmanThe ExpatriatesMore authentic beliefs and forms of expression found outside the the U.S. (Paris & London, salons and cafes)FitzgeraldHemingwaySteinEzra PoundEdna St. Vincent MillayT.S. Eliot

Modernism make it new" Ezra Pound's credo

Rejection of literary conventions of the pastResponse to the perceived breakdown of modern culture; attempt to give order and coherence to the decay; retreat from new social vision into the cold comfort of a purely literary or imaginative order (The American Tradition 480)Irony - signature technique of Modernist literatureConveyed a sense of hopelessnessExperiments in form: free verse, stream-of-consciousness prose an example of subjectivism: reality is not absolute and orderly, depends of the point of view of the observer1st personElimination of narrator or speaker (presenting the experience, sense perception of the character without the emotions/opinions of the author intruding)Alienating, understated, ironic, impersonal, lacking in transitions between ideas, full of odd juxtapositions and sophisticated references, or allusions

NotablesEdith Wharton (the Age of Innocence - the breakdown of traditional ways of life for the wealthy)F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby- disillusionment and ambivalence about the morality of the self-made man in American society)John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath effects of the Great Depression and Great Dust Bowl of 1930s)Upton Sinclair (the Jungle scathing expose of meatpacking industry)Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt, Elmer Gantry excesses of materialism, hypocrisy & greed of small-town real estate dealers and showman preachers)Richard Wright (Native Son explosive results of discrimination against African Americans)

20th century: golden age of American women writersEdith WhartonEudora WeltyWilla CatherKatherine Anne PorterZora Neale HurstonAmy LowellMarianne MooreEdna St. Vincent Millay

Shirley JacksonLillian HellmanDenise LevertovGwendolyn BrooksAnne SextonSylvia PlathAlice WalkerLorraine HansberryJoyce Carol OatesAnother way to look at ita momentary stay against confusion. Robert FrostFind renewal in the United States itselfUsed ideas and techniques of ModernismNot Modernist: traditional forms, expression of traditional valuesPostwar regionalists who wrote American literature about local, rural areas, strength and hope in these worksRobert Frost (rural New England)Sherwood Anderson (Ohio)Zora Neale Hurston (novels of African American experience in rural South)William Faulkner (regional settings and lost traditional values)Southern regionalism: Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, Flannery OConnor, Katherine Anne Porter

The Fugitives & New CriticismThe Fugitives (led by John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren)Southern literary school rejected northern urban, commercial valueAdvocated a return to the land, esp. in Southern American traditionsNew Criticism: close readings and attentiveness to format (patterns of imagery, metaphors, metrics, sounds, and symbols) and their suggested meanings (rather than a focus on history and biography)

Postwar Literature1945-1960The era following WWIIProsperity in the United StatesHigh employment as economy reverted to peacetime productionWomen = housewives & moms; Men = breadwinnersUrban sprawl (suburbia) developed with better cardsMobile society facilitated by 33 billion from Congress for an interstate highway system (Holiday Inn, A & W, drive-in theaters) Auto = successSocial characteristic: traditional, stable, but undercurrent of disapproval, distrust and disillusionment with the status quoThe Silent Generation: traditionalists, experimenters, and iconoclasts (one who attacks widely accepted ideas/beliefs)Postwar LiteratureAmerica is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remainOur fate is to become one, and yet many. --Ralph Ellison1945-1960

The era following WWIITelevision:: Middle-class appeal and ideal familiesThe Tonight Show (Steve Allen) Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan)Father Knows BestI Love Lucy Ozzie and Harriet Rock & roll emergesBill Haley & the Comets: Rock around the Clock (1954)Elvis: Hound Dog, Blue Suede Shoes, Dont be cruelPopular ReadingThe Cat in the Hat Dr. SeussBaby and Child Care: Dr. Benjamin SpockPat Boone (the all-American) vs James Dean (the outcast)Underneath: surface prosperity is turmoil: pervading loneliness (David Reisman: The Lonely Crowd (1951) & Rebel without a Cause (film with James Dean whose character laments the adult world that abandoned him): & J.D. Salingers 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye: the adult word is phonyFolk Music craze/fold song armyThe Kingston Trio (Tom Dooley)Woody Guthrie (This Land is Your Land)Pete and Peggy SeegerPeter, Paul, and MarySatirical songs about American lifeGuitars & banjoesThe voice of the youth protest movement (hippies) and flower children) of the 1960sThe Politics in the era following WWIIDwight David Eisenhower & Richard M Nixon 1952 election; Ike reelected 1956Cold war (1945- 1989)Ideological (independence vs collective), political (democracy vs communism), and economic (market vs command) tensions between United States & Western Europe vs. USSR and Eastern Europepolitical (conservatism) Liberals were often given epithets: pinko/commieAnticommunist paranoiaHollywood blacklists for Communist Party affiliation ( pressure to identify communist sympathizers)Senator Joseph McCarthy witch hunt in the U.S. Senate (inspiration for The Crucible Arthur Miller) (mass hysteria and guilt by association)On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan) suggested that one should sing or rat on ones corrupt friendsSpace Race - 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik leading to U.S. moon landing 1969Korean was (1950 19593) Sotho Korea 7 its ally U.S. vs North Korea and ally Communist ChinaCivil Rights MovementAfrican-Americans left in the old and decaying inner cities where increased poverty and unemployment fostered social unrest.mid-1950s Civil Rights movement had begunRosa Parks (refused to give up her seat on the city bus and was arrested)Martin Luther King, Jr. led the boycott against public transportation & Supreme Court ruled segregation laws in Montgomery unconstitutional19574 Brown vs.. The Topeka Board of Education: Supreme Court rules Plessey vs.. Ferguson (separate but equal) was inherently unequal and unconstitutional, so schools had to be integrated. First major challenge came in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957Emergence of several black writersRichard Wright ( Black Boy 1945)Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man 1952)James Baldwin ( Go Tell it on the Mountain 1953)Gwendolyn Brooks (Bronzeville Boys and Girls 1956)Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun 1958)Literary SceneLiterature emerging from the warNorman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead)James Jones (From Here to Eternity)Early 20th century writers become powerhouses:William Faulkner (Nobel Prize for literature 1950)John Steinbeck (East of Eden 1952)Katherine Anne PorterEarnest Hemingway (Nobel Prize for literature 1952)New genre: Nonfiction novel:Hiroshima (1946) John Hersey combination of journalism and literature (literary techniques + factual air of reporting to describe real events) The most significant piece of journalism in modern timesJewish writers: the Holocaust and life in AmericaSaul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March (1953)Henderson, the Rain King 9159Seize the Day (1956)Bernard MalamudThe Natural (1952)The Assistant (1957)The Magic Barrel 1954Isaac Bashevis SingerGimpel the Fool 1953The Family Moskat 1950Fugitive School: Southern writers rebellion against Northern materialism and against science and progressJohn Crowe RansomRobert Penn WarrenAllan TateOther Southern WritersFlannery OConnorWalker PercyEudora WeltyTruman CapoteJohn CheeverJohn OHaraJohn UpdikeFlowering of American DramaArthur MillerTennessee WilliamsWilliam IngeEugene ONeillLillian HellmanPostwar PoetsWallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Marianne MooreT.S. Eliot (poetry should be an escape from emotion and personality) Nobel Prize for literature 1947E.E. Cummings (experimented with parts of speech, capitalization, and punctuation to explore the essence of language)William Carlos Williams (there should be no ideas except in things)Black Mountain School in North Carolina: Charles Olsen, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan experimented with the rhythms and sounds of words in lines based on breath pauses. Poetry itself creates a thing, an artifactConfessional poets: John Berryman, Robert Lowell: used haunting, stark images to reveal intensely personal experiences. Theodore Roethke: a new romantic, based poetry on childhood experience, using his fathers greenhouse as metaphorBerryman & Lowell: inner demons, strained and broken marriages, alcoholismBlack Mountain School centered around Black Mountain College, an experimental liberal arts college in Asheville, N.C. where poets, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley taught in the early 1950sEd Dorn, Joel Oppenheimer, Jonathan Williams were studentsPaul Blackburn, Larry Eigner, Denise Levertov published experimental work in the schools magazines (Origin and the B lack Mountain Review)Manifesto for the Black Mountain poets by Charles Olson: in the essay Projective Verse (1950): emphasize the creative process, in which the poets energy is transferred through the poem to the reader, and conversational language.49Postwar PoetsThe Counterculture begins in the mid-1950s on the West Coast1955 Six Gallery poetry reading Allen Ginsberg: Howl spontaneous composition written to jazz rhythms that challenged every aspect of American life and language1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martins: City Lights Bookstore, 1st all-paperback bookstore in the U.S. & haven for writersThis new literati challenged the social malaise and traditional formsAbstract ExpressionismNew York Poets: John Ashbery, Frank OHara, Kenneth Koch: experimented with new perceptions & poetry forms; tried to duplicate in words what the expressionists artists accomplished in paint. The Beats (the Beat generation centered in bookstores around the U.S.): Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Kenneth RexrothBeat poems based on existential and Eastern philosophy; strove to cut through superficial facades, denouncing and reviling thoughtless conformity, to embrace life itself

Early Contemporary Literature1960 to 1980Turbulent sixtiesJohn F. Kenney: Cold War & arms race, civil rightsBay of Pigs InvasionCuban Missile CrisisReverend Martin Luther King, Jr.: Civil Rights Movement & race relationsPresident Lyndon JohnsonCivil Rights Act 1964Voting Rights Act 19675Great Society series of social welfare measures (housing, Medicare, Medicaid, education)Conservatives: more defense spending; less on domestic programsLiberals: more spending on domestic programs, less on defenseExpansion of Viet Nam War (police action) divisive; antiwar demonstrations throughout the U.S. Counterculture rebellion of American youth, prosperous but challenged the war and traditional materialistic values; extreme styles of dress, speech, of hippie movement)Race riots: 1965, 1967, 1968Assassinations: John F. Kennedy (1963); King & Robert Kennedy (1968)53The seventiesRichard Nixon elected by landslide; later becomes 1st president to resign from officeDtente (improved relations) with the Soviet UnionStrategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT)Improved relations with China (1972)Withdrew from Vietnam (1973)Improprieties during the 72 lection campaign including burglary led to resignationVice President Gerald Ford finished the termJimmy Carter elected in 1976, promoted human rights around the worldBrought Israel and Egypt to negotiating tableU.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran taken over by Islamic fundamentalists (Iran Hostage Crisis)54The Womens MovementCall for equal rights for womenWomens movement or womens libRenewed interest in feminismSpearheaded by found of Ms. Magazine (19781)Gloria SteinemBetty FriednaBella AbsuzShirley ChisholmNationals Womens Political CaucusGender roles fell under questionLTypes of literatureRadical experimentationhappenings spontaneous expressions of creative freedom (precursors of performance art)Found poems - bits of language collected from the culture at large (billboards, graffiti, subway posters, etc.)Concrete poems designed to appeal to the eyeConfessional poetry extremely personal verse that described intimate, often troubled experiencesRobert LowellAnne SextonSylvia PlathJohn BerrymanTypes of literatureTopicsAntiwar poetryRobert BlyDenise LevertovPoems about race and discriminationLeroi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka)Nikki GiovanniGwendolyn BrooksMari EvansTypes of literatureFiction/Fact? Novels/ReportageTruman CapoteNew Journalism volumes of nonfiction reportages the relied heavily on techniques of fiction or that frequently manipulated the facts, reshaping them to add to the drama and immediacy of the story being reported (subjective valued over the objective).Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, John Barth, Richard Brautigan, John IrvingConcern for the absence of morals and ethics; critical of empty experimentation; rather, fiction should reflect ethical values that would make sense of the human conditionWalker Percy, Joan Didion, John GardnerChronicles of the Vietnam Wardescribed intimate, often troubled experiencesTim OBrienThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) - WolfeFear and Loathing n Las Vegas (1972) Kesey, ThompsonMiami and the Siege of Chicago (1968) MailerOne Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1962) Kesey (mental hospital patients with staff who is more disturbed than patients)Lost in the Funhouse (1968) Barth; regarded the interior self as supremet to the external worldTrout Fishing in America (1967) whimsical fantasy (Brautigan)The World According to Garp (1978) Irving turned social conventions on their head Slaughterhouse Five (1969) Vonnegut great anti-war novel centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden Germany WWII

The Moviegoer (1962)The Last Gentleman (1966)The Second Coming (1980)All three examine civilization and its discontents with a wry but moral eyePlay It A It Lays (19670) Didion: decadent purposelessness of HollywoodGrendel (1971)Nickel Mountain (1973)October Light (1976) moral acts and values can lead to a life worth livingOn Moral Fiction (1978) argued that some of the most acclaimed authors were distraction themselves with empty experimentation Gardner called instead for fiction that reflected ethical values that would make sense of the human condition

Obrien: If I Die in a Combat zone (1979): intelligent perspective to help Americans understand how the war had divided their countryGoing After Cacciato (1978): considered by some to be the best novel about eh Vietname war (National Book Award)58Types of literatureWomens literature about womens issues as well as other topicsBlack women made notable advancesMulticultural literature emergedDeconstruction: a tool for evaluating texts constantly questioned the nature of realityReemergence of regionalism: New Regionalism decentralization of the publishing industryNo longer exclusive to New York; now small literary presses and little magazines emerged funded by colleges and universities or loyal readers, writers and editorsAble to promote new regional and experimental works in ways the big commercial publishing houses could or would notMore expansive and diverse from East to WestWilliam Kennedy: Albany , New YorkJoyce Carol Oates: NortheastAnne Tyler: Baltimore, MarylandPat Conroy: South Carolina low countryJane Smiley farms in the heartlandLeslie Marmon Silko and Cormac McCarthy: American SouthwestWallace Stegner: Far WestJoan Didion: CaliforniaRaymond Carver: Pacific NorthwestPlaywrights: Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Lanford Wilson, Beth Henley: regional theater movementContemporary Literature1980 to PresentCultural Events of 1980sEnd of American hostage crisis in IranElection of Ronald Reagan (end of Jimmys Carters presidency)Iran-Contra scandalSDI (Star Wars)Family farms in depressionFall of the Soviet Union/End of the Cold War/Berlin Wall comes downIncreasing Arab animosity for the United States (esp. Libya, Iraq, and Iran)Economy takes off leading to increase in consumerismEarth Day revived: manmade disasters includes nuclear accidents in Bhopal, India, Chernobyl, Ukraine, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania,Exxon Valdez oil spill Alaska, emission of greenhouse gases, detection of hole in the ozone layer of Antarctica Cultural Events of 199sBoomers (World War II babies) become YuppiesValued success in corporate worldGeneration XNobodies, nameless, depressed, both working parents (poor economy and feminism): selfish, cynical, dependent, demanding, materialistsMTV; consumerism and economic boom1989: hyper-text-transfer protocol (http) invented1993: World Wide Web open for public useInformation Superhighway: reality shaped by the information we collect for ourselvesGlobal Village (Marshall McCluhan) become reality: national boundaries weaken, cross-cultural marketing and consumerismHIV: the AIDS virus spreads dramaticallyContemporary LiteratureWriters examine events from perspectives of those who are not in power and who do not justify the status quoAwareness of diversity yet searching for unityContemporary LiteratureMixed-media forms, performance art and installation art. Laurie Anderson United States (1984)Poetry Slams: open poetry reading contests held in literary bookstores and cafesPerformance poetry (rap music)New Formalists: champion a return in poetry of form, rhyme, and meters (19h century themes, contemporary attitudes and images, musical language and traditional closed forms)Multiculturalism: American literature increasingly characterized by an unprecedented interest in a promotion of diversity especially women and people of color (vs predominantly white male literary canon)Creative NonfictionDefinition: creative nonfiction mixes literary techniques more common to fiction with nonfictionOrigins: A term the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) began using in the early 1970s to refer to contemporary nonfiction such as essays, memories, biographies, and a personalized style of reportage,Examples: Truman Capote: In Cold Blood, (1965) Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) John McPhee: The Control of Nature (1990)John Berendt: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994)The Control of Nature: The Control of Nature is John McPhee's bestselling account of places where people are locked in combat with nature. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking is his depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those attempting to wrest control from her - stubborn, sometimes foolhardy, more often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

In Cold Blood: On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Blue Ridge valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of "mystery, death, beauty, violence."

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.66Minority literatureHispanic-American poets: Gary Soto, Alberto Rios, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Pat Mora, Jimmy Santiago BacaChicano (Mexican-American) poets: rich oral tradition in the corrido or ballad, form. Recent works stress traditions of the Mexican community and the discrimination it has sometimes experienced from whites

Native American writers of poetry and prose: vivid evocations of the natural world, almost mystical; tragic sense of the irrevocable loss of a rich heritageLeslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Sherman AlexieBeet Queen trilogy (Erdrich)Ceremony (Silko)The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Alexie) Movie: Smoke Signals (1998)68African-American PoetsAmiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)Lucille CliftonMichael HarperNikki GiovanniRita DoveNovelistsToni MorrisonAlice Walker Charles JohnsonShort Story writersToni Cade BambaraMaya Angelou(Gorilla, My Love 1993 (Bambara)On the Wings of Morning (Angelou) read at the inauguration of Pres. Clinton 1993(1993 Nobel Prize for literature winner for The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved)(1993 Poet Laureate of the United States and 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for Thomas and Beulah69Asian American (American writers of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Koran, Thai all with distinct cultural heritages) PoetsLi-Young LeeCathy SongGarrett HongoDavid MuraJanice MirikitaniProseMaxine Hong KingstonAmy TanFrank ChinSylvia WatanabeGish JenGus LeeAmerican writersPoetsDiane AckermanLouise CluckPhillip LevineSharon OldsCharles WrightDonald Hall

ProseAllan GurganusTim OBrienAnne BeattieAnne TylerBarbara KingsolverJane SmileyTom WolfeFrank McCourtGarrison KeillorE. Annie ProulxIsaac AsimovKathleen NorrisJohn Updike