American Literature

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American Literature

• Lecture Notes!!

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FYI

• Genre(s) Type of Classification
• Look at Historical Genres
• 8 Genres (or historical periods)

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I. Colonial Period (1620-1732)

• Puritan-Calvinist writing
• (Religious)
• a. John Winthrop
• Winthrops Journal (1649)
• b. Ben Franklin (1732) Begins publishing Poor
  Richards Almanack
• -Autobiography of Ben Franklin
• -orders his day according to a strict
  discipline
• -Manage time efficiently
• -Set Goals

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II. Revolutionary Period (1760s-1787)

• 1776-Independence Day
• 1787-Constitution adopted
• Writing switches from religious to political
  (1765)
• a. Thomas Paine
• Pamphlet Common Sense (1775)
• -American Independence
• b. 1776- Declaration of Independence-Thomas
  Jefferson
• -Started University of Virginia
• -believed in creating an intellectual elite

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III. Early National Period(1800-1830)

• A. Washington Irving
• 1.Rip Van Winkle-1819-1820
• 2.Legend of Sleepy Hollow-1819-1820
• B. Noah Webster (1828)
• -1ST. American Language Dictionary
• C. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- poet
• Paul Reveres Ride

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IV. American Renaissance(1830-1860)

• A. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• - Poet/prose writer
• Transcendentalist
• Nature (1836)
• B. Henry David Thoreau
• (1) Walden (1854)
• (2) Civil Disobedience
• C. Emily Dickinson
• Wrote 1400 poems-1850-1860

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IV. American Renaissance (1830-1860) Cont.

• Death was a focus of her poems. Ex I heard a
  fly buzz
• D. Edgar Allan Poe
• 1830s-1840s creator of Gothic Horror
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• E. Nathaniel Hawthorne
• (1850) Scarlet Letter
• F. Herman Melville
• (1851) Moby-Dick
• G. Walt Whitman
• (1855) Leaves of Grass
• H. Harriet Beecher Stowe
• (1850) Uncle Toms Cabin

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V. Post Civil War Literature (1865-1910)

• Writing switches from romantic to realism
• a. Mark Twain
• - Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
• - Adventures of Huck Finn(1884)
• b. Henry James (elitist, wealthy)
• -dual citizenship in England and the United
  States.
• -Turn of the Screw
• -Portrait of a Lady
• c. Regional Writers (1880s-1900)
• -Laura Ingals Wilder (KS)
• -Little House on the Prairie
• -Willa Cather (NE)
• -Wagner Matinee
• -My Antonia
• -Kate Chopin (LA)-1st feminist
• -A pair of Silk Stockings
• Awakeningher novel
• -Jack London- Novels-Call of the Wild, White
  Fang (Yukon Territory)
• d. Stephen Crane (1895-1905) The Red Badge of
  Courage

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VI. Post WWI Literature(1920s-1930s)

• Realism? Disillusionment
• A. Poets
• -T.S. Eliot The Waste Land
• -Robert Frost, ee cumings
• B. Novelists
• 1.Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms
• 2.William Faulkner- wrote in dialect The
  Stream of Consciousness -The Sound And The
  Fury (1929)
• 3. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
  (1925)
• C. 30s- Depression
• -John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

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VII. Post WWII Period (1940s-Present)

• A. Playwrights
• Tennessee Williams
• Glass Menagerie (1944)
• Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
• Arthur Miller (1940s)
• The Crucible
• Death of A Salesman
• B. Other Novelists
• 1. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
• 2. Truman Capote (1965) In Cold Blood
• C. Poets
• 1. Feminists
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Sylvia Plath
• Anne Sexton

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VII. Post WWII Period (1940s-present) Cont.

• 2. African American
• Gwendolyn Brooks (50s-on)
• Maya Angelou
• Lucille Clifton
• Alice Walker
• Toni Morrison

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VIII. Science Fiction (1940s-present)

• (acknowledge two forerunners to SF Jules Verne
  (French) and H.G. Wells (British)
• 4 American Founding Fathers
• 1. Isaac Asimov
• 2. Robert Heinlein
• 3. Arthur C. Clarke 2001 A Space Odyssey
• 4. Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
• 3 Types of Science Fiction
• 1. Altered past-time travel machine
• 2. Intruded upon present
• 3. Extrapolated future