The Eight Periods of American Literature

1
The Eight Periods of American Literature

• Late 1500s-1620 Native American Age of
  Exploration
• 1620-1720 The Puritan Age
• 1720-1820 The Age of Enlightenment
• 1820-1865 The Romantic Age
• 1865-1895 The Age of Realism
• 1895-1920 The Age of Naturalism
• 1920-1945 The Age of Disillusionment
• 1945-Present The Age of Anxiety

2
Native American Literature

• Primarily oral-
• Passed down from generation to generation through
  storytelling and performance
• Includes myths to explain creation and tales of
  heroes and tricksters
• Originally over 200 distinct groups and 500
  languages
• Collected in early 1900s by anthropologists
  (study human culture and growth over time)
• (Ever play telephone?)

3
Emphasis in N.A. Literature

• Nature is alive and aware
• Kinship with animals, plants, heavenly bodies,
  the land, and the elements
• Humans and non-humans part of a sacred whole
• Humans do NOT have control over nature
• must act to maintain a right relationship with
  nature

4
Trickster Tales

• Mythic folk tales
• Often involved a coyote or fox. Why?
• Use animals or humans who engage in deceit,
  violence, and magic
• Explains features of the world

5
First Explorers

• Europeans traveled for
• Adventure and recognition
• To Find great riches
• Had been to India and China
• Looking for Trade
• Slave Trade began with Portuguese in 1400s
• To find land-commissioned for their country
• To avoid religious persecution
• To spread Christianity

6
Explorers and Slavery

• Travel to East Indies brought first African
  slaves
• Africans with most Spanish and Portuguese
  Explorers
• Indians were to vulnerable to European diseases
• English in Jamestown brought first African
  Indentured servants in 1600s
• By 1640, first American-built slave ship

7
First Explorers

• Written Accounts-Historical Personal
• Christopher Columbus- for Spain
• Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
• -Spanish to Florida
• William Bradford-Plymouth, MA
• John Smith -VA
• Olaudah Equiano-slave narrative

8
Historical Narratives

• Audience/Point of View
• Details
• Diction
• Authors Purpose
• Primary and Secondary Sources

9
Puritan Literature

• Devotional in nature
• Non-Fiction
• Sermons, essays, speeches, prayers,
  instructional minimal poetry
• Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards

10
Puritan Beliefs

• Predestination-an unfolding of Gods will
• Elect-very few are saved and will go to Heaven
• Knowledge of salvation from religious conversion
• Original Sin-human beings are inherently evil
• Repentance (showing regret) depended on grace of
  God
• Sin could never be completely erased-guilt and
  remorse were signs of grace

11
Puritan Beliefs

• Divine Providence-belief God intervenes in daily
  life
• Hard Work-a life devoted to service and duty
• Christian Commonwealth-each person puts the good
  of the group ahead of personal concerns
• Education- primary way to fight atheism and
  instill the value of hard work

12
Puritan Beliefs

• Theocracy-the Bible was the supreme authority on
  Earth including government
• Preoccupied with punishing and wiping out
  sinfulness even in other Christians
• believed in witches as instrument of the devil
• Intolerant of other viewpoints
• Execution
• Excommunication

13
Puritan Beliefs

• Rules of morality were severe and strict
• No play on Sundays
• Relations between the sexes scrutinized
• Adultery, theft- punishable by death
• Blasphemy and disrespect to ones elders led to
  public whipping the pillory on the gallows

14
Enlightenment

• Faith in natural goodness-born without sin
• Helping others
• Possible to improve oneself-birth, economy,
  religion, politics

15
Enlightenment

• Caused Writers to search into all aspects of the
  world
• Interested in the classics as well as the Bible
• Optimism
• Sense of personal responsibility for success

16
Romanticism

• Writing celebrated nature rather than
  civilization
• Nature is beautiful, strange, and mysterious
• Romantics valued imagination/emotion over
  rationality and reason
• Emotion and Creativity more important in
  individual than reason
• Irrational depths of human nature explored
• Human potential for social growth

17
Romantics Friends to the Transcendentalists

• Transcendentalism literary, philosophical,
  spiritual movement during the Romantic Period
  (transcend to move beyond or across)
• Perceived truth through intuition-a spiritual
  reality which goes beyond the empirical and
  scientific
• Oversoul-universal soul shared by God, humanity
  and nature. Since humanity shares a soul with God
  and nature-man intuitively knows things about
  them
• Nature worlds are within our inner worlds-all is
  symbolic of the spirit

18
Romantic and Transcendentalist Writers

• Washington Irving
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Margaret Fuller
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

19
Realism

• Literature moves away from nature, spirituality,
  and creativity
• Accurate and detailed portrayal actual life
  typical to middle and lower class
• Class is important
• Ugliness of war, poverty, and resulting sin
• Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Bret
  Harte

20
Naturalism

• A branch of Realism
• Writers focused on how natural environment and
  instinct influence human behavior
• Fate of humans is beyond an individuals control
• Humans are products of their environments

21
Disillusionment

• Disillusionment-to become disenchanted or
  disappointed to be stripped of an illusion
• Writing mimics confusion of the time
• Stream of Consciousness, free verse poetry
• Ending left for readers to figure out based on
  clues in the novel or short story
• Themes implied-reader feels uncertain about
  outcome
• Reflects feelings of loss of innocence because
  reality of situation becomes clear
• Examples

22
Writers during the Age of Disillusionment

• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• William Faulkner
• Ernest Hemingway

23
The Age of Anxiety

• WWII
• Social changes for women, African-Americans,
  Japanese-Americans, Communist Americans
• J.D. Salinger, James Thurber, E.B. White, W. H.
  Auden, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Arthur
  Miller