SAT History

1
SAT History

• American Literature Review

2
Origins of Literature--Virginia

• 17th century Virginia Captain John Smith A
  True Relation of Virginia (1608), The General
  Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer
  Isles (1624
• Robert Beverly The History and Present state of
  Virginia (1705

3
Origins--Massachusetts

• John Winthrop published a journal of the
  religious foundations
• Edward Winslow wrote a diary of the first years
• Increase Mather, William Bradfordreligious
  writers History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-47
  (Bradford)
• Magnalia Christi Americana Cotton Mather
  (Increases son)

4
Mass. 2

• Poetry, Anne Bradstreet (1st published female
  writer), The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up into
  America (published in England, Several Poems
  Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning
  (posthumous, 1679)
• Michael Wigglesworth The Day of Doom
  (1662)minister who wrote about the day of
  judgment
• Writers about Indian interaction Daniel Gookin,
  Benjamin Church, John Eliot (1st translation of
  the Bible into an Indian language)
• Other writers Edward Taylor, Nicholas Noyes

5
Great Awakening

• Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of An
  Angry God
• George Whitfield
• Other writers of the period Thomas Hooker,
  Thomas Shepard, John Wise, Samuel Willard, Samuel
  Sewall, Sarah Kemble Knight, William Byrd

6
Colonial to Independence

• Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanac The
  Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Thomas Paine Common Sense (1776), The American
  Crisis (1794)
• Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson,
  also his autobiography, Notes on the State of
  Virginia
• Political writers Fisher Ames, James Otis,
  Patrick Henry
• Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison, John Jay)
• Other writers Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, John
  Dickinson, Joesph Galloway (the latter was
  pro-British)

7
19th Century America

• First Short Stories The Sketch Book of Geoffrey
  Crayon (1819-20), Washington Irving, also Irving
  was considered the first American style author
  (Salamundi, A History of New York, by Diedrich
  Knickerbocker (1809)
• William Cullen Bryant wrote poems in the English
  romantic poetry style about American beauty
  (Thanatopsis, 1817, To a Waterfowl, 1818)
• Edgar Allen Poeshort stories The Masque of the
  Red Death The Fall of the House of
  UsherGothic writer
• James Fenimore Cooper Leatherstocking Tales
  (main character Natty Bumppo, The Last of the
  Mohicans (1826), The Deer Slayer
  (1841)Historical romance novels

8
New England Writers

• New England Brahmins (a group of writers
  connected to Harvard), included James Russell
  Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver
  Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature,
  1836 Henry David Thoreau Walden (Pond), 1853?
• Others in the Transcendentalism group Bronson
  Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Orestes
  Brownson, Jones Very

9
Political Writersmid 1800s

• Abolitionists
• William Lloyd Garrison The Liberator
• Poet John Greenleaf Whittier
• Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Toms Cabin
  (1851-52) very sentimental

10
Hawthorne and Melville

• Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1837 Stories, 1840s The
  Scarlet Letterabout a woman thrown out of a
  Puritan community for committing adultery
• Herman Melville (sea novels) Moby Dick
  (whaling voyage), Billy Budd (duty and
  compassion on a ship in time of word)forgotten
  during his life, rediscovered later
• Melville, Hawthorne, Poe are Anti-transcendentalis
  m

11
19th Century American Poetry

• Walt Whitmanworking man, traveller, nurse during
  the Civil War. Leaves of Grassfree-flowing
  verse to depit the all-inclusiveness of American
  democracy
• Emily Dickinson (total opposite)very sheltered,
  private, not published during her lifetime

12
American Realism

• Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)first major
  writer to not be born near the East Coast
  (Missouri)Life on the Mississippi Adventures
  of Huckleberry Finnvery large use of the
  vernacular (speaking), characters sound real
• Contemporaries of Clemens George W. Cable,
  Thomas Nelson Paige, Joel Chandler Harris,
  William Sydney Porter (O. Henry)
• Henry Jameswrote about the Old World- New World
  splitAmericans who live/travel to Europe

13
American Journalists

• Most of the revolutionary writers also published
  in the newspapers.
• Elijah Lovejoy (1802-1837)dedicated to the
  freedom of the press, killed by an angry mob
  trying to set fire to his press in a warehouse
• Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)First American female
  foreign and war correspondent
• Mathew Brady (1823-1896)First news photographer
• Mark Twain
• Jacob Riis (1849-1914) How the Other Half Lives
• Nellie Bly (1867-1922)investigative reporting by
  example

14
Journalists 2

• H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) coluimnist/critic
• Grantland Rice (1880-1954) sportswriting pioneer
• Walter Winchell (1897-1972)first celebrity
  gossip writer
• Ernie Pyle (1900-1945)World War II Journalist,
  human side of war
• Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) photography of
  the Great Depression and World War II
• Alice Dunnigan (1906-1983)anti-segregation
  writer (see also Ethel Paine, 1911-1991)
• Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodwardcoverage of
  Watergate

15
Muckrakers

• They were in contrast to William Randolph Hearst,
  who was against news and for sensationalism
• Lincoln Steffens Tweed Days in St. Louis 1902,
  McClures Magazine
• Ida Tarbell The Rise of the Standard Oil
  CompanyMcClures, 1905-1908
• Upton Sinclair The Jungle about meat packing
  industry (outrage over this good gave us the Pure
  Food and Drug Act)
• Ray Stannard Baker The Right to Work,
  McClures, 1903, coal mine conditions/scab
  workers
• David Graham Phillips The Treason of the
  SenateFeb. 1906, Cosmopolitan, corruption in
  the US Senate
• Samuel Hopkins Adams The Great American Fraud
  (patent medicine, mediical fraud)

16
Naturalist Writing

• Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage about
  the Civil War, Maggie A Girl of the Streets
• Theodore Dreisser Sister Carrie
• Jack London The Call of the Wild White
  Fangalso journalism about the SF earthquake of
  1906

17
Early 20th Century

• Ezra Pound (1885-1972), poet
• T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), poet The Wasteland
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) The Great
  Gatsbycapture mood of the 1920s
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)death, violence, and
  reality The Sun Also Rises A Farewell to
  Armsvery brief writing, no extra words
• William Faulkner (1897-1962)humanity in
  Mississippi, stream of consciousness writing,
  The Sound and The Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying
  (1930)

18
Depression Era

• John Steinbeck (1902-1968)working-class poverty
  life, The Grapes of Wrath Of Mice and Men
  East of Eden
• Henry Miller1930s semi-autobiographical

19
Harlem Renaissance

• Also known as the New Negro Movement and the
  Black Literary Renaissance
• Hubert Harrison, The Father of Harlem
  Radicalism founded the Liberty League and the
  Voice (first organization and first newspaper)
• 1917 Three plays for a Negro TheatreRidgely
  Torrance
• 1919 Claude McKay, poetry
• James Weldon Johnson fiction (all of these were
  describing contemporary black life)

20
Harlem 2

• Zora Neale Hurston Jonahs Gourd Vine (1934),
  Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
• Nella Larsen Quicksand 1928, Passing 1929
• Jean Toomer Cane 1923
• Walter White The Fire in the Flint 1924,
  Flight 1926

21
Harlem Drama and Poetry

• Langston Hughes (poetry, drama)
• Zora Neale Hurston Color Struck
• Countee Cullen The Black Christ and Other Poems
  (1929)
• James Weldon Johnson, poet, Gods Trombones