American Literary Movements1650-presentAKA…the “isms” of literature

What is an American?

What is Literature?

What is American Literature?

Puritanism/Colonialism1650-1750

Genre/Style:Utilitarian writing, sermons, diaries, personal narrativesWritten in plain style

Effect/Aspects:InstructiveDescriptiveReinforce authority of the Bible and church

Historical Context:PredestinationNotion of progress, preoccupation with guilt, emphasis on hard work and drive toward affluenceAll people are corrupt and must be saved by Christ

Examples:Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards

Puritanism/Colonialism1650-1750

American writing began with the work of English adventurers and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers in the mother country. Some of these early works reached the level of literature, as in the robust and perhaps truthful account of his adventures by Captain John Smith and the sober journalistic histories of William Bradford in New England. From the beginning, the literature of New England was also purposed for the edification and instruction of the colonists themselves, intended to direct them in the ways of the godly.

Revolutionary/Age of Reason

1750-1800Genre/Style:

Political pamphletsTravel writingHighly ornate stylePersuasive writing

Effect/Aspects:Patriotism growsInstills prideCreates common agreement (and opposition) and issuesNational mission and the American characterControl in own destiny?

Historical Context:Tells readers how to interpret what they are reading to encourage Revolutionary War supportInstructive in valuesMoves away from lofty philosophies (God, church, etc…) to domestic, immediate issues

Examples:Poor Richard’s Almanac by Benjamin FranklinWritings of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry

Revolutionary/Age of Reason

1750-1800This period was a time when authors were focused more on their own reasoning rather than simply taking what the church taught as fact. During this period there was also cultivation of patriotism. The main medium during that period were political pamphlets, essays, travel writings, speeches, and documents.

Also during this period many reforms were either made or requested, for instance during this time the Declaration of Independence was written.

Romanticism1800-1860

Style/Genre:Character sketchesSlave narrativesPoetryShort stories

Effect/Aspect:Value feeling and intuition over reasoningJourney away from corruption of civilization & limits of rational thought toward integrity of nature & freedom of the imaginationHelped instill proper gender behavior for men and womenAllowed people to re-imagine the America past (good thing???)

Historical Context:Expansion of magazines, newspapers, & book publishingSlavery debatesIndustrial revolution brings ideas that the “old ways” of doing things are now irrelevant

Examples:Poems of Emily DickinsonPoems of Walt Whitman“Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Romanticism1800-1860

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, and there was a large emphasis on the individual/common man, and on nature or the natural world.

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.

Transcendentalism1840-1860

Style/Genre:PoetryShort StoriesNovels

Effects/Aspects:True reality is spiritualIdealistsSelf-reliance & individualismImportance & significance of nature

Historical ContextToday in literature we still read of people seeking the true beauty in life and in natureIn literature, we also still see a belief in true love and contentment

Examples:“Self Reliance” by Ralph Waldo EmersonWalden by Henry David Thoreau

Transcendentalism1840-1860

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. Often Transcendentalists used nature to gain knowledge or to return to a life of self-reliance and individualism. 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.

Anti-Transcendentalism/Dark Romanticism

1840-1860Genre/Style:

PoetryShort StoriesNovelsHold readers’ attention through dread of a series of terrible possibilitiesFeature landscapes of dark forests, extreme vegetation, concealed ruins with horrific rooms, depressed characters

Effect/Aspects:Used great symbolism to great effectSin, pain and evil exist

Historical Context:Today in literature we still see portrayals of alluring antagonists whose evil characteristics appeal to one’s sense of aweToday in literature we still see stories of the persecuted young girl forced apart from her true love

Examples:The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne“The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe

Anti-Transcendentalism/Dark Romanticism

1840-1860During the same time period when Transcendentalism was taking place, it’s opposite, Anti-Transcendentalism, was also happening. As oppose to Transcendentalism, which focused on the natural world and its relationship to humanity, and the quest for understanding of the human spirit. Anti- Transcendentalism focused on the limitations of mankind, and its potential destructiveness of the human spirit. For instance, water brings life, but it’s excess, i.e. a flood, can bring death and destruction.

(Notice how they sometimes use nature in their writings to reflect what goes in with humans. Example: Scarlet Letter and the forest – reflect Pearl’s wild nature; only place Hester and Dimmesdale can be free, etc.)

Realism1855-1900

Style/Genre:Novels and short storiesObjective narratorDoes not tell the reader how to interpret the workDialogue includes voices from around the country

Effect/AspectsSocial realism aims to change a specific social problemAesthetic realism includes art that insists on detailing the world as one sees itOne’s perspective is one’s reality

Historical Context:Civil War brings demand for “truer” type of literature that does not idealize people or places

Examples:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark TwainThe Awakening by Kate ChopinThe Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Realism1855-1900

This literary movement took place during the Civil War; at a time when a war was taking place people were tired of Transcendentalism and Anti-Transcendentalism, for one thing they were both extremes of the same spectrum, one was nice and happy, and “frilly;” the other was dark and destructive. 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.

Modernism1900-1950

Style/Genre:NovelsPlaysPoetryHighly experimental as writers seek a unique styleUse of interior monologue & stream of consciousness

Effect/Aspects:In pursuit of the “American Dream”…Admiration for America as a “paradise”OptimismImportance of the individual

Historical Context:Writers reflect the ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and Karl Marx (how $ and class structure control a nation)Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th centuryRise of the youth culture and counter culturesWWI & WWIIHarlem Renaissance

Examples:The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldPoems by TS Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Carl SandburgShort stories by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck

Modernism1900-1950

This type of writing is one of the most experimental types. Modernist authors used of fragments, stream of consciousness, and interior dialogue. The main thing that authors were trying to achieve with Modernism was a unique style, one that they could stand out for, and be known for.

During this period Technology was taking incredible leaps and two World Wars took place, there was destruction of a global scale. The younger generation began to take over the main stage.

Harlem Renaissance1920s

Style/Genre:Allusions to African-American spiritualsUses structure of blues songs in poetry (repetition)Superficial stereotypes revealed to be complex charactersDialect

Effect/Aspects:“Conversation art”Blues and jazz transmitted across America via radio and phonographs (widespread popularity)

Historical Context:Parallel to modernismMass African-American migration to Northern urban centersAfrican-Americans have more access to media and publishing outlets after they move north

Examples:Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale HurstonEssays & poetry of W.E.B. DuBoisPoetry, short stories and novels of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale HurstonPoetry of Claude McKay, Jean Toomer and Countee Cullen

Harlem Renaissance1920s

Originally called the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary and intellectual flowering that fostered a new black cultural identity in the 1920s. Chiefly literary, the birth of jazz and many other artistic firsts are credited within this time period.

The years between WWI and the Great Depression were “boom times” for the United States and jobs were plentiful in cities, especially in the North. Between 1920 and 1930 almost 750,000 African Americans left the South and many of the migrated to urban areas in the North to take advantage of the prosperity and the more racially tolerant environment.

The white literary establishment soon became fascinated with the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance and began publishing them in larger numbers. But for the writers themselves, acceptance by the white world was less important, as Langston Hughes put it, than the “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves”.

Post-Modernism/Contemporary

1950-presentStyle/Genre:

Fiction/Non-fictionMixing of fantasy with non-fiction; blurs lines of reality for readerNo heroes/anti-heroConcern with individual in isolationNarrativesPresent-tenseEmotion-provokingHumorless or humorous irony

Effect/Aspects:Erodes distinctions between classes of peopleInsists that values are not permanent but only “local” or “historical”Some too soon to tell

Historical Context:Post-WWII prosperityMedia culture interprets valuesPeople beginning a new century and a new millenniumWe are still struggling with many issues and face new ones all the time

Examples:The Catcher in the Rye by JD SalingerDeath of a Salesman by Arthur MillerBeat Poets: Jack Kerouac, Allen GinsbergThe Bell Jar by Sylvia PlathThe Things They Carried Tim O’BrienWritings of Maya Angelou, Barbra Kingsolver, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton

Post-Modernism/Contemporary

1950-presentIn 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. That’s exactly what has happened, there are more different types of writing being done at one time than at any other period in history; Fantasy, fiction, science fiction, horror, Political writings, romantics, plays, and poems, anything and everything.