Major American Literary Movements

This will be on your quiz on Friday!! Major American Literary MovementsColonialism1620-1770sEmphasis: history, religion, the New WorldMajor Authors: Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, Anne Bradstreet

Revolutionary1750s 1800 Emphasis: great documents of American revolution and independenceMajor Authors: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin

Nationalism1770s 1820sEmphasis: authentic American settings and charactersWashington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe

Romanticism1780s 1880sEmphasis: emotion and imagination over logic and scientific thought Major Authors: Nathanial Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(Some would make the argument that Poe, and Irving are also Romantic authors)

Transcendentalism1830s 1850sEmphasis: self-reliance, independence from modern innovationsMajor Authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman

Realism1850s 1900Emphasis: simpler style, everyday concernsMajor Authors: Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin

Naturalism1880s 1940sEmphasis: how heredity and environment control peopleMajor Authors: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser

Modernism1900 1950 (some say it continues through the present)Emphasis: alienation, reaction to modern lifeMajor Authors: T.S. Elliot, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck

The Lost Generation1914 1930sEmphasis: post-WWI disillusionmentMajor Authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound

Harlem Renaissance1920sEmphasis: African-American literary movementMajor Authors: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston

Southern Agrarians1930sEmphasis: Southern American poets return to metrical verse and narrativeMajor Authors: John Crowe Ransom, Rober Penn Warren

New York School1940s 1960sEmphasis: urban, alternative lifestyles, leftistMajor Authors: Frank OHara, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest

Beat Generation1950s 1960sEmphasis: anti-establishmentMajor Authors: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson

Confessional Poets1950s 1960sEmphasis: self-exploration, often brutalMajor Authors: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath

Postmodernism1950 presentEmphasis: post-WWII skepticism about absolutes, embracing of diversity, iron, and word playMajor Authors: Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates