History of American Literature
1. Colonial and Early American Literature (1607–1776)
Context: Puritan settlement, colonial expansion, religious zeal, and survival in the New World.
Features: Didactic, moralistic, spiritual focus; little imaginative literature; emphasis on diaries, sermons, histories.
Major Forms: Sermons, journals, captivity narratives, religious tracts.
Key Writers:
- William Bradford – Of Plymouth Plantation (history of Pilgrims, Providential view).
- John Winthrop – “A Model of Christian Charity” (idea of America as a “city upon a hill”).
- Anne Bradstreet – The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (first published poet of America).
- Mary Rowlandson – A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration (captivity narrative).
- Cotton Mather – Magnalia Christi Americana (religious history, witch trials).
- Edward Taylor – Metaphysical poetry, sermons.
2. Revolutionary and Early National Period (1776–1830)
Context: American Revolution, Declaration of Independence (1776), rise of nationalism.
Features: Political essays, pamphlets, Enlightenment thought, first attempts at fiction.
Major Forms: Political writing, autobiography, satire, early novels.
Key Writers:
- Benjamin Franklin – Autobiography (model of self-made man).
- Thomas Paine – Common Sense, The American Crisis (political propaganda).
- Thomas Jefferson – Declaration of Independence.
- Philip Freneau – “Poet of the American Revolution.”
- Charles Brockden Brown – First American novelist (Wieland).
- Washington Irving – The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow).
- James Fenimore Cooper – The Leatherstocking Tales (Natty Bumppo as frontier hero).
3. The Romantic Period / American Renaissance (1830–1865)
Often called the “American Renaissance”, a flourishing of imaginative literature.
Context: Transcendentalism, abolition, reform movements, expansion westward.
Features: National identity, individualism, symbolism, Romantic ideals.
Major Movements:
Transcendentalism – Belief in intuition, nature, spiritual self-reliance.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nature, “The American Scholar.”
- Henry David Thoreau – Walden, Civil Disobedience.
Anti-Transcendentalism (Dark Romanticism) – focus on sin, guilt, evil.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables.
- Herman Melville – Moby-Dick, Billy Budd.
- Edgar Allan Poe – poetry (“The Raven”), short stories (“The Fall of the House of Usher”), detective fiction.
Poetry of Democracy & Nation:
- Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass (free verse, expansive voice).
- Emily Dickinson – innovative, compressed, personal lyric poetry.
Other Writers: Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin), Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass).
4. Realism and Regionalism (1865–1914)
Context: Civil War aftermath, Reconstruction, industrialization, westward expansion.
Features: Focus on ordinary life, social realities, regional/local color writing.
Major Writers:
Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (realism, satire).
Henry James – The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw (psychological realism, international theme).
William Dean Howells – “Dean of American Realism” (The Rise of Silas Lapham).
Regionalists/Local Colorists:
- Bret Harte (California Gold Rush stories).
- Kate Chopin (The Awakening – proto-feminist).
- Sarah Orne Jewett (The Country of the Pointed Firs).
- Charles W. Chesnutt (African American realism).
5. Naturalism and the Early Modern Period (1890–1930)
Context: Darwinism, determinism, industrial capitalism, urban poverty.
Features: Life shaped by environment, heredity, social conditions; pessimistic tone.
Major Writers:
- Stephen Crane – Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage.
- Frank Norris – McTeague, The Octopus.
- Theodore Dreiser – Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy.
- Jack London – The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden.
- Upton Sinclair – The Jungle (social protest).
Transition to Modernism with writers like Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio).
6. Modernism (1914–1945)
Context: World War I, urbanization, alienation, the “Lost Generation.”
Features: Experimentation with form, fragmentation, irony, stream-of-consciousness.
Major Poets:
- T. S. Eliot – The Waste Land (though expatriate).
- Ezra Pound – Imagism, Cantos.
- Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams (Imagism, Objectivism).
- Robert Frost – traditional forms with modern complexity.
Novelists:
- F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (Jazz Age).
- Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms (style of understatement).
- William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying (Southern Gothic, stream of consciousness).
- John Dos Passos – U.S.A. trilogy.
Harlem Renaissance (1920s):
- Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer.
7. Post-World War II Literature (1945–1970)
Context: Cold War, consumerism, Civil Rights Movement, counterculture.
Features: Confessional poetry, postmodern beginnings, drama of ideas.
Key Writers:
Poets:
- Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg (Howl – Beat Generation).
Novelists:
- Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man.
- Saul Bellow – Herzog.
- Norman Mailer – The Naked and the Dead.
- J. D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye.
- Jack Kerouac – On the Road (Beat).
Playwrights:
- Arthur Miller – Death of a Salesman, The Crucible.
- Tennessee Williams – A Streetcar Named Desire.
- Edward Albee – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
8. Postmodernism and Contemporary American Literature (1970–Present)
Features: Irony, metafiction, fragmentation, play with language, multicultural voices.
Major Writers:
- Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow.
- Don DeLillo – White Noise.
- Toni Morrison – Beloved (African American experience, Nobel laureate).
- Philip Roth – Portnoy’s Complaint.
- John Updike – Rabbit series.
- Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
- Sandra Cisneros – The House on Mango Street (Chicana literature).
- Amy Tan – The Joy Luck Club (Asian American writing).
- August Wilson – The Pittsburgh Cycle (African American drama).
Trends: Feminist literature, ethnic literature, immigrant voices, experimental fiction, environmental writing.
Summary of Major Periods
- Colonial (1607–1776) – Religious, Puritan, historical writings.
- Revolutionary (1776–1830) – Political, rationalist, early fiction.
- Romantic/American Renaissance (1830–1865) – Transcendentalism, Dark Romanticism, Whitman, Dickinson.
- Realism/Regionalism (1865–1914) – Twain, James, Chopin.
- Naturalism (1890–1930) – Dreiser, London, Norris.
- Modernism (1914–1945) – Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Eliot.
- Post-WWII (1945–1970) – Confessional poetry, drama, Beat, African American writing.
- Postmodernism (1970–Present) – Multicultural, experimental, globalized voices.