3. AMERICAN LITERATURE
Literature that was written in America
and it’s native areas.
With the development of American
society, questions were raised on the
actual culture and writings of American
literature.
With the advent of Post-War period,
American voices gained pace and
Literature started flourishing.
5. AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM
START TO PRESENT…
Colonialism Beginnings to 1800
Native Americans used their myths to explain
the creation of the world and humankind’s
relationships with each other or to nature.
Puritans (1600’s-1800’s) were a group
persecuted for religious beliefs in England who
came to America for religious freedom and wrote
on and about Biblical models.
Rationalists believed that humans could arrive
at truth by using reason.
6. American Romanticism 1800-1860:-
This literary period valued feeling and intuition over reason. It
was characterized by heroes and journeys. Most of these
symbolic “trips” were moving away from the evil of civilization and
the bonds of rational thought to the purity of nature and the
freedom of the imagination. They preferred youthful innocence,
individual freedom, the wisdom of the past, fascination with the
supernatural, inspiration of folk culture, and poetry as the highest
expression of creativity. ,The Fireside poets (the Boston poets of
Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes sometimes referred to as
“Schoolroom Poets” ) were extremely popular, often memorized,
and usually recited. Their subject matter (love, patriotism, nature,
family, God) comforted their audiences but did not challenge them
to be innovative.
Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book (“Rip Van Winkle” & “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow”)
William Cullen Bryant’s “Than-atopsis”.
7. American Renaissance- 1840-1860
This literary rebirth began with the question, “Will there ever be a
greater writer than Shakespeare?”
Transcendentalism was a belief of finding religion in nature.
Everything was a reflection of the divine soul according to Emerson and
Thoreau.
Gothic ideals looked at the dark side of human nature using spooky
(ghostly) settings, mysterious illnesses, strange sounds, and live burials
(in works of Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne) to make people face their
feelings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature and Self-Reliance.
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods; Resistance to Civil
Government
Poe’s “The Fall of House of Usher,” “The Raven,” “The Purloined Letter,”
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” &“The Cask of Amontillado”; founder of modern
detective story.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”; Twice-Told Tales; The
Scarlet Letter
8. A New American Poetry –
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) &
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
These two people were both great innovators of a new way
of writing but were total opposites. Whitman was a
spokesman for progress, and Dickinson wrote
privately of her spiritual metaphors in nature.
Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” and Song of Myself
Dickinson’s “The Poems of E.D”; “Success Is Counted
Sweetest”; “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”’; “I Heard
a Fly Buzz-When I Died”.
9. Realism – 1850-1900
Civil War writing favored realistic characters and settings over those
that were contrived. Seeing the horrors of war made Whitman more
optimistic because heroes overcame so much suffering but make
Melville more pessimistic because of the pain he witnessed.
Realism sought to portray ordinary life in non-romantic settings, and to
explain why people act the way they do.
Regionalism (or local color writing) focused on a small geographical
area and tried to accurately reproduce the speech and manners of that
region.
Naturalism was a 19th
c. literary movement that wanted to show life
exactly as it is, with people behaving like animals who follow natural
laws of the universe and sometimes are not able to control their own
destinies.
Psychological fiction occurs inside a character’s mind while the
universe is indifferent.
Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
and Adventures of Tom Sawyer
10. Moderns- 1900-1950
Writers boldly experimented with new styles and rejected traditional themes.
After World War I, disillusionment abounded, and new moral codes tempted
some.
Some wrote of the American dream, which showed this country as a land of
promise, a place for optimists, and a world for the independent individualist.
(Emerson defined its elements most clearly). Rather than most writers coming
from New England, many now came from the South, the Midwest, or the West.
Marxism and Freud’s psychoanalysis drew many away from the old values.
Stream of consciousness writing used no chronology but followed a character’s
random thoughts wherever they went. The Jazz Age, of the Roaring 20’s,
(The Roaring Twenties is a term sometimes used to refer to the 1920s,
characterizing the decade's distinctive cultural edge in New York
City, Paris, Berlin, London and many other major cities during a period of
sustained economic prosperity. French speakers called it the "années folles"
("Crazy Years"), emphasizing the era's social, artistic, and cultural
dynamism. "Normalcy" returned to politics in the wake of hyper-emotional
patriotism during World War I) found people seeking pleasure to avoid the
restraints of the Prohibition. Expatriates left America in search of grace and
luxury abroad. Some rejected the ideal American hero for one who is flawed but
has honor and courage. Symbolists and Imagists dominated new poetry.
11. E. A. Robinson and Robert Frost from New England and Edgar Lee
Masters from the Midwest wrote traditional verse forms. The *Harlem
Renaissance (1920’s – mid 1930’s) was a rebirth of African-American
art, music, and literature focused mainly in the Harlem section of New
York City. It used ghetto (slum area) speech and the rhythms of jazz and
blues to enhance poetry. As a belief in self-reliance persisted, Edenic
American (African/ African American ability to identify with their gods)
writers in the Modernist era kept asking questions about the
meaning and purpose of human existence.
Robert Frost’s Mountain Interval(“The Road Not Taken” and “Birches”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath
E. Hemingway’s; A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old
Man& the Sea
T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; The Hollow Men; “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”
*Zora Neale Hurstson’s “Dust Tracks on a Road”
*Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” and “Harlem”
12. Contemporary – 1950-Present
Gallows humor (by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Joseph Heller, and Terry
Southern) laughed at life’s tragic ironies, acknowledging the absurd
and the grotesque. Postwar science and technology gave economic
growth but left individuals lost in a fast-paced, impersonal world.
Post-modern work allows for multiple meanings and worlds,
nontraditional forms, and comments upon itself. It has cultural
diversity, blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction, and
relied on the past. New journalism or (Literary Journalism) has
added personal and fictional elements to nonfiction, making it more
popular with readers. Contemporary poetry became more personal and
accessible and more challenging of convention. The Beat poets,
nonconformist (who do not conform to the conventional practices) new
bohemians or hippies (esp. in 1960s A person of unconventional
appearance, typically having long hair and wearing beads...) cried out
against conformity of the 1950’s.
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Robert Lowell’s Life Studies were about
personal experiences regarding it.
13. The Confessional School of Poets, friends or (like
Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and John Berryman) wrote
brutal poems about their private lives. Oral performance at
poetry indicates a fresh voice and a new attitude of poetry
with a democratic quality, but the same familiar themes,
seeking spiritual revelations in ordinary life.
Anne Sexton’s “The Bells” , Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
and “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” , Amy Tan’s “The
Rules of the Game”; The Joy Luck, James Baldwin’s Go Tell
It on the Mountain, Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”.
AMERICAN DRAMA
Basic elements are exposition, characters, and conflict. A
success requires collaboration between the playwright, the
producer, the director, the actors, and the audience.
14. Theater seems to dramatize accepted attitudes and values because
it is a social art. Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is America’s most
important playwright with plays like The Great God Brown, Days
Without End, and Strange Interlude. He won the Nobel Prize in
literature in 1936.
European playwrights Henrik Ibsen from Norway, August
Strindberg from Sweden, and Anton Chekhov from Russia greatly
influenced American drama by shifting dramatic action to intense
inner emotional concerns of common life. This is called “slice-of-
life” dramatic technique.
We see a realistic play through a “fourth wall” that has been
removed from real life so that we can see into the character’s lives.
Arthur Miller (1915- ) is a playwright of social conscience. He
uses characters’ psychological makeup, along with social,
philosophical, and economic atmosphere of their times to work his
magic. He wrote The Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.
15. Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) wrote realistic drama
mixed with imaginative, poetic sensibility in his plays
The Glass Menagerie, and A Streetcar Named Desire
and has been called the playwright of our souls. His
characters are often lost women dealing with their
own social tensions and problems.
The Theater of the Absurd or Expressionist
drama, does not rely on time order but presents
action in a fragmented way. It is a revolt against
realism. Corresponding to stream-of-consciousness
writing, it is expressive and experimental. Samuel
Beckett’s Waitng for Godot, Eugene Ionesco’s The
Bald Soprano,and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Wolfe? are examples.
16. UNIQUE STYLE
War of 1812(fought b/w America and British
empire) gave rise to new American literary style:
Humour and fantasy: Irving’s Sleepy Hollow and
Rip Van Winkle
Human psychology: e.g., Edgar Allen Poe’s The
Pit and the Pendulum, The House of Usher.
Nature: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays
responding to natural world.
17. AMERICAN POETRY(19TH
CENTURY)
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass using free
verse.
Robert Frost
Wallace Stevens
Emily Dickinson
Ezra Pound
William Carlos Williams
18. REALISM
Slavery, racism, local language.
Social turmoil, discrimination.
Human pschye.
As we find in Mark Twain’s The Huckleberry
Finn, Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
19. 20TH
CENTURY LITERATURE
THEMES
Experimentation continued with new literary
themes of 20th
century.
Common man,
Political instability,
The hollowness of modern man,
The lose of faith,
Restlessness,
Defiant of mood.
20. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: haunted and
fragmented images of 20th
century like Wilfred
Owen…depiction of horror/ destruction of war/
effects of war.
F. Scott. Fitzgerald (1896–1940) capture the
restless, pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the
1920s. He expressed poignantly the youth's
golden dreams to dissolve in failure and
disappointment.
21. ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY
American writer (July 21, 1899 –
July 2, 1961).
Won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
Pulitzer Prize won in 1953.
Published seven novels, six short stories and two non fiction
novels.
He is considered to be greatest classics of American
Literature.
Became spokesperson of World War-I.
22. LIST OF WORKS
Indian Camp(1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
(1935)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
The Old Man and the Sea (1951)
A Moveable Feast (1964)
True at First Light(1999)
23. THEMES
According to Scholar Frederic Svoboda( main
theme is Love, War, Wilderness and Loss, all of
which are strongly evident in the body of work”.
Theme of Death and destruction.
Loss of relationships as in Farewell to Arms.
24. A FAREWELL TO ARMS
Written in 1929
Background is set in Italian Campaign(wars
fought b/w 1915-1918)
Title is taken from 16th
century dramatist George
Peele
Focuses on romance of Frederick Henry and a
nurse called Catherine
Autobiographical novel
25. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL
Novel based on real incidents of writer’s life
Hemingway himself was Henry
Catherine Barkley, nurse was Agnes von
Kurowsky
Kitty Cannel was replaced by Sara Ferguson
26. THEMES IN FAREWELL TO ARMS
War (WW I)
Destruction
Loss of love/relationships
Loss of faith on religion (lost generation)
Love for women
30. OUTLINE OF STORY
A Farewell to Arms focuses on a romance
between Henry and a British nurse, Catherine
Barkley, against the backdrop of World War I,
cynical(pessimistic) soldiers, fighting and the
displacement of populations.
The publication of Hemingway's novel, cemented
his stature as a modern American writer became
his first best-seller.
31. SUGGESTED READINGS:
Bloom, Harold. Ed. Modern Critical Views:
William Faulkner (Modern Critical Views
Series). New York: Chelsea House, 1986
Bradbury, M. Modern American Novel, 1983
Brown, Julie. Ed. American Women Short Story
Writers: A Collection of Critical Essays. New
York: Garland Pub, 1995
Chase, R. The American Novel and its
Traditions, 1958
Gray, R. American Fiction: New Readings, 1983
Hardwick, Elizabeth. Herman Melville. Viking
Books: 2000
