The Eight Periods of American Literature
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Transcript of The Eight Periods of American Literature
The Eight Periods of American Literature
• Late 1500s-1620 Native American & Age of Exploration
• 1620-1720 The Puritan Age• 1720-1820 The Age of Enlightenment• 1820-1865 The Romantic Age• 1865-1895 The Age of Realism• 1895-1920 The Age of Naturalism• 1920-1945 The Age of Disillusionment• 1945-Present The Age of Anxiety
Native American Literature
• Primarily oral-– Passed down from generation to generation through
storytelling and performance• Includes myths to explain creation and tales of
heroes and tricksters• Originally over 200 distinct groups and 500
languages• Collected in early 1900s by anthropologists
(study human culture and growth over time)• (Ever play telephone?)
Emphasis in N.A. Literature
• Nature is “alive and aware”• Kinship with animals, plants, heavenly
bodies, the land, and the elements• Humans and non-humans part of a sacred
whole• Humans do NOT have control over nature
– must act to maintain a right relationship with nature
Trickster Tales
• Mythic folk tales
• Often involved a coyote or fox. Why?
• Use animals or humans who engage in deceit, violence, and magic
• Explains features of the world
First Explorers
• European’s traveled for– Adventure and recognition– To Find great riches
• Had been to India and China• Looking for Trade• Slave Trade began with Portuguese in 1400’s
– To find land-commissioned for their country– To avoid religious persecution– To spread Christianity
Explorers and Slavery
• Travel to East Indies brought first African slaves• Africans with most Spanish and Portuguese
Explorers• Indians were to vulnerable to European diseases • English in Jamestown brought first African
Indentured servants in 1600’s– By 1640, first American-built slave ship
First Explorers
• Written Accounts-Historical & Personal – Christopher Columbus- for Spain– Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
-Spanish to Florida– William Bradford-Plymouth, MA– John Smith -VA– Olaudah Equiano-slave narrative
Historical Narratives
• Audience/Point of View
• Details
• Diction
• Author’s Purpose
• Primary and Secondary Sources
Puritan Literature
• Devotional in nature• Non-Fiction• Sermons, essays, speeches,
prayers, instructional; minimal poetry
• Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards
Puritan Beliefs• Predestination-an unfolding of God’s will• Elect-very few are saved and will go to
Heaven – Knowledge of salvation from religious
conversion • Original Sin-human beings are inherently
evil– Repentance (showing regret) depended on
grace of God– Sin could never be completely erased-guilt
and remorse were signs of grace
Puritan Beliefs
• Divine Providence-belief God intervenes in daily life
• Hard Work-a life devoted to service and duty– Christian Commonwealth-each person
puts the good of the group ahead of personal concerns
– Education- primary way to fight atheism and instill the value of hard work
Puritan Beliefs
• Theocracy-the Bible was the supreme authority on Earth –including government
• Preoccupied with punishing and wiping out sinfulness even in other Christians – believed in witches as instrument of the
devil– Intolerant of other viewpoints – Execution– Excommunication
Puritan Beliefs
• Rules of morality were severe and strict– No play on Sundays– Relations between the sexes scrutinized– Adultery, theft- punishable by death– Blasphemy and disrespect to one’s elders
led to public whipping; the pillory on the gallows
Enlightenment
• Faith in natural goodness-born without sin
• Helping others
• Possible to improve oneself-birth, economy, religion, politics
Enlightenment
• Caused Writers to search into all aspects of the world
• Interested in the classics as well as the Bible
• Optimism
• Sense of personal responsibility for success
Romanticism
• Writing celebrated nature rather than civilization• Nature is beautiful, strange, and mysterious• Romantics valued imagination/emotion over
rationality and reason• Emotion and Creativity more important in
individual than reason• Irrational depths of human nature explored• Human potential for social growth
Romantics: Friends to the Transcendentalists
• Transcendentalism: literary, philosophical, spiritual movement during the Romantic Period (transcend: to move beyond or across)
• Perceived truth through intuition-a spiritual reality which goes beyond the empirical and scientific
• Oversoul-universal soul shared by God, humanity and nature. Since humanity shares a soul with God and nature-man intuitively knows things about them
• Nature worlds are within our inner worlds-all is symbolic of the spirit
Romantic and Transcendentalist Writers
• Washington Irving
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Margaret Fuller
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Realism
• Literature moves away from nature, spirituality, and creativity
• Accurate and detailed portrayal actual life typical to middle and lower class
• Class is important• Ugliness of war, poverty, and resulting sin• Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Ambrose
Bierce, Bret Harte
Naturalism
• A branch of Realism
• Writers focused on how natural environment and instinct influence human behavior
• Fate of humans is beyond an individual’s control
• Humans are products of their environments
Disillusionment
• Disillusionment-to become disenchanted or disappointed; to be stripped of an illusion
• Writing mimics confusion of the time• Stream of Consciousness, free verse poetry• Ending left for readers to figure out based on clues in
the novel or short story• Themes implied-reader feels uncertain about outcome• Reflects feelings of loss of innocence because reality
of situation becomes clear• Examples:
Writers during the Age of Disillusionment
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• William Faulkner
• Ernest Hemingway
The Age of Anxiety
• WWII
• Social changes for women, African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Communist Americans
• J.D. Salinger, James Thurber, E.B. White, W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller