American literature

American Literature


Periods of Am. Lit.
1.




Beginning of American Literature:
1607-1776 Colonial Period
1765-1790 The Revolutionary Age
1775-1828 The Early National Period


2. Romanticism,
Transcendentalism
 1828-1865

The Romantic Period
(Also known as:
TheAmerican Renaissance)
 The Age of Transcendentalism 18651900


3. Realism, Naturalism


The Realistic Period 1900-1914



The Naturalistic Period (extreme realism)



1914-1939 1920s 1920s, 1930s:
American Modernist Period:
Jazz Age,
Harlem Renaissance
The "Lost Generation"


1939-present 1950s 1960s, 1970s
The Contemporary Period:
 The Beat generation
 American Literature recognizes works

of:
African-American Writers
Native American Writers
Asian-American Writers


Colonial Period
 Periods of Am. Literature vary a lot
 It´s impossible to give exact dates
 The first literature started to

appear after
founding of the first settlement at

Jamestown in 1607
 It continuoud till the outbreak of the
Revolution


Literary genres:
 Historical writings
 Religious themes –

sermons (kázání)
tracts

Writers:
Anne Bradstreet (poet)
Benjamin Franklin (The Way to Wealth)
William Bradford


The Revolutionary Age
 The greatest documents of American

history were authored:
 Thomas Paine (Common Sense – he
urged independence)
 The Declaration of Independence
(Thomas Jefferson - 1776)
 The Constitution

(1789 - ratified)

The Early National Period
 Beginnings of true Am. Literature
 The writers wrote in th English style but

the settings, themes and characters were
authentically American


 Washington Irving – he wrote about Am.

Life, biography of G. Washington
 James Fenimore Cooper – The Last of the

Mohicans
 Edgar Allan Poe


E.A.Poe (1809-1849)
 son of a poor actress (drastic death)
 his father alcoholic
 He was taken by his guardian Mr. Allan
 Studied West Point – kicked out
 Marriage with 13 year-old cousin
 She died of TB ten years later – despair,

grief was reflected in his works
 1849 found delirious in a steet

 The Raven (poem) -

a tired, unhappy
student asks if he ever meets his love
again
 His doubts are underlined by the raven´s
repetition „nevermore“,
symbol of doubts and longing


 The Golden Bug
 The Pit and the Pendulum
 The Black Cat
 The Murders in the Rue Morgue
 The Fall of the House of Usher


His work:
 1. realism: detective stories – logical,
brilliant, rational
 2. romanticism – irrationalism, mystery,
violence, criminality, death, passion
Perverse, vulgar, grotesque style.


Transcendentalism
 American reflection of European

romanticism
 Philosophical movement



The transcendal philosophy was based
on:

1.

Free will
Humanity
Intuition
Individual conscience
It glories nature

2.
3.
4.
5.


 All transcendentalists were isolated people
 They lived in „Utopian Community“ –

Brookfarm near Boston
 The individual can transcend the world

and discover union with God and Ideal

Main representatives:
 Ralph Waldo Thoreau
 Henry David Thoreau


Other Romantic Writers
 Herman Melville – symbolist (Moby-Dick)
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
the main theme –sin
Hester has te wear letter A – means adulteress

 Walt Whitman (poet)
 Emily Dickinson (poet)


Realistic Period
 After Civil War:
 Social injustice – first millionaires appear

(Rockefeller)
 discoveries in science (railway, telegraph
cable, telephone,…)
 Growth of education
 Twain called this period „gilded age“


Realism
 Action against romanticism
 Main literary form – novel
 Authors accuse romanticism of falsehood

 They describe common things, common

places, everyday life


Mark Twain
 His real name: Samuel Langorne Clemens
 He spent his childhood on the Mississippi

river
 Workedon a steamboat on the Mississippi
 Travelled a lot
 He recollects his childhood in his books


 The Innocents Abroad
 The Gilded Age
 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
 The Advedntures of Huckleberry Finn

Tom likes danger, he´s always able to
avoid problems, Huck represents social
conscience, he´s sensitive to everything
around him


Naturalism
 Derived from the word nature (interest in

nature)

 It has its origin in France – Zola
 Prople are influenced by environmental
forces (outside us) and inner drives (inside
us) – peole can ´t control them
 The main drives of characters: hunger,
fear, sex, …


 Their writings are often cruel and tragic.
 Stephen Crane
 Jack London (Tjhe Call of the Wild)
 Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy)
 Upton Sinclair (The Jungle)