1. American Literature Time Periods

2. What is a Literary Time Period?
A literary time period is another way to group authors and texts together. The writing from a certain time period tends to share certain characteristics.
What is a Literary Time Period?

3. Each time-period tends to REACT TO the previous time period!
The next time period will often reject some part of the previous time period…
BUT it also tends to keep some of the characteristics, too!
IMPORTANT!

4. Early America featuring Puritanism + the Enlightenment Eras Beginnings - 1800

5. “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”
Main concern was living a Christian life and becoming one of the “elect.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Concerned with the perfection of the human being through reason/science
Did not reject, but questioned the heavy reliance on spirituality of the Puritans
The thinking of this period gave us our Constitution!

6. Romantics Era Transcendentalists (Light Side) Gothics (Dark Side) Fireside Poets 1800-1850

7. Two divisions of Romanticism were:
Romantics rejected the scientific and rational emphasis of the previous time period.
They were more interested in emotion, nature as a reflection of the divine, etc.
Two divisions of Romanticism were:
Transcendentalism, which sought to find truth in beauty, specifically nature
Gothic Romance, which was more concerned with the SUPER natural

8. Important romantic techniques included imagery, figurative language, and symbol.
Not surprisingly, the best romantic writers were often poets.

9. Civil War Era
The Southern states had become increasingly isolated from the rest of the country because of their support of slavery and their exclusion from the industrial boom in the North. Tensions between the North and South grew, and the end of the Union – or a war to preserve it --- hovered on the horizon.
Writers responded to the issues of slavery, regional conflict, and eventually the Civil War. Many moved from Romanticism to a realistic portrayal of the problems confronting the nation.

10. Regionalism + Realism Era (Local Color) 1880-1910

11. After the Civil War, writers rejected the idealized version of life.
Romantic writers offered and concentrated on getting the facts right.
Many writers of this time period started their careers as journalists
Techniques the Realists used included dialect and “local color”

12. Modernism Women’s Rights The Imagists The Lost Generation Harlem Renaissance 1910-1960

13. Affected by the horrors of WWI (the first “modern” war)
Modern writers were realists, but rejected traditional literary forms and techniques.
Some new/important techniques the Modernists used were stream of consciousness, internal conflicts, points- of-view, the anti-hero, and open-ended endings that were non-moralistic.

14. Some of the greatest American writers wrote during this time period
Many in a group called “The Lost Generation” – or the “Wastelanders”:
>Hemingway >Stein >Fitzgerald >Steinbeck> Faulkner
Factory owners in the North began hiring African Americans, and many mistreated blacks fled from the South and settled in Harlem, NY.
The Harlem Renaissance is the coming of age of the African American culture, flowering the community’s creativity found in music, poetry, + folklore.

15. Post- Modernism 1960s-present

16. Post-modern writers retained many of the ideas and techniques of the moderns. However, after the atomic bomb, everything seemed pointless to many of these writers.
Their writing reflected that.