1. American Literary Periods and Their Characteristics

2. Puritan/Colonial Writing 1650-1750 Main Ideas / Focus
Focus on God
A person’s fate is determined by God (predestination)
Man is sinful and corrupt
Success or failure is a sign of God’s favor or disapproval

3. Puritan/Colonial 1650-1750 Writing Style / Types
Sermons, diaries, personal narratives
Moralistic and religious writing
Written in plain style

4. Puritan/Colonial 1650-1750 Effect/Aspects
Instructive
Solemn tone
Reinforces authority of the Bible and church

5. Puritan/Colonial 1650-1750 Examples
Of Plymouth Plantation (Bradford)
“A Narrative of the Captivity” (Rowlandson)
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (Edwards)
Though not written during Puritan times, The Crucible & The Scarlet Letter depict life during the time when Puritan theocracy prevailed

6. Revolutionary/Age of Reason 1750-1800 Main Idea / Focus
Freedom and independence
“American” values
Rationalism – arrive at truth through reason
God created the universe but is “hands-off”

7. Revolutionary/Age of Reason 1750-1800 Writing Style / Types
Political pamphlets
Speeches
Highly ornate style – “big” language
Persuasive writing

8. Revolutionary/Age of Reason 1750-1800 Effect/Aspects
Patriotism grows
National pride
Self-examination

9. Revolutionary/Age of Reason 1750-1800 Examples
“Common Sense” (T. Paine)
“Speech to the Virginia Convention” (P. Henry)
“The Declaration of Independence” (T. Jefferson)
Autobiography (B. Franklin)

10. Romanticism 1800-1860 Main Ideas / Focus
In response to Industrial Revolution and rationalism
Abolish slavery
Move from corrupt civilization and limited rational thought to nature and freedom of imagination
Emphasis on feelings and intuition
NATURE

11. Romanticism 1800-1860 Writing Style / Types
Slave narratives
Poetry
Short stories
Essays

12. Romanticism 1800-1860 Effects/Aspects
Journey into nature
Trust personal experience and power of imagination
Youthful innocence
Sense of adventure into wilderness
Distrustful of “progress”
Poetry is ultimate expression of imagination

13. Romanticism 1800-1860 Examples
“Rip Van Winkle” (W. Irving)
“Thanatopsis” (W.C. Bryant)
Poems of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman

14. American Ren./Transcendentalism 1840-1860 Main Ideas / Focus
Prove that America has great writers
Exploring the dark side of human existence / the human mind
Nature is a doorway to mystical world containing truths
Social improvement
Lyceum mov’t
Public education
Abolish slavery
Women’s rights

15. American Ren./Transcendentalism 1840-1860 Writing Style / Types
Poetry
Short Stories
Novels
“Intellectual”
Explore conflict between good and evil; psychological effect of guilt and sin (Dark Romantics)

16. American Ren./Transcendentalism 1840-1860 Effect/Aspects
Transcendentalists:
Immanuel Kant
True reality is spiritual
Self-reliance and individualism
Anti-Transcendentalists:
Importance of symbolism
Sin, pain, & evil exist
Humans have a dark side, too

17. American Ren./Transcendentalism 1840-1860 Examples
“Self-Reliance” (Emerson)
Walden (Thoreau)
Poems and short stories from Edgar Allen Poe
Poems and essays of Emerson & Thoreau
Moby Dick (Melville)

18. Realism (Civil War & Postwar Period) 1860-1900 Main Ideas / Focus
Civil War brings demand for a "truer" type of literature that does not idealize people or places but accurately portrays real life
Battlefield photography – reality of life in pictures

19. Realism (Civil War & Postwar Period) 1850-1900 Writing Style / Types
Novels and short stories with objective narrators
Realistic characters
Does not tell reader how to interpret story
Focus on social issues – writing about slavery, war, women’s issues, etc.

20. Realism (Civil War & Postwar Period) 1850-1900 Effect/Aspects
Social realism: aims to change a specific social problem
Aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it

21. Realism (Civil War & Postwar Period) 1850-1900 Examples
Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Truth)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe)
Little Women (Alcott)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (followed by Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) (Twain)
The Red Badge of Courage (Crane)

22. The Moderns 1900-1950 Historical Context
Charles Darwin (survival of the fittest)
Karl Marx (money and class structure control a nation)
Technological “progress”
Rise of the youth culture
WWI and WWII
Harlem Renaissance

23. The Moderns 1900-1950 Writing Style / Types
Novels / Plays
Poetry (a great resurgence after deaths of Whitman & Dickinson)
Highly experimental (writers seek a unique style)
Generally a plain style
Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness
Disillusioned but honorable & courageous hero figures

24. The Moderns 1900-1950 Effect/Aspect
Pursue and challenge the promise of the American Dream
Faith in progress
Confidence in the triumph / success of the individual
Optimistic
End of innocence
Disillusionment with and distrust of tradition

25. The Moderns 1900-1950 Examples The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
Chicago Poems (Sandburg)
The Waste Land (Eliot)
A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway)
The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
Robert Frost publishes his first poetry collection