ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD
Two phases: The Age of Faith from 1607 until 1750
and The Age of Reason from 1750 until 1800
I. The Age of Faith (1607-1750)
Historical Context
- Puritans and Pilgrims
- Separated from the Anglican church of England
- Aligned with a religion that dominated their lives and writings
- Work ethic - belief in hard work and simple, no-frills living
Genre/Style
- Sermons, diaries, personal narratives, slave narratives
- Instructive
- Plain style
Major Writers
- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
First published American poet
"To My Dear and Loving Husband"
"Upon the Burning of Our House”
- Edward Taylor (1645-1729)
Minister considered the finest Puritan poet
"Huswifery"
"Make me, O Lord, Thy spinning wheel complete"
- Jonathan Edwards
Minister
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
View of God as punitive and distant and view of man as basically evil
- John Smith (1580-1631)
General History of Virginia
Pocahontas legend
Adventurer and writer
II. The Age of Reason (1750-1800)
Historical context
- American Revolution; growth of patriotism
- Development of American character/democracy
- Use of reason as opposed to faith alone
Genre/Style
- Political pamphlets, essays, travel writing, speeches, documents
- Instructive in values; highly ornate writing style
Major Writers
- Ben Franklin
Autobiography and Poor Richard's Almanac
Symbol of success gained by hard work and common sense:
"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
"God helps them that help themselves."
"Haste makes waste."
- Thomas Jefferson
Declaration of Independence
Considered the finest writer of the era
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal…"
- Thomas Paine
Pamphleteer
"The American Crisis" helped propel colonies into war
Remains a model of effective propaganda:
"These are the times that try men's souls."
ROMANTICISM (1800-1855)
Historical context
- Expansion of book publishing, magazines, newspapers
- Industrial Revolution
- Abolitionist movement
Genre/Style
- Short stories, novels, poetry
- Imagination over reason; intuition over fact
- Focused on the fantastic of human experience
- Writing that can be interpreted two ways: surface and in depth
- Focus on inner feelings
- Gothic literature (sub-genre of Romanticism)
Use of the supernatural
Characters with both evil and good characteristics
Dark landscapes; depressed characters
Major Writers
- Washington Irving (1789-1851)
First famous American writer; called "Father of American Lit"
Wrote short stories, travel books, satires
"Legend of Sleepy Hollow" terrified generations of children
"Rip Van Winkle" and the antihero
"Devil and Tom Walker": an encounter-with-the-devil tale
- Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
Created the modern short story and detective story
Short stories such as "Fall of the House of Usher," "Pit and the Pendulum,"
Inspired future detective/horror stories Poems: "The Raven," "Bells, "Annabel Lee" Attacked two long-standing conventions: a poem has to be long, and a poem must teach a lesson
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Wrote about sin and guilt; consequences of pride, selfishness
The Scarlet Letter
Short stories ("The Minister's Black Veil")
Anti-transcendentalist
- Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Ranked as one of America's top novelists, but recognized by few in his own time
Anti-transcendentalist
Moby Dick: did not sell – only his friend Hawthorne liked it, now considered America's greatest prose epic
- William Cullen Bryant
- "Fireside Poets"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oliver Wendell Holmes
James Russell Lowell
John Greenleaf Whittier
Transcendentalism (1840 - 1855)
Stressed individualism, intuition, nature, self-reliance
Genre/Style
Essays, journals, speeches, poetry
Major Writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
- Established the philosophy of individualism:
- Now an idea deeply embedded in American culture
- "Nature"
- "Self-Reliance"
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
- Resisted materialism; chose simplicity, individualism
- "Civil Disobedience": a primer for nonviolent protest
- Lived on Walden Pond for two-plus years
- Walden – a metaphorical guidebook for life, showing how to live wisely in
a world designed to make wise living impossible
New Poetic Forms
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
- Rejected conventional themes, forms, subjects
- Used long lines to capture the rhythm of natural speech, free verse
- Use everyday vocabularyin free verse
- "Song of Myself," "I Hear America Singing," "O Captain My Captain"
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
- Her poetry broke with convention: did not “look right,” did not rhyme
- In her time, her poetry considered too bold, too radical
- Concrete imagery, forceful language, unique style
- Wrote 1775 poems, published only seven in her life
- "Because I could not stop for Death--"
“My life closed twice before its close—"
“The Soul selects her own Society—"
REALISM (1865-1915)
Historical context
- Civil War brings demand for a "truer" literature that does not idealize people or places
- People in society became defined by "class" as a result of materialism
- Reflection of ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and Marx (how money and class
structure control a nation)
Genre/Style
- Realism: a reaction against romanticism
- Focus on lives of ordinary people; rejected heroic and adventurous
- Anti-materialism rejected the new "class" system
- View of nature as a powerful and indifferent force beyond man's control
- Naturalism (sub-genre of Realism)
Like Realism but a darker view of the world
The universe is unpredictable; fate is determined by chance; free will is an illusion
Characters' lives are shaped by forces they can't understand or control
Novels, short stories
Often aims to change a specific social problem
Dominant themes: survival, fate, violence, nature as an indifferent force
Major Writers
The Civil War (1855-1865)
- Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
The most famous woman of her day
Uncle Tom's Cabin: most influential book of the nineteenth century
First American book to sell one million copies
One of the most effective documents of propaganda
Was said to have helped fuel the Civil War - Frederick Douglas (1817-1895)
An escaped slave; one of the most effective orators of his day
Influential newspaper writer; militant abolitionist; diplomat
Autobiography an instant and enduring classic of courage
The Frontier (1865-1915)
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens widely thought to be the greatest American humorist
Used vernacular, exaggeration, deadpan narrator to create humor
“Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Adventures of HuckleberryFinn Life on the Mississippi (a memoir)
- Stephen Crane (1871-1900) (Naturalist)
Crane attacked patriotism, individualism, organized religion; confronted the meaninglessness of the world; writing known for its images and symbolism
Red Badge of Courage (most famous work; set in Civil War)
“The Open Boat” (man vs. Nature's indifference)
“An Episode of War” (short story)
- Jack London
Pushed Naturalism to its limits
Call of the Wild (tame dog forced to revert to his original primitive state)
“To Build a Fire” (survival of the fittest)
The Local Colorists (1865-1930)
Regional writers tried to capture the essence of a particular area, or its "local color"
- Bret Harte (1836-1902)
Old West
“Outcasts of Poker Flat” - Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
Louisiana bayou
The Awakening - Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Life on the Nebraska prairie
Pulitzer Prize winner
New Poetic Forms
- Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Edgar Lee Masters
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
MODERNISM (1915-1945)
Historical context
- Overwhelming technological changes
- World War I first war of mass destruction
- Grief over loss of past; fear of eroding traditions
- Rise of youth culture
Genre/Style
- Dominant mood: alienation/disconnection
- Writers see to create a unique style
- Writing highly experimental: use of fragments, stream of consciousness, interior dialogue
Major Writers
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Writing style: concise, direct, spare, objective, precise, rhythmic
Major works include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea
Larger than life hero; big game hunter; sport fisherman; headliner
Won Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
The Great Gatsby (ironic and tragic treatment of the American success myth)
His work and life illustrate American culture of the 1920's
- William Faulkner (1897-1962)
As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury (his masterpiece)
The most original writer of his time
Primary subject was his heritage: Southern memory, reality, myth
- John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men and The Pearl
Belief in the need for social justice; hope people learn from the suffering of others
Grapes of Wrath (combined naturalism and symbolism to express outrage and compassion for the plight of the farmers displaced by the Depression and Dustbowl)
Sherwood Anderson
Katherine Anne Porter
Eudora Welty
Thornton Wilder
CONTEMPORARY TIMES (1945-present)
Historical context
- Media saturated culture
- People observe life as media presents it rather than experiencing life directly
- Insistence that values are not permanent but only "local" or "historical"
- Media culture interprets values
- Post WWII prosperity
- People now in a new century, a new millennium
- Social protest
Genre/Style
- Lines of reality blurred; mix of fantasy and nonfiction
- No heroes/anti-heroes
- Concern with individual in isolation
- Detached, unemotional, usually humorless
- Emergence of ethnic and women writers
Major Writers
- Beat writers (pre-hippie, highly intellectual, anti-tradition)
- Countered the hidden despair of the 50's with wildly exuberant language/behavior
- Confessional poets: Used anguish of own lives to explore America's hidden despair
- J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, symbol for a generation of disaffected youth
- Flannery O'Conner (Southern Gothic)
- James Thurber (America's most popular humorist in 30's and 40's)
- Multicultural Literature
Jewish American literature (50's and 60's)
African American literature (black militancy/civil rights movement in 50's 60's) Native American Latino-American literature
Asian-American literature - New Frontiers
John Updike and Truman Capote - Arthur Miller's The Crucible
