American Literature.pptx

7/30/2019 American Literature.pptx

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LECTURE # 1


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American Literature


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AMERICAN LITERATURE

Literature that was written in America and

its native areas.

With the development of American society,

questions were raised on the actual cultureand writings of American literature.

With the advent of Post-War period,

American voices gained pace and Literature

started flourishing.


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American Literature in Different Eras


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AMERICAN LITERATUREFROMSTARTTO

PRESENT

ColonialismBeginnings to 1800

Native Americans used their myths to explain the

creation of the world and humankinds relationships

with each other or to nature.

Puritans (1600s-1800s) were a group persecuted

for religious beliefs in England who came to

America for religious freedom and wrote on and

about Biblical models.

Rationalists believed that humans could arrive at

truth by using reason.


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American Romanticism1800-1860:-

This literary period valued feeling and intuition over reason. Itwas characterized by heroes and journeys. Most of thesesymbolic trips were moving away from the evil of civilization andthe bonds of rational thought to the purity of nature and thefreedom of the imagination. They preferred youthful innocence,

individual freedom, the wisdom of the past, fascination with thesupernatural, inspiration of folk culture, and poetry as the highestexpression of creativity. ,The Fireside poets (the Boston poetsof Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes sometimes referredto as Schoolroom Poets ) were extremely popular, oftenmemorized, and usually recited. Their subject matter (love,patriotism, nature, family, God) comforted their audiences but did

not challenge them to be innovative. Washington Irvings The Sketch Book(Rip Van Winkle & The

Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

William Cullen Bryants Than-atopsis.


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American Renaissance-1840-1860

This literary rebirth began with the question, Will there ever be agreater writer than Shakespeare?

Transcendentalism was a belief of finding religion in nature.Everything was a reflection of the divine soul according toEmerson and Thoreau.

Gothic ideals looked at the dark side of human nature usingspooky (ghostly) settings, mysterious illnesses, strange sounds,and live burials (in works of Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne) tomake people face their feelings.

Ralph Waldo Emersons Nature and Self-Reliance.

Henry David Thoreaus Walden, or Life in the Woods; Resistanceto Civil Government

Poes The Fall of House of Usher, The Raven, The PurloinedLetter, The Tell-Tale Heart, &The Cask of Amontillado;founder of modern detective story.

Nathaniel Hawthornes The Ministers Black Veil; Twice-ToldTales; The Scarlet Letter


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A New American Poetry

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) &

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

These two people were both great innovators of a new way of

writing but were total opposites. Whitman was a spokesmanfor progress, and Dickinson wrote privately of her

spiritual metaphors in nature.

Whitmans I Hear America Singing and Song of Myself

Dickinsons The Poems of E.D; Success Is Counted

Sweetest; Because I Could Not Stop for Death; I Heard a

Fly Buzz-When I Died.


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Realism1850-1900

Civil War writing favored realistic characters and settings over those thatwere contrived. Seeing the horrors of war made Whitman more optimisticbecause heroes overcame so much suffering but make Melville morepessimistic because of the pain he witnessed.

Realism sought to portray ordinary life in non-romantic settings, and to

explain why people act the way they do. Regionalism (or local color writing) focused on a small geographical

area and tried to accurately reproduce the speech and manners of thatregion.

Naturalism was a 19th c. literary movement that wanted to show lifeexactly as it is, with people behaving like animals who follow natural lawsof the universe and sometimes are not able to control their own

destinies. Psychological fiction occurs inside a characters mind while the

universe is indifferent.

Mark Twains Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,andAdventures of Tom Sawyer


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Moderns-1900-1950

Writers boldly experimented with new styles and rejected traditional themes. AfterWorld War I, disillusionment abounded, and new moral codes tempted some.

Some wrote of the American dream, which showed this country as a land ofpromise, a place for optimists, and a world for the independent individualist.(Emerson defined its elements most clearly). Rather than most writers coming fromNew England, many now came from the South, the Midwest, or the West. Marxism

and Freuds psychoanalysis drew many away from the old values. Stream ofconsciousness writing used no chronology but followed a characters randomthoughts wherever they went. The Jazz Age, of the Roaring 20s, (TheRoaringTwenties is a term sometimes used to refer to the 1920s, characterizing thedecade's distinctive cultural edge in New York City, Paris, Berlin, London and manyother major cities during a period of sustained economic prosperity. Frenchspeakers called it the "annes folles" ("Crazy Years"),emphasizing the era's social,artistic, and cultural dynamism. "Normalcy" returned to politics in the wake ofhyper-emotional patriotism during World War I) found people seeking pleasure to

avoid the restraints of the Prohibition. Expatriates left America in search of graceand luxury abroad. Some rejected the ideal American hero for one who is flawedbut has honor and courage. Symbolists and Imagists dominated new poetry.


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E. A. Robinson and Robert Frost from New England and Edgar LeeMasters from the Midwest wrote traditional verse forms. The *HarlemRenaissance(1920s mid 1930s) was a rebirth of African-Americanart, music, and literature focused mainly in the Harlem section of NewYork City. It used ghetto (slum area) speech and the rhythms of jazz andblues to enhance poetry. As a belief in self-reliance persisted, EdenicAmerican (African/ African American ability to identify with their gods)

writers in the Modernist era kept asking questions about the meaningand purpose of human existence.

Robert Frosts Mountain Interval(The Road Not Taken and Birches)

F. Scott FitzgeraldsThe Great Gatsbyand Tender Is the Night

John Steinbecks Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath

E. Hemingways; A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old

Man& the Sea T. S. Eliots The Waste Land; The Hollow Men;The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock

*Zora Neale HurstsonsDust Tracks on a Road

*Langston Hughes The Weary Bluesand Harlem


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Contemporary1950-Present

Gallows humor (by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Joseph Heller, and TerrySouthern) laughed at lifes tragic ironies, acknowledging the absurd andthe grotesque. Postwar science and technology gave economic growthbut left individuals lost in a fast-paced, impersonal world.

Post-modern work allows for multiple meanings and worlds,

nontraditional forms, and comments upon itself.It has culturaldiversity, blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction, and relied onthe past. New journalism or (Literary Journalism) has added personaland fictional elements to nonfiction, making it more popular with readers.Contemporary poetry became more personal and accessible and morechallenging of convention. The Beat poets, nonconformist (who do notconform to the conventional practices) new bohemians or hippies (esp. in1960s A person of unconventional appearance, typically having long hair

and wearing beads...) cried out against conformity of the 1950s. Allen Ginsbergs Howland Robert Lowells Life Studies were about

personal experiences regarding it.


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The Confessional School of Poets, friends or (like SylviaPlath, Anne Sexton and John Berryman) wrote brutal poemsabout their private lives. Oral performance at poetry indicatesa fresh voice and a new attitude of poetry with a democraticquality, but the same familiar themes, seeking spiritual

revelations in ordinary life. Anne Sextons The Bells , Alice Walkers The Color Purple

and In Search of Our Mothers Gardens , Amy Tans TheRules of the Game; The Joy Luck, James Baldwins Go Tell Iton the Mountain,Sylvia Plaths Mirror.

AMERICAN DRAMA

Basic elements are exposition, characters, and conflict. Asuccess requires collaboration between the playwright, theproducer, the director, the actors, and the audience.


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Theater seems to dramatize accepted attitudes and valuesbecause it is a social art. Eugene ONeill (1888-1953) isAmericas most important playwright with plays like The GreatGod Brown, Days Without End, and Strange Interlude. Hewon the Nobel Prize in literature in 1936.

European playwrights Henrik Ibsen from Norway, AugustStrindberg from Sweden, and Anton Chekhov from Russiagreatly influenced American drama by shifting dramatic actionto intense inner emotional concerns of common life. This iscalled slice-of-life dramatic technique.

We see a realistic play through a fourth wall that has beenremoved from real life so that we can see into the characters

lives. Arthur Miller (1915- ) is a playwright of social conscience. He

uses characters psychological makeup, along with social,philosophical, and economic atmosphere of their times towork his magic. He wrote The Death of a Salesman and TheCrucible.


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Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) wrote realistic drama

mixed with imaginative, poetic sensibility in his plays

The Glass Menagerie, and A Streetcar Named Desire

and has been called the playwright of our souls. His

characters are often lost women dealing with their ownsocial tensions and problems.

The Theater of the Absurd or Expressionist drama,

does not rely on time order but presents action in a

fragmented way. It is a revolt against realism.

Corresponding to stream-of-consciousness writing, it isexpressive and experimental. Samuel Becketts Waitng

for Godot, Eugene Ionescos The Bald Soprano,and

Edward Albees Whos Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? are

examples.


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UNIQUESTYLE

War of 1812(fought b/w America and British empire)

gave rise to new American literary style:

Humourand fantasy: Irvings Sleepy Hollow and

Rip Van Winkle

Human psychology: e.g., Edgar Allen Poes The Pit

and the Pendulum, The House of Usher.

Nature: Ralph Waldo Emersons essays responding

to natural world.


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AMERICAN POETRY(19THCENTURY)

Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass using free verse.

Robert Frost

Wallace Stevens Emily Dickinson

Ezra Pound

William Carlos Williams


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REALISM

Slavery, racism, local language.

Social turmoil, discrimination.

Human pschye.As we find in Mark Twains The Huckleberry Finn,

Adventures of Tom Sawyer.


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20THCENTURYLITERATURE THEMES

Experimentation continued with new literary themes

of 20th century.

Common man,

Political instability, The hollowness of modern man,

The lose of faith,

Restlessness,

Defiant of mood.


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T.S. Eliots The Waste Land: haunted and

fragmented images of 20th century like Wilfred

Owendepiction of horror/ destruction of war/

effects of war.

F. Scott. Fitzgerald (18961940) capture the

restless, pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the

1920s. He expressed poignantly the youth's golden

dreams to dissolve in failure and disappointment.


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ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY

American writer (July 21, 1899July 2, 1961).

Won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Pulitzer Prize won in 1953.

Published seven novels, six short stories and two non fictionnovels.

He is considered to be greatest classics of American Literature.

Became spokesperson of World War-I.


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LISTOFWORKS

Indian Camp(1926)

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1935) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

The Old Man and the Sea (1951)

A Moveable Feast(1964)

True at First Light(1999)


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THEMES

According to Scholar Frederic Svoboda( main

theme is Love, War, Wilderness and Loss, all of

which are strongly evident in the body ofwork.

Theme of Death and destruction.

Loss of relationships as in Farewell to Arms.


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A FAREWELLTO ARMS

Written in 1929

Background is set in Italian Campaign(wars fought

b/w 1915-1918)

Title is taken from 16

th

century dramatist GeorgePeele

Focuses on romance of Frederick Henry and a

nurse called Catherine

Autobiographical novel


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AUTOBIOGRAPHICALNOVEL

Novel based on real incidents of writers life

Hemingway himself was Henry

Catherine Barkley, nurse was Agnes von Kurowsky Kitty Cannel was replaced by Sara Ferguson


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THEMESIN FAREWELLTO ARMS

War (WW I)

Destruction

Loss of love/relationships Loss of faith on religion (lost generation)

Love for women


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SYMBOLS/IMAGERY

Rain

Water

Roads

Flood River

Sun/moon

Mountains


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SETTINGS

Italy/Switzerland

Intermingling of seasons

Mountains

River side

Road side

Hospitals


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LANGUAGE/STYLE

Simple

Conversational

Direct

Lucid Romantic

Love

Natural


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OUTLINEOFSTORY

A Farewell to Arms focuses on a romance between

Henry and a British nurse, Catherine Barkley,

against the backdrop of World War I,

cynical(pessimistic) soldiers, fighting and the

displacement of populations.

The publication of Hemingway's novel, cemented

his stature as a modern American writer became

his first best-seller.


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SUGGESTED READINGS:

Bloom, Harold. Ed. Modern Critical Views: William

Faulkner (Modern Critical Views Series). New York:

Chelsea House, 1986

Bradbury, M. Modern American Novel, 1983

Brown, Julie. Ed.American Women Short Story

Writers: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York:

Garland Pub, 1995

Chase, R. The American Novel and its Traditions,

1958

Gray, R. American Fiction: New Readings, 1983

Hardwick, Elizabeth. Herman Melville. Viking

Books: 2000

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