The Eight Periods of American Literature

• Late 1500s-1620 Native American & Age of Exploration

• 1620-1720 The Puritan Age• 1720-1820 The Age of Enlightenment• 1820-1865 The Romantic Age• 1865-1895 The Age of Realism• 1895-1920 The Age of Naturalism• 1920-1945 The Age of Disillusionment• 1945-Present The Age of Anxiety

Native American Literature

• Primarily oral-– Passed down from generation to generation through

storytelling and performance• Includes myths to explain creation and tales of

heroes and tricksters• Originally over 200 distinct groups and 500

languages• Collected in early 1900s by anthropologists

(study human culture and growth over time)• (Ever play telephone?)

Emphasis in N.A. Literature

• Nature is “alive and aware”• Kinship with animals, plants, heavenly

bodies, the land, and the elements• Humans and non-humans part of a sacred

whole• Humans do NOT have control over nature

– must act to maintain a right relationship with nature

Trickster Tales

• Mythic folk tales

• Often involved a coyote or fox. Why?

• Use animals or humans who engage in deceit, violence, and magic

• Explains features of the world

First Explorers

• European’s traveled for– Adventure and recognition– To Find great riches

• Had been to India and China• Looking for Trade• Slave Trade began with Portuguese in 1400’s

– To find land-commissioned for their country– To avoid religious persecution– To spread Christianity

Explorers and Slavery

• Travel to East Indies brought first African slaves• Africans with most Spanish and Portuguese

Explorers• Indians were to vulnerable to European diseases • English in Jamestown brought first African

Indentured servants in 1600’s– By 1640, first American-built slave ship

First Explorers

• Written Accounts-Historical & Personal – Christopher Columbus- for Spain– Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

-Spanish to Florida– William Bradford-Plymouth, MA– John Smith -VA– Olaudah Equiano-slave narrative

Historical Narratives

• Audience/Point of View

• Details

• Diction

• Author’s Purpose

• Primary and Secondary Sources

Puritan Literature

• Devotional in nature• Non-Fiction• Sermons, essays, speeches,

prayers, instructional; minimal poetry

• Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards

Puritan Beliefs• Predestination-an unfolding of God’s will• Elect-very few are saved and will go to

Heaven – Knowledge of salvation from religious

conversion • Original Sin-human beings are inherently

evil– Repentance (showing regret) depended on

grace of God– Sin could never be completely erased-guilt

and remorse were signs of grace

Puritan Beliefs

• Divine Providence-belief God intervenes in daily life

• Hard Work-a life devoted to service and duty– Christian Commonwealth-each person

puts the good of the group ahead of personal concerns

– Education- primary way to fight atheism and instill the value of hard work

Puritan Beliefs

• Theocracy-the Bible was the supreme authority on Earth –including government

• Preoccupied with punishing and wiping out sinfulness even in other Christians – believed in witches as instrument of the

devil– Intolerant of other viewpoints – Execution– Excommunication

Puritan Beliefs

• Rules of morality were severe and strict– No play on Sundays– Relations between the sexes scrutinized– Adultery, theft- punishable by death– Blasphemy and disrespect to one’s elders

led to public whipping; the pillory on the gallows

Enlightenment

• Faith in natural goodness-born without sin

• Helping others

• Possible to improve oneself-birth, economy, religion, politics

Enlightenment

• Caused Writers to search into all aspects of the world

• Interested in the classics as well as the Bible

• Optimism

• Sense of personal responsibility for success

Romanticism

• Writing celebrated nature rather than civilization• Nature is beautiful, strange, and mysterious• Romantics valued imagination/emotion over

rationality and reason• Emotion and Creativity more important in

individual than reason• Irrational depths of human nature explored• Human potential for social growth

Romantics: Friends to the Transcendentalists

• Transcendentalism: literary, philosophical, spiritual movement during the Romantic Period (transcend: to move beyond or across)

• Perceived truth through intuition-a spiritual reality which goes beyond the empirical and scientific

• Oversoul-universal soul shared by God, humanity and nature. Since humanity shares a soul with God and nature-man intuitively knows things about them

• Nature worlds are within our inner worlds-all is symbolic of the spirit

Romantic and Transcendentalist Writers

• Washington Irving

• Edgar Allen Poe

• Margaret Fuller

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Henry David Thoreau

• Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Realism

• Literature moves away from nature, spirituality, and creativity

• Accurate and detailed portrayal actual life typical to middle and lower class

• Class is important• Ugliness of war, poverty, and resulting sin• Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Ambrose

Bierce, Bret Harte

Naturalism

• A branch of Realism

• Writers focused on how natural environment and instinct influence human behavior

• Fate of humans is beyond an individual’s control

• Humans are products of their environments

Disillusionment

• Disillusionment-to become disenchanted or disappointed; to be stripped of an illusion

• Writing mimics confusion of the time• Stream of Consciousness, free verse poetry• Ending left for readers to figure out based on clues in

the novel or short story• Themes implied-reader feels uncertain about outcome• Reflects feelings of loss of innocence because reality

of situation becomes clear• Examples:

Writers during the Age of Disillusionment

• F. Scott Fitzgerald

• William Faulkner

• Ernest Hemingway

The Age of Anxiety

• WWII

• Social changes for women, African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Communist Americans

• J.D. Salinger, James Thurber, E.B. White, W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller