Module 4 | Lesson 1 - The Bluest Eye by Toni
Morrison ( American Literature)
AMERICAN LITERATURE
American literature does not easily lend itself to
classifica3on by 3me period. Given the size of the
United States and its varied popula3on, there are
o>en several literary movements happening at the
same 3me. However, this hasn't stopped literary
scholars from making an aDempt. Here are some of
the most commonly agreed upon periods of
American literature from the colonial period to the
present.
The Colonial Period (1607–1775)
This period encompasses the founding of
Jamestown up to a decade before the Revolu3onary
War. The majority of wri3ngs were historical,
prac3cal, or religious in nature. Some writers not to
miss from this period include Phillis Wheatley,
CoDon Mather, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet,
and John Winthrop. The first account of an enslaved
African person, "A Narra3ve of the Uncommon
Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton
Hammon, a Negro Man," was published during this
period, in 1760 Boston.
The RevoluJonary Age (1765–1790)
Beginning a decade before the Revolu3onary War
and ending about 25 years later, this period includes
the wri3ngs of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine,
James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. This is
arguably the richest period of poli3cal wri3ng since
classical an3quity. Important works include the
“Declara3on of Independence,” "The Federalist
Papers," and the poetry of Joel Barlow and Philip
Freneau.
The Early NaJonal Period (1775–1828)
This era in American literature is responsible for
notable first works, such as the first American
comedy wriDen for the stage—"The Contrast" by
Royall Tyler, wriDen in 1787—and the first American
Novel—"The Power of Sympathy" by William Hill,
wriDen in 1789. Washington Irving, James Fenimore
Cooper, and Charles Brockden Brown are credited
with crea3ng dis3nctly American fic3on, while Edgar
Allan Poe and William Cullen Bryant began wri3ng
poetry that was markedly different from that of the
English tradi3on.
The American Renaissance (1828–1865)
Also known as the Roman3c Period in America and
the Age of Transcendentalism, this period is
commonly accepted to be the greatest of American
literature. Major writers include Walt Whitman,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman
Melville. Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller are
credited with shaping the literature and ideals of
many later writers. Other major contribu3ons
include the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
and the short stories of Melville, Poe, Hawthorne,
and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Addi3onally, this era is
the inaugura3on point of American literary cri3cism,
lead by Poe, James Russell Lowell, and William
Gilmore Simms. The years 1853 and 1859 brought
the first novels wriDen by African American authors,
both male and female: "Clotel," by William Wells
Brown and "Our Nig," by Harriet E. Wilson.
The RealisJc Period (1865–1900)
As a result of the American Civil War, Reconstruc3on
and the age of industrialism, American ideals and
self-awareness changed in profound ways, and
American literature responded. Certain roman3c
no3ons of the American Renaissance were replaced
by realis3c descrip3ons of American life, such as
those represented in the works of William Dean
Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain. This period
also gave rise to regional wri3ng, such as the works
of Sarah Orne JeweD, Kate Chopin, Bret Harte, Mary
Wilkins Freeman, and George W. Cable. In addi3on
to Walt Whitman, another master poet, Emily
Dickinson, appeared at this 3me.
The Naturalist Period (1900–1914)
This rela3vely short period is defined by its
insistence on recrea3ng life as life really is, even
more so than the realists had been doing in the
decades before. American Naturalist writers such as
Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London
created some of the most powerfully raw novels in
American literary history. Their characters are
vic3ms who fall prey to their own base ins3ncts and
to economic and sociological factors. Edith Wharton
wrote some of her most beloved classics, such as
"The Custom of the Country" (1913), "Ethan Frome"
(1911), and "The House of Mirth" (1905) during this
3me period.
The Modern Period (1914–1939)
A>er the American Renaissance, the Modern Period
is the second most influen3al and ar3s3cally rich age
of American wri3ng. Its major writers include such
powerhouse poets as E.E. Cummings, Robert Frost,
Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne
Moore, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot,
Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Novelists and other prose writers of the 3me include
Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, Edith Wharton, F.
ScoD Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway,
William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Sinclair Lewis,
Thomas Wolfe, and Sherwood Anderson. The
Modern Period contains within it certain major
movements including the Jazz Age, the Harlem
Renaissance, and the Lost Genera3on. Many of
these writers were influenced by World War I and
the disillusionment that followed, especially the
expatriates of the Lost Genera3on. Furthermore, the
Great Depression and the New Deal resulted in some
of America’s greatest social issue wri3ng, such as the
novels of Faulkner and Steinbeck, and the drama of
Eugene O’Neill.
The Beat GeneraJon (1944–1962)
Beat writers, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen
Ginsberg, were devoted to an3-tradi3onal
literature, in poetry and prose, and an3-
establishment poli3cs. This 3me period saw a rise in
confessional poetry and sexuality in literature, which
resulted in legal challenges and debates over
censorship in America. William S. Burroughs and
Henry Miller are two writers whose works faced
censorship challenges. These two greats, along with
other writers of the 3me, also inspired the
counterculture movements of the next two decades.
The Contemporary Period (1939–Present)
A>er World War II, American literature has become
broad and varied in terms of theme, mode, and
purpose. Currently, there is liDle consensus as to
how to go about classifying the last 80 years into
periods or movements—more 3me must pass,
perhaps, before scholars can make these
determina3ons. That being said, there are a number
of important writers since 1939 whose works may
already be considered “classic” and who are likely to
become canonized. Some of these very established
names are: Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Tan, John Updike,
Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Sylvia Plath, Arthur
Miller, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Joan Didion,
Thomas Pynchon, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee
Williams, Philip Roth, Sandra Cisneros, Richard
Wright, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, Bernard
Malamud, Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates, Thornton
Wilder, Alice Walker, Edward Albee, Norman Mailer,
John Barth, Maya Angelou, and Robert Penn Warren.
Reference: Burgess, Adam. (2020, August 29). A Brief
Overview of American Literary Periods. Retrieved
from hDps://www.thoughtco.com/american-
literary-periods-741872
TONI MORRISON
Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a
family that possessed an intense love of and
apprecia3on for Black culture. Storytelling, songs,
and folktales were a deeply forma3ve part of her
childhood. She aDended Howard University (B.A.,
1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). A>er
teaching at Texas Southern University for two years,
she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. In 1965
Morrison became a fic3on editor at Random House,
where she worked for a number of years. In 1984 she
began teaching wri3ng at the State University of
New York at Albany, which she le> in 1989 to join the
faculty of Princeton University; she re3red in 2006.
Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a
novel of ini3a3on concerning a vic3mized
adolescent Black girl who is obsessed with white
standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In
1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it
examines (among other issues) the dynamics of
friendship and the expecta3ons for conformity
within the community.
Module 4 | Lesson 2 - A Rose for Emily by William
Faulkner (American Literature)
Core Content: A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Faulkner (1897-1962), who came from an
old southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi.
He joined the Canadian, and later the Bri3sh, Royal
Air Force during the First World War, studied for a
while at the University of Mississippi, and
temporarily worked for a New York bookstore and a
New Orleans newspaper. Except for some trips to
Europe and Asia, and a few brief stays in Hollywood
as a scriptwriter, he worked on his novels and short
stories on a farm in Oxford.
In an aDempt to create a saga of his own, Faulkner
has invented a host of characters typical of the
historical growth and subsequent decadence of the
South. The human drama in Faulkner’s novels is then
built on the model of the actual, historical drama
extending over almost a century and a half. Each
story and each novel contributes to the construc3on
of a whole, which is the imaginary Yoknapatawpha
County and its inhabitants. Their theme is the decay
of the old South, as represented by the Sartoris and
Compson families, and the emergence of ruthless
and brash newcomers, the Snopeses. Theme and
technique – the distor3on of 3me through the use
of the inner monologue are fused par3cularly
successfully in The Sound and the Fury (1929), the
downfall of the Compson family seen through the
minds of several characters. The novel Sanctuary
(1931) is about the degenera3on of Temple Drake, a
young girl from a dis3nguished southern family. Its
sequel, Requiem For A Nun (1951), wriDen partly as
a drama, centered on the courtroom trial of a Negro
woman who had once been a party to Temple
Drake’s debauchery. In Light in August (1932),
prejudice is shown to be most destruc3ve when it is
internalized, as in Joe Christmas, who believes,
though there is no proof of it, that one of his parents
was a Negro. The theme of racial prejudice is
brought up again in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), in
which a young man is rejected by his father and
brother because of his mixed blood. Faulkner’s most
outspoken moral evalua3on of the rela3onship and
the problems between Negroes and whites is to be
found in Intruder In the Dust (1948).
In 1940, Faulkner published the first volume of the
Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet, followed by two
volumes, The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959),
all of them tracing the rise of the insidious Snopes
family to posi3ons of power and wealth in the
community. The Reivers, his last – and most
humorous – work, with great many similari3es to
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, appeared in 1962,
the year of Faulkner’s death.
Faulkner and the Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic is a literary tradi3on that came into
its own in the early twen3eth century. It is rooted in
the Gothic style, which had been popular in
European literature for many centuries. Gothic
writers concocted wild, frightening scenarios in
which mysterious secrets, supernatural occurrences,
and characters’ extreme duress conspired to create
a breathless reading experience. Gothic style
focused on the morbid and grotesque, and the genre
o>en featured certain set pieces and characters:
dra>y castles laced with cobwebs, secret passages,
and frightened, wide-eyed heroines whose
innocence does not go untouched. Although they
borrow the essen3al ingredients of the Gothic,
writers of Southern Gothic fic3on were not
interested in integra3ng elements of the sensa3onal
solely for the sake of crea3ng suspense or 33lla3on.
Writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee
Williams, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty,
Erskine Caldwell, and Carson McCullers were drawn
to the elements of Gothicism for what they revealed
about human psychology and the dark, underlying
mo3ves that were pushed to the fringes of society.
Southern Gothic writers were interested in exploring
the extreme, an3social behaviors that were o>en a
reac3on against a confining code of social conduct.
Southern Gothic o>en hinged on the belief that daily
life and the refined surface of the social order were
fragile and illusory, disguising disturbing reali3es or
twisted psyches. Faulkner, with his dense and
mul3layered prose, tradi3onally stands outside this
group of prac33oners. However, “A Rose for Emily”
reveals the influence that Southern Gothic had on
his wri3ng: this par3cular story has a moody and
forbidding atmosphere; a crumbling old mansion;
and decay, putrefac3on, and grotesquerie.
Faulkner’s work uses sensa3onal elements to
highlight an individual’s struggle against an
oppressive society that is undergoing rapid change.
Another aspect of the Southern Gothic style is
appropria3on and transforma3on. Faulkner has
appropriated the image of the damsel in distress and
transformed it into Emily, a psychologically damaged
spinster. Her mental instability and necrophilia have
made her an emblema3c Southern Gothic heroine.
A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” was
published in the April 30, 1930 edi3on of Forum
magazine. It was Faulkner’s first short story to be
published in a notable magazine. Though it received
minimal aDen3on a>er its first publica3on, “A Rose
For Emily” has become one of Faulkner’s most
popular works. Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1949, and is now hailed as one of the
greatest writers of the 20th century. His works deal
primarily with the cultural shi>s that occurred in the
post-Civil War South. “A Rose For Emily” is one of
many of Faulkner’s works, such as Sartoris, set in
fic3onal Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.
“A Rose For Emily” uses a non-chronological
structure to tell the story of Emily Grierson. Emily, a
faded Southern Bell, dies at the age of 74 a>er
leading an isolated life. The curious townsfolk come
together for her funeral and reflect on her history in
Jefferson, Mississippi. Their recollec3ons include the
details of Emily’s scandalous rela3onship with a
Northern laborer named Homer Barron. The
narrator uses the collec3ve pronoun “we” in order
to give the sense that the en3re town is reflec3ng on
Emily’s life. The story is some3mes read as an
allegory for the resistance of the Old South, as
represented by Emily, to moderniza3on, as
represented by both Homer and the younger
genera3ons of Jefferson.
Module 4 | Lesson 3– Story of an Hour by Kate
Chopin
Core Content: Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
STORY OF AN HOUR BY KATE CHOPIN
Kate Chopin
She is an American writer best known for her stories
about the inner lives of sensi3ve, daring women.
She is considered one of the first feminist authors of
the 20th century.
She is best known for her novel The Awakening
(1899), a haun3ngly prescient tale of a woman
unfulfilled by the mundane yet highly celebrated
"feminine role," and her painful realiza3on that the
constraints of her gender blocked her ability to seek
a more fulfilling life.
Context
Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was an American author.
She lived in a 3me when women had few rights,
including the right to vote. The role of women was
to be subservient to men and to obey them. Women
were unable to have their independence and they
were expected to marry and produce children. Many
women felt trapped at the 3me and they were not
free to have career paths.
Author’s Purpose
Kate Chopin (1850-1904)
was an American author. She was of French and
Irish descent. She lived in many different areas and
she wished to express her ideas about 19th century
Southern American society. Chopin had bold ideas
regarding society at the 3me. She took an interest in
the suffering of others and the struggle for iden3ty.
Although she was not a feminist, she understood the
suppression of women at the 3me and how they
were not equal to men.
Structure
The story is set across one hour how one hour can
change one’s life. The story contains mul3ple short
paragraphs that contain mul3ple short sentences. It
is almost as if these are the seconds and the minutes
of the character’s life.