Module 3 American Post Colonial

. American revolution =1775-1783

.1776-declaration of independence
. George Washington - first American president.
.1960-civil rights movement —>1945 (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
. Red Indians are the indigenous people.
. First novel.= the power of sympathy by billion hill brown (1989)
. Phillis Wheatley was the first black poet of note by bengemin franclins (autobiography)
. 19th century -truly American literature origined.
.1800-1820, short stories/all are in British tradition.
. Washington Irving published collection of short stories and novels in 19th century.
. Edger Allan Poe -scary tails (beginning of modern detective story & novel)
Eg:-the murders in the rue morgue (Mercury)
- The raven (poem)
New England is a part of United States
->hw congfellow } they depict the life of
Ow Holems } upper class Americans. Call ratings are writer
thought the filter

Transcendentalist they thought that all creatures are part of one united whole

Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism was a cultural movement that arose during the first half of the 19th
century. Transcendentalism's definition centers around the idea that humans have
knowledge from nature that goes beyond what can be understood with the
senses. Transcendentalism was a 19th-century American literary movement emphasizing the
importance and equality of the individual. It was characterized by the promotion of
individualism, self-reliance, and the idea that the divine spirit resides within all of us.
Transcendentalists embraced intuition over rationality and believed in the "inherent
goodness" of people. Their contributions to American literature include promoting the idea
of individualism, self-reliance, and the elevation of the human spirit. This movement
influenced American literature by advocating for a more personal and intuitive approach to
writing and thinking. Transcendentalism had a lasting impact on the development of
American literature, philosophy, and culture.
Transcendentalism was an American literary movement that emphasized the importance and
equality of the individual. It began in the 1830s in America and was heavily influenced by
German philosophers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Immanuel Kant, along with
English writers like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Transcendentalists espoused four main philosophical points. Simply stated, these were the
ideas of:
• Self Reliance
• Individual Conscience
• Intuition Over Reason
• Unity of All Things in Nature
In other words, individual men and women can be their own authority on knowledge through
the use of their own intuition and conscience. There was also a distrust of societal and
governmental institutions and their corrupting effects on the individual.
The Transcendentalist Movement was centered in New England and included a number of
prominent individuals including Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, Henry David Thoreau,
Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. As a philosophy, Transcendentalism is deeply rooted
in faith and spirituality. Transcendentalists believed in the possibility of personal
communication with God leading to an ultimate understanding of reality. Leaders of the
movement were influenced by the elements of mysticism found in Hindu, Buddhist, and
Islamic religions, as well as the American Puritan and Quaker faiths. The
transcendentalists equated their belief in a universal reality to the Quakers’ belief in a
divine Inner Light as a gift of God’s grace.

Transcendentalism movement was all feactres are part of everything United whole .

• Re Emerson.hd Thoreau wrote influential asses.

• Margaret fuller= the daily (magazine, editor)
• National Hawthorne (some novel , short stories)
• Walt Whitman (poet)
• Herman Melville (prominent writer)
• Movement emerged from Romanticism
• Idea of spirituality, Zen, Buddhism
-> American literature began in early 15th century and 16th century.
->American revolution - 1775
->French revolution - 1789
• National hawthorn = the scalet letter, Melvin influenced by hawthorn.
• Walt Whitman is a poet in this Are.
- An important work is leaves of grass.the landmark of in the history of American literature
• WW Bron . HE villain the black woman writer.
• Harriet Geacab .
• Mark T wain = The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

American romanticism

American Romanticism is a literary and art movement in the United States. Its major
characteristics are a strong connection to nature, escapism, spirituality as it connects to
nature, individualism, and imagination. In the mid-1850s, as the United States was beginning
to shape its own identity within the realm of literature, American Romanticism emerged. This
literary movement holds unique importance to American history because it is known to be the
first, full-fledged literary movement of America. This movement saw the emergence of
writers celebrating American beauty and identity. The American Renaissance period saw the
publishing of timeless masterpieces, by authors including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. In short, American
Romanticism emerged in response to the nationalist values beginning to develop a distinct
American literary style.
Much like the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century, the emergence of American
Romanticism saw the celebration of the common man. American Romanticism celebrated the
unknown – as Americans began to venture westward into newly acquired territories, authors
began to write about the beauty of the natural landscape, untouched by man. The aesthetic
of nature is something that was extremely importance to American Romantic writers, and is
reflected in works such as the Leatherstocking Tales, The Last of the Mohicans, and even
holds in Moby-Dick, a work that epitomizes what Romanticism is all about.
Furthermore, American Romanticism was composed of a couple different themes, including
the theme of nature and the great unknown was told through stories of the frontier – a land
unexplored, that promised opportunity for expansion, growth, and freedom. The most import
aspect of American Romanticism was that it had its own individualistic elements, apart from
its European counterparts. For the first time in history, a movement came about that was
entirely belonging to the United States, and the American writer’s identity thus was a result
of it.

What are the major themes of American Romanticism?

Some themes of American Romanticism are the individual's connection with nature and
seeing the spirituality of nature. Other themes include the emotion and imagination of the
individual.

CIVIL WAR

The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the
Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined
what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left
unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable
confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national
government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with
an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the
world.
Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the
institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements
came at the cost of 625,000 lives--nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other
wars in which this country has fought combined. The American Civil War was the largest and
most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in
1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914.
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave
states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that
had not yet become states.

A crucial chapter in American history, the American Civil War took place over the course of
five turbulent years. The Confederate assault on Fort Sumter in April 1861 marked the
beginning of it, setting off a string of momentous conflicts and occasions that would
ultimately determine the fate of the country. The crucial Battle of Gettysburg, the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and Union General Sherman’s conquest of Atlanta in
1864—which cut off the Union’s essential supply lines—were among the significant turning
points. On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee submitted at Appomattox Court
House, marking the beginning of the end of the war and its turning point. The conflict came
to an end with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865 and the
Confederate leaders’ surrenders. The military conflict came to an official end with the last
battle at Palmito Ranch in Texas and Confederate leader Edmond Kirby Smith’s final
surrender in May 1865. The difficult Reconstruction era began with President Andrew
Johnson’s proclamation in August 1866, which officially declared the end of the Civil War.

BEAT GENERATION
The Beat Generation was a Postmodern literary movement that sprang up in New York in the
late 1940s and lasted until the mid-1960s. Characterised by its free-flowing,
collaged prose and rebellious mindset, the movement built on a few existing Modernist
techniques whilst adding elements like those of jazz-inspired improvisation and Eastern
mysticism.

Beat poetry emerged from the disillusionment that followed World War II, a period of
unimaginable atrocities including the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons against
Japan. Following the end of the war, the United States and the Soviet Union quickly entered a
Cold War, a period of geopolitical hostility that created paranoia and cultural and political
repression at home.
By the mid-1950s, the Beats helped to spearhead a cultural vanguard reacting against
institutionalized American values, materialism, and conformity. On October 7, 1955, the
Beats gave their first major public poetry reading, a seminal event held at Six Gallery in San
Francisco. Among the five poets to perform their work was Allen Ginsberg, who first read
“Howl”.
The three most famous founders of the Beat Movement met in New York City in the 1940s.
Allen Ginsberg attended Columbia University, while Kerouac was a Columbia dropout, and
Burroughs a Harvard graduate. A fourth member, Lucien Carr, also attended Columbia and is
credited with writing what some consider to be the Beat Manifesto. The movement included
many other authors such as Gary Snyder, Diane Di Prima, Gregory Corso, LeRoi Jones (Amiri
Baraka), Carl Solomon, Carolyn Cassady, Peter Orlovsky, Neal Cassady, and Michael Mcclure.

CONFESSIONALISM

The confessional movement, led by the poets W.D. Snodgrass, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton,
and Sylvia Plath, began in April 1959. Its influence on current culture is immeasurable.

Colloquial language, rich images describing emotional states, missing universal symbols, and
the ring of truth in the personal experience of actual events were the hallmarks of the new
poetry. It was quickly published, won major awards, and gathered devotees. All four poets
associated with the confessional poetry movement wrote poems to their daughters in this
style. They are intense first-person accounts of their relationships, often pain-ridden,
ultimately sweet. They serve as examples of new poetry and illustrate both the common
ground and the dissimilarity among these four most notable writers of the confessional
movement.
Walt Whitman brought the beginnings of the confessional style to poetry. Writing in the
second half of the nineteenth century, his poetic tone was more universal, but it carried the
undeniable passion and the intimate “I” characteristic of confessional verse.
Consequently, when the confessional movement arrived in April 1959, the idea was hardly
new. The newness derived from the no-holds-barred veracity of emotion and the public
acceptance of it. As the culture changed and became more rebellious, everything became
fair game. The confessional movement has had an enormous impact on modern culture.
The confessional poetry movement ostensibly ended in the 1970s. Since then, it has
morphed into other disciplines. Confession has long since spread beyond the realms of art.
Nevertheless, confessional poetry arguably has impacted society much more than most
literary movements. The impetus for confession in verse removed the barrier that made
personal trauma improper for discussion. Without the cultural freedom to speak, injustice is
far more likely to occur and the experiences of others to be misunderstood. As a parent
influences his or her child, confessional poetry influenced the social structure of the
generations following it. Despite the personal tone, the final words in Sylvia Plath’s
“Morning Song” to her daughter have a prophetic resonance.

WOMANISM
Womanism is a term used to refer to feminists of colour, more specifically Black feminists.
Womanism centres around the experiences, contributions and efforts of Black feminists to
better the world around them for all of humanity, not just themselves. Womanists speak to
the injustices faced by Black women, men, children and families and frequently fight against
these injustices by leading, participating in or supporting various social justice movements.
The term was first coined by African American writer and author of The Color Purple, Alice
Walker. In her work, In Search of Our Mother’s Garden: Womanist Prose (Harcourt Brace,
1983) Walker characterized womanism as inclusive of Black women’s courage, willfulness,
audacious behavior and grown-up, in charge demeanor as well as their love for other
women, oneself and humanity. Since Walker’s coining of the term, others have extended
the concept of womanism to various fields, including Africana womanism and womanist
theology or spirituality.
Womanism, as evidenced in American literature, involves the intersection of feminism and
the experiences of women of colour, particularly Black women. It addresses the unique
challenges faced by women of colour and focuses on their contributions and efforts to better
the world around them for the benefit of all of humanity, emphasizing the conditions and
concerns specific to this demographic. Literary womanism involves creative writing that
centres Black women's folk culture and vernacular traditions, offering a platform for their
voices and experiences to take primacy in the literature.