American

Literary Periods
 THE EIGHT PERIODS OF
AMERICAN LITERATURE

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

Exploration
• 1620-1720: The Puritan Age/Colonial
• 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
 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
 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
• Humans must act to maintain an appropriate
relationship with nature
TRICKSTER TALES
 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
• Native Americans 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
Puritanism
 PURITAN
LITERATURE
• Texts are devotional, religious and related
towards persuading and cultivating “God
Fearing” citizens.
• 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
 The
Enlightenment
 ENLIGHTENMENT/RATIONALI
SM

• Emphasis on reason as opposed to

faith alone; rise of empirical science,
philosophy, theology
• Shift to a more print-based culture;
literacy seen as sign of status
• Instructive in values, highly ornate
writing style; highly political and
patriotic
 ENLIGHTENMENT/RATIONALIS
M

• Writers focused on explaining and justifying the

American Revolution
• After the Revolution, this period becomes known
as Early Nationalism. Writers begin to ponder
what it really means to be an American.
• After the War of 1812, which removed the last
British troops from North America, there was an
even greater focus on nationalism, patriotism, and
American identity
 ENLIGHTENMENT/RATIONALIS
M

• Representative authors:
• Benjamin Franklin (biography, common
sense aphorisms)
• Patrick Henry (speech)
• Thomas Paine (pamphlet)
• Thomas Jefferson (political documents)
• Abigail Adams (letters)
 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
ROMANTICISM
ROMANTICISM
 ROMANTICISM
• Writers celebrated individualism, nature,
imagination, creativity, and emotions.
 Interest in fantasy and supernatural
 Writing can usually be interpreted two ways—
surface and in depth
 Writing is didactic—attempting to shape readers
 Good will triumph over evil.
 Strong focus on inner feelings
 Imagination prized over reason; intuition over fact
 GOTHIC
ROMANTICISM
• Dark Romanticism (also known as Gothic or Anti-
Transcendentalism)
• Belief that man’s nature is inherently evil
• Belief that whatever is wrong with society—sin, pain, evil
—has to be fixed by fixing the individual man first.
• Use of supernatural | Ghosts, monsters, ghouls, etc.
• Strong use of symbolism
• Dark landscapes, depressed characters
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (novels, short stories)
 Herman Melville (novels, short stories, poetry)
 Edgar Allan Poe (short stories, poetry, literary criticism
 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