American

Literature
 Edward Taylor (1642-1729)
*the finest poet in colonial period
*he was a teacher, minister and physician
*published only two poems in his life
*thought his connection with God was personal
Work: Preparatory Meditation
 William Bradford
• Governor of Plymouth for 31 years
• Was a great leader
• Wrote Of Plymouth Plantation
• Wrote in puritan plain style
• He told things for how they were in his writing
 Benjamin Franklin
1. Works
• The Autobiography
• Poor Richard’s Almanack
2. Life
Benjamin Franklin came from a Calvinist background.
He was born into a poor candle-maker’s family. He had very little education. He
learned in school only for two years, but he was a voracious reader.
At 12, he was apprenticed to his elder half-brother, a printer.
At 16, he began to publish essays under the pseudonym “Silence Do good” .
At 17, he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune.
He set himself up as an independent printer and publisher. In 1727 he founded the
Junto club.
Franklin’s Contributions to Society
He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital.
He founded an academy which led to the University of
Pennsylvania.
And he helped found the American Philosophical Society.

Franklin’s Contributions to Science

He was also remembered for volunteer fire departments, effective street
lighting, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and efficient heating devices.
And for his lightning-rod, he was called “the new Prometheus who had
stolen fire from heaven.”
Franklin’s Contributions to the U.S.
He was the only American to sign the four documents that created the
United States:
The Declaration of Independence,
The Treaty of Alliance with France,
The Treaty of Peace with England,
The Constitution
 Poor Richard’s Almanac

• •“lost time is never found again”

• •“a penny saved is a penny earned”
• •“God helps those that help themselves”
• •“Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy,
wealthy, and wise”
 The Autobiography
• •First published in Paris in March of 1791 entitled “Memoires
De La Vie Privee”
• •The first English translation, "The Private Life of the Late
Benjamin Franklin. Originally Written By Himself, And Now
Translated From The French," was published in London in
1793.
• •Faithful Puritan account of the colorful career of America’s
first self-made man.
• •The writing process lasted for 40 years, yet the book was still
not completed when he died
 Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)
• Was the son of a tribal leader
• Brought to America at the age of eleven years
• Bought his freedom with money he saved up
• He spoke out against slavery everywhere
• Black writer of autobiography: The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African(1789) -
about the cruel slave trade; promoting the abolition campaign in
England
 Washington Irving (1783-1859)
• 1. Literary Status
• Father of American literature
• The first professional American writer
• The first American Romantic writer
• The first American short story writer
• The first American imaginative writer to be recognized by the Europeans
• 2. Life
• Born into a wealthy New York merchant family
• Read widely from very early age – studied law
• Cared for his family business in England
• Went bankrupt – wrote to support himself
 His Works:
• A History of New York (1809)
• The Sketch Book (1819-1820 )
• The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
(1828)
• The Alhambra (1832)
• Life of Goldsmith, Life of Washington
• The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with
Irving’s The Sketch Book, a collection of essays, sketches, and tales,
of which the most famous and frequently anthologized are “Rip Van
Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.
 James Fenimore Cooper ( 1789-1851)
• 1. Literary Status:
• The first American Frontier novel
• The first American Sea novel
• The first American Spy Novel
• The first American Historical Novel
• His “Leatherstocking Tales” as the American National Epic
• 2. Life:
• Locally famous family – Yale University at 14 – five years at sea –
comfortable life – began to write accidentally – failed in his first novel
Precaution – his second novel The Spy (Harvey Birch) – firmly established
with his The Leatherstocking Tales
• 3. His major works:
• Precaution (1820)
• The Spy (1821)
• “The Leatherstocking Tales” includes
• The Pioneers (1823)
• The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
• The Prairie (1827)
• The Pathfinder (1840)
• The Deerslayer (1841)
 Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
• The Father of American Poetry
• “Poet of American Revolution”: poems of patriotism and
nationalism
• Works were influenced by political situations
• Went to Princeton University
• Established the National Gazette
• By the early 1800s, he retired to a farm to write more poetry
• Poems in praise of nature and the American Indian’s way of life
(“noble savage”), a part of American romantic tradition
• His Works
• While on sea duly he was captured by the British and placed
aboard a prison ship, an experience which inspired a long poem
entitled "The British Prison Ship" .
• He wrote a number of other long poems, but he was at his best
in his short lyrics, such as "The Wild Honey Suckle ".
• Many of these short works, including "On the Emigration to
America”.
• "The Indian Burying Ground," and "To the Memory of the
Brave Americans," deal with American subjects and it is for
these poems that Freneau is best remembered today.
 William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
• Considered an American Romantic poet
• Heavily influenced by the English Romantics - William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• The first American poet to use blank verse and introduced it into
mainstream American poetry
• His Works
• “To a Waterfowl” 1815
• “Thanatopsis” 1817
• “The Yellow Violet” 1814
 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

• father of modern short story

• father of detective story
• father of psychoanalytic criticism
 Final Days
• In June of 1849, Poe left New York and went to Philadelphia, where he
visited his friend John Sartain. Poe left Philadelphia in July and came to
Richmond. He stayed at the Swan Tavern Hotel but joined "The Sons of
Temperance" in an effort to stop drinking. He renewed a boyhood
romance with Sarah Royster Shelton and planned to marry her in October.
• On September 27, Poe left Richmond for New York. He went to
Philadelphia and stayed with a friend named James P. Moss. On
September 30, he meant to go to New York but supposedly took the wrong
train to Baltimore. On October 3, Poe was found at Gunner's Hall, a public
house at 44 East Lombard Street, and was taken to the hospital.
• He lapsed in and out of consciousness but was never able to explain
exactly what happened to him. Edgar Allan Poe died in the hospital on
Sunday, October 7, 1849.
 His works
• Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque
• “MS. Found in a Bottle”
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue“
• “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• “The Masque of the Red Death”
• “The Cask of Amontillado” The Raven
• Israfel
• Annabel Lee
• To Helen
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
• All his life, Hawthorne seems to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life
—“Black vision”. Evil seems to be man’s birthmark.

• His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more
specifically, dark romanticism.
• His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often
have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His themes often center on
the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and
deep psychological complexity.
• The House of the Seven Gables is an appalling fictional version of Hawthorne’s
belief that the “wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones.”
• One source of evil in Hawthorne is overwhelming intellect.
 His Works
• Twice-Told Tales 1837
• Mosses from an Old Manse 1843
• The Scarlet Letter 1850
• The House of the Seven Gables 1851
• The Blithedale Romance 1852
• The Marble Faun 1860
• “Young Goodman Brown”
• “The Minister’s Black Veil”
• “Rappacini’s Daughter”
 The Scarlet Letter
• Themes
• Evil, sin, revenge and redemption
• Main characters:
• Hester
• Chillingworth
• Dimmesdale
• Pearl
• The symbols in the novel:
• The scarlet letter
• The wild rose
• The meteor
• Implication of names