22EN605: AMERICAN LITERATURE

LECTURE II: INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE

American literature does not easily lend itself to classification by time period. Given the size
of the United States and its varied population, there are often several literary movements
happening at the same time. However, this hasn't stopped literary scholars from making an
attempt. Here are some of the most commonly agreed upon periods of American literature
from the colonial period to the present.

The Colonial Period 1492-1700

This history of American literature begins with the arrival of English-speaking Europeans in
what would become the United States. At first American literature was naturally a colonial
literature, by authors who were Englishmen and who thought and wrote as such. John Smith,
a soldier of fortune, is credited with initiating American literature. His chief books included A
True Relation of…Virginia(1608) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and
the Summer Isles (1624). Although these volumes often glorified their author, they were
avowedly written to explain colonizing opportunities to Englishmen.

The utilitarian writings of the 17th century included biographies, treatises, accounts of
voyages, and sermons. There were few achievements in drama or fiction, since there was a
widespread prejudice against these forms. 17th-century American writings were in the
manner of British writings of the same period. John Smith wrote in the tradition of
geographic literature, Bradford echoed the cadences of the King James Bible, while the
Mathers and Roger Williams wrote bejeweled prose typical of the day. Anne Bradstreet’s
poetic style derived from a long line of British poets, including Spenser and Sidney, while
Taylor was in the tradition of such Metaphysical poets as George Herbert and John Donne.
Both the content and form of the literature of this first century in America were thus markedly
English.

This period encompasses the founding of Jamestown up to a decade before the Revolutionary
War. The majority of writings were historical, practical, or religious in nature. Some writers
not to miss from this period include Phillis Wheatley, Cotton Mather, William Bradford, Anne
Bradstreet, and John Winthrop.

Revolutionary Period 1700-1800

Beginning a decade before the Revolutionary War and ending about 25 years later, this period
includes the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander
Hamilton. This is arguably the richest period of political writing since classical antiquity.
Important works include the “Declaration of Independence,” "The Federalist Papers," and the
poetry of Joel Barlow and Philip Freneau.

The wrench of the American Revolution emphasized differences that had been growing
between American and British political concepts. As the colonists moved to the belief that
rebellion was inevitable, fought the bitter war, and worked to found the new nation’s
government, they were influenced by a number of very effective political writers, such as
Samuel Adams and John Dickinson, both of whom favoured the colonists, and loyalist Joseph
Galloway. But two figures loomed above these—Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.

Franklin, born in 1706, had started to publish his writings in his brother’s newspaper, the
New England Courant, as early as 1722. This newspaper championed the cause of the
“Leather Apron” man and the farmer and appealed by using easily understood language and
practical arguments. Franklin’s self-attained culture, deep and wide, gave substance and skill
to varied articles, pamphlets, and reports that he wrote concerning the dispute with Great
Britain, many of them extremely effective in stating and shaping the colonists’ cause.

Thomas Paine went from his native England to Philadelphia and became a magazine editor
and then, about 14 months later, the most effective propagandist for the colonial cause. His
pamphlet Common Sense (January 1776) did much to influence the colonists to declare their
independence. The American Crisis papers (December 1776–December 1783) spurred
Americans to fight on through the blackest years of the war. Based upon Paine’s simple
deistic beliefs, they showed the conflict as a stirring melodrama with the angelic colonists
against the forces of evil. Such white and black picturings were highly effective propaganda.
Another reason for Paine’s success was his poetic fervour, which found expression in
impassioned words and phrases long to be remembered and quoted.

Period of Romanticism and Transcendentalism 1800-1880

After the American Revolution, and increasingly after the War of 1812, American writers
were exhorted to produce a literature that was truly native. As if in response, four authors of
very respectable stature appeared. William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, James
Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe initiated a great half century of literary development.

Edgar Allan Poe, reared in the South, lived and worked as an author and editor in Baltimore,
Philadelphia, Richmond, and New York City. His work was shaped largely by analytical skill
that showed clearly in his role as an editor: time after time he gauged the taste of readers so
accurately that circulation figures of magazines under his direction soared impressively. It
showed itself in his critical essays, wherein he lucidly explained and logically applied his
criteria. His gothic tales of terror were written in accordance with his findings when he
studied the most popular magazines of the day. His masterpieces of terror—“The Fall of the
House of Usher” (1839), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), “The Cask of Amontillado”
(1846), and others—were written according to a carefully worked out psychological method.
So were his detective stories, such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), which
historians credited as the first of the genre. As a poet, he achieved fame with “The Raven”
(1845). His work, especially his critical writings and carefully crafted poems, had perhaps a
greater influence in France, where they were translated by Charles Baudelaire, than in his
own country.

The Romantic Period in America and the Age of Transcendentalism 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 contributions include the poetry of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow and the short stories of Melville, Poe, Hawthorne, and Harriet
Beecher Stowe. Additionally, this era is the inauguration point of American literary criticism,
lead by Poe, James Russell Lowell, and William Gilmore Simms. The years 1853 and 1859
brought the first novels written by African-American authors, both male and female: "Clotel,"
by William Wells Brown and "Our Nig," by Harriet E. Wilson.

American Renaissance. The authors who began to come to prominence in the 1830s and
were active until about the end of the Civil War—the humorists, the classic New Englanders,
Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and others—did their work in a new spirit, and their
achievements were of a new sort. In part this was because they were in some way influenced
by the broadening democratic concepts that in 1829 triumphed in Andrew Jackson’s
inauguration as president. In part it was because, in this Romantic period of emphasis upon
native scenes and characters in many literatures, they put much of America into their books

American Realism and Naturalism (1860-1930)

As a result of the American Civil War, Reconstruction and the age of industrialism, American
ideals and self-awareness changed in profound ways, and American literature responded.
Certain romantic notions of the American Renaissance were replaced by realistic descriptions
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 writing. In addition to Walt
Whitman, another master poet, Emily Dickinson, appeared at this time.

Naturalism. This relatively short period is defined by its insistence on recreating 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 victims who
fall prey to their own base instincts 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 time period.

American Modernism
After the American Renaissance, the Modern Period is the second most influential and
artistically rich age of American writing. 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 time include Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, Edith
Wharton, F. Scott 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 Generation. Many of these writers were influenced by
World War I and the disillusionment that followed, especially the expatriates of the Lost
Generation. Furthermore, the Great Depression and the New Deal resulted in some of
America’s greatest social issue writing, such as the novels of Faulkner and Steinbeck, and the
drama of Eugene O’Neill.
• The Beat Generation (1944–1962). Beat writers, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen
Ginsberg, were devoted to anti-traditional literature, in poetry and prose, and anti-
establishment politics. This time 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 time,
also inspired the counterculture movements of the next two decades.

• The Contemporary Period (1939–Present). After World War II, American literature
has become broad and varied in terms of theme, mode, and purpose. Currently, there
is little consensus as to how to go about classifying the last 80 years into periods or
movements—more time must pass, perhaps, before scholars can make these
determinations. 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.