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American Civilization
Prof.dr.Rodica Mihaila

Periodization: American History and Literature

History
- The Colonial Period 1607 Jamestown, Virginia 1783 (Peace of Versailles)
a. Puritan Colonization 1620=Plymouth Plantation- The Mayflower
Compact: a body politic (Bradford Of Plymouth Pl); 1630 Massachussetts
Bay Colony(Winthrop A Model of Christian Charity: the City-upon-the Hill,
beacon,)
b. Revolutionary (1765-1783) Growing tension between the British and
Americans (No taxation without representation)
1765 Stamp act generates violent reaction. 1st congress of 13 colonies in New
York issued the Declaration of Rights.
-1775- 1783 Independence War: 1776 Decl. Of Independence; 1783 Peace
(Independence acknowledged by the Great Powers)
-1788=Constitution ratified
-1789=Washington first president
- Early National (1783-1837) = The New Republic: John Adams, Jefferson
- 1812-1815 Last war against England which attacks from Canada
- 1829-1837= Andrew Jackson: Jacksonian democracy (dem. Reforms)
- Civil War (1861-1865)
- The Triumph of Capitalism (1865-1914)
- The Empire (War with Spain 1898) Imperialism
- World War I (1914-1918)
- Between the Wars (1918-1939)
- The Second World War (1939-1945)
- The Cold War (1946-1989)
- The Collapse of Communism (1989)
- The Gulf War (1990)
- The New World Order. Globalization
- The War Against Terrorism: Iraq (2003); Afghanistan

Literature

General characteristics: Influenced by the colonization process:

I. Shaping forces:
1. Space and the Frontier (Nash Smith Virgin Land, Turner, Anette Kolodny: )
-New beginnings: the myth of Adam and of the Garden (R.W.B.Lewis: The American
Adam embodies a characteristic of Am lit)
-Spiller- Two main themes: cutting loose and faring forth; nostalgia for the rich
culture of Europe
-Am tradition acquired through: study, imitation, inheritance of an environment
-Characteristics: responsibility in making of a nation; inquiring, exploratory,
importance of experience; pragmatism; influenced by democracy: humanitarian,
individualism and self reliance
2. Puritanism:
doctrines: total depravity (Luther); predestination-the Elect (Providence) ; Gods
justice and authority (the Bible=main source of mythology)symbolism
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II. Main directions: a) optimistic (Emerson, Whitman); b) dark strain (sense of evil, darkness
of experience, the unknown): Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Frost

Periodization of American Literature

-Colonial Period:
a. 17th century=Puritan import. Imitation of British lit: End of the Renaissance +
Metaphysical Poetry
Subject: Man-God
Forms: sermon, diary, allegory, devotional poems, captivity narratives
(Bibl=Mary Rowlandson)
Legacy: sense of history, habit of self-inquiry, theory of style
Sermons: Winthrop: A Model of Christian Charity, his Journal
Historians: Bradford, Winthrop, Cotton Mather (bibl. Of Plymouth P)
Poets: Ann Bradstreet, Edward Taylor
Religious Mind: Jonathan Edwards (Decline of Puritanism>The Great
Awakening 1734- )
_ b. Revolutionary Age:
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, of Neoclassicism.(bibl. The Re-Usable
Past: the Enlightenment 87-108)
Ideals of the age: dedication to pragmatism and common sense, unique Am destiny,
belief in justice, liberty and equality as natural rights of man
Ideals of neoclassicism: clarity, restraint, simplicity, balance, Unity of action, place,
time, decorum
Prose: utilitarian, heavy in style. Forms=travel lit, scientific works, pol prose,
pamphlets
Greatest works: bibl. Franklin, Jefferson; rev.thought: Paine; pol. Writing: the
Federalist(Hamilton, Madison)
Emergent national literature: (1743 Philosophical Society- 1826 death of
Jefferson; Cooper, Last of the Mohicaans)
Influence of growing nationalism. Decline of puritan influence (rise of Philad, NY,
Hartford.)
The arts needed time to develop after the revol. The one piece remaining: Crevecoeur
Letters from an American Farmer (letter 13)
Appearance of the novel and the drama:
The drama: Royall Tyler, The Contrast (1790)=first comedy professionally
performed
The novel: didactic, derivative in technique: Slow to appear (18th c England:
Samuel Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sternethe rise of the middle class). Puritanism
hostile to arts (lies, emotionalism).
-Influence: 1744 Franklin published Pamela, archetype of the sentimental novel
1st =The Power of Sympathy (based on a real scandal) ascribed to Sarah
Morton/William Hill Brown; Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748, Scotland-1816): Modern
Chivalry; Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (1798).
-Characteristics: strain of morbidity, violence, pervesionrelated to the sentimental
novel and to lit of romantic period. From these tales of seduction and betrayal to Hawthornes
Scarlet Letter
Poetry:
-Philip Freneau (The Honeysuckle, The Indian Burying Ground)=the poet of the Am
rev; the father of Am poetry
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-the Hartford Wits (Connecticut)=first school of poetry: John Trumpball, Joel Barlow
(The Columbiad), Timothy Dwight. Collective work: the Anarchiad
-Phillis Wheatley= slave, Boston. Poems of Various Subjects. Religious and Moral
(1773)
Transition from neoclassicism to romanticism:
Poetry: Bryant
-John Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)=to an Am sensibility. The American W.Scott
-Washington Irving (1783-1859)-transitional figure. From neocl to romanticism
through contact with German gothicism and Scott
The Romantic Age: A National Literature (1826 death of Jeff/ 1830=Nature
1861) Transcendentalism; Symbolism Poe, Emerson Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville,
Whitman, Dickenson
Transition from romanticism to realism: Local Color, The Great Am Novel
Realism and naturalism (1865-1910): William Dean Howells, Twain, Henry James.
Naturalism: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Th Dreiser
Symbolism, modernism, aestheticism: 1900-1930
Gertrude Stein, the Lost Generation:Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolf. Nabokov
Poetry: High modernism and after= Pound, Eliot, W.Stevens, William Carlos Williams,
Crane, e.e.cummings.
Contemporary literature: after 1945
-the 50s: realism and existentialism, the Jewish Novel, the Black Novel
-the 60s: postmodenism, confessionalism
-since the 70s: womens literature, ethnic literatures
-the 80s: minimalism, multiculturalism
-the 90s: transnationalism and cultures of globalization
-after 9/11: post-postmodernism