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American Literary Periods

Modernism: 1900-1946
American
Puritans: 1650 - 1750 Renaissance/Romanticism: 1800
1855
Postmodernism: 1946 - present

Gothic: 1800-1850

Contemporary: 1980s - present


Rationalism/Age of Enlightenment: Naturalism: 1880-1900
17501800

Harlem Renaissance:
Realism: 1855-1900 1920s

Notes sourced from: http://www.studyguide.org/


American Literary Periods
Puritans: 1650 - 1750
Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Historical Context: Authors:
errand into the sermons, diaries instructive a person's fate is Poetry:
wilderness personal narratives reinforces authority determined by God Anne Bradstreet (1612 1672)
be a city upon a hill captivity narratives of the Bible and all people are Michael Wigglesworth (1631 1705)
Christian utopia jeremiads church corrupt and must be Edward Taylor (1645 1729)
written in plain style saved by Christ Diaries/Chronicles/Histories:
William Bradford (1590 1657)
John Winthrop (1588 1649)
Cotton Mather (1663 1728)
Edward Johnson (1598 1672)
Mary Rowlandson (c.1636 c.1678)
Sermons:
Jonathan Edwards (1703 1758)
Major Work: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Rationalism/Age of Enlightenment: 1750 - 1800


Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Historical Context: Authors:
national mission and political pamphlets patriotism grows tells readers how to Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790)
American character travel writing instills pride interpret what they
democratic utopia highly ornate writing creates common are reading to Thomas Paine (1737 1809)
use of reason style agreement about encourage
history is an act of fiction employs issues Revolutionary War Thomas Jefferson (1743 1826)
individual and generic plots and shows differences support
national self-assertion characters between Americans instructive in values Alexander Hamilton (1757 1804)
fiction often tells the and Europeans
story of how an
innocent young
woman is tested by
a seductive
male
Major Work:
Notes sourced from: http://www.studyguide.org/
American Literary Periods
American Renaissance/Romanticism: 1800 - 1855
Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Authors:
writing that can be interpreted literary tale helps instill proper Prose:
2 ways, on the surface for character sketch gender behavior for men Washington Irving (1783 1859), James Fennimore Cooper (1789 1851)
common folk or in depth for slave narratives, and women William Cullen Bryant (1794 1878), Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849)
philosophical readers political novels fuels the abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 1882), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 1864)
sense of idealism poetry movement Margaret Fuller (1810 1850), Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862)
focus on the individual's inner transcendentalism allow people to re- Herman Melville (1819 1891), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811- 1896)
feelings imagine the American Louisa May Alcott (1832 1888)
emphasis on the imagination past Poetry:
over reason and intuition over The Boston Brahmins Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882)
facts Historical Context: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 1894), James Russell Lowell (1819 1891)
urbanization versus nostalgia expansion of magazines, Walt Whitman (1819 1892), Emily Dickinson (1830 1886)
for nature newspapers, and book
burden of the Puritan past publishing
slavery debates
Major Work: Emerson, Nature (1836) Poe, The Raven (1845) Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) Melville, Moby Dick (1851) Stowe, Uncle Toms Cabin (1852) Thoreau,
Walden (1854) Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

Gothic: 1800 1850 (sub-genre of Romanticism)


Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Historical Context: Authors:
sublime and overt use of the short stories and novels today in literature we industrial revolution
supernatural hold readers' attention still see portrayals of brings ideas that the
individual characters see themselves at through dread of a series alluring antagonists "old ways" of doing
the mercy of forces our of their control of terrible possibilities whose evil things are now
which feature landscapes of dark characteristics irrelevant
they do not understand forests, extreme appeal to one's
motif of the "double": an individual with vegetation, concealed sense of awe
both evil and good characteristics ruins with horrific today in literature we
often involve the persecution of a rooms, depressed still see stories of the
young woman who is forced apart from characters persecuted young girl
her true love forced apart from
her true love
Major Work:

Notes sourced from: http://www.studyguide.org/


American Literary Periods
Realism: 1855 - 1900
Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Authors:
common characters not novel and short social realism: aims to Prose:
idealized (immigrants, stories are important change a specific social Mark Twain (18351910)
laborers) prefers objective problem Henry James (1843 1916)
people in society defined by narrator aesthetic realism: art William Dean Howells (1837 1920)
class dialogue includes that insists on detailing Local Color
society corrupted by many voices from the world as one sees it Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 1909)
materialism around the country Kate Chopin (1851 1904)
emphasizes moralism does not tell the Bret Harte (1836 1902)
through observation reader how to Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 1935)
interpret the story Historical Context: Poetry:
Civil War brings demand Edward Arlington Robinson (1869 1935)
for a "truer" type of Robert Frost (1874 1963)
literature that does not Carl Sandburg (1878 1967)
idealize people or places
Major Work: James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Frost The Road Not Taken (1916)

Naturalism: 1880 1900 (sub-genre of realism)


Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Historical Context: Authors:
dominant themes: survival fate violence short story, novel this type of literature writers reflect the
taboo characters usually lower continues to capture ideas of Darwin
nature is an indifferent force acting on class or lower middle audiences in present (survival of the fittest)
humans class day: the pitting of and Karl Marx (how
"brute within" each individual is fictional world is man against nature money and class
comprised of strong and warring commonplace and structure control a
emotions such as unheroic; everyday life is a nation)
greed, power, and fight for survival in dull round of daily
an amoral, indifferent world. existence
characters ultimately
emerge to act heroically or
adventurously with acts of
violence, passion, and/or
bodily strength in a tragic
ending
Major Work:

Notes sourced from: http://www.studyguide.org/


American Literary Periods
ModernisM: 1900 - 1946
Content: Effect: Authors:
dominant mood: alienation and common readers are alienated Prose
disconnection by this literature Gertrude Stein (1874 1946), Ernest Hemingway (18991961), John Dos Passos (1896 1970), F. Scott
people unable to communicate Fitzgerald (1896 1940), William Faulkner (1897 1962), Sherwood Anderson (18761941), Katherine
Historical Context:
effectively Anne Porter (1890 1980), Zora Neale Hurston (1901?1960), Thomas Wolfe (1900 1938), Nathaniel
overwhelming technological
fear of eroding traditions and grief West (1903 1940), Willa Cather (1873 1947), Henry Miller (1891 1980), Anais Nin (1903 1977)
changes of the 20th Century
over loss of the past Poetry:
World War I was the first war of
Genre/Style: Thomas Stearns Eliot (18881965), William Carlos William (1883 1963)
mass destruction due to
highly experimental Wallace Stevens (1879 1955)
technological advances
allusions in writing often refer to Imagists:
rise of the youth culture
classical Greek and Roman writings Ezra Pound (1885 1972), H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886 1961), Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925), Marianne
use of fragments, juxtaposition, Moore (1887 1972), E.E. Cummings (1894 1962), Archibald MacLeish (1892 1982), Hart Crane (1899
interior monologue, and stream of 1932)
consciousness Fugitives:
writers seeking to create a unique John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), Allen Tate (1899 1979)
style Drama:
Eugene ONeill (1888 1953), Thorton Wilder (1897 1975)
Major Work: Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919), Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920), Eliot, The Waste Land (1922), Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar (1923),
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925), Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925), Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926), Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Faulkner, The
Sound and the Fury (1929), Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel (1930), Faulkner, Light in August (1932), Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
(1937), Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), West, The Day of the Locust (1939), Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
(1952), Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952 )

Harlem Renaissance: 1920s (runs parallel to modernism)


Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Historical Context: Authors:
celebrated characteristics of African- allusions in writing often this period gave birth mass African-
American life refer to African-American to a new form of American migration
enjoyment of life without fear spirituals religious music called to Northern urban
writing defines the African-American uses the structure of blues "gospel music" centers.
heritage and celebrates their new songs in poetry (ex- blues and jazz are African-Americans
identity as Americans repetition of key phrases) transmitted across have more access to
superficial stereotypes America via radio media and publishing
later revealed to be and phonographs outlets after they
characters capable of move north.
complex moral judgments
Major Work:

Notes sourced from: http://www.studyguide.org/


American Literary Periods
Postmodernism: 1946 - present
Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Authors:
people observe life as the mixing of fantasy with erodes distinctions
media presents it, rather than nonfiction; blurs lines between classes of
experiencing life directly of reality for reader people
popular culture saturates no heroes insists that values are
people's lives concern with not permanent but only
absurdity and coincidence individual in isolation "local" or "historical"
detached,
unemotional
usually humorless
narratives Historical Context:
metafiction post-World War II
present tense prosperity
magic realism media culture interprets
values
Major Work:


Content: Genre/Style: Effect: Historical Context: Authors:
identity politics narratives: both fiction and Not yet known people beginning a
people learning to cope with problems nonfiction new century and a
through communication anti-heroes new millennium
people's sense of identity is shaped by concern with connections media culture
cultural and gender attitudes between people interprets values
emergence of ethnic writers and emotion-provoking
women writers humorous irony
storytelling emphasized
autobiographical essays
Major Work:

Notes sourced from: http://www.studyguide.org/

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