WORLITE HANDOUTS American Literature 8:30-10:00 TThAMERICAN LITERATURE

The body of written works produced in the English language in the United States.

Like other national literatures, American literature was shaped by the history of the country that produced it. For almost a century and a half, America was merely a group of colonies scattered along the eastern seaboard of the North American continent—colonies from which a few hardy souls tentatively ventured westward. After a successful rebellion against the motherland, America became the United States, a nation.

HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

I. Period of Colonization and Revolution (17th - 18th Century)A. First permanent English settlement was established

at Jamestown, Virginia in 1617. The War for Independence lasted for eight years (1776-1783).

B. American Puritanism – one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and literature. The representatives of the Enlightenment set themselves the task of disseminating knowledge among the people and advocating revolutionary ideas.

C. The Puritans emphasized hard work, piety and sobriety; The earliest writings include diaries, traveling books, journals, letters, sermons even government contracts.

D. The earliest American writers: a)Benjamin Franklin – author of “Poor Richard’s

Almanac” and his “Autobiography”.b)Thomas Jefferson – primary author of “The

Declaration of Independence”.II. Period of Romanticism (first half of 19th century)

A. Industrial Revolution; Western expansion; immigrant’s contribution; political ideal of equality and democracy; the influence of European Romanticists.

B. American Romanticism – the real beginning of American literature; the first American Renaissance; emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, a liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational and the supernatural; the strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man.

C. New England Transcendentalism – the Romanticism on the Puritan soil; emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul; the stress of the importance of the individual as the most important element of society; a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God.

D. Notable Authorsa) Washington Irving – father of American short stories. The first who one international fame. Author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.

b) James Fenimore Cooper – father of American fiction. Author of Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels about the frontier life of American settlers.

c) Edgar Allan Poe – father of American detective stories. He is a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of acumen and insight.

d) Hawthorne – his black vision of life and human being; evil as the trade mark of human being. His novels: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables.

e) Walt Whitman – a pioneer poet known for his free verse poems. Some of his works are “Leaves of Grass”, Song of Myself and When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.

E. Free verse – poetry basing on the irregular rhythmic cadence, no conventional use of meter, rhyme may or may not be present.

III. Period of Realism (latter half of the 19th Century)A. The impact of American Civil War; increasing

industrialization; the widening contrast of wealth and poverty; popular feeling of frustration and disillusionment.

B. Realism – a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions; a great interest in the realities of life, everyday existence, what was brutal or sordid and class struggle

C. Local Colorism – the beginning of Realism; the presentation and interpretation of the local character, the truthful color of local life.

D. Dominant figures in the period of Realism:a) Mark Twain – the true father of American literature by H. L. Mencken; rough humor and social satire; magic power with language, the use of vernacular and colloquial speech. Famous works: Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventure of Tom Sawyer.

b) Henry James – psychological approach to his subject matter; concerned more with the inner life of human beings than with overt human actions. Representative works: The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassador, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl.

c) William Dean Howells – focuses on the rising middle class and the way they lived.

IV. American Naturalism (last decade of the 19th century)A. Darwin’s evolutionary theory made an impact on the

American thought; emergence of this period was also influenced by the 19th century French literature.

B. Naturalism – Naturalists chose their subjects from the lower ranks of the society, portrayed misery and poverty of the underdogs who were demonstrably victims of society and nature. And one of the most familiar themes in American Naturalism is the theme of human bestiality, especially as an explanation of sexual desire.

V. Modernism/Contemporary American Literature (20th

Century)A. Booming industry and material prosperity in contrast

with a sense of unease and relentless underneath; a decline in moral standard described as a spiritual poverty; the impact of war – feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment.

Sources:english.tongji.edu.cn/ymwx/pdf/meiwenxueshi.pdfiipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/English/publication/2008/05/20080516134208eaifas0.1100885.html#axzz3CmQgCJxF

WORLITE HANDOUTS American Literature 8:30-10:00 TThB. Imagist Movement - Pound and Flint laid down three

main principles: direct treatment of poetic subjects, elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words, and rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of a metronome.

C. Modernism in poetry – the feeling of frustration and failure; the commercialization and debasement of art in Pound’s “Mauberley”; Pound’s attempt to impose, through art, order and meaning upon a chaotic and meaningless world in his work “Cantos.”

D. The Lost Generation – a period of spiritual crisis. Also known as the second American Renaissance; the expatriate movement; young people volunteered to “take part in the war to end wars”, only to find that modern warfare was not glorious or heroic.

E. The Depression Period – the Great Depression (1929-1933); social protests was the main theme of most novels in this period.

F. The Beat Movement – this came about by the impact of WWII, the cold war, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the assassination of Kennedy and of Martin Luther King. This movement has the idea that life is a big joke or an absurdity. This movement sees the world as more disintegrating and fragmentary; and people is described as more estranged and despondent. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” became the manifesto of the Beat Movement.

G. American Fiction after WWII – themes of the writings in this period were about traumatic war experiences, Jewish experience, about black people, alienated youth, and about middle-class life.

H. New Fiction – American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s proves to be different. Writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, and John Bath shared almost the same belief that human beings are trapped in a meaningless world and that neither God nor man can make sense of the human condition.

I. 20th Century American Drama has gained itself an indispensable position in the world literature and also established its international reputation for its achievements in the realistic theatre, expressionist theatre, metatheatre and feminist theater that are rooted in American social reality. It produces a band of important playwrights, two Nobel-Prize laureates among them.

J. Third Wave Feminists – a movement that usually refers to young women in their 20s and 30s who have grown up in an era of widely accepted social equality in the United States. Third Wave feminists feel sufficiently empowered to emphasize the individuality of choices women make. Bridget Jones’s Diary by the British writer Helen Fielding and Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City featuring urban single women with romance in mind have spawned a popular genre among young women.

VI. Postmodernism (later parts of 20th century – early 21st

Century)A. Postmodernism suggests fragmentation: collage,

hybridity, and the use of various voices, scenes and identities. Postmodern authors question external

structures, whether political, philosophical, or artistic. They tend to distrust the master-narratives of modernist thought, which they see as politically suspect. Instead, they mine popular cultural genres, especially science fiction, spy, and detective stories, becoming in effect, archaeologists of pop culture.

B. Creative Nonfiction: Memoir and Autobiography – the rise of global, multiethnic, and women’s literature – works in which writers reflect on experiences shaped by culture, color and gender – has endowed autobiography and memoir with special allure. Autobiography is a written account of the life of a person written by himself. While a memoir a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources. The contents of an autobiography and a memoir are almost the same but the latter is typically shorter than the former.

C. The Short Story: New Directions – The short story has lost its luster by the late 1970s. It was until an outsider from the Pacific Northwest – a gritty realist in the tradition of Ernest Hemmingway – revitalized the genre. Writers with ethnic and global roots are informing the story genre with non-Western and tribal approaches, and storytelling has commanded critical and popular attention. The versatile, primal tale is the basis of several hybridized forms: novels that are constructed of interlinking short stories or vignettes, and creative nonfictions that interweave history and personal history with fiction.

D. The Short Short Story – is a very brief story, often only one or two pages long. It is sometimes called as “flash fiction” or “sudden fiction” after 1986 anthology Sudden Fiction, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas. In short short stories, there is little space to develop a character. Rather, the element of plot is central. A crisis occurs, and a sketched-in character simply has to react. Authors deploy clever narrative or linguistic patterns; in some cases, the short short resembles a prose poem.

Sources:english.tongji.edu.cn/ymwx/pdf/meiwenxueshi.pdfiipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/English/publication/2008/05/20080516134208eaifas0.1100885.html#axzz3CmQgCJxF