NATIVE AMERICANS AND PURITANISM

Traits, Characteristics:

  Two main forms of communication  Storytelling

 “the oral tradition”  Each tribe has a storyteller  Stories are passed down from generation to generation

 Pictographs  Drawings  Often found in caves, on trees, or on animal hides

Traits, Characteristics:

1.  practical information about nature

2.  moral lessons 3.  both animal and human characters 4.  ARCHETYPES! (a pattern or model: hero, villain,

damsel in distress, jokester, etc.)

PURITANS Presented this 22 day of August in Puritan-appropriate black and white. Please do not enjoy.

Some Puritan Terms

  Theocracy – government based on the word of God   Puritan Paradox – fled England to escape persecution,

yet proceeded to persecute others in the New World   Original Sin – the belief that every human is born in

sin and therefore all humans are innately sinful   Predestination – the belief that God saves only a

chosen few – “The Elect”; you strive to live a decent, sin-free life in order to insure your place in heaven should you be among “The Elect”

  Saved by Grace

TRAITS OF WRITING

1. Simple

2. Often religious (Biblically based)

3. Very few figures of speech/literary devices (metaphors, “flowery” language)

Examples: --journals --poems

--sermons

Works/Writers

 Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

 Anne Bradstreet, “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, “Upon the Burning of Our House”

 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

RATIONALISM/ REVOLUTIONARY

Presented this 22 day of August in Puritan-appropriate black and white. Please do not enjoy.

Characteristics, Forms

  Freedom (Emancipation) from England   Self reliance   Pamphlets, government documents, persuasive

documents, speeches

*“Common Sense”, written by Thomas Paine

*Thomas Jefferson wrote the “Declaration of Independence”

*Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack,

Collection of aphorisms/epigrams, EX: “Fish and visitors smell in three days.” “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”

*Patrick Henry, “Speech in the Virginia Convention”

Romanticism Presented this 22 day of August in Puritan-appropriate black and white. Please do not enjoy.

Characteristics

  The dark side

  Supernatural

  Escape from reality   Emotion

  Imagination

  Nature

  Man’s connection to nature

Important characters and Movements:   Romantic Hero: reflection of the new America;

Bold, eccentric, flawed, and sometimes brooding (mysterious & conflicted)

  American Gothic: combination of horror and romance; the dark side of mankind. Dark setting, dark and mysterious characters.

Works and Writers

  William Cullen Bryant, poem “Thanatopsis”

  The Fireside Poets: Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Whittier

  Washington Irving: “The Devil and Tom Walker”, “Rip Van Winkle”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

  Edgar Allan Poe, short stories, American Gothic writer, created the detective story, “The Raven”

  Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, poets

END OF ROMANTICISM AND THE BEGINNING OF TRANSCENDENTALISM Presented this 22 day of August in Puritan-appropriate black and white. Please do not enjoy.

Characteristics

  1 A belief in a higher reality than that achieved by human reasoning.

2.  Suggests that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth through intuition

  3. Unlike Puritans, they saw humans and nature as possessing an innate goodness.

  4. Opposed strict ritualism and dogma of established religion.

  5. Believed in living close to nature/importance of nature. Nature is the source of truth and inspiration.

  6. Taught the dignity of manual labor

  7. Advocated self-trust/ confidence

  8. Valued individuality/non-conformity/free thought

  9. Advocated self-reliance/ simplicity

Writers and works:

  “Self-Reliance” -Emerson   Walden – Thoreau   Poets: Whitman, Dickinson

Realism/Naturalism Presented this 22 day of August in Puritan-appropriate black and white. Please do not enjoy.

Characteristics:

* Exploring and developing personality of characters more important than plot

* Characters are middle or lower class

* Plot contains complexities, contradictions, and ironies

* Ordinary settings

* True-to-life dialogue that portrays dialect and idioms of conversation (idiom = expressions, common sayings

Naturalism:  essentially realism with an additional facet: Determinism (characters do not have free will. Mother Nature, or God, controls all and is not necessarily kind or fair.)

Writers and Works:

  Ambrose Bierce: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

  Major Sullivan Ballou: “Letter to Sarah Ballou”   Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of an

American Slave   Abraham Lincoln: “The Gettysburg Address”,

“The Emancipation Proclamation”   Jack London: The Call of the Wild, “To Build a Fire”   John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men   Kate Chopin “The Story of an Hour”, The Awakening

Modernism Presented this 22 day of August in Puritan-appropriate black and white. Please do not enjoy.

Traits and Themes:

  Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties

  Alienation of the individual

  Valorization (heroic transformation) of the despairing individual in the force of an unmanageable future

  Product of the metropolis, of cities and urbanscapes

  Challenged tradition   Writers wanted to move beyond Realism to

introduce such concepts as disjointed timelines.

  An overarching theme of Modernism was “emancipation”

Writers and Works:

  Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), William Faulkner (“A Rose for Emily”),

Flannery O’Conner (“A Good Man is Hard to Find”)

Poets: E.E.Cummings, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot

  Harlem Renaissance major poet Langston Hughes