American Literature

The United States of America is referred to by many as the “El Dorado” or the land of opportunity. Recognized as a melting
pot of diversity, this land has so much to offer, particularly when it comes to literature. Many well-known literary
masterpieces have originated from America, and perhaps, numerous influential writers we know are Americans. In this
unit, we are going to discuss American literature by focusing on four of its literary periods.

At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

•• Describe American literature;

•• Discuss the four literary periods that helped mold American literature; and
•• Differentiate the masterpieces from each literary period.

American Literature during the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

•• The colonial period began when Jamestown, the first English settlement in America, was founded in 1607 and ended
during the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775.

•• In the 1630s, there was a big wave of British immigration to Boston. This phenomenon paved the way for various
events in American literature in this period. It is at this time that the Puritans, Protestants who follow the Bible in the
strictest manner, were dominating England. In this milieu, the Puritan ideals had influenced not only British society but
also its colonies. However, because of the criticism of the Catholic Church and the lack of political support, they fled to
America. The most significant event of this era was the invention of the printing press, which quickly changed the literary
landscape not only in England but also in America. During the colonial period, the many places became the key spots of
printing literary works. These places are Cambridge, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis.
•• Because of this breakthrough, the oral literature that was cherished by the Native American Indians was soon
replaced by printed literature. Moreover, it was also through the violent suppression of the Native Americans that their
literary heritage was almost eradicated in American literary history.

•• Many political and military events happened that shattered the indigenous American culture. Because of these
events, English became the local language as well as the preferred language for literary writing. The most prominent form
of literary piece was the pamphlet that extolled the European conquerors.

•• Since the Puritans exalted religiosity, many of the early writings of this period centered on faith, including internal
struggles and hypocrisy of the faithful. Notable religious writers were:

«« John Winthrop – a Puritan who influenced the government and religions of other colonies through his writings

«« Edward Winslow – wrote several works that were of massive value to the historian of the Plymouth colony

«« William Bradford – wrote a journal chronicling the Pilgrim venture

«« Anne Bradstreet – one of the first poets to write English verse in the American colonies

«« Edward Taylor – one of the foremost poets of colonial British North America

«« Michael Wigglesworth - an author of rhymed treatises expounding Puritan doctrines «« Nicholas Noyes – wrote
competent verses in the Puritan metaphysical tradition

•• Because of the attempt of the British government to impose cultural hegemony (dominance of a culture over
another culture) and to dominate the minority culture, some writings focused on typifying the contact and conflicts of the
Britons with the Indians. Such themes are very evident in the works of Daniel Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason,
Benjamin Church, and Mary Rowlandson.

•• During this era, we can also see the rise of African-American literature as there was an influx of Africans coming to
America as slaves for the Americans. Two notable African-American writers of this time were Phillis Weatley, who was a
slave brought to America, and Olaudah Equiano, who is known for his writings that criticized the British Empire and
America for its tolerance for slavery.

•• The natives’ realization of the atrocities of their conquerors, such as their having no representation in the
government and their desire to have the same rights from British subjects, brought about the revolutionary period, which
ran from 1765 to 1783. The literature of this period was very political because it was seen as an avenue by American
writers to express their protest against the British Empire. Two keynote personalities during this time were Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Paine.
•• As a subtle condemnation of England, satires came into the limelight. The prominent satirists were John Trumbull,
Francis Hopkinson, and Philip Morin Freneau.

•• In the Norton Anthology for American Literature (2007), the American revolutionary period was described as, “The
enormous scientific, economic, social, and philosophical, changes of the 18th century, called the Enlightenment, impacted
the authority of clergyman and scripture, making way for democratic principles. The increase in population helped account
for the greater diversity of opinion in religious and political life as seen in the literature of this time.”

American Renaissance

•• This period is regarded as the “Golden Era” of American literature because writers showed the spirit of liberation in
their works. It also led to the popularization of democratic literature. F.O. Matthiessen coined the term American
Renaissance in 1941. He asserted that American Renaissance literature is “literature for democracy and for the people.”
Through literature, it was expected that people will imbibe the spirit of democracy in their daily lives.

•• Literary enthusiasts asserted that writers should have their unique styles that are only seen in American literature. The
purpose of this was to create a national identity and to make American literature known to the world. It was also an
initiative to show the demarcation between American literature and British literature. Notable writers of this period were
Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper. These writers explored local color, the American
environment, and daily life to give a distinct texture to the American literary tradition.

•• It was also during the American Renaissance that American writers had a fresh look toward their writing and wrote
without the influence of the British. Many of the most famous writers emerged in this era of literature. Also, two groups of
writers emerged, namely the transcendentalists and the dark romantics.

Transcendentalists

«« They believed that knowledge could be obtained through intuition and contemplation of inner spirits and not merely
through the senses.

«« Major writers of this movement were:

ƒƒ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

ƒƒ Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

ƒƒ Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)

ƒƒ William Henry Channing (1810–1884)

ƒƒ George Ripley (1802–1880)

ƒƒ Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

ƒƒ Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888)

ƒƒ Elizabeth Peabody (1804–1894)

Dark Romantics

«« They explored mankind’s darker side through writing subjects that are grotesque, gothic, and extremely melancholic.

«« They also explored the conflict between good and evil in their literary works.

«« Major writers of this movement were:

ƒƒ Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

ƒƒ Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

ƒƒ Herman Melville (1819–1891

•• During this period, women writers started to become empowered because of gradual access to education. This
paved the way for the rise of feminine writing and aesthetics. However, although female writers were given opportunities
to write, their works were not that popular since America was still a patriarchal society. Despite this, there were some
women writers who became popular figures of this time, and these were Harriet Beecher Stowe and Fanny Fern. In
addition, Abraham Lincoln even commented that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin ignited civil war within
the American society.

Realism in American Literature

•• The literary movement realism articulates the portrayal of the actualities of life. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is
more widely known by his pseudonym Mark Twain, is regarded as the father of realism in American literature. The most
remarkable realist masterpieces of Twain are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
According to Norton Anthology for American Literature (2007) Twain has been

a popular figure of the realism movement because “Twain’s style – influenced by journalism, wedded to the vernacular,
direct and unadorned but also highly evocative and irreverently humorous – changed the way Americans write their
language. His characters speak like real people and sound distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented
words, and regional accents.”

•• This new approach to literature shows objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter. It embraced the concept that
people were neither completely good nor completely bad but somewhere in between.

•• A popular literary device used in this kind of literature was the frame narrative or the story within a story. In more
technical terms, this is called “mise en abyme.” This device is
not new to world literature as it has been used in earlier masterpieces such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

•• To better understand how realism is portrayed in literature, we can best describe it by referring to the writing style
of American writers at that time. Realist writers utilized the vernacular language in writing. In this light, readers can easily
connect to what they read since the language used was localized. Hence, we can see the fusion of local languages and
regional accents as characters delivered their discourses in the texts.

•• Apart from Twain, there were numerous realist American writes who were famous as well. These were George W.
Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, Mary Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock), Sarah Orne Jewett,
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Henry Cuyler Bunner, and William Sydney Porter (O. Henry).

IV. American Literature in the Modern and Postmodern Periods

•• During the 1950s, we can see a big and drastic change in the American literary tradition.

That change revolutionized how writers compose their works. This, of course, comes from the social movements such as
the two World Wars and the Cold War. Writers challenged the norms and traditional practices of writing. Hence, this
phenomenon led to the beginnings of the modern and postmodern periods.

•• These eras broke away from the seemingly realist paragon that already dominated

American literature. Guerin, et. al. (2011) stated in their book that: “In character development, both modern and
postmodern literature explore subjectivism, turning from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness, in
many cases drawing on modernist examples in the ‘stream of consciousness’ styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, or
explorative poems like ‘The Waste Land’ by T. S. Eliot. In addition, both modern and postmodern literature explores
fragmentariness in narrative- and character-construction.”

•• Influential writers of these periods were Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and T. S. Eliot. Woolf became popular because
of her “stream of consciousness” style of writing. Her style of writing gives readers a view of what goes on in the
characters’ minds. Joyce and Eliot, on the other hand, were powerhouses of modernism and postmodernism because of
the fragmentariness of their writing.

•• Eliot’s poems are perfect illustrations of the influences of modernism and postmodernism in American literature.
Eliot’s poems are fragmentary, which means they neither ascribe to a continuous flow of thought nor follow a coherent set
of ideas.

•• Simply put, modernism and postmodernism underscored that literary writing has to be “free.” In this essence,
writers of these periods are unconventional as it deconstructed the norms in writing. These distortions for them are not
regarded as rebellious acts of writing. However, such “delineations” are the unique features of modern and postmodern
works. If a writer chooses to bombard his poems with so many exclamation points after every word, it will not mean that
he is not a good writer and that he does not know anything about the structure of English. Rather, the writer adheres to
the style of modern and postmodern literature. Modernist and postmodernist writers mimic the dizzying events that unfold
in their era.

•• The most notable writers of these periods were T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, John Ashbery, Rita Dove, Anne Sexton,
and Sylvia Plath.
Learning Tasks

•• Task 1: Create a table to show the different characteristics of American literature in the colonial and revolutionary
periods, American Renaissance, Realism, and Modern and Postmodern periods. In each column, write the key terms and
notable phrases that characterize the literary period.

•• Task 2: Create a graphic organizer that will show the different writers who emerged in a particular era. For each
writer, indicate a brief note that describes his or her contribution to the development of American literature.

•• Task 3: Research more about the modernism and postmodernism periods in American literature and point out its
differences with the three other periods with the use of a Venn diagram.

Examples

Questions:

What was the greatest innovation in the colonial period that popularized print literature?

Who among the following writers is not a realist?

George Cable

Rita Dove

Thomas Nelson Page

O. Henry

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Which the following is not a characteristic of modern and postmodern literary works?

depicts the actualities of life

makes use of fragmentary narratives

shows an unconventional writing style

uses a distorted language structure

Answers:

printing press

Explanation:

The invention of the printing press led to the production of more literary works.

b. Rita Dove

Explanation:

Rita Dove is a postmodern writer.

a. depicts the actualities of life

Explanation:

This is a characteristic of a realist work.

Wrap Up

American literature is indeed a very influential body of literary works. In order for us to better understand it as a whole, we
need to revisit four important periods that molded American literature into what it is now.

•• The colonial and revolutionary periods anchored on the premise that literature should be religious and that there have
to be fostering of humanistic faculties for whoever will read it.

•• The American Renaissance asserted that literature is for democracy.

•• As a literary movement, realism believes that good literature typifies the actualities of life.

•• The modern and postmodern periods underscored that being unconventional would not hinder writers from
producing beautiful works. All of these periods are important in providing us a framework on the development of American
literature.

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Bibliography

Abrams, Robert E. Landscape and Ideology in American Renaissance Literature: Topographies of

Skepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Baym, Nina, ed. Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A: Beginnings to 1820. Bt Bound, 2007.

Bremer, Francis J. John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Emerson, Everett H., ed. American Literature, 1764–1789: The Revolutionary Years. Madison,

Wisconsin: The University of Wisonsin Press, 1977.

Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. 2nd ed. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Gregson, Susan R. Phillis Wheatley. Mankato, Minnesota: Bridgestone Books, 2002.

Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, and John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical
Approaches to Literature. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Hall, David D. Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book. Amherst, Massachusetts:

University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

Long, William Joseph. Outlines of English and American Literature. Whitefish, Montana:

Kessinger Publishing LLC, 2010.

Meyers, Karen H. Colonialism and the Revolutionary Period (Beginnings–1800). 2nd ed. New York: Chelsea House
Publishers, 2010.

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