Literature 

broadly is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly

for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama,
and poetry.[2] In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature,
much of which has been transcribed.[3] Literature is a method of recording, preserving,
and transmitting knowledge and entertainment.
Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such
as autobiography, diaries, memoir, letters, and the essay. Within its broad definition,
literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other printed information on a
particular subject.[4][5]
Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura "learning, a writing,
grammar," originally "writing formed with letters," from litera/littera "letter".[6] In spite
of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts.[7][8] Developments in print
technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works,
which now includes electronic literature.
Literature is classified according to whether it is poetry, prose or drama, and such works
are categorized according to historical periods, or their adherence to
certain aesthetic features, or genre.

Oral literature[edit]
The use of the term "literature" here is a little problematic because of its origins in the
Latin littera, “letter,” essentially writing. Alternatives such as "oral forms" and "oral
genres" have been suggested but the word literature is widely used.[14]
Oral literature is an ancient human tradition found in "all corners of the world".[15] Modern
archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to preserve and transmit
arts and knowledge that depended completely or partially on an oral tradition, across
various cultures:
The Judeo-Christian Bible reveals its oral traditional roots; medieval European
manuscripts are penned by performing scribes; geometric vases from archaic Greece
mirror Homer's oral style. (...) Indeed, if these final decades of the millennium have
taught us anything, it must be that oral tradition never was the other we accused it of
being; it never was the primitive, preliminary technology of communication we thought it
to be. Rather, if the whole truth is told, oral tradition stands out as the single most
dominant communicative technology of our species as both a historical fact and, in many
areas still, a contemporary reality.[15]
The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of
remembering history, genealogy, and law.[16]
In Asia, the transmission of folklore, mythologies as well as scriptures in ancient India, in
different Indian religions, was by oral tradition, preserved with precision with the help of
elaborate mnemonic techniques.[17]
The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first
by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral
societies such as the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature
is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across
generations, without being written down.[citation needed] According to Goody, the Vedic texts
likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it a "parallel products of a literate
society".[citation needed]
Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed
down through thousands of years. In a study published in February 2020, new evidence
showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and
40,000 years ago.[18] Significantly, this is a "minimum age constraint for human presence
in Victoria", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of
the Gunditjmara people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria,
which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence.
[19]
 An axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans
inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.[18]
All ancient Greek literature was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature
was completely so.[20] Homer's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, was largely
composed, performed and transmitted orally.[21] As folklores and legends were performed
in front of distant audiences, the singers would substitute the names in the stories with
local characters or rulers to give the stories a local flavor and thus connect with the
audience, but making the historicity embedded in the oral tradition as unreliable.[22] The
lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious traditions have led scholars
to presume that these were ritualistic and transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars
disagree that the complex rituals in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an
exclusive product of an oral tradition.[23]
Writing systems are not known to have existed among Native North Americans before
contact with Europeans. Oral storytelling traditions flourished in a context without the
use of writing to record and preserve history, scientific knowledge, and social practices.
[24]
 While some stories were told for amusement and leisure, most functioned as practical
lessons from tribal experience applied to immediate moral, social, psychological, and
environmental issues.[25] Stories fuse fictional, supernatural, or otherwise exaggerated
characters and circumstances with real emotions and morals as a means of teaching. Plots
often reflect real life situations and may be aimed at particular people known by the
story's audience. In this way, social pressure could be exerted without directly causing
embarrassment or social exclusion.[26] For example, rather than yelling, Inuit parents
might deter their children from wandering too close to the water's edge by telling a story
about a sea monster with a pouch for children within its reach.[27]
See also African literature#Oral literature
Oratory[edit]
Oratory or the art of public speaking "was for long considered a literary art".
[4]
 From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western
education in training orators, lawyers, counsellors, historians, statesmen, and poets.[28][note 1]
Writing[edit]
Further information: History of writing

Limestone Kish tablet from Sumer with pictographic writing; may be the earliest known writing,

3500 BC. Ashmolean Museum
Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration
in Mesopotamia outgrew human memory, and writing became a more dependable method
of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form.[30] Though in both ancient
Egypt and Mesoamerica, writing may have already emerged because of the need to
record historical and environmental events. Subsequent innovations included more
uniform, predictable, legal systems, sacred texts, and the origins of modern practices
of scientific inquiry and knowledge-consolidation, all largely reliant on portable and
easily reproducible forms of writing.  
Early written literature[edit]
Main articles: History of literature, Ancient literature, and History of books
Ancient Egyptian literature,[31] along with Sumerian literature, are considered the
world's oldest literatures.[32] The primary genres of the literature of ancient Egypt—
didactic texts, hymns and prayers, and tales—were written almost entirely in verse;[33] By
the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works
included funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and
commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent
administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to
17th century BC) that a narrative Egyptian literature was created.[34]
Many works of early periods, even in narrative form, had a covert moral or didactic
purpose, such as the Sanskrit Panchatantra.200 BC – 300 AD, based on older oral
tradition.[35][36] Drama and satire also developed as urban culture provided a larger public
audience, and later readership, for literary production. Lyric poetry (as opposed to epic
poetry) was often the speciality of courts and aristocratic circles, particularly in East Asia
where songs were collected by the Chinese aristocracy as poems, the most notable being
the Shijing or Book of Songs (1046–c.600 BC), .[37][38][39]

Egyptian hieroglyphs with cartouches for the name "Ramesses II", from the Luxor Temple, New

Kingdom
In ancient China, early literature was primarily focused on
philosophy, historiography, military science, agriculture, and poetry. China, the origin of
modern paper making and woodblock printing, produced the world's first print cultures.
[40]
 Much of Chinese literature originates with the Hundred Schools of Thought period that
occurred during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (769‒269 BC).[41] The most important of these
include the Classics of Confucianism, of Daoism, of Mohism, of Legalism, as well as
works of military science (e.g. Sun Tzu's The Art of War, c.5th century BC)) and Chinese
history (e.g. Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, c.94 BC). Ancient Chinese
literature had a heavy emphasis on historiography, with often very detailed court records.
An exemplary piece of narrative history of ancient China was the Zuo Zhuan, which was
compiled no later than 389 BC, and attributed to the blind 5th-century BC historian Zuo
Qiuming.[42]
In ancient India, literature originated from stories that were originally orally transmitted.
Early genres included drama, fables, sutras and epic poetry. Sanskrit literature begins
with the Vedas, dating back to 1500–1000 BC, and continues with the Sanskrit
Epics of Iron Age India.[43][44] The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts. The Samhitas
(vedic collections) date to roughly 1500–1000 BC, and the "circum-Vedic" texts, as well
as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000‒500 BC, resulting in a Vedic period,
spanning the mid-2nd to mid 1st millennium BC, or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron
Age.[45] The period between approximately the 6th to 1st centuries BC saw the
composition and redaction of the two most influential Indian epics, the Mahabharata[46]
[47]
 and the Ramayana,[48] with subsequent redaction progressing down to the 4th century
AD. Other major literary works are Ramcharitmanas[49] & Krishnacharitmanas.
The earliest known Greek writings are Mycenaean (c.1600–1100 BC), written in
the Linear B syllabary on clay tablets. These documents contain prosaic records largely
concerned with trade (lists, inventories, receipts, etc.); no real literature has been
discovered.[50][51] Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, the original decipherers of Linear
B, state that literature almost certainly existed in Mycenaean Greece,[51] but it was either
not written down or, if it was, it was on parchment or wooden tablets, which did not
survive the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces in the twelfth century BC.
[51]
 Homer's, epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, are central works of ancient Greek
literature. It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around
the late eighth or early seventh century BC.[52] Modern scholars consider these
accounts legendary.[53][54][55] Most researchers believe that the poems were
originally transmitted orally.[56] From antiquity until the present day, the influence of
Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous
works of literature, music, art and film.[57] The Homeric epics were the greatest influence
on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has
taught Greece" – ten Hellada pepaideuken.[58][59] Hesiod's Works and Days (c.700 BC)
and Theogony, are some of the earliest, and most influential, of ancient Greek literature.
Classical Greek genres included philosophy, poetry,
historiography, comedies and dramas. Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC)
and Aristotle (384–322 BC) authored philosophical texts that are the foundation
of Western philosophy, Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC) and Pindar were influential lyric
poets, and Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) ) and Thucydides were early Greek historians.
Although drama was popular in ancient Greece, of the hundreds of tragedies written and
performed during the classical age, only a limited number of plays by three authors still
exist: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The plays of Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386
BC) provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy,
the earliest form of Greek Comedy, and are in fact used to define the genre.[60]
The Hebrew religious text, the Torah, is widely seen as a product of the Persian
period (539–333 BC, probably 450–350 BC).[61] This consensus echoes a traditional
Jewish view which gives Ezra, the leader of the Jewish community on its return from
Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation.[62] This represents a major source of
Christianity's Bible, which has been a major influence on Western literature.[63]
The beginning of Roman literature dates to 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin
version of a Greek play.[64] Literature in latin would flourish for the next six centuries, and
includes essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings.
The Qur'an (610 AD to 632 AD)[65] ), the main holy book of Islam, had a significant
influence on the Arab language, and marked the beginning of Islamic literature. Muslims
believe it was transcribed in the Arabic dialect of the Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad.[26]
[66]
 As Islam spread, the Quran had the effect of unifying and standardizing Arabic.[26]
Theological works in Latin were the dominant form of literature in Europe typically
found in libraries during the Middle Ages. Western Vernacular literature includes
the Poetic Edda and the sagas, or heroic epics, of Iceland, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, and
the German Song of Hildebrandt. A later form of medieval fiction was the romance, an
adventurous and sometimes magical narrative with strong popular appeal.[67]
Controversial, religious, political and instructional literature proliferated during the
European Renaissance as a result of the Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing
press[68] around 1440, while the Medieval romance developed into the novel,[69]
The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang dynasty China, the world's earliest dated
printed book, AD 868 (British Library)
Publishing became possible with the invention of writing, but became more practical with
the invention of printing. Prior to printing, distributed works were copied manually,
by scribes.
The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware circa 1045. Then
c.1450, separately Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe. This invention
gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available.
Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before 1501 in Europe
are known as incunables or incunabula. "A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of
Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight
million books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had produced
since Constantine founded his city in A.D. 330."[70]
Eventually, printing enabled other forms of publishing besides books. The history of
modern newspaper publishing started in Germany in 1609, with publishing of
magazines following in 1663.
Women and literature[edit]
Further information: French literature, German literature, Russian literature,
and English poetry § Women poets in the 18th century
The widespread education of women was not common until the nineteenth century, and
because of this literature until recently was mostly male dominated.[72]

Children's literature[edit]
A separate genre of children's literature only began to emerge in the eighteenth century,
with the development of the concept of childhood.[80]:x-xi The earliest of these books were
educational books, books on conduct, and simple ABCs—often decorated with animals,
plants, and anthropomorphic letters.[81]

Prose[edit]
As noted above, prose generally makes far less use of the aesthetic qualities of language
than poetry.[102][103][110] However, developments in modern literature, including free
verse and prose poetry have tended to blur the differences, and American poet T.S.
Eliot suggested that while: "the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the
distinction between poetry and prose is obscure".[111] There are verse novels, a type of
narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry
rather than prose. Eugene Onegin (1831) by Alexander Pushkin is the most famous
example.[112]
On the historical development of prose, Richard Graff notes that "[In the case of ancient
Greece] recent scholarship has emphasized the fact that formal prose was a comparatively
late development, an "invention" properly associated with the classical period".[113]
Latin was a major influence on the development of prose in many European countries.
Especially important was the great Roman orator Cicero.[114] It was the lingua
franca among literate Europeans until quite recent times, and the great works
of Descartes (1596 – 1650[), Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), and Baruch Spinoza (1632 –
1677[) were published in Latin. Among the last important books written primarily in
Latin prose were the works of Swedenborg (d. 1772), Linnaeus (d. 1778), Euler (d.
1783), Gauss (d. 1855), and Isaac Newton (d. 1727).

There are very few women poets writing in English, whose names are remembered, until
the twentieth century.[citation needed] Even in the nineteenth century the only names that stand
out are Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson ( see American
poetry).[according to whom?] But while generally women are absent from the European cannon
of Romantic literature, there is one notable exception, the French novelist and memoirist
Amantine Dupin (1804 – 1876) best known by her pen name George Sand[74][75] One of the
more popular writers in Europe in her lifetime,[76] being more renowned than both Victor
Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s,[77] Sand is recognised as
one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. Jane Austen (1775 – 1817)
is the first major English woman novelist, while female dramatists are a rarity until the
twentieth century.[78][failed verification]
113 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded between 1901 and 2020 to 117
individuals: 101 men and 16 women. Selma Lagerlöf (1858 – 1940)} as the first woman
to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she was awarded in 1909. Additionally, she
was the first woman to be granted a membership in The Swedish Academy in 1914.[79]
Feminist scholars have since the twentieth century sought expand the literary canon to
include more women writers.

Novel[edit]

A novel is a long fictional prose narrative. In English, the term emerged from

the Romance languages in the late 15th century, with the meaning of "news"; it came to
indicate something new, without a distinction between fact or fiction.[115] The romance is a
closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in
prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents",
whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events
and the modern state of society".[116] Other European languages do not distinguish between
romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo",[117] indicates the
proximity of the forms.[118]
Although there are many historical prototypes, so-called "novels before the novel", [119] the
modern novel form emerges late in cultural history—roughly during the eighteenth
century.[120] Initially subject to much criticism, the novel has acquired a dominant position
amongst literary forms, both popularly and critically.[118][121][122]
Novella[edit]
The publisher Melville House classifies the novella as "too short to be a novel, too long
to be a short story".[123] Publishers and literary award societies typically consider a novella
to be between 17,000 and 40,000 words.[124]
Short story[edit]
A dilemma in defining the "short story" as a literary form is how to, or whether one
should, distinguish it from any short narrative and its contested origin,[125] that include
the Bible, and Edgar Allan Poe.[126]
Graphic novel[edit]
Graphic novels and comic books present stories told in a combination of artwork,
dialogue, and text.
Electronic literature[edit]
Electronic literature is a literary genre consisting of digital works

This article traces the history of

American poetry, drama, fiction, and social and literary
criticism from the early 17th century through the turn of the
21st century. For a description of the oral and written
literatures of the indigenous peoples of the
Americas, see Native American literature. Though the
contributions of African Americans to American literature are
discussed in this article, see African American literature for in-
depth treatment. For information about literary traditions
related to, and at times overlapping with, American literature
in English, see English literature and Canadian literature:
Canadian literature in English.

The 17th Century

This history of American literature begins with the arrival of

English-speaking Europeans in what would become the United
States. At first American literature was naturally a colonial
literature, by authors who were Englishmen and who thought
and wrote as such. John Smith, a soldier of fortune, is credited
with initiating American literature. His chief books included A
True Relation of…Virginia…(1608) and The Generall Historie
of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624).
Although these volumes often glorified their author, they were
avowedly written to explain colonizing opportunities to
Englishmen. In time, each colony was similarly described:
Daniel Denton’s Brief Description of New
York (1670), William Penn’s Brief Account of the Province of
Pennsylvania (1682), and Thomas Ashe’s Carolina (1682)
were only a few of many works praising America as a land of
economic promise.
Such writers acknowledged British allegiance, but others
stressed the differences of opinion that spurred the colonists to
leave their homeland. More important, they argued questions
of government involving the relationship between church and
state. The attitude that most authors attacked was jauntily set
forth by Nathaniel Ward of Massachusetts Bay in The Simple
Cobler of Aggawam in America (1647). Ward amusingly
defended the status quo and railed at colonists who sponsored
newfangled notions. A variety of counterarguments to such
a conservative view were published. John
Winthrop’s Journal (written 1630–49) told sympathetically of
the attempt of Massachusetts Bay Colony to form a theocracy
—a state with God at its head and with its laws based upon
the Bible. Later defenders of the theocratic ideal were Increase
Mather and his son Cotton. William Bradford’s History of
Plymouth Plantation (through 1646) showed how his pilgrim
Separatists broke completely with Anglicanism. Even more
radical than Bradford was Roger Williams, who, in a series of
controversial pamphlets, advocated not only the separation of
church and state but also the vesting of power in the people
and the tolerance of different religious beliefs.
The utilitarian writings of the 17th century included
biographies, treatises, accounts of voyages, and sermons.
There were few achievements in drama or fiction, since there
was a widespread prejudice against these forms. Bad but
popular poetry appeared in the Bay Psalm Book of 1640 and
in Michael Wigglesworth’s summary in doggerel verse of
Calvinistic belief, The Day of Doom (1662). There was some
poetry, at least, of a higher order. Anne Bradstreet of
Massachusetts wrote some lyrics published in The Tenth Muse
Lately Sprung Up in America (1650), which movingly
conveyed her feelings concerning religion and her family.
Ranked still higher by modern critics is a poet whose works
were not discovered and published until 1939: Edward Taylor,
an English-born minister and physician who lived
in Boston and Westfield, Massachusetts. Less touched by
gloom than the typical Puritan, Taylor wrote lyrics that
showed his delight in Christian belief and experience.

All 17th-century American writings were in the manner of

British writings of the same period. John Smith wrote in the
tradition of geographic literature, Bradford echoed
the cadences of the King James Bible, while the Mathers and
Roger Williams wrote bejeweled prose typical of the day.
Anne Bradstreet’s poetic style derived from a long line of
British poets, including Spenser and Sidney, while Taylor was
in the tradition of such Metaphysical poets as George
Herbert and John Donne. Both the content and form of the
literature of this first century in America were thus markedly
English.

The 18th Century

In America in the early years of the 18th century, some
writers, such as Cotton Mather, carried on the older traditions.
His huge history and biography of Puritan New
England, Magnalia Christi Americana, in 1702, and his
vigorous Manuductio ad Ministerium, or introduction to the
ministry, in 1726, were defenses of ancient
Puritan convictions. Jonathan Edwards, initiator of the Great
Awakening, a religious revival that stirred the eastern seacoast
for many years, eloquently defended his burning belief in
Calvinistic doctrine—of the concept that man, born totally
depraved, could attain virtue and salvation only through God’s
grace—in his powerful sermons and most notably in the
philosophical treatise Freedom of Will (1754). He supported
his claims by relating them to a complex metaphysical system
and by reasoning brilliantly in clear and often beautiful prose.
But Mather and Edwards were defending a doomed cause.
Liberal New England ministers such as John
Wise and Jonathan Mayhew moved toward a less rigid
religion. Samuel Sewall heralded other changes in his
amusing Diary, covering the years 1673–1729. Though
sincerely religious, he showed in daily records how
commercial life in New England replaced rigid Puritanism
with more worldly attitudes. The Journal of Mme Sara
Kemble Knight comically detailed a journey that lady took
to New York in 1704. She wrote vividly of what she saw and
commented upon it from the standpoint of an orthodox
believer, but a quality of levity in her witty writings showed
that she was much less fervent than the Pilgrim founders had
been. In the South, William Byrd of Virginia, an aristocratic
plantation owner, contrasted sharply with gloomier
predecessors. His record of a surveying trip in 1728, The
History of the Dividing Line, and his account of a visit to his
frontier properties in 1733, A Journey to the Land of Eden,
were his chief works. Years in England, on the Continent, and
among the gentry of the South had created gaiety and grace of
expression, and, although a devout Anglican, Byrd was as
playful as the Restoration wits whose works he clearly
admired.
The wrench of the American Revolution emphasized
differences that had been growing between American and
British political concepts. As the colonists moved to the belief
that rebellion was inevitable, fought the bitter war, and worked
to found the new nation’s government, they were influenced
by a number of very effective political writers, such as Samuel
Adams and John Dickinson, both of whom favoured the
colonists, and loyalist Joseph Galloway. But two figures
loomed above these—Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.
Franklin, born in 1706, had started to publish his writings in
his brother’s newspaper, the New England Courant, as early as
1722. This newspaper championed the cause of the “Leather
Apron” man and the farmer and appealed by using easily
understood language and practical arguments. The idea that
common sense was a good guide was clear in both the
popular Poor Richard’s almanac, which Franklin edited
between 1732 and 1757 and filled with prudent and
witty aphorisms purportedly written by uneducated but
experienced Richard Saunders, and in
the author’s Autobiography, written between 1771 and 1788, a
record of his rise from humble circumstances that offered
worldly wise suggestions for future success.
Franklin’s self-attained culture, deep and wide, gave substance
and skill to varied articles, pamphlets, and reports that he
wrote concerning the dispute with Great Britain, many of them
extremely effective in stating and shaping the colonists’ cause.

Thomas Paine went from his native England

to Philadelphia and became a magazine editor and then, about
14 months later, the most effective propagandist for the
colonial cause. His pamphlet Common Sense (January 1776)
did much to influence the colonists to declare their
independence. The American Crisis papers (December 1776–
December 1783) spurred Americans to fight on through the
blackest years of the war. Based upon Paine’s simple deistic
beliefs, they showed the conflict as a stirring melodrama with
the angelic colonists against the forces of evil. Such white and
black picturings were highly effective propaganda. Another
reason for Paine’s success was his poetic fervour, which found
expression in impassioned words and phrases long to be
remembered and quoted.

The new nation

In the postwar period some of these eloquent men were no

longer able to win a hearing. Thomas Paine and Samuel
Adams lacked the constructive ideas that appealed to those
interested in forming a new government. Others fared better—
for example, Franklin, whose tolerance and sense showed in
addresses to the constitutional convention. A different group
of authors, however, became leaders in the new period—
Thomas Jefferson and the talented writers of the Federalist
papers, a series of 85 essays published in 1787 and 1788
urging the virtues of the proposed new constitution. They were
written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.
More distinguished for insight into problems of government
and cool logic than for eloquence, these works became a
classic statement of American governmental, and more
generally of republican, theory. At the time they were highly
effective in influencing legislators who voted on the new
constitution. Hamilton, who wrote perhaps 51 of the Federalist
papers, became a leader of the Federalist Party and, as first
secretary of the treasury (1789–95), wrote messages that were
influential in increasing the power of national government at
the expense of the state governments.
Thomas Jefferson was an influential political writer during and
after the war. The merits of his great summary, the Declaration
of Independence, consisted, as Madison pointed out, “in a
lucid communication of human rights…in a style and tone
appropriate to the great occasion, and to the spirit of the
American people.” After the war he formulated the exact
tenets of his faith in various papers but most richly in his
letters and inaugural addresses, in which he urged individual
freedom and local autonomy—a theory of decentralization
differing from Hamilton’s belief in strong federal government.
Though he held that all men are created equal, Jefferson
thought that “a natural aristocracy” of “virtues and talents”
should hold high governmental positions.

Notable works of the period

Poets and poetry

Poetry became a weapon during the American Revolution,

with both loyalists and Continentals urging their forces on,
stating their arguments, and celebrating their heroes in verse
and songs such as “Yankee Doodle,” “Nathan Hale,” and “The
Epilogue,” mostly set to popular British melodies and in
manner resembling other British poems of the period.
The most memorable American poet of the period was Philip
Freneau, whose first well-known poems, Revolutionary War
satires, served as effective propaganda; later he turned to
various aspects of the American scene. Although he wrote
much in the stilted manner of the Neoclassicists, such poems
as “The Indian Burying Ground,” “The Wild Honey Suckle,”
“To a Caty-did,” and “On a Honey Bee” were romantic lyrics
of real grace and feeling that were forerunners of a literary
movement destined to be important in the 19th century.

Drama and the novel

In the years toward the close of the 18th century, both dramas
and novels of some historical importance were produced.
Though theatrical groups had long been active in America, the
first American comedy presented professionally was Royall
Tyler’s Contrast (1787). This drama was full of echoes of
Goldsmith and Sheridan, but it contained a Yankee character
(the predecessor of many such in years to follow) who brought
something native to the stage.
William Hill Brown wrote the first American novel, The
Power of Sympathy (1789), which showed authors how to
overcome ancient prejudices against this form by following
the sentimental novel form invented by Samuel Richardson. A
flood of sentimental novels followed to the end of the 19th
century. Hugh Henry Brackenridge succeeded
Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Henry Fielding with some
popular success in Modern Chivalry (1792–1815), an
amusing satire on democracy and an interesting portrayal of
frontier life. Gothic thrillers were to some extent nationalized
in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (1798), Arthur
Mervyn (1799–1800), and Edgar Huntly (1799).

The 19th Century

Early 19th-century literature

After the American Revolution, and increasingly after the War

of 1812, American writers were exhorted to produce
a literature that was truly native. As if in response, four
authors of very respectable stature appeared. William Cullen
Bryant, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and
Edgar Allan Poe initiated a great half century of literary
development.

Bryant, a New Englander by birth, attracted attention in his

23rd year when the first version of his poem “Thanatopsis”
(1817) appeared. This, as well as some later poems, was
written under the influence of English 18th-century poets. Still
later, however, under the influence of Wordsworth and
other Romantics, he wrote nature lyrics that vividly
represented the New England scene. Turning to journalism, he
had a long career as a fighting liberal editor of The Evening
Post. He himself was overshadowed, in renown at least, by a
native-born New Yorker, Washington Irving.
Irving, the youngest member of a prosperous merchant family,
joined with ebullient young men of the town in producing
the Salmagundi papers (1807–08), which satirized the foibles
of Manhattan’s citizenry. This was followed by A History of
New York (1809), by “Diedrich Knickerbocker,” a burlesque
history that mocked pedantic scholarship and sniped at the old
Dutch families. Irving’s models in these works were obviously
Neoclassical English satirists, from whom he had learned to
write in a polished, bright style. Later, having met Sir Walter
Scott and having become acquainted with imaginative German
literature, he introduced a new Romantic note in The Sketch
Book (1819–20), Bracebridge Hall (1822), and other works.
He was the first American writer to win the ungrudging (if
somewhat surprised) respect of British critics.
James Fenimore Cooper won even wider fame. Following the
pattern of Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley” novels, he did his
best work in the “Leatherstocking” tales (1823–41), a five-
volume series celebrating the career of a great frontiersman
named Natty Bumppo. His skill in weaving history into
inventive plots and in characterizing his compatriots brought
him acclaim not only in America and England but on the
continent of Europe as well.
Edgar Allan Poe, reared in the South, lived and worked as
an author and editor in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond,
and New York City. His work was shaped largely
by analytical skill that showed clearly in his role as an editor:
time after time he gauged the taste of readers so accurately that
circulation figures of magazines under his direction soared
impressively. It showed itself in his critical essays, wherein he
lucidly explained and logically applied his criteria. His gothic
tales of terror were written in accordance with his findings
when he studied the most popular magazines of the day. His
masterpieces of terror—“The Fall of the House of Usher”
(1839), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), “The Cask of
Amontillado” (1846), and others—were written according to a
carefully worked out psychological method. So were
his detective stories, such as “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue” (1841), which historians credited as the first of
the genre. As a poet, he achieved fame with “The Raven”
(1845). His work, especially his critical writings and carefully
crafted poems, had perhaps a greater influence in France,
where they were translated by Charles Baudelaire, than in his
own country.
Two Southern novelists were also outstanding in the earlier
part of the century: John Pendleton Kennedy and William
Gilmore Simms. In Swallow Barn (1832), Kennedy wrote
delightfully of life on the plantations. Simms’s forte was the
writing of historical novels like those of Scott and Cooper,
which treated the history of the frontier and his native South
Carolina. The Yemassee (1835) and Revolutionary romances
show him at his best.

The naturalists

Other American writers toward the close of the 19th century

moved toward naturalism, a more advanced stage
of realism. Hamlin Garland’s writings exemplified some
aspects of this development when he made short stories and
novels vehicles for philosophical and social preachments and
was franker than Howells in stressing the harsher details of the
farmer’s struggles and in treating the subject of sex. Main-
Travelled Roads (1891) and Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly (1895)
displayed Garland’s particular talents. These and a
critical manifesto for the new fiction, Crumbling Idols (1894),
were influential contributions to a developing movement.

Contemporary American literature is subversive. It contains an element of the surreal,

bizarre names, plots and consistent, biting commentary. Primarily postmodernist,
these works are inherently distrustful. They not only question cultural inconsistencies,
they allow such inconsistencies to naturally unfold within the narrative. As a result,
contemporary American literature, arguably continues the pattern of highly-politicized
fiction popularised in the 18th and 19th century, along with the thought-provoking
philosophical questions of 20th century Modernist movement.

1. John Updike, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom series (1960, 1971, 1981, 1990)

Much like William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Updike’s

“Rabbit” series is told in a present-tense narrative,
destabilizing the novel’s traditional style. Harry ‘Rabbit’
Angstrom is a middle-class man who feels there is
something missing from his life. The series follows Harry
and his family through marriage, affairs and aging, each
novel embodying the many triumphs and frustrations of
the everyday American.

2. E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime (1975)

Set in 1906, Ragtime tells the story of Harry Houdini, a
famous escape artist who crashes into a telephone
pole outside a family’s home. Filled with many sub-
stories and plots, Doctorow captures American history
as a series of random events, challenging the nature
of recorded history. As a result, Doctorow subverts the
traditional set-up of the novel in its intricate mixing of
historical and fictional characters into a single
narration.

Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family

(1976)
As a work of, what Haley calls, “faction,” Roots tells the
semi-biographical story of his ancestors. Starting with
the 18th-century, Kunta Kinte, Haley’s African ancestor
who was captured and sold into United States slavery,
he creates a genealogy of his ancestors. Through this
recount, Haley records the injustices and struggles
found within the African slave trade, making it not
only a great novel but also a significant document for
future generations.

Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song (1979)

Mailer’s recounting of the Gary Gilmore case, a man
famous killing for demanding the death penalty
during his murder trial, reveals a dark struggle
between the individual and the state. Mixed with the
media’s hunger for his plea, the narrative becomes a
creative blend of fact and fiction (as Haley would say,
“faction”) making it a stimulating critique of the
American system of government and punishment.

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)

Published posthumously, A Confederacy of Dunces is
a comedic novel that takes place in 1950s, New
Orleans. It follows Ignatius J. Reilly who has a master’s
degree in medieval studies, no job and who lives with
his mother. Like the Rabbit series and Ragtime, Toole
has a collection of seemingly random stories that
seduce the reader as he or she tries to tie narrations
together before Toole reveals their connect at the end
of the novel.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

“All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had

to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my
uncles. A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men. But I
never thought I’d have to fight in my own house. She
let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I
do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me.”

Walker’s novel tells the story of a young black woman

in America, through a series of entries that span
through 20 years of her life. Dealing with abuse, rape,
racism, sisterhood, feminism and hatred, The Color
Purple embodies a journey violence, beauty and self-
acceptance.
Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods (1994)
O’Brien’s protagonist, John Wade, failed in his campaign for
Senate. When he moves to Lake of the Woods, Minnesota,
he realizes his wife, Kathy, is missing. Through a series of
flashbacks and character statements, the novel offers a
‘court-like’ approach to the mystery surrounding her
absence. In this way, the novel self-reflexively turns the
reader into the ‘judge’ who must produce a final verdict.

Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain (1997)

Cold Mountain tells the story of W. P. Inman, a

Confederate soldier who was severely wounded during the
Civil War. Desiring to return to Ada Monroe, the woman he
is in love wife, he dangerously embarks on a journey to
return home on foot (reminiscent of Homer’s The Odyssey
and elements of Dante’s Inferno). With the narrative
altering between the perspectives of Inman and Monroe,
Frazier reveals his historical tale to be one of love, survival
and transformation.

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

Set in 1959, an evangelical Baptist, Nathan Price, takes his

family with him on his mission to the Belgian Congo, right
at the heart of their fight for independence from Belgium.
Narrated by Price’s wife and daughters, Kingsolver’s novel
engages in a discussion of the Congo’s history and the
unwillingness of other nations, including the United States,
to allow the Congo’s to preserve their own culture as a
nation. In this way, Kingsolver offers a critique of the
destructive post-colonial ideals that are permeated within
American (and European) politics.

Richard Russo, Empire Falls (2001)

After 20 years, Miles Roby is still working at the Empire

Grill diner. In all that time, he’s dropped college to
care for his dying mother, has gotten married and
divorced, looks after his alcoholic father and his
disabled brother, and dotes on his daughter. Failing to
follow his own dreams, Roby has spent his life caring
for other people. Despite the encompassing theme of
disillusionment, Russo manages offer small moments
of consolation through ideas of community and
family.
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006)

Set between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and

period just after World War I, Against the Day
 examines the labour struggles of the major cities of
the world. He places the reader into the sidelines of
one of the major turnovers in history, making the
novel more of a temporal ‘glance’ at a moment in time
rather than the traditional linear, plot found within
most of the literary canon. In this way, his novel
employs elements of Joyce’s Ulysses in its global
‘stream of consciousness narrative’ while also
providing moments of hope through rich, multi-
dimensional characters.

Everything Is Illuminated
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the book. For the film, see Everything Is Illuminated (film). For the Dexter episode,
see List of Dexter episodes § Season 5 (2010).

Everything Is Illuminated

Front cover of hardcover edition.

Author Jonathan Safran Foer

Cover artist Jon Gray (aka gray318)

Country United States

Language English
 Genre Novel

Publisher Houghton Mifflin

Publication date April 16, 2002

Media type Print (hardback & paperback)

ISBN 0-618-17387-0 (hardcover)

OCLC 48144414

Dewey Decimal 813/.6 21

LC Class PS3606.O38 E84 2002

Everything Is Illuminated is the first novel by the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer,

published in 2002. It was adapted into a film of the same name starring Elijah Wood and Eugene
Hütz in 2005.
The book's writing and structure received critical acclaim for the manner in which it switches
between two stories, both of which are autobiographical. One of them is the fictionalized history
of the eradicated town of Trochenbrod (Trachimbrod), a real exclusively Jewish shtetl in
Poland before the Holocaust where the author's grandfather was born; while the second narrative
encompasses Foer's trip to Ukraine in search of the remnants and memories of Trachimbrod as
well as the author's writing-in-progress.

Contents

 1Historical background
 2Plot summary
 3Literary significance and criticism
 4Awards and honors
 5References
 6External links
Historical background [edit]
The real town of Trochenbrod was an exclusively Jewish shtetl located in Western Ukraine.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union in the 1941, a Nazi ghetto was established at
Trochenbrod for local residents including those from nearby villages. The ghetto was
exterminated during the Holocaust. In August and September 1942, nearly all Jews of
Trochenbrod were murdered by the German security troops with assistance from the Ukrainian
Auxiliary Police who rounded up Jews. An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Jews were murdered,
including those from nearby Lozisht.[1]

Plot summary[edit]
Jonathan Safran Foer (the author), a young American Jew, who is vegetarian and an avid
collector of his family's heritage, journeys to Ukraine in search of Augustine, the woman who
saved his grandfather's life during the Nazi liquidation of Trachimbrod, his family shtetl (a small
town) in occupied eastern Poland. Armed with maps, cigarettes and many copies of an old
photograph of Augustine and his grandfather, Jonathan begins his search with the help from
Ukrainian native and soon-to-be good friend, Alexander "Alex" Perchov, who is Foer's age and
very fond of American pop culture, albeit culture that is already out of date in the United States.
Alexander studied English at his university, and even though his knowledge of the language is
not "first-rate", he becomes Foer's translator. Alex's "blind" grandfather and his
"deranged seeing-eye bitch," Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr., accompany them on their journey.
Interspersed throughout the book is the story that Jonathan Safran Foer (the character) learns
about his ancestors—namely, his great-times-five-or-six grandmother Brod and his grandfather
Safran. Brod has a magical, maybe-virgin birth, when she, as a baby, bobs to the surface after her
father dies in a wagon accident in the river Brod, for which the baby is later named. A man
named Yankel raises her until he dies.

Literary significance and criticism[edit]

Upon its initial release the book received enthusiastic reviews, particularly in The Times, which
stated that Foer had "staked his claim for literary greatness."[2] However, Canadian historian Ivan
Katchanovski in his article from The Prague Post online lamented that the book misrepresents
the history of Jews in Ukraine and that the factual history of the massacre at Trachimbrod
"stands in a sharp contrast to claims made in the book."[3]

Awards and honors[edit]

 2001 National Jewish Book Award, winner

 2002 Guardian First Book Award, winner
 2002 New York Times Bestseller
 2002 Amazon.com Best Books
 2003 Young Lions Fiction Award, winner
 2003 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, winner
 2004 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, co-winner
 2007 Pajiba's Best Books of the Generation (Readers' List), no.8.[4]