BSEE36
AMERICAN LITERATURE
A. Colonial Period in New England
1. William Bradford (1590-1657)
 wrote Of Plymouth Plantation and the first
document of colonial self-governance in the English
New World, the Mayflower Compact.
2. Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672)
 wrote the first published book of poems by an
American which was also the first American book to
be published by a woman.
 She wrote long, religious poems on conventional
subjects, but she is well loved for her witty poems on
subjects from daily life and her warm and loving
poems to her husband and children.
 She was inspired by English metaphysical poetry,
and her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in
America (1650) shows the influence of Edmund
Spenser, Philip Sidney, and other English poets as
well.
3. Edward Taylor (c. 1644-1729)
 was an intense, brilliant poet, teacher and minister
who sailed to New England in 1668 rather than take
an oath of loyalty to the Church of England.
 He wrote a variety of verses: funeral elegies, lyrics, a
medieval "debate," and a 500-page Metrical History
of Christianity (mainly a history of martyrs).
 His best works, according to modern critics, are the
series of short Preparatory Meditations
4. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
 a Puritan minister best known for his frightening,
powerful sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God. Puritans refer to two distinct groups:
"separating" Puritans, such as the Plymouth
colonists, who believed that the Church of England
was corrupt and that true Christians must separate
themselves from it; and non-separating Puritans,
such as those in Massachusetts Bay Colony, who
believed in reform but not separation.
 Puritans believed in God’s ultimate sovereignty in
granting grace and salvation; therefore, their lives
center on three important covenants – covenants of
Works, Grace, and Redemption.
B. THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT
- Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted
to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the
natural rights of man. Thus, the18th-century
American Enlightenment was a movement
marked by –
 an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition,
 scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious
dogma, and
 Representative government in place of monarchy.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
- America's "first great man of letters," who embodied
the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality.
- He used the pseudonym Poor Richard or Richard
Saunders in Poor Richard’s Almanack – a yearly
almanac he released from 1732-1758. The almanac
was a repository of Franklin’s proverbs and aphorisms.
Benjamin Franklin’s Aphorisms
 “Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.”
- Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1756
 “Better slip with foot than tongue.”
- Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1734
 “Don’t throw stones at your neighbors, if your own
windows are glass.”
- Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1736
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
- America’s greatest pamphleteer
- His pamphlet Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies
in the first three months of its publication.
- He wrote the famous line, "The cause of America is in
a great measure the cause of all mankind."
Washington Irving (1789-1859)
- published his Sketch Book (1819-1820) simultaneously
in England and America, obtaining copyrights and
payment in both countries.
- The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (Irving's
pseudonym) contains his two best-remembered
stories, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow
- “The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow”
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784)
- the first African-American author who wrote of
religious themes.
- To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
and On Being Brought from Africa to America. These
poems boldly confront white racism and assert
Spiritual equality.
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
Transcendentalists
- The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction
against 18th century rationalism and a manifestation
of the general humanitarian trend of 19th century
thought.
- The movement was based on the belief in the unity of
the world and God.
- The doctrine of self- reliance and individualism
developed through the belief in the identification of
the individual soul with God.
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1. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
- was a leading exponent of the transcendentalist
movement who called for the birth of American
Individualism inspired by nature.
- In his essay Self-Reliance, Emerson remarks: "A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.“
- Most of his major ideas – the need for a new national
vision, the use of personal experience, the notion of
the cosmic Over-Soul, and the doctrine of
compensation – are suggested in his first publication,
Nature.
2. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
- wrote Walden, or Life in the Woods, which was the
result of two years, two months, and two days (from
1845 to 1847) he spent living in a cabin he built at
Walden Pond on property owned by Emerson.
- In Walden, Thoreau not only tests the theories of
transcendentalism, but he also re-enacts the collective
American experience of the 19th century by living on
the frontier.
- He also wrote Civil Disobedience, with its theory of
passive resistance based on the moral necessity for
the just individual to disobey unjust laws. This was an
inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi's Indian
independence movement and Martin Luther King's
struggle for black Americans' civil rights in the 20th
century.
3. Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
- incorporated both transcendentalist and realist ideas
in his works. He championed the individual and the
country's democratic spirit in his Leaves of Grass.
- Leaves of Grass, which he rewrote and revised
throughout his life, contains Song of Myself, the
strongest evocation of the transcend list ideals.
From Song of Myself
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you
4. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
- was a radical individualist who found deep inspiration
in the birds, animals, plants, and changing seasons of
the New England countryside.
- She wrote 1,775 poems but only one was published in
her lifetime.
- She shows a terrifying existential awareness. Like Poe,
she explores the dark and hidden part of the mind,
dramatizing death and the grave.
THE BRAHMIN POETS
- Boston Brahmin poets refer to the patrician, Harvard-
educated literati who sought to fuse American and
European traditions in their writings.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
- was responsible for the misty, ahistorical, legendary
sense of the past that merged American and European
traditions.
- He wrote three long narrative poems popularizing
native legends in European meters Evangeline, The
Song of Hiawatha, and The Courtship of Miles
Standish.
- He also wrote short lyrics like The Jewish Cemetery at
Newport, My Lost Youth, and The Tide Rises, The Tide
Falls.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
- was a physician and professor of anatomy and
physiology at Harvard. Of the Brahmin poets, he is the
most versatile.
- His works include collections of humorous essays (The
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table), novels (Elsie
Venner), biographies (Ralph Waldo Emerson), and
verses (The Deacon's Masterpiece, or The Wonderful
One-Hoss Shay).
FICTION
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
- set his stories in Puritan New England. His greatest
novels, The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven
Gables; and his best-known shorter stories The
Minister's Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown, and
My Kinsman, Major Molineux, all highlight the
Calvinistic obsession with morality, sexual repression,
guilt and confession, and spiritual salvation
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
- went to sea when he was just 19 years old. His
interest in sailors' lives grew naturally out of his own
experiences, and most of his early novels grew out of
his voyages.
- Moby-Dick is Melville's masterpiece. It is the epic
story of the whaling ship Pequod and its "ungodly,
god-like man," Captain Ahab, whose obsessive quest
for the white whale Moby-Dick leads the ship and its
men to destruction.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
- refined the short story genre and invented detective
fiction. Many of his stories prefigure the genres of
science fiction, horror, and fantasy so popular today.
- His famous works The Cask of Amontillado, Masque of
the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher,
Purloined Letter, and the Pit and the Pendulum, all
center on the mysterious and the macabre.
- He also wrote poetry like Anabel Lee, The Raven, and
The Bell.
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“Anabel Lee” - Slavery is depicted as evil not for political or
philosophical reasons but mainly because it divides
It was many and many a year ago,
families, destroys normal parental love, and is
In a kingdom by the sea,
inherently un-Christian.
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other
thought Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; For the moon never
beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

- wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly

which became the most popular American book of the
19th Century. Its passionate appeal for an end to
slavery in the United States inflamed the debate that,
within a decade, led to the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865).
- Uncle Tom, the slave and central character, is a true
Christian martyr who labors to convert his kind
master, St. Clare, prays for St. Clare's soul as he dies,
and is killed defending slave women.