American Literature

United States of America (USA)

• Country comprising 50 states
• 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km2), it is the world's third or fourth
largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of
Europe
• Estimated population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most
populous country.
• The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York
City.
 American Literature
• Written or produced in the United States of America and its preceding
colonies (for specific discussions of poetry and theater. Before the
founding of the United States, the British colonies on the eastern coast of
the present-day United States were heavily influenced by English
literature.
• The American literary tradition thus began as part of the broader tradition
of English literature.
 Pre-Colonial (17th Century – 1830)
• The first European settlers of North America wrote about their
experiences starting in the 1600s. This was the earliest American
literature: practical, straightforward, often derivative of literature in Great
Britain, and focused on the future.
 The Romantic Period (1830 to 1870)
• Romanticism is a way of thinking that values the individual over the
group, the subjective over the objective, and a person’s emotional
experience over reason. It also values the wildness of nature over human-
made order
• Romanticism as a worldview took hold in western Europe in the late 18th
century, and American writers embraced it in the early 19th century.
Realism and Naturalism (1870 to 1910)
• The human cost of the Civil War in the United States was immense: more than 2.3
million soldiers fought in the war, and perhaps as many as 851,000 people died in
1861–65. 
• Walt Whitman claimed that “a great literature will…arise out of the era of those
four years,” and what emerged in the following decades was a literature that
presented a detailed and unembellished vision of the world as it truly was. This
was the essence of realism.
• Naturalism was an intensified form of realism. After the grim realities of a
devastating war, they became writers’ primary mode of expression.
 The Modernist Period (1910 to 1945)
• Advances in science and technology in Western countries rapidly
intensified at the start of the 20th century and brought about a sense of
unprecedented progress. The devastation of World War I and the Great
Depression also caused widespread suffering in Europe and the United
States. These contradictory impulses can be found swirling within 
modernism, a movement in the arts defined first and foremost as a radical
break from the past.
 The Modernist Period (1910 to 1945)
• But this break was often an act of destruction, and it caused a loss of faith
in traditional structures and beliefs. Despite, or perhaps because of, these
contradictory impulses, the modernist period proved to be one of the
richest and most productive in American literature.
 The Contemporary Period (1945 to
present)
• The United States, which emerged from World War II confident and
economically strong, entered the Cold War in the late 1940s. This conflict
with the Soviet Union shaped global politics for more than four decades,
and the proxy wars and threat of nuclear annihilation that came to define it
were just some of the influences shaping American literature during the
second half of the 20th century.
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

• Was a novelist and short story writer

• Hawthorne’s works have been labelled ‘dark romanticism,’ dominated as
they are by cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the
most inherent natural qualities of humankind.
• His novels and stories, set in a past New England, are versions of
historical fiction used as a vehicle to express themes of ancestral sin, guilt
and retribution.
 Major Works
• Twice Told Tales (1837)
• Mosses From an Old Manse (1846)
• The Scarlet Letter (1850)
 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
• Was an American writer, editor, and literary critic.
• He is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of
mystery and suspense.
• He is generally considered the inventor of detective fiction.
• Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on
American and international literature. In addition to his detective stories
he is one of the originators of horror and science fiction.
 Classic Works
• The Raven
• The Cask of Amontillado
• The Masque of the Red Death
 Herman Melville (1819 – 1891)
• Was an American writer of novels, short stories and poems.
• He is best known for the novel Moby-Dick and a romantic account of his
experiences in Polynesian life, Typee.
• His whaling novel, Moby-Dick is often spoken of as ‘the great American
novel’ ’vying with Scott Fitgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Mark Twain’s
Huckleberry Finn for that title.
 Notable Works
• “Moby Dick” • “Bartleby the Scrivener”
• “Typee” • “Benito Cereno”
• “Israel Potter” • “Billy Budd, Foretopman”
• “White-Jacket” • “The Encantadas”
• “Pierre” • “Mardi”
 Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)
• Was poet, essayist, and journalist who transformed poetry around the
world with his disregard for traditional rhyme and meter and his
celebration of democracy and sensual pleasure.
• His masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, a collection of poems, is widely studied
by poets, students and academics, set to music, translated into numerous
languages, and is widely quoted.
 Poems
• Song of Myself • O Me! O Life!
• I Sing the Body Electric • Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
• I Hear America Singing • Pioneers! O Pioneers!
• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard • Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in
Bloom’d Hand
• O Captain! My Captain!
• A Noiseless Patient Spider
 Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
• Unknown as a poet during her lifetime
• Emily Dickinson is now regarded by many as one of the most powerful
voices of American culture.
• Her poetry has inspired many other writers, including the Brontes. In 1994
the critic, Harold Bloom, listed her among the twenty-six central writers
of Western civilisation.
 Poem
• Because I could not stop for Death
• I'm Nobody!
• Hope is the thing with feathers
• I felt a Funeral, in my Brain