MEMBERS

ALBERT MALABAD
RIENA MARIS GABON
JOHN MICHAEL BUNA
HEZEL PERUCHO
 AMERICAN LITERATURE

The body of written works produced in the English language in the

United States. Like other national literatures, American literature was
shaped by the history of the country that produced it. For almost a century
and a half, America was merely a group of colonies scattered along the
eastern seaboard of the North American continent colonies from which a few
hardy souls tentatively ventured westward. After a successful rebellion
against the motherland, America became the United States, a nation.
 By the end of the 19th century this nation extended southward to the
Gulf of Mexico, northward to the 49th parallel, and westward to the Pacific.
By the end of the 19th century, too, it had taken its place among the powers
of the world its fortunes so interrelated with those of other nations that
inevitably it became involved in two world wars and, following these
conflicts, with the problems of Europe and East Asia. Meanwhile, the rise of
science and industry, as well as changes in ways of thinking and feeling,
wrought many modifications in people’s lives. All these factors in the
development of the United States molded the literature of the country.
Beginnings, Native American Tradition &
Exploration
Beginnings to 1620(ish)
 Native American Period (pre-1620)

Oral tradition of song and stories

 Original Authors unknown
 Written accounts come after colonization
 Include creation stories, myths, totems
 Archetypes of tricksters and conjurer
Explorers

 A unique and often biased view of the New Land

 Discovery was mutual not one sided
 Columbus (Italian, supported by Spain)
 De las Cases (Spain)
 John Smith (England)
 Cortes (Spain)
 Champlain (France)
 Colonial Period 1607(ish) - 1750
(1620 – 1750)
 Newly arrived colonist create villages and towns and establish new
governments while protesting the old ways in Europe.
 Did not consider themselves “Americans” until mid 18C
 Enormous displacement of Native-American civilizations
 French – St Lawrence River
 Swedes – Delaware River
 Dutch – Hudson River
 German and Scots-Irish – New York and Pennsylvania
 Spanish – Florida
 Africans (mostly slaves) were throughout the colonies
 Literature of the period dominated by the Puritans and their religious
influence
 Emphasis is on faith in one’s daily life
 A person’s fate is determined by God
 All are corrupt and need a Savior
 Theocracy – civil authority in Bible and church
 Nature is revelation of god’s providence and power
 Puritan work ethic – belief in hard work and simple, no-frills living
 Writing is utilitarian; writers are amateurs (not professional writers)
 Writing is instructive sermos, diaries, personal narratives,
 Puritan Plain Style – sinple, direct
Representative authors

 Wiliam Bradford (journal)

 Anne Bradstreet(poetry)
 Jonathan Edwards (sermon)
 Mary Rowlandson (captivity narrative)
 Phillis Wheatley (poetry)
 Olaudah Equiano (slave narrative)
Revolutionary Period (The Enlightenment)
1750 – 1815
 Writers focused on explaining and justifying the American Revolution
 After the Revolution, this period becomes known as Early Nationalism.
Writers begin to ponder what I really mean to be an American.
 After the war of 1812, which removed the last British troops from North
America, there was an even greater focus on nationalism, patriotism, and
American identity
 Emphasis on reason as opposed to faith alone; rise of empirical science,
philosophy, theology(Enlightenment)
 Shift to a more print-based culture; literacy seen as sign of status
 Instructive in values highly ornate writing style; highly political and
patriotic
Representative authors

 Benjamin Franklin (biography, common sense aphorisms)

 Patrick Henry (speech)
 Thomas Paine (pamphlet)
 Thomas Jefferson (political documents)
 Abigail Adams (letters)
 Romanticism 1800-1865

 A philosophical reaction to the previous decades in which reason and

rational thought dominated
 Emphasis on universal human experience
 Valuing feeling and intuition over reason
 Optimistic period of invention, Manifest Destiny, abolition movement, and
the “birth: of truly American literature
 Growth of urban population in the Northeast with growth of newspapers,
lectures debates (especially over slavery and women’s roles)
 Revolution in transportation, science.
 Industrial revolution made “old ways” of doing things irrelevant
 Writers celebrated individualism, nature, imagination, creativity, and
emotions
 Interest in fantasy and super natural
 Writing can usually be interpreted two ways surface and in depth
 Writing is didactic attempting to shape readers
 Good will triumph over evil
 Strong focus on inner feelings
 Imagination prized over reason; intuition over fact
 Blossoming of short stories, novels, and poetry
 Early Romantic (1800 – 1865)

 Early Romantic authors began the tradition of creating imaginative

literature that was distinctly American
 Washington Irving (folktales)
 William Cullen Bryant (poetry)
 James Fenimore Cooper (novels)
 Fireside Poets, the most popular Romantic poets of the time, were read
in the home by the fireside because their poetry contained strong family
values, patriotism, etc. It has remained popular in elementary schools for
memorization.
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Oliver Wendell Holmes
 James Russell Lowell
 John Greenleaf Whittier
 Transcendentalism came to America from Europe
 Belief that man’s nature is inherently good; ”divine spark” or “inner-light”
 Belief that man and society are perfectible (utopia)
 Stress individualism, self-reliance, intuition
 Ralph Waldo Emerson (essays, poetry)
 Henry David Thoreau (essays)
 Dark Romanticism (also known as Gothic or Anti-Transcendentalism)
 Belief that man’s nature is inherently evil
 Belief that whatever is wrong with society-sin, pain, evil has to be fixed by
fixing the individual man first
 Use of supernatural
 Strong use of symbolism
 Dark landscapes, depressed characters
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (novels, short stories)
 Heman Melville (novels, short stories, poetry)
 Edgar Allan Poe (short stories, poetry, literary criticism
 Realism

1850 – 1900
 Transitional writers which span the Romantic and Realistic Periods
express Transcendental ideas in poetry with realistic detail
 Experimented with new poetic techniques such as free verse and slant
rhyme.
 Walt Whitman (poetry)
 Emily Dickinson (poetry)
• The Realistic Period, which includes the Civil war significant industrial
inventions, and extensive westward expansion, is one of the most
turbulent and creative in American history.
 Rejection of Romantic view of life as too idealistic
 Writers turn to real life to articulate the tensions and complex events of
the time, rather than idealized people or places.
 Seek “verisimilitude” by portraying “a slice of life” as it really is.
 Usually objective narrator
 Civil War writers are primarily concerned with the war, slavery, and to a
lesser extent, women’s suffrage.
 Abraham Lincoln
 Robert E. Lee
 Mary Chesnut
 Sojourner Truth
 Harriet Beecher Stowe
 John Parker
 sFrederick Douglass
 • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Last Leaf by William Sydney Porter
 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby 2013 movie link

• https://mega.nz/folder/LDxCBKyb
• Decryption key: NikirfsuYJjeK2pLpD3AQw
Author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald, in full Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, (born
September 24, 1896, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.—died December 21, 1940,
Hollywood, California), American short-story writer and novelist famous for
his depictions of the Jazz Age (the 1920s), his most brilliant novel being 
The Great Gatsby (1925). His private life, with his wife, Zelda, in both 
America and France, became almost as celebrated as his novels.
Characters
• Nick Carraway – the novels narrator
• Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband
• Myrtle Wilson - Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-
down garage in the valley of ashes.
• Jay Gatsby - The title character and protagonist of the novel
• Daisy Buchanan - Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves
• Jordan Baker - Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes
romantically involved during the course of the novel
• George Wilson - Myrtle’s husband, the lifeless, exhausted owner of a run-
down auto shop at the edge of the valley of ashes.
Settings
 Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is set in New York City and Long
Island during the Prohibition era
 Prohibition made alcohol illegal, but that actually increased its
presence in society.
 Prohibition gave rise to the creation of speakeasies, bootleggers, and
other “underground” business.
 The characters are living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous
Long Island in the summer of 1922.
 POINT OF VIEW
• The Great Gatsby is written in first-
person limited perspective from Nick’s
point of view.
• This means that Nick uses the word “I”
and describes events as he experienced
them.
• He does not know what other
characters are thinking unless they tell
him.
 Although Nick narrates the book, in many ways he is
incidental to the events involved, except that he facilitates
the meeting of Daisy and Gatsby.
• For most part, he remains an
observer of the events around him,
disappearing into the background
when it comes time to narrate
crucial meetings between Gatsby,
Tom, and Daisy.
• In several extended passages his
voice disappears completely, and he
relates thoughts and feelings of
other characters as though he is
inside their heads.
 When Gatsby tells Nick
about his past with Daisy,
Nick writes directly from
Gatsby’s point of vie “His
heart beat faster as Daisy’s
white face came up to his
own. He knew that when he
kissed this girl… his mind
would never romp again like
the mind of God. So he
waited…”
 Whenever a novel is narrated in the
first person by one of the characters,
a key question for the reader is how
much faith we should put in the
narrator’s reliability.
GENRE
•Tragedy
•Realism
•Modernism
•Social Satire
 TRAGEDY
The Great Gatsby can be
considered a tragedy in that
it revolves around a larger-
than-life hero whose
pursuit of an impossible
goal blinds him to reality
and leads to his violent
death.
 REALISM
• The Great Gatsby is an example of literary realism because it
depicts the world as it really is.
• In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s characters move through
Manhattan landmarks such as the Plaza Hotel, Pennsylvania
Station, and Central Park. East and West Egg are recognizable as
fictionalized versions of the real towns of East and West
Hampton.
• Fitzgerald’s frank acknowledgement of sex, adultery, and
divorce further ground the plot in reality.
 MODERNISM
• In the novel, the encroachment of modernity is seen in the
descriptions of the valley of ashes, as well as the “red-belted
ocean-going ships,” trains, and most of all, automobiles.
• The sardonic descriptions of the latest innovations, such as
“a machine which could extract the juice…of two hundred
oranges…if a little button was pressed two hundred times,”
implies a certain amount of anxiety about the increasing
automation of everyday life.
SOCIAL SATIRE

• Fitzgerald’s use of irony, exaggeration, and

ridicule to mock hypocritical social types
also qualifies The Great Gatsby as a social
satire.
SYMBOL

• Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and

colors used to represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
• West Egg- where Nick
and Gatsby live,
represents new
money
• East Egg- where Daisy
lives, the more
fashionable area,
represents old money
OLD MONEY VS. NEW MONEY
• Old
NewMoney
Money:
• Money
Someone from
who
family
has achieved
wealth the American Dream
• Born
Not asrich
respected in the 1920’s
• Not earned through work done by yourself
• Respected above all in the 1920’s
• Green Light- at the
end of Daisy’s dock
and visible from
Gatsby’s mansion.
Represents
Gatsby's hopes and
dreams about
Daisy.
• The Valley of Ashes- the area
between West Egg and New
York City.
• It is a desolate area filled
with industrial waste.
• It represents the social and
moral decay of society
during the 1920’s. It also
shows the negative effects
of greed.
• The Eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg- A decaying billboard in the
Valley of Ashes with eyes advertising an optometrist.
There are multiple proposed meanings, including the
representation of God’s moral judgment on society.
THEMES
• The decline of the American dream, the spirit of
the 1920s,
• The difference between social classes, the role of
symbols in the human conception of meaning,
• The role of the past in dreams of the future
 The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe

•https://study.com/academy/lesson/poes-the-cask-of-amontillado-summary-
and-analysis.html#partialRegFormModal
 
•https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgarAllanPoe
 
•https://www.enotes.com/topics/cask-amontillado/themes#:~:text=The
%20main%20themes%20in%20%E2%80%9CThe,takes%20on%20his
%20%E2%80%9Cfriend.%E2%80%9D
• https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/cask-of-amontillado/
summary
Author
 
•Edgar Allan Poe, (born January 19 1809 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
•-died October 7, 1849(aged 40) Baltimore,Maryland, U.S.)
•was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known
for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the
macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the
United States and of American literature as a whole
Style of writing
Edgar Allan Poe has unique and dark way of writing. His mysterious style
of writing appeals to emotionand drama. Poe’s most impressionable works
of fiction are gothic. Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery
and terror and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting
emphasis from surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in
language and various meanings of word.
The Title
• First we need to define a couple of words in his title. Amontillado is a
very specific kind of Spanish sherry, sherry being a fortified wine. And
a cask is a barrel. So if we put that all together, this story could be
called 'The Barrel of Sherry,' but 'The Cask of Amontillado'.
Characters
So, aside from being a story about a barrel of wine, Poe's short story is
one of revenge and secret murder. It's a tale of terror starring two main
characters: Montresor and Fortunato. Montresor is the narrator and the
murderer. Fortunato is a wine connoisseur and the victim.
Point of view
 
Montresor, the narrator and main character in The Cask of Amontillado
tells the story using the first-person point of view. Consistent in voice,
Montresor uses a sadistic and manipulative tone that creates dramatic
irony.He is an unreliable narrator because his story tries to justify his crime.
The setting
The Cask of Amontillado takes place in Italy during Carnevale: a festive
time in the country similar to Mardi Gras in the United States. We start there,
at night, in the madness, but are then taken back to the home of Montressor,
more specifically, into the catacombs/wine cellars below. The setting is
described as dark and damp, with niter climbing the walls and a mix of casks
of wine and bones littering the area. The men carry flambeaux, creating the
idea of darkness with only the small light of fire guiding the way. The
Carnevale setting provides irony of a horror story taking place in such a
festive and unlikely backdrop. 
Summary of The Cask of Amontillado
The narrator begins by telling us that
Fortunato has hurt him. Even worse,
Fortunato has insulted him. The narrator must
get revenge. He meets Fortunato, who is all
dressed up in jester clothes for a carnival
celebration − and is already very drunk. The
narrator mentions he’s found a barrel of a rare
brandy called Amontillado. Fortunato
expresses eager interest in verifying the wine’s
authenticity.
So he and the narrator go to the underground graveyard, or
“catacomb,” of the Montresor family. Apparently, that’s where
the narrator keeps his wine. The narrator leads Fortunato
deeper and deeper into the catacomb, getting him drunker and
drunker along the way. Fortunato keeps coughing, and the
narrator constantly suggests that Fortunato is too sick to be
down among the damp crypts, and should go back. Fortunato
just keeps talking about the Amontillado.
• Eventually, Fortunato walks into a man-sized hole that’s part of the
wall of a really nasty crypt. The narrator chains Fortunato to the wall,
then begins to close Fortunato in the hole by filling in the opening with
bricks. When he has one brick left, he psychologically tortures
Fortunato until he begs for mercy – and we finally learn the narrator’s
name: Fortunato calls him “Montresor.”
• After Fortunato cries out Montresor’s name, he doesn’t
have any more lines. But just before Montresor puts in the
last brick, Fortunato jingles his bells. Then Montresor
finishes the job and leaves him there to die. At the very
end, Montresor tells us that the whole affair happened
fifty years ago, and nobody has found out.
 The Last Leaf by William Sydney Porter

https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the-last-leaf.pdf
Author

O. Henry
William Sydney Porter (born September 11, 1862, Greensboro, North
Carolina–died June 5, 1910, New York, United States), better known by his
pen name O. Henry, was an American short story writer. His stories are
known for their surprise endings.
Characters
•Joanna (Johnsy) – A young artist from California, has long dreamed of
visiting Italy to paint the Bay of Naples. She falls seriously ill with pneumonia
and becomes convinced that she will die when the last leaf falls from the
vine outside her window.
•Sue – A young artist from Maine. She is very close to Johnsy, cooking for
her, caring for her, and financially supporting her in her illness.
•Behrman – An old and somewhat cantankerous artist who lives downstairs
from Sue and Johnsy. He has been painting for four decades without any
commercial success, but still hopes to paint what he calls his “Masterpiece”.
•Doctor – A busy, older man with “shaggy grey eyebrows” who attends to
Johnsy and Behrman. He diagnoses Johnsy with mental as well as physical
illness.
Settings
•The Last Leaf is set in an area of Greenwich Village in 20th century that
functions as an artists’ colony.

Point of View
•The Last Leaf is a third person omniscient point of view from the
perspective of the author point of view itself.
Style
•The style of The Last Leaf is extremely dramatic, ironic and surprising
ending, the story has psychological description of the human characters
which reflected to social background.
 

Themes
•Short Story, Fiction
 END
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