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British-
American
Literature
What is Literature?
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Literature

 is any single body of written works.

 is writing that is considered to be an art form, or any
single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual
value
 touches lives
 Famous American Writers?
1. Willa Cather (1873-1947)
2. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
3. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
5. William Faulkner (1897-1962)
6. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
7. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
8. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
9. Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)
10. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
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American Literature
 It begins orally.
 There was no written literature among the more than 500 different
Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America
before the first Europeans arrived.
 Indian oral tradition and its relation to American literature as a whole is
one of the richest and least explored topics in American studies.
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American Literature
 The hundreds of Indian words in everyday American English include
"canoe," "tobacco," "potato," "moccasin," "moose," "persimmon,"
"raccoon," "tomahawk," and "totem.”
 Tribes maintained their own religions -- worshipping gods, animals,
plants, or sacred persons. Systems of government ranged from
democracies to councils of elders to theocracies.
Colonial Literature
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Colonial Literature
 earliest forms of American literature were pamphlets and writings
 Captain John Smith could be considered the first American author
with his works: A True Relation of ... Virginia (1608).
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Colonial Literature

 The revolutionary period also contained political writings,

including those by colonist Samuel Adams.
 Two key figures were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.
 Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography
of Benjamin Franklin are esteemed works with their wit and
influence toward the formation of a budding American
identity.
Early U.S. Literature
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Early U.S. Literature

 The Federalist essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and
John Jay represented a historical discussion of government
organization and republican values.
 Thomas Jefferson's United States Declaration of Independence, his
influence on the Constitution, and the mass of his letters have led to
him being considered one of the most talented early American writers.
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Early U.S. Literature

 The first American novel is sometimes considered to be William Hill
Brown's The Power of Sympathy (1789). Much of the early literature
of the new nation struggled to find a uniquely American voice.
American 19 century
th
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American 19th century

 Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a working man, a traveler, a self-
appointed nurse during the American Civil War (1861-1865), and a
poetic innovator.
 Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), lived the sheltered life of a genteel
unmarried woman in small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. Her work
was unconventional for its day, and little of it was published during her
lifetime. Many of her poems dwell on death, often with a mischievous
twist.
Realism
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Realism
 Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-
1910) was the first major American writer to be born away from the
East Coast -- in the border state of Missouri. His regional masterpieces
were the memoir Life on the Mississippi and the novel Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
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Realism
 Henry James (1843-1916) confronted the Old World-New World
dilemma by writing directly about it. Among his more accessible works
are the novellas Daisy Miller, about an enchanting American girl in
Europe, and The Turn of the Screw, an enigmatic ghost story.
English literature
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English literature writers

 William Shakespeare – tragedies, comedy, histories, poetry and plays.
 Geoffrey Chaucer – Father of English Literature. His first important
poem The Book of Duchess a dream vision of elegy for Blanche,
Duchess of Lancaster who died for a plague
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English literature writers

 Jane Austen - author of the novel Pride and Prejudice
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Assignment

 Research and take note famous anglo-american

poems and poets. Analyze how their works touch
lives.