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Key Themes in

Key Themes in. American Literature. Prepared by Mr. Kevin Cheng. Outline of Key Themes. The Colonial Period – Beginnings to 1790 The New Republic – 1790-1820 American Romanticism – 1820-1865 The Continental Nation – 1865-1900 The Progressive Era – 1900-1920

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Key Themes in

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  1. Key Themes in American Literature Prepared by Mr. Kevin Cheng

  2. Outline of Key Themes • The Colonial Period – Beginnings to 1790 • The New Republic – 1790-1820 • American Romanticism – 1820-1865 • The Continental Nation – 1865-1900 • The Progressive Era – 1900-1920 • American Lit as part of the mainstream of Western Lit – 1920-1945 • Cultural Diversity in American Literature – 1945-present

  3. The Colonial Period – Beginnings to 1790 • The English came to settle the land. • For first 100 years, early settlers were confined to the sea coast from Maine to Florida. The westward movement was not till the late 18th century. • In New England, a public education system was developed which gave rise to the development of literary arts. • Their culture helped shape the nation.

  4. The Colonial Period – Beginnings to 1790 • Puritanism • John Smith (1580-1631) • Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) • Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) • Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Back

  5. American Romanticism – 1820-1865 • American literary Romanticism derives mainly from • the English Romantic Poets (Coleridge & Wordsworth), • German Romantic Philosophy and • Jonathan Edwards (A Divine and Supernatural Light & Images and Shadows of Divine Things)

  6. American Romanticism – 1820-1865 • Five principal Romantic themes: • intuition (“truth of the heart”) is more trustworthy than reason • to express deeply felt experience is more valuable than to elaborate universal principles • the individual is at the centre of life and God is at the centre of the individual • nature is an array of physical symbols from which knowledge of the supernatural can be intuited • we should aspire to the Ideal, to changing whaat is to what ought to be.

  7. American Romanticism – 1820-1865 • James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) • Transcendentalism (emerging around 1815) • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) • Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) • Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) • Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) • Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) • Herman Melville (1819-1891) • Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Back

  8. American Lit as part of the mainstream of Western Lit – 1920-1945 • After WW1, military, political and business forces created a reactionary climate hostile to new social and artistic ideas. • Many young writers left for Europe. • They found the freedom to critically scrutinise the values of their own country • Discovered new standards of craftsmanship and new techniques originated by an older generation of artists and thinkers.

  9. American Lit as part of the mainstream of Western Lit – 1920-1945 • Poetry – French symboliste poets, Yeats and Pound • Novelists – Proust, Joyce and Gertrude Stein • Visual Arts – cubism, post-impressionism, dada-ism • Concepts –Freud and Einstein • Even if their refinement was European, their subject matter was American – presented in American terms without timidity.

  10. American Lit as part of the mainstream of Western Lit – 1920-1945 • Modernism • Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) • Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and the New Poetry • T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) • E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) • F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) • Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) • Langston Hughes (1902-1976) • John Steinbeck (1902-1968) Back

  11. Cultural Diversity in American Literature – 1945-present • In the early 40s, criticism placed a new emphasis on the purely literary aspects of writing – insisted that the artist work outside of political and social consideration. • This position became controversial in the 60’s, and from the 70’s till present, has been the object of increasingly vigorous attack. • Many divergent forms of criticism took to the fore in the American literary consciousness.

  12. Cultural Diversity in American Literature – 1945-present • Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) • Arthur Miller (1915-) • James Baldwin (1924-1987) • Alice Walker (1944-) • “Beat” Poets: Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder • Anne Sexton (1928-1975) • Adrienne Rich (1929-) • Toni Morrison (1931-) • Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) • Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-) • Amy Tan (1952-) Back

  13. Hmm… • What constitutes the main themes and features (i.e. the spirit) of American Lit? • Is this spirit the same in the past as in contemporary America? • What is a text that is adequately representative of the spirit of American Lit? • What mode/genre is representative of American Lit? • How does The Crucible measure up as a representative text?

  14. Interesting Links • American Literature on the Web http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/ • America’s Library http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi • Outline of American Literature http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/oaltoc.htm • PAL: Perspectives in American Literature http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/TABLE.HTML • The Cambridge History of English and American Literature http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/ • The Norton Anthology of American Literature http://www.wwnorton.com/naal/

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