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A Brief History of American Literature
Pre-Revolutionary Writing Most important works: True Revelation of Such Occurrences and
Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia
Since the First Planting of That Colony (John Smith,
1608), The History of Plymouth Plantation (William Bradford,
1651), The History of New England (John Winthrop, 1649),
General information: The earliest literature that can be
classified as American were the journals and letters of those coming to
the New World, John Smith being the first true American writer. Writing
of the Colonial Period mostly dealt with historical, natural or religious
issues, reflecting the Puritans' point of view on life. In the 18th
century, Puritan writings as well as humanistic essays that dealt with
the American independence were created in America.
The Nineteenth Century Most important works: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (Edgar
Allan Poe, 1840), On Walden Pond (Henry David Thoreau,
?), Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman, 1855),
Moby Dick (Herman Melville, 1851), Uncle Tom's
Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
General information: While Edgar Allan Poe shaped the genre
of the short story in the early 1900s, American writing was liberated from
Puritan thinking and some authors turned towards transcendentalism, stressing
the importance of the individual free spirit and the possibility of going
beyond the limits of logic and experience by insight. Literature
also contained criticism on slavery, as in Uncle Tom's Cabin, which helped
convince many Northerners of the wrongs of slavery.
Post-Civil War Literature Most important works: Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, ??), The
Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, ??)
General information: After the Civil War, Americans started
to write often humorous stories of the West, about certain societies, e.g.
the one of New Orleans, expressing their feelings towards the new situation
of the United States with its new coloured citizens. Towards the
end of the 19th century there was also a trend towards Naturalism, through
which writers portrayed aspects as they saw them. The Twentieth Century Most important works: Our Town (Thornton Wilder, 1938), The Great
Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925), Babbitt
(Sinclair Lewis, 1922), Uncle Tom's Children
(Richard Wright, 1938), USA Trilogy (John Dos Passos,
1936)
General information: At the beginning of the 20th century,
American writers portrayed the negative side of American society and pleaded
for social reform, while the time of and between W.W.I and II saw experiments
with Naturalistic and Expressionistic techniques. Much writing of
the period was produced to protest against developments in post-W.W.I society,
showing the disillusionment and moral breakdown of the 1920s, attacking
averageness and portraying immigrants and other victims of capitalism.
Short stories and novels of the period display an eye for detail, seemingly
minor points take on deeper, symbolic meanings.
After World War II Most important works: Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, 19??)
General information: Many of the great literary figures
of the time before W.W.II continued writing after the war. From 1945
on, black concerns have been brought to a wider public, black humour has
been used to deal with serious topics. Some concentrated on exploring
the psyche of the adolescent, others on portraying middle class America.
based on: Invitation to Literature, Cornelsen 1980 (pp. 261 -
267)
Most important writers: Captain John Smith (1580 - 1631), William
Bradford (1590 - 1657), Winthrop (1588 - 1649),
Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758), Thomas Paine (1737
- 1809), Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), Benjamin
Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Most important writers: Washington Irving (1783 - 1859), Edgar
Allan Poe (1809 - 1849), Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow (1807 - 1882), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803
- 1882), Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Walt Whitman
(1819 - 1892), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864), Herman Melville
(1819 - 1891), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896)
Most important writers: Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), Kate
Chopin (1851 - 1904), William Sidney Porter
(1862 - 1910), Samuel Langhorne Clemens / Mark
Twain (1835 - 1910), Theodore Dreiser (1871 - 1945), Stephen
Crane (1871 - 1900), Henry James (1843 - 1916)
Most important writers: Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968), Eugene
O'Neill (1888 - 1953), Thornton Wilder (1897 -
1975), Robert Frost (1874 - 1963), Edwin Arlington
Robinson (1869 - 1935), Langston Hughes (1902 - 1950), F. Scott
Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940), Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951), Richard
Wright (1908 - 1960), John Dos Passos (1896 - 1970), Ernest
Hemingway (1898 - 1961), William Faulkner (1897 - 19629; John
Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)
Most important writers: Ralph Ellison (1914 - ), James Baldwin
(1924 - 1987), Truman Capote (1924 - 1984), J.D
Salinger (1919 - ), Arthur Miller (1915 - ),
Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983)
