Periods of American Literature

Colonial Period

The period of American literature in which Benjamin Franklin, Anne Bradstreet, and Jonathan Edwards flourished as authors is called the

Revolutionary Age

The period of literary beginnings in which the voices of Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Philip Freneau, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, Washington Irving, and Royall Tyler found expression is the

Federalist Age

The period between the formation of the U.S. national government and the "Second Revolution" of Jacksonian Democracy during which time the United States emerged as a world force and enjoyed a rapid literary development is the

Federalist Age

Not one of the periods in the American canon during which writers and other artists were influenced by the great sectional and social problems that soon became so much a part of the fabric of this nation is the

Colonial Period

The period of American literature in which Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard’s Almanac), Anne Bradstreet, and Jonathan Edwards flourished as authors is called the

Colonial Period

1607 - 1765 American period

Colonial Period

From the founding of the colony at Jamestown- which began the Period in America until the Stamp Act in 1765

Colonial Period

Three major figures emerged in this period: Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, and Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard’s Almanac).

Colonial Period

That BELLES-LETTRES (essays, particularly on literary and artistic criticism, written and read primarily for their aesthetic effect – according to google bc the book definition makes no sense) should not have flourished is hardly surprising.

Colonial Period

Whether PURITANS of the North or Royalists of the South, the colonists were uniformly engaged throughout the period in possessing the land and making it fruitful. Wilderness, Native Americans, and disease were common foes that demanded attention. Wealth, government, progress, and political rights absorbed the attention of the Americans

Colonial Period

The 17th century was the age of travel and personal records, diaries, historical and descriptive accounts, sermons, and a little verse largely instructive, such as Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom, or religious, such as the Bay Psalm Book and the numerous funeral elegies. Only Anne Bradstreet "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America" wrote poems worthy of comparison with Taylor's.

Colonial Period

In the 18th century, the dangers of early colonization were over, but the colonial attitude persisted. Religious controversy was prevalent. Newspapers and ALMANACS flourished. Jonathan Edwards both in the pulpit and in his writing demonstrated his greatness. Franklin created the widely popular American fictional character Richard Saunders of Poor Richard's ALMANAC. But little important verse and no native drama emerged.

Colonial Period

As the period in which Americans had thought and acted like colonials drew to a close in the 1760s, a vast amount of writing had been done in America some of it of a high quality but very little that did not self-consciously take English authors as models and even less that could merit the term belletristic.

Revolutionary and Early National Period

The period of literary beginnings in which the voices of Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Philip Freneau, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, Washington Irving, and Royall Tyler found expression is the

Revolutionary and Early National Period

1790-1830 American Period

Revolutionary Age

Between the Stamp Act in 1765 and the formation of the federal government in 1789, American writers were mostly engaged in non belletristic pursuits.

Revolutionary Age

Poetry was largely neoclassical, with the influence of Pope dominating, although strains of early Romanticism–notably those associated with the Graveyard School and with a renewed appreciation of wild nature–were felt.

Revolutionary Age

Trumbull, Frencau, Hopkinson, Dwich I, and Barlow produced patriotic Works in varied forms, often burlesque and satiric. The first play written by patriotic works acted in America Godfrey's The Prince of Parthia was performed in 1767, and the stage grew to be an increasing influence on American art outside of New England.

Revolutionary Age

That of Thomas Paine (Common Sense), Samuel Adams, and Hamilton and Madison (The Federalist papers). The first American novel The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown- was published in 1789. But the two major prose works of the period were Franklin- with his memoirs (later called his Autobiography) and Jefferson whose Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential pieces of writing in human history.

Revolutionary and Early National Period: Federalist Age

The period between the formation of the U.S. national government and the "Second Revolution" of Jacksonian Democracy during which time the United States emerged as a world force and enjoyed a rapid literary development is the

Revolutionary and Early National Period: Federalist Age

Called the [this age] because of the dominance of the [this age] Party, the period extends from 1790 to 1830.

Revolutionary and Early National Period: Federalist Age

Internationally, the United States emerged as a world force through the War of 1812. Internally, it was an "Era of Good Feeling,” with the sectional and social issues that were later to plague the nation just beginning to be felt. It was an age of rapid literary development.

Revolutionary and Early National Period: Federalist Age

Poetry moved from the imitative neoclassicism of Barlow and Dwight, through the limited romanticism of Freneau, to the first notable American achievements in verse in the work of William Cullen Bryant. The novel-first practiced in America in 1789- saw good work by Charles Brockden Brown (Wieland) and H. H. Brackenridge and the establishment of a distinctively American romance with James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Irving in his burlesque Knickerbocker's History of New York and in his essays and tales found an international audience.

Revolutionary and Early National Period: Federalist Age

The North American Review, founded in 1815, was a thriving quarterly. In the decade 1800-1810, Hawthorne, Simms, Whittier, Longfellow, Poe, and Holmes were born; and 1819 was an annus mirabilis, being the birth year of Lowell, Melville, and Whitman. By 1830, the neoclassic, restrained, aristocratic [this age] that America had been had given way to a romantic, exuberant, democratic young giant that was flexing its muscles and was beginning effectively to express itself in art as well as action.

Romantic Period

The period between the Jacksonian Era and the close of the Civil War that saw the testing of a nation and its development by ordeal and which was characterized by westward expansion, the increasing gravity of the slavery question, and the impulse toward reform in the North is the

Romantic Period

The nineteenth-century period during which the United States experienced its first great creative wave—the period of Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Thoreau, and Emerson, among others—is the

Realistic Period

The period in American literary history following the Civil War for which fiction became the effective voice of the new turbulence, the growing skepticism and disillusionment, and culminating with the publication of Dreiser's Sister Carrie is the

Naturalistic and Symbolic Period

The period in American literary history covering 1900 to 1930 that is known for, in part, the virtual birth of modern American poetry, is the

Naturalistic and Symbolic Period

The literary period between 1900 and 1930 in the United States that witnessed the flourishing of muckraking magazines and novels is the

Romantic Period

The period between the Jacksonian Era and the close of the Civil War that saw the testing of a nation and its development by ordeal and which was characterized by westward expansion, the increasing gravity of the slavery question, and the impulse toward reform in the North is the

Romantic Period

1830-1865 American period

Romantic Period

Testing of America and its development by ordeal. An age of great westward expansion, of the increasing gravity of the slavery question, and of a powerful impulse to reform in the North. Its culminating act was the trial by arms of the opposing views in a civil war, whose conclusion certified the fact of a united nation dedicated to the concepts of industry and capitalism and philosophically committed to egalitarianism. America's first great creative period a full flowering of the romantic impulse on American soil.

Romantic Period

Surviving from the FEDERALIST AGE were its three major literary figures: William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving (Sleepy Hollow, Diedrich Knickerbocker / Geoffrey Crayon), and James Fenimore Cooper (Last of the Mohicans). Emerging as new writers of strength and creative power were the novelists Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), and Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin); the poets Edgar Allan Poe (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Paul Rever’s Ride), Lowell, Dickinson, and Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass); the essayists Henry David Thoreau (Walden), Ralph Waldo Emerson (Invisible Man)

Romantic Period

The American South advanced three distinguished periodicals: the Southern Review, the Southern Literary Messenger, and the Southern Quarterly Review. In the North, the Knickerbocker Magazine and the Democratic Review joined the continuing arbiter of Northern taste the North American Review-and then were followed by Harper's Magazine (1850) and the Atlantic Monthly (1857).

Romantic Period

Between 1830 and 1855, the GIFT BOOKS and ANNUALS proved to be remunerative markets for essays and tales.

Romantic Period

Moral qualities were significantly present in the verse of Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and Thoreau. The sectional issues were debated in poetry by Whittier and Lowell speaking for abolition and Timrod, Hayne, and Simms speaking for the South.

Realistic Period

The period in American literary history following the Civil War for which fiction became the effective voice of the new turbulence, the growing skepticism and disillusionment, and culminating with the publication of Dreiser's Sister Carrie is

Realistic Period

In the period following the Civil War, modern America was born and grew to a lusty although not always happy or attractive adolescence. The Civil War had been at least in part a struggle between agrarian democracy and industrial-capitalist democracy, and the result of the Northern victory was the triumphant emergence of industrialism, which was to yield material advances but was also to bring difficulties: severe labor disputes and economic depression.

Realistic Period

American capitalism was to produce a group of powerful and ruthless "robber barons"; its application to politics begot "bossism" and political corruption. Great advances were made in communications and transportation: The Atlantic cable was laid in 1866; the transcontinental railroad in 1869; the telephone was in 1876; and the automobile manufactured by the 1890s. By the last two decades of the century, many thoughtful people had begun to declare that somehow the promise of America had been lost.

Realistic Period

The impact of Darwin (Origin of Species), Marx (Das Kapital), Comte, Spencer, and others influenced a scientific attitude upon the older religious view of Americans. The passing of the physical frontier around 1890 removed a safety valve that had acted to protect them against the malcontents and the restless in their world; now they must absorb them, since they could no longer seek virgin land.

Realistic Period

In poetry, the field appeared to be held by a group of sentimental imitators of the English romantics, but two new and authentic poetic voices were raised: Whitman's (Leaves of Grass) and Dickinson's. Toward the close of the century, Stephen Crane (Red Badge of Courage). Riley wrote the first American VILLANELLE, which would influence Ezra Pound

Realistic Period

In fiction, the work of Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer / Huckleberry Finn / Roughin’ It) and Henry James (Portrait of a Lady), the greatest contributions of the age were made.

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

The period in American literary history covering 1900 to 1930 that is known for, in part, the virtual birth of modern American poetry, is the

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

The literary period between 1900 and 1930 in the United States that witnessed the flourishing of muckraking magazines and novels is the

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

Sharply divided by World War I–the part before the war being dominated by [this age] and the part after by a growing international aware being dominated by European literary models, and a steadily developing [this age] in literature.

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

The first decade of the 20th century saw the flourishing of the Muckraking magazine expose and the corresponding novel.

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

During this decade, Henry James (Portrait of a Lady) carried American realism probably to its greatest height in The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie), and Jack London (The Call of the Wild) were producing crude but powerful examples of the [this age] novel

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

virtual birth of modern American poetry, with the founding of Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, the emergence of the IMAGISTS (led by Ezra Pound), and the beginning of the careers of Frost, Pound, Doolittle, Eliot, Stevens, and William Carlos Williams (Pictures from Brueghel).

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

The realistic novel continued in the works of  Willa Cather (O, Pioneers / My Antonia) and Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth). The plays of Eugene O'Neill (Strange Interlude) gave promise of a theatrical revival to match the growing LITTLE THEATER MOVEMENT.

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

World War I dislocated many talented writers, many born between 1895 and 1902; the "LOST GENERATION," F. Scott Fitzgerald (Beautiful and Damned / Great Gatsby), Ernest Hemingway (Farewell to Arms / Sun Also Rises), E. E. Cummings

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

Poets and critics published The Fugitive in Nashville were AGRARIANS. Also came the modern Southern novel and much of the NEW CRITICISM; the group included John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men), Cleanth Brooks, and William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying / The Reivers)

Naturalistic & Symbolic Period

Harlem Renaissance of 1910s-1930s took place in this period

Period of Confessional Self

Not the 18th or 19th century literary period in which historical and religious concerns, or the romantic spirit, or pragmatic verisimilitude characterizes the literature is the

Modernism and Consolidation

1930 was a turning point in American social history as well as the beginning of the period in literary history that lasted until 1960.

Modernism and Consolidation

In October 1929, the stock market crash marked the end of the prosperous twenties, and by the end of 1930, the impact of the Depression was being felt throughout American life. As the Depression intensified, the social and economic revolution called the New Deal occurred, and a steadily increasing concern with social or sociological issues occupied many serious writers.

Modernism and Consolidation

Hemingway's (The Old Man and the Sea) career had been launched in the twenties and his work in the thirties added little to his stature, but Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury / Absalom, Absalom) was to produce in the first half of the decade the largest single body of his best work.

Modernism and Consolidation

Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward, Angel), Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer), and John Steinbeck (East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl, Of Mice and Men) did their best work.

Modernism and Consolidation

E. A. Robinson, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot continued their dominant positions in poetry. (Hint: Frost won his last two Pulitzers in 1937 and 1943)

Modernism and Consolidation

The coming of World War II put an end to the radicalism of the thirties. The war and its aftermath resulted in an age of conformity and conservatism, bolstered by a burgeoning economy. American life in the forties and the fifties was marked by a tendency to conformity. traditionalism, and reverence for artistic form and restraint, although there was marked informality in social conduct and freedom of subject matter in art.

Modernism and Consolidation

The postwar drama revealed the strong new talents of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, while Thornton Wilder was doing his most mature work

Period of the Confessional Self

Not the 18th or 19th century literary period in which historical and religious concerns, or the romantic spirit, or pragmatic verisimilitude characterizes the literature is the

Period of the Confessional Self

The 1960s marked a time of uncertainty, revolt, and cynicism in America and a strong turning inward of many American writers. American involvement in the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. The most unpopular war in the history of the United States; it ignited a massive revolt of the young against war.

Period of the Confessional Self

The struggle for the civil rights of minorities in the 1960s was a rallying point for many. The result of these varying forces was a tendency for imaginative writers to find their chief values in the self rather than in society and to see the proper realm of art to be introspection and confession rather than the creation of imaginary worlds.

Period of the Confessional Self

A younger group of poets,  including Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath (Colossus / The Bell Jar), and a number of African-American poets, practiced an intensely personal poetry of a marked [this age] quality. They were joined by older writers such as Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, and most notably Robert Lowell.

Period of the Confessional Self

The novelists of substantial work were William Styron (Sophie’s Choice), Saul Bellow (Humboldt’s Gift), Bernard Malamud (A New Life), John Updike (Rabbit Run), and Norman Mailer (Executioner’s Song), Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five), and Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow) produced works of great experimental ingenuity.

Period of the Confessional Self

The Southern writers, who had dominated the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, were largely dead or silent, and a group of Jewish writers- Bellow (Humboldt’s Gift), Malamud (A New Life), Philip Roth (American Pastoral), and Norman Mailer (Executioner’s Song) came closest to being their successors as a group.

Period of the Confessional Self

African American writers Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), Alice Walker (The Color Purple), and Toni Morrison (Beloved) publish many works in this time

Period of the Confessional Self

Edward Albee (Three Tall Woman / Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), writing a skillful kind of absurdist drama, joined with Tennessee Williams to dominate the American stage, as television made increasing inroads on both film and legitimate drama.

Period of Postmodernism

1989-present in America

Period of Postmodernism

By 2000 American writers appeared to be committed to a private, largely asocial exploration of the self and toward experiments in form. The emergence of a generation of writer born after 1940–including poets James Tate, Louise GlÜck, and others continued the varied and vigorous accomplishment in literature

Period of Postmodernism

David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest), Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow), Philip Roth (American Pastoral), John Updike (Rabbit at Rest), Annie Proulx (The Shipping News), Cormac McCarthy (The Road)