English 11- Literary Periods

Native American Period

Before North America was invaded, the Natives enjoyed songs, ceremonies, stories, and prayers. Their literature was passed down orally. Which included a sense of interconnectedness of all things such as animals, people, and their land. Sense of community and a communal sense of identity.

After the European invasion, Native Americans literature includes:

Survival and continuance by adapting old stories and customs. The struggle of being caught between traditional ways and mainstream American society. Acute awareness of the loss of ancestral homelands, self, and community. Response to Euro-American stereotypes.

For Women:

19th amendment (1920). Equal pay act (1963). Oregon v. Rideout - husband could be found guilty of raping their wife (1978). Women make 78 cents compared to the $1 men make (2012).

For African Americans:

Slavery was in force until 1865, after Civil War, little changed. The South had "Slavery by another name" (PBS) from 1865-1940s. Jim Crow laws 1876-1965. Civil Rights Act passed in 1965.

Invaders/Colonial Literature

1600s-1700s. Travels to and life in the "New World". Religious discussions. Manifest Destiny. Theocracy. Dogmatism and punishment.

William Bradford - Colonial Literature

Published History of Plymouth Plantation.

Anne Bradstreet - Colonial Literature

Wrote personal poems about her family, religious devotion, and Homelife. Criticized for writing poetry rather than spending time being a better mother, wife, and follower of God.

Phillis Wheatley - Colonial Literature

African American poet. Her poetry was the birth of the African American literature during the Colonial period.

Olaudah Equiano

Wrote The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equino.

Revolutionary Period

Age of Enlightenment/Recession. Democracy: How we manage ourselves as a collective pluribus umum. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Great American Experiment. Separation of Church and State. Natural rights: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Deism. Abigail Adams. Rational thought: science, logic.

Gothic (The Dark Romantics)

Mid 1800s. Gothic elements include dark and mysterious settings, supernatural events, violence/gore, and the exploration of humans' dark sides. (Harry Potter, Stephen King, Haunted Houses, Scary Movies).

Edgar Allan Poe - Gothic

"The Raven" and "The Pit and the Pendulum."

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Gothic

"The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of Seven Gables."

Herman Melville - Gothic

"Moby Dick."

Romantic Period

Mid 1800s. Responding to Industrialization, urbanization, Age of Reason/Logic, Slavery, Civil War. Charles Darwin - science v religion. Individuality, Intuition, Emotion. Nature/Solitude.

Henry Longfellow - Romantic

Widely known American poet of his lifetime. Achieved a level of national and international prominence and previously unequaled the literary history of the U.S. "Paul Revere's Ride" and "A Psalm of Life."

Walt Whitman - Romantic

His magnum opus was "Leaves f Grass", in which he uses a free flowing verse and lines of irregular length to depict the all-inclusiveness of American democracy. At the time, his poetry was seen as overly provocative and sometimes overly sexual.

Emily Dickinson - Romantic

Known as Recluse of Amherst. Her poetry is ingenious, witty, and sensitive- she often challenges the commonly-held beliefs about gender-power and religion. Her work was unconventional for its day. Many of her poems deal with death, often with a mischievous twist.

Transcendentalism

Mid 1800s (Romanticism 2.0). Civil Disobedience. Self-reliance. Nonconformity. Transparent eyeball. Over-soul. Utopian communities. Nature. One is almost his or her own god.

Louis May Alcott - Transcendentalism

Wrote "Little Women."

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Transcendentalism

Published "Nature" in which he claimed it was possible to dispense with organized religion and reach a lofty spiritual state by studying and responding to the natural world.

Henry David Thoreau - Transcendentalism

Wrote "Walden", a book-length memoir that urges resistance to the meddlesome dictates of organized society. His radical writings express a deep-rooted tendency toward individualism in the American character. While in jail, he wrote "Civil Disobedience." Which pointed out that for democracy to evolve, good people must be willing to break bad laws- idea adopted by many revolutionaries including MLK Jr.

The Civil War

Between Romantic and Transcendental eras encapsulate the Civil War, African American voices started to get attention as they added their voices to the anti-slavery movement.

Frederick Douglas

African-American Social reformer, escaped slavery, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. Became national leader of the abolitionist movement in MA and NY, gaining note of his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Founded and edited his own anti-slavery magazine called "The North Star."

Harriet Ann Jacobs

Abolitionist, speaker, and reformer. Wrote an autobiographical novel, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl."

Realism

Versimilitude, regular folk's struggles, local color.

Mark Twain

He employed realism, much of Twain's writing was funny, sarcastic, often parodying American life. Twain, was a writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, lecturer. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer","Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Realism Women:

Not only did women start to get political voice but a literary one too. Literature by written by women in this era often reflected the everyday conflicts of women and their struggles to overcome such stereotypes as being weak, passive, timid, domestic, illogical, emotional, susceptible to hysteria and madness, and unable to resist temptation. Such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Kate Stanton, and Sojourner Truth who rhetorically asked "Ain't I a Woman?"

Kate Chopin

"The Awakening"

Flannery O'Connor

"A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"The Yellow Wallpaper"

Naturalism

Extreme realism. Natural selection. Role of family background, social conditions, and environment in shaping human character. (Jack London)

Modernism

WWI-WWII. Increasing industrialization and globalization. New war tech Decline of civilization. Capitalism. Roaring 20s. Great Depression. Incredible weather disparity and self-centeredness. Lost generation.

Ernest Hemingway - Modernism

"The Old Man and the Sea" "A Farewell to Arms"

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Modernism

"The Great Gatsby" "The Beautiful and the Damned"

John Steinback - Modernism

"Grapes of Wrath" "Of Mice and Men"

William Faulkner - Modernism

"The Sound and the Fury" "As I Lay Dying"

Modernist Poets:

Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore.

The Harlem Renaissance

1920s-mid 1930s. Literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that kindled a new black identity. Influenced future generations of black writers, but it was largely ignored by there literary establishment after it waned in the 1930s.

Langston Hughes

"I, too" "A Dream Deferred"

Zora Neale Hurston

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" "How it Feels to be Colored Me"

Postmodernism

After end of WWII. Characterized by nuclear threat, global warming, pollution, terrorism. No trust. Filter bubbles. No one claims ultimate authority.

Harper Lee - postmodernism

"To Kill a Mockingbird"

Katherine Ann Porter - postmodernism

Short stories and poems

Sylvia Path and Anne Sexton

Postmodernism writers.

Tom Morrison and Maya Angelou

Two most famous postmodernism female African American writers of this era.

Sherman Alexie and Leslie Marmon Silko

Native American Postmodern writers.