American Lit.pdf

AMERICAN LITERATURE
BY: Sonam Sharma
RESEARCH SCHOLAR
CUJ

Colonial Period (1607-1765)
• The Colonial Period of American Literature spans the time between the
founding of the first settlement at Jamestown(1607) to the outbreak of the
Revolution.
• Often reflective of the literary trends of Europe.
• Prominent writings include religious sermons (Puritan doctrine) , Theological
and polemic writings by Cotton Mather and diary or autobiographies.
• Captain John Smith could be considered the first American author with his
works: A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath
Happened in Virginia ... (1608) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New
England, and the Summer Isles (1624)
• A journal written by John Winthrop, The History of New England, discussed the
religious foundations
• The Bay Psalm Book by Thomas Weld, John Eliot and Richard Mather was one
of the earliest poetic work written in America and the first book printed by the
American press.
•

• Anne Bradstreet (1612-1673) a Puritan poet. Her
book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America
contains her poems titled “The Four Seasons”,
“The Four Elements”, “the Four Constitutions”,
“Four Monarchies”. “ To My Dear and Loving
Husband “ is a deeply personal poem.
• Michael Wigglesworth (1631- 1705) a minister
wrote the terrifying poem “The Day of Doom”
• Thomas Godfreys – the author of the first
American play “The Prince of Parthia ”(1965) by a
native playwright. His poems in 2 volumes – “The
Court of Fancy” and “Juvenile Poems”. The play
was presented in 1767.

THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE (American
Revolution) 1765-1790
• Some of the greatest documents of American history were
authored.
• Political writings abound.
• In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence.
• In 1781, The Articles of Confederation were ratified.
• Between 1787 and 1788, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,
and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers.
• Finally, in 1787, The Constitution of the United States was drafted
and in 1789 it was ratified.
Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard's Almanac and his Autobiography
are esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the
formation of a budding American identity.
Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense (1776) and The American
Crisis influenced the political tone of America.

• Songs and ballads composed during the revolution. Yankee
Doodle (non sense verse)
• John Trumbull’s M’fingal (1775-82)is a political satire
(imitating Butler’s Hudibras)
• Nathan Hale is a popular song of war .
• Joel Barlow’s epic in ten books “The Columbiad” and mock
heroic “The Hasty Pudding”.
• Philps Freneau ,regarded as the Poet of the American
Revolution. His works include patriotic and anti- British
writing like “American Liberty”,” A Political Littany”, “America
Independent” and his most important “The British Prisoner”
inspired by his own experience as a prisoner aboard an
English ship. "The House of Night", one of the first romantic
poems written and published in America, included the
Gothic elements and dark imagery that were later seen in
the poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. Freneau's nature poem, "The
Wild Honey Suckle" (1786), was considered an early seed to
the later Transcendentalist movement.

Early National Period 1775- 1828
• the beginnings of literature that could be truly identified as "American".
• The writers of this new American literature wrote in the English style,
but the settings, themes, and characters were authentically American.
• This era in American literature is responsible for notable first works,
such as the first American comedy written for the stage—"The
Contrast" by Royall Tyler, written in 1787(reminiscent of Sheridan’s
School for Scandal)—and the first American Novel—"The Power of
Sympathy" by William Hill, written in 1789. (Richardson’s sentimental
novel).
Charles Brokden Brown published Wieland in 1798, and in 1799
published Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn. (Gothic genre)
Henry Bracken Bridge published Modern Chivalry in 1792-1815
(picaresque novel)

•Washington Irving (1783- 1859) is a short story writer, essayist,
biographer. largely credited as the first American Man of Letters and the
first to earn his living solely by his pen. best known for his short stories
"Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both
of which appear in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
Gent.
•James Fenimore Cooper,(1789-1851) best known for five historical
romance novels of the frontier period, written between 1823 and 1841,
known as the Leatherstocking Tales, which introduced the iconic American
frontier scout, Natty Bumppo. his last masterpiece novel is The Last of the
Mohicans (1826)
•William Dunlop’s plays The Father of American Shadism (1789), Andre
(1798) and The Italian Father (1799)
•John Neal's early works in the 1810s and 1820s played a formidable role
in the developing American style of literature. He criticised Irving and
Cooper for relying on old British conventions of authorship to frame
American phenomena, arguing that "to succeed ... [the American writer]
must resemble nobody . Neal was "the first in America to be natural and
colloquial in his diction. Rachel Dyer is considered his best novel, "Otter-
Bag, the Oneida Chief" and "David Whicher" his best tales, and The Yankee
his most influential periodical. He was the first to use the phrase ‘son of a
bitch’ in a novel.

The American Renaissance (1828-1865)
• The term American Renaissance coined by F.O.Matthiessen as a reference to rebirth of
American Writing. Also American Romantic Period.
• Abolitionism, Utopia, California Gold Rush 1848, Civil War 1961-1965
• The age characterized by two parallel movements- Transcendentalism and Dark
Romanticism (anti transcendentalism)
• American themes ,landscapes, frontier, democracy and a fresh awareness of America’s place
in the world. Confident use of American idiom and language. Ideals and aims of American
lit.
• Transcendentalism principles: Self Reliance , Individual Conscience, Intuition Over Reason,
Unity of All Things in Nature part of Divine Soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson leader of the movement . His essay Nature, (1836) argued that men
should dispense with organized religion and reach a lofty spiritual state by studying and
interacting with the natural world. Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series
(1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance",
[9] "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet", and "Experience." His speech "The American
Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual
Declaration of Independence.“
"I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.
Henry David Thoreau wrote his memoirs Walden(1854) on simple living in the Woods. Also
famous is his essay Civil Disobedience arguing resistance to unjust state.
Margaret Fuller, an early feminist transcendentalist.

• Abolitionism inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti
slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin : Life of the Lowly
(1852) as a book in two volumes. First serialised in the
anti-slavery journal The National Era. She originally
used the subtitle "The Man That Was a Thing", but it
was soon changed to "Life Among the Lowly“.
• The novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward
African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said
to have "helped lay the groundwork for the American
Civil War.
• Slave narratives and autobiographies of African-
American slaves who had escaped flourished between
1830-65 including Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass(1845) and Harriet
Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl (1861)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
• In 1837,collected some of his short stories as Twice-Told Tales, a volume rich
in symbolism and occult incidents.
• Hawthorne went on to write full-length "romances", quasi-allegorical novels
that explore the themes of guilt, inherent evil and sin of humanity pride, and
emotional repression in New England. Anti puritan with moral messages.
• His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, A Romance (1850), is a novel about a
woman cast out of her community for committing adultery.
• Fanshawe (published anonymously, 1828), The House of the Seven Gables, A
Romance (1851),The Blithedale Romance (1852),The Marble Faun: Or, The
Romance of Monte Beni (1860),
• In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne describes his
romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow
the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture".[104] The
picture, Daniel Hoffman found, was one of "the primitive energies of
fecundity and creation.
• His Unfinished novels are The Dolliver Romance (1863) , Septimius Felton;
or, the Elixir of Life (1872),Doctor Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance.
• His other works include several short stories collections like Tanglewood
Tales .

Herman Melville (1819-91)
• He wrote romances replete with philosophical
speculation.
• In Moby-Dick (1851), an adventurous whaling voyage
becomes the vehicle for examining such themes as
obsession, the nature of evil, and human struggle against
the elements.
• Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in
Polynesia.
• The short novel Billy Budd, Sailor, dramatizes the
conflicting claims of duty and compassion on board a ship
in time of war.
• His renewed appreciation began in 1917 with Carl Van
Doren's article on Melville in a standard history of
American literature.
• The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)
• Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) (poetry
collection)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845)
• American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best
known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of
mystery and the macabre. Gothic,horror.
• Father of detective fiction. Auguste Dupin , the detective of
ratiocination. Contributor to emerging sci-fi.
• 1839, the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was
published in two volumes. His famous short stories include "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue“, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head“,
"The Oval Portrait“, "The Premature Burial“, "The Purloined
Letter“, "The Cask of Amontillado“, "The Fall of the House of
Usher“,"The Gold-Bug, "The Masque of the Red Death"
• His Poem "The Raven“ was published in 1845 to instant success.
He planned for years to produce his own journal The Penn (later
renamed The Stylus), but before it could be produced, he died.

• Annabel Lee is his last complete poem like many of Poe's
poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful
woman.
• Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark
romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism
which Poe strongly disliked. He referred to followers of the
transcendental movement as "Frog-Pondians", after the
pond on Boston Common, and ridiculed their writings as
"metaphor—run mad," lapsing into "obscurity for
obscurity's sake" or "mysticism for mysticism's sake.
• William Butler Yeats was occasionally critical of Poe and
once called him "vulgar". Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo
Emerson reacted to "The Raven" by saying, "I see nothing in
it", and derisively referred to Poe as "the jingle man”.
• Dark Romanticism focusses on the guilt, inherent evil and
sin of humanity. It uses unpleasant and often supernatural
imagery of burial, death, grotesque etc.
• Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson can be said to be
Dark Romantics.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
• Father of Modern American Poetry, representative poet of America.
• Celebration of Individualism, freedom , democracy,religion, inherent human
dignity and nobility. Transcendentalism, organic wholeness, mystical,symbolism,
realistic approach to sex, theme of labour
• Leaves of Grass (1855)is an epic of Modern America, The bible of Democracy.
• 1st
edition in 1855 contained 12 poems with a preface. The best poem was Song
of Myself with 52 clusters. 2nd
edition in 1856 included 20 new poems .
• 3rd
edition published by Thayer & Eldridge, with 124 new poems arranged in
groups and clusters. Children of Adam and Calamus two of the most celebrated
clusters. 4th
edition in 1867, 5th
edition in 1871-72 with a new cluster’ Passage to
India” along with “Democratic Vistas”
• The final stage in the growth of the epic was reached in four editions published
successively in 1876, 1881-1882, 1889, 1891-92. To the deathbed edition he
added another cluster of old age poems under the name “Goodbye My Fancy”
• There was a Child Went Forth, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, When Lilacs Last

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-86)
• Eccentric, lived life in seclusion.
• Her earliest poetry dates early 1850’s . Most prolific during 1860-65
• She preserved her work in hand sewn booklets called fascicles and did not
like her work to be published.
• Work published posthumously . Small selections in 1886. Complete
edition of 1800 poems in 1955 by Thomas Johnson
• Poetry is unsettling, fragmented , with dislocated syntax, unusual rhymes
and metres. Pessimistic, refuses to conform to fixed ideas of religion
• Death is a recurrent theme ambivalence of belief and faith.
• “Hope is the thing with feathers. ...
• “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.” ...
• “Forever is composed of nows.” ...
• “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” ...
• “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever
warm me, I know that is poetry.”

•Fireside Poets ( schoolroom / household poets –
were a group of 19th-century American poets associated with
New England. These poets were very popular among readers
and critics both in the United States and overseas. Their
domestic themes and messages of morality presented in
conventional poetic forms deeply shaped their era until their
decline in popularity at the beginning of the 20th century.
• William Cullen Bryant ( 1794 – 1878) was an American
romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York
Evening Post.
Thanatopsis (1811/1816) Meaning 'a consideration of death', the
word is derived from the Greek 'thanatos' (death) and 'opsis'
(view, sight).
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882) "Paul Revere's
Ride“ (1860), The Song of Hiawatha(1855), and
Evangeline(1847). He was the first American to translate
Dante's Divine Comedy . Very popular . 70th birthday in 1877
took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches,
and the reading of his poetry. Poems on slavery (1842)

• John Greenleaf Whittier a quaker poet and an abolitionist poet
famous for his poems Barbara Frietchie, "The Barefoot Boy", "Maud
Muller" and Snow-Bound.(1866) Of all the poetry inspired by the Civil
War, the "Song of the Negro Boatmen" was one of the most widely
printed.A number of his poems have been turned into hymns,
including Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, taken from his poem "The
Brewing of Soma.
• James Russell Lowell(1819-91), A Fable for Critics,(1848) a book-
length poem satirizing contemporary critics and poets. He attempted
to emulate the true Yankee accent in the dialogue of his characters,
particularly in The Biglow Papers (1848). This depiction of the dialect,
as well as his many satires, was an inspiration to writers such as Mark
Twain. Used poetry to express anti- slavery ideals. with his friend
Robert Carter in founding the literary journal The Pioneer.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94)wrote commemorative poems. His
best known and critically successful poems—"Old Ironsides" and "The
Last Leaf“. "Dorothy Q" is a portrait of his maternal great-
grandmother. He is also famous for his Breakfast Table series like
Professor at the Breakfast Table, Autocrat at the Breakfast Table.
(1858)
Whittier
Lowell

The Realistic Period 1865-1900
• Following the Civil War, Reconstruction and the age of industrialism, American
ideals and self-awareness changedand American Literature entered into the
Realistic Period. Regionalism grew.
• William Dean Howells (1837-1920) represented the realist tradition through his
novels, including The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and A Traveler from Altruria
(utopian novel critique of the gilded age)and the Christmas story "Christmas
Every Day” . He was editor of The Atlantic Monthly. nicknamed "The Dean of
American Letters. "
• Henry James (1843–1916) confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by
writing directly about it. Although he was born in New York City, James spent
most of his adult life in England. Many of his novels center on Americans who live
in or travel to Europe. key transitional figure between literary realism and literary
modernism. The Portrait of a Lady, (1881) and his famous trilogy The
Ambassadors(1903), and The Wings of the Dove(1902) and the Golden Bowl
(1904)
• His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed
and ambiguous ghost story

• Bret Harte (1836-1902) short story writer and
poet, best remembered for short fiction featuring
miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of
the California Gold Rush. "Plain Language from
Truthful James", aka "The Heathen Chinee" (1870)
is a satirical poem on the anti Chinese sentiment
prevalent in America. The Stolen Cigar-Case
featuring ace detective "Hemlock Jones", which
Ellery Queen praised as "probably the best parody
of Sherlock Holmes ever written.
• William Sydney Porter (1862 –1910), better
known by his pen name O. Henry, was an
American short story writer. "The Gift of the
Magi", "The Duplicity of Hargraves", and "The
Ransom of Red Chief". His stories are known for
their surprise endings and witty narration

Kate Chopin born Katherine O'Flaherty(1850 –
1904) • Regional novels representing Louisiana
• Forerunner of American feminist writers of southern or catholic
background
• major works were two short story collections: Bayou Folk (1894)
and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories
included "Désirée's Baby" (1893), a tale of miscegenation in
antebellum Louisiana,"The Story of an Hour" (1894),[7] and "The
Storm" (1898). "The Storm" is a sequel to "At the Cadian Ball,"
which appeared in her first collection of short stories, Bayou Folk.
[6]
• her two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which
are set in New Orleans and Grand Isle, respectively. The
characters in her stories are usually residents of Louisiana, and
many are Creoles of various ethnic or racial backgrounds. Overt
female sexuality hence mixed reception.

MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL LANGHORNE
CLEMENS) (1835-1910)
• The first major American writer to be born away from the
East Coast – in the border state of Missouri.
• Range of literary forms –sketches,essays,short stories,travel
narratives, novels.
• William Faulkner called him "the father of American
literature"
• The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County(1867)
beginning as a novelist and humourist.
• His regional masterpieces were the memoir Life on the
Mississippi(1883) and the novels Adventures of Tom
Sawyer(1876) and its sequel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884). The latter is often called "The Great American Novel.

• His characters speak like real people and
sound distinctively American, using local
dialects, newly invented words, and regional
accents. His novels describe the beauty of the
Mississipi river.
• Hemingway also wrote “All modern American
literature comes from one book by Mark
Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
• 12 yr old Huck’s escape from Widow Douglas ,
friendship with runaway slave Jim and his
assistance in his freedom . Story ends with
Huck disgusted at ‘civilisation’, planning to
renounce society.
• The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims'
Progress.(1899)

The Naturalistic Period (1900-1914)
• Naturalism claims to give an even more accurate depiction of life than realism.
• Naturalistic writings try to present subjects with scientific objectivity. These
writings are often frank, crude, and tragic.
• Stephen Crane (1871–1900), best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of
Courage (1895), depicted the life of New York City prostitutes in Maggie: A Girl of
the Streets (1893) .
• Jack London’s famous novels include The Call of the Wild(1903) and White
Fang(1906), both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, a dystopian novel The Iron Heel
(1904), as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire“(1902), "An Odyssey of the
North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as
"The Pearls of Parlay", and "The Heathen".
• Theodore Dreiser’s (1871–1945) Sister Carrie (1900), portrayed a country girl
who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman.
• Frank Norris's (1870 – 1902) fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre.
His notable works include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), The
Octopus: A Story of California (1901) and The Pit (1903) . He wrote on problems
of American farmers.
• Edith Wharton wrote some of her most beloved classics, such as "The Custom of
the Country" (1913), "Ethan Frome" (1911), and "The House of Mirth" (1905)
during this time period.

American Modernist Period (1914-1939)
• Between 1914 and 1939, American Literature entered into a phase which is still referred to as
"The Beginnings of Modern Literature".
• Some well-known American Modernist Poets include Robert Frost (1874-1963) with his North
of Boston (1914) and New Hampshire (1923), William Carlos Williams(1883-1963) with his
Spring and All (1923), one of his seminal books of poetry, which contained the classic poems
"By the road to the contagious hospital", "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "To Elsie". Paterson was
his modern epic (1946-58) . Edwin Arlington Robinson , Carl Sandburg were other notable poets
• e.e. cummings. (1894-1962) modernist free form poetry with idiosyncratic syntax. Tulips and
Chimneys (1923)
• 1920s : Jazz Age(Roaring Twenties)
• 1923- until Depression , Harlem Renaissance
• 1920s- 1930s : The "Lost Generation“
• 1930’s : Great Depression
• The American Modernist Period also produced many other writers that are considered to be
writers of Modernist Period Subclasses.
• For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered a writer of The Jazz Age, and Langston Hughes and
W.E.B. DuBois writers of The Harlem Renaissance.
• Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway are famous writers of The Lost
Generation.
e.e. Cummings
William Carlos
Williams

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
• Many of his stories and novels captured the restless,
pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the 1920s, a decade he
named the Jazz Age in his Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
• Fitzgerald's masterpiece The Great Gatsby, (1925) Set in
the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel
depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions
with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's
obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
• Novels.This Side of Paradise (1920) The Beautiful and
Damned (1922) Tender Is the Night (1934). Famous short
story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button“(1922)
• Characteristic theme - the tendency of youth's golden
dreams to dissolve in failure and disappointment.
• He also dwells on the collapse of long-held American
Ideals, such as liberty, social unity, good governance and
peace, features which were severely threatened by the
pressures of modern early 20th century society.

LOST Generation (1920’s -1930’s )
• Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), Labeled a group of American literary figures
who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s the "Lost Generation
• an expatriate in Paris, She published Three Lives(1909), an innovative work of
fiction influenced by her familiarity with cubism, jazz, etc.“The Autobiography
of Alice B. Toklas” (1933), a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, written in the
voice of Alice B. Toklas,her partner. Her books include Q.E.D. (1903), about a
lesbian romantic affair involving several of Stein's friends; Fernhurst, a
fictional story about a love triangle; Three Lives (1905–06); The Making of
Americans (1902–1911); and Tender Buttons (1914).
• Ezra Pound (1885 –1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic and a
fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works include Ripostes
(1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem, The
Cantos (c. 1917–1962).
• contribution to poetry is with his role in developing Imagism, a movement
stressing precision and economy of language.
• Hemingway wrote in 1932 that, for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th
century, not to be influenced by Pound would be "like passing through a great
blizzard and not feeling its cold."

• was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and
editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a
central figure in English-language Modernist poetry.
• Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he moved to England in 1914 at the
age of 25 became a British citizen in 1927
• His first poetry is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915,
which was received as a modernist masterpiece. It was followed
by some of the best-known poems in the English language,
including "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925),
"Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943).
• He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in
the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). The Family
Reunion (1939)
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his
outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry
T.S.Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Ernest Hemingway(1899-1961)
• Novelist and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1954.
• He moved to Paris after the world war 1
• His first work includes stories In Our Time (1925)
• The Sun Also Rises(1926) ,dealing with lives of the lost gen in
Paris and Spain, and A Farewell to Arms (1929) based on his
personal experience as a wounded ambulance driver in WW1
are generally considered his best novels;
• His other major works : Novels- For Whom The Bell Tolls
(1940), the Old Man And The Sea (1952). Short stories- A
Clean Lighted Place, The Snows Of Kilimanjaro and Big Two-
Hearted River.
• Death in The Afternoon (1932) book on bull fighting.

• He was concerned with the formulation of identity in
extreme circumstances and a pre-occupation with the
nature of masculinity.
• Suicide in 1961. Posthumous works include the
memoir A Movable Feast(1964), unfinished novel
Garden of Eden (1986)
• John Dos Passos wrote a famous anti-war novel, Three
Soldiers, describing scenes of blind hatred, stupidity,
and criminality; and the suffocating regimentation of
army life. He also wrote about the war in the U.S.A.
trilogy which comprised of the novels The 42nd
Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932) and The Big Money (1936)
which extended into the Depression. Experimental in
form, the U.S.A. trilogy weaves together various
narrative strands, which alternate with contemporary
news reports, snatches of the author's autobiography,
and capsule biographies of public figures including
Eugene Debs, Robert La Follette and Isadora Duncan.

William Faulkner (1897- 1962)
• won the Nobel Prize in 1949. one of the best writers of Southern
literature.
• Faulkner encompassed a wide range of humanity in
Yoknapatawpha County, a Mississippian region of his own
invention. He recorded his characters' seemingly unedited
ramblings in order to represent their inner states, a technique
called "stream of consciousness".
• He also jumbled time sequences to show how the past – especially
the slave-holding era of the Deep South – endures in the present.
• Sartoris (1927), his first work which is set in Yoknapatawpha
County.
• Among his great works are Absalom, Absalom!(1936), As I Lay
Dying(1930), The Sound and the Fury (1929), and Light in
August(1932)
• Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers
(1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
• American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his
realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic
humor and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of
American letters.
• Born in Salinas, California, where he set many of his stories. His style was
simple and evocative, winning him the favor of the readers but not of the
critics. Steinbeck often wrote about poor, working-class people and their
struggle to lead a decent and honest life. His works represent everyman.
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939), considered his masterpiece, is a strong,
socially-oriented novel that tells the story of the Joads, a poor family
from Oklahoma and their journey to California in search of a better life
during the Great Depression. He was awarded the Pulitzer prize for the
novel.
• He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery
Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the
novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937) drama about
the dreams of two migrant agricultural laborers in California.
• sixteen novels, six nonfiction works and five collections of short storie

Eugene O’Neil (1888 -1953)
• was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in
literature. Four times Pulitzer Prize winner
• His poetically titled plays were among the first to
introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of
realism earlier associated with Russian playwright
Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik
Ibsen.
• The Emperor Jones,(1920),The First Man, (1922),
The Hairy Ape, (1922), All God's Chillun Got Wings,
(1924),Desire Under the Elms, (1924)
• Beyond the Horizon, (1918 . Pp 1920) Anna Christie,
(1920 .PP- 1922), Strange Interlude, (1928 – PP),
Long Day's Journey into Night,(1941, PP 1957)

• American Drama under Neil gained international
recognition.
• One-act plays- The Glencairn Plays, all of which
feature characters on the fictional ship Glencairn
—filmed together as The Long Voyage Home:
Bound East for Cardiff(1914), In the Zone (1917),
The Long Voyage Home (1917), Moon of the
Caribbees, (1918)
• O'Neill's plays were among the first to include
speeches in American English vernacular and
involve characters on the fringes of society. They
struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations,
but ultimately slide into disillusion and despair.
• Of his very few comedies, only one is well-known
(Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays
involve some degree of tragedy and personal
pessimism.

Harlem Renaissance 1923-30’s
• First major movement of African American Literature involing intellectuals associated with Harlem,
district of Manhattan.
• Associated with New Negro Movement so called because of the anthology The New Negro (1925)
edited by Alain Locke is the manifesto of the renaissance. No longer apologetic for blackness , pride
in racial identity, heritage, renewed self respect and self dependence.
• Langston Hughes (1902-67) was a poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His work Weary Blue(1926)
made powerful use of folk idioms and vernacular such as blues.
• Prominent Harlem Renaissance writers include James Weldom Johnson(1871-1938), Jessie
Redomon Fauset, Nella Larsen(1893-1964), Jean Toomer (1894-1967), Arna Bontemps (1902-81),
Helen Johnson(1905-95)
• Key works : Toomers multi generic Cane (1923), Larsen’s Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) and
Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Watching God (1937)
• Nigger Heaven (1926), a novel by white writer, Carl Van Vechten African culture enthusiast
• Poet Countee Cullen (1903-46) believed in not racializing poetry. Diametrically opposite extremes of
the Harlem Renaissance. I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet. Translator of Euripedes.
• Richard Wright’s books, including Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), Native Son (1940), and Black Boy
(1945), were works of burning social protest,

The Contemporary period (1939- Present)
• The Contemporary Period includes an abundance of important American literary
figures spanning from World War II into the New Millennium.
• Beat Generation Writers (1944-1950’s).
• Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948 to characterize a
perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York Beat
writers,
• core group of Beat Generation authors—Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg,
William Burroughs, Lucien Carr, Henry Miller, and Jack Kerouac
• The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative
values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern
religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human
condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual
liberation ,confession, exploration which lead to disputes of censorship.
• Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959), and
Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat
literature.
• were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing
in the United States. The members of the Beat Generation developed a
reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and
spontaneous creativity.
• They inspired the counterculture movements of the next two decades. 60’s -70’s

• The period was dominated by the last few of the more realistic modernists.
• This included the highly popular To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee that deals with
racial inequality .
• War Novels that responded to America's involvement in World War II, Korean War, Vietnam
War in two parallel ways- realistic and other nightmarish horror.
• WW II was the subject of these novels. Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Irwin
Shaw’s The Young Lions (1948) were realistic war novels, though Mailer’s book was also a novel
of ideas, exploring fascist thinking and an obsession with power as elements of the military
mind. James Jones, amassing a staggering quantity of closely observed detail, documented the
war’s human cost in an ambitious trilogy : From Here to Eternity [1951], The Thin Red Line
[1962], and Whistle [1978]) that centred on loners who resisted adapting to military discipline.
• Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961)written , black comedy, Kafkaesque horror) and Kurt Vonnegut
Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969),mixed dark fantasy and horror to describe the allied bombing.
• While the Korean war was a source of trauma for the protagonist of The Moviegoer (1962), by
Southern author Walker Percy, winner of the National Book Award; his attempt at exploring
"the dislocation of man in the modern age.“
• Tim O’Brien in Going After Cacciato (1978) and the short-story collection The Things They
Carried (1990) portrayed Vietnam War.

• Meta Fiction
• Realism inadequate to express the horrors of the bombing and the
pressures of the contemporary life. Black humour and absurdist fantasy.
• A highly self-conscious fiction emerged, laying bare its own literary devices,
questioning the nature of representation, and often imitating or parodying
earlier fiction rather than social reality.
• Russian-born Vladimir Nabokov and the Argentine writer Jorge Luis
Borges were strong influences on this new “metafiction.” Nabokov, who
became a U.S. citizen in 1945, produced a body of exquisitely wrought
fiction distinguished by linguistic and formal innovation. Despite their
artificiality, his best novels written in English—including Lolita (1955), Pnin
(1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—are highly personal books that have a strong
emotional thread running through them.

• Thomas Pynchon emerged as the major American practitioner of the absurdist
fable. His novels and stories were elaborately plotted mixtures of historical
information, comic-book fantasy, and countercultural suspicion. Using
paranoia as a structuring device as well as a cast of mind, Pynchon worked out
elaborate “conspiracies” in V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity’s
Rainbow (1973). The underlying assumption of Pynchon’s fiction was the
inevitability of entropy—i.e., the disintegration of physical and moral energy
• In The Victim (1947), The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Herzog (1964),
Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970), and Humboldt’s Gift (1975), Saul Bellow
(Canadian born , Chicago based) tapped into the buoyant, manic energy and
picaresque structure of black humour while proclaiming the necessity of
“being human.” Social Realism. darker fictions such as the novella Seize the
Day (1956), a study in failure and blocked emotion that was perhaps his best
work. With the publication of Ravelstein (2000), his fictional portrait of the
scholar-writer Allan Bloom, and of Collected Stories (2001), Bellow was
acclaimed as a portraitist and a poet of memory.
• Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature (1976),
and the National Medal of Arts(thrice)
• Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the
Rain King, was the one most like himself reflect his own yearning for
transcendence, a battle "to overcome not just ghetto conditions but also
ghetto psychoses.

• J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)In 1948, his critically acclaimed
story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish“ was published in The
New Yorker. His most famous novel The Catcher in the Rye
(1951), depicts adolescent alienation and loss of innocence
in the protagonist Holden Caulfield. short story collection,
Nine Stories (1953); Franny and Zooey (1961)
• Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) was an American poet,
novelist, and short-story writer.
• She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional
poetry and is best known for two of her published
collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel
(1965), as well as The Bell Jar(1963), a semi-
autobiographical novel published shortly before her death
in 1963. The Collected Poems were published in 1981,
which included previously unpublished works. For this
collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in
1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour
posthumously. She suicided in depression.

• John Updike approached American life from a more
reflective but no less subversive perspective. His 1960 novel
Rabbit, Run, the first of four chronicling the rising and
falling fortunes of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the
course of four decades against the backdrop of the major
events of the second half of the 20th century, broke new
ground on its release in its characterization and detail of
the American middle class and frank discussion of taboo
topics such as adultery.
• Notable among Updike's characteristic innovations was his
use of present-tense narration, his rich, stylized language,
and his attention to sensual detail. His work is also deeply
imbued with Christian themes. The two final installments of
the Rabbit series, Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest
(1990), were both awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
• Other notable works include the Henry Bech novels (1970–
98), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), Roger's Version (1986)
and In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), which literary critic
Michiko Kakutani called "arguably his finest".

• Philip Roth (1933-2018)vigorously explores Jewish identity in
American society, especially in the postwar era and the early 21st
century. explores the distinction between reality and fiction in
literature while provocatively examining American culture.
• Frequently set in Newark, New Jersey, his work is known to be
highly autobiographical, and many of his main characters, most
famously the Jewish novelist Nathan Zuckerman, are thought to be
alter egos of Roth.
• His most famous work includes the Zuckerman novels, The Ghost
Writer (1979), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), and, above all, The
Counterlife (1987) the controversial Portnoy's Complaint (1969), and
Goodbye, Columbus (1959). Among the most decorated American
writers of his generation, he has won every major American literary
award, including the Pulitzer Prize for his major novel American
Pastoral (1997).
• Other Jewish writers include Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, and
Singer.
• Malamud’s (1914-86) gift for dark comedy and Hawthornean fable
was especially evident in his short-story collections The Magic Barrel
(1958) and Idiots First (1963). His first three novels, The Natural
(1952), The Assistant (1957), and A New Life (1961) His stories
parables out of Jewish immigrant life.

• Grace Paley (1922-2007) first language Yiddish. Her first
volume of short stories, The Little Disturbances of Man:
Stories of Men and Women at Love (1959), was noted for its
realistic dialogue. It was followed by Enormous Changes at the
Last Minute (1974) and Later the Same Day (1985), both of
which continued her compassionate, often comic, exploration
of ordinary individuals struggling against loneliness. All
feature the character of Faith, Paley’s reputed alter ego.
Leaning Forward (1985) and Begin Again: New and Collected
Poems (1992) are volumes of Paley’s poetry.
• The Polish-born Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1978 for his stories, written originally in Yiddish.
They evolved from fantastic tales of demons and angels to
realistic fictions set in New York City’s Upper West Side, often
dealing with the haunted lives of Holocaust survivors.
• he was awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, one in
Children's Literature for his memoir A Day Of Pleasure: Stories
of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw (1970) and one in Fiction for
his collection A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1974).

African American Literature
• James Baldwin (1924-87)In his semi-autobiographical first and best
novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), portrayed the Harlem world
and the Black church through his own adolescent religious
experiences. His second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), deals with the
white world and concerns an American in Paris torn between his love
for a man and his love for a woman. Between the two novels came a
collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955). His book of essays,
Nobody Knows My Name (1961), explores Black-white relations in the
United States. This theme also was central to his novel Another
Country (1962), which examines sexual as well as racial issues.
• Ralph Ellison wrote a deeply resonant comic novel that dealt with the
full range of Black experience—rural sharecropping, segregated
education, northward migration, ghetto hustling, and the lure of such
competing ideologies as nationalism and communism. Many
considered his novel Invisible Man (1952) the best novel of the
postwar years. National Book Award for Fiction. Shadow and Act
(1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays,
• Black Art Movement 1960’s-70’s

• Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford;1931 – 2019),
known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, The Bluest
Eye,(1970) explores incestuous rape and racial ideals of beauty. The critically
acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) was a lyrical prose In 1988, Morrison won the
Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987)lyrical fantasy of former slave family haunted by
a spirit. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
• Maya Angelou born Marguerite Annie Johnson(1928 –2014) was an American
poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. Called the black woman's poet laureate.
• best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her
childhood and early adult experiences.
• The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age
of 17 Chronology of autobiographies
• Gather Together in My Name (1974): 1944–48
• Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976): 1949–55
• The Heart of a Woman (1981): 1957–62
• All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986): 1962–65
• A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002): 1965–68
• Mom & Me & Mom (2013): overview
• 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first
inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural
recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961

• Alice Walker, after writing several volumes of poetry and a novel dealing with the civil rights
movement Meridian [1976], received the Pulitzer Prize for her Black feminist novel The Color
Purple (1982).
• Ishmael Reed, whose works marked by surrealism, satire, and political and racial commentary. The
Free-Lance Pallbearers, was 1967. It centres on Bukka Doopeyduk, who launches a rebellion
against the despotic Harry Sam. A black circus cowboy with cloven hooves, the Loop Garoo Kid, is
the hero of the violent Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969). The Last Days of Louisiana Red
(1974) is a fantastic novel set amid the racial violence of Berkeley, California, in the 1960s. Flight to
Canada (1976) depicts an American Civil War-era slave escaping to freedom via bus and airplane.
• James Alan McPherson, a subtle short-story writerDespite his coming of age as a writer during the
Black Arts movement, his stories transcend issue-oriented politics. He was the first African
American winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for his second short-story collection, Elbow Room
(1977).
• Charles Johnson, whose novels, such as The Oxherding Tale (1982) and The Middle Passage (1990),
showed a masterful historical imagination;
• Randall Kenan, a gay writer with a strong folk imagination whose style also descended from both
Ellison and Baldwin;
• Colson Whitehead, who used experimental techniques and folk traditions in The Intuitionist
(1999) and John Henry Days (2001). He was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for consecutive
books: the historical novels The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019).

Arthur Asher Miller (1915 – 2005)
• He was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter
in the 20th-century .Arthur Miller wrote eloquent essays
defending his modern, democratic concept of tragedy;
despite its abstract, allegorical quality and portentous
language, Death of a Salesman (1949) came close to
vindicating his views depicting the death of the American
Dream.
• From All My Sons (1947) to The Price (1968), his work was
at its strongest when he dealt with father-son relationships,
anchored in the harsh realities of the Great Depression. Yet
Miller could also be an effective protest writer, as in The
Crucible (1953), which used the Salem witch trials to attack
the witch-hunting of the McCarthy era.
• A View from the Bridge (1955), a one act verse drama

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
• T. W. is the pen name of Thomas Lanier Williams III . Among the three
prominent American Playwrights.
• His first successful play was The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City.
This play closely reflected his own unhappy family background.
• Other famous plays include A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana
(1961). Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded to A Streetcar Named Desire
in 1948 and to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.
• His characters are often seen as representations of his family ,members.
Blanche DuBois protagonist of SND, Laura Wingfield and Amanda Wingfield
TGM are said to be modelled on his sister and mother respectively.
• Since 1986, the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival has been
held annually in New Orleans, Louisiana, in commemoration of the
playwright. The festival takes place at the end of March to coincide with
Williams's birthday

Edward Franklin Albee III (1928-2016)
• was an American playwright . Some critics have argued that some of his work
constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified and named the
Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two
of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
• The Zoo Story (1958) a play about contact between humans with only two
characters Jerry and Peter and a violent climax. Explores existential concerns.
• The Sandbox (1959), dedicated to his adoptive grandmother Gotta Albee.
• The Death of Bessie Smith (1959) shows Bessie Smith ,the negro singer dying as a
victim of racial intolerance.
• The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)play in 3 acts, A
Delicate Balance (1966, PP), represented a satirical attack on the American Myth of
Perfection.
• the Seascape (1975) and Three Tall Women (1994) both won pulitzer.
• His works are often considered frank examinations of the modern condition. The
theme of Reality versus Illusion all pervasive in his plays.
• His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing,
marriage, and sexual relationships.
• Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's mix of
theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent postwar American theatre
in the early 1960s. Later in life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The
Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).

Nobel Prize winners American Authors
• 1930: Sinclair Lewis (novelist)
• 1936: Eugene O'Neill (playwright)
• 1938: Pearl S. Buck (biographer and novelist)
• 1948: T. S. Eliot (poet and playwright)
• 1949: William Faulkner (novelist)
• 1954: Ernest Hemingway (novelist)
• 1962: John Steinbeck (novelist)
• 1976: Saul Bellow (novelist)
• 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (novelist, wrote in Yiddish)
• 1987: Joseph Brodsky (poet and essayist, wrote in English and Russian)
• 1993: Toni Morrison (novelist)
• 2016: Bob Dylan (songwriter)
• 2020: Louise Glück (poetry)

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