American literature
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American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but it also includes literature produced in the United States in languages other than English.[1]
The American Revolutionary Period (1775–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. An early novel is William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published in 1791. Writer and critic John Neal in the early- to mid-nineteenth century helped advance America toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing predecessors such as Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts and by influencing writers such as Edgar Allan Poe.[2] Edgar Allan Poe took American poetry and short fiction in new directions. Ralph Waldo Emerson pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement; Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, was influenced by this movement. The conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe and authors of slave narratives, such as Frederick Douglass. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) explored the dark side of American history, as did Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). Major American poets of the nineteenth century include Walt Whitman, Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Mark Twain was the first major American writer to be born in the West. Henry James achieved international recognition with novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881).
Following
In late 20th century and early 21st century there has been increased popular and academic acceptance of literature written by immigrant, ethnic, and LGBT writers, and of writings in languages other than English.[3] Examples of pioneers in these areas include LGBT author Michael Cunningham, Asian American authors Maxine Hong Kingston and Ocean Vuong, and African Americans authors such as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. In 2016, the folk-rock songwriter Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Native American literature
Oral literature
Published books
In 1771 the first work by a Native American in English, A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, by Samson Occom, from the Mohegan tribe, was published and went through 19 editions. The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (1854) by John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee, 1827–67) was the first novel by a Native American, and O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-I-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods) (1899) by Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi, 1830–99) was "the first Native American novel devoted to the subject of Indian life".[5]
A significant event in the development of Native American literature in English came with the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 to N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa tribe) for his novel House Made of Dawn (1968).
Colonial literature
The Thirteen Colonies have often been regarded as the center of early American literature. However, the first European settlements in North America had been founded elsewhere many years earlier.[6] The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book printed in any of the colonies before the American Revolution.[6] Spanish and French had two of the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States. Moreover, a wealth of oral literary traditions existed on the continent among the numerous different Native American tribes. However, with the onset of English settlement of North America, the English language established a foothold in North America that would spread with the growth of England's political influence in the continent and the continued arrival of settlers from the British Isles. This included the English capture of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1664, with the English renaming it New York and changing the administrative language from Dutch to English.[7]
From 1696 to 1700, only about 250 separate items were issued from the major printing presses in the American colonies. This is a small number compared to the output of the printers in London at the time. London printers published materials written by New England authors, so the body of American literature was larger than what was published in North America. However, printing was established in the American colonies before it was allowed in most of England. In England, restrictive laws had long confined printing to four locations, where the government could monitor what was published: London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Because of this, the colonies ventured into the modern world earlier than their provincial English counterparts.[6]
Some American literature of the time consisted of pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonial audience. 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). Other writers of this genre included Daniel Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson.
Topics of early prose
The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were important topics of early American literature. A journal written by
Other late writings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians, as seen in writings by
Of the second generation of New England settlers, Cotton Mather stands out as a theologian and historian, who wrote the history of the colonies with a view to God's activity in their midst and to connecting the Puritan leaders with the great heroes of the Christian faith. His best-known works include the Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), the Wonders of the Invisible World and The Biblia Americana.[11]
New England was not the only area in the colonies with a literature: southern literature was also growing at this time. The diary of planter William Byrd and his The History of the Dividing Line (1728) described the expedition to survey the swamp between Virginia and North Carolina but also comments on the differences between American Indians and the white settlers in the area.[8] In a similar book, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West, William Bartram described the Southern landscape and the Indian tribes he encountered; Bartram's book was popular in Europe, being translated into German, French and Dutch.[8]
As the colonies moved toward independence from Britain, an important discussion of American culture and identity came from the French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, whose Letters from an American Farmer (1782) addresses the question "What is an American?" by moving between praise for the opportunities and peace offered in the new society and recognition that the solid life of the farmer must rest uneasily between the oppressive aspects of the urban life and the lawless aspects of the frontier, where the lack of social structures leads to the loss of civilized living.[8]
This same period saw the beginning of African-American literature, through the poet Phillis Wheatley and the slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). At this time American Indian literature also began to flourish. Samson Occom published his A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul and a popular hymnbook, Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, "the first Indian best-seller".[13]
Revolutionary period
The Revolutionary period also contained political writings, including those by colonists
During the
During the 18th century, writing shifted from the Puritanism of Winthrop and Bradford to Enlightenment ideas of reason. The belief that human and natural occurrences were messages from God no longer fit with the budding anthropocentric culture. Many intellectuals believed that the human mind could comprehend the universe through the laws of physics as described by Isaac Newton. One of these was Cotton Mather. The first book published in North America that promoted Newton and natural theology was Mather's The Christian Philosopher (1721). The enormous scientific, economic, social, and philosophical, changes of the 18th century, called the Enlightenment, impacted the authority of clergyman and scripture, making way for democratic principles. The increase in population helped account for the greater diversity of opinion in religious and political life as seen in the literature of this time. In 1670, the population of the colonies numbered approximately 111,000. Thirty years later it was more than 250,000. By 1760, it reached 1,600,000.[6] The growth of communities and therefore social life led people to become more interested in the progress of individuals and their shared experience in the colonies. These new ideas can be seen in the popularity of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.
Even earlier than Franklin was Cadwallader Colden (1689 - 1776), whose book The History of the Five Indian Nations, published in 1727 was one of the first texts published on Iroquois history.[14] Colden also wrote a book on botany, which attracted the attention of Carl Linnaeus, and he maintained a long term correspondence with Benjamin Franklin.[15][16]
Post-independence
In the post-war period,
Early American literature struggled to find a unique voice in existing literary genre, and this tendency was reflected in novels. European styles were frequently imitated, but critics usually considered the imitations inferior.
The first American novel
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the first American novels were published. These fictions were too lengthy to be printed for public reading. Publishers took a chance on these works in hopes they would become steady sellers and need to be reprinted. This scheme was ultimately successful because male and female literacy rates were increasing at the time. Among the first American novels are Thomas Attwood Digges's Adventures of Alonso, published in London in 1775 and William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1789. Brown's novel depicts a tragic love story between siblings who fell in love without knowing they were related.
In the next decade, important women writers also published novels. Susanna Rowson is best known for her novel Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, published in London in 1791.[18] In 1794 the novel was reissued in Philadelphia under the title, Charlotte Temple. Charlotte Temple is a seduction tale, written in the third person, which warns against listening to the voice of love and counsels resistance. She also wrote nine novels, six theatrical works, two collections of poetry, six textbooks, and countless songs.[18] Reaching more than a million and a half readers over a century and a half, Charlotte Temple was the biggest seller of the 19th century before Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Although Rowson was extremely popular in her time and is often acknowledged in accounts of the development of the early American novel, Charlotte Temple often is criticized as a sentimental novel of seduction.
Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette: Or, the History of Eliza Wharton was published in 1797 and was extremely popular.[19] Told from Foster's point of view and based on the real life of Eliza Whitman, the novel is about a woman who is seduced and abandoned. Eliza is a "coquette" who is courted by two very different men: a clergyman who offers her a comfortable domestic life and a noted libertine. Unable to choose between them, she finds herself single when both men get married. She eventually yields to the artful libertine and gives birth to an illegitimate stillborn child at an inn. The Coquette is praised for its demonstration of the era's contradictory ideas of womanhood.[20] even as it has been criticized for delegitimizing protest against women's subordination.[21]
Both The Coquette and Charlotte Temple are novels that treat the right of women to live as equals as the new democratic experiment. These novels are of the sentimental genre, characterized by overindulgence in emotion, an invitation to listen to the voice of reason against misleading passions, as well as an optimistic overemphasis on the essential goodness of humanity. Sentimentalism is often thought to be a reaction against the Calvinistic belief in the depravity of human nature.[22] While many of these novels were popular, the economic infrastructure of the time did not allow these writers to make a living through their writing alone.[23]
Charles Brockden Brown is the earliest American novelist whose works are still commonly read. He published Wieland in 1798, and in 1799 published Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn. These novels are of the Gothic genre.
The first writer to be able to support himself through the income generated by his publications alone was Washington Irving. He completed his first major book in 1809 titled A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty.[24]
Of the picaresque genre, Hugh Henry Brackenridge published Modern Chivalry in 1792–1815; Tabitha Gilman Tenney wrote Female Quixotism: Exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventure of Dorcasina Sheldon in 1801; Royall Tyler wrote The Algerine Captive in 1797.[22]
Other notable authors include
19th century – Unique American style
After the war with Britain in 1812, there was an increasing desire to produce a uniquely American literature and culture. Literary figures who took up the cause included Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper. Irving wrote humorous works in Salmagundi and the satire A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809). Bryant wrote early romantic and nature-inspired poetry, which evolved away from their European origins. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales about Natty Bumppo (which includes The Last of the Mohicans, 1826) treated uniquely American material in ways that were popular both in the new country and Europe.
John Neal as a critic played a key role in developing American literary nationalism. Neal criticized Irving and Cooper for relying on old British conventions of authorship to frame American phenomena,[29] arguing that "to succeed ... [the American writer] must resemble nobody ... [he] must be unlike all that have gone before [him]" and issue "another Declaration of Independence, in the great Republic of Letters."[30] As a pioneer of the literary device he referred to "natural writing",[31] Neal was "the first in America to be natural in his diction"[32] and his work represents "the first deviation from ... Irvingesque graciousness."[33]
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston but raised in Virginia and identified with the South. In 1832, he began writing short stories, such as "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and "The Fall of the House of Usher", that explore hidden depths of human psychology and push the boundaries of fiction. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", is seen as the first detective story.
Humorous writers were also popular and included Seba Smith and Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber in New England and Davy Crockett, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson J. Hooper, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, and George Washington Harris writing about the American frontier.
In New England, a group of writers known as Boston Brahmins included James Russell Lowell, then in later years Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had renounced his ministry, published his essay Nature, which argued that men should dispense with organized religion and reach a lofty spiritual state by studying and interacting with the natural world. He expanded his influence with his lecture "The American Scholar", delivered in Cambridge in 1837, which called upon Americans to create a uniquely American writing style. Both the nation and the individual should declare independence. Emerson's influence fostered the movement now known as Transcendentalism. Among the leaders was Emerson's friend, Henry David Thoreau, a nonconformist and critic of American commercial culture. After living mostly by himself for two years in a nearby cabin by a wooded pond, Thoreau wrote Walden (1854), a memoir that urges resistance to the dictates of society. Other Transcendentalists included Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Jones Very.[34]
As one of the great works of the Revolutionary period was written by a Frenchman, so too was a work about America from this generation. Alexis de Tocqueville's two-volume Democracy in America (1835 and 1840) described his travels through the young nation, making observations about the relations between American politics, individualism, and community.
The political conflict surrounding
In 1837, the young
Anti-transcendental works from Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe all comprise the
Ethnic writers
Slave narrative autobiography from this period include
Late 19th century Realist fiction
Mark Twain (the pen name used by
Other writers interested in regional differences and dialect were
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. With its intricate, highly qualified sentences and dissection of emotional and psychological nuance, James's fiction can be daunting. Among his more accessible works are the novellas Daisy Miller (1878), about an American girl in Europe, and The Turn of the Screw (1898), a ghost story.
Social novel
20th century prose
At the beginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding fiction to encompass a broader range of experiences, and sometimes connected these to the naturalist school of realism. In her stories and novels, Edith Wharton (1862–1937) scrutinized the upper-class, Eastern-seaboard society in which she had grown up. One of her finest books, The Age of Innocence (1920), centers on a man who chooses to marry a conventional, socially acceptable woman rather than a fascinating outsider.
Social issues and the power of corporations was the central concern of some writers at this time.
Race was a common issue as well, as seen in the work of Pauline Hopkins, who published five influential works from 1900 to 1903. Similarly, Sui Sin Far wrote about Chinese-American experiences, and Maria Cristina Mena wrote about Mexican-American experiences.
Prominent among mid-western and western American writers were Willa Cather (1843-1947) and Wallace Stegner (1909-1993), both of whom had a major opus set largely in their regions.
1920s
Experimentation in style and form soon joined the new latitudes in subject matter. In 1909, Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), by then an expatriate in Paris, published Three Lives, an innovative work influenced by her familiarity with cubism, jazz, and other movements in contemporary art and music. Stein labeled a group of expatriate literary figures who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s the "Lost Generation," a term later used as by Ernest Hemingway.
The 1920s brought sharp changes to American literature. Many writers had direct experience of the First World War, and they used it to frame their writings.[37] Writers like Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and poets Ezra Pound, H.D. and T. S. Eliot demonstrate the growth of an international perspective in American literature. American writers had long looked to European models for inspiration, but whereas the literary breakthroughs of the mid-19th century came from finding distinctly American styles and themes, writers from this period were finding ways of contributing to a flourishing international literary scene, not as imitators but as equals. Something similar was happening back in the States, as Jewish writers (such as Abraham Cahan) used the English language to reach an international Jewish audience.
The period of peace and debt-fueled economic expansion that followed WWI was the setting for many of the stories and novels of
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) saw violence and death as an ambulance driver in World War I, and the carnage persuaded him that abstract language was empty and misleading. He cut out unnecessary words from his writing, simplified sentence structure, and concentrated on concrete objects and actions. He adhered to a moral code that emphasized grace under pressure, and his protagonists were strong, silent men who often dealt awkwardly with women. The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are generally considered his best novels; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.[41]
1930s – Depression-era
Depression era literature offered blunt, direct social criticism. John Steinbeck (1902–1968) set many of his stories in Salinas, California, where he was born. His style was simple and evocative, winning him the favor of the readers but not of the critics. His poor, working-class characters struggled to lead a decent and honest life. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), considered his masterpiece, is a strong, socially-oriented novel of the Joads, a poor family from Oklahoma and their journey to California in search of a better life. Other of his popular novels include Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, and East of Eden. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.
In his short life,
In non-fiction, James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men observes and depicts the lives of three struggling tenant-farming families in Alabama in 1936. Combining factual reporting with poetic beauty, Agee presented an accurate and detailed report of what he had seen coupled with insight into his feelings about the experience and the difficulties of capturing it for a broad audience. In doing so, he created an enduring portrait of a nearly invisible segment of the American population.
Post-World War II fiction
Novel
The period was dominated by the last few of the realistic
World War II was the subject of several major novels:
Though born in Canada, Chicago raised
The 1950s poetry and fiction of the "
In contrast,
Frequently linked with Updike is the novelist Philip Roth. Roth vigorously explores Jewish identity in American society, especially in the postwar era and the early 21st century. Frequently set in Newark, New Jersey, Roth's work is known to be highly autobiographical, and many of Roth's main characters, most famously the Jewish novelist Nathan Zuckerman, are thought to be alter egos of Roth. With these techniques, and armed with his articulate and fast-paced style, Roth explores the distinction between reality and fiction in literature while provocatively examining American culture. His most famous work includes the Zuckerman novels, 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).
In the realm of African-American literature,
Perhaps the most ambitious and challenging post-war American novelist was William Gaddis, whose uncompromising, satiric, and large novels, such as The Recognitions (1955) and J R (1975) are presented largely in terms of unattributed dialog that requires almost unexampled reader participation. Gaddis's primary themes include forgery, capitalism, religious zealotry, and the legal system, constituting a sustained polyphonic critique of modern American life. Gaddis's work, though largely ignored for years, anticipated and influenced the development of such ambitious "postmodern" fiction writers as Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Joseph McElroy, William H. Gass, and Don DeLillo. Another neglected and challenging postwar American novelist, albeit one who wrote much shorter works, was John Hawkes, whose surreal visionary fiction addresses themes of violence and eroticism and experiments audaciously with narrative voice and style. Among his most important works is the short nightmarish novel The Lime Twig (1961).
Short fiction
In the postwar period, the art of the short story again flourished. Among its most respected practitioners was
Literary non-fiction
Major American essayists of the 20th century included writers such as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Flannery O'Connor[45] and Joan Didion.
Contemporary fiction
Though its exact parameters remain disputable, from the early 1990s to the present day the most salient literary movement has been
Writing in a lyrical, flowing style that eschews excessive use of the comma and semicolon, recalling
Seizing on the distinctly postmodern techniques of digression, narrative fragmentation and elaborate symbolism, and strongly influenced by the works of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace began his writing career with The Broom of the System, published to moderate acclaim in 1987. His second novel, Infinite Jest (1996), a futuristic portrait of America and a playful critique of the media-saturated nature of American life, has been consistently ranked among the most important works of the 20th century,[51] and his final novel, unfinished at the time of his death, The Pale King (2011), has garnered much praise and attention. In addition to his novels, he also authored three acclaimed short story collections: Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) and Oblivion: Stories (2004). Jonathan Franzen, Wallace's friend and contemporary, rose to prominence after the 2001 publication of his National Book Award-winning third novel, The Corrections. He began his writing career in 1988 with the well-received The Twenty-Seventh City, a novel centering on his native St. Louis, but did not gain national attention until the publication of his essay, "Perchance to Dream", in Harper's Magazine, discussing the cultural role of the writer in the new millennium through the prism of his own frustrations. The Corrections, a tragicomedy about the disintegrating Lambert family, has been called "the literary phenomenon of [its] decade"[52] and was ranked as one of the greatest novels of the past century.[51] In 2010, he published Freedom to great critical acclaim.[52][53][54]
Other notable writers at the turn of the century include Michael Chabon, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) tells the story of two friends, Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, as they rise through the ranks of the comics industry in its heyday; Denis Johnson, whose 2007 novel Tree of Smoke about falsified intelligence during Vietnam both won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was called by critic Michiko Kakutani "one of the classic works of literature produced by [the Vietnam War]";[55] and Louise Erdrich, whose 2008 novel The Plague of Doves, a distinctly Faulknerian, polyphonic examination of the tribal experience set against the backdrop of murder in the fictional town of Pluto, North Dakota, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and her 2012 novel The Round House, which builds on the same themes, was awarded the 2012 National Book Award.[56]
Autofiction
Autofiction is a literary movement that has gained steam in American literature throughout the 21st century. Coined in 1977 by French author Serge Doubrovsky, the autofictional subgenre blends autobiography and fiction, thereby allowing authors to go beyond the limitations of form and substance imposed by these genres.[57] A well-established term in the French literary world, it has been less discussed in American literary criticism, despite the recent proliferation of such novels.[58]
Of the autofiction genre, English professor Bran Nicol states:
American autofiction is best regarded less as a form which interrogates the complex workings of memory and their effect on subjectivity and more as evidence of the preoccupation with the conditions of authorship, especially institutional, which has characterized American writing in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.[59]
Notable American authors known to have written in the autofiction genre include Bret Easton Ellis, Sheila Heti, Maggie Nelson, Chris Kraus (American writer), and Ben Lerner[60][59]
Poetry
Puritan poetry was highly religious, and one of the earliest books of poetry published was the Bay Psalm Book (1640), a set of translations of the biblical Psalms; however, the translators' intention was not to create literature, but to create hymns that could be used in worship.[8] Among lyric poets, the most important figures are Anne Bradstreet, who wrote personal poems about her family and homelife; pastor Edward Taylor, whose best poems, the Preparatory Meditations, were written to help him prepare for leading worship; and Michael Wigglesworth, whose best-selling poem, The Day of Doom (1660), describes the time of judgment. It was published in the same year that anti-Puritan Charles II was restored to the British throne. He followed it two years later with God's Controversy With New England. Nicholas Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse.
18th century
The 18th century saw an increasing emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. This trend is most evident in the works of Philip Freneau (1752–1832), who is also notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude to Native Americans, which was reflective of his skepticism toward American culture.[61] However, this late colonial-era poetry generally was influenced by contemporary poetry in Europe. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard (1772–1855), is still relevant today, writing about the environment as well as also human nature.[62]
19th century
The
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), two of America's greatest 19th-century poets could hardly have been more different in temperament and style. Walt Whitman was a working man, a traveler, a self-appointed nurse during the American Civil War (1861–1865), and a poetic innovator. His magnum opus was Leaves of Grass, in which he uses a free-flowing verse and lines of irregular length to depict the all-inclusiveness of American democracy. Taking that motif one step further, the poet equates the vast range of American experience with himself without being egotistical. For example, in Song of Myself, the long, central poem in Leaves of Grass, Whitman writes: "These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me".
In his words Whitman was a poet of "the body electric". In Studies in Classic American Literature, the English novelist D. H. Lawrence wrote that Whitman "was the first to smash the old moral conception that the soul of man is something 'superior' and 'above' the flesh."
By contrast, Emily Dickinson lived the sheltered life of a genteel unmarried woman in small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poetry is ingenious, witty, and penetrating. Her work was unconventional for its day, and little of it was published during her lifetime. Many of her poems dwell on the topic of death, often with a mischievous twist. One, "Because I could not stop for Death", begins, "He kindly stopped for me". The opening of another Dickinson poem toys with her position as a woman in a male-dominated society and an unrecognized poet: "I'm nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody too?"[64]
20th century
American poetry arguably reached its peak in the early-to-mid-20th century, with such noted writers as
Pound's poetry is complex and sometimes obscure, with references to other art forms and to a vast range of Western and Eastern literature.[65] He influenced many poets, notably T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), another expatriate. Eliot wrote spare, cerebral poetry, carried by a dense structure of symbols. In The Waste Land, he embodied a jaundiced vision of post–World War I society in fragmented, haunted images. Like Pound's, Eliot's poetry could be highly allusive, and some editions of The Waste Land come with footnotes supplied by the poet. In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature.[66]
Post-World War II
Among the most respected postwar American poets are:
In addition, in this same period the
21st century
Stylistic and cultural diversity remain distinguishing features of American poetry.[70] Notable poets of the 21st century include Amanda Gorman, Saul Williams, Ocean Vuong, Saeed Jones, Alex Dimitrov, Ada Limón, and others.
Drama
Although the American theatrical tradition can be traced back to the arrival of
American dramatic literature, by contrast, remained dependent on European models, although many playwrights did attempt to apply these forms to American topics and themes, such as immigrants, westward expansion, temperance, etc. At the same time, American playwrights created several long-lasting American character types, especially the "Yankee", the "Negro" and the "Indian", exemplified by the characters of
Realism began to influence American drama, partly through Howells, but also through Europeans such as
The most ambitious attempt at bringing modern realism into the drama was
In the middle of the 20th century, American drama was dominated by the work of playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of the American musical, which had found a way to integrate script, music and dance in such works as Oklahoma! and West Side Story. Later American playwrights of importance include Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, August Wilson and Tony Kushner.
Ethnic studies and literature
One of the developments in late-20th-century American literature was the increase of literature written by and about ethnic minorities beyond African Americans and Jewish Americans. This development came alongside the growth of the Civil Rights Movement and its corollary, the ethnic pride movement, which led to the creation of
Ethnic literature
The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of American Jewish writers such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Chaim Potok, and Bernard Malamud. Potok's novels about a young New York Jewish boy's coming of age, The Chosen and The Promise figured prominently in this movement.
After being relegated to cookbooks and autobiographies for most of the 20th century, Asian American literature achieved widespread notice through
Other notable
Hispanic literature also became important during this period, starting with acclaimed novels by
Celebrated Puerto Rican novelists who write in English and Spanish include Giannina Braschi, author of the Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing! and Rosario Ferré, best known for "Eccentric Neighborhoods".[72][73] Puerto Rico has also produced important playwrights such as René Marqués (The Oxcart), Luis Rafael Sánchez (The Passion of Antigone Perez), and José Rivera (Marisol). Major poets of Puerto Rican diaspora who write about the life of American immigrants include Julia de Burgos (I was my own route fui), Giannina Braschi (Empire of Dreams), and Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rican Obituary). Pietri was a co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café, a performance space for poetry readings.[73] Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Nuyorican poet and playwright, wrote the popular Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights.[74]
Spurred by the success of
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- 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 (poet)
American literary awards
- American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Pulitzer Prize (Fiction, Drama and Poetry, as well as various non-fiction and journalist categories)
- National Book Award (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry and Young-Adult Fiction)
- American Book Awards
- PEN literary awards (multiple awards)
- United States Poet Laureate
- Bollingen Prize
- Pushcart Prize
- O. Henry Award
See also
- American literature (academic discipline)
- Great American Novel
- List of American literary critics
- List of 20th-century American writers by birth year
- Poetry of the United States
- Theater in the United States
Regional and minority focuses in American literature
- Literature of New England
- Chicago literature
- Southern literature
- Literature of Southern states: Louisiana; Maryland; Mississippi, North Carolina; South Carolina; Tennessee; Texas; Virginia; West Virginia
- Literature of Southern states:
- Literature in Hawaii
- LGBT literature
- Deaf American literature
- American Catholic literature
- American literature in Spanish
- Ethnic minority literature
- Armenian American literature
- African-American literature
- Jewish American literature
- List of Jewish American writers
- Arab American literature
- List of Arab American writers
- Asian American literature
- Chinese American literature
- Korean American writers
- List of Asian American writers
- Latino literature
- Romani literature § United States
Notes and references
- ^ ShellSollors (2000).
- ISBN 0-226-46969-7.
- from the original on May 31, 2022, retrieved May 31, 2022
- ^ Gunther, Erna. "Native American Literature". Britannica. Britannica.com. Archived from the original on September 28, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2021.
- ^ MacKay, K.L. "Native American Literature". faculty.weber.edu. Weber State University. Archived from the original on December 4, 2021. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
- ^ a b c d Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Print.
- ^ Henry L. Schoolcraft, "The Capture of New Amsterdam", English Historical Review (1907) 22#88 674–693 in JSTOR Archived August 7, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c d e f Skipp, Francis E. American Literature, Barron's Educational, 1992.
- ^ A Short History of Boston by Robert J. Allison, p.14
- ^ the Bay Psalm Book exhibition at the Library of Congress 2015
- ^ Silverman, Kenneth (1984). The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. New York: HarperCollins.
- ^ "Sarah Kemble Knight | American diarist | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved March 27, 2023.
- ^ Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Blackwell, 2004.
- ^ Colden, Cadwallader, and John G. Shea. The History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New-York. New York: T.H. Morrell, 1866.
- ^ Gitin, Louis L. Cadwallader Colden: As Scientist and Philosopher. Burlington, Vt, 1935.
- ^ Hoermann, Alfred R. Cadwallader Colden: A Figure of the American Enlightenment. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002.
- ^ Julian P. Boyd, "The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original" Archived February 12, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 100, number 4 (October 1976), p. 456.
- ^ a b Parker, Patricia L. "Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson". The English Journal. 65.1: (1976) 59-60. JSTOR. Web. 1 March 2010.
- ^ Schweitzer, Ivy. "Review". Early American Literature. 23.2: (1988) 221-225. JSTOR. Web. 1 March 2010.
- ^ Hamilton, Kristie. "An Assault on the Will: Republican Virtue and the City in Hannah Webster Foster's 'The Coquette'". Early American Literature. 24.2: (1989) 135-151. JSTOR. Web. 1 March 2010
- from the original on February 5, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2017.
- ^ a b c Campbell, Donna M. (July 14, 2008). "The Early American Novel: Introductory Notes". Literary Movements. Archived from the original on September 29, 2005. Retrieved March 1, 2010.
- ^ Rutherford, Mildred. American Authors. Atlanta: The Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., 1902.
- ^ Reynolds, Guy. "The Winning of the West: Washington Irving's 'A Tour on the Prairies'". The Yearbook of English Studies. 34: (2004) 88-99. JSTOR. Web. 1 March 2010.
- ISBN 080-5-7723-08.
- from the original on February 6, 2021. Retrieved August 8, 2020.
- OCLC 1043364329. Archivedfrom the original on February 5, 2023. Retrieved August 8, 2020.
- ^ "Summary of Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831. Ed. John Franklin Jameson. From The American Historical Review, 30, No. 4. (July 1925), 787-795". docsouth.unc.edu. Archived from the original on July 12, 2020. Retrieved August 8, 2020.
- ^ Lease 1972, pp. 42, 69
- ^ Sears 1978, p. 80
- ^ Sears 1978, p. 57
- ^ Pattee, Fred Lewis (1937). "Introduction". In Pattee, Fred Lewis (ed.). American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824-1825). Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. p. 22. Archived from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved August 10, 2020.
- ^ Lease 1972, p. 70, quoting Harold C. Martin
- ISBN 978-0-8090-3477-2
- ^ "Garland, Hamlin 1860 - 1940". Dictionary of Wisconsin History. Wisconsin Historical Society. Archived from the original on November 10, 2012. Retrieved October 17, 2009.
- ^ "Hamlin Garland and Henry George". Archived from the original on February 3, 2014. Retrieved January 29, 2014.
- ^ Hazel Hutchison, The War That Used Up Words: American Writers and the First World War (Yale University Press, 2015)
- ^ Jeffrey Meyers, Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (HarperCollins, 1994).
- ^ Dos Passos, John (1932). Three Soldiers. United States of America: The Modern Library.
- ^ Maxwell Geismar, American moderns, from rebellion to conformity (1958)
- ^ Keith Ferrell, Ernest Hemingway: The Search for Courage (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014)
- ^ John T. Matthews, William Faulkner: seeing through the South (Wiley, 2011).
- ^ Kimball, Roger "Existentialism, Semiotics and Iced Tea, Review of Conversations with Walker Percy" Archived December 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. New York Times, August 4, 1985, Accessed September 24, 2006
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (January 12, 1996). "Seeking Salvation On the Silver Screen". The New York Times Books. Archived from the original on May 20, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2009.
- ISBN 978-0-525-56733-2.
- ^ Bloom, Harold: How to Read and Why, page 269. Touchstone Press, 2000.
- ^ Allén, Sture. "Nobel Prize Award Ceremony Speech". NobelPrize.org. Archived from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved May 31, 2022.
- ^ a b "What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?". The New York Times. May 21, 2006. Archived from the original on August 8, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
- ^ Bloom, Harold (June 15, 2009). "Harold Bloom on Blood Meridian". A.V. Club. Archived from the original on November 5, 2013. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ^ Bloom, Harold (September 24, 2003). "Dumbing down American readers". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on June 17, 2006. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
- ^ a b "All-Time 100 Novels: The Complete List". Time. October 16, 2005. Archived from the original on October 19, 2005. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
- ^ a b Grossman, Lev (August 12, 2010). "Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist". Time. Archived from the original on August 15, 2010. Retrieved August 16, 2010.
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (August 15, 2010). "A Family Full of Unhappiness, Hoping for Transcendence". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 12, 2011. Retrieved August 16, 2010.
- ^ Tanenhaus, Sam (August 19, 2010). "Peace and War". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 3, 2011. Retrieved August 19, 2010.
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (August 31, 2007). "In Vietnam: Stars and Stripes, and Innocence Undone". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 23, 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2010.
- ^ "2012 National Book Awards". National Book Foundation. November 14, 2012. Archived from the original on October 26, 2018. Retrieved December 2, 2012.
- ^ Saunders, Max (2020). "Autofiction, Autobiografiction, Autofabrication, and Heterony: Differentiating Versions of the Autobiographical". Biography. 43 (4): 763. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
- ISBN 9781496208750. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
- ^ ISBN 978-3-319-89901-5. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
- . Retrieved March 6, 2024.
- ISBN 978-90-5183-628-8.
- ^ "Our Land, Our Literature: Literature - Rebecca Lard". digitalresearch.bsu.edu. Archived from the original on December 1, 2022. Retrieved May 31, 2022.
- ^ "A Brief Guide to the Fireside Poets" Archived January 16, 2014, at the Wayback Machine at Poets.org Archived December 18, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 10-07-2015
- ^ "Emily Dickinson Archive". January 24, 2018. Archived from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
- ^ Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound (1970)
- ^ Hugh Kenner, The invisible poet: TS Eliot (1965).
- ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020". NobelPrize.org. Archived from the original on October 8, 2020. Retrieved March 21, 2021.
- ^ Groundbreaking Book: Life Studies by Robert Lowell (1959) Archived May 29, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Accessed May 5, 2010
- from the original on April 30, 2018. Retrieved April 30, 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-19-976435-8
- ^ Madsen 2000, p. 107
- ^ "Giannina Braschi". National Book Festival. Library of Congress. 2012. Archived from the original on August 28, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2015.
'Braschi: one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin America today'
- ^ OCLC 607322888.
- ^ "Luis A. Miranda, Jr. Doesn't 'Need To Be Liked' but This New Documentary Will Make You Like Him Anyway". Remezcla. October 5, 2020. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
Bibliography
For references on specific authors or topics, please see the relevant article.
- Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. (1994–2005). The Cambridge History of American Literature. Vol. 1–8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- S2CID 57567897.
- Gray, Richard (2011). A History of American Literature. Malden, Ma: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Madsen, Deborah L. (2000). Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-57003-379-7.
- Moore, Michelle E. (2019). Chicago and the Making of American Modernism: Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald in Conflict. New York; London: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Müller, Timo (2017). Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Boston, Ma: de Gruyter.
- Shell, Marc; Sollors, Werner, eds. (2000). The Multilingual Anthology of American Literature: A Reader of Original Texts with English Translations. New York: SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0814797525.
- Van Doren, C., eds. (1917–1921). The Cambridge History of American Literature. Vol. 1–4. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press; G. P. Putnam's Sons.
- Woodberry, George Edward (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 831–842.
External links
- The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: an Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes (Online Version of 1907–1921 print) – via Bartleby.com.
- 19th Century American Fiction and Poetry The Ohio State University Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection
- Audio lectures on American Literature in TheEnglishCollection.com (clickable timeline)
- Electronic Texts in American Studies