Survey of American Literature II

Major Literary Movements

1. Colonial Period: 1607-1776
   • Between the founding of the first settlement at Jamestown to the beginning of the Revolution
   • Writings centered on religious, practical, or historical themes
   • Anne Bradstreet, William Bradford, Benjamin Franklin


2. Revolutionary Age: 1765-1790
   • Great documents of American history such as The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States
   • Writings centered on political themes
   • Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Madison


3. Early National Period: 1775-1828
   • Beginnings of truly "American" writing - poetry, themes, settings, and characters uniquely American
   • Phyllis Wheatley, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper


4. Romantic Period: 1825-1865
   • American Renaissance or the Age of Transcendentalism
   • Major form of literature was poetry although the novel was becoming increasingly popular
   • Romanticism - a world-wide movement - focused on ideals such as chivalry, love, and beauty
   • Focused on the supernatural
   • Transcendentalism - specifically American - focused our oneness with God and nature and relying on our natural instincts while responding negatively to established religion
   • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman


5. Realistic Period: 1865-1900
   • Following the Civil War
   • Realistic fiction was the major form of literature
   • Goal is to represent life as it really is so the characters and instances in the story are believable
   • Focused on the common and ordinary life
   • A reaction against Romanticism
   • Mark Twain


6. Naturalistic Period: 1900-1914
   • As a result of Darwinism, writers believed that their characters were only animals whose behaviors were based upon heredity and environment.
   • They tried to be scientifically objective and believed their writings were even more realistic than the writing of those during the Realistic Period
   • Stephen Crane and Jack London


7. American Modernist Period: 1914-1939
   • Experimented with subject matter, form, and style such as stream of consciousness
   • Subclasses include the jazz Age, The Harlem Renaissance, and The Lost Generation
   • Ends with The Great Depressions
   
   
   • F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck


8. Contemporary Period: 1939 to the present
   • Hard to define
   • Includes the following:
     • Beat Movement which focuses on anti-establishment and anti-traditional writing
     • Counterculture Writing which is an even more intense form of the Beat Movement
     • Postmodernism which is a reaction against modernistic thinking with an emphasis on relativism
   • Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, Arthur Miller, Zora Neal Hurston, Maya Angelou, John Irving

Sources:
Outline of American Literature - Chp 2
New England Transcendentalism
Literary Periods