Welcome to the American Literature guide. This guide represents a beginning point for your research. Use it to learn where to find books, articles, journals, literary criticism, databases and other useful information.
The Colonial and Early National period of American Literature took place between the 17th century to 1830.
Colonial American literature emerged from the original U.S. colonies during the period from 1607 to the late 1700s and was largely influenced by British writers. Many of the characteristics of colonial American literature can be found in the poems, journals, letters, narratives, histories and teaching materials written by settlers and religious and historic figures of the period. Some authors of the period are Mary Rowlandson, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop. This period also includes the writings of explorers, such as John Smith, the founding fathers, and writers of a young nation, including Phillis Wheatley and Washington Irving.
Romanticism embodies a manner of thinking that values the person rather than the group, the subjective versus the objective, and an individual's emotional experiences over reason.
Edgar Allan Poe probably was the poster child for the role of the Romantic literary person of the time. He had a genius for writing in several formats, but was often tormented and he struggled with convention. He is credited with inventing the modern crime or detective story when he wrote "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841). His poem, "The Raven", (1845), is a melancholy lament about lost love. His short stories, "The Fall of the House of Usher"(1839), and "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), are hard-to-forget tales of horror.
Some other popular writers of this period were James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman.
Realism and naturalism was a period of American Literature that promoted a descriptive and stark picture of the American life following the Civil War.
In his late twenties Samuel Clemens, a typesetter, , a journalist, a riverboat captain and an all around laborer, became Mark Twain. He used a combination of realism and humor in most of his writing.
Naturalism was inspired by French authors who wanted to show through fiction the reality they saw in the world, especially relating to middle and working class people living in large cities.
Theodore Dreiser was a front runner of American writers who promoted naturalism. His novel, Sister Carrie, is a leader in American naturalism.
Others are Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, and the Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, and the books of Frank Norris, McTeague, The Octopus and The Pit.
During this period of American Literature the United States left World War II and entered the Cold War. The 1950's and 1960's saw major cultural changes in the country largely driven by the civil rights and women's movements.
African American writers, such as Richard Wright, whose autobiography Black Boy, wanted to change an unjust society. Other black writers of this period were:
Ralph Ellison-Invisible Man
James Baldwin-Go Tell It on the Mountain
Lorraine Hansberry-A Raisin in the Sun
Toni Morrison-The bluest Eye
Alice Walker-The Color Purple
