the Colonial Period 1607-1775
from the settlement North America in the early
seventeeth century through the end of eighteenth
Jonathan Edwards
（1703-1758）
religious idealism
Benjamin Franklin
（1706-1790）
1.Poor Richard Almanac
2.Autobiography
style:
1.rather formal of organization
2.simplicity
3.subtl humor
4.sarcastic
the Romantic period
covers the first half of the 19th century.
Transcedentalism: Spirit first and matter second
(culminated)
One literary figure is Ralph Wald Emerso(the leading New Englan Transcendentalist)
Nature"the Manifesto of American Transcendentalism"
Washinton Irving
（1783-1859）
the father of American literature
1.A history of New York （1809）
2.The Sketch book of Geoffrey Crayon,Gent见闻札记（国际声誉）
3.The legend of sleepy hollow
4.Rip Van Winkle
James Fenimore Cooper
leatherstocking
The importance of the frontier and
wilderness in American literature.
was for the first time well illustrated in it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The scarlet letter
blackness
the realistic period 1861-1914
Background: Civil war(1861-1865)brought the Romantic Period to an end
Definition:it expresses the concern for the commonplace and the low,and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience
typical representative
Mark Twain
Local colorism
Mark Twain wrote works which have become part of the American cultural tradition.
Henry James
James'critical theory on the art of fiction, contributing as it does so much to the literary critical idiom,
“international theme," and psychological realism
William Dean Howells
the de factodean of American literature
Theodore Dreiser
The greatest American literature natualist
1.Trilogy of Desire
2.Sister Carrie
Literary naturalism
Three American writers who wrote in this tradition
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the first American naturalistic work
Frank Norris (1870-1902)
McTeague the manifesto of A american naturalism
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Sister Carrie the work in which naturalism attained maturity
O.Henry (short storie)
1.The gift of magi
2.The cop and the anthem
3.The Trimmed Lamp
4.The last leaf
1920s
Imagism
(1908-1917)
Background: WWI
The 1920s saw avigorous literary activity in America
Prime mover:Ezra Pound
(1885-1972)
Poetry
the father of modern American poetry.
Ezra Pound
The most important literary finger
T.S.Eliot
(1888-1965)
epochal poem:The waste land
Eliot′s High Modernism was a dominant intluence on American poetry for over a quarter of a century.
William Carlos Williams
(1883-1963)
His poetry is renowned for its simplicity, directness and apparent formlessness.
Hart Crane
(1899-1932)
The Bridge, a poem of epic stature, representing modern American experience.
Novel
writers painting the “Waste Land”
landscape of the modern West
F.Scott Fitzgerald(1896-1940)
The Great Gatsby
the frustration and despair resulting
from the failure of the American dream
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
reveal man's i mpotence and his despairing courage to assert himself against overwhelming odds
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
1930s
the period of the Great Depression
against the injustice of the capitalist system
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
managed to pick up a refreshing belief in human fellowship and courage
African A american literature.
inspired in large measure by deliverance fro m slavery
“Go Down, Moses," is an illustration of the aspirations offreedom
written African American literature appeared in the eighteenth and,especially,the nineteenth century
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
A major voice for the African Bondage and My Freedom,in his strenuous fight against slavery and for equality.
Booker T.Washington (1856-1915)
the postbellum African American leader
W.E.B.Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk:Essays and Sketches,dealing with the lives of the African American people
one of the most influential books at
the turn of the twentieth century.
The Harlem Renaissance
the 1920s.upsurge of African American literature
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Richard Wright′s Native Son
African American literature can
be said to have come of age
American drama
Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
O'Neill can be nihilistic in his outlook
Clifford Odets (1906-1963)
Waiting for Lefty
Feminist drama developed, and multiethnic
plays have drawn critical attention
The postwar period
Novel
poets and poetry
These poets constitute a new American “academy”
The California Renascents like Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (also known as the poets of the Beat generation)
Postmodernism
Robert Bly (known as "the Black Mountain Poets")
John Ashbery (who is now seen as a major meditative poet)
