XVII-XX CENTURY. Beginnings in 17 th century – first English settlements in North America in the first three decades of the century (Jamestown,Virginia)

XVII-XX CENTURY

Beginnings in 17th century – first English settlements in North America in the first three decades of the century (Jamestown,Virginia)

First written texts were not English only – French, Spanish and Dutch

Beginnings of AmLit commonly associated with Puritan colony of New England (Boston) which flourished in 1630s.

Populated by members of a group of English Protestants called Puritans.

Puritans felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Catholic Church. They formed into and identified with various religious groups advocating greater "purity" of worship and doctrine.

Church should be free of luxury, elaborate rituals and rules – God can be worshipped everywhere – because he is omnipotent and omnipresent

Under Elizabeth I they were recognized as one of religious movements.

However, under the Stuarts, their position swiftly deteriorated. The Stuarts were closer to the Catholic Church. Especially Charles I, who was married to a French princess and remained close to Roman Catholic France throughout his reign.

The Puritans opposed the supremacy of the monarch in the church, arguing that the only head of the church is Christ. The Stuarts, on the other hand, believed in the Divine Right of Kings.

Large numbers of Puritans left England during the Stuart reign and settled in New England.

1620 – the Mayflower – about 100 of English Puritans (Pilgrim Fathers) landed in today’s Massachusetts.

A landmark event in American historyLater, Puritans established a college and a

printing press in BostonFirst wirings – colonial pamphlets and histories

decribing the colonies to the English - Capt. John Smith

Religious writings – describing Puritan beliefsCotton Mather – theologian and historian

During the 18th century, writing shifted focus from the Puritanical ideals to the power of the human mind and rational thought. The belief that human and natural occurrences were messages from God no longer fit with the new human centered world. Many intellectuals believed that the human mind could comprehend the universe through the laws of physics as described by Isaac Newton. 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.

Late 18th century colonies moved towards the break with Britain - the American War of Independence

Political writings – Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence

Political independence influenced all aspects of society and led to creation of original literary works in the US.

Nation’s first novels published at the turn of the 19th century – literacy rate increasing

First female authors of novels, advocating the right of women to live as equals to men – written in the Sentimentalist manner

Washington Irving – first author who made his living only by writing – unique American style

Still heavily influenced by British lit movements

19th century – 1830s – Poe, Hawthorne, Melville – Dark Romanticism

Edgar Allan Poe – Gothic genre – best remembered for short stories, novellas and poetry (“The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Raven”, “Annabel Lee”) – enormous influence on the SF and FF genre

Herman Melville – adventure novels, focusing on human psychology and nature of evil – Moby Dick –influenced Conrad and Hemingway

Nathaniel Hawthorne – “romances", quasi-allegorical novels exploring such themes as guilt, pride, and emotional repression in his native New England. His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, is the stark drama of a woman cast out of her community for committing adultery

Victorian influence – Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin – the movement against slavery in the Confederate States (the American South) at the eve of the Civil War (1861-1865)

Realism – Mark Twain (1835-1910) - first famous American author not from the East Coast (he was from Missouri). Twain's style – influenced by journalism, direct and unadorned but also highly evocative and irreverently humorous – changed the way Americans write their language. His characters speak like real people and sound distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and regional accents.

Novels: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississipi

Realism - Henry James (1843–1916) confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by writing directly about it. Although born in New York City, he spent most of his adult years in England. Many of his novels center on Americans who live in or travel to Europe. Intricate, highly qualified sentences, investigating human psychology, unreliable narrators, interior monologue – influence of modernism.Novel: The Portrait of a Lady – contrast between Europe and America. Novellas : “Daisy Miller”, about an enchanting American girl in Europe, and “The Turn of the Screw”, an enigmatic ghost story.

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, centers on a man who chooses to marry a conventional, socially acceptable woman rather than a fascinating outsider.

Post World War I - Modernism - “The Lost Generation” – disillusioned by the Great War - Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald

The stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) capture the restless, pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the 1920s. Fitzgerald's characteristic theme, expressed in The Great Gatsby, is the tendency of youth's golden dreams to dissolve in failure and disappointment. Fitzgerald also reflects the collapse of some key American Ideals, set out in the Declaration of Independence, such as liberty, social unity, good governance and peace, features which were severely threatened by the pressures of modern early 20th century society.

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) saw violence and death first-hand as an ambulance driver in World War I, and the carnage persuaded him that abstract language was mostly empty and misleading. He cut out unnecessary words from his writing, simplified the 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 1953, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Five years before Hemingway, another American novelist had won the Nobel Prize: William Faulkner (1897–1962). Faulkner managed to encompass an enormous range of humanity in an invented Mississippian region. He used the "stream of consciousness“ technique to record his characters’ seemingly disconnected inner monologue. (In fact, these passages are carefully crafted, and their seemingly chaotic structure conceals multiple layers of meaning.) He also used discontinous time sequences to show how the past – especially the slave-holding era of the Deep South – endures in the present. Novel: The Sound and the Fury.

Post WW II- Harper Lee, Sallinger, Mailer, Nabokov, Updike, Roth

Postmodernism: Pynchon, Toni Morrison, McCarthy, DeLillo