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Period: 1300 to
Native American Period
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1400
Info
Myths about the creation
Epic poetry about heroes
Songs and rites about religion
Balance between humans and nature -
Period: to
The Colonial Period
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Content
Errand into the wilderness
Be a city upon a hill
Christian Utopia -
Genre/Style
Sermons, diaries
Personal narratives
Captivity Narratives
Jeremiads
Written in plain style -
Effect
instructive
reinforces authority of the bible and church -
Historical Context
A person's fate is determined by god
All people are corrupt and must be saved by christ -
Content 2
1 Puritans arrived to the "New World"
2 Personal narrative, everything about their experiences
3 Religious writing was very popular, sermons and diaries
4 Pilgrims, Quakers, puritans and separatists -
Authors
Anne Bradstreet
William Bradford -
Period: to
The Great Awakening
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Content
1 The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in America during the 1730s and 1740s
2 Jonathan Edwards - Father of the great awakening
3 People are sinners -
Content 2
National mission and American character
Democratic utopia
Use of reason
History is an act of individual and national self-assertion -
Period: to
Age of Reason - Revolutionary Period
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Genre/Style
Political pamphlets
Travel writing
Highly orate writing style
Fiction employs generic plots and characters
Fiction often tells the story of how an innocent young woman is tested by a seductive male -
Effect
Patrotism groWs
Instills pride
Creates common agreement about issues
Shows differences betwaen Americans and Europeans -
Historical Context
tells readers how to interpret What they are reading to encourage revolutionary war support
Instructive in Values -
Content
1 Science more important than Religion
2 Trying to understand the world
3 The revolutionary War
4 Declaration of Independence
5 Biographies, essays, almacans and speeches -
Authors
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson -
Period: to
Romanticism
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Content 2
Writing that can be interpreted 2 ways, on the surface for common folk or in depth for philosophical readers
Sense of idealism
Focus on the individual's inner feelings
Emphasis on the imagination over reason and intuition over facts
Urbanization versus nostalgia for nature
Burden of the Puritan past -
Genre/Styles
Literary tale
Character sketch
Slave narratives,
Political novels
Poetry
Transcendentalism -
Effect
Helps instill proper gender behavior for men and women
Fuels the abolitionist movement
Allow people to reimagine the American past -
Historical Context
expansion of magazines, newspapers, and book publishing
slavery debates -
Gothic Content
Sublime and overt use of the supernatural
Individual characters see themselves at the mercy of forces our of their control which
They do not understand
Motif of the "double"; an individual with both evil and good characteristics
Often involve the persecution of a young woman who is forced apart from her true love -
Gothic Style
Shot stories and novels
Hold readers' attention through dread of a series of terrible possibilities
Feature landscapes of dark forests, extreme vegetation, concealed ruins with homific
Rooms, depressed characters -
Gothic Effect
Today in literature we still see portrayals of alluring antagonists whose evil characterstico appeal to one's sense of an e
Today in literature we still see stores of the persecuted young girl forced apart from her true love -
Gothic Historical context
industrial revolution brings ideas that the "old ways" of doing things are now inelevant -
Content
1 Based on values, passion, feelings, intuitions, person's emocional experience over reason.
2 Civil War - Industrialization
3 Gothic elements
4 Strong connection between human and nature -
Authors
Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The scarlet letter
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Washington Irving - The legend of sleepy hollow -
Period: to
Transcendentalism
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Part of romantic period
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Content
Balance between God, Men and Nature
Social protests, end of slavery
Female Literature -
Realism Content
Common characters not idealized (immigrants,lab orers)
People in society defined by dass
Society corrupted by materialism
Emphasizes moralism through observation -
Authors
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Margaret Fuller -
Realism Style
Novel and short stones are important
Prefers objective narrator
Dialogue indudes many voices from around the country does not tell the reader hoy to interpret the story -
Realism effect
Social realism: aims to change à specific sod el problem
Aesthetic realism; art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it -
Realism historical context
Cuil War brings demand for a "truer" type of literature that does not idealize people or places -
Period: to
Realism and Naturalism
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Content
Realistic situations based on the daily roitine of people
Authors expresses harsh and reality and the consequences of the civil war. -
Authors
Mark Twain
Sthepen Crane -
Naturalism Content
Dominant themes; survival fate violence taboo
Nature is an indifferent force acting on humans
"brute within" each individual is comprised of strong and warring emotions such as
Greed, power, and fight for survival in an amoral indifferent world. -
Naturalism Style
Short story, novel
Characters usually lower class or lower middle dass
Fictional world is commonplace and unheroic; everyday life is dull round of daily existence
Characters ultimately ernerge to act heroically or adventurously with acts of violence, passion, and/or bodily strength in a tragic ending -
Naturalism effect
this type of literature continues to capture audiences in present day; the pittina of man against nature -
Naturalism historical context
Writers reflect the ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and Kart Marx (how money and class
structure control a nation) -
Period: to
Modernism
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Period: to
Contemporary Period
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Content
Influenced by the World War I
Great Drepression
Advences in science and technology
Loss and disillusion -
Content
Civil rights
Women movements, authors from different backgrounds
Varied in terms, themes, mode and purposes -
Authors
Ernest Hemingway
Robert Frost
Marianne Moore -
Authors
Sylvia Plath
Ralph Ellison
James Baldwin
Alice Walker -
Content 2
Dominant mood: alienation and disconnection
People unable to communicate effectively
Fear of eroding traditions and grief over loss of the past -
Style
Highly experimental
Allusions in wnting often refer to dassical Greek and Roman writings
Use of fragments, juxtaposition, intenor monologue,
and stream of consciousness
Writers seeking to create a unique style -
Effect
common readers are alienated by this literature -
Historical Content
Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century
World War I was the first war of mass destruction due to technological advances
Rise of the youth culture -
Content 2
Identity politics
People learning to cope with problems throught communication
People's sense of identity is shaped by cultural ann gender attitudes
Emergence of ethnic writers and woman writers -
Style
Narratives: both fiction and non-fiction
Anti-heroes
Concern with connectors between people
Emotion-provoking
Humorous irony
Storytelling emphasized
Autobiographical Essays -
Effect
too soon to tell -
Historical Context
People Beginning a new century and a new milennium
Media culture interprets values