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Contents. Introduction Brief Outline of American LiteratureChapter I Colonial PeriodChapter II Revolutionary Period Benjamin Franklin Philip FreneauChapter III American Romanticism Washington Irving James Fenimore Cooper William Cullen Bryant Edgar Allan Poe Nathaniel Hawthorne. .
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1. Book I American Literature
2. Contents Introduction
Brief Outline of American Literature
Chapter I Colonial Period
Chapter II Revolutionary Period Benjamin Franklin Philip Freneau
Chapter III American Romanticism Washington Irving James Fenimore Cooper William Cullen Bryant Edgar Allan Poe Nathaniel Hawthorne
3. Introduction What is literature? Writings that are valued as works of art, esp. fiction, poetry, drama and essay.
Forms (genres) of literature? Verse - Poetry: epic, elegy, lyric, etc.
Prose - Fiction: novel, short story, novelette, etc.
Drama, essay, journalism, sermon, (auto)biography, travel accounts, etc.
4. Puritanism in America They follow the ideas of the Swiss reformer John Calvin.
Doctrines: - Predestination - Original sin and total depravity (human beings are basically evil.) - Limited atonement (or the Salvation of a selected few)
Puritan values (creeds): Hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety, simple tastes. Puritans are more practical, tougher, and to be ever ready for any misfortune and tragic failure. They are optimistic.
5. Puritanism in America Why did Puritans come to America? - to reform the Church of England - to have an entirely new church - to escape religious persecution * God’s chosen people * To seek a new Garden of Eden * To build “City of God on earth”
6. Puritanism in America Influence - American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature. - American literature is based on a myth, i.e. the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. - Puritanism can be compared with Chinese Confucianism.
7. Brief Outline of American literature Colonial period (1607-1775) Anne Bradstreet Edward Taylor
Revolutionary period (1775-1783) Benjamin Franklin Philip Freneau
Democratic Period (1783-1802)
Romanticism (1820-1861) Washington Irving Edgar Allan Poe Nathaniel Howthorne William Whitman * Transcendentalism (New England Renaissance) Ralph Waldo Emerson Fillip Thoreau
8. Brief Outline of American literature The 1930s Steinbeck Harlem Renaissance (Black American literature) Hughes Wright Ellison
American Drama Eugene O’Neill
9. Colonial Period (1607-1775)
10. Three major poets in colonial period: Anne Bradstreet
Michael Wigglesworth
Edward Taylor
11. 1. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
12. 2. Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) the most popular poet in American Colonial Period
Work: “The Day of Doom” (1662)
13. Features of Colonial Poets They were servants of God.
They faithfully imitated and transplanted English literary traditions.
14. Chapter Two Revolutionary Period (1775-1783)
15. In the 18th century, people believed in man’s own nature and the power of human reason. With Franklin as its spokesman, the 18th century America experienced an age of reason.
Words had never been so useful and so important in human history. People wrote a lot of political writings. Numerous pamphlets and printings were published. These works agitated revolutionary people not only in America but also around the world.
16. The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy.
Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.
The colonists who would form a new nation were firm believers in the power of reason; they were ambitious, inquisitive, optimistic, practical, politically astute, and self-reliant.
17. Leading writers and their works Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826):
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
Thomas Paine(1737-1809):
Common Sense (1776)
Benjamin Franklin:
Autobiography
Philip Freneau:
“The Wild Honey Suckle”
18. 1. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
21. The Autobiography is a record of self-examination and self-improvement.
Benjamin Franklin was a spokesman for the new order of the 18th century enlightenment
The Autobiography is a how-to-do-it book, a book on the art of self-improvement. (for example, Franklin’s 13 virtues)
Through telling a success story of self-reliance, the book celebrates, in fact, the fulfillment of the American dream.
The Autobiography is in the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision.
22. 2. Philip Freneau (1752-1832) “Poet of the American Revolution”
“Father of American Poetry”
“Pioneer of the New Romanticism”
“A gifted and versatile lyric poet”
23. The wild honeysuckle
25. Poem Appreciation The Wild Honeysuckle
The following poem was published in his Poems (1786) and was virtually unread in the time when he was living.
In the poem the poet expresses his keen awareness of the liveliness and transience of nature celebrating the beauty of the frail forest flower, thus showing his deep love for nature.
The poem was written in six-line iambic tetrameter stanzas rhymed on ababcc pattern.
The poem is said to anticipate the nineteenth-century romantic use of simple nature imagery.
It is considered one of the author’s finest nature poems.
26. The Indian Burying Ground The poem was published in the poet’s Miscellaneous Works in 1788.
Like “The Wild Honey Suckle”, it anticipated romantic primitivism and the celebration of the “noble savage”.
The poem portrays sympathetically the spirit of the nomadic Indian hunters, who were traditionally buried in a sitting position and with images of the objects they knew in life.
It is believed to be the earliest to romanticize the Indian as a child of nature.
The poem was written in ten iambic tetrameter quatrains with the rhyme scheme of “abab”.
