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American Literature

American Literature. Overview. I.Qualities of America/ Being an American. Individualism Equality Freedom. II. American Experiences. What is the American Experience? How does America’s unique experience influence its literature, poetry, and other arts?. III. Themes in American Literature.

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American Literature

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  1. American Literature Overview

  2. I.Qualities of America/ Being an American • Individualism • Equality • Freedom

  3. II. American Experiences • What is the American Experience? • How does America’s unique experience influence its literature, poetry, and other arts?

  4. III. Themes in American Literature • The Individual • The Community • The American Dream • The Frontier • The City • Coming of Age: Innocence to Awareness • The Hero and the Anti-Hero

  5. IV. Literary Movements • Colonialism/Puritanism • World view emphasizes the conflict between personal freedom and society’s desire for conformity. • William Bradford, Thomas Jefferson, William Byrd, Thomas Paine

  6. IV. Literary Movements cont’d • Classicism • World view emphasizes that reason and logic perfect man and reform society. • Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton

  7. IV. Literary Movements cont’d • Romanticism • World view emphasizes that emotion, the individual, and the imagination are the key to the elevation of the human spirit. • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  8. IV. Literary Movements cont’d • Transcendentalism • World view emphasizes that when man combines intuition with a close observation of nature, he can achieve a higher level of spiritual truth. • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

  9. IV. Literary Movements cont’d • Realism • World view emphasizes that the truth of an experience should be expressed through an emphasis on objective details, the common man, and vernacular language. • Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin, Walt Whitman

  10. IV. Literary Movements cont’d • Naturalism • World view emphasizes that man is a victim of both nature and society and is engaged in a brutal and constant struggle for survival. • Edith Wharton, Jack London, Stephen Crane

  11. IV. Literary Movements cont’d • Modernism • World view emphasizes that human experience is characterized by alienation, fragmentation, and loss. No universal higher power exists to give meaning to life. • Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, John Steinbeck

  12. IV. Literary Movements cont’d • Post-Modernism/Contemporary • Extension of modernism; world view emphasizes social commentary through criticism and absurdity. • Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Maya Angelou

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