Early American Literature to 1700

I. Main themes
1. NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE
a. The sense of the sacred
b. The sense of the beauty
c. The sense of place
d. The sense of community
2. LITERARY OF EXPLORATION
a. The benefits of the New World
b. The difficult of pilgrimages into the wilderness
c. Conflict of benefits
d. Religious motivation
3. LITURATURE OF RELIGION (puritans literature)
II. Main works and their themes
1. The sky tree
- Natural (explain how the world was formed
- Love
2. Pocahontas
- Love
- Adventure
- Being in agreement
3. To my dear and loving husband
- Love
- Marriage
- Death
- Religion
4. A model of christian charity
- Charity
- Communalism
- Unity

Early American Literature 1700-1800

I. Main themes
1. Religion
2. Politic
3. Scientific
4. Justice & Liberty
5. Equality
6. Religion
II. Main works and their themes
1. The way to wealth - Benjamin Franklin in 1758 (A collection of adages and
advices.)
- Industry: God help them that help themselves. => self-help => the
Puritanism virtues
Independent > depend on other people.
Work hard to survive and stand on his own feet
- Frugality
If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as of getting=> People in
developed countries are fond of saving, including American.
2. Common Sense by Thomas Paine
- Injustice government
Government is a necessary evil: Restraining peoples vices
Natural state live without government
- Patriotism
- Fight for freedom: American independence and freedom are unavoidable
Fight for Equal Government- Against Monarchy- create Democracy- Make
Warfare- Build up Patriotism- Fight for freedom
Fight for Human Rights : Build up Patriotism- Fight for Freedom
- The problems with monarchy: Originated from sins/ Criticizing on hereditary
succession/ Dissatisfaction

3. LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER- J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

- Freedom and equality

- Nature of the New World

- Difference between America and Europe

- Desire for defying American identity

- Treatment towards slaves

 4. The declaration of independence

- Equality for all people

- Purpose of government

Government derive their authority from the consent of people

When a government abuses its power, the people have the right to overthrow it

- Independence from England

We have thee natural right by God to declare our independence form England
The colonies tried repeatedly to compromise with King George but has been a tyrant
5. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- The scientific scheme of self-improvement
- An access to knowledge and science
- Vision of the American Dream
- The importance of education
6. SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD- By Jonathan Edwards
- Corrupt sinners face a fearful judgement
- Time is short for the unrepentant: Gods righteous wrath will come suddenly
and unexpectedly
- It is only Gods free choice that extends the day of mercy and provides
another opportunity to respond to his call

Nineteenth Century to 1865 and Romanticism

I. Main themes

ROMARONTICISM

(1800 - 1860)
Imagination
Escapism
Nature
Emotion
DARK ROMANTICISM
(1840 - 1860)
The Self - Divided
The Gothic Nature
II. Main works and their theme
1. Washington Irving-RIP VAN WINKLE (romanticism)
- Imagination
- Escapism
- Nature & Supernatural
2. POOR LITTLE HEART- Emily Dickinson (romanticism)
3. THE SCARLET LETTER
- The self- divided
- The Gothic nature
4. The Last of the Mohicans 1826 (James Fenimore Cooper)
- Interracial love and frienship
- The important role of nature
- Heroic symbols: Hawkeye
- Evil: Magua
4. The Fall of the House of Usher- Edgar Allan Poe
- Madness
- Death
- Evil
5. The black cat
- Emotional intensity
- Death
- Evil

Nineteenth Century to 1865 and Transcendentalism

I. Main themes
1. Non-comformity: Refusal to conform to accepted standards or prevailing rules.
Representing the edge of transcendentalism, non-conformity helps to provide
more of a direct definition between those who seem to lead a life reflecting the
tenets and those who fail to do so.

2. Self-reliance: Reliance on ones own personality, capabilities, or judgments.

The transcendentalist tenet of self reliance can be described as a state of being
where one's own thoughts, actions, and emotions are unaffected by outside
influences like social pressure, society, and the media

3. Free thought (Individualism): Thought is free

4. Confidence: The belief that one can rely on someone or something else.
Important to have confidence and a key to success.
 The idea of confidence in relation to transcendentalism is that you should be
able to love who you are and be happy with this no matter what other people
say.
5. Importance of nature: Phenomena of the natural world including plants and
animals and the surrounding landscape.
Transcendentalists believe that nature allows us to escape from reality. They
believe it can free our minds so that we can connect with our inner spirit.

II. Main works and their themes

6. Nature
- Man can understand the nature:Nature can only be understood by a man when
he is in solitude.
It is essential to see nature from the eyes of a child because a child sees
everything without judging it, from plain eyes.
- Relationship of Man and Nature:

Emerson declares in Nature: Both man and nature are expressions of the divine.

Man is a part of the material world. But Emerson refers to man's separateness from
nature through his intellectual and spiritual capacities

Man has particular powers over nature. Nature was made to serve Man.

- Spirituality:

Emerson asserts throughout Nature the primacy of spirit over matter. Ex: He first
states that words represent particular facts in nature, which exists in part to give us
language to express ourselves.

7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

- Self reliance: Only rely on yourself be independent/ Self reliance must be
applied to all aspects of life, and illustrates how such an application would
benefit society
- Man and the natural world:
Nature can be a source of inspiration and enlightenment
Nature is the world in its simplest.
8. Leaves of Grass- Walt Whitman
- The self
The body (physical)
The soul (spiritual)
 Personalism
Individualism
- The nature

The universe is not dead matter, but full of life and meaning.

Man is the natures child.

Never be disjoined

- Democracy
Respect the individual
A deep faith in democracy
The genius of the US is best expressed in the common people

Late Nineteenth Century and Naturalism

I. Main themes

1. Brute (animal) within: The Dark Side of Human Nature- The "brute within"
each individual, composed of strong and often warring emotions: passions such as
lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure.

2. Forces of heredity and environment deeply affected individual lives.

3. Human beings attempt to exercise free will but free will = illusion

4. Nature

5. Man - a product of environment, heredity

II. Main works and their themes

1. Mc.TEAGUE (1899)- Frank Norris (1807-1902)
- Greed
- Strife
- ATAVISM
2. SISTER CARRIER - By Theodore Dreiser
- Ambition
- Isolation/loneliness
- Identity and social standing
3. The red badge of courage
- Courage
 - Transformation
4. Maggie: a girl of streets- Stephen Crane

- Violence

- Man-a product of the environment , heredity

5. The open boat- Stephan Crane

- Natures indifference to man

- Mans insignificance in the universe

6. The call of the wild- Jack London

- The dark side of human nature

- Determinism theory of environment Survival of the Fittest

Early Twentieth Century and Modernism

I. Main themes
1. Materialism
2. Love
3. War
4. Death
5. disillusionment
6. destruction
7. loss & exile
8. cycle
II. main works and their themes

1. the waste land- T.S.ELIOTS

- Death
- Disillusionment
- War
2. The great Gatsby- By F. Scott. Fitzgerald
- American dream
- Social classes
- Wealth and Materialism
 - Decadence
- Morality and Ethics
- (Im)Mutability

3. A farewell to arms- Ernest Hermingway

- The grim reality of war

The relationship between love and pain
Self vs. duty

5. The sun also rises- Ernest Hermingway

- The Loss & Exile
- The Dissatisfaction
- The Nature of Masculinity & Insecurity
- The Disillusionment & Escapism
6. The Age of Innocence- by Edith Wharton
- Power of Society on the Individual
- Gender Conflict

Harlem Renaissance

I. Main themes
1. Race and passing
2. Racial pride
3. Conflicting Images of Blacks
4. African Heritage
II. Main works and their themes
1. I , TOO, SING AMERICA- Langston Hughes
- Race
- Freedom
2. God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse- James Weldon Johnson
- Race and Discrimination
- Identity
- Passing
3. Passing - Nella Larsen
- Passing
- Race and social class
- Sexuality
Late Twentieth Century and Postmodernism

I. Main themes
1. Alienation
- Powerlessness
- Meaninglessness
- Normlessness
- Social Isolation
2. Capitalism
3. Paranoia
4. Relativism
II. Main works and their themes
1. The Crying of Lot 49
- Versions of Reality
- Paranoia
- Isolation
2. Infinite jest- david foster wallance
- Capitalism-Media theories
- Addiction- Alienation

Puritans

Puritans attitude towards the nature: The Puritans felt that the nature was against humans.
Blessed God of Heaven who had brought them to the vast and furious ocean,
Nature was seen as something negative because the nature didnt support their voyage.
The Puritans had to struggle facing great danger in the sea. They fell amongst dangerous
shoals and roaring breakers. Bradford described the first winter as the worst condition of
the Puritans. The Puritans first winter in Plymouth was very hard.The Puritans had to
struggle against the nature, bad weather of winter. They had to face inaccommodate
condition.

wild nature threatened the life and viability of a sedentary society. The acquirement of the
most basic human need food was one of the main reasons that drove settlers to eliminate
forestlands. Being used to agriculture and permanent residences, they had to transform the
landscape according to their needs. Another important factor in the rejection of wild nature
was the fact that it served as a habitat for the Natives, wild beasts[,] and still stranger
creatures of the imagination (Nash 24). Partly due to their nomadic lifestyle and their
divergent attitude, inter alia, towards religion and nature, indigenous Americans were
regarded as heathen and wild, and thus perceived as a threat to the newly established
community.
THE AGE OF REASON

In this new age, man felt obligated to follow his own intellect, not revealed truth. Earth and
emphasis on nature became the new dogma; miracles, prophecy, and religious rites were mere
superstitions.

Nature was revelation enough, showing all that needed to be known of God. Man was now free to
postulate his own theories of existence and ideas about the nature ( the earth and its relation to the
sun)

ROMANTICISM

For Romantics, Nature is often a source of respite, both for body and for soul.
Further, it is where the intuition beggins and leads man to understanding.
Nature nurtures the Romantics.

the Romantics really are finding God in nature. They believed that they could
achieve high levels of insight and information about the world around them
just by going to nature.
Transcendentalism

Transcendentalists believed that nature and man are intertwined and designed to fit together like
pieces of a larger puzzle and that total consciousness could be achieved through observing nature.
Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" chronicles the more than two years he spent living in solitude in the
woods. In his 1836 essay "Nature" Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "All the parts incessantly work into
each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the
wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the
rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity
nourish man."

Nature was looked at as something to be studied first and enjoyed second. The
Transcendentalists revered nature in a divine sense.1 Nature was not subordinate to
them, but instead nature was the other part of a symbiotic relationship.

Transcendentalists saw nature not only as beautiful, but as a reflection of divinity--

literally, the face of God. They believed that the "macrocosm" (the universe) and the
"microcosm" (the individual) were directly connected. Both also contained the divine,
as well as all other objects, animate and inanimate. They believed that the purpose of
human life was union with the so-called "over-soul" which embraced--and was
reflected in-- everything in the world. People could develop their potential by
immersing themselves in the beauty of the natural world. Beauty and truth could be
experienced only through intuition, though careful observation of nature might help to
uncover its laws and provide a glimpse into the divine.

Naturalism
Naturalism in terms of literature is a special perception of the reality of the world around us. Everything happening
around us seems to be an experiment held by nature.

Naturalism considers the nature (the outside world, environment) is the primary
reason for everything happening . Therefore everything can be explained in terms of
nature. This natural power is above everything, even human beings. Naturalism
depicts everything exactly the way it is and considers everything to be the cause of
natural influences. Naturalism with its all-embracing influence on the world makes
people believe that everything is inevitable, implies that the individuals will has no
effect on the outcome.

The controlling forces that leave us with no will is not represented by nature, but also
our heredity and environment as the key factor of the formations of the personality of
a person. Through heredity we get aptitudes and abilities that do put us on a certain
path and are complemented with the influence of the environment. In naturalist
literature, a character, not shown as an individual, but as a consequence of the will
of nature