LITERARY PERIODS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

PERIODS Genre/Style Effect/ Historical Examples Aspects Context

PURITAN/COLONIAL Sermons, diaries, Instructive A person’s fate is Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation personal narratives determined by God Reinforces authority Rowlandson's "A Narrative of the Captivity" 1650-1750 Written in plain style of the Bible and All people are church corrupt and must be saved by Christ Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Though not written during Puritan times, The Crucible & The Scarlet Letter depict life during the time when Puritan theocracy prevailed.

REVOLUTIONARY/AGE Political pamphlets Patriotism grows Tells readers how Writings of Jefferson, Paine, Henry to interpret what OF REASON they are reading to Travel writing Instills pride encourage Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac 1750-1800 Revolutionary War Highly ornate style Creates common support Franklin's "The Autobiography" agreement about issues Persuasive writing Instructive in values National mission and the American character

ROMANTICISM Character sketches Value feeling and Expansion of Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" intuition over magazines, reasoning newspapers, and 1800-1860 Slave narratives book publishing William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" Journey away from Poetry corruption of Slavery debates Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" civilization and limits Short stories of rational thought Poems of Emily Dickinson toward the integrity of Industrial nature and freedom revolution brings of the imagination ideas that the "old Poems of Walt Whitman ways" of doing things are now Helped instill proper irrelevant gender behavior for men and women

Allowed people to re- imagine the American past

AMERICAN Poetry Transcendentalists: Today in literature Poems and essays of Emerson & Thoreau we still see RENAISSANCE/ portrayals of Short Stories *True reality is alluring Thoreau's Walden spiritual TRANSCENDENTALISM antagonists whose Novels evil characteristics Aphorisms of Emerson and Thoreau *Comes from18th appeal to one’s 1840-1860 century philosopher sense of awe Anti- Immanuel Kant Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter Transcendentalists Today in literature (Note overlap in time * Idealists we still see stories Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and period with *Hold readers’ of the persecuted "The Black Cat" Romanticism -- some attention through young girl forced dread of a series of * Self-reliance & apart from her true consider the anti- terrible possibilities individualism love transcendentalists to be the "dark" romantics or *Feature landscapes * Emerson & Thoreau Today in literature gothic) of dark forests, we still read of extreme vegetation, people seeking the Anti- concealed ruins with true beauty in life Transcendentalists: horrific rooms, and in nature … a depressed * Used symbolism to belief in true love characters great effect and contentment

*Sin, pain, & evil exist

* Poe, Hawthorne, & Melville

REALISM Novels and short Social realism: aims Civil War brings Writings of Twain, Bierce, Crane stories to change a specific demand for a social problem "truer" type of 1855-1900 literature that does The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Objective narrator not idealize people Douglass Aesthetic realism: art or places that insists on (Period of Civil War and Does not tell reader The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (some detailing the world as st Postwar period) how to interpret one sees it say 1 modern novel) story Regional works like: The Awakening. Dialogue includes Ethan Frome, and My Antonia (some say voices from around modern) the country

THE MODERNS Novels In Pursuit of the Writers reflect the Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby American Dream-- ideas of Darwin (survival of the 1900-1950 Plays fittest) and Karl Poetry of Jeffers, Williams, Cummings, *Admiration for Marx (how money Frost, Eliot, Sandburg, Pound, Robinson, America as land of and class structure Stevens Poetry (a great Eden resurgence after control a nation) deaths of Whitman Rand's Anthem & Dickinson) *Optimism Overwhelming technological Short stories and novels of Steinbeck, th Highly experimental *Importance of the changes of the 20 Hemingway, Thurber, Welty, and Faulkner as writers seek a Individual Century unique style Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun & Wright's Rise of the youth Native Son (an outgrowth of Harlem Use of interior culture Renaissance-- see below) monologue & stream of WWI and WWII consciousness Miller's The Death of a Salesman (some consider Postmodern) Harlem Renaissance

HARLEM Allusions to African- Gave birth to "gospel Mass African- Essays & Poetry of W.E.B. DuBois American spirituals music" American RENAISSANCE migration to Northern urban Poetry of McKay, Toomer, Cullen Uses structure of Blues and jazz centers (Parallel to modernism) blues songs in transmitted across poetry (repetition) American via radio Poetry, short stories and novels of Hurston and phonographs African-Americans and Hughes 1920s have more access Superficial to media and Their Eyes Were Watching God stereotypes publishing outlets revealed to be after they move complex characters north

POSTMODERNISM Mixing of fantasy Erodes distinctions Post-World War II Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and The with nonfiction; blurs between classes of prosperity Executioner's Song lines of reality for people reader 1950 to present Media culture Feminist & Social Issue poets: Plath, Rich, Insists that values are interprets values Sexton, Levertov, Baraka, Cleaver, No heroes not permanent but Morrison, Walker & Giovanni Note: Many critics only "local" or extend this to present "historical" Concern with Miller's The Death of a Salesman & The and merge with individual in isolation Crucible (some consider Modern) Contemporary -- see below) Social issues as Lawrence & Lee's Inherit the Wind writers align with feminist & ethnic groups Usually humorless Capote's In Cold Blood

Narratives Stories & novels of Vonnegut

Metafiction Salinger's Catcher in the Rye

Present tense Beat Poets: Kerouac, Burroughs, & Ginsberg Magic realism Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

CONTEMPORARY Narratives: both Too soon to tell People beginning a Poetry of Dove, Cisneros, Soto, Alexie fiction and nonfiction new century and a new millennium Writings of Angelou, Baldwin, Allende, 1970s-Present Anti-heroes Tan, Kingsolver, Kingston, Grisham, (Continuation of Media culture Crichton, Clancy interprets values postmodernism) Concern with connections Walker's The Color Purple & Haley's Roots between people Butler's Kindred Emotion-provoking Guest's Ordinary People Humorous irony Card's Ender's Game Storytelling emphasized O'Brien The Things They Carried

Autobiographical essays Frazier's Cold Mountain