Characteristics of American Literary Movements

 Native American Literary Movement

• Focus on oral storytelling traditions, songs, and poetry.
• Themes included creation stories, myths, and folktales.
• Examples include trickster myths, often featuring a coyote as the troublemaker, and creation myths to explain how various aspects of the world came into being.

Puritan Literature (1620-1750):

• Focus usually on religious subject matter.
• Non-fiction materials, including journal and diary entries or letters. Literature was not for entertainment but for religious instruction.
• Examples include Of Plymouth Plantation (1651) by William Bradford and the poetry of Anne Bradstreet.

Colonial Literature (1607-1775)

• Focused on describing the process of colonization and daily life in the colonies.
• Non-fiction materials that included journal and diary entries or letters.
• Examples include A True Relation of Virginia (1608) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624) by John Smith.

Revolutionary Age (1775-1783)

• Focus on political ideology and the use of literature to further the cause of independence.
• Popular literary forms included political essays and propaganda pamphlets.
• Examples include The American Crisis (1776-1783) by Thomas Paine and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1773).

Early National Literature (1775-1830)

• Focus on political ideology and the use of literature to build national identity.
• Popular literary forms included political essays and most literature remained non-fiction in nature.
• Examples include the Federalist Papers (1787-1788) and The Declaration of Independence (1776).

American Romanticism (1830-1865)

• Focus on themes of individualism, the beauty of nature, and conveying strong emotions.
• A great increase in the writing of novels and poetry.
• Sub-movements of American Romanticism include Transcendentalism, Dark Romanticism, American Gothic, and the Fireside Poets.

Transcendentalism

• Focus on the inherent goodness of the individual.
• Individuals can “transcend” the world around them.
• Examples include Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-1892).

Dark Romanticism

• Focus on the fallibility of the individual and the tendency towards self-destruction.
• Opposite of Transcendentalism: the individual cannot transcend the world around them.
• Examples include Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville and The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

American Gothic

• Focus on the uncanny and macabre.
• Includes the use of supernatural elements such as ghosts and monsters.
• Examples include the short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) by Washington Irving.

Fireside Poets:

• Focus on themes of domesticity and national identity.
• Used poetic conventions that made their work easy to memorize.
• Examples include William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).

Naturalism (1865-1914)

• Related to Realism and the use of literature to depict everyday life.
• Focus on determinism, including the effects of environment and circumstance on characters.
• Examples include Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) by Stephen Crane and To Build a Fire (1902) by Jack London.

Slave Narratives

• Accounts that were written by enslaved Africans detailing their experiences.
• Focus on simple language to realistically and matter-of-factly portray the horrors of slavery.
• Examples include A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) by Frederick Douglass, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs.

Modernism and Experimentation (1914-1940)

• Emphasis on style and how a story is told.
• Experimentation with structure and point of view in both poetry and prose.
• Sub-movements within Modernism and Experimentation include the Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation.

The Harlem Renaissance:

• Focus on the African American experience.
• Experimentation with style and structure.
• Examples include the poetry of Langston Hughes (1901-1967) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston.

The Lost Generation:

• Rebellion against established American cultural ideals.
• Themes of disillusionment and critiques of the American Dream.
• Examples include The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway and The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Modern American Prose

• Novels and essays that were published after World War II.
• Authors employ a wide variety of themes and styles to describe the experience of the contemporary world, usually following the themes and arguments seen in Postmodernism.
• Examples include To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee and Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison.

Modern American Drama

• Emphasis on plays with realistic settings.
• Focus on the depiction of American life and society.
• Examples include A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by Tennessee Williams and Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller.

Modern American Poetry

• American poets use a variety of styles and explore a variety of themes.
• Sub-movements within Modern American Poetry include the San Francisco Renaissance, New Formalism, Confessional Poetry, The New York School, the Beat Generation, the Black Mountain Poets, and Poetry Slam.

San Francisco Renaissance

• Avant-garde poetry movement based in San Francisco.
• Shunning the poetic mainstream.
• Examples include the poetry of Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) and William Everson (1912-1994).

New Formalism

• Poetry movement that sought to re-embrace poetic conventions of the past.
• Poets rejected free verse and instead returned to traditional forms of rhyme, meter, and verse.
• Examples include the poetry of Charles Martin (1942-present) and Molly Peacock (1947-present).

Confessional Poetry

• Poetry movement centered on personal poetry.
• Focus on private, intimate themes and personal history.
• Examples include the poetry of Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) and Anne Sexton (1928-1974).

New York School

• Poetry movement based in Manhattan.
• Focus on depicting everyday life while embracing humor and references to popular culture.
• Examples include the poetry of John Ashbery (1927-2017) and Alice Notley (1945-present).

Beat Generation

• Poetry movement related to the San Francisco Renaissance.
• Focus on questioning social conformity and challenging traditional literary conventions.
• Examples include the poetry of Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Jack Kerouac (1922-1969).

Black Mountain Poets

• Avant-garde poetry movement based at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
• Focus on the use of conversational language and turning away from poetic conventions of the past.
• Examples include the poetry of Charles Owen (1910-1970) and Larry Eigner (1927-1996).

Poetry Slam

• Poetry movement that explores the performance of poetry.
• Focus on competition and high-energy performances.
• Examples include the poetry of Taylor Mali (1965-present) and Anis Mojgani (1977-present).

American Literary Movements - Key takeaways

• The first American literary movement was pre-Colonial Native American literature.
• Puritan literature focused on religious teachings and non-fiction accounts of daily life.
• Writers of Colonial literature described life in the colonies for those back home in Europe and Great Britain.
• Revolutionary and Early National authors focused on political ideas.
• Romanticism was the first truly American literary movement.
• In the period following the Civil War, Romanticism gave way to Realism and Naturalism.
• Authors of the Modernism and Experimentation periods focused on style and point of view in their writing.
• Modern-day American literature is not defined by any single literary movement.