Literature Part 2 - Quarter Review

Study Notes

American literature began long before the US existed, with Native American oral traditions, myths, and legends focusing on nature and creation stories.
The first permanent settlers were Puritans, interested in education and culture. Harvard was founded in 1636, and a printing press started in 1638.
Early American literature primarily comprised sermons, histories, autobiographies, and poems, often with a religious purpose.

Historical Context: Overwhelming technological advances, World War I, grief over loss of past, fear of eroding traditions, rise of youth culture.
Genre/Style: Dominant mood: alliteration/disconnection, writing highly experimental (stream of consciousness, interior dialogue), writers sought a new style.
Major Writers: Ernest Hemingway (known for concise, direct style; The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea), F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury), John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl), Tennessee Williams (playwright; A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land), Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken, Mending Wall). Carl Sandburg (Chicago poet, positive tone, simple words).

A black cultural movement in Harlem, New York during the 1920s, with a flourishing of literature, music, and art.
Major figures: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, F. Claude McKay, Countee Cullen.

American literature became complex and inclusive.
Major figures and key works:
Drama: Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman), Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).
Novels: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Eudora Welty, Jamaica Kincaid, Sandra Cisneros, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ha Jin, Jonathan Franzen. Junot Diaz. Colson Whitehead
Specific notes: Particular figures and works focused on race, sexuality, and social issues.

Born June 7, 1917, died December 3, 2000, an American poet.
First African American poet to win a Pulitzer Prize (1950).
1968 she was named the poet laureate of Illinois.
Works often deal with the everyday life of urban blacks, and exploring themes of love, loneliness, family, and poverty.
Her early background with multiple high schools helped her understanding of social dynamics.
Notable poem: The Bean Eaters.

Poem about an elderly couple eating beans in their simple home.
A detailed look into the characters’ simple life, their loves, contentment, growing old.
Poem portrays the reality of daily life for low-income people.

Overview: What is the poem all about (Formalism, naturalism)
Techniques: What techniques did the poet use (Realism, symbolism, imagery)
Context: What struggle in the context do we need to know (historical, biographical, Marxist)

Colonial and Early National (17th century to 1830):
Written by British settlers
Focused on future, practical, and often derivative of British Literature.
Notable figures include John Smith.
Romantic (1830 to 1870):
Individual over the group, subjective over objective, emotional experience over reason
Notable figures and works include Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven, detective stories).
Realism and Naturalism (1870 to 1910):
Accurate, detailed, unembellished life depictions
Rejected imaginative work for direct observation and depiction.
Notable figures and works: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Theodore Dreiser, Henry James.
Modernist (1910 to 1945):
Radical break from past traditions.
Loss of faith in traditional structures and beliefs.
Contemporary (1945 to present)
More complex, inclusive, and wide-ranging.
Influenced by past writings and encompassing different backgrounds