American Literature

A History of the Dividing Line was about:

Byrd's trek into the Dismal Swamp separating the carolinian territories from Virginia and Maryland.

A History of the Dividing Line was written by:

William Byrd

American Drama: Arthur Miller

The Crucible, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman

American Drama: Edward Albee

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Three Tall Women, and A Delicate Balance

American Drama: Eugene O'Neill

Long Day's Journey into Night, Mourning Becomes Electra, and Desire Under the Elms

American Drama: Tennessee Williams

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire

American Fiction: Ernest Hemingway

Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls

American Fiction: Eudora Welty

The Optomists Daughter

American Fiction: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night

American Fiction: John Updike

Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux

American Fiction: Sinclair Lewis

Babbit and Elmer Gantry

American Fiction: William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury, and Absolom, Absolom!

American Poetry

Multifacited. Authors include: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Richard Wilbur, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Rita Dove and Robert Frost.

Anne Bradstreet's poetrey describes:

colonial New England life.

Bejamin Franklin's contributions to Revolutionary literature.

essays from Poor Richard's Almanac and satires such as "How to Reduce a Great Empire to a Small one" and "A Letter to Madame Gout.

Bernard Malamud

The Fixer and The Natural

Billy Budd

Melville. Christ-like sacrifice to the black-and-white maritime laws on the high seas.

Characteristics Of Native-American Liturature

Reverance for and awe of nature, and the interconnectedness of the elements in the life cycle.

Colonial period: Stylistically

neoclassical, emphasizing order, balance, clarity, and reason.

Come Up from the Fields, Father

Walt Whitman. about a Civil War soldier's death and his family's reaction.

cricket on the harth

one of Hawthorne's children's stories

Declaration of Independence

this was the brainchild predominantly of Thomas Jefferson (edited by Ben Franklin) and is a prime example of neoclassical writing--balanced, well crafted, and focused.

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, The Devil and Tom Walker, & Rapuccini's Daughter

Dark, brooding, adult short stories by Hawthorne

EAP begins the detective story genre with:

Murders in the Rue Morgue

EAP horror

The Telltale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe

distinctly america version of romanticism with his 16 syllable lines in The Raven, the classical To Helen, and his Gothic Annabelle Lee. The origional horror short story writer.

Emerson

wrote about the transcending the complexities of life

Emerson most remembered for:

his address to Thoreau's Harvard graduating class The American Scholar--defined the qualities of hard work and intillectual spirit required of Americans in their growing nation.

Emerson's Essays and War poetry

elegantly crafted and still validate several important universal truths.

Emily Dickinson

all but three of her poems were never published in her lifetime. her themes: introspection and attention to nature's details and wonders.

Fireside Poets

James Russell, Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Greenleaf Wittier.

great orations of the revolutionary period

Pactrick Henry's "Speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses" ('Give me liberty or give me death') and George Washington's "Farewell to the Army of the Patomac

James Fenimore Cooper

his early writings (including Leatherstocking Tales) provide readers a window into the uniquely American world through stirring accounts of drums along the Mohawk Trail, the French and Indian Wars, the futile British defense of Fort William Henry, and the

Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman. gave America its first truly unique poetry form.

Longfellow

Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Evageline. told of adversity, sorrow, and ultimate happiness--uniquely American Fashion.

Mark Twain

uniue blend of tall tale and fable.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville. Follows crazed Captain Ahab on his odyssey to conquer the great white whale that has outwitted him and his whaling crews time and again. Melville paints in painstaking detail and with knowledge the harsh life of a whaler out of New Bedfor

Nathaniel Hawthore and Herman Melville

Preeminent early American novelists. Write on subjects definitely regional, specific, and American, yet sharing insights about human foibles, fears, loves, doubts and triumphs.

naturalists

many writers believed that man was subject to a fate over which he had no control. the short stories "outcasts of Poker Flat" (Bret Harte) "To Build a Fire" (Jack London).

Realistic period

the late nineteenth centurey saw a reaction against the tendency of Romantic writers to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. writers like Frank Norris (the pit) and Upton Sinclair (the Jungle) used their novels to decry deporable working contit

realistic writers

wrote of common, ordinary people and events using realistic detail to reveal the harsh realities of life. they broached taboos by creating protagonists whose environments often destroyed them.

Robert Frost

one of the most loved twentieth-century American poets. His New England motifs of snowy evenings, birches, apple picking, stone wall mending, hired hands, and nature relate universal truths through exquisite diction, polysyllabic words and rare allusions

Romantic Period

composed of Early American folk tales and the emergence of a distinctly American style of writing.

romantic writers

created protagonists whose indomitable wills helped them rise above adversity.

Snowbound

by whittier. Relates the story of a captive family isolated by a blizzard and stresses family closeness.

Some memorable characters by James Fenimore Cooper

Natty Bumppo, Chingachgook, Uncas, and Magua. they reflect the American spirit in thought and action.

Southern Cavaliers

came to the New World with King George's blessing. They were given grants to pursue business ventures. ex: W. Byrd

The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn.

bold. oft banned. examined many taboo subjects. written partly in dialect and southern vernacular. some say: greatest american novel.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and The Man who Stole Hadleyburg

Mark Twain. epitomes of short story writing.

The Courtin

by Lowell. Uses Yankee dialect to tell a story

The House of Seven Gables

Nathanial Hawthorne: deals with kept secrets, loneliness, societal pariahs, and the triumph of love over horrible wrongs.

The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Abrose Bierce. Relates the unfortunate hanging of a Confederate soldier.

The Revolutionary Period

Primarily nonfiction. Essay, Pamphlet, Speech, Famous Document, and Epistle.

The Scarlet Letter

Nathanial Hawthorne's Masterpiece

Themes of Native-American Literature

The hardiness of the native body and soul, remorse for the destruction of the native way of life, the genocide of many tribes by the encroaching settlement and Manifest Destiny policies of the U.S. government.

Thomas Paine

wrote Common Sense: a pamphlet that spoke to the American patriots' common sense in dealing with issues in the cause of freedom.

Thoreau

wanted to get to the "marrow of life" immersed himself in nature. wrote passionately regarding his objections to the interference of government in the life of the individual.

Transcendentalism authors

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau. offshoots of American Romanticism.

twentieth-century american writing is divided into what 3 catagories?

drama, fiction, and poetry.

Walt Whitman

classified by poignant poetry and ushered in the Civil War period. paid homage to all who suffered from the ripple effects of war and presidential assasination.

What do Washingon Irvin's characters (Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle) represent?

uniquely American folklore devoid of English influences. Indelibly marked by their environment and the superstitions of the New Englander.

When Lilacs Last in the Courtyard Bloom'd

Walt Whitman. about the effects of Lincoln's death on the poet and nation.

Why were colonists' writing and speaking "British

because they had been schooled in England, even though their thinking became entirely American

William Bradord's excerpts from "the Mayflower Compact relate:

the hardships of crossing the Atlantic, the misery and suffering of the first winter, the approaches of the American Indians, the decimation of the colonists' ranks, and the establishment of the Bay colony of Massachusetts.