American Literature
Selected Periods and Movements
Explorers, colonists and Puritans wrote of their experiences and philosophy/theology. Although not acknowledged by the European settlers, the Native Americans also recorded their experiences in poem, story and song.
Featured Author: Anne Bradstreet
Literature of this time period reflects a change in the social structure from one which was largely influenced by Protestant theology to one which is centered on a respect for the common man and a move toward democracy.
Featured Author: Benjamin Franklin
The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne
Moby Dick by Melville
Walden by Thoreau
Walking by Thoreau
These writers infused their writing with “fancy, imagination, emotion, nature, individuality and exotica” (The American Experience). Transcendentalism and anti-transcendentalism are hallmarks of this era as many of these writers explored man’s relationship to nature and his desire to reach a higher consciousness outside traditional theology.
Featured Author: Walt Whitman
The Awakening by Chopin
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Twain
Influenced by the events preceding and following the Civil War, literature from this period is less philosophical in nature than the romantic period and more cynical and questioning. This period reflects a concern for the everyday experiences of the common man.
Featured Author: Kate Chopin
Writers in this literary period tended to see humans as the “hapless victims of immutable natural laws” (The American Experience). They were also influenced by the industrial revolution.
Featured Author: Chief Joseph
The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
In Our Time by Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
Cannery Row by Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
The reader and the reader’s response to a text is the focus of this time period. Writers began to experiment with form and structure in order to evoke a particular response from readers.
Featured Author: Ernest Hemingway
"The renaissance mainly involved a group of writers and intellectuals associated (often loosely) with Harlem, the district of Manhattan that, during the migration of African Americans from the rural South, became the major center for urbanized blacks.
The Harlem writers… engaged in an intense debate regarding the place of the African American in American life, and on the role and identity of the African-American artist” (1920s-Mid-1930s Harlem Renaissance).
Featured Author: Langston Hughes
A Raisin in the Sun by Hansberry
Dance Hall of the Dead by Hillerman
The Natural by Malamud
The Crucible by Miller
Death of a Salesman by Miller
Literature of this period reflects the social activism and social change characteristic of the times.
Featured Author: Arthur Miller
Tears of a Tiger by Draper
Ellen Foster by Gibbons
The Fault in Our Stars by Green
Out of the Dust by Hesse
October Sky by Hickam
The Rookie by Morris
October Sky by Hickam
Monster by Myers
The Things They Carried by O'Brien
42: The Jackie Robinson Story by Rosenberg
Literature of this period has its roots in the latter half of the 20th century and reflects the new and emerging forms of writing and literacy characteristic of the digital age.
Featured Author: Anna Quindlen