American Literature & Rhetoric

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.

These writers infused threir writng 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 of traditional theology. 

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.

"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).

Literature of this period has its roots in the latter half of the 20th  century and reflects the  new and emerging forms of writing in the digital age.