.:|| some essays regarding the American Literature ||:.

[Dreams]

Hello every one

here are some articles regarding American Literature
to tell the truth i haven't written them all by myself
but rather rearranged the information i've got
from different resources either from books or websites

hope you find them beneficial

kind regards

Dreams

[Dreams]

The Colonial Period


The colonial period has started in 1607 and ended in 1763. Englishmen who have imitated the form and the style of the English literature write the American literature at that time. Consequently, the writings of the literature are not good because they are imitative, mostly due to avocation and they are described as the colonial literature. However, the literature is utilitarian though it showed a cultural lag. Therefore, there is no distinctive American literature at that time.
When the European colonists have arrived in the Americas, Native Americans have been speaking hundreds of distinct languages, engaging in different religious practices, and structuring their cultures in extraordinarily diverse economic and political forms. Native American literatures have been originated in oral performance, which are offered to audiences as dramatic events in time and language for the ear. Unlike the Europeans, most do not use a written alphabet. It is not until the early nineteenth century, with the advent of Romanticism in Europe, that Native American verbal expression is recognized as literature from a Western perspective.
Many European colonial settlements are ruined by in-fighting, including riots and mutinies among greedy settlers. Amidst this disorder, European nations have continued to expand their colonial presence in the Americas.
Moreover, there are two divisions of American literature at that time; the literature of the south and the literature of the north. Literature of the south is affected by the exploration of that time since it is a phase of the renaissance. Therefore, authors such as John Smith, John and Ann Cotton are Elizabethan; they are curious and there writings are energetic and adventurous. Their prose, describing their adventures, is dynamic, complicated, and intricate. Yet, their poetry is full of conceits using free or blank verse and their forms are the styles of the metaphysical poets. However, their writing and culture are not preserved due to the lack of printing.
There are two of the most important writers of the colonial period. One is Captain John Smith, an annalist who has convinced English readers that there is an earthly paradise not far from their shores. His most successful works are The general history of Virginia, New England, and the summer isles, A description of New England, and New England’s trials. The other is John Cotton, who is a colonist known with his good style in prose. His poems are metaphysical in style. Unfortunately, most of his writings were lost.
Literature of the north is more religious; most of the authors of that time are separatists from the church of England who call themselves the pilgrims and the puritans. They have been converted into both myth and ideological argument. They think of themselves as soldiers of God on earth by sowing discord among those who profess to be Christians. The believers have saw no hope of reforming a national church and its Anglican hierarchy from within. Therefore, they have left England and settled in Holland. Yet, their language has isolated them, and because they fear that they would lose their identity as a religious community living as strangers in a foreign land, they have settled in Virginia. In spite of the fact that their separatism does not make them representative of the large number of the emigrants who come to these shores in the seventeenth century, their story has become an integral part of the American literature. The puritans want to establish a Christian commonwealth; however, their aim is far away from democracy, which has caused of the separation between the pilgrims and the puritans. Puritans hold the writing of history in high regard, for as heirs of renaissance thought, they believe that lasting truths are to be gained by studying the lives of noble individuals. However, their writings and their history are primary to defend the colony through religious writing, sermons, biographies and poems, which are utilitarian in purpose. Their poetry is an imitation of the metaphysical conceit of English religious poets such as Herbert.
There are many famous writers of this period such as William Bradford, who is a statesman, annalist, and a versatile and the greatest of early historians. His most important work is History of the Plymouth Plantation. Additionally, there is Mary Rowlandsom, who is the first woman writer, has been captured by the Indians for eleven weeks. She has many contributions to American Literature of her time such as The Sovereignty and Goodness of God Together, and Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. Furthermore, there is Roger Williams, who has gone to America and served as a preacher. He, also, has many influential works such as A Key into the Language of America, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, and The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody. Moreover, there is Cotton Mather, who comes from a respectable family. He has his MA from Harvard and is very industrious; he has produced five hundred books. In addition, there is Michael Wigglesworth, who is a religious man, minister, medical doctor and poet. Likewise, Edward Taylor, who is a religious poet and minister, born in England and has studied in Harvard. His major works are Huswifery, The Ebb and Flow, Meditation eight, and Meditation three.

[Dreams]

The Revolutionary Period


The revolutionary period has started in 1765 and ended in 1810. At that time, America witnessed the decline of Puritan influence. Since the scientist Sir Isaac Newton and philosopher John Locke saw no conflict between their discoveries and traditionally held Christians truths. They saw nothing heretical in arguing that the universe was an orderly system and that by application of reason humanity would comprehend its law. But the inevitable result of there inquiries was to make the universe seem more rational and benevolent than it had been represented by Puritan doctrine. Because the world seemed more comprehensible, people paid less attention to revealed religion.

Although some historians view the great number of religious revivals in England and America between 1735 and 1750 as a result of desperate efforts to reassert outmoded Puritan values in the face of new ideas, others have pointed out that they were directly inspired by the new cult of feeling whose foundation was laid by John Locke. One of the most vocal revivalists was Jonathan Edwards, whose name has become synonymous with the “Great Awakening” of the 1730s. Edwards began to rejuvenate the basic tenets of Calvinism, some of which were difficult to reconcile with Enlightenment principles. Opponents to the Awakening engaged in pamphlet wars with revivalists in order to win over public opinion.

This period also witnessed the rise of many cities such as Philadelphia and New York as literary capitals. Furthermore, it was marked by the appearance of the novel and the drama. Two remarkably coincident phenomena, one political, and the other aesthetic characterize it.

The Revolutionary period was quite different from any that had preceded it. Before the war, although the issues of the American press showed, as noted, a sprinkling of non-theological works, they were nevertheless overwhelmingly religious in character. Now politics becomes of first importance. There was great difficulty in obtaining paper during and just before the war, and as pamphlets were too expensive, not to say books, broadsides became the prevailing form of publication. The publishers regularly advertised for rags. Yet although American publishing bears eloquent witness to the all-obsessing nature of the stern struggle, coming as it did at a time when our publishing facilities were not materially far enough advanced to absorb the blow, nevertheless the love of literature was not dead. The opening years of the Revolution saw, in addition to Brackenridge, Trumbull, Freneau, and Hopkinson, who of course would be issued regardless of conditions, works issued of Alsop, Defoe, Falconer, Garrick, Milton, Pope, Sterne, Thomson, Voltaire, and Young.

Back of all publication, and in the final analysis dominating it, stands of course the psychology of the reading public. Somewhere, about the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, American publishers began to sense the fact that the people of the country, having won some slight measure of victory over the imperious necessities of mere material existence. And having to some degree slowly broadened down to a mellowness where life was no longer solely a struggle with the flesh and the devil, were beginning to demand real literature.

The South, even before the Revolution, was obtaining by direct importation, through book dealers, and from American publishers large quantities of belles-lettres, especially novels.

The revolution made artists self-conscious about American subjects. But it would be another fifty years before writers discovered ways of being American without compromising their integrity. One of the ironies of American history is that the revolution itself has rarely proved to be usable subject for American literature and art.

[Dreams]

The Romantic Period


As an intellectual and aesthetic phenomenon, Romanticism has dominated the cultural thought of America from 1810 until 1865. Since the seventeenth century writing are religious and the eighteenth century writing is political, writing of the Romantic period has succeeded to establish literature since the Romantic Movement has exerted a powerful hold on Western thought and culture at that time. Nonetheless, three civilizations and cultures helped to shape the Romantic Movement in the American literature which are the German influence, especially the ideas of Manuel Count, the Orientalists influence, especially the Indian philosophy, and of French pauperism. However, it is the American writing that popularize the ideas of this movement. In the early years of this movement, educated Americans are generally more familiar with Greek and Roman history, European history, Greco-Roman classics, and British literature than they are with the work of colonial and Revolutionary writers. Most of them have advocated the need for a national poem; critics have encouraged aspiring writers to take up subjects such as the American Revolution, Native American legends, and stories of colonial battles in order to celebrate the new country. Nevertheless, the popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels has altered early calls for a national literature. Personal travel books have been adaptable to different regional experiences of emerging American writers.
In poetry, American poets have become increasingly preoccupied with articulating the personal experience that becomes, in turn, a representative one. They believe that a man should develop a communion with nature, one of the ideas of William Wordsworth. They introduce this natural philosophy into religion. The poet takes on, to some extent, religious status not only as prophet and moral leader, but also as a divinely inspired vehicle through which nature and the common ‘man’ find their voices. In aesthetic terms, this individuality has translated into the revolution of feeling against the classical balance in favor of Romantic asymmetry. Romantic poets have ceased struggling to make the expression fit conventional forms and carve out new forms to encase their expression and thought. Thus, they believe that the Romantic Soul requires an equally dynamic new language to make it understood.
There are many poets who have helped to popularize romantic ideas through their writings. For instance, William Culler Bryant, a poet, editor and a classicist. He has written Byronic poetry and many other poems. He is influenced by Blair White, Cowper, Thomson and Byron. His work, written in an English romantic style and celebrating the countryside of New England, is well received. Moreover, he is the “first American writer of verse to win international acclaim." He has many successful poems such as To a Waterfowl, The Prairies, and Thanatopsis. Likewise, Edger Allen Poe, a poet, short story writer and a critic. His major works are Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, The Raven, Annabelle, and The Cask of Amontillado.
In novel,
Embracing the unknown and unafraid of the contraries of human existence, the Romantics overthrew the philosophical, artistic--even geographical--limitations of the Enlightenment. The quintessential Romantic figure was the Wanderer, literally and figuratively journeying in search of new lands, new places in the imagination, and new vistas for the soul. Exotic lands, the amorphous world of dreams, the dark terrors of the psyche as well as the dizzying heights of creativity and the dazzling beauties of Nature--these were all waystations along the Romantic quester's route.

[Dreams]

The Realism Period


The realism movement has started from 1865 until 1914. Before the Civil War and industrialization, workers, the poor, vagrants, and unheroic soldiers are rarely the subjects of fiction. But changes in the marketplace, most notably in the publishing industry, has changed that. Newspapers has become important spaces to distribute political, social, and cultural ideas. Many writers including Ambrose Bierce, Sui Sin Far, Abraham Cahan, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, and William Dean Howells began their careers as journalists. By the mid-eighteenth century, monthly magazines showcasing a “distinctively” American culture has emerged as an important forum for writers.

As American writers began to struggle with the particularities of their nation, from the 1830s to the end of the century, realism became an important aspect of the American literary aesthetic. Many writers have struggled with the crisis of representation; the notion that a gap exists between the literary representation and that which is being represented. Some writers have combined particularities with satire, reflecting more on human consciousness than on the settings or furnishings. Others, like Henry James and Mark Twain, have understood language as an interpretation of the real, rather than the real thing itself.

An amplification of realism, naturalism, particularly that practiced by a group of writers such as Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London, has been informed by philosophical and scientific developments in Europe and North America. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, has proposed the idea of human evolution and some of his ideas have been extended to account for human behavior in literary works. While industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie extended this argument to explain why only a few individuals would ever be able to be at the top of the economic ladder, few writers unquestioningly have adopted a vulgarly deterministic view of human behavior. Stephen Crane, for instance, has hinted that biology, psychology, and environment shaped, but did not wholly determine, human behavior.

Furthermore, regionalism and the desire to preserve expressions of modes of life before industrialization became an important impulse in American writing. Focusing on specific regions within the nation, writers such as Bret Harte, Hamlin Garland, Mark Twain, and Kate Chopin have captured the sensibilities of particular places. Women writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Sui Sin Far, and Constance Fenimore Woolson offered the additional perspective of women’s experiences. Instead of merely lamenting the postwar economic and spiritual devastation of the nation, this new group of women has explored issues of relevance to women’s political, economic, and social conditions.

Moreover, non-fictional realist works have been also written to speak of the unsolved social problems of the time. Women’s rights, the devastation of nature, exploitation of labor, racial inequality, and corruption among political and business leaders have become important topics for non-fictional prose. However, Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk have become important works that focused on racial inequality in the United States.

Additionally, many authors of the era have not separate aesthetics from politics. Changing social, economic, and political realities in the period following industrialization has been dealt with in imaginative and distinctive ways by authors of the period. In short, the enduring forms of fictional realism and non-fictional prose of the era have created a space for literature to reflect on the radical transformation of life.

There are many characteristics of the writings of this age. Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot. Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject. Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past. Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class. Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances. Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact. Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses. Interior or psychological realism a variant form. In Black and White Strangers, Kenneth Warren suggests that a basic difference between realism and sentimentalism is that in realism, "the redemption of the individual lay within the social world," but in sentimental fiction, "the redemption of the social world lay with the individual" (75-76). The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed in twentieth century; Howellsian realism fell into disfavor as part of early twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition."

[Randa Amer]

great job sister

keep on

[محمد العنزي]

Great effort

I really appreciate it

Thank you too much sister

May God bless you

With best wishes

[Dreams]

dear Randa , Sir

thank you very much
i'm merely following your path

regards !

[أحمد النافع]

thank you dear sister so much
i will read them all
Regards

[Dreams]

good luck reading them brother
seriosly, i wasn't interested in writing them
though i have enjoyed reading the works of
some american poets


regards