Download American Literature Timeline Cheat Sheet and more Cheat Sheet American literature in PDF only on Docsity! American Literature Timeline Period Dates Period Name Period Characteristics Famous Authors and Works Arrived 40,000 - 20,000 B.C Native Americans 1. Oral literature: epic narratives, creation myths, stories, poems, songs. 2. Use stories to teach moral lessons and convey practical information about the natural world. 3. Deep respect for nature and animals 4. Cyclical world view 5. Figurative language/parallelism 1600-1800 First “American” colonies established Salem Witch Trials Puritanism 1. Wrote mostly diaries and histories, which expressed the connections between God an their everyday lives. 2. Sought to “purify” the Church of England by reforming to the simpler forms of worship and church organization described in the New Testament 3. Saw religion as a personal, inner experience. 4. Believed in original sin and “elect” who would be saved. 5. Used a plain style of writing William Bradford (“Of Plymouth Plantation”), Anne Bradstreet (poetry), Jonathan Edwards (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”), Edward Taylor (“Huswifery”) 1750-1800 Revolutionary War The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and The Declaration of Independence were created. Rationalism “The Age of Reason” “The Enlighten- ment” 1. Mostly comprised of philosophers, scientists, writing speeches and pamphlets. 2. Human beings can arrive at truth (God’s rules) by using deductive reasoning, rather than relying on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or intuition. Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography), Patrick Henry (“Speech to the Virginia Convention”), Thomas Paine (“The Crisis”), Phyllis Wheatley (poetry) 1800-1860 Industrialization War of 1812 California Gold Rush Romanticism 1. Valued feeling, intuition, idealism, and inductive reasoning. 2. Placed faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination. 3. Shunned the artificiality of civilization and seek unspoiled nature as a path to spirituality. 4. Championed individual freedom and the worth of the individual. 5. Saw poetry as the highest expression of the imagination. 6. Dark Romantics: Used dark and supernatural themes/settings (Gothic style) Washington Irving (“Rip Van Winkle”), Emily Dickinson (poetry), Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Edgar Allan Poe (“The Raven”), Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) 1840-1860 Abolitionist, Utopian, and Women’s Suffrage Movements Transcendentalism “The American Renaissance” 1. Everything in the world, Including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul 2. People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls. 3. Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to tradition Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature, “Self-Reliance”), Henry David Thoreau (Walden, Life in the Woods). Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
