Literary Movements

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COLONIAL LITERATURE

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(1472-1750)

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Most of this is histories, journals, personal poems, sermons, and diaries. Most of this literature is either utilitarian, very personal, or religious. We call it Puritan because the majority of the writers during this period were strongly influenced by Puritan ideals and values. Jonathan Edwards continues to be recognized from this period.
John Smith (1608-1776) Benjamin Franklin

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THE ENLIGHTENMENT

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(1750-1800)

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the intellectual thriving period in America in the mid-to-late 18th century, especially as it relates to American Revolution on the one hand and the European Enlightenment on the other Called the Enlightenment period due to the influence of science and logic, this period is marked in US literature by political writings. Genres included political documents, speeches, and letters. Benjamin Franklin is typical of this period. There is a lack of emphasis and dependence on the Bible and more use of common sense (logic) and science. There was not a divorce from the Bible but an adding to or expanding of the truths found there.

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EARLY AMERICAN NOVEL

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4

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William Hill Brown – “The Power of Sympathy” (1791)
Susanna Rowson – “Charlotte Temple “ (1791)
Hannah Webster Foster – “The Coquette” (1797)
Charles Brockden Brown – “Wieland” (1798)

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ROMANTICISM

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The European Romantic movement reached America in the early 19th century

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The Romantic movement gave rise to New England Transcendentalism which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and Universe. The European Romantic movement reached America in the early 19th century. Response to the Enlightenment. American Romanticism. Distinct from European Romanticism, the American form emerged somewhat later, was based more in fiction than in poetry, and incorporated a (sometimes almost suffocating) awareness of history, particularly the darkest aspects of American history. Notable authors: Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Romanticism was a literary and artistic movement of the nineteenth century that arose in reaction against eighteenth-century Neoclassicism and placed a premium on fancy, imagination, emotion, nature, individuality, and exotica. There’s a movement here from personal and political documents to entertaining ones. Purely American topics were introduced such as frontier life. Romantic elements can be found in the works of American writers as diverse as Cooper, Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Dickinson, Hawthorne, and Melville. Romanticism is particularly evident in the works of the New England Transcendentalists.

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Pre-Raphaelitism

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19th century

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19th century, primarily English movement based ostensibly on undoing innovations by the painter Raphael. Many were both painters and poets. Notable authors: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti

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Transcendentalism

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(1836 when Emerson joined the Transcendentalist club and through to about 1880 (when the works of Dickinson and Whitman were waning))

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(1836 when Emerson joined the Transcendentalist club and through to about 1880 (when the works of Dickinson and Whitman were waning)) 19th century American movement: poetry and philosophy concerned with self-reliance, independence from modern technology. Notable authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau (1840-1855) -Transcendentalism was an American literary and philosophical movement of the nineteenth century. The Transcendentalists, who were based in New England, believed that intuition and the individual conscience “transcend” experience and thus are better guides to truth than are the senses and logical reason. Influenced by Romanticism, the Transcendentalists respected the individual spirit and the natural world, believing that divinity was present everywhere, in nature and in each person. The Transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, W.H. Channing, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody. The anti-Transcendentalist (Hawthorne and Melville) rebelled against the philosophy that man is basically good. A third group, the Fireside poets, wrote about more practical aspects of life such as dying and patriotism.