American literature

Table of Contents

Introduction & Top Questions
The 17th century
The 18th century
- The new nation
- Notable works of the period
  - Poets and poetry
  - Drama and the novel
The 19th century
- Early 19th-century literature
- American Renaissance
  - New England Brahmins
  - The Transcendentalists
  - New England reformers and historians
  - Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman
- From the Civil War to 1914
  - Literary comedians
  - Fiction and local colourists
  - The naturalists
  - Henry James
  - Critics of the gilded age
  - Henry Adams
  - Poets of the era
The 20th century
- Writing from 1914 to 1945
  - Experiments in drama
  - The new poetry
  - Fiction
    - Critics of society
    - Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck
    - Lyric fictionists
  - Literary criticism
    - Socio-literary critics
    - Moral-aesthetic critics
- After World War II
  - The novel and short story
    - Realism and “metafiction”
    - Southern fiction
    - African American literature
    - New fictional modes
    - The influence of Raymond Carver
    - Multicultural writing
  - Poetry
    - Formal poets
    - Experimentation and Beat poetry
    - “Deep image” poets
    - New directions
    - Autobiographical approaches
  - Drama
    - Miller, Williams, and Albee
    - The Off-Broadway ascendancy
  - Literary and social criticism
    - Literary biography and the “new journalism”
    - Theory

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

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Vietnam War. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson awards the Distinguished Service Cross to First Lieutenant Marty A. Hammer, during a visit to military personnel, Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam, October 26, 1966. President Johnson

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American literature: Related Content

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Photos and Videos

John Smith: Virginia

The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America

Poor Richard's almanac

Washington Irving

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Henry David Thoreau: Walden Pond cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Josh Billings, Mark Twain, Petroleum V. Nasby

Consider science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury's views on Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher”

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Topics

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Quiz

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

Poetry: First Lines

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

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Emily Dickinson, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right

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List

Girl Reading On Turquoise Couch

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Chapter 4 pg 42 - Chapter header of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Published in 1884 by The American Publishing Company

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Close up of books. Stack of books, pile of books, literature, reading. Homepage 2010, arts and entertainment, history and society

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