Thumbnail Sketches: Shifts in Historical Periods of American Literature through Epistemology and Viewpoints
1. Puritanism (1620-1730s):
a. Knowledge: comes from grace, scripture, typological history
b. World view is God directed
c. Social view: governmental theocracy, mutual suspicion
d. Self Concept: self loathing, very self conscious
e. View of Nature: emblematic of God's purposes, the living work of God. Earlier: fearful woods, Satan, Later: beauty
f. Representative Persons: Bradford/Winthrop--Edwards
2. Colonialism/Enlightenment (1740s-1820):
a. Knowledge: Lockian empiricism, through senses and reason
b. World view: natural laws are discoverable, Deism (celestial clockmaker)
c. Social view: democracy, common man is more moral, closer to truth, Constitution is "machine" to set government in motion
d. self concept: social, member of a community, be a good citizen, social works
e. View of Nature: mechanical, scientific, follows laws/rules, hierarchical separation of God, Man, Nature
f. Representative Persons: Franklin, Jefferson
3. Romantic Period (1820-1860/65)
a. Knowledge: genius, intuition, the sublime
b. World view: individual directed, only know through own mind
c. Social view: autocracy of the soul
d. Self concept: self discovery of your true self
e. View of Nature: organic, God, Man, Nature fused
f. Representative Persons: Emerson, Hawthorne
Elements of Transcendentalism:
-- combines world of senses with a world beyond the senses
-- triumph of feeling/intuition over scientific reason
-- exaltation of individual over society
-- impatience of bondage to custom and habit
-- thrilling delight in nature
Transcendental Doctrines:
a. living close to nature
b. dignity of manual labor
c. strong need of intellectual companionship and interests
d. great emphasis on "spiritual living"
e. Men's relation to God personal, not intermediation of ritualistic church
f. self-trust and self-reliance practiced at all times
g. intense individualism
Philosophy and Tone of Transcendental writings:
1. worth of the individual
2. revolutionary bent towards action
3. rejection of the past, especially European traditions
4. call for a new American literature (Insist on yourself, never imitate)
Romanticism [1830-1865] Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson
a. emphasis on the individual, center of life/experience
b. extraordinary characters in unusual circumstances
c. concentration on Nature over world alter/affected by man
-exault wild/natural, scorn the urban/artificial
d. often set in distant/historic/exotic past
e. importance of the imagination/intuition
Critique of Slavery--some common elements of slave narratives [1820-1865] Jacobs, Douglass
a. emphasis on family and attempts to destroy or deny family ties
b. undulating hope and hopelessness
c. dehumanization, animal imagery of both slave and slaveowner
d. preference for death rather than slavery
e. power and powerlessness,often tied to food imagery/hunger
f. religious/political hypocrisy of slave owners
Southwestern Humor [1830s-1880s]:
a. anti-intellectual bias
b. avid interest in "native" vernacular characters
c. exaggeration/hyperbole often used
d. interest in representing actual spoken dialects/vernacular
e. often uses a Frame structure [genteel narrator vs vernacular]
Local Color/Regionalism [1870-1910]:
a. folklore, local customs fading, need to be preserved
b. response to complexity of day, loss of pastoral
c. nostalgic
d. particular regional setting
e. simple, deceptive quality; best work becomes universal
Realism [1865-1910] -- Twain, Howells, James, Wharton
a. fidelity to actuality, reality as it appears through observation
b. objectivity, neutrality
c. social awareness, critical appraisal of society/institutions
d. vernacular/dialect, spoken language verisimilitude
e. greater concern over character over action (as in romanticism)
f. absolute opposition to sentimental fiction
Naturalism [1880-1900] -- Crane, London
a. attempted objectivity
b. frankness
c. amoral attitude toward material
d. philosophy of determinism
e. pessimism
f. projection of "strong" characters, animal or neurotic natures
Last modified April, 2000 by Dr. Michael O'Conner. Contact:
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