Characteristics

and Common Genre

of
English- American
Literature
 Characteristics
Of
English-American Literature
Native American Period
(present-1620)
• Oral Traditions of songs and stories
- Narratives, myths, legends, songs,
and creation stories
This focuses on:
- the natural world as sacred
- importance of land and place
Notable Works:
• “The Earth on the Turtle’s Back”
• “When Grizzlies Walked Upright”
• “Grandmother Spider Steals the Sun”
• :Creation by Women”
Colonial Period
(1620-1750)
• Literature of the period was
dominated by the Puritans and their
religious influences
• Emphasis on faith in one’s daily life
- Predestination – a person’s fate is
determined by God
- Original Sin – all are corrupt and
need a savior
- Puritan work ethic- belief in hard
work and simple, no frills living
- Theocracy – government ruled by
Bible/church
Types of Writings Writing Style
• Sermons • Writing is Utilitarian
• Diaries - not professional writers
• Personal Narratives • Writing in instructive
• Puritan Plain Style
- Simple and direct
Representative Authors:
• William Bradford (journal)
– Plymouth Plantation
• Anne Bradstreet (poetry) -
• Jonathan Edwards (sermon)
– Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
• Mary Rowlandson (captivity narrative)
– A Narrative of a captivity
• Phillis Wheatley (poetry)
• Olaudah Equiano (slave narrative)
Though not written during Puritan times, The Crucible by Author Miller and
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn depict life during the time when
Puritan theocracy prevailed.
Revolutionary Period:
Age of Reason
(1750-1800)
The Revolutionary
period usually refers to
writings that are
politically motivated,
either in support of
British rule, in support
of American patriotism
and independence, or
relating to the
Constitution.
 Genre/style
• Political pamphlets
• Travel writing Effects/Aspects
• Highly ornate style • Patriotism grows, instills
• Persuasive writing pride
• Letters • Creates common
agreement about issues
• National mission and the
American character
• Writings of Thomas
Jefferson, Thomas
Paine- “Common
Sense”
• Benjamin Franklin's
Poor Richard's
Almanac and "The
Autobiography"
Romanticism Period
1800-1860 
• Expansion of magazines,
newspapers, and book
publishing
• Slavery debates
• Industrial revolution
brings ideas that the "old
ways" of doing things are
now irrelevant
 Genre/Style
• Character sketches
• Frontier exploits
• Slave narratives
• Poetry
• Short stories
 Effects/Aspects
• Value feeling and intuition over
reasoning
• Journey away from corruption
of civilization and limits of
rational thought toward the
integrity of nature and freedom
of the imagination
• Helped instill proper gender
behavior for men and women
• Allowed people to re-imagine
the American past
• Washington Irving’s
"Rip Van Winkle
• William Cullen Bryant's
"Thanatopsis“
• Dunbar’s
"We Wear the Mask“
• Poems of Emily Dickinson
American Renaissance
Transcendentalism
1840-1860
• Transcendentalists:
*True reality is spiritual
- *Comes from18th century
philosopher Immanuel Kant
• Idealists
• Self-reliance & individualism
* Emerson & Thoreau
• Seeking true beauty and
understanding in life and in
nature
• Poetry
• Short Stories
• Novels
*Hold readers’ attention through dread
of a series of terrible possibilities
*Feature landscapes of dark forests,
extreme vegetation, concealed ruins
with horrific rooms, depressed
characters
Realism -Civil War &
Post War period 
1855
• Civil War brings
demand for a "truer"
type of literature that
does not idealize people
or places
Genre/Style
• Battlefield Photography
• Novels and short stories
• Objective narrator
• Does not tell reader how to
interpret story
• Dialogue includes voices
from around the country
• Social realism: aims to
change a specific social
problem
• Aesthetic realism: art that
insists on detailing the
world as one sees it
• Writings of Mark Twain,
Ambrose Bierce, Stephen
Crane The Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass
• The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (some
say 1st modern novel)
• Regional works like: The
Awakening. Ethan Frome,
and My Antonia (some say
modern)
Regionalism
1865-1915
• Regionalism was a literary movement
in which authors would write a story
about specific geographical areas.
• Writers in this time not only tried to
show the region they wrote about to
their readers, but they also made an
attempt at a sophisticated sociological
or anthropological treatment of the
culture of the region.
 Authors of Regionalism
• Willa Cather
• By writing about regions, • William Faulkner
the authors explore the • Kate Chopin
culture of that area • Frank Norris
including its-
- Languages
- Customs
- Beliefs
-History
NATURALISM
1890-1950
• Trend rather than a movement; never
formalized nor dominated by the influence of
a single writer
- A more extreme, intensified version of
realism
- Shows more unpleasant, ugly, shocking
aspects of life
- Objective picture of reality viewed with
scientific detachment
• Determinism – man’s life is dominated by the
forces he cannot control: biological instincts,
social environment
• No free will, no place for moral judgment
• Pessimism
• Disillusionment with the dream of success;
collapse of the predominantly agrarian myth
• Struggle of an individual to adopt to the
environment
• Society as something stable, its predictability
allowed one to present a universal human
situation through accurate representation of
particulars
• Faith in society and art
The Moderns
1900-1950
• Writers reflect the ideas of
Darwin (survival of the
fittest), Karl Marx (how
money and class structure
control a nation), and
Sigmund Freud (the power of
the subconscious)
• Overwhelming technological
changes of the 20th Century
• Rise of the youth culture
• WWI and WWII
  Genre/Style
• Novels Plays
• Poetry (a great
resurgence after deaths
of Whitman & Dickinson)
• Highly experimental as
writers seek a unique
style
• Use of interior
monologue & stream of
consciousness
 Effect/Aspect
• In Pursuit of the
American Dream
• Admiration for America
as land of Eden
• Optimism
• Importance of the
Individual
• Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
• Poetry of Jeffers, Williams, Cummings,
Frost, Eliot, Sandburg, Pound, Robinson,
Stevens
• Rand's Anthem
• Short stories and novels of Steinbeck,
Hemingway, Thurber, Welty, and Faulkner
• Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun & Wright's
Native Son (an outgrowth of Harlem
Renaissance-- see below)
• Miller's The Death of a Salesman (some
consider Postmodern)The Moderns
Examples
 Harlem Renaissance
(parallel to Modernism)
1920
• Mass African-American
migration to Northern
urban centers
• African-Americans have
more access to media
and publishing outlets
after they move north
 Genre/Style
• Allusions to African-
American spirituals
• Uses structure of blues
songs in poetry (repetition)
• Superficial stereotypes
revealed to be complex
characters
  Effect/Aspects
• Gave birth to "gospel
music“
• Blues and jazz
transmitted across • Essays & Poetry of W.E.B.
American via radio DuBois
and phonographs • Poetry of McKay, Toomer,
Cullen
• Poetry, short stories and
novels of Zora Neale Hurston
and Langston Hughes
• Their Eyes Were Watching
God
Postmodernism
1950-present
• Post-World War II prosperity
• Media culture interprets
values
• Disillusionment
• Resistance to easily
recognizable themes or
morals in a story
• Insists that values are not
permanent but only "local" or
"historical"
• Mixing of fantasy with nonfiction;
blurs lines of reality for reader
No heroes
• Concern with individual in
isolation
• Social issues as writers align with
feminist & ethnic groups
• Usually humorless
• Narratives
• MetafictionPresent tense
• Magic realism
• Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and The
Executioner's Song Feminist & Social Issue
poets: Plath, Rich, Sexton, Levertov,
Baraka, Cleaver, Morrison, Walker &
Giovanni
• Miller's The Death of a Salesman & The
Crucible (some consider Modern)
• Lawrence & Lee's Inherit the Wind
• Capote's In Cold Blood
• Stories & novels of Vonnegut
• Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
• Beat Poets: Kerouac, Burroughs, &
Ginsberg
• Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
 Common Genres
Of
English-American Literature
 Literary Fiction
• Literary fiction novels are considered works with
artistic value and literary merit. They often include
political criticism, social commentary, and
reflections on humanity.
 “The Open Boat”
Stephen Crane “The Known World”
Edward Jones

“This side of Paradise”

F. Scoot Fitzgerald
 Mystery
• Mystery novels, also called detective fiction, follow a
detective solving a case from start to finish. They drop
clues and slowly reveal information, turning the reader
into a detective trying to solve the case, too.
 “The Cipher”
Nina Guerrera

“The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes”
“Death on the Nile”
A. Conan Doyle Hercule Poirot
 Thriller
• Thriller novels are dark, mysterious, and suspenseful
plot-driven stories. They very seldom include comedic
elements, but what they lack in humor, they make up for
in suspense.
 “7th Heaven”
James Patterson

“Bird Box” “Dead or Alive”

Josh Malerman Tom Clancy and
Grant Blackwood
Horror
• Horror novels are meant to scare, startle, shock, and
even repulse readers. Generally focusing on themes of
death, demons, evil spirits, and the afterlife, they prey
on fears with scary beings like ghosts, vampires,
werewolves, witches, and monsters.
 Historical
• Historical fiction novels take place in the past.
Written with a careful balance of research and
creativity, they transport readers to another time
and place—which can be real, imagined, or a
combination of both.
 Romance
• Romantic fiction centers around love stories between
two people. They’re lighthearted, optimistic, and have
an emotionally satisfying ending.
 Western
• Western novels tell the stories of cowboys, settlers, and
outlaws exploring the western frontier and taming the
American Old West. They’re shaped specifically by their
genre-specific elements and rely on them in ways that
novels in other fiction genres don’t.
 Bildungsroman
• Bildungsroman is a literary genre of stories about a
character growing psychologically and morally from
their youth into adulthood. Literally translated, a
bildungsroman is “a novel of education” or “a novel of
formation.”
 Speculative Fiction
• Speculative fiction is a supergenre that encompasses a
number of different types of fiction, from science
fiction to fantasy to dystopian. The stories take place in
a world different from our own.
 Science Fiction
• Sci-fi novels are speculative stories with imagined
elements that don’t exist in the real world. Common
elements of sci-fi novels include time travel, space
exploration, and futuristic societies.
 Fantasy
• Fantasy novels are speculative fiction stories with
imaginary characters set in imaginary universes.
They’re inspired by mythology and folklore and
often include elements of magic. The genre attracts
both children and adults; well-known titles
include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis
Carroll and the Harry Potter series by J.K.
Rowling.
 Dystopian
• Dystopian novels are a genre of science fiction.
They’re set in societies viewed as worse than the
one in which we live.
 Magical Realism
• Magical realism novels depict the world truthfully,
plus add magical elements. The fantastical elements
aren’t viewed as odd or unique; they’re considered
normal in the world in which the story takes place.
 Realist Literature
• Realist fiction novels are set in a time and place
that could actually happen in the real world. They
depict real people, places, and stories in order to
be as truthful as possible.
Thank
You