Day 20

American Literature
Major Movements and Writers
Native American Oral Tradition
Puritanism or Colonial 1620-1750
Movements
Revolutionary, Age of Reason, 1750-1800
Enlightenment

Romanticism, Dark 1800-1865

Romanticism, Anti-
Transcendentalism, American
Gothic
Transcendentalism 1840-1860
Realism 1865-1914
Naturalism 1885-1930
Regionalism 1865-1895
Modernism 1914-1945
Lost Generation, Jazz Age, 1917-1937
Roaring 20s, the Harlem
Renaissance

Beat Generation 1950-1965

Contemporary or 1939-Present
Postmodernism
An Overview
 Native American (Before 1600)
 Characterized by oral traditions, epic poems, creation myths, songs, and poetry.
Native American literature was well established long before European settlers
arrived.
 Puritanism or Colonial (1620-1750)
 Revolutionary, Age of Reason, Enlightenment (1750-1800)
 Literature of this period was frequently satirical and sceptical.
 Romanticism, American Gothic (1800-1865)
 This era valued feeling, intuition, and idealism
 It placed faith in interior experience and imagination
 Individual freedom and worth were paramount, and poetry was seen as the
highest expression of the mind
 The Dark Romantics, or American Gothic writers, combined these values with dark
supernatural themes and settings.
An Overview

 Transcendentalism (1840-1860)
 advocated self-reliance and individualism over authority and conformity to
tradition, believing institutions and organizations were responsible for corrupting
the inherent goodness of people.
 Reaction against rationalism
 In their writing, transcendentalists commonly reflected on nature, a unified
“divine spirit”, common to all people, and community.

 Realism, Naturalism & Regionalism (1865-1914)

 this movement was marked by feelings of disillusionment.
 Familiar subjects included ghettos of rapidly growing cities, the Industrial
Revolution, and corrupt politicians.
 Authors focused on painting a realistic setting of everyday life and ordinary
people, including local colour, while also seeking to explain human behaviour.
An Overview

 Modernism (1914-1945)
 began as an extension of realism, but made efforts to break with literary and poetic
traditions.
 Authors of this era were bold and experimental in style; an example -“stream of
consciousness”.
 Commonly dealing with the struggles of individuals, modernist literature can seem
bleak, but is characterized by the optimistic belief that people can change the world
around them.

 Lost Generation, Jazz Age, Roaring 20s & The Harlem Renaissance (1917-1937)
 Alongside modernism, African American culture in Harlem, New York was flourishing.
 Much of the style derived from poetry rhythms based on spirituals, jazz lyrics on the
blues, and the use of slang in everyday diction.
 These influences intersected with prohibition, reactions to WWI, and the nightlife of the
big city to produce an energetic progressive culture.
American Revolution and Literature

 1775- 1783
 Revolution to free themselves from the political and cultural dependence
on Britain
 Revolution was followed by search for native culture
 Issues related to independence
 European influence in early years
 Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine etc.
 Thomas Jefferson’s ‘The Declaration of Independence’- a classic in
American Prose (1776)

 Revolutionary Age (1765- 1790)

 Revolution- 1775-1783; Declaration of Independence- 1776 July 4
American Enlightenment

 18th century movement emphasized on Rationality, Scientific Inquiry and

Representative government
 Enlightenment writers and thinkers devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty
and equality as the natural rights of man

Neoclassicism

 Writings in neoclassical style

 Epic, Mock epic and satire
Benjamin Franklin (1706- 90)

 The Busy Body- a series of essays

 Poor Richard’s Almanack
Thomas Paine (1737- 1809)

 “Common Sense”- political pamphlet

 Rights of Man (1791)
 The Age of Reason (1794, 1795, 1807)
Early National Period (1775- 1824)

Washington Irving (1783- 1859)

 ‘father of American short stories’
 Occasionally used the penname ‘Geoffrey Crayon’
Works:
 The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon- contains Rip Wan Winkle & The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow
 Wrote biography of George Washington

James Fennimore Cooper (1789- 1851)

 The Leatherstocking Tales- most famous of his novels (5 Tales)
 American Romanticism (1828-65)
• From 1820s; Emerson and Thoreau- major figures
• Could be considered the real beginning of American literature- 1st great period in literature
• Includes the period of American Renaissance (1850s)
• Emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, a liking for the
picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational and the supernatural
• The strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man

Elements of American Romanticism

• Qualities of the American Frontier • Mingling of races due to large-scale
• Ties with nature immigration
• Industrialization led to North/South divide
• Optimism • Issue of slavery
• Spirit of experimentation • The Civil War (1861-65, chiefly over
slavery)
in science & other institutions
American Renaissance

 1850s
 Major works of this period:
 R W Emerson’s Representative Men
 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
 Herman Melville’s Moby- Dick
 Thoreau’s Walden
 Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

 Individualism, Nature, Emotion, Imagination, Acceptance of Diversity

 Two Predominant genres: The Sentimental Novel & The Romance
 Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe
(1811- 1896)
• American abolitionist and author
• Best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Wrote 30 books, including novels, travel memoirs &collections of articles and letters
• “This is the lady who started the great civil war”- Lincoln about her
• Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
• Her first novel; Subtitle: “Life among the Lowly”
• Portrays the harsh conditions for enslaved African Americans

Other works:
• The Christian Slave (1855, drama)
• Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856)
• Our Charley and What to do with Him (1858)
• The Minister’s Wooing (1859)
• Agnes of Sorrento (1862)
• Religious Poems (1867)
• We and our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street: A Novel (1875)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804- 1864)
• American novelist and short story writer; Related to Dark Romanticism
• His writing centres on New England; moral metaphors; dark romanticism; deep
psychological complexities
• First published work is the novel Fanshawe (1828)- published anonymously
• The Scarlet Letter (1850) is his masterpiece
• Subtitle: A Romance
• Historical fiction; set in Boston, between 1642-49
• Hester Prynne, Pearl, Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale, Chillingworth - characters

Major Works:
• Twice-Told Tales (1837)- collection of short stories
• The House of the Seven Gables, A Romance (1851)
• The Blithedale Romance (1852)
• The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni (1860)
• The Dolliver Romance (1863)
• Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) – short stories
• A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1851) -short stories
Herman Melville (1819- 1891)
• Novelist, short story writer, and poet - Belongs to American Romanticism
• Best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851) and Typee (1846)
• Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)- poetry on American Civil War
• Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876) is his metaphysical
epic
Typee (1846)
• His first book; subtitle: “A Peep at Polynesian Life”
• Omoo (1847) is its sequel; both are travel-adventures
Moby-Dick or The Whale (1851)
• Considered as one of the great American novels
• Story of a whaling voyage narrated by Ishamael; “Call me Ishmael”
• Captain Ahab
Other Works:
• Redburn (1849) and Mardi (1849)
• White-Jacket: The World in a man of War (1850)
• Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)- psychological novel
• The Confidence-Man (1857)- his last work of prose
• Billy Budd, Sailor (1924)- unfinished novella; posthumously published
Edger Allen Poe (1809- 1849)
• Pioneer of American short story, detective fiction and science fiction
• Poems are musical and strictly metrical
• The most famous poem “The Raven” (1845)
• Belongs to Dark Romanticism, a reaction to Transcendentalism
• Developed a unique style in literary criticism
• Baudelaire translated Poe's stories and admired him
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue - early detective story
• He believed that strangeness was an essential ingredient of beauty
• His writing is often exotic
Works
• Raven (1845)
• To Science (1829)
• To Helen (1836)
• The Bell (1849)
• El Dorado (1849)
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
Age of Transcendentalism

• 1820s and ‘30s

• Beginnings of Transcendentalism - Influenced by Montaigne,
Swedenborg, Hegel, Plato
• Centered on Emerson
• Transcendentalism: Influences
• English and German Romanticism
• Hindu and Buddhist thought
• Thoughts of Confucius
The Transcendental Club
• Organized in 1836
• Includes -
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Margaret Fuller
• EW Channing
• Amos Bronson Alcott
• The Dial (1840-44)
• Official magazine of Transcendentalism Quarterly magazine
• The first issue, edited by Margaret Fuller, published in July 1840 in
Boston
• Emerson called it a ‘Journal in a new spirit’
• The title was suggested by Bronson Alcott
• Emerson succeeded Fuller as editor for the magazine's last two
years.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882)

• Born in Boston, Massachusetts

• Attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College
• Urged Americans to be independent thinkers
• Works
• Nature (1836)- long prose essay
• Brahma (1856)
• The American Scholar (1837)
• Politics (1844)
• The Representative Men (1850)
• The Conduct of Life (1860)
Henry David Thoreau (1817- 1862)

• Born in Concord, Massachusetts

• Unorthodox manners and irreverent views
• Idealism
• A devoted Abolitionist (against slavery)
• Became an intimate friend of Emerson In 1845-47,
• Thoreau spent two years in Walden Pond, near Concord,
Massachusetts, living a simple life supported by no one
• The episode was both experimental and temporary.
Henry David Thoreau (1817- 1862)

• Walden; or, Life in the Woods, first published in 1854

• Divided into 18 chapters
• Records Thoreau’s life from 1845-47 when he spent two years living a
simple life supported by no one in Walden Pond, near Concord,
Massachusetts, which was owned by Emerson
• Importance of contemplation, solitude, closeness to nature
• Themes: Self-reliance and simplicity of life, non-conformity and seIf-
sufficiency

• Other works
• Civil Disobedience (1849)
• A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
Margaret Fuller (1810- 1850)

• American journalist, editor and critic

• Fuller was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular,
women's education and the right to employment.
• She is the first editor of the transcendentalist journal The
Dial in 1840
• Became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard
College.
• She was sent to Europe for the Tribune as its first
female correspondent in 1846
• Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) is
considered as the first major feminist work in the United
States.
Walt Whitman (1819- 1892)
• One of the greatest of American writers
• Inspiration - Emerson
• Long lines
• Free verse
• Glorifies spiritual life grounded in the body and everyday life
• Democracy
• Individualism
Works:
• Leaves of Grass (1855)
• Title is from the essay "The Poet" by RW Emerson
• First Edition - contained 12 poems
• Song to Myself
• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
• Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (1859)
• O Captain! My Captain (1865)
• Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
H W Longfellow (1807- 1882)

• American poet and educator

• First American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy
• First major poetry collections were
• Voices of the Night (1839)
• Ballads and Other Poems (1841).
• In 1839, Longfellow published Hyperion, a book in prose inspired
by his trip abroad
• Major Works
• Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847)
Emily Dickinson (1830- 1886)
• “Nun of Amherst”
• About 1700 short poems; only a few published during lifetime
• Puzzling, obscure
• Love, death, nature, immortality
• Questioning of established religion, authority
• The largest portion of her poetry concerns death and immortality
• Most of them have no titles, always quoted by their first lines
• Her short poems especially are known for their directness and plainness.
Major Poems:
• Because I could not Stop for Death
• My life Closed Twice before its close
• I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
• A Bird Came Down the Walk
Collections
• Wild Night
• Final Harvest
• A Brighter Garden
The Period of Realism (Second Part
of the 19th century)

 American Civil War 1861- 65

 Abraham Lincoln elected as President in 1860
 Civil war due to North- south divide over slavery issue breaks out in 1861

 Realistic Period (1865- 1914)

 Realism was a reaction against Romanticism

 Naturalistic Period (1900- 1914)

Novels Based on the Civil War

 The Red Badge of Courage- Stephen Crane (1895)

 Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell (1936)
 Shiloh – Shelby Foote (1952)
 The Killer Angels- Michael Shaara (1975)
 March- Geraldine Brooks (2005)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

 Real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens

 Considered the true father of American literature
 The power he wielded over language, the use of vernacular and
colloquial speech still influence readers
 His most iconic works are
 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876),
 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),
 Life on the Mississippi (1883)
 His first short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
in 1865 brought him national fame
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Other Works:
 Advice to Little Girls- 1865, humorous short story
 The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today- 1873, novel
 Advise to Youth- satirical essay
 The Prince and the Pauper- 1881
 Fennimore Cooper’s Literary Offences- essay
 Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)

 Became the president of Washington Literary Society

 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her only published novel, Gone With the
Wind
 A Southern plantation fiction written from the perspective of the slave owners
 Gone With the Wind (1936)
 Title taken from a poem written by the British poet, Ernest Dowson
 The novel is set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta during years of the
Civil War
 Differs from most Civil War novels by glorifying the South and demonizing
the North
 The book was adapted into an American film in 1939
Henry James (1843 -1916)

 The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

 Story of the American woman, Isabel Archer

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

 Innovative writer associated with Realism, Naturalism, Impressionism

 His first novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
 considered the first American Naturalist work
Twentieth Century

Jazz Age (1920s- 30s)

 Also referred to as the "Roaring 20's
 The Jazz Age began in 1918 with the end of World War I, and lasted until
1928, ending with the Stock Market Crash.
 This period was marked by economic prosperity, liberal behavior, social
mobility, bootleg liquor, and most notably Jazz Music
 Jazz music and dance styles rapidly gained nationwide popularity in the
United States.
Harlem Renaissance (1920s)
• 1920s-creative passion in Harlem, the black community near New
York
• From Alaine Locke's anthology The New Negro
• Racial pride, need for a new black identity
• Challenge of stereotypes through literature, art and music
Authors:
• Jean Toomer
• Jessie Fauset,
• Claude McKay
• Zora Neale Hurston
• James Weldon Johnson
• Alain Locke
• Eric D. Walrond
• Langston Hughes
Twentieth Century

Beat Generation
 A literary and counterculture movement of the 1960s
 Only a few members, but had tremendous influence and cultural status in
post-war America
 Questioned rampant materialism of the society
 Dissatisfaction with consumer culture
 Treated capitalism as destructive to human spirit and antithetical to social
equality
 Rejected the taboos against sexuality
 The literature was more bold, straightforward and expressive
Twentieth Century

Beat Writers
 Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouack- the founders
 Jack Kerouack coined the term “Beat Generation”
 Lucien Carr, J C Holmes, Gregory Corso and Neal Cassidy, William S
Burroughs- other members
 They were from the educated middle-class
 Works showed romantic, surrealistic, and absurdist tendencies
 Admired Thoreau and his Walden
 Rejected the objective and formalist modernism of T S Eliot
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

 Novelist, poet, playwright

 Rejected the narrative, linear, and temporal conventions of 19
century literature
 Poem - Sacred Emily

 Collection - Geography and Plays (1922)

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

 Novelist and journalist known for his economical and understated style
 The Old Man and the Sea won Pulitzer Prize in 1953
 Hemingway got the Nobel Prize in 1954
 His father was an outdoorsman who loved hunting and fishing - interests
Hemingway shared
 Rejected for regular military service in World War I because of a weak left
eye, he became a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy during the war
 Works
 The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
 For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
 The Sun Also Rises (1926)
 A Farewell to Arms (1929)
F Scott Fitzgerald (1896- 1940)

 Jazz Age novelist and Short Story writer

 Works
 The Great Gatsby (1925): The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by
American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long
Island, the novel depicts narrator Nick Carraway's interactions
with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to
reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
 The Side of Paradise
 The Beautiful and the Damned
Henry Miller (1891-1980)

 Works are essentially autobiographical, express his intense

individualism, his love of freedom and his enthusiastic search for
intellectual and aesthetic adventure
Works
 Tropic of Cancer (1934) - Semi-autobiographical account of his
experiences in Paris
 Tropic of Capricorn (1959) - Prequel to Tropic of Cancer
 Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)

 Before Eugene O'Neill, American theatre consisted of melodrama and

farce
 O'Neill was one of the first American playwrights to take drama
seriously as an aesthetic and intellectual form
 Used American vernacular on stage to focus on marginalızed
characters
 Introduced psychological and social realism to the Ameican stage
(influenced by Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg)
 Also employed other techniques such as expressionism and naturalism,
and employed comedy, tragedy and myth
 Only playwright to have won the Pulitzer Prize four times
 The Emperor Jones (1920)
 The Hairy Ape (1922)
William Faulkner (1897-1962)

 William Faulkner is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of

the 20th century.
 He is remembered for his pioneering use of the stream-of-
consciousness technique as well as the range and depth of his
characterization.
 In 1949 Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
 First play - Soldier's Play (1926)
 Light in August (1923)
 Absalom! Absalom! (1936)
 The Sound and the Fury (1929)
 As I Lay Dying
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

 First book of poems, Harmonium (1923)

 exhibited the influence of the English Romantics and French
Symbolists
 Got Pulitzer Prize in 1955

 "Sunday Morning"
 The Emperor of Ice cream
 Anecdote of the Jar
Robert Frost (1874 –1963)

 Born in 1874, in San Francisco

Poems
 four Pulitzer Prizes
• Stopping by Woods
 Poetry Collections on a Snowy Evening
 A Boy's Will (1913) • The Road Not Taken
 North of Boston (1914) • Mending Wall
 New Hampshire (1923) • Birches
 A Further Range (1936) • After Apple Picking
 Steeple Bush (1947) • Home Burial
 In the Clearing (1962) • Fire and Ice
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

 Born on 27 February 1902 in Salinas, California

 Attended Stanford University
 Works often dealt with social and economic causes
 Got the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962
Works
 Cup of Gold (1929)
 Tortilla Flat ( 1935)
 The Pearl (1948)
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

Dustbowl Trilogy
 Of Mice and Men (1937)
 The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
 In Dubious Battle (1936): Tells the story of a fruit pickers' strike in California
which is both aided and damaged by the help of "the Party"

 Other
 East of Eden (1952)
 Long family saga set in the Salinas Valley
Langston Hughes (1902-67)

 Wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry

 One of the earliest innovators of the then new literary art form
called jazz poetry
 Played a major role in shaping the artistic contributions of the
Harlem Renaissance
 The first black American to earn his living solely from his writing
and public lectures
 Poems
 I too Sing America
 A Dream Deferred
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

 Won the Pulitzer Prize for drama twice, for the plays
 A Street Car Named Desire
 The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
 Glass Menagerie (1944)
 His plays have been adapted to film more frequently
and artfully than of any other
 Domestic Realism of Williams
 Focused on social misfits
 Explored the private pains and passions of lonely
individuals
 Task of living in the world is unendurable
Arthur Miller (1915-2005)

 Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949

 Works
 After the Fall (1964)
 Semi - Autobiographical
 Based on his marriage to Marlyn Monroe
 Incident at Vichy (1964)
 The Price (1968)
 Death of a Salesman (1949)
 Characters: Willy Loman, Linda Loman, Biff Loman, Happy Loman
etc
 The Crucible (1953)
Allen Ginsberg (1926-97)

 Beat poet
 Took part in non-violent political protests
 Kaddish (1961)
 Accounts of personal grief
 Love Poem on a Theme by Whitman (1956)
 The Reply(1956)
 Don't Grow Old
 Death of his father
 Howl (1956)
Jack Kerouac (1922-69)

 French-Canadian born in Massachussetts

 Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a
pioneer of the Beat Generation.
 First novel - The Town and the City
 Major work - On the Road (1957)
 On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the
travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States
Confessional Poetry

 An intensely subjective poetic style

 Emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s
 Associated with poets such as Robert Lowell, Snodgrass, and Lowell’s
students Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton
 They reveal intimate aspects of their private lives
 Often write in first person, using straightforward and sometimes explicit
language
 Themes such as sex, troubled marriages and mental illness
 Lowell’s book Life Studies (1959)
Sylvia Plath (1932-63)

 Born in Boston, Massachusetts

 Two Collections
 Colossus (1960) -
 First collection of poems; the only one in her lifetime
 First published in England
 In 1962, Ted Hughes left Plath for another woman
 In a deep depression and an intense burst of creativity, Plath wrote
most of the poems that comprised her most famous book, Ariel
(1965)
 She committed suicide by inhaling gas from a kitchen oven
Sylvia Plath (1932-63)

Posthumous Publications:
 Crossing the Water (1971)
 Winter Trees (1972)
 The Collected Poems (1981)- 1982 Pulitzer prize (1st poet to win a
Pulitzer after death)
 The Bell Jar (1963)- her only published novel
 Semi-autobiographical
 Published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”
 Protagonist: Esther Greenwood
 Discusses her experiences of mental breakdown and recovery
 Unconventional coming- of- age story
Sylvia Plath (1932-63)

Famous poems:
 Holocaust Poems
 Daddy
 Lady Lazarus
 Mary’s Song
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time—— Daddy
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Sylvia Plath

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal
…………..
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
…. Lady
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
Lazarus
Sylvia Plath
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
….
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

 Suffered from depression and mental breakdown throughout her

life
 Started writing at the suggestion of her therapist
 Focused on the psychological aspect of poetry
 Had a successful writing career
 Won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967
 Committed suicide at the age of 46
 Sexton’s confessional poetry is more autobiographical than Plath's
 Sexton' s poems appeal powerfully to the emotions
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

 Some Poetry Collections

 45 Mercy Street (1976)
 All My Pretty Ones (1962)
 Live or Die (1966)
 The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)
 The Book of Folly (1973)
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

 Major figure of postwar American poetry

 Feminist poet
 Themes: women 's role in society, racism, and the Vietnam war
 Major Collection - Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972
 Won the National Book Award
 A collection of exploratory and often angry poems
 A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society (2009, essays)
Other Major Poetry Collections:
 Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (2006)
 Fox (2001)
 Midnight Salvage (1999)
 The Dream of a Common Language (1978)
 A Change in the World (1951)- includes the poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”
 Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
 “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”- 1951- famous poem
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

Non-fiction
 Arts of the Possible (2001)
 What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993)
 Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience (1956)
 Examines the motherhood as experience and institution
 Title recalls the line from Macbeth
 “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1980)- essay
 Essay published in her book “Blood, Bread and Poetry” (1986)
 Portrays lesbianism as an extension of feminism
Edward Albee (1928-2016)

 American representative of the Theatre of the Absurd

 Unsympathetic examination of the modern condition
 Major plays
 The Sandbox
 The American Dream
 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
 The Zoo Story (1959)
One-act play originally titled "Peter and Jerry
Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

 Poet, educator, historian, best-selling author, actress, playwright, civil-

rights activist, producer and director
 One of the first African American women who was able to publicly
discuss her personal life
 Autobiographical fictions
 Has written seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and
several books of poetry
 Her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
 Tells of her first seventeen years
 Brought her international recognition
 Famous poems: “Phenomenal Woman” and “Still I Rise”
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-65)

 The first black woman to write a play performed on

Broadway
 One of the first playwrights to create realistic portraits of
African-American life
 A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
 Addresses many issues important during the 1950s in the
United States
 Toni Morrison (1931 – 2019)
 Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in a family that possessed an intense
appreciation for black culture
 Explored Black American experience
 Received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993
 Inspired by storytelling, songs, and folktales in her childhood
Works:
Wrote several concentric histories of the American experience from a
distinctively African American perspective
 The Bluest Eye (1970)- First work
 Sula (1973)
 Beloved (1987)
 Song of Solomon (1977)
 Tar Baby (1981)
Toni Morrison (1931 – 2019)

 The Bluest Eye (1970, first novel)

 A novel of girlhood; of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black girl
who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes
 Pecola Breedlove- protagonist, and Claudia MacTeer
 Sula (1973)
 A novel of womanhood, examines (among other issues) the dynamics of
friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community
 Beloved (1987)
 Won Pulitzer prize
 Based on a true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills
her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery
 Sethe- a young female slave
Alice Walker (b. 1944)

 Controversial for her lesbian, feminist and political views

 Became active in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi
 Wrote poetry and short stories
 The Color Purple (1982, her third novel)
 Won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize
 Made into a film in 1985 by Steven Spielberg
 Focuses on the theme of Black women- double oppression
 Epistolary form- main character Celie, 14-year-old girl writes letters to
God
 Other characters: Shug Avery and Nettie
 The novel projects a positive outcome in life, even under the harshest
conditions
Alice Walker (b. 1944)

 In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)

 Essays, articles, reviews and speeches
 “WOMANISM”- a social theory deeply rooted in the racial and gender
oppression of black women
 Walker defines ‘Womanism’ at the beginning of the book, as ‘A Black Feminist
or Feminist of Colour’
Alice Walker (b. 1944)

Other Novels:
 The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
 Meridian (1976)
 The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
 Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
 Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004)
 Speechlessness (2010)
 The Chicken Chronicles (2012)
Amiri Baraka (1934 - 2014)

 Works
 A Good Girl is Hard to Find (1958)
 The Baptism (1964)
 The Toilet (1964)
 Dutchman (1964)
 The Slave (1964)
Other Writers

 Saul Bellow- Herzog

 August Wilson
 Joseph Keller- Catch-22
 Harper Lee- To Kill a Mockingbird
 J D Salinger- The Catcher in the Rye
 Philip Roth
Horror and Cyberpunk Fiction

 Issac Assimov- pioneer of science fiction

 Stephen King- contemporary Horror
 The Stand
 The Shining
 It