Romantic Age

(1789-1832) UK

WRITERS:
✔ William Blake
✔ William Wordsworth
✔ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
✔ Percy Shelley
✔ George Gordon Byron (Lord
✔ Byron)
✔ John Keats

KEY IDEAS IN ROMANTIC AGE:

- Emotion more important than Reason
- Imagination more important than Observation
- Nature more important than Society (reaction to Industrial Revolution)
- Democracy better than Monarchy (response to French Revolution; obviously
different from medieval romance!)

DESCRIPTION :
“Romance” = originally a name for the French language (e.g., “Romance
languages”)
In the Middle Ages, many popular stories and legends came from France.
These stories often dealt with idealized figures (knights, ladies) and wild
adventures in exotic locations. Because these stories came from France, they
were called “romances”:
- The Romance of the Rose
- The Arthurian stories (English trans. by Sir Thomas Malory)
- The Song of Roland
The word “romantic” thus came to mean “like these romances”. i.e., fantastic,
idealized, imaginative
Before the 19th century, the word was often used negatively – to mean
“foolishly sentimental and ridiculously imaginative”, e.g. Thomas Paine in The
Rights of Man:
“The romantic and barbarous distinction of men into kings and subjects…”
In the years 1801-04, August Wilhelm Schlegel gave a series of lectures in
Berlin, outlining what he saw as two types of art:
- “romantic” works, which resembled the old medieval romances
- “classic” works, which resembled the works of ancient Greece and Rome
When we speak of Romantic literature, then, we are thinking in terms of
Schlegel’s categories, which became widely accepted in the 19th century.
When we speak of the Romantic Age, we are thinking primarily of the years
between 1789-1832.
Increasing numbers of English writers (and their readers) saw art primarily as a
vehicle for the Romantic spirit, for example:
- Gothic fiction
- ballad revival
- medievalism (e.g., Walter Scott)
Romanticism became a permanent part of English-language (and European)
culture, e.g., “be natural”; “be yourself”; medievalism; fantasy; rock music,
folk music, etc.
The Romantic celebration of emotion and imagination was tremendously
influential.
However, historical changes caused other types of literature to become
increasingly important, and we say that in the 1830’s a new age of literature
began – the Victorian Age

IMPORTANT WRITERS :
William Blake
• Published his own illustrated books, filled with his own poetry
• Early poems are simplest and best-known: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
✔ “The Lamb,” “The Tiger”
✔ “The Chimney Sweeper” (in tutorial)
• Blake’s poems express his complex philosophy – at its heart is a celebration of
spontaneous feeling and freedom as opposed to reason and political tyranny
William Wordsworth
• Probably best-known and most influential of the Romantic poets
• Grew up in the scenic Lake District of northern England
• Learned to love natural scenery as a boy – this influenced him throughout his whole
life
• As a young man, met Samuel Taylor Coleridge: together they published a book of
poems called Lyrical Ballads (1798)
• These poems expressed Wordsworth’s philosophy: he felt that the poetry of his time
was artificial and lacking in true feeling
• Tried to write simple, emotional poems about Nature, country people, and children
• His most famous poems celebrate simplicity of feeling and natural beauty

Victorian Age (1837 to 1901)

[some say 1832-1914] UK

WRITERS:
✔ Novels
- Charles Dickens
- William Makepeace Thackeray
- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
- Anthony Trollope
- Emily and Charlotte Brontë
✔ Poetry
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Robert Browning
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- Algernon Charles Swinburne
KEY IDEAS IN VICTORIAN AGE:
1. Urbanization and industrialization
• Development of new industrial and transportation technologies
• Railway systems, steamships
• British Empire dominates global trade
• Rapid growth of English cities, e.g., London, Birmingham,
Manchester
• Prosperity and improvements in education increase the numbers
of the middle class
✔ hard-working
✔ moralistic
✔ socially ambitious
✔ hungry for books, magazines, and poems that reflected its
✔ values and interests

2. Religious revival
• Methodism + counter-revolutionary propaganda spurs new moral
seriousness
• “Evangelicalism” – a new, more idealistic strain of Anglicanism
• Emphasis on social reform, hard work, moral purity
3. Rise of science
• Physical sciences offer powerful new ways of understanding the
world
• Charles Darwin – Origin of Species (1859)
• New systems, organizations to solve problems: schools, prisons,
trade unions
• “Spirit of Mechanism” – Thomas Carlyle
• Many Victorians experience crisis of faith
DESCRIPTION :
Novels
• Growing readership leads to “Golden Age of the English novel”
• Many new genres of popular novel catering to middle-class readers
• Often serialized in magazines
• Increased interest in realism in the novel, fictions that accurately portray the
world around us (by-product of science?)
✔ Adventure novels – travel, sea, exotic places
✔ Sporting novels – fox-hunting, fishing, shooting, etc.
✔ “Silver-fork” novels – stories of fashionable life
✔ “Newgate fiction” – sensational (and sentimental) crime stories

• Some popular novels rose to the level of great literature

Poetry
• Last age of popular literary poetry
• Romanticism remains the dominant approach to poetry
• Loses “prophetic” quality, gains psychological sophistication
Conclusion
• Legacies of Romanticism drifted into decadence as the Victorian Age went on
• Realism (psychological and social) gained increasing authority – leading
eventually to Modernism

IMPORTANT WRITERS:

Charles Dickens
• Journalist turned author – enormously popular
• Blends realism with sensationalism, sentiment
• Strong social conscience
Oliver Twist – Orphans, street crime
David Copperfield – Autobiographical story of a boy who works in a factory,
struggles for success
Hard Times – Industrial cities, new methods of education
Great Expectations – (tutorial)

William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair – Satire of wealthy society in the Romantic Age and, implicitly, his
own time

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

• Realistic novels, very morally serious
• Investigated ways our moral attitudes shape our lives
Middlemarch – Realistic study of life in an English country town
The Mill on the Floss –Young woman struggles with rigid Victorian morality

Anthony Trollope
• Realistic novels of rural life and parliamentary politics

Barchester Towers – Part of a series about life in the English countryside

Palliser series – Series of novels about politics and fashionable life

Emily and Charlotte Brontë

• Merged Romantic-Gothic themes with realistic style
Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights
Love and violence in a rural-Gothic setting
Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre
Love, madness, deception – middle-class heroine and passionate aristocratic
hero

Victorian Poetry
• Last age of popular literary poetry
• Romanticism remains the dominant approach to poetry
• Loses “prophetic” quality, gains psychological sophistication
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Most popular poet of Victorian Age
• Very moody, musical
In Memoriam –Poem sequence about lost friend, filled with Romantic
melancholy, sentiment
Idylls of the King – Poem sequence about King Arthur (Romantic medievalism)
but
also concerned with moral, political issues
Robert Browning
• Intelligent and dramatic – most famous for his dramatic monologues
• These are poems written in the voice of a particular person, displaying the
essence of his or her personality
Examples: “My Last Duchess,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”
• The Ring and the Book (long poem about murder in Renaissance Italy, told in
dramatic monologues)
Pre-Raphaelite poets
• Named after a society that wanted to return to medieval styles of art (before
Raphael)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Algernon Charles Swinburne
• Admirers and imitators of Romantic poets, especially John Keats
• Dreamy, sentimental poems, lush imagery, rich language
Conclusion
• Legacies of Romanticism drifted into decadence as the Victorian Age went on
• Realism (psychological and social) gained increasing authority – leading
eventually to Modernism
 Late-Victorian and Edwardian
Literature (1901-1918) UK

- Victoria dies in 1901. The “Edwardian Age” follows - Edward VII dies in 1910 –
the
“Age” often extended to 1918 (end of WWI)
Last period of British global dominance; also last period before the age of
modern
machines, politics, and war.
A time of great richness and diversity in English literature.

WRITERS:
✔ Rudyard Kipling
✔ Oscar Wilde (Aestheticism)
✔ Thomas Hardy (Naturalism)
✔ George Gissing (Naturalism)
✔ John Galsworthy (Naturalism)
✔ H.G. Wells (Science fiction)
✔ Robert Louis Stevenson (Science fiction)
✔ Arthur Conan Doyle (Detective fiction)
✔ J.M. Barrie (Children’s literature)
✔ Beatrix Potter (Children’s literature)
✔ Frances Hodgson Burnett (Children’s literature)
✔ Joseph Conrad (Józef Korzeniowski)

KEY IDEAS IN LATE-VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN AGE:

• By the end of the 19th century, Victorian culture and its values seemed
eternal
- Middle-class tastes and values
- Moral and religious seriousness
- Belief in progress (scientific and cultural)
- Patriotism – God, Queen, and Country
- Romanticism in poetry
- Realism in prose
- Growth of popular genres (adventure, crime, etc.)

DESCRIPTION :
Aestheticism
• Romanticism (with its emphasis on feeling) led to Aestheticism
• A rejection of realism and the view that art should teach morality
• Instead, the purpose of art was seen as the creation of beauty: “art for art’s
sake”
• Tennyson and the pre-Raphaelites pioneered this idea with their dreamy
medieval fantasies
• A major advocate of aestheticism in the late-Victorian period is the novelist,
poet, and playwright Oscar Wilde

Naturalism
● Realism developed into Naturalism
● An extreme form of realism, influenced by French writers like Émile Zola
● Naturalist writers embraced the new physical-scientific vision of the
world
● Often concerned with depicting the harsh realities of life, especially
among the lower classes
● Abandoned the conventional moral framework seen in earlier Victorian
writers like Dickens (good people rewarded, bad punished, etc.)

Beginnings of Modernism
● In this period, too, we begin to see the birth of a new way of thinking
about literature
● Writers begin to question and challenge the core values of Victorian
society itself
 ● The drive towards realism, scientific thinking, study of individual
psychology leads writers to question the foundations of Victorian
society and culture
● Victorian culture begins to appear complacent, repressive – its art
oversimplified, artificial, part of a false, hypocritical culture
● Quest for new ways of writing begins – we call this the beginning of
Modernism
● A key figure in the birth of Modernism in English literature was the
Polish-born novelist Joseph Conrad (Józef Korzeniowski)

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
Thomas Hardy wrote naturalistic novels of the English countryside, depicting
the tragedies experienced by everyday people
- Jude the Obscure
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles
- The Mayor of Casterbridge
George Gissing is most noted for novels about the urban poor
- New Grub Street
John Galsworthy wrote a series of naturalistic novels about the rise of a
materialistic Victorian family
- The Forsyte Saga

Science fiction: Literature begins to explore the potential of technology to

change our lives
H.G. Wells
• The Time Machine
• The Invisible Man
• The War of the Worlds
Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Detective fiction: Methods of detection become the focus of the traditional

crime story (influence of science/realism?)
Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Sherlock Holmes stories

Children’s literature also flowered in the Edwardian period

J.M. Barrie
• Peter Pan
Beatrix Potter
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Little Lord Fauntleroy
• The Secret Garden
Modernism
Joseph Conrad (Józef Korzeniowski)
- Lord Jim
- Nostromo
- Heart of Darkness (tutorial)

Early Twentieth-Century Poetry UK

WRITERS:
Traditionalism
✔ A.E. Housman
✔ W.B. Yeats
✔ Wilfred Owen
✔ Siegfried Sassoon
✔ Walter de la Mare
✔ Modernism
Symbolism:
✔ Paul Verlaine
✔ Arthur Rimbaud
 ✔ Stephane Mallarmé
Imagism:
✔ Ezera Pound
✔ T.S. Eliot - Imagism + Symbolism
✔ Later Modernists:
✔ Dylan Thomas
✔ W. H. Auden

KEY IDEAS IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY POETRY:

• The early 20th century marked a new phase of scientific development: cars;
airplanes; telephone; electric power
• Scientific attitudes penetrate all areas of culture, including religion,
philosophy, art
• Physics: Einstein discredits the neatly ordered universe of Victorian science
• Psychology: Sigmund Freud seeks biological explanations for human
behaviour (sex drive, family dynamics)
• A more complex view of human nature arises – the idea of the
“subconscious” – we feel and perceive more than we know
• Spirit of experimentation, challenging tradition – new ways of seeing, thinking
• Victorian-Edwardian values threatened by all of these factors, but one event
is crucial in marking the end of this Age

DESCRIPTION :
The First World War (“The Great War”)
• In England, the war was fought for Victorian ideals (God, King, Empire,
Progress)
• Supposed to be a short, glorious war – instead millions killed in long years of
dreary trench warfare
• Credibility of Victorian values was destroyed for many in the younger
generation
• Old European order collapses – new world takes shape – England weakened,
rise of America and Soviet Union
• Beginning of 20th century ideological struggles: Democracy, Fascism,
Communism Trends in English Poetry
• Generally speaking, English poets responded to these developments in two
ways:
a) Traditionalism – maintaining Victorian literary culture
b) Modernism – rejection of Victorian literary culture

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
Traditionalism:
A.E. Housman wrote an extremely popular collection of melancholy lyrics
about English country life
- A Shropshire Lad
• In Ireland, a nationalistic literature revived, returns to traditional forms and
themes – the Celtic Revival
• W.B. Yeats, in his early works, draws on traditional Irish folk forms and
themes (later moves towards Modernism)
• “Georgian” poets of the 1910’s formed a short-lived traditionalist movement
• Walter de la Mare is the most notable Georgian, author of Wordsworthian
lyrics celebrating nature, e.g. “All That’s Past”:
Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier's boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are--
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.

• The war poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon described wartime
experiences in a traditional style
Symbolism was a movement that began in France, but which influenced
English Modernism strongly
1. Key names: Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarmé
2. Basic principle: “techniques of strangeness” – to express beauty in fresh,
new ways, avoiding everyday language
3. Symbolist poetry was not linguistically logical, but intuitive, dreamlike –
often very obscure and difficult

Imagism
Ezra Pound, an American who moved to England in 1912
• Author of the most famous Imagist poem, “In a Station of the Metro”:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
• Pound later moved on to longer, more complex works:
- Cathay (Chinese poems)
- Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
- The Cantos
• T.S. Eliot was another American – moved to England in 1915, became British
citizen
• His work combines Symbolism, Imagism, but adds intellectual complexity
reminiscent of 17th century metaphysical poets
• Poems are complex studies of the 20th century psyche -- perhaps the
greatest of
Modernist poets
- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
- The Waste Land
- The Hollow Men
Later Modernists (1930’s and 40’s)
• Dylan Thomas returned to Romantic themes (nature, childhood, beauty), but
with the stylistic experimentation of Modernism
- “Fern Hill”
- “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
• W. H. Auden wrote poems notable for their dry, ironic tone – filled with
political and social commentary
- “The Unknown Citizen”
 - Spain 1937
• The experimentation and psychological complexity of Modernism are key
elements of English poetry to the present day

Early Twentieth-Century Prose UK

WRITERS:
✔ E. M. Forster (Traditionalist)
✔ Evelyn Waugh (Traditionalist)
✔ James Joyce
✔ D.H. Lawrence
✔ Virginia Woolf
✔ Aldous Huxley & George Orwell

KEY IDEAS IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY PROSE:

-The forces that changed English poetry in the early 20th century also affected
prose (i.e., novels, short stories)
- As with poetry, prose from this period can be divided into Traditionalist and
Modernist streams Traditionalism
- Traditionalist writers followed the basic pattern of Victorian and Edwardian
fiction
- Continued the realistic stream of English prose (linear, chronological
narratives, depictions of lives of ordinary people)
- Traditionalist prose did not lose artistic credibility the way traditionalist
poetry did (was less Romantic, closer to Modernism

DESCRIPTION :
Modernist Prose
● Many prose writers, on the other hand, were deeply influenced by the
Modernist spirit
 ● Like the Modernist poets, these writers wanted literature to reflect the
new realities of 20th century life
● This led to a period of dramatic change in English prose
● Some key traits of Modernist prose:
- Experimental techniques
- New subject matter (especially psychological and sexual)
- Loss of middle-class readership (avant-garde)
● Example of new technique: interior monologue, or stream of
consciousness
● Recording not events, but the thoughts of characters (sometimes for
pages, or entire books)
● Develops from two sources:
- A trend in late Victorian and Edwardian fiction towards more careful
study of the inner lives of characters (cf. Heart of Darkness)
- Influence of new science of psychology: Sigmund Freud, William James,
Henri Bergson
● The real story of our lives is the flow of thoughts and feelings that
passes through our minds each day
● “ In one day thousands of ideas have coursed through your brains;
thousands of emotions have met, collided, and disappeared in
astonishing disorder.” (Virginia Woolf)
● To portray a character’s “stream of consciousness,” some writers
rejected rules of grammar, punctuation, and even logic
● An example, from James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses. Here Molly Bloom
watches her husband sleep:
“... I suppose there isnt in all creation another man with the habits he has look
at the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he without a hard
bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth breathing
with his hand on his nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet
Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a pinafore lying on his
side on his hand with his ten toes sticking out that he said was a bigger
religion than the jews and Our Lords both put together all over Asia…”
● This technique still used by many writers today, sometimes in simpler
forms
● Other experimental techniques:
- Non-linear narrative – flashbacks, erratic shifts in time and place (cf.
Heart of Darkness)
- Writing sections of novels in dialogue form, like a playscript
- Including songs, poems, myths, jokes, parodies of other literary works
IMPORTANT WRITERS:
Major Traditionalists
E. M. Forster was a major novelist of this period, a bridge between tradition
and Modernism
- His novels are technically very traditional: linear, third-person narrative
- Not a reactionary – investigated how traditionalist sensibilities could be
adapted to the modern world
- As a homosexual, he was critical of Victorian morality
- Interested in conflicts between 19th century culture and the more open,
democratic culture of 20th century
- Howards End – a story of two families in conflict over ownership of a
beautiful house (one family traditional, the other modern, commercial)
- A Room With a View – a young woman chooses between two men – one
old-fashioned and aristocratic, and the other open-minded and modern
- A Passage to India – story of the decline of British rule in India, seen
through friendship between an Indian and an Englishman
- Also wrote stories about homosexuality, which he did not publish,
fearing controversy (not an issue for Modernists!)
Evelyn Waugh was another important Traditionalist, famous for his
Catholicism and his black humour
- His novels are conventionally realist in approach, though often comic
and absurd
- Celebrates traditional values over modern values -- Waugh saw the 20th
century as the end of
- real culture
- Brideshead Revisited – nostalgic story of the decline of a British
aristocratic family in the 20th
- century (Catholicism important theme)
- Sword of Honour – trilogy about a traditionalist who fights in the Second
World War (but is
- disillusioned by modern politics and war)
- A Handful of Dust – a traditional man is betrayed by his modern-living
wife and her lover
James Joyce, a major figure of literary Modernism
- Joyce began his career writing realistic short stories about life in Dublin
(Dubliners)
- He later turned to experimental forms, and produced some of the most
important (and difficult!) novels in English
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man –autobiographical novel about a
young Irish man who rejects Catholicism and becomes a writer
- Uses stream of consciousness to portray different phases of life,
including early childhood
 - Explores the struggle with tradition characteristic of artists of Joyce’s
generation
- Ulysses – Extremely complex novel about a single day in the lives of
two men (approx. 1000 pages!)
- Structurally, the novel is modeled after the Greek myth of Odysseus –
shows how ordinary lives
- exemplify the great themes of mythology
- Extremely complex novel – long sections of interior monologue;
playscript sections; jokes,songs, etc.
- Explores new subject matter – sexual scenes and depictions of bodily
functions (characters are depicted urinating, etc.)
- Was banned in the USA – this kind of novel had no appeal to the
commercial reading public
- Nevertheless, considered by some the greatest novel in English
literature
- Finnegans Wake – Extremely strange experimental novel –no clearly
identifiable plot or characters
- Language is packed with dense puns and allusions, interwoven with
other languages– often seems like nonsense:
- Has to be interpreted like a code, or a foreign language – scholars still
puzzle over its meaning
D.H. Lawrence was an English writer of working class background
Notable for his reaction against the industrial, mechanical, technological world
- But Lawrence is not a traditionalist – for him, nature is brutal and physical, a
life-giving source of energy
-Sex (rather than courtship) is a main concern of his novels
- Sons and Lovers – Autobiographical novel about a working class boy’s
struggle to become an artist (and cope with the influence of a controlling
mother)
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover – an aristocratic woman has a sexual affair with a
working-class man (unpublishable in England for years)
-The Rainbow and Women in Love – novels of the lives and love affairs of an
English family (also banned for explicit sexuality)
Virginia Woolf – English novelist, important for her experimental techniques
and feminist outlook
- Mrs. Dalloway -- the story of a woman’s life, told via flashbacks and interior
monologue during the events of a single day
-Past and present are seamlessly interwoven, as in our minds memory and
present experience are
-Other important works include:
-The experimental novel To the Lighthouse (famous for its unconventional
treatment of the death of its heroine)
-The essay A Room of One’s Own, which argues that women are as artistically
talented as men (feminism)

Some Later Modernist Novelists

-Not all Modernist writers were intensely experimental
-By the 1930’s, the prevailing trend was to adapt the traditional novel form to
modern situations and themes
Aldous Huxley – novel of ideas, rich in intellectual subject matter– explores
implications of technology in Brave New World
George Orwell – most famous for political novels, notably Animal Farm and
1984
-But despite the persistence of traditional techniques, the experiments of
Modernism permanently changed English literature
- Broadened both the subject matter and technical approaches available to
English writers

Post-War British Literature

(1940-1950) UK

WRITERS:
✔ J.R.R. Tolkien
✔ J.K. Rowling
✔ Nick Hornby
✔ George Orwell
✔ William Golding
✔ Iris Murdoch
✔ The “Angry Young Men”:
✔ John Osborne (Drama)
 ✔ Kingsley Amis (Novels)
✔ Philip Larkin (Poetry)
Postmodernism:
✔ Samuel Beckett
✔ Harold Pinter
✔ Martin Amis
✔ John Fowles
Postcolonialism:
✔ Salman Rushdie
✔ Hanif Kureishi

KEY IDEAS IN POST-WAR BRITISH LITERATURE:

Britain has changed a great deal since the Second World War
- rise of the bureaucratic welfare state
- society is more egalitarian
- increased educational opportunities – many new universities
- break-up of Empire, immigration from former colonies
Consequently, the post-war period has been a dynamic time in English
literature, with many different movements, trends
Due to time limitations, we’ll focus on three important subjects:
- Literature of the late 1940’s and 50’s
- Postmodern literature
- Postcolonial literature
(We live in an age of “antis” and “posts” – one characteristic of
our period is that it has trouble defining itself except in opposition
to other periods)
DESCRIPTION :
Literature of the late 1940’s and 50’s
• The years immediately following WW2 were a difficult time in England
• The country had been subjected to starvation tactics and aerial bombing for
years, and recovery was slow
• Poverty, urban decay, rise in crime -- all lead to a surprising pessimism in
postwar England
• Cold War and the threat of nuclear war also dominate the imagination of the
world in the post-war period
• Novels of the late 1940’s and the 1950’s tend to be realist in style, and
concerned with profound political and ethical problems
• They often raise serious questions about humanity’s capacity for good and
evil

Postmodernism
• A very complex intellectual movement that begins to influence English
literature in the post-war period
• Modernism tried to find the reality behind Victorianism – Postmodernism tries
to find the truth behind Modernism
• That is, what do we mean by “reality,” anyway? And can we really represent it
truthfully in fiction?
• Postmodern works tend to be highly experimental
• They often emphasize their own artificiality, attacking the idea that reality can
ever be represented truly
• In drama, postmodernism is associated with the “Theater of the Absurd”
• Plays that challenge the conventional rules of drama
- may have no logical plot
Postcolonialism
Final comments
• The post-war period has been a paradoxical time in English literature
• Serious literature has become more diverse and dynamic, while popular
genres like science-fiction, spy fiction, and children’s literature have boomed:
 - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter series (1997-present)
• But at the same time, literature has lost importance due to movies and
television
• Modernism and Postmodernism have also alienated the reading public to
some degree – the Victorian middle-class readership has fragmented
• Some contemporary writers have reacted against these trends, expressing
nostalgia for traditional values like family, friendship, etc. Nick Hornby
- About a Boy (1998)
- How to Be Good (2001)
• In general, however, literature remains a vital part of today’s complex,
increasingly diverse English culture

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
George Orwell began writing before the war, but his major works were
published in the mid-late 1940’s
• His novels are often superficially unrealistic, yet brutally realistic about
human motives and behaviour
● 1984 (1949)– Influential science-fiction story written in a realist style; it
tells of a futuristic totalitarian England after a nuclear war
● Animal Farm (1945) – Allegorical fable about a farm whose animals have
a socialist revolution that ends in tyranny
• In Orwell’s work we can see the modern fear of nuclear war and
totalitarianism – Can democracy (and civilization itself) survive?
William Golding is another important novelist concerned with humanity’s fate
in the nuclear age
• Golding also turned to fable and science-fiction – yet he, too, is a realist in
style and pessimistic about humanity:
● Lord of the Flies (1954)
● The Inheritors (1955) – a story of pre-history: early humans struggle with
Neanderthals for survival (and win because they’re more violent)
Iris Murdoch is a philosophical novelist who wrote from the 50’s into the
90’s; her works combine realistic plots and complex symbolism
• Murdoch’s novels (she wrote 26!) are often concerned with the challenge of
finding true goodness in life
 ● The Sea, The Sea (1978) – the story of a theater director who writes his
autobiography to purge himself of egotism

The “Angry Young Men”

• The “Angry Young Men” were young writers of the 1950’s – they often wrote
very critical works about post-war Britain
• Products of the new egalitarian welfare state, they attacked the elitism and
hypocrisy of pre-war English culture
• Rejected Modernist experimentalism – often wrote naturalistic stories about
lowerclass life (so called “kitchen sink realism”)

Drama:
● John Osborne – Look Back in Anger (1956) A working class man
graduates from university, but cannot fit into a society still partly
controlled by the traditional class system
• Novels:
● Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim (1954) Comic novel about a poor college
professor in one of the new universities; a satire of the post-war
education system
• Poetry:
● Philip Larkin – a member of “the Movement” (a group of Anti- Modernist
poets)
● “Church-Going” (1955) – simple poem about an atheist visiting a church
(a sense of loss of values)

Postmodernism:
• Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright, was a major figure in this movement
o Waiting for Godot (1952) – A play about characters simply waiting – there
is no real action; only endless talking (A metaphor for life?)
• Harold Pinter – Combines realism and absurdity to create a sense of the
danger that lies behind ordinary life
● The Birthday Party (1958) – A play about a sordid birthday party that
becomes sinister and violent (a symbolic commentary on post-war urban
life?)
• Novels:
● Martin Amis – Time’s Arrow (1991) A novel told in reverse – starts with
the end, moves towards the beginning (Suggests that time itself is a
fiction?)
● John Fowles – The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) – The author
appears as a character in his own story (Fowles wants us to remember
that the story is fiction, not real)
● The novel has two endings; the reader can choose whichever he likes
best
Salman Rushdie is an immigrant from India and a notable postmodernist
• He writes complex fantasy-like novels that combine elements of Indian and
English literary tradition
● Midnight’s Children (1981) – Postmodernist fantasy about India’s
independence from British rule
● The Satanic Verses (1988) – Postmodernist fantasy about two Indians,
one who adopts a British identity and one who doesn’t
Hanif Kureishi was born in England of Pakistani parents
● The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) – Comic novel about an Indian immigrant
who becomes a spiritual leader to bored English people

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings(1954-55)

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter series (1997-present)
Nick Hornby
● About a Boy (1998)
● How to Be Good (2001)

American Literature of the

Colonial and Revolutionary
Periods US
WRITERS:
✔ John Smith
✔ Mary Rowlandson
✔ Daniel Denton
✔ William Bradford (Puritanism)
✔ Anne Bradstreet (Puritanism)
✔ Edward Taylor (Puritanism)
✔ Jonathan Edwards (Puritanism)
✔ J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur (The Colonial Press and the
Revolution)
✔ Thomas Paine
✔ Thomas Jefferson
✔ Benjamin Franklin

DESCRIPTION :
• The United States of America originated as a group of English colonies along
the Eastern seacoast of North America
• First permanent English settlement: Jamestown, Virginia, 1607
• Perhaps the very first piece of “American” literature was written by John
Smith, a leader of the Jamestown colony:
A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Hapned
in Virginia Since the First Planting of that Collony (1608)
• Contains an account of the early days of the Jamestown colony, description
of the landscape, the native tribes
• Much of the earliest colonial writing was of this type: pamphlets and books
describing the exotic new continent and its native people
• The image of the New World that appears in these writings tends to fluctuate
between two extremes
• On one hand, North America was portrayed as a land of terrors, of harsh
weather, rugged landscapes and savage inhabitants
• One expression of this view was a new genre of writing – the “captivity
narrative”
• These were descriptions of the capture of colonists by Native Americans –
most famous example: Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative (1682)
• One the other hand, the New World was often described as a kind of paradise,
a huge land, rich with natural resources (sometimes exaggerated)
For example, Daniel Denton’s “Brief Description of New York” (1670) states:
“I may say, and say truly, that if there be any terrestrial happiness to be had by
people of all ranks, especially of an inferior rank, it must certainly be here: here
any one may furnish himself with land, and live rent-free, yea, with such a
quantity of land, that he may weary himself with walking over his fields of
Corn, and all sorts of Grain… I must needs say, that if there be any terrestrial
Canaan, ‘tis surely here, where the Land floweth with milk and honey.”
• The idea that America is a land of opportunity, a place where the poor and
low-ranking can go to find prosperity – is thus a very old and fundamental part
of American culture
• However, it was clear that a person had to be strong and independent, (and
faithful to God) to claim this prosperity
Puritanism
• Many of the early colonists were refugees from the English religious conflicts
of the 17th century
• The area around the modern city of Boston was settled in this way – starting
in 1620, by radical Protestants known as “Puritans”
• The Puritans wanted to establish a society based on stern Christian
principles to be a model for the world
• They were extremely literate people, immersed in the Bible, and from their
writings come many notable works of early colonial literature

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
William Bradford was a governor of the first Puritan colony – he wrote a
detailed record of the lives and experiences of the colonists
• From Of Plymouth Plantation (1620-47):
“Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon
their knees & blessed ye God of heaven, who had brought them over ye vast &
furious ocean, and delivered them from all ye periles & miseries therof, againe
to set their feete on ye firme and stable earth…”
Anne Bradstreet, of a prominent Puritan family, was the first successful female
writer in America
• Her poetry, collected as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650),
was published without her knowledge, but was successful in England and in
the colonies
Edward Taylor, a Puritan minister, wrote complex, intricate religious poems
• His Preparatory Meditations (1682-1725) resemble the work of the English
Metaphysical poets like John Donne and George Herbert
Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan minister, is notable for many religious works,
including the famous hellfire sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
(1741)
J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur, a French immigrant, tried to explain the
culture of these new colonies to European readers
• His Letters from an American Farmer (1782) argued that America was a truly
new society, free from feudal class structures
• Crevecoeur celebrated American simplicity, equality, and industriousness
• His Letters helped create a sense of an “American identity” in Europe and in
the colonies
• To Crevecoeur, America was a land where anyone could become prosperous
and independent (an idea later known as “the American Dream”)
Thomas Paine was the greatest of these writers, and arguably one of the most
influential writers of all time – he was a politically radical Englishman who
emigrated to the colonies
• Common Sense (1776) presented the arguments for war with England in a
way that everyone could understand
• This pamphlet was key in inspiring the colonists to declare independence
from England
• Throughout the American Revolution (1776-1783), Paine published a series of
pamphlets called The American Crisis
Other important books by Paine:
● The Rights of Man (1791) – a key document of 18th century democratic
thinking
● The Age of Reason (1795) – an attack on “revealed religion,” especially
Christianity
Thomas Jefferson (the third president) was the primary author of the
Declaration of Independence (1776) – as well as many important letters, and
geographical and philosophical works (including a revised version of the
Bible!)
Benjamin Franklin was a key figure in Revolutionary politics – but also a
popular writer, a scientist, and a diplomat
● Franklin is the prototypical American “self-made man” – he rose from
obscurity and poverty to become rich, famous and influential
● Author of the very successful Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732-1757) – a
yearly compendium of useful household information (calendar, weather
forecasts, etc.)
● The Almanack also contained practical advice in the form of aphorisms –
many of these have become proverbial, e.g.
● “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
● Franklin later wrote books explaining the principles of his worldly
success:
- Autobiography (1751-1790)
- The Way to Wealth (1758)
● • Franklin remains a prominent figure in American history, a pioneer of
self-help literature, and a model of the “American Dream”

Early 19th Century American

Literature US

WRITERS:
✔ Alexander Hamilton, James
✔ Madison, and John Jay
✔ Charles Brockden Brown
✔ Washington Irving
✔ James Fenimore Cooper
✔ Edgar Allan Poe
✔ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Transcendentalism)
✔ Henry David Thoreau (Transcendentalism)
DESCRIPTION:
• After the American Revolution (1776-1783), many hoped the new
nation would produce a new literature reflecting the spirit of
democracy
• However, the first major work of the early republic was not new,
but an extension of Revolutionary literature
• The Federalist Papers (1787-88) a collective work of three key
figures of the Revolution: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and
John Jay
• A series of 85 newspaper articles that lay out the basic principles
of the U.S. government
• Still studied today for insight into the foundations of modern
democracy
• But significant literary art was slow in coming – the years 1780-
1820 are considered a low point for Am. Lit.
• American writers produced mainly weak imitations of British
models
• Still looking to Europe for inspiration, fiction writers and poets
had not yet found uniquely American voices
• There were two significant fiction writers of this period, however,
Charles Brockden Brown and Washington Irving

After 1820
• After 1820 (as the influence of British Romanticism waned)
American literature experienced a remarkable period of
development
• Over the next several decades, America began to produce an
exciting, unique literature, with writers of international quality and
importance

New England Transcendentalism

• By the mid-19th century, Puritanism had evolved and changed,
and the Boston area had become a centre of controversy
• Influence of Romanticism, Hinduism (from India), German
philosophy (Kant) resulted in a new philosophy: Transcendentalism

Key principles of Transcendentalism:

✔ Dislike of dry, rational religion (Puritanism/Unitarianism)
✔ Romantic emphasis on personal experience, looking inward
for spontaneous truth
✔ Rejection of religious tradition – continuous revelation via the
Divine inside each person
Two essential American writers were associated with this
movement: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
The Federalist Papers (1787-88) a collective work of three key figures of the
Revolution: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
Charles Brockden Brown (1781-1810) is sometimes called the “Father of the
American Novel”
• As a young law student and journalist, he dreamed of writing classical epic
poetry on New World themes (e.g., Cortes)
• Later he adapted the Gothic novel to the American context
• For the lonely castles of European Gothic, Brown substituted remote
wilderness locations and lonely houses on the frontier
• For bandits, ghosts, etc., he substitutes savage Indians, mysterious villains
using hypnosis or ventriloquism
- Wieland (1798) is a horror story set on the frontier; a man uses
ventriloquism to terrorize the settlers
- Edgar Huntly (1799) tells a complex story of murder – both the suspected
murderer and the man pursuing him are sleepwalkers
• Brown was not widely read – many readers found his books overcomplicated,
with underdeveloped characters
• However, later writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe found
inspiration in his adaptation of dark and fantastic themes to American contexts

Washington Irving (1783-1859) is another important name of this period – the

most successful professional author of early America
• Irving earned over $200,000 writing fiction, history, and travel literature
• He won fame with the comic mock-history Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History
of New York (1809)
• Irving is remembered primarily for two short stories (adapted from German
folk tales) that have become icons of American culture
- “Rip Van Winkle” (1820) is the story of a lazy man who falls asleep for
twenty years
- “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) tells of a schoolteacher who
encounters a ghostly “Headless Horseman”
• Irving’s immense financial and popular success gave confidence to later
writers
• His tactic of handling Romantic subject matter with quasi-European “genteel”
tastefulness was also influential (some say for the worse)

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was one of the first writers to see new
literary possibilities in the American psyche (rather than in situations)
• Born into a prominent family of New York landowners, Cooper started writing
after a career in the U.S. Navy
• He published thirty-two books between 1820 and 1851, most dealing with life
on the American frontier
• His most famous novels are the “Leatherstocking” series
• These recount the adventures of a half-Indian frontiersman named Natty
Bumppo, or “Hawkeye”
• Cooper’s “Hawkeye” is a personification of American individualism – he lives
in the forest on the edges of civilization and takes orders from no one
• An expert hunter, warrior, and explorer, “Hawkeye” is best known as the main
character in Last of the Mohicans (1826)
- The Pioneers (1823)
- The Prairie (1827), etc.
• Cooper was tremendously popular and influential –“Hawkeye” is the
prototype of the American tough, self-reliant action hero
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
• Poe’s life and career were erratic – he lived on the edge of poverty working as
a literary journalist
• Has a reputation as a madman, due to his strange works (and a hostile early
biographer)
• His poems and short stories, however, are world-famous – he is considered a
key figure in several genres of writing, including:
• Horror fiction:
- “The Raven” (1845)
- “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846)
- “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1845)
• Detective fiction
- “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
• Science-fiction
- “The Balloon Hoax” (1844)
• Poe’s work is diverse, combining Romantic tastes with a fascination with
logic and rationality
• His work typically focuses on representing extreme mental or emotional
states, e.g., fear, horror, guilt, etc.
• Although he died unappreciated, Poe’s effect on literature was profound – the
French Symbolist poets saw him as an inspiration, as did Oscar Wilde
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
• Trained as a Unitarian minister, he experienced a crisis of faith after the death
of his young wife
• Embraced a Romantic view of religion: the Divine is to be found in the
individual soul, not in books or traditions
• Resigned his position as a minister and began to write – his many essays
became a foundation of American literary culture
- “Nature” (1836)
- “Self-Reliance” (1841)
- “The American Scholar” (1837)
- “Experience” (1844)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a friend of Emerson’s – both lived in the
small village of Concord, near Boston
• Thoreau applied Transcendentalist ideas to practical living
• Although educated at Harvard University, Thoreau lived simply and did
menial jobs – ignored public opinion
• Most famous for Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (1854), a book about two years
he spent living alone in the forest
• Walden advocates a simple life of voluntary poverty and self-chosen work;
combines philosophy, practical advice, and observation of Nature
• Walden has been a tremendously influential book in 20th century America–
even today people live their lives by it
• Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience” (1846) influenced Mohandas Gandhi

American Prose:
Mid-Century to 1900 US

WRITERS:
✔ Oliver Wendell Holmes
✔ Henry Adams
✔ Nathaniel Hawthorne
✔ Herman Melville
✔ Mark Twain
✔ William Dean Howells
✔ Frank Norris
✔ Kate Chopin

DESCRIPTION:
In the mid-19th century, American literature could be divided into two streams
- “genteel” (Victorian influence)
- uniquely American authors (Poe, Emerson, etc.)
• Popular literature was dominated by “genteel” novels and stories
- Historical romances, refined humour, sentimental poetry, adventure novels,
“silver fork” novels, etc.
• This style of writing rose to a high level in the works of several writers from
the upper classes of New England
• These writers, known as “Boston Brahmins” were educated in the Puritan
tradition of hard work, discipline, and introspection
• They produced literature of dignified clarity and elegance

The “American Renaissance”

• Term used to describe the flourishing of distinctively American talent in the
mid-19th century (again in Boston area)
• Two writers we’ve already talked about: Emerson and Thoreau
• But also America’s first major novelists: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman
Melville

Late 19th - Century Realism

• By the closing years of the 19th century, America was no longer a nation of
small Anglo-Saxon farmers and merchants
• Millions of immigrants had arrived from all over Europe: Irish, Germans,
Italians
• America had become both a huge agricultural nation and an industrial power
• Cities grew rapidly, became dynamic, commercial centres -- “The Gilded Age”
• In the literary world, the centre of culture shifted from Boston to New York
• Simultaneously, the Romanticism of Emerson, Hawthorne, et al., was
replaced by Realism and Naturalism
• Writers wanted to capture the energy, change, scale of the growing nation

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
Essayist and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
o The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858-) -- a series of humourous
magazine pieces commenting on life (“Good Americans, when they die, go to
Paris.”)
Henry Adams (1838-1918), historian and novelist, now best-known for The
Education of Henry Adams (1907), an analysis of cultural changes over Adams’
life
• These writers (as well as poets like Henry Longfellow and John Greenleaf
Whittier) were popular in America, admired as equals of the best Victorian
writers
Emerson and Thoreau
• But also America’s first major novelists
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) came from a formerly Puritan family -- began
as a short-story writer for magazines
- Twice Told Tales (1837)
- Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
• Hawthorne was fascinated by the Puritan past, and was intensely interested
in the psychology of guilt and fanaticism
• Many of his stories are historical fantasies that analyze the psychology of
Puritanism
- “Young Goodman Brown” (1835) is the story of a Puritan man who meets
the devil in the forest
• His most famous novel, also deals with this subject -- considered the first
great American novel
- The Scarlet Letter (1850) -- the story of a Puritan woman who commits
adultery with her minister (she wears a red letter “A” for “Adulteress”)
• Hawthorne’s work is deceptive -- on the surface, it often seems commercial,
typically “genteel”
• But it is also often heavily ironic or laden with symbolism that suggests
complex meanings
• Hawthorne’s careful psychological studies and sophisticated symbolism were
models for later American writers
• Other novels:
- The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
- The Blithedale Romance (1852)
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was a friend of Hawthorne’s, and perhaps the
greatest of America’s early novelists
• As a young man, Melville became a sailor and travelled to the South Pacific
Ocean on a whaling ship
• He left the ship, lived on an island with natives for several weeks
• When he returned to America, he began a writing career with a series of
adventure novels about the sea
Typee (1846), a fictionalized account of his island experience, gave him
moderate success
• On the strength of this success, he wrote his greatest novel, a sea adventure
story with fantasy and symbolic elements
- Moby-Dick (1851) -- The story of a whaling ship in pursuit of a
mysterious, aggressive white whale
• As the novel develops, the whale becomes a symbol of everything that man
fears and seeks to destroy
• The book is notable for its intricate style, eccentric first-person narrator, long
digressions about whaling, etc.
• The book was too strange for a popular 19th century readership, and
Melville’s career deteriorated
• Years after his death, Moby-Dick was rediscovered
• 20th century (Modernist) readers were less troubled by the novel’s oddities --
it is now considered one of the great novels of world literature
• Note also poets associated with this period: Emily Dickinson and Walt
Whitman (both next meeting)
Mark Twain
• In the late 19th century, inspired partly by Realism, writers began to draw on
the lively folk culture of the American frontier
• Characteristics: Dry, deadpan humour; exaggeration (the “tall tale”); use of
slang and dialect
• Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is the master of this genre
• Twain was born in Missouri, at that time a frontier state -- he worked as a
journalist, silver miner, steamboat pilot
• Became famous as a humourist with:
- The Innocents Abroad (1869), a semi-fictional travel book about
Americans in Europe
- Roughing It (1872), a similar book about his own adventures in the
American West
• Twain also wrote many novels, but is best-known for two that have become
icons of American culture
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
• Stories based on Twain’s memories of his childhood in rural America
• Huckleberry Finn, the best of the two, is extremely important, partly as a
portrait of 19th century American frontier society
• Also deals with issues of race, social class, freedom -- mocks European
tradition
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was a key figure in the rise of American
Realism
• He wrote Realist novels about the rising business class in American cities
- The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) is the story of an American
entrepreneur who finds and then loses success (in the paint business!)
• Howells became a prominent magazine editor, used his influence to promote
Realism in literature
Frank Norris (1870-1902) was one of the authors Howells promoted -- a
committed Naturalist, he planned a three-part novel series called The Epic of
Wheat
• This unfinished trilogy was to tell the human story behind the production,
sale, and exporting of American wheat
Kate Chopin (1850-1904) is another important Realist writer -- one of the
earliest feminist novelists in American literature
• Chopin tried to depict the difficulties women faced under the social codes of
the period
- The Awakening (1899) -- the story of an unhappy wife who leaves her
husband to become an artist
- The book was considered immoral and was not widely read until the
1960’s!

Nineteenth and Early Twentieth

Century American Poetry US
WRITERS:
✔ Philip Freneau
✔ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Other “Fireside Poets” include
- John Greenleaf Whittier
- James Russell Lowell
- and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

✔ Edgar Allan Poe

✔ Emily Dickinson
✔ Walt Whitman
✔ William Carlos Williams (Modernism)
✔ Wallace Stevens (Modernism)
✔ Dorothy Parker (Modernism)
Other important American Modernist poets:
- Hart Crane
- E.E. Cummings

DESCRIPTION:
As with prose, early American poetry was imitative of European models, but
there are signs of later, distinctively American trends in this early work
Poets of the Genteel Tradition
• Most poetry of the 19th century was in this Romantic-Victorian style (e.g.,
Emmeline Grangerford in Huckleberry Finn)
• The so-called “Fireside Poets” were the most notable members of this
tradition
• They were given this name for the popularity of their poetry -- well-suited for
family reading by the fireside
• Sentimental, patriotic, historical subjects, written in conventional rhymed
verse
Poets of the American Renaissance: Dickinson and Whitman
American Modernism
• With the example of Whitman before them, it was perhaps easier for American
poets to rebel against Victorianism
• Many of the key figures in Modernist poetry were Americans: T.S. Eliot and
Ezra Pound
• But there are other important American Modernist poets

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
Philip Freneau (1752-1832) is regarded as one of the founders of American
poetry
• Primarily a neoclassicist in the 18th century style, Freneau wrote many
political poems in support of the Revolution
• His non-political poetry shows an unpretentious feeling for the American
countryside that foreshadows the work of later poets
• “The Wild Honeysuckle” is a pretty Wordsworthian lyric about the short life of
an American wildflower
Freneau is regarded as a bit of a literary failure - spent his energy and talent on
political poetry with no appeal to later generations
• Much of the better poetry of the early Republic was political, e.g. that of the
so called “Hartford Wits” from Connecticut, who were popular in the 1780’s
and 90’s
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is the best-known of this group
• A well-educated New Englander, Longfellow was a professor of foreign
languages at Harvard University
• His poetry shows the best qualities of the Fireside Poets -- simple, popular
themes, regular meter and rhyme (easy to recite)
• Generations of American schoolchildren have memorized works like:
- Paul Revere’s Ride (1863) -- about a colonist who warned Revolutionary
troops of a British attack
- Evangeline (1847) -- about the expulsion of French settlers from Canada
- The Song of Hiawatha (1855) -- about the decline of the Native Americans
(a favourite Romantic theme)
• Longfellow’s work was extremely popular, and he was the first American poet
to be widely read in England
• His reputation declined in the 20th century -- the poems seem
unsophisticated by Modernist standards
Other “Fireside Poets” include
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• James Russell Lowell
• and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Edgar Allan Poe
• Edgar Allan Poe’s first ambition was to be a poet
• His theory of poetry was similar to that of the short story: to create an
emotional effect, short, readable in one sitting
• His poetry is notable for musical rhymes and rhythms and powerful symbolic
images, e.g. “The Raven”:
• Poe’s poetry was influential in France, and helped spur the development of
Symbolism (and thus Modernism)
Poets of the American Renaissance: Dickinson and Whitman
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) lived in Amherst, a small town near Boston
• Daughter of a prominent lawyer and politician, she was unusually well
educated
• But she left college after one year, and lived in her father’s house for the rest
of her life
• She never married, lived a very quiet and private life, writing hundreds of
poems (“my letter to the world/ That never wrote to me”)
• Although Dickinson often wrote on conventional Romantic subjects (Nature,
love, etc.), in traditional meters, her poems are distinctive and original
• Her nature poems, for instance, have a remarkable freshness, free of genteel
(or even Wordsworthian) attitudes
• Dickinson published only a few poems during her lifetime (anonymously)
• Her poetry was widely known only after her death, and it was much later, in
the 20th century, before it was appreciated
• Today she is considered one of the two greatest poets of 19th century
America
The other is Walt Whitman (1819-1892), sometimes called “America’s Poet”
• Originally a journalist, Whitman was inspired to write poetry after hearing one
of Emerson’s lectures
• He self-consciously set out to capture the spirit of America in poetry
- Leaves of Grass (1855) is his greatest work -- a collection of poems he
revised many times
• In this work, Whitman broke completely with the conventions of genteel
poetry (and was brutally criticized for it)
• He is considered one of the inventors of “free verse”
• His lines are long and flowing, following the rhythms of speech rather than of
traditional meter
• Whitman’s main subject matter is the everyday life of America, told in a
resonant, rhythmic style
• Although Whitman is not considered a Modernist (due to his
Transcendentalist philosophy), his work was a crucial influence on Modernist
poetry
Modernist poetry were Americans: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound
• But there are other important American Modernist poets
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a physician from near New York
• He met Ezra Pound while studying in Europe, was influenced by Imagism
• Williams is noted for his efforts to escape European influence (Eliot and
Pound, he thought, were too European)
• Most famous for simple (and at times, mysterious) Imagist poems on
everyday subjects
- “The Red Wheelbarrow”
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was unusual in that he was a businessman, an
executive in an insurance company
• Stevens’ poems are usually written in free verse, but are formal, dignified,
highly intellectual
• His most famous poem is “Sunday Morning” (1923) in which he questions
traditional views of immortality
• Because of their innovations in style and subject matter, Stevens and
Williams were key figures in the development of 20th century American poetry
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) was a journalist and critic
• She is interesting as a popular poet who combined traditional and Modernist
influences
• Her poems are usually humourous and sad, written in a style similar to that of
the Georgian poets
• But they often mock traditional ideas about love and romance, reflect new
social situation of women in 20th century
- Enough Rope (1926)
- Not So Deep as a Well (1936)
Other important American Modernist poets:
• Hart Crane
• E.E. Cummings

Early 20th Century American Prose US

WRITERS:
✔ Henry James
✔ Edith Wharton
✔ Theodore Dreiser
✔ Sinclair Lewis
✔ F. Scott Fitzgerald
✔ Ernest Hemingway
✔ William Faulkner
Other important writers:
✔ Eugene O’Neill (Realist drama)
✔ John Steinbeck (Realist novels of Depression)

DESCRIPTION:
• At the start of the 20th century, the search for a truly “American” literature
had led to Realism
• Depiction of the exciting (and harsh) new realities of the rapidly growing,
changing nation
• Romanticism seemed old-fashioned:
- Transcendentalism
- Imaginative fantasy (Hawthorne, Melville, Poe)
- Genteel fiction (although lasted into 20’s)
• The same influences that led from Realism to Modernism in Britain were also
at work in America
- Rise of scientific thinking
- New psychological theories (Freud, James)
- Rejection of 19th century world-view
• As in Europe, these influences led to the kind of individualistic, critical, and
experimental art we know as Modernist
From Genteel to Modernist : James and Wharton
Two novelists can be seen as linking 19th century genteel fiction and
Modernism: Henry James and Edith Wharton
Realism in the New Century
• More significant for the future was the Naturalistic strain of Realism
• Focusing on everyday American life, and often written by journalists The “
Lost Generation”
• In the years after the First World War, another kind of critique of American
values was born
• Allied victory and an economic boom (“The Roaring 20’s”) created a mood of
wild optimism and national pride
• For many artists, however, prosperity combined with the decline of tradition
led to a sense of decadence
- “…all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken…” -- F. Scott
Fitzgerald
• Writers expressing this mood are called the “Lost Generation” (a term created
by the American writer Gertrude Stein)
• Many felt alienated from American life, went to Europe
Three of the most important are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and
William Faulkner (the last two Nobel Prize winners)
By mid-century, American literature had grown from small beginnings to
become one of the world’s richest and most dynamic

IMPORTANT WRITERS:
Henry James (1843-1916) was born into a wealthy and intellectual New York
family - educated in Europe
• James is best-known for realistic stories about wealthy Americans in Europe
-- “trans-Atlantic literature”
- “It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it
entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.”
• James often pairs Americans and Europeans as types of innocence and
experience:
- Daisy Miller (1878)
- The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
- The Ambassadors (1903)
• He argued influentially that novels should have unlimited freedom of style
and subject matter
• Later work experiments with: stream of consciousness, multiple points of
view, unreliable narrators
- The Turn of the Screw (1898) -- a ghost story in which the narrator may
or not be insane
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was also from a wealthy New York family
• Like James, she wrote realistic novels about wealthy Americans
• Her work shows Modernist themes, e.g., the individual’s struggle against
social pressures (cf. “Prufrock”)
- The House of Mirth (1905) -- a story about a socialite seeking a wealthy
husband, despite loving a poorer man
- The Age of Innocence (1920) -- about a wealthy young man who marries
unhappily rather than pursuing his true love
• Wharton also recorded the decay of genteel New York society as the city grew
and changed:
- The Custom of the Country (1913) -- the story of a beautiful but amoral
country girl who schemes her way to the top of society

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) is key figure in American Naturalism

• Dreiser saw people as pawns of natural and social forces (chance, class,
culture)
- Sister Carrie (1900) is the story of a poor country girl who finds success
in the big city through a series of lucky chances
• A version of the “American Dream” in which morality and character play no
part (cf. Franklin)
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was also a journalist, and another important Realist
(although not a Naturalist)
• Lewis studied the culture of America’s thousands of small towns and cities
• Saw a mixture of Puritanism, intellectual ignorance, and greed -- American
Dream as destructive
- Main Street (1920) -- a harshly realistic novel of small-town America (but
became a bestseller!)
- Babbitt (1922) -- about the conformist, intellectually empty life of a
middle-class businessman
• Lewis was both praised and attacked
• First American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1930), but his books were
banned in some parts of America

“lost generation”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was from a rich Midwestern family
• He received an expensive education in an elite East Coast college and had
early success as a novelist:
- This Side of Paradise (1920) - autobiographical story of a disillusioned
college student
• Lived a wild life of travel and extravagant parties -- much of his writing
describes this life in critical terms: the emptiness of the American Dream
- Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
- The Great Gatsby (1925)
• Fitzgerald’s stories about the unhappy rich went out of fashion after 1929 --
but he is now considered one of the great 20th century novelists
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) was a journalist from rural America -- served as
an ambulance driver during WWI
• He found the war a disillusioning experience -- decided to stay in Europe and
become a writer
- The Sun Also Rises (1926) tells of expatriate Americans living in Europe
after the war
- A Farewell to Arms (1929) - about an American soldier and a British
nurse who desert the army to be together
• Famous for its clear, simple style, his work typically deals with the
individual’s struggle to preserve a sense of dignity in a world without God
Other important works:
- For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
- The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
William Faulkner (1987-1962) was from the American South, served as a pilot
during the First World War
• After the war, he began writing stories like those of Fitzgerald and
Hemingway
- Soldiers’ Pay (1926) is about a wounded soldier’s problems adjusting to
post-war life
• However, Faulkner only found success when he began writing about the
decline of Southern aristocratic culture -- very influential in his focus on place
• His books are often written in an obscure, experimental style:
- The Sound and the Fury (1929) is the story of the disintegration of an
aristocratic Southern family --narrated partly by a mentally handicapped
character:
- As I Lay Dying (1930)
- Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
• Other important writers:
- Eugene O’Neill (Realist drama)
- John Steinbeck (Realist novels of Depression)

Post-War American Literature US

WRITERS:
The “Southern Renaissance”:
 ✔ William Faulkner
✔ Flannery O’Connor
✔ Tennessee Williams
Jewish-American Writers:
✔ Saul Bellow
✔ Norman Mailer
Black Writers:
✔ Ralph Ellison
✔ Toni Morrison
✔ Allen Ginsberg (Beats)
✔ Jack Kerouac (Beats)
✔ Sylvia Plath (Feminist Literature)
✔ Erica Jong (Feminist Literature)
✔ Kurt Vonnegut (Postmodernism)
✔ Thomas Pynchon (Postmodernism)
✔ Douglas Coupland (Generation X)
✔ Chuck Palahniuk (Generation X)

DESCRIPTION:
America emerged from World War II as the world’s richest and most powerful
nation
• Prosperity and profound social change have contributed to a tremendous
increase in the diversity of American literature
• Due to time limitations, we’ll focus on a few key trends:
- New voices: Southern, Black, and Jewish-American writing
- The Social Revolution: “Beat” and Feminist writing
- Postmodernism and “Generation X”
-

New Voices
• The 1940’s and 50’s were a time of paranoia and social conservatism
- Cold War
- McCarthyism
- “Father Knows Best”
• A Golden Age? Or a repressive era of fear and conformity?
• Perhaps in reaction, writers from outside the white, middle-class mainstream
of American society began to attract attention (legacy of Modernism?)
• In this sense, post-war American writing became more truly “American,”
reflecting the country’s vast ethnic and social diversity

The Social Revolution of the 1960’s

• In the 1960’s, a “counter-culture” of political and social rebellion shattered
the illusion of American post-war cultural stability
• The 1950’s literary pre-cursors to this movement were known as the “Beats”
• They rejected the values of middle-class America -- experimented with drugs,
sexual freedom, Eastern religions

Postmodernism
• The 1960’s, with its spirit of questioning, saw the arrival of Postmodernism in
America, and a return to experimentalism in literature

The 1990’s and “Generation X”

• In the last years of the 20th century, a new phenomenon emerged -- a
generation raised on Postmodernism and the threat of imminent death (Cold
War, AIDS)

Final Comments
• Literature as a genre faces increasing competition from television, movies,
and the Internet
• However, many genres of popular writing continue to flourish, including
- Techno-thrillers -- technology-oriented spy fiction, originated by
American writer Tom Clancy
- “Chick Lit” -- stories of professional women, their careers and love lives
• Despite fears that literature is dying in America, millions of Americans
continue to read and enjoy their nation’s literature, now one of the richest in
the world
IMPORTANT WRITERS:
William Faulkner’s example inspired other writers from the American South
• Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) combined Faulknerian “Southern Gothic” with
an anti-Modernist Catholicism
• “My audience are the people who think God is dead.”
- “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1955) -- A family is murdered by criminals
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) is considered one of the greatest American
playwrights
• Williams often wrote about the decay of the Southern aristocracy
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) -- A Polish workman marries into a
oncewealthy aristocratic family
Jewish-American Writers
• Jewish writers also took a leading place in post-war American literature
Saul Bellow (1915-2005), winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize, wrote intellectually
complex Realist novels
• They express Bellow’s struggle to apply traditional Jewish and Western ideas
to the 20th century world
• Existentialist themes (i.e., the search for meaning in a world without God)
- Herzog (1964) -- A middle-aged Jewish divorcé writes letters to the great
thinkers of Western history, questioning and attacking their ideas
• Norman Mailer (1923 - ) A Jewish writer from New York who became famous
for a Realist war novel
- The Naked and the Dead (1948) -- a psychological study of soldiers at
war
• Mailer also helped create a new kind of literature: the non-fiction novel
- The Executioner’s Song (1978) -- The fictionalized biography of a real
murderer, from troubled childhood to execution

Black Writers
• After the war, there was a new push towards racial integration in America
(reforms in the Army, and later, schools)
• More attention was paid to the work of Black authors
Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) is known for his only novel, one of the key
documents of American Black culture
● Invisible Man (1952) tells of a young Black man in a white-dominated
society that treats him as “invisible”
• Ellison’s work inspired later Black writers, some of whom have come to be
preeminent figures in American literature
Toni Morrison (1931 - ) winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, is today
one of America’s best-known authors
• She writes personal and historical stories of the Black experience in America
- The Bluest Eye (1970) is a story of racism and sexual abuse; the
protagonist is a young Black girl who longs for blue eyes
- Beloved (1987) is a historical novel about escaped slaves trying to build
a new life in 19th century America

The Social Revolution of the 1960’s

• In the 1960’s, a “counter-culture” of political and social rebellion shattered
the
illusion of American post-war cultural stability
• The 1950’s literary pre-cursors to this movement were known as the “Beats”
• They rejected the values of middle-class America -- experimented with drugs,
sexual freedom, Eastern religions
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was the most prominent Beat poet
- “Howl” (1956) -- A Whitmanesque outpouring of free verse, attacking the
culture of post-war America
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) wrote novels about young Beats travelling across
America, taking drugs, having sex, looking for a freer, better way of life
- On the Road (1957)

Feminist literature
• Traditional views of womanhood were challenged in this era; the status of
women changed dramatically
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) embodied the conflict of these times
- The Bell Jar (1963) -- An autobiographical novel about a young woman
who wants to be a wife and a writer
- Ariel (1965) -- Collection of dark and dramatic free-verse poems written
shortly before her suicide
Erica Jong (1942 - ) shocked readers and critics with her vivid descriptions of
female sexual desire
- Fear of Flying (1973) - An unhappy wife explores her sexual nature by
having an affair (with a man named “Goodlove”!)
Postmodernism
• The 1960’s, with its spirit of questioning, saw the arrival of Postmodernism in
America, and a return to experimentalism in literature
Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - ) is one of the most popular American Postmodern
novelists
• His works often ignore traditional rules of the novel, e.g. linearity of plot; clear
borders between the fictional and “real” worlds
- Slaughterhouse 5 (1969) is the story of the Dresden firebombings -- told
from the perspective of an American soldier who travels through time at
random
Thomas Pynchon (1937 --) is famous for the enormous complexity of his novels
• The stories fluctuate wildly in time, narrative perspective, with unclear
borders between reality and unreality
- V. (1963) -- The story of the search for a mysterious woman who is
replacing her body parts with inanimate objects
- The book jumps rapidly in time, from one narrator to another (some
unreliable, or of unknown reliability)

Generation X
Writers like Douglas Coupland (1961 - ) felt that this generation faced a kind of
purposeless, uncertain life in a materialistic society
- Generation X (1991) depicts young people trying to live outside the
commercialized society of North America
Chuck Palahniuk (1962 - ) is another popular “Generation X” author
 - Fight Club (1996) is the story of an unhappy office worker who finds a
sense of life in physical violence
Final Comments
• Literature as a genre faces increasing competition from television, movies,
and the Internet
• However, many genres of popular writing continue to flourish, including
- Techno-thrillers -- technology-oriented spy fiction, originated by
- American writer Tom Clancy
- “Chick Lit” -- stories of professional women, their careers and love lives