Literature Of America

American literature is literature written or produced in the United States and in the colonies that
preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language
literature but also includes literature produced in languages other than English. [1]
The American Revolutionary Period (1775–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin
Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. An early novel is William Hill
Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published in 1791. Writer and critic John Neal in the early- to mid-
nineteenth century helped advance America toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing
predecessors, such as Washington Irving, for imitating their British counterparts and by influencing
writers such as Edgar Allan Poe.[2] Edgar Allan Poe took American poetry and short fiction in new
directions. Ralph Waldo Emerson pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement; Henry
David Thoreau, author of Walden, was influenced by this movement. The conflict surrounding
abolitionism inspired writers, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and authors of slave narratives, such as
Frederick Douglass. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) explored the dark side of
American history, as did Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). Major American poets of the
nineteenth century include Walt Whitman, Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Mark Twain was the first
major American writer to be born in the West. Henry James achieved international recognition with
novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881).
Following World War I, modernist literature rejected nineteenth-century forms and values. F. Scott
Fitzgerald captured the carefree mood of the 1920s, but John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, who
became famous with The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, and William Faulkner, adopted
experimental forms. American modernist poets included diverse figures such as Wallace Stevens, T. S.
Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and E. E. Cummings. Depression-era writers included John
Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath (1939). America's involvement in World War II led to
works such as Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Prominent playwrights of these years include Eugene
O'Neill, who won a Nobel Prize. In the mid-twentieth century, drama was dominated by Tennessee
Williams and Arthur Miller. Musical theater was also prominent.
In late 20th century and early 21st century, there has been increased popular and academic acceptance
of literature written by immigrant, ethnic, and LGBT writers, and of writings in languages other than
English.[3] Examples of pioneers in these areas include LGBT author Michael Cunningham, Asian
American authors Maxine Hong Kingston and Ocean Vuong, and African Americans authors such as
Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. In 2016, the folk-rock songwriter Bob Dylan won
the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Native American literature
Main article: Native American literature
Oral literature
Further information: Mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, American Indian literary
nationalism, Hawaiian literature, Indigenous literatures in Canada, List of writers from peoples
indigenous to the Americas, Mesoamerican literature, and Mexican literature § Pre-Columbian
literature
Oral literature and storytelling has existed among the various Indigenous tribes, prior to the arrival of
European colonists. The traditional territories of some tribes traverse national boundaries and such
literature is not homogeneous but reflects the different cultures of these peoples. [4]
Published books
Further information: Native American Renaissance
In 1771 the first work by a Native American in English, A Sermon Preached at the Execution of
Moses Paul, an Indian, by Samson Occom, from the Mohegan tribe, was published and went through
19 editions. The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (1854) by John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee,
1827–67) was the first novel by a Native American, and O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-I-gwa-ki (Queen of the
Woods) (1899) by Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi, 1830–99) was "the first Native American novel
devoted to the subject of Indian life".[5]
A significant event in the development of Native American literature in English came with the
awarding of the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 to N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa tribe) for his novel House Made
of Dawn (1968).
Colonial literature
Captain John Smith's A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Happened
in Virginia ... (1608) can be considered America's first work of literature.
The Thirteen Colonies have often been regarded as the center of early American literature. However,
the first European settlements in North America had been founded elsewhere, many years earlier. [6]
The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book printed in any of the
colonies before the American Revolution.[6] Spanish and French had two of the strongest colonial
literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States. Moreover, a wealth of oral literary
traditions existed on the continent among the numerous different Native American tribes. However,
with the onset of English settlement of North America, the English language established a foothold in
North America that would spread with the growth of England's political influence in the continent and
the continued arrival of settlers from the British Isles. This included the English capture of the Dutch
colony of New Amsterdam in 1664, with the English renaming it New York and changing the
administrative language from Dutch to English.[7]
From 1696 to 1700, only about 250 separate items were issued from the major printing presses in the
American colonies. This is a small number, compared to the output of the printers in London at the
time. London printers published materials written by New England authors, so, the body of American
literature was larger than what was published in North America. However, printing was established in
the American colonies before it was allowed in most of England. In England, restrictive laws had long
confined printing to four locations, where the government could monitor what was published:
London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Because of this, the colonies ventured into the modern world
earlier than their provincial English counterparts.[6]
Some American literature of the time consisted of pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the
colonies to both a European and colonial audience. Captain John Smith could be considered the first
American author with his works A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath
Happened in Virginia ... (1608) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer
Isles (1624). Other writers of this genre included Daniel Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George
Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson.
Topics of early prose
Letters from an American Farmer is one of the first in the canon of American literature, and has
influenced a diverse range of subsequent works.
The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were important topics of early American
literature. A journal written by John Winthrop, The History of New England, discussed the religious
foundations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edward Winslow also recorded a diary of the first
years after the Mayflower's arrival. "A modell of Christian Charity" by John Winthrop, the first
governor of Massachusetts, was a Sermon preached on the Arbella (the flagship of the Winthrop
Fleet) in 1630. This work outlined the ideal society that he and the other Separatists would build, in an
attempt to realize a "Puritan utopia". Other religious writers included Increase Mather and William
Bradford, author of the journal published as a History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47. Others like
Roger Williams and Nathaniel Ward more fiercely argued state and church separation. Others, such as
Thomas Morton, cared little for the church; Morton's The New English Canaan mocked the Puritans
and declared that the local Native Americans were better people than them. [8]
Other late writings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians, as seen in writings by Daniel
Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason, Benjamin Church, and Daniel J. Tan. John Eliot translated
the Bible into the Algonquin language (1663) as Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God.[9] It
was the first complete Bible printed in the Western hemisphere; Stephen Daye printed 1,000 copies on
the first printing press in the American colonies.[10]
Of the second generation of New England settlers, Cotton Mather stands out as a theologian and
historian, who wrote the history of the colonies with a view to God's activity in their midst and to
connecting the Puritan leaders with the great heroes of the Christian faith. His best-known works
include the Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), the Wonders of the Invisible World and The Biblia
Americana.[11]
Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield represented the Great Awakening, a religious revival in the
early 18th century that emphasized Calvinist thought. Other Puritan and religious writers include
Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Wise, and Samuel Willard. Less strict and serious writers
included Samuel Sewall (who wrote a diary revealing the daily life of the late 17th century), [8] and
Sarah Kemble Knight (who likewise wrote a diary).[12]
New England was not the only area in the colonies with a literature: southern literature was also
growing at this time. The diary of planter William Byrd and his The History of the Dividing Line
(1728) described the expedition to survey the swamp between Virginia and North Carolina but also
comments on the differences between American Indians and the white settlers in the area. [8] In a
similar book, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West, William Bartram
described the Southern landscape and the Indian tribes he encountered; Bartram's book was popular in
Europe, being translated into German, French and Dutch.[8]
As the colonies moved toward independence from Britain, an important discussion of American
culture and identity came from the French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, whose Letters
from an American Farmer (1782) addresses the question "What is an American?", by moving between
praise for the opportunities and peace offered in the new society and recognition that the solid life of
the farmer must rest, uneasily, between the oppressive aspects of the urban life and the lawless aspects
of the frontier, where the lack of social structures leads to the loss of civilized living. [8]
This same period saw the beginning of African-American literature, through the poet Phillis Wheatley
and the slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
(1789). At this time, American Indian literature also began to flourish. Samson Occom published his
A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul and a popular hymnbook, Collection of Hymns
and Spiritual Songs, "the first Indian best-seller".[13]
Revolutionary period
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1793)
The Revolutionary period also contained political writings, including those by colonists Samuel
Adams, Josiah Quincy, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, the last being a loyalist to the crown.
Two key figures were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack and
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin are esteemed works, with their wit and influence toward the
formation of a budding American identity. Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and The American Crisis
writings are seen as playing a key role in influencing the political tone of the time.
During the Revolutionary War, poems and songs such as "Nathan Hale" were popular. Major satirists
included John Trumbull and Francis Hopkinson. Philip Morin Freneau also wrote poems about the
War.
During the 18th century, writing shifted from the Puritanism of Winthrop and Bradford to
Enlightenment ideas of reason. The belief that human and natural occurrences were messages from
God no longer fit with the budding anthropocentric culture. Many intellectuals believed that the
human mind could comprehend the universe through the laws of physics, as described by Isaac
Newton. One of these was Cotton Mather. The first book published in North America that promoted
Newton and natural theology was Mather's The Christian Philosopher (1721). The enormous
scientific, economic, social, and philosophical, changes of the 18th century, called the Enlightenment,
impacted the authority of clergyman and scripture, making way for democratic principles. The
increase in population helped account for the greater diversity of opinion in religious and political life,
as seen in the literature of this time. In 1670, the population of the colonies numbered approximately
111,000. Thirty years later, it was more than 250,000. By 1760, it reached 1,600,000.[6] The growth of
communities, and therefore social life, led people to become more interested in the progress of
individuals and their shared experience in the colonies. These new ideas can be seen in the popularity
of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.
Even earlier than Franklin was Cadwallader Colden (1689–1776), whose book The History of the
Five Indian Nations, published in 1727 was one of the first texts published on Iroquois history.[14]
Colden also wrote a book on botany, which attracted the attention of Carl Linnaeus, and he
maintained a long term correspondence with Benjamin Franklin.[15][16]
Post-independence
The opening of the original printing of the Declaration, printed on July 4, 1776, under Jefferson's
supervision.[17]
In the post-war period, Thomas Jefferson established his place in American literature through his
authorship of the Declaration of Independence, his influence on the U.S. Constitution, his
autobiography, his Notes on the State of Virginia, and his many letters. The Federalist essays by
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay presented a significant historical discussion of
American government organization and republican values. Fisher Ames, James Otis, and Patrick
Henry are also valued for their political writings and orations.
Early American literature struggled to find a unique voice in existing literary genre, and this tendency
was reflected in novels. European styles were frequently imitated, but critics usually considered the
imitations inferior.
The first American novel
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the first American novels were published. These fictions
were too lengthy to be printed for public reading. Publishers took a chance on these works in hopes
they would become steady sellers and need to be reprinted. This scheme was ultimately successful
because male and female literacy rates were increasing at the time. Among the first American novels
are Thomas Attwood Digges's Adventures of Alonso, published in London in 1775 and William Hill
Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1789. Brown's novel depicts a tragic love story between
siblings who fell in love without knowing they were related.
In the next decade, important women writers also published novels. Susanna Rowson is best known
for her novel Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, published in London in 1791.[18] In 1794 the novel was
reissued in Philadelphia under the title, Charlotte Temple. Charlotte Temple is a seduction tale, written
in the third person, which warns against listening to the voice of love and counsels resistance. She
also wrote nine novels, six theatrical works, two collections of poetry, six textbooks, and countless
songs.[18] Reaching more than a million and a half readers over a century and a half, Charlotte Temple
was the biggest seller of the 19th century before Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Although Rowson was
extremely popular in her time and is often acknowledged in accounts of the development of the early
American novel, Charlotte Temple often is criticized as a sentimental novel of seduction.
Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette: Or, the History of Eliza Wharton was published in 1797 and
was extremely popular.[19] Told from Foster's point of view and based on the real life of Eliza
Whitman, the novel is about a woman who is seduced and abandoned. Eliza is a "coquette" who is
courted by two very different men: a clergyman who offers her a comfortable domestic life and a
noted libertine. Unable to choose between them, she finds herself single when both men get married.
She eventually yields to the artful libertine and gives birth to an illegitimate stillborn child at an inn.
The Coquette is praised for its demonstration of the era's contradictory ideas of womanhood. [20] even
as it has been criticized for delegitimizing protest against women's subordination. [21]
Washington Irving and his friends at Sunnyside
Both The Coquette and Charlotte Temple are novels that treat the right of women to live as equals as
the new democratic experiment. These novels are of the sentimental genre, characterized by
overindulgence in emotion, an invitation to listen to the voice of reason against misleading passions,
as well as an optimistic overemphasis on the essential goodness of humanity. Sentimentalism is often
thought to be a reaction against the Calvinistic belief in the depravity of human nature. [22] While many
of these novels were popular, the economic infrastructure of the time did not allow these writers to
make a living through their writing alone.[23]
Charles Brockden Brown is the earliest American novelist whose works are still commonly read. He
published Wieland in 1798, and in 1799 published Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn. These
novels are of the Gothic genre.
The first writer to be able to support himself through the income generated by his publications alone
was Washington Irving. He completed his first major book in 1809 titled A History of New-York from
the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty.[24]
Of the picaresque genre, Hugh Henry Brackenridge published Modern Chivalry in 1792–1815;
Tabitha Gilman Tenney wrote Female Quixotism: Exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and
Extravagant Adventure of Dorcasina Sheldon in 1801; Royall Tyler wrote The Algerine Captive in
1797.[22]
Other notable authors include William Gilmore Simms, who wrote Martin Faber in 1833, Guy Rivers
in 1834, and The Yemassee in 1835. Lydia Maria Child wrote Hobomok in 1824 and The Rebels in
1825. John Neal wrote Keep Cool in 1817, Logan in 1822, Seventy-Six in 1823, Randolph in 1823,
Errata in 1823, Brother Jonathan in 1825, and Rachel Dyer (earliest use of the Salem witch trials as
the basis for a novel[25]) in 1828. Catherine Maria Sedgwick wrote A New England Tale in 1822,
Redwood in 1824, Hope Leslie in 1827, and The Linwoods in 1835. James Kirke Paulding wrote The
Lion of the West in 1830, The Dutchman's Fireside in 1831, and Westward Ho! in 1832. Omar ibn
Said, a Muslim slave in the Carolinas, wrote an autobiography in Arabic in 1831, considered an early
example of African-American literature.[26][27][28] Robert Montgomery Bird wrote Calavar in 1834 and
Nick of the Woods in 1837. James Fenimore Cooper was a notable author best known for his novel
The Last of the Mohicans written in 1826.[22] George Tucker produced in 1824 the first fiction of
Virginia colonial life with The Valley of Shenandoah. He followed in 1827 with one of the country's
first science fictions: A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs,
Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians.
19th century – Unique American style
John Neal
After the war with Britain in 1812, there was an increasing desire to produce a uniquely American
literature and culture. Literary figures who took up the cause included Washington Irving, William
Cullen Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper. Irving wrote humorous works in Salmagundi and the
satire A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809). Bryant wrote early romantic and
nature-inspired poetry, which evolved away from their European origins. Cooper's Leatherstocking
Tales about Natty Bumppo (which includes The Last of the Mohicans, 1826) treated uniquely
American material in ways that were popular both in the new country and Europe.
John Neal as a critic played a key role in developing American literary nationalism. Neal criticized
Irving and Cooper for relying on old British conventions of authorship to frame American
phenomena,[29] arguing that "to succeed ... [the American writer] must resemble nobody ... [he] must
be unlike all that have gone before [him]" and issue "another Declaration of Independence, in the
great Republic of Letters."[30] As a pioneer of the literary device he referred to "natural writing",[31]
Neal was "the first in America to be natural in his diction"[32] and his work represents "the first
deviation from ... Irvingesque graciousness."[33]
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston but raised in Virginia and identified with the South. In 1832, he
began writing short stories, such as "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and
"The Fall of the House of Usher", that explore hidden depths of human psychology and push the
boundaries of fiction. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", is seen as the first detective story.
Humorous writers were also popular and included Seba Smith and Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber in
New England and Davy Crockett, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson J. Hooper, Thomas Bangs
Thorpe, and George Washington Harris writing about the American frontier.
In New England, a group of writers known as Boston Brahmins included James Russell Lowell, then
in later years Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had renounced his ministry, published his essay Nature, which
argued that men should dispense with organized religion and reach a lofty spiritual state by studying
and interacting with the natural world. He expanded his influence with his lecture "The American
Scholar", delivered in Cambridge in 1837, which called upon Americans to create a uniquely
American writing style. Both the nation and the individual should declare independence. Emerson's
influence fostered the movement now known as Transcendentalism. Among the leaders was
Emerson's friend, Henry David Thoreau, a nonconformist and critic of American commercial culture.
After living mostly by himself for two years in a nearby cabin by a wooded pond, Thoreau wrote
Walden (1854), a memoir that urges resistance to the dictates of society. Other Transcendentalists
included Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Jones Very. [34]
As one of the great works of the Revolutionary period was written by a Frenchman, so too was a work
about America from this generation. Alexis de Tocqueville's two-volume Democracy in America
(1835 and 1840) described his travels through the young nation, making observations about the
relations between American politics, individualism, and community.
The political conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the writings of William Lloyd Garrison and
his paper The Liberator, along with poet John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe in her
world-famous Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). These efforts were supported by the continuation of the
slave narrative autobiography.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In 1837, the young Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) collected some of his stories as Twice-Told
Tales, a volume rich in symbolism and occult incidents. Hawthorne went on to write full-length
"romances", quasi-allegorical novels that explore the themes of guilt, pride, and emotional repression.
His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850), is a drama, set in Puritan Massachusetts, about a woman
cast out of her community for committing adultery with a minister who refuses to acknowledge his
own sin.
Herman Melville (1819–1891) made a name for himself with Typee and Omoo, adventure tales based
loosely on his own life at sea and jumping ship to live among South Sea natives. Becoming a friend of
Hawthorne's in 1850, Melville was inspired by his work. Moby-Dick (1851) became not only an
adventure tale about the pursuit of a white whale, but also an exploration of obsession, the nature of
evil, and human struggle against the elements. It was a critical and commercial failure, as were his
subsequent novels. He turned to poetry and did not return to fiction until the short novel Billy Budd,
Sailor, which he left unfinished at his death in 1891. In it, Melville dramatizes the conflicting claims
of duty and compassion on board a ship in time of war. His more profound books sold poorly, and he
had been long forgotten by the time of his death. He was rediscovered in the 1920s.
Anti-transcendental works from Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe all comprise the Dark romanticism
sub-genre of popular literature at this time.
Ethnic writers
Slave narrative autobiography from this period include Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl (1861). At this time, American Indian autobiography develops, most notably in William Apess's
A Son of the Forest (1829) and George Copway's The Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-
bowh (1847). Moreover, minority authors were beginning to publish fiction, as in William Wells
Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853), Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends,
(1857) Martin Delany's Blake; or, The Huts of America (1859–62) and Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig:
Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859) as early African-American novels, and John Rollin
Ridge's The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854), which is considered the first American
Indian novel but is also an early story that talks about Mexican-American issues.
Late 19th century Realist fiction
Willa Cather
Mark Twain (the pen name used by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) was among the first
major American writers to be born away from the East Coast – in the border state of Missouri. His
regional masterpieces were the memoir Life on the Mississippi and the novels Adventures of Tom
Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Twain's style – influenced by journalism, wedded
to the vernacular, direct and unadorned but also highly evocative and irreverently humorous –
changed the way Americans write their language. His characters speak like real people and sound
distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and regional accents.
Other writers interested in regional differences and dialect were George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson
Page, Joel Chandler Harris, Mary Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock), Sarah Orne Jewett,
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Henry Cuyler Bunner, and William Sydney Porter (O. Henry). A version of
local color regionalism that focused on minority experiences can be seen in the works of Charles W.
Chesnutt (writing about African Americans), of María Ruiz de Burton, one of the earliest Mexican-
American novelists to write in English, and in the Yiddish-inflected works of Abraham Cahan.
William Dean Howells also represented the realist tradition through his novels, including The Rise of
Silas Lapham (1885) and his work as editor of The Atlantic Monthly.
Henry James (1843–1916) confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by writing directly about it.
Although he was born in New York City, James spent most of his adult life in England. Many of his
novels center on Americans who live in or travel to Europe. With its intricate, highly qualified
sentences and dissection of emotional and psychological nuance, James's fiction can be daunting.
Among his more accessible works are the novellas Daisy Miller (1878), about an American girl in
Europe, and The Turn of the Screw (1898), a ghost story.
Stephen Crane (1871–1900), best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895),
depicted the life of New York City prostitutes in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893). And in Sister
Carrie (1900), Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) portrayed a country girl who moves to Chicago and
becomes a kept woman. Frank Norris's (1870–1902) fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre.
His notable works include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), The Octopus: A Story of
California (1901) and The Pit (1903). Norris along with Hamlin Garland (1860–1940) wrote about the
problems of American farmers and other social issues from a naturalist perspective. Garland is best
known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers.[35] (Main-Travelled Roads (1891),
Prairie Folks (1892), Jason Edwards (1892).[36])
Social novel
Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward (1888) was concerned with political and social
issues.
20th century prose
Ernest Hemingway in World War I uniform
At the beginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding fiction to encompass a
broader range of experiences, and sometimes connected these to the naturalist school of realism. In
her stories and novels, Edith Wharton (1862–1937) scrutinized the upper-class, Eastern-seaboard
society in which she had grown up. One of her finest books, The Age of Innocence (1920), centers on
a man who chooses to marry a conventional, socially acceptable woman rather than a fascinating
outsider.
Social issues and the power of corporations was the central concern of some writers at this time.
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), most famous for his muckraking novel The Jungle (1906), advocated
socialism. Jack London (1876–1916) was also very committed to social justice and socialism through
some of his books as The Iron Heel or The People of the Abyss. Other political writers of the period
included Edwin Markham (1852–1940) and William Vaughn Moody. Journalistic critics, including Ida
M. Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens, were labeled "The Muckrakers". Henry Brooks Adams's literate
autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1907) also depicted a stinging description of the
education system and modern life.
Race was a common issue as well, as seen in the work of Pauline Hopkins, who published five
influential works from 1900 to 1903. Similarly, Sui Sin Far wrote about Chinese-American
experiences, and Maria Cristina Mena wrote about Mexican-American experiences.
Prominent among mid-western and western American writers were Willa Cather (1873–1947) and
Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), both of whom had a major opus set largely in their regions.
1920s
F. Scott Fitzgerald, photographed by Carl van Vechten, 1937
Experimentation in style and form soon joined the new latitudes in subject matter. In 1909, Gertrude
Stein (1874–1946), by then an expatriate in Paris, published Three Lives, an innovative work
influenced by her familiarity with cubism, jazz, and other movements in contemporary art and music.
Stein labeled a group of expatriate literary figures who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s the "Lost
Generation," a term later used as by Ernest Hemingway.
The 1920s brought sharp changes to American literature. Many writers had direct experience of the
First World War, and they used it to frame their writings.[37] Writers like Henry James, Gertrude Stein,
and poets Ezra Pound, H.D. and T. S. Eliot demonstrate the growth of an international perspective in
American literature. American writers had long looked to European models for inspiration, but
whereas the literary breakthroughs of the mid-19th century came from finding distinctly American
styles and themes, writers from this period were finding ways of contributing to a flourishing
international literary scene, not as imitators but as equals. Something similar was happening back in
the States, as Jewish writers (such as Abraham Cahan) used the English language to reach an
international Jewish audience.
William Faulkner in 1954
The period of peace and debt-fueled economic expansion that followed WWI was the setting for many
of the stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). Fitzgerald's work captured the restless,
pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the 1920s, a decade he named the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's
characteristic theme, expressed poignantly in his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, is the tendency of
youth's golden dreams to dissolve in failure and disappointment. Fitzgerald also dwells on the
collapse of long-held American Ideals, such as liberty, social unity, good governance and peace,
features which were severely threatened by the pressures of modern early 20th century society. [38]
Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson also wrote novels with critical depictions of American life.
John Dos Passos wrote a famous anti-war novel, Three Soldiers, describing scenes of blind hatred,
stupidity, and criminality; and the suffocating regimentation of army life. [39] He also wrote about the
war in the U.S.A. trilogy which extended into the Depression.[40] Experimental in form, the U.S.A.
trilogy weaves together various narrative strands, which alternate with contemporary news reports,
snatches of the author's autobiography, and capsule biographies of public figures including Eugene
Debs, Robert La Follette and Isadora Duncan.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), once labelled the "brightest talent of the modern American
epoch,"[41] was most famous for his production of short stories and novels such as "The Sun Also
Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms." In contrast to writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway is
regarded as the predecessor of literary minimalism, and preferred to write using short prose, avoiding
the usage of adverbs and adjectives wherever possible. Hemingway's adoption of this minimalist style
came as a result of his time working as a journalist at the Kansas City Star. [42] In 1954, Hemingway
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and has persisted as one of the most influential writers,
both culturally and stylistically, to have emerged from early 20th-Century America. [43]
William Faulkner (1897–1962) won the Nobel Prize in 1949. Faulkner encompassed a wide range of
humanity in Yoknapatawpha County, a Mississippian region of his own invention. He recorded his
characters' seemingly unedited ramblings to represent their inner states, a technique called "stream of
consciousness". He also jumbled time sequences to show how the past – especially the slave-holding
era of the Deep South – endures in the present. Among his great works are Absalom, Absalom!, As I
Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August.[44]
1930s – Depression-era
Further information: List of writers of the Lost Generation
Zora Neale Hurston
Depression era literature offered blunt, direct social criticism. John Steinbeck (1902–1968) set many
of his stories in Salinas, California, where he was born. His style was simple and evocative, winning
him the favor of the readers but not of the critics. His poor, working-class characters struggled to lead
a decent and honest life. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), considered his masterpiece, is a strong,
socially-oriented novel of the Joads, a poor family from Oklahoma and their journey to California in
search of a better life. Other of his popular novels include Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, Cannery
Row, and East of Eden. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.
In his short life, Nathanael West produced two short novels that later came to be considered classics.
Miss Lonelyhearts plumbs the life of reluctant (and, to comic effect, male) advice columnist who
cannot deal with the tragic letters he receives. The Day of the Locust satirizes Hollywood stereotypes
and the dark ironies of Hollywood life.
In non-fiction, James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men observes and depicts the lives of three
struggling tenant-farming families in Alabama in 1936. Combining factual reporting with poetic
beauty, Agee presented an accurate and detailed report of what he had seen coupled with insight into
his feelings about the experience and the difficulties of capturing it for a broad audience. In doing so,
he created an enduring portrait of a nearly invisible segment of the American population.
Henry Miller's semi-autobiographical novels of sexual exploration, written and published in Paris,
were deemed pornographic and officially banned from the United States until 1962. By then, the
themes and stylistic innovations in Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Black Spring had already set an
example that paved the way for sexually frank novels of personal experience of the 1950s and 1960s.
Post-World War II fiction
Novel
Norman Mailer, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948
The period was dominated by the last few of the realistic modernists, the wildly Romantic beatniks,
and explorations of personal, racial, and ethnic themes.
World War II was the subject of several major novels: Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead
(1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). While
the Korean war was a source of trauma for the protagonist of The Moviegoer (1962), by Southern
author Walker Percy, winner of the National Book Award; his attempt at exploring "the dislocation of
man in the modern age."[45]
Though born in Canada, Chicago raised Saul Bellow became one of the most influential American
writers. Works like The Adventures of Augie March (1953) and Herzog (1964), Bellow painted vivid
portraits of Jewish life in America that opened the way for further work. He was honored by the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1976. Other noteworthy novels are J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
(1951), Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963), and Russian-American Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955).
The highly popular To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee was a less intense novel of racial
inequality and white responsibility.
The 1950s poetry and fiction of the "Beat Generation" developed, initially from a New York circle of
intellectuals and then established more officially later in San Francisco. The term Beat referred to the
countercultural rhythm of the Jazz scene, to a sense of rebellion regarding the conservative stress of
post-war society, and to an interest in new forms of spiritual experience through drugs, alcohol,
philosophy, and religion (specifically Zen Buddhism). Allen Ginsberg set the tone with his
Whitmanesque poem Howl (1956), a work that begins: "I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness". Among the achievements of the Beats, in the novel, are Jack Kerouac's On
the Road (1957), the chronicle of a soul-searching travel through the continent, and William S.
Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959), a more experimental work structured as a series of vignettes
relating, among other things, the narrator's travels and experiments with hard drugs.
John Updike Eudora Welty, 1962
In contrast, John Updike approached American life from a more reflective but no less subversive
perspective. His 1960 novel Rabbit, Run, the first of four chronicling the rising and falling fortunes of
Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of four decades against the backdrop of the major events of
the second half of the 20th century, broke new ground on its release in its characterization and detail
of the American middle class and frank discussion of taboo topics such as adultery. Notable among
Updike's characteristic innovations was his use of present-tense narration, his rich, stylized language,
and his attention to sensual detail. His work is also deeply imbued with Christian themes. The two
final installments of the Rabbit series, Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), were both
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other notable works include the Henry Bech novels (1970–98),
The Witches of Eastwick (1984), Roger's Version (1986) and In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), which
literary critic Michiko Kakutani called "arguably his finest". [46]
Frequently linked with Updike is the novelist Philip Roth. Roth vigorously explores Jewish identity in
American society, especially in the postwar era and the early 21st century. Frequently set in Newark,
New Jersey, Roth's work is known to be highly autobiographical, and many of Roth's main characters,
most famously the Jewish novelist Nathan Zuckerman, are thought to be alter egos of Roth. With
these techniques, and armed with his articulate and fast-paced style, Roth explores the distinction
between reality and fiction in literature while provocatively examining American culture. His most
famous work includes the Zuckerman novels, the controversial Portnoy's Complaint (1969), and
Goodbye, Columbus (1959). Among the most decorated American writers of his generation, he has
won every major American literary award, including the Pulitzer Prize for his major novel American
Pastoral (1997).
Flannery-O'Connor 1947
In the realm of African-American literature, Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man was instantly
recognized as among the most powerful and important works of the immediate post-war years. The
story of a black Underground Man in the urban north, the novel laid bare the often repressed racial
tension that still prevailed while also succeeding as an existential character study. Richard Wright was
catapulted to fame by the publication in subsequent years of his now widely studied short story, "The
Man Who Was Almost a Man" (1939), and his controversial second novel, Native Son (1940), and his
legacy was cemented by the 1945 publication of Black Boy, a work in which Wright drew on his
childhood and mostly autodidactic education in the segregated South, fictionalizing and exaggerating
some elements as he saw fit. Because of its polemical themes and Wright's involvement with the
Communist Party, the novel's final part, "American Hunger", was not published until 1977.
Perhaps the most ambitious and challenging post-war American novelist was William Gaddis, whose
uncompromising, satiric, and large novels, such as The Recognitions (1955) and J R (1975) are
presented largely in terms of unattributed dialog that requires almost unexampled reader participation.
Gaddis's primary themes include forgery, capitalism, religious zealotry, and the legal system,
constituting a sustained polyphonic critique of modern American life. Gaddis's work, though largely
ignored for years, anticipated and influenced the development of such ambitious "postmodern" fiction
writers as Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Joseph McElroy, William H. Gass, and Don
DeLillo. Another neglected and challenging postwar American novelist, albeit one who wrote much
shorter works, was John Hawkes, whose surreal visionary fiction addresses themes of violence and
eroticism and experiments audaciously with narrative voice and style. Among his most important
works is the short nightmarish novel The Lime Twig (1961).
Short fiction
Lorrie Moore
In the postwar period, the art of the short story again flourished. Among its most respected
practitioners was Flannery O'Connor, who developed a distinctive Southern gothic esthetic in which
characters acted at one level as people and at another as symbols. A devout Catholic, O'Connor often
imbued her stories, among them the widely studied "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Everything
That Rises Must Converge", and two novels, Wise Blood (1952); The Violent Bear It Away (1960),
with deeply religious themes, focusing particularly on the search for truth and religious skepticism
against the backdrop of the nuclear age. Other important practitioners of the form include Katherine
Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, and the more experimental
Donald Barthelme.
Literary non-fiction
Major American essayists of the 20th century included writers such as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal,
Susan Sontag, Flannery O'Connor[47] and Joan Didion.
Contemporary fiction
Joyce Carol Oates
Though its exact parameters remain disputable, from the early 1990s to the present day the most
salient literary movement has been postmodernism. Thomas Pynchon, a seminal practitioner of the
form, drew in his work on modernist fixtures such as temporal distortion, unreliable narrators, and
internal monologue and coupled them with distinctly postmodern techniques such as metafiction,
ideogrammatic characterization, unrealistic names (Oedipa Maas, Benny Profane, etc.), plot elements
and hyperbolic humor, deliberate use of anachronisms and archaisms, a strong focus on postcolonial
themes, and a subversive commingling of high and low culture. In 1973, he published Gravity's
Rainbow, a leading work in this genre, which won the National Book Award and was unanimously
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that year. His other major works include his debut, V.
(1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Mason & Dixon (1997), and Against the Day (2006).
Toni Morrison, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, writing in a distinctive lyrical prose style,
published her controversial debut novel, The Bluest Eye, to critical acclaim in 1970. Coming on the
heels of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the novel, widely studied in American schools,
includes an elaborate description of incestuous rape and explores the conventions of beauty
established by a historically racist society, painting a portrait of a self-immolating black family in
search of beauty in whiteness. Since then, Morrison has experimented with lyric fantasy, as in her two
best-known later works, Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987), for which she was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; along these lines, critic Harold Bloom has drawn favorable comparisons to
Virginia Woolf,[48] and the Nobel committee to "Faulkner and to the Latin American tradition [of
magical realism]."[49] Beloved was chosen in a 2006 survey conducted by The New York Times as the
most important work of fiction of the last 25 years.[50]
David Foster Wallace
Writing in a lyrical, flowing style that eschews excessive use of the comma and semicolon, recalling
William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway in equal measure, Cormac McCarthy seizes on the literary
traditions of several regions of the United States and includes multiple genres. He writes in the
Southern Gothic aesthetic in his Faulknerian 1965 debut, The Orchard Keeper, and Suttree (1979); in
the Epic Western tradition, with grotesquely drawn characters and symbolic narrative turns
reminiscent of Melville, in Blood Meridian (1985), which Harold Bloom styled "the greatest single
book since Faulkner's As I Lay Dying", calling the character of Judge Holden "short of Moby Dick,
the most monstrous apparition in all of American literature"; [51] in a much more pastoral tone in his
celebrated Border Trilogy (1992–98) of bildungsromans, including All the Pretty Horses (1992),
winner of the National Book Award; and in the post-apocalyptic genre in the Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Road (2007). His novels are noted for achieving both commercial and critical success, several of
his works having been adapted to film.
Don DeLillo, who rose to literary prominence with the publication of his 1985 novel, White Noise, a
work broaching the subjects of death and consumerism and doubling as a piece of comic social
criticism, began his writing career in 1971 with Americana. He is listed by Harold Bloom as being
among the preeminent contemporary American writers, in the company of such figures as Philip Roth,
Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon.[52] His 1997 novel Underworld chronicles American life
through and immediately after the Cold War and is usually considered his masterpiece. It was also the
runner-up in a survey that asked writers to identify the most important work of fiction of the last 25
years.[50] Among his other important novels are Libra (1988), Mao II (1991) and Falling Man (2007).
Jhumpa Lahiri
Seizing on the distinctly postmodern techniques of digression, narrative fragmentation and elaborate
symbolism, and strongly influenced by the works of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace began
his writing career with The Broom of the System, published to moderate acclaim in 1987. His second
novel, Infinite Jest (1996), a futuristic portrait of America and a playful critique of the media-saturated
nature of American life, has been consistently ranked among the most important works of the 20th
century,[53] and his final novel, unfinished at the time of his death, The Pale King (2011), has garnered
much praise and attention. In addition to his novels, he also authored three acclaimed short story
collections: Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) and Oblivion:
Stories (2004). Jonathan Franzen, Wallace's friend and contemporary, rose to prominence after the
2001 publication of his National Book Award-winning third novel, The Corrections. He began his
writing career in 1988 with the well-received The Twenty-Seventh City, a novel centering on his native
St. Louis, but did not gain national attention until the publication of his essay, "Perchance to Dream",
in Harper's Magazine, discussing the cultural role of the writer in the new millennium through the
prism of his own frustrations. The Corrections, a tragicomedy about the disintegrating Lambert
family, has been called "the literary phenomenon of [its] decade"[54] and was ranked as one of the
greatest novels of the past century.[53] In 2010, he published Freedom to great critical acclaim.[54][55][56]
Other notable writers at the turn of the century include Michael Chabon, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) tells the story of two friends, Joe Kavalier and
Sam Clay, as they rise through the ranks of the comics industry in its heyday; Denis Johnson, whose
2007 novel Tree of Smoke about falsified intelligence during Vietnam both won the National Book
Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was called by critic Michiko Kakutani
"one of the classic works of literature produced by [the Vietnam War]"; [57] and Louise Erdrich, whose
2008 novel The Plague of Doves, a distinctly Faulknerian, polyphonic examination of the tribal
experience set against the backdrop of murder in the fictional town of Pluto, North Dakota, was
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and her 2012 novel The Round House, which builds on the same
themes, was awarded the 2012 National Book Award.[58]
Autofiction
Chris Kraus
Autofiction is a literary movement that has gained steam in American literature throughout the 21st
century. Coined in 1977 by French author Serge Doubrovsky, the autofictional subgenre blends
autobiography and fiction, thereby allowing authors to go beyond the limitations of form and
substance imposed by these genres.[59] A well-established term in the French literary world, it has been
less discussed in American literary criticism, despite the recent proliferation of such novels. [60]
Of the autofiction genre, English professor Bran Nicol states:
American autofiction is best regarded less as a form which interrogates the complex workings of
memory and their effect on subjectivity and more as evidence of the preoccupation with the
conditions of authorship, especially institutional, which has characterized American writing in the late
twentieth and twenty-first centuries.[61]
Notable American authors known to have written in the autofiction genre include Bret Easton Ellis,
Sheila Heti, Maggie Nelson, Chris Kraus, and Ben Lerner[62][61]
Poetry
Main article: American poetry
Emily Dickinson Title page of the copy of the Bay Psalm Book held by the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library
Puritan poetry was highly religious, and one of the earliest books of poetry published was the Bay
Psalm Book (1640), a set of translations of the biblical Psalms; however, the translators' intention was
not to create literature, but to create hymns that could be used in worship. [8] Among lyric poets, the
most important figures are Anne Bradstreet, who wrote personal poems about her family and
homelife; pastor Edward Taylor, whose best poems, the Preparatory Meditations, were written to help
him prepare for leading worship; and Michael Wigglesworth, whose best-selling poem, The Day of
Doom (1660), describes the time of judgment. It was published in the same year that anti-Puritan
Charles II was restored to the British throne. He followed it two years later with God's Controversy
With New England. Nicholas Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse.
18th century
The 18th century saw an increasing emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. This
trend is most evident in the works of Philip Freneau (1752–1832), who is also notable for the
unusually sympathetic attitude to Native Americans, which was reflective of his skepticism toward
American culture.[63] However, this late colonial-era poetry generally was influenced by contemporary
poetry in Europe. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard (1772–1855), is still relevant today, writing
about the environment as well as also human nature.[64]
19th century
Walt Whitman, 1854
The Fireside Poets (also known as the Schoolroom or Household Poets) were some of America's first
major poets domestically and internationally. They were known for their poems being easy to
memorize due to their general adherence to poetic form (standard forms, regular meter, and rhymed
stanzas) and were often recited in the home (hence the name) as well as in school (such as "Paul
Revere's Ride"), as well as working with distinctly American themes, including some political issues
such as abolition. They included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John
Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Longfellow achieved the
highest level of acclaim and is often considered the first internationally acclaimed American poet,
being the first American poet given a bust in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner. [65]
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), two of America's greatest 19th-
century poets could hardly have been more different in temperament and style. Walt Whitman was a
working man, a traveler, a self-appointed nurse during the American Civil War (1861–1865), and a
poetic innovator. His magnum opus was Leaves of Grass, in which he uses a free-flowing verse and
lines of irregular length to depict the all-inclusiveness of American democracy. Taking that motif one
step further, the poet equates the vast range of American experience with himself without being
egotistical. For example, in Song of Myself, the long, central poem in Leaves of Grass, Whitman
writes: "These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me".
In his words Whitman was a poet of "the body electric". In Studies in Classic American Literature, the
English novelist D. H. Lawrence wrote that Whitman "was the first to smash the old moral conception
that the soul of man is something 'superior' and 'above' the flesh."
By contrast, Emily Dickinson lived the sheltered life of a genteel unmarried woman in small-town
Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poetry is ingenious, witty, and penetrating. Her work was
unconventional for its day, and little of it was published during her lifetime. Many of her poems dwell
on the topic of death, often with a mischievous twist. One, "Because I could not stop for Death",
begins, "He kindly stopped for me". The opening of another Dickinson poem toys with her position as
a woman in a male-dominated society and an unrecognized poet: "I'm nobody! Who are you? / Are
you nobody too?"[66]
20th century
First edition
American poetry arguably reached its peak in the early-to-mid-20th century, with such noted writers
as Wallace Stevens and his Harmonium (1923) and The Auroras of Autumn (1950), T. S. Eliot and his
The Waste Land (1922), Robert Frost and his North of Boston (1914) and New Hampshire (1923),
Hart Crane and his White Buildings (1926) and the epic cycle, The Bridge (1930), Ezra Pound, The
Cantos (1917–1969). William Carlos Williams and his epic poem about his New Jersey hometown,
Paterson, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Langston Hughes.
Pound's poetry is complex and sometimes obscure, with references to other art forms and to a vast
range of Western and Eastern literature.[67] He influenced many poets, notably T. S. Eliot (1888–1965),
another expatriate. Eliot wrote spare, cerebral poetry, carried by a dense structure of symbols. In The
Waste Land, he embodied a jaundiced vision of post–World War I society in fragmented, haunted
images. Like Pound's, Eliot's poetry could be highly allusive, and some editions of The Waste Land
come with footnotes supplied by the poet. In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature. [68]
Post-World War II
Among the most respected postwar American poets are: John Ashbery, the key figure of the
surrealistic New York School of poetry, and his celebrated Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry, 1976); Elizabeth Bishop and her North & South (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1956) and
"Geography III" (National Book Award, 1970); Richard Wilbur and his Things of This World, winner
of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1957; John Berryman and his
The Dream Songs, (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1964, National Book Award, 1968); A.R. Ammons,
whose Collected Poems 1951–1971 won a National Book Award in 1973 and whose long poem
Garbage earned him another in 1993; Theodore Roethke and his The Waking (Pulitzer Prize for
Poetry, 1954); James Merrill and his epic poem of communication with the dead, The Changing Light
at Sandover (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1977); Louise Glück for The Wild Iris (Pulitzer Prize for
Poetry, 1993) and Faithful and Virtuous Night (National Book Award, 2014), who is additionally the
only living American author publishing primarily written poetry awarded the Nobel prize in literature;
[69]
W.S. Merwin for The Carrier of Ladders (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1971) and The Shadow of
Sirius (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2009); Mark Strand for Blizzard of One (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry,
1999); Robert Hass for Time and Materials, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book
Award for Poetry in 2008 and 2007 respectively; and Rita Dove for Thomas and Beulah (Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry, 1987).
In addition, in this same period the confessional, whose origin is often traced to the publication in
1959 of Robert Lowell's Life Studies,[70] and beat schools of poetry enjoyed popular and academic
success, producing such widely anthologized voices as Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Gary
Snyder, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, among many others. Other notable poets of the late 20th
century include Louise Glück, Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, Robert Pinsky, and others.
21st century
Amanda S. C. Gorman became the first National Youth Poet Laureate. [71]
Stylistic and cultural diversity remain distinguishing features of American poetry. [72] Notable poets of
the 21st century include Amanda Gorman, Saul Williams, Ocean Vuong, Saeed Jones, Alex Dimitrov,
Ada Limón, Ben Lerner, and others.
Drama
Main article: Theater of the United States
U.S. postage stamp of Eugene O'Neill issued in 1967.
Although the American theatrical tradition can be traced back to the arrival of Lewis Hallam's troupe
in the mid-18th century and was very active in the 19th century, as seen by the popularity of minstrel
shows and of adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin, American drama attained international status only in
the 1920s and 1930s, with the works of Eugene O'Neill, who won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel
Prize.
American dramatic literature, by contrast, remained dependent on European models, although many
playwrights did attempt to apply these forms to American topics and themes, such as immigrants,
westward expansion, temperance, etc. At the same time, American playwrights created several long-
lasting American character types, especially the "Yankee", the "Negro" and the "Indian", exemplified
by the characters of Jonathan, Sambo and Metamora. In addition, new dramatic forms were created in
the Tom Shows, the showboat theater and the minstrel show. Among the best plays of the period are
James Nelson Barker's Superstition; or, the Fanatic Father, Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion; or, Life in
New York, Nathaniel Bannister's Putnam, the Iron Son of '76, Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon; or,
Life in Louisiana, and Cornelius Mathews's Witchcraft; or, the Martyrs of Salem.
Realism began to influence American drama, partly through Howells, but also through Europeans
such as Ibsen and Zola. Although realism was most influential in set design and staging—audiences
loved the special effects offered up by the popular melodramas—and in the growth of local color
plays, it also showed up in the more subdued, less romantic tone that reflected the effects of the Civil
War and continued social turmoil on the American psyche.
The most ambitious attempt at bringing modern realism into the drama was James Herne's Margaret
Fleming (1890), which addressed issues of social determinism through realistic dialogue,
psychological insight, and symbolism. The play was not successful, and both critics and audiences
thought it dwelt too much on unseemly topics and included improper scenes, such as the main
character nursing her husband's illegitimate child onstage.
In the middle of the 20th century, American drama was dominated by the work of playwrights
Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of the American musical, which
had found a way to integrate script, music and dance in such works as Oklahoma! and West Side
Story. Later American playwrights of importance include Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, David Mamet,
August Wilson and Tony Kushner.
Ethnic studies and literature
Main articles: American literature in Spanish, Mexican American literature, Jewish American
literature, African-American literature, and Asian American literature
One of the developments in late-20th-century American literature was the increase of literature written
by and about ethnic minorities beyond African Americans and Jewish Americans. This development
came alongside the growth of the Civil Rights Movement and its corollary, the ethnic pride
movement, which led to the creation of Ethnic Studies programs in most major universities. These
programs helped establish the new ethnic literature as worthy objects of academic study, alongside
such other new areas of literary study as women's literature, gay and lesbian literature, working-class
literature, postcolonial literature, and the rise of literary theory as a key component of academic
literary study.
Ethnic literature
Sandra Cisneros, best known for her first novel The House on Mango Street (1983) and her
subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). She is the
recipient of numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is
regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.[73]
The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of American Jewish writers such as Saul
Bellow, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Chaim Potok, and Bernard Malamud. Potok's
novels about a young New York Jewish boy's coming of age, The Chosen and The Promise figured
prominently in this movement.
After being relegated to cookbooks and autobiographies for most of the 20th century, Asian American
literature achieved widespread notice through Maxine Hong Kingston's fictional memoir, The Woman
Warrior (1976), and her novels China Men (1980) and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book. Chinese-
American author Ha Jin in 1999 won the National Book Award for his second novel, Waiting, about a
Chinese soldier in the Revolutionary Army who has to wait 18 years to divorce his wife for another
woman, all the while having to worry about persecution for his protracted affair, and twice won the
PEN/Faulkner Award, in 2000 for Waiting and in 2005 for War Trash.
Other notable Asian-American novelists include Amy Tan, best known for her novel, The Joy Luck
Club (1989), tracing the lives of four immigrant families brought together by the game of Mahjong,
and Korean American novelist Chang-Rae Lee, who has published Native Speaker, A Gesture Life,
and Aloft. Such poets as Marilyn Chin and Li-Young Lee, Kimiko Hahn and Janice Mirikitani have
also achieved prominence, as has playwright David Henry Hwang. Equally important has been the
effort to recover earlier Asian American authors, started by Frank Chin and his colleagues; this effort
has brought Sui Sin Far, Toshio Mori, Carlos Bulosan, John Okada, Hisaye Yamamoto and others to
prominence.
Sherman Alexie reading at the launch of RED INK: International Journal of Indigenous Literature,
Art, and Humanities at Arizona State University in 2016
Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut collection of
short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), and went on to write a well-received novel, The
Namesake (2003), which was shortly adapted to film in 2007. In her second collection of stories,
Unaccustomed Earth, released to widespread commercial and critical success, Lahiri shifts focus and
treats the experiences of the second and third generation.
Hispanic literature also became important during this period, starting with acclaimed novels by Tomás
Rivera (...y no se lo tragó la tierra) and Rudolfo Anaya (Bless Me, Ultima), and the emergence of
Chicano theater with Luis Valdez and Teatro Campesino. Latina writing became important thanks to
authors such as Sandra Cisneros, an icon of an emerging Chicano literature whose 1983
bildungsroman The House on Mango Street is taught in schools across the United States, Denise
Chavez's The Last of the Menu Girls and Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
Mestiza.
Dominican-American author Junot Díaz received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 2007 novel The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which tells the story of an overweight Dominican boy growing up
as a social outcast in Paterson, New Jersey. Another Dominican author, Julia Alvarez, is well known
for How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies. Cuban American
author Oscar Hijuelos won a Pulitzer for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, and Cristina García
received acclaim for Dreaming in Cuban.
Celeste Ng has gained recognition for her nuanced exploration of family dynamics.
Celebrated Puerto Rican novelists who write in English and Spanish include Giannina Braschi, author
of the Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing! and Rosario Ferré, best known for "Eccentric Neighborhoods".
[74][75]
Puerto Rico has also produced important playwrights such as René Marqués (The Oxcart), Luis
Rafael Sánchez (The Passion of Antigone Perez), and José Rivera (Marisol). Major poets of Puerto
Rican diaspora who write about the life of American immigrants include Julia de Burgos (I was my
own route fui), Giannina Braschi (Empire of Dreams), and Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rican Obituary).
Pietri was a co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café, a performance space for poetry readings. [75] Lin-
Manuel Miranda, a Nuyorican poet and playwright, wrote the popular Broadway musicals Hamilton
and In the Heights.[76]
Spurred by the success of N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize–winning House Made of Dawn, Native
American literature showed explosive growth during this period, known as the Native American
Renaissance, through such novelists as Leslie Marmon Silko (e.g., Ceremony), Gerald Vizenor (e.g.,
Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles and numerous essays on Native American literature), Louise
Erdrich (Love Medicine and several other novels that use a recurring set of characters and locations in
the manner of William Faulkner), James Welch (e.g., Winter in the Blood), Sherman Alexie (e.g., The
Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven), and poets Simon Ortiz and Joy Harjo. The success of
these authors has brought renewed attention to earlier generations, including Zitkala-Sa, John Joseph
Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle and Mourning Dove.
More recently, Arab American literature, largely unnoticed since the New York Pen League of the
1920s, has become more prominent through the work of Diana Abu-Jaber, whose novels include
Arabian Jazz and Crescent and the memoir The Language of Baklava.