1

A PROJECT REPORT ON

AMERICAN LITERATURE
SUBMITTED TO SUBMITTED BY

MRS. ALKA MEHTA AMIT PRADHAN

(PHACULTY ENGLISH) ROLL NO.- 20 ( SEM-II)

BA.LLB (HONS.)

HIDAYATULLAH NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY,

RAIPUR (C.G.)

SUBMITTED ON - 22.03.2013
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................. 02

TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... 03

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY…………………………………………………………… 04

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………………… 04

 Introduction………………………………………………. 05
 Colonial Literature In America…………………………. 07
 Post Independence American Literature………………. 09
 First American Novels……………………………………. 10
 Unique American Style……………………………………….. 12
 Early American Poetry…………………………………….. 12
 Contemporary American Literature………………………… 14
 Nobel Prize Winners in American Literature………………... 15

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………… 16

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………. 17

WEBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………... 17
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Acknowledgements
In preparing this project I took help from many people but it is very difficult to list every
name. First and foremost I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Mrs. Alka Mehta for
putting his trust on me, by giving me such a topic and for him unstinted support by helping me in
all possible ways. I hope that I have not disappointed her and have done justice to it.

I also want to express my gratitude to the staff and administration of HNLU and to the
library and IT Lab that was a source of great help for the completion of this project. I would also
like to thank all my seniors who always guided me without their help, it would have been
impossible for me to complete this project.

Amit Pradhan

Roll No.- 20
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Objectives:
 Colonial Literature in America
 Post - Independence American Literature
 First American Novels
 Unique American style
 Early American Poetry
 Contemporary American literature

Research Methodology: The Doctrinal research is descriptive and

analytical in nature. Secondary and Electronic resources have been largely used to gather
information and data about the topic.
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INTRODUCTION
AMERICAN LITERATURE is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United
States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater,
see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history,
America was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States.
Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked to the broader tradition of English literature.
However, unique American characteristics and the breadth of its production usually now
cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition.

In the beginning, America was a series of British colonies on the east coast of the
present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins with the tradition of English
literature. However, very quickly unique American characteristics and the breadth of its
production began to develop an American writing tradition. Some consider Captain John Smith
to be the first American author, when he wrote The General History of Virginia, New England,
and the Summer Isles (1624) Similar writer of interest include Daniel Cox, John Hammond,
Gabriel Thomas, George Percy, Daniel Denton, Thomas Ash, John Lawson and William
Strachey. Poetry was also written in those early days, Nicholas Noyes wrote Doggerel verse.
Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet were popular and Michael Wiggleworth was known for his
best selling poem. The Day of Doom. It is almost inevitable that given the history of the early
American settlers, religious questions were rich topics for early writings.

A journal written by John Winthrop discussed the religious foundations of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony. Edward Winslow also recorded a diary of the first years after the Mayflower's
arrival. Other religiously influenced 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.
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A Calvinistic revival in the early 18th century inspired strict Puritan and other
religious writers including, Samuel Willard, John Wise, Uriah Oakes, Thomas Shepard, and
Thomas Hooker. Other less strict writers were Samuel Sewell, Sarah Kemble-Knight and
William Byrd. Interaction and conflict with the Indians are described by Daniel Gookin,
Alexandra Whitaker,

John Mason, Benjamin Church and Mary Rowlandson. The Bible was also
translated into the Algonquin language by John Eliot and Mary Rowlandson. It is inevitable that
during the revolutionary period political writings would abound and these included works by the
colonists, John Dickinson, Josiah Quincy, Samuel Adams, and loyalist Joseph Galloway.
Benjamin Franklin's work; Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin were popular and influenced the building of an American identity. Pain's works,
common Sense, and, The American Crisis, also plays a key role in the political development of
that period of history.
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 Colonial Literature
Owing to the large immigration to Boston in the 1630s, the high articulation of Puritan cultural
ideals, and the early establishment of a college and a printing press in Cambridge, the New
England 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.
Towns older than Boston include the Spanish settlements at Saint Augustine and Santa Fe,
the Dutch settlements at Albany and New Amsterdam, as well as the English colony
of Jamestown in present-day Virginia. During the colonial period, the printing press was active
in many areas, from Cambridge and Boston to New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis.

The dominance of the English language was hardly inevitable.[1] The first item printed
in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book printed in any of the colonies before
the American Revolution.1 Spanish and French had two of the strongest colonial literary
traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States, and discussions of early American
literature commonly include texts by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and Samuel de
Champlain alongside English language texts by Thomas Harriot and John Smith. Moreover, we
are now aware of the wealth of oral literary traditions already existing on the continent among
the numerous different Native American groups. Political events, however, would eventually
make English the lingua franca for the colonies at large as well as the literary language of choice.

For instance, when the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, they renamed it New York
and changed the administrative language from Dutch to English.

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 Londonat the time. 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: London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Because of this, the colonies ventured into the
modern world earlier than their provincial English counterparts.[1]

Back then, some of the American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of
the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. Captain John Smith could be considered

1
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Print
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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 manner included Daniel
Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel
Thomas, and John Lawson.

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 Londonat the time. 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: London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Because of this, the colonies ventured into the
modern world earlier than their provincial English counterparts.[1]

Back then, some of the American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of
the colonies to both a European and colonist 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 manner included Daniel
Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel
Thomas, and John Lawson.2

The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were also topics of early writing. 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. Other religiously influenced 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. And still others, like Thomas Morton, cared little for the church;
Morton's The New English Canaan mocked the religious settlers and declared that the Native
Americans were actually better people than the British.3

2
Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Blackwell, 2004.
3
Skipp, Francis E. American Literature, Barron's Educational, 1992.
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 POST INDEPENDENCE AMERICAN LITERATURE

In the post-war period, Thomas Jefferson's United States Declaration of

Independence, his influence on the United States Constitution, his autobiography, the Notes on
the State of Virginia, and his many letters solidify his spot as one of the most talented early
American writers. 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.

Much of the early literature of the new nation struggled to find a uniquely American voice in
existing literary genre, and this tendency was also reflected in novels. European forms and styles
were often transferred to new locales and critics often saw them as inferior.4

4
Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Blackwell, 2004.
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 First American Novels

It was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that the nation’s first novels were published.
These fictions were too lengthy to be printed as manuscript or public reading. Publishers took a
chance on these works in hopes they would become steady sellers and need to be reprinted. This
was a good bet as literacy rates soared in this period among both men and women. Among the
first American novels are Thomas Attwood Digges' "Adventures of Alonso", published in
London in 1775 and William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy published in 1791.[1] Brown's
novel depicts a tragic love story between siblings who fell in love without knowing they were
related. This epistolary novel belongs to the Sentimental novel tradition, as do the two following.

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.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. In addition to this best selling novel, she wrote nine novels, six theatrical works, two
collections of poetry, six textbooks, and countless songs. 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 is often criticized as a sentimental novel of seduction.5

Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette: Or, the History of Eliza Wharton was
published in 1797 and was also extremely popular. Told from Foster’s point of view and based
on the real life of Eliza Whitman, this epistolary 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 the comfort and regularity of domestic life, and a noted libertine. She fails to choose
between them and 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.

5
Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Blackwell, 2004.
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The Coquette is praised for its demonstration of this era’s contradictory ideals of
womanhood. 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. 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.
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 Early American poetry

America's two greatest 19th-century poets could hardly have been more different in temperament
and style. Walt Whitman (1819–1892) 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 ..."

Whitman was also a poet of the body – "the body electric," as he called it. 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." Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), on the other hand, lived the sheltered life of a genteel
unmarried woman in small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. Within its formal structure, her poetry
is ingenious, witty, exquisitely wrought, and psychologically penetrating. Her work was
unconventional for its day, and little of it was published during her lifetime.6 Many of her poems
dwell on 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 ?"

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, 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, in addition to many others.
6
Kakutani, Michiko (January 12, 1996). "Seeking Salvation On the Silver Screen". New York
Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/12/books/books-of-the-times-seeking-salvation-on-the-silver-
screen.html. Retrieved December 3, 2009
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 Beginning of the 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding fiction's social
spectrum to encompass both high and low life and sometimes connected 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, centers on a man who chooses to marry a conventional, socially acceptable woman
rather than a fascinating outsider. At about the same time,Stephen Crane (1871–1900), best
known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, depicted the life of New York City
prostitutes in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. And in Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945)
portrayed a country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman. Hamlin
Garland and Frank Norris wrote about the problems of American farmers and other social issues
from a naturalist perspective.7 More directly political writings discussed social issues and power
of corporations. Some like Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward outlined other possible
political and social frameworks. Upton Sinclair, most famous for his muck-raking novel The
Jungle, advocated socialism. Other political writers of the period included Edwin
Markham, William Vaughn Moody. Journalistic critics, including Ida M. Tarbell and Lincoln
Steffens were labeled The Muckrakers. Henry Brooks Adams' literate autobiography, The
Education of Henry Adams also depicted a stinging description of the education system and
modern life.

Experimentation in style and form soon joined the new freedom in subject matter. In
1909, Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), by then an expatriate in Paris, published Three Lives, an
innovative work of fiction influenced by her familiarity with cubism, jazz, and other. 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.

7
Bloom, Harold: How to Read and Why, page 269. Touchstone Press, 2000.
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 Contemporary American Literature

Though its exact parameters remain debatable, from the early 1970s 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.), absurdist 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, the most recent American recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writing in a
distinctive lyrical prose style, published her controversial debut novel, The Bluest Eye, to
widespread 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,[14] and the Nobel committee to "Faulkner and to the Latin American tradition
[of magical realism]."[15] 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.
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 Nobel Prize Winners in Literature

(American authors)

 1930: Sinclair Lewis (Novelist)

 1936: Eugene O'Neill (Playwright)
 1938: Pearl S. Buck (Biographer and novelist)
 1948: T. S. Eliot (Poet and playwright)
 1949: William Faulkner (novelist)
 1954: Ernest Hemingway (novelist)
 1962: John Steinbeck (novelist)
 1976: Saul Bellow (novelist)
 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (novelist, wrote in Yiddish)
 1993: Toni Morrison (novelist)8

8
Nobel Prize Nobel Prize Award Ceremony Speech". Nobelprize.org. 19 Aug 2010
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CONCLUSION
A century ago, the identity of American Literature was undergoing a kindered process of cultural
flux, Its image too, was initially antithetical to the very idea of a higher carriculam. This
conception held that American literature lacked seriousness, its materials were too
chronologically close to current life to warrant scholarly treatment , it had no academic pedigree,
people enjoyed reading it, so it didn’t require attention in it. Seen from the largest historical
vantage, American literature’s history in two roughly 1880 to 1930, the early literature in
American history was very effective and prescious which was done by the greatest writers

Which was called as colonial literature The dominance of the English language was hardly
inevitable. The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book
printed in any of the colonies before the American Revolution. Spanish and French had two of
the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States, and
discussions of early American literature commonly include texts. That time the age of literature
was very differ from current period of literature in America. In the beginning, America was a
series of British colonies on the east coast of the present-day United States.

Therefore, its literary tradition begins with the tradition of English literature. A Calvinistic
revival in the early 18th century inspired strict Puritan and other religious writers including,
Samuel Willard, John Wise, Uriah Oakes, Thomas Shepard, and Thomas Hooker. Other less
strict writers were Samuel Sewell, Sarah Kemble-Knight and William Byrd. Interaction and
conflict with the Indians are described by Daniel Gookin, Alexandra Whitaker, John Mason,
Benjamin Church and Mary Rowlandson. These are the famous work and the writers also in that
time the holy Bible was written in English that time this whole notion that proved that the
specification of American Literature.
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BIBLEOGRAPHY
 New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural
Literary Heritage by Alpana Sharma Knippling (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood,
1996)
 Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook by Emmanuel S.
Nelson (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000).

WEBLIOGRAPHY
 Audio lectures on American Literature in TheEnglishCollection.com (clickable timeline)
 A Student's History of American Literature (1902) by Edward Simonds
 Electronic Texts in American Studies
 http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/12/books/books-of-the-times-seeking-salvation-on-the-
silver-screen.html. Retrieved December 3, 2009
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/fiction-25-years.html
 http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html.
 http://www.anoldbookshop.com