Native Americans
This is a "new" period of literature in that even such a short time ago as my tour through the undergradaute degree, it was not included. The period really begins sometime about 15,000 years ago when the first humans appeared beneath the Canadian ice sheets. For our purposes, we'll look a bit more south and recently at the Caddo tribe that settled in this area of Texas.
A quick, down and dirty couple of pages on who they Caddo were/are can be found here: LINK
Puritanism 1620s-1750s
For the most part, this section and period will make you question where is the literature? Owing in part to the difficulty of living a life, there is a scarcity of what we normally think of as literature. In fact, there is another period (Rationalism) in between Puritanism and the Romantic, emerges in the 1800s, before we find what is a commonly held understanding of literature.
This is an era of religion, diaries, histories, and sermons. Perpare to have thy britches burned and none of that highfalutin literature (except for the poetry, there will be poetry).
We will look at three major representative of the period: Anne Bradstreet (poetry), Jonathan Edwards (sermons), and Mary Rowlandson (diaries).
English 2326 - Survey of American Literature
Welcome to the course. The main purpose of the site is to provide you with .pdfs of all the readings in the course. You are, of course, welcome to purchase the texts or print them out, but if you find yourself digitally adept, feel free to simply use the .pdfs. A brief word of caution on that, however, is that there are times when a web address for the .pdf moves or is removed.
Also contained on the site are the various assigments you will have during the course, discussions of the periods we are covering, and other material. These will be stable, but many find it best to print them out.
This village scene shows the bee-hive shape of the sturdy grass houses made by Caddo Indians of East Texas. Painting by George Nelson, courtesy of the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio. More can be found here: LINK
Four Caddo Stories
Major Features of the Native American Period
It is with some trepidation that I'll write the major features of a period that runs much longer and deeper through so many various subgroupings that it almost becomes absurd to say: "This, this is what the Native Americans did in their literature." However, it suits our purpose to start "small" and limit what is being thrown at you in the first week. It is also referred to by some as the Pre-Colonial Period. You'll be expected to know that tidbit, as well as be, able to indicate these are the four main features of the literature during the period:
1. Comunicated Orally. The tales, legends, song-poems, and various spoke texts were often accompanied by a performance including dance and/or music. Texts were passed along from generation to generation, and so the texts you have in front of you are what reamins of that legacy (and are to be understood as versions of the tales/legends.)
2. Literature as a Communal Text. Because of the above quality of the literature, this only makes sense. In this regard there were no individaul authors and the texts were communal even to the point that audience response be included. Further, the design of the literature spoke to the harmony of the tribe(s) who participated in the practice.
3. Myths and Legends. In the tales you learn creation stories, hierarchies of animals and humans, and basically the cultural life of the tribe(s).
4. Focus on Nature and Creation Stories. If the vehicle for the stories are myths and legends, the content of those myths and legends are predominately stories about the natural world and creation stories.
Major Authors of the Native American Period
As you might imagine, because the texts belonged to no single author, there are no major authors of the period. Not only is this a placemarker because in other periods names will be named, it is also great fodder for a test question to see if you're paying attention. In future periods you;l find a list of authors that you'll need to commit to memory as they are absolutely test fodder.
Major Events of the Native American Period
This could easily take up the rest of the course detailing the events and times of just the Caddo people, let alone all of the Native Americans. However, this thankfully is not a history course. If you scroll up, there is a down and dirty history of the Caddo people that will suffice for our needs in a literature class. Normally, you'll have a list of events that you are not beholden to commit to memory. They just serve as a backdrop and way to understand the period.
Over the course of the semester we will also look at music of the period. For this initial period you have two items, the first is a Caddo Ghost song.
Though the lyrics of the song in the video are different, this site has lyrics for A Caddo Ghost/Peyote Dance to give you a sense of it: LINK
Below is an example of the Turkey Dance also from the Caddo people along with some explanation of its significance and context.
Image courtesy of history.com
Anne Bradstreet as sexpot image courtesy of calvinistpoets who think of her as a sexpot, it seems.
Anne Bradstreet 1612-1672
The poetry foundation introduces Bradstreet as: Anne Bradstreet was the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet. Her volume of poetry The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America ... received considerable favorable attention when it was first published in London in 1650. Eight years after it appeared it was listed by William London in his Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England, and George III is reported to have had the volume in his library. Bradstreet's work has endured, and she is still considered to be one of the most important early American poets.
Major Features of the Puritan Period
Major Events of the Puritan Period
Major Authors of the Puritan Period
1. Wrote mostly in diaries, histories, and poems that sought to connect God and everyday life.
2. Religion was a personal, inner experience.
3. Believed in original sin and the idea of being "elect."
4. Wrote in a plain, unadorned style.
5. Believed in hard work and simple living.
1607 Jamestown
1620 Mayflower and Plymouth Plantation
1692-3 Salem Witch Trials
1704 First newspaper in Boston
1730 "Great Awakening" (religious revival movement
William Bradford "Of Plymouth Plantation"
Phillis Wheatley poet most often considered the first black author in America
John Smith "General History of Virginia" chief source fo the Pocahantas legend (1580-1631)
Jonathan Edwards 1703-1758
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy introduces Edwards: Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian. His work as a whole is an expression of two themes — the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God's holiness. The first is articulated in Edwards' defense of theological determinism, in a doctrine of occasionalism, and in his insistence that physical objects are only collections of sensible “ideas” while finite minds are mere assemblages of “thoughts” or “perceptions.” As the only real cause or substance underlying physical and mental phenomena, God is “being in general,” the “sum of all being.”
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Thomas Walter 1696-1724
Matt Jones introduces Walter and GRM giving more than you could ever want to know in his article: Among other accomplishments, Walter was much gifted "in the science of harmony" and it is not surprising, therefore, that he joined with his uncle in the controversy respecting the improvement of church singing which raged in the New England ' churches between 1720 and 1725. In the controversial class of literature relating to this subject he published "The Sweet Psalmist of Israel," Boston, 1722; but he performed his greatest service to the cause of improved singing by the publication in 1721 of a little book entitled :The/Grounds and Rules/of/MUSICK/Explained : Or,/An Introduction to the Art of Singing/by NOTE./Fitted to the meanest Capacities./By Thomas Walter. M.A./Recommended by several Ministers./Let every thing that hath Breath praise the Lord. Psal. 150.6./BOSTON: Printed by J. Franklin, for
S. Gerrish, near tbe Brick Church in Cornhill. 1721.
Image courtesy http://musicinearlyamerica.weebly.com/18th-century.html
Image courtesy of Sydney Raeburn-Bell
Mary Rowlandson 1637-1711
Campbell writes a nice short biography with a hint of the narrative itself: Mary Rowlandson was born circa 1637-1638 in England. With her parents John and Joan White, she sailed for Salem in 1639. Joseph Rowlandson became a minister in 1654 and two years later he and Mary were married. They had a child, Mary, who lived for three years; their other children were Joseph, b. 1661; Mary, b. 1665; Sarah, b. 1669. At the time of their capture, the children were 14, 10, and 6.
In 1675 Joseph Rowlandson. went to Boston to beg for help from the Massachusetts General Assembly, during which period Mary Rowlandson was captured. ... While a prisoner, Mary Rowlandson travelled some 150 miles, from Lancaster to Menamaset then north to Northfield and across the Connecticut river to meet with King Philip/Metacomet himself, sachem of the Wampanoags. Next she traveled up into southwestern New Hampshire, south to Menamaset, and north to Mount Wachusett.
Major Features of the Rationalist Period
Major Authors of the Rationalist Period
Major Events of the Rationalist Period
1. Wrote in political pamphlets, essays, travel writing, speeches, and documents
2. Instructive in "values," particularly patriotism/democracy
3. Ornate writing style
4. Emergence of reason as opposed to faith alone
A. Pragamatism: Truth in practical experience/nature
B. Deism: God created but doesn't control the world
C. Idealism: Universal sense of right and wrong (humans are good!)
Thomas Paine "Common Sense"
Alexander Hamilton "Federalist Papers" w/ John Jay and James Madison
1773 Boston Tea Party
1775-1783 American Revolution
1776 Declaration of Independence
1783 Treaty of Paris
1789 American Constitution
1789-1799 French Revolution
Abigail Adams 1744-1818
Biography.com provides this nugget about Adams: "As John Adams was busy hammering out a new government, Abigail Adams expressed concern about how women would be treated. In one of her many letters to her husband, she requested that he “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” Odd spellings aside, Abigail often expressed her thoughts on political matters with her husband. Throughout his career, Abigail had served as his unofficial adviser. Their letters show him seeking her counsel on many issues, including his presidential aspirations."
Ben Franklin 1706-1790
History.com offers thison Franklin: "One of the leading figures of early American history, Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) was a statesman, author, publisher, scientist, inventor and diplomat. Born into a Boston family of modest means, Franklin had little formal education. He went on to start a successful printing business in Philadelphia and grew wealthy. Franklin was deeply active in public affairs in his adopted city, where he helped launch a lending library, hospital and college, and garnered acclaim for his experiments with electricity, among other projects. During the American Revolution, he served in the Second Continental Congress and helped draft the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He also negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War (1775-83). In 1787, in his final significant act of public service, he was a delegate to the convention that produced the U.S. Constitution."
Be sure to check out Ben the Ladies' Man!
Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826
The White House contributesd this snippet to our understanding of Jefferson: "Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786."
Major Features of the Romantic Period
Major Authors of the Romantic Period
Major Events of the Romantic Period
1. Short stories, novels, and poetry become the norm.
2. Imagination and Nature over reason; intuition over fact.
3. Gothic emerges as subgenre
A. Supernatural
B. Characters both good and evil characterstics
C. Dark, dark, dark landscapes, characters, and mood.
4. What is it to be an American/American Artist?
1812 War of 1812
1815-1850 Westward Expansion
1846-8 Mexican War
1849 California Gold Rush
Washington Irving 1783-1859
A quick synopsis of Irving from Biography: "Author and editor Washington Irving was born in New York City on April 3, 1783. Irving achieved international fame for his fictional works, including the stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, as well as for his biographies and historical writings. Irving served as the United States ambassador to Spain and helped to promote international copyright before his death in 1859."
Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849
The Poe Museum offer this intro: "The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry."
Oliver Shaw 1779-1848
"Big" Al Pavlow provides this introduction to the first American music "star:" "Born in Middleborough, Massachusetts in 1779 to a seafaring captain, he probably would have made the sea his life’s occupation but after losing sight in one eye when a childhood prank went awry, and in his other after ill-advised exposure to sunlight following a bout with yellow fever, his family decided that the field of music was his best bet and sent him to Newport, R.I. to study piano, organ and “the science of music” with Dr. John L. Birkenhead, who was also blind. This was followed by advanced study in Boston with Gottlieb Graupner. In 1805, he taught piano and organ at a school in Dedham, Mass. and in 1806 he published his first work, a compilation of material by other composers “A Favourite Selection of Music Adapted to the Piano Forte” which included his very first composition “Address to a Tuft of Violets” (words by Herman Mann)."
There's Nothing True But Heaven
“There’s Nothing True but Heaven” composed in 1816, officially published in 1829, provided Oliver Shaw with his most popular song. Like “Mary’s Tear’s”, it featured a text by Thomas Moore. At the time of its publication, the world was still seventy years away from mass produced cylinders and flat discs which would bring recorded music into the homes of millions, so the primary means of getting music out to the people was via the printing press. Melodies and lyrics of music from simple songs to symphonies were committed to paper and published (as they still are), and the popularity of tunes from this period can be determined by the number of times a song was reprinted. “There’s Nothing True but Heaven” appeared in print often enough to bring Oliver Shaw a reported $1,500 in royalties. Considering the population of the country, the presumably low royalty rate, and the dollar value of the time, it was a hefty amount and proof that “There’s Nothing True but Heaven” was a huge hit.
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864
Biography.com provides this synopsis of Hawthorne's career: "Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories include "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832), "Young Goodman Brown" (1835), and the collection Twice-Told Tales. He is best known for his novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). His use of allegory and symbolism make Hawthorne one of the most studied writers."
Bring on the Midterm!
Robert Frost 1874-1963
Robert Frost holds a unique and almost isolated position in American letters. “Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet,” writes James M. Cox, “it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern poetry.” In a sense, Frost stands at the crossroads of 19th-century American poetry and modernism, for in his verse may be found the culmination of many 19th-century tendencies and traditions as well as parallels to the works of his 20th-century contemporaries. Taking his symbols from the public domain, Frost developed, as many critics note, an original, modern idiom and a sense of directness and economy that reflect the imagism of Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. On the other hand, as Leonard Unger and William Van O’Connor point out in Poems for Study, “Frost’s poetry, unlike that of such contemporaries as Eliot, Stevens, and the later Yeats, shows no marked departure from the poetic practices of the nineteenth century.” Although he avoids traditional verse forms and only uses rhyme erratically, Frost is not an innovator and his technique is never experimental.
William Faulkner 1897-1962
The Mississippi Witer's Page says this about Faulkner: "The man himself never stood taller than five feet, six inches tall, but in the realm of American literature, William Faulkner is a giant. More than simply a renowned Mississippi writer, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist and short story writer is acclaimed throughout the world as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers, one who transformed his “postage stamp” of native soil into an apocryphal setting in which he explored, articulated, and challenged “the old verities and truths of the heart.” During what is generally considered his period of greatest artistic achievement, from The Sound and the Fury in 1929 to Go Down, Moses in 1942, Faulkner accomplished in a little over a decade more artistically than most writers accomplish over a lifetime of writing. It is one of the more remarkable feats of American literature, how a young man who never graduated from high school, never received a college degree, living in a small town in the poorest state in the nation, all the while balancing a growing family of dependents and impending financial ruin, could during the Great Depression write a series of novels all set in the same small Southern county — novels that include As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and above all, Absalom, Absalom! — that would one day be recognized as among the greatest novels ever written by an American. "
Major Events of the Harlem Renaissance
Major Authors of the Harlem Renaissance
Major Events of the Harlem Renaissance
1. Black cultural movement in Harlem, NY
2. Some poetry and prose based on spirituals, jazz, the blues, and the diction of the area.
Countee Cullen "The Black Keats"
Jean Toomer "Cane"
Jazz Age
The Roaring 20's
Langston Hughes 1902-1967
The Academy of American Poets says this about Hughes: Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen—Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.
Zora Neal Hurston 1891-1960
The Official Zora Neal Hurston website introduces her: Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature. Hurston was closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance and has influenced such writers as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Gayle Jones, Alice Walker, and Toni Cade Bambara. / In 1975, Ms. Magazine published Alice Walker's essay, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" reviving interest in the author. Hurston's four novels and two books of folklore resulted from extensive anthropological research and have proven invaluable sources on the oral cultures of African America. / Through her writings, Robert Hemenway wrote in The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, Hurston "helped to remind the Renaissance--especially its more bourgeois members--of the richness in the racial heritage."
Major Events of the Contemporary Period
Major Features of the Contemporary Period
Major Authors of the Contemporary Period
1. Constant change
2. Globalization
3. Post-colonialism
4. Post WWII prosperity
5. Social protest
1. Influenced by studies of media, language, and informtation technology
2. Hold that very little if anything is qunique: culture replicates itself
3. New, experimental forms of literature: dialogue only, mixing fiction and nonfiction, experiments with physical appearance, and so on.
Alice Walker "The Color Purple"
Jack Kerouac "On the Road"
J.D. Salinger "Cathcer in the Rye"
Stephen King "The Shining"
And many, many more...
Joyce Carol Oates 1938 -
Oates is Emeritus faculty at Princeton and this is the introduction: Joyce Carol Oates has often expressed an intense nostalgia for the time and place of her childhood, and her working-class upbringing is lovingly recalled in much of her fiction. Yet she has also admitted that the rural, rough-and-tumble surroundings of her early years involved "a daily scramble for existence." Growing up in the countryside outside of Lockport, New York, she attended a one-room schoolhouse in the elementary grades. As a small child, she told stories instinctively by way of drawing and painting before learning how to write. After receiving the gift of a typewriter at age fourteen, she began consciously training herself, "writing novel after novel" throughout high school and college.
Thomas Pynchon 1937 -
Who knows? He's elusive. Head on over to ThomasPynchon.com if you want to know some things. But he'd really rather you didn't.
As much as I want to dis' history (or more specifically Craig Nakashian, the Texas State Historical Association offers a piece on Caddo here. However, I'm including it here not simply because it's a new edition to th site this semester and there was this fine space needing to be filled, rather I include it because the offer a free ebook on Texas Musical History when you load the page. It said only for a "limited time," so get it while you can?
The ole' poetry genius could use some help on this one, feel free to step up to the plate.
Be Part of Something Pretty Darn Cool
The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University (JEC) has as its primary mission making available the complete writings of the eighteenth-century theologian, philosopher, and revivalist in print and online formats. On the JEC's website (edwards.yale.edu) Edwards' writings are presented in literal transcription and in edited forms. In the interest of making edited versions of his writings, especially sermons, available in a more efficient manner, and to further its educational mission by encouraging interested users to engage historic texts, the JEC announces its Global Accelerated Sermon Editing Project. Through this initiative, users can volunteer to become editors of Edwards' sermons under the auspices of the JEC staff and through the JEC's online training, revision, and submission tools.
How to Volunteer
If you are a scholar, pastor, graduate student, or interested lay person who would like participate in the Edwards project, this is your opportunity to work with an original Edwards text that has not been heard since he first preached it. Sermon editors will work from digitized, proofread sermon transcripts. Along with these files, editors will be supplied with a list of editorial conventions, orthographical assistance, and the guidance of the JEC staff.
Aside from making the texts available to others, transcribers have the privilege of acquiring new information and, in some cases, new skills. Furthermore, those who edit manuscripts are given full credit for their work on the project website and in any publications that may result. Transcribers and proofreaders are welcome to keep an electronic copy of their edited text, and they have full freedom to use the text non-commercially in their own pastoral or scholarly work.
If for some unknown reason you find yourself thinking, "Hey! I'd like to read the whole thing with the instructions on how to sing by note and such, well, you're in luck! You can find it here.
If you're a little less ambitious, you can work on Psalm 148 using the video to the left from the Gregg Smith Singers. I'm guessing that it's in the Rules, but I'll confess to not have made it that far...yet.
Proof that the internet has just about anything and folks with perhaps too much time on their hands. I watched it. I suppose I want to essentially haze you by placing it on the page. It does, however, point to the love between Abigail and John Adams (though I wish that perhaps they had provided an alternate reason for Jefferson to tell John it'll all be okay).
It's not the Franklin Mint, but your chance to own a coin with the "catch phrase" that has resonated throughout American history here.
There's this: the cartoon on the left is a fair representation of one side of Thomas Jefferson and his significant contributions to who we think personally as a people and the way our government is structured in law and ideology. However, it isn't the only Thomas Jefferson. The private Jefferson tells a different story. This is not intended as a slam or a throw the baby out with the bath water moment. Instead, check this interesting discussion of Jefferson from the Smithsonian (notably interesting because it is not just simply a discussion of who he was or wasn't sleeping with at the time.
You neither are compelled to watch the Drunk History video to the left, nor are you responsible for it on an exam: it is there for your amusement. You should check out the video here from History.com and this discussion on why Ben Franklin was such a Ladies Man here.
Francis Hopkinson 1737-1791
Hopkinson was engaged in politics, and you'll even find his names among the signatures on The Declaration of Independence; however, he was also a poet, a political satirist, and the author of the first extant secular song by a native composer. Read more about him here.
Check out a version of the tune below.
John Dickinson 1731-1808
Another guy playing politics and with music. Dickinson was a delegate to the Continental Congresses and wrote the first draft of the Articles of the Confederation. He also wrote "Liberty Song" an incredibly popular tune of the era that you can read more about here.
Francis Scott Key 1779-1843
Dude wrote the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. What else you want?
