am. lit

American literature

We could date modern America’s origins back to the 1500s when Spanish and Portuguese explorers began landing in places that are now Florida or Texas. Later, English explorers started sending colonists further north to places like North Carolina and Virginia. In 1607, one of the first colonies, Jamestown, was founded.

The colonists weren’t the first people to live on this land. The Native Americans farmed and hunted all over the US long before them. While they didn’t have much written work, their stories and beliefs were handed down generation by generation.

So, it’s clear that American literature is relatively young. The first books written in America were diaries of the newcomers, books of theological argument and political pamphlets.

18th and 19th Century

This period is inseparable with romanticism and nationalism.

Washington Irving

• Americans topics – the history of NY, biography of G. Washington

• Well known book The Sketch Book

James Fenimore Cooper

• Described American wilderness and wrote Indian novels of adventure (The last of the Mohicans)

Edgar Alan Poe

• A poet, short story writer

• He is the father of horror and crime fiction

• His best poem is The Raven – on a stormy night a tired student who has lost his love asks if he will ever meet her again in some other world. His doubts are underlined by the raven’s repetition of Nevermore.

• He wrote short stories such as The Black cat, The pit and the Pendulum, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and much more

Herman Melville

• The greatest symbolist

• He sailed on seas for many years

• Sea experiences influenced almost all his novels

• The most famous novel is Moby Dick – captain Ahab hunts Moby Dick (white whale, symbol of evil) for free days, but it has tragic end – Ahab is pinned to the whale’s body by his own harpoon

Mark Twain

• Novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are both set along the Mississippi River and describe the adventures of his boyhood.

20th century

Quick American development in 19th century brought advantages and disadvantages too. Authors tried to describe these disadvantages like for example social problems.

Theodor Dreiser

• Is famous for his masterpiece An American Tragedy

Jack London

• Wrote popular adventurous books

• He was inspired by gold rush

• He wrote for example White Fang or The Call of the wild

The Lost Generation came after first world war. They were influenced by their ugly experiences from this hell. The most famous members of Lost Generation are Ernst Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

Ernst Hemingway

• Is my favourite American writer

• He wrote by method of iceberg. It means that he wrote only basic story and you have to think about feelings of characters.

• He wrote many books about 1st world war or about veterans from 1st world war

• His famous books are for example A Farewell to Arms, From Whom the Bell Tolls or Fiesta.

• His masterpiece is definitely novella The old man and the sea

• It is about old man - fisherman who didn’t catch fish for long time, a young boy helped him, but his parents forbid him hunting with old man. So the old man set out on the sea. He caught enormous fish, but sharks ate it, only bones stayed. But the old man fought to the end.

• Hemingway said: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated”