GRADE 11 | 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD
UNIT 15
American Literature
The United States of America is referred to by many as the “El Dorado” or the land of opportunity. Recognized as
a melting pot of diversity, this land has so much to offer, particularly when it comes to literature. Many well-
known literary masterpieces have originated from America, and perhaps, numerous influential writers we know
are Americans. In this unit, we are going to discuss American literature by focusing on four of its literary periods.
Objectives
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
• Describe American literature;
• Discuss the four literary periods that helped mold American literature; and
• Differentiate the masterpieces from each literary period.
Learn about It!
I. American Literature during the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
• The colonial period began when Jamestown, the first English settlement in America, was founded in
1607 and ended during the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775.
• In the 1630s, there was a big wave of British immigration to Boston. This phenomenon paved the way
for various events in American literature in this period. It is at this time that the Puritans, Protestants
who follow the Bible in the strictest manner, were dominating England. In this milieu, the Puritan
ideals had influenced not only British society but also its colonies. However, because of the criticism of
the Catholic Church and the lack of political support, they fled to America. The most significant event
of this era was the invention of the printing press, which quickly changed the literary landscape not
only in England but also in America. During the colonial period, the many places became the key spots
of printing literary works. These places are Cambridge, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis.
• Because of this breakthrough, the oral literature that was cherished by the Native American Indians
was soon replaced by printed literature. Moreover, it was also through the violent suppression of the
Native Americans that their literary heritage was almost eradicated in American literary history.
• Many political and military events happened that shattered the indigenous American culture. Because
of these events, English became the local language as well as the preferred language for literary
writing. The most prominent form of literary piece was the pamphlet that extolled the European
conquerors.
• Since the Puritans exalted religiosity, many of the early writings of this period centered on faith,
including internal struggles and hypocrisy of the faithful. Notable religious writers were:
« John Winthrop – a Puritan who influenced the government and religions of other colonies through
his writings
« Edward Winslow – wrote several works that were of massive value to the historian of the Plymouth
colony
« William Bradford – wrote a journal chronicling the Pilgrim venture
« Anne Bradstreet – one of the first poets to write English verse in the American colonies
« Edward Taylor – one of the foremost poets of colonial British North America
« Michael Wigglesworth - an author of rhymed treatises expounding Puritan doctrines
« Nicholas Noyes – wrote competent verses in the Puritan metaphysical tradition
• Because of the attempt of the British government to impose cultural hegemony
(dominance of a culture over another culture) and to dominate the minority culture, some writings
focused on typifying the contact and conflicts of the Britons with the Indians. Such themes are very
evident in the works of Daniel Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason, Benjamin Church, and
Mary Rowlandson.
• During this era, we can also see the rise of African-American literature as there was an influx of
Africans coming to America as slaves for the Americans. Two notable AfricanAmerican writers of this
time were Phillis Weatley, who was a slave brought to America, and Olaudah Equiano, who is known
for his writings that criticized the British Empire and America for its tolerance for slavery.
• The natives’ realization of the atrocities of their conquerors, such as their having no representation in
the government and their desire to have the same rights from British subjects, brought about the
revolutionary period, which ran from 1765 to 1783. The literature of this period was very political
because it was seen as an avenue by American writers to express their protest against the British
Empire. Two keynote personalities during this time were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.
• As a subtle condemnation of England, satires came into the limelight. The prominent satirists were
John Trumbull, Francis Hopkinson, and Philip Morin Freneau.
• In the Norton Anthology for American Literature (2007), the American revolutionary period was
described as, “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.”
II. American Renaissance
• This period is regarded as the “Golden Era” of American literature because writers showed the spirit
of liberation in their works. It also led to the popularization of democratic literature. F.O. Matthiessen
coined the term American Renaissance in 1941. He asserted that American Renaissance literature is
“literature for democracy and for the people.” Through literature, it was expected that people will
imbibe the spirit of democracy in their daily lives.
• Literary enthusiasts asserted that writers should have their unique styles that are only seen in
American literature. The purpose of this was to create a national identity and to make American
literature known to the world. It was also an initiative to show the demarcation between American
literature and British literature. Notable writers of this period were Washington Irving, William Cullen
Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper. These writers explored local color, the American environment,
and daily life to give a distinct texture to the American literary tradition.
• It was also during the American Renaissance that American writers had a fresh look toward their
writing and wrote without the influence of the British. Many of the most famous writers emerged in
this era of literature. Also, two groups of writers emerged, namely the transcendentalists and the dark
romantics.
Transcendentalists
« They believed that knowledge could be obtained through intuition and contemplation of inner
spirits and not merely through the senses.
« Major writers of this movement were:
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
William Henry Channing (1810–1884)
George Ripley (1802–1880)
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888)
Elizabeth Peabody (1804–1894)
Dark Romantics
« They explored mankind’s darker side through writing subjects that are grotesque, gothic, and
extremely melancholic.
« They also explored the conflict between good and evil in their literary works.
« Major writers of this movement were:
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Herman Melville (1819–1891
• During this period, women writers started to become empowered because of gradual access to
education. This paved the way for the rise of feminine writing and aesthetics. However, although
female writers were given opportunities to write, their works were not that popular since America
was still a patriarchal society. Despite this, there were some women writers who became popular
figures of this time, and these were Harriet Beecher Stowe and Fanny Fern. In addition, Abraham
Lincoln even commented that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin ignited civil war
within the American society.
III. Realism in American Literature
• The literary movement realism articulates the portrayal of the actualities of life. Samuel Langhorne
Clemens, who is more widely known by his pseudonym Mark Twain, is regarded as the father of
realism in American literature. The most remarkable realist masterpieces of Twain are The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. According to Norton Anthology for American
Literature (2007) Twain has been a popular figure of the realism movement because “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.”
• This new approach to literature shows objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter. It embraced
the concept that people were neither completely good nor completely bad but somewhere in
between.
• A popular literary device used in this kind of literature was the frame narrative or the story within a
story. In more technical terms, this is called “mise en abyme.” This device is
not new to world literature as it has been used in earlier masterpieces such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales.
• To better understand how realism is portrayed in literature, we can best describe it by referring to the
writing style of American writers at that time. Realist writers utilized the vernacular language in
writing. In this light, readers can easily connect to what they read since the language used was
localized. Hence, we can see the fusion of local languages and regional accents as characters delivered
their discourses in the texts.
• Apart from Twain, there were numerous realist American writes who were famous as well. These
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).
IV. American Literature in the Modern and Postmodern Periods
• During the 1950s, we can see a big and drastic change in the American literary tradition. That change
revolutionized how writers compose their works. This, of course, comes from the social movements
such as the two World Wars and the Cold War. Writers challenged the norms and traditional practices
of writing. Hence, this phenomenon led to the beginnings of the modern and postmodern periods.
• These eras broke away from the seemingly realist paragon that already dominated American
literature. Guerin, et. al. (2011) stated in their book that: “In character development, both modern
and postmodern literature explore subjectivism, turning from external reality to examine inner states
of consciousness, in many cases drawing on modernist examples in the ‘stream of consciousness’
styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, or explorative poems like ‘The Waste Land’ by T. S. Eliot. In
addition, both modern and postmodern literature explores fragmentariness in narrative- and
characterconstruction.”
• Influential writers of these periods were Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and T. S. Eliot. Woolf became
popular because of her “stream of consciousness” style of writing. Her style of writing gives readers a
view of what goes on in the characters’ minds. Joyce and Eliot, on the other hand, were powerhouses
of modernism and postmodernism because of the fragmentariness of their writing.
• Eliot’s poems are perfect illustrations of the influences of modernism and postmodernism in American
literature. Eliot’s poems are fragmentary, which means they neither ascribe to a continuous flow of
thought nor follow a coherent set of ideas.
• Simply put, modernism and postmodernism underscored that literary writing has to be “free.” In this
essence, writers of these periods are unconventional as it deconstructed the norms in writing. These
distortions for them are not regarded as rebellious acts of writing. However, such “delineations” are
the unique features of modern and postmodern works. If a writer chooses to bombard his poems with
so many exclamation points after every word, it will not mean that he is not a good writer and that he
does not know anything about the structure of English. Rather, the writer adheres to the style of
modern and postmodern literature. Modernist and postmodernist writers mimic the dizzying events
that unfold in their era.
• The most notable writers of these periods were T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, John Ashbery, Rita Dove,
Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath.
