CALDOZA, KRISTEL JANE P.

ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

British Literature
The Anglo-Saxons
The term Anglo-Saxon is a relatively modern one. It refers to settlers from the German
regions of Angeln and Saxony, who made their way over to Britain after the fall of the Roman
Empire around AD 410.The Roman armies withdrew from Britain early in the fifth century
because they were needed back home to defend the crumbling centre of the Empire. Britain was
considered a far-flung outpost of little value. At this time, the Jutes and the Frisians from Denmark
were also settling in the British Isles, but the Anglo-Saxon settlers were effectively their own
masters in a new land and they did little to keep the legacy of the Romans alive. They replaced the
Roman stone buildings with their own wooden ones, and spoke their own language, which gave
rise to the English spoken today. The Anglo-Saxons also brought their own religious beliefs, but
the arrival of Saint Augustine in 597 converted most of the country to Christianity. The Anglo-
Saxon period lasted for 600 years, from 410 to 1066, and in that time Britain's political landscape
underwent many changes.
The Anglo-Saxon period stretched over 600 years, from 410 to 1066...
The early settlers kept to small tribal groups, forming kingdoms and sub-kingdoms. By the
ninth century, the country was divided into four kingdoms - Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia and
Wessex. Wessex was the only one of these kingdoms to survive the Viking invasions. Eric
Bloodaxe, the Viking ruler of York, was killed by the Wessex army in 954 and England was united
under one king - Edred.
Most of the information we have about the Anglo-Saxons comes from the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, a year-by-year account of all the major events of the time. Among other things it
describes the rise and fall of the bishops and kings and the important battles of the period. It begins
with the story of Hengist and Horsa in AD 449.
Anglo-Saxon rule came to an end in 1066, soon after the death of Edward the Confessor,
who had no heir. He had supposedly willed the kingdom to William of Normandy, but also seemed
to favour Harold Godwinson as his successor.
Harold was crowned king immediately after Edward died, but he failed in his attempt to
defend his crown, when William and an invading army crossed the Channel from France to claim
it for himself. Harold was defeated by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066,
and thus a new era was ushered in. (The Anglo Saxons. Retrieved from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/saxons.shtml)

Middle English Period

 The event that began the transition from Old English to Middle English was the Norman
Conquest of 1066, when William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy and, later, William I of
England) invaded the island of Britain from his home base in northern France, and settled in his
new acquisition along with his nobles and court. William crushed the opposition with a brutal hand
and deprived the Anglo-Saxon earls of their property, distributing it to Normans (and some
English) who supported him.
The conquering Normans were themselves descended from Vikings who had settled in
northern France about 200 years before (the very word Norman comes originally from Norseman).
However, they had completely abandoned their Old Norse language and wholeheartedly adopted
French (which is a so-called Romance language, derived originally from the Latin, not Germanic,
branch of Indo-European), to the extent that not a single Norse word survived in Normandy.
However, the Normans spoke a rural dialect of French with considerable Germanic
influences, usually called Anglo-Norman or Norman French, which was quite different from the
standard French of Paris of the period, which is known as Francien. The differences between these
dialects became even more marked after the Norman invasion of Britain, particularly after King
John and England lost the French part of Normandy to the King of France in 1204 and England
became even more isolated from continental Europe.
Anglo-Norman French became the language of the kings and nobility of England for more
than 300 years (Henry IV, who came to the English throne in 1399, was the first monarch since
before the Conquest to have English as his mother tongue). While Anglo-Norman was the verbal
language of the court, administration and culture, though, Latin was mostly used for written
language, especially by the Church and in official records. For example, the “Domesday Book”,
in which William the Conqueror took stock of his new kingdom, was written in Latin to emphasize
its legal authority.
However, the peasantry and lower classes (the vast majority of the population, an estimated
95%) continued to speak English - considered by the Normans a low-class, vulgar tongue - and
the two languages developed in parallel, only gradually merging as Normans and Anglo-Saxons
began to intermarry. It is this mixture of Old English and Anglo-Norman that is usually referred
to as Middle English. Mustin, L. (2011). The History of English. Retrieved from
https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/history_middle.html

The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and
economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the
14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical
philosophy, literature and art. Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and
artists in human history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands
and cultures to European commerce. The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between
the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization. Renaissance. (2006). Retrieved from
https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/renaissance

Elizabethan Age
Elizabeth ushers in Peace and Plenty.Detail from The Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory
of the Tudor Succession, c. 1572, attributed to Lucas de Heere.
The Elizabethan Age is the time period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth
I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was an age
considered to be the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the full flowering of English
literature and English poetry. In Elizabethan theater, William Shakespeare, among others,
composed and staged plays in a variety of settings that broke away from England's past style of
plays. It was an age of expansion and exploration abroad, while at home the Protestant
Reformation was established and successfully defended against the Catholic powers of the
Continent.
The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the contrasts with the periods before
and after. It was a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation, with
battles between Protestants and Catholics, and the battles between parliament and
the monarchy that would engulf the seventeenth century. The Protestant Catholic divide was
settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and parliament was still not strong
enough to challenge royal absolutism. (2011). Retrieved from
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Elizabethan_age

Jacobean Age
Jacobean age, (from Latin Jacobus, “James”), period of visual and literary arts during the
reign of James I of England (1603–25). The distinctions between the early Jacobean and the
preceding Elizabethan styles are subtle ones, often merely a question of degree, for although
the dynasty changed, there was no distinct stylistic transition.
During this period, painting and sculpture lagged behind architecture in accomplishments
because there was no outstanding practitioner of either. The chief of the early Jacobean painters
was the talented miniaturist Isaac Oliver. Most of the Jacobean portraitists, like the sculptors,
were foreign-born or foreign-influenced—for example, Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger, Paul
van Somer, Cornelius Johnson, and Daniel Mytens. Their efforts were later surpassed by those of
the Flemish painters Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck, who worked in England during
the reign of Charles I. (2019) Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/art/Jacobean-age

Caroline Age
 The Caroline Age has its time span of Charles First during 1625-1649 and the name
Charles derived from Latin word ‘Carolus’ which means Charles. After the demise of James
First, Charles First appointed as the King in 1625 and in 1649, he was executed as a result of
Puritan uprising under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell.
The Age of Charles First also known as the Caroline Period and during this span of time
the spirit of Renaissance began declining. The period is very fruitful in terms of its creative
writings. John Milton started his writing in this period. This age is the time for religious poet
George Herbert and the prose writers Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne apart from
the Cavalier poets like Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace and Sir John Suckling.

The whole period emphasised on Civil War which divided people into frictions. It dealt with
England Civil War that was fought between the supporters of King, known as Cavaliers and the
supporters of Parliament, known as Roundheads. The crisis started when James First who
reclaimed the right of royalty from an Act of Parliament and supported the Divine Right while
ignoring the importance of Parliament.
The Puritans influenced the English middle classes since the reign of James I and play a
powerful force role in the social life of the age and initiated the movement for social and
constitutional reforms. The hostilities and atrocities which began in 1642, ended with the
banishment of Charles I in 1649. There was a great political instability during 1649-1660 and the
establishment of the commonwealth under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. But the political
chaos and volatility ended with the restoration of King Charles II in 1660. (2019) Retrieved from
https://englishsummary.com/caroline-age-characteristics/

Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum)

On January 30, 1649, Charles I, King of England, was executed. After a difficult reign,
during which he had to continually give more and more power to Parliament to finance his war
with Spain, Charles and Parliament began to fight over control of the army. This led to the
English Civil War in 1642. Charles was captured, but kept trying to continue the war, so the
Long Parliament (so-called because it stayed active for so long) voted to put the king on trial in
1648. This had never been done before in English history. You can guess how the trial turned out
for Charles.
After the death of Charles, a new king did not assume power until 1660. The period from
1649-1660, when England was without a king, is called the English Interregnum. England was
instead controlled by the Rump Parliament, those who remained in Parliament after Charles'
supporters were kicked out of office.
The English Interregnum is divided into four periods. The first, lasting from 1649-1653,
was the Commonwealth of England. In 1649, the Rump Parliament declared England a
Commonwealth, a free collection of people ruled by Parliament and not a king. Parliament got
rid of the Privy Council and House of Lords, as well as other branches of government, so that it
had complete control. It was an unstable group of men who could not agree on exactly what form
the new English republic should take. It also argued over land reforms, class issues, and control
of the army. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-english-interregnum-
definition-history-quiz.html

Neoclassical Period
The neoclassical period of literature is also known as the Enlightenment Period.
Literature can be broadly divided into ages, starting from the middle ages, renaissance,
neoclassical period, romantic period, modern period, to the post-modern period.
Neoclassical authors saw the world under a new light. Unlike the previous two eras, the
writers of this era gave more importance to social needs as compared to individual needs. They
believed that man can find meaning in society, religion, natural order, government, and literature.
In no time, the winds of a new revolution swept through Europe and North America, and
changed everything from art and literature to society and fashion, on its way. Though the
neoclassical era later transitioned into the romantic era, it left behind a prominent footprint which
can be seen in the literary works of today.
The term neo means new while classical refers to the Roman and Greek classics, hence
the name is aptly coined as neoclassical. Neoclassical literature emulated the Greek and Roman
styles of writing.
The neoclassical era was closely preceded by the renaissance period. Before the
renaissance period, life and literature was mainly dictated by the Church. However, during
renaissance, science and innovation was given the main emphasis. Thus, in the neoclassical era, a
vast difference between the two ideologies can be witnessed. Therefore, you will find confusion
and contrary depictions in neoclassical literature.
Neoclassical literature was defined by common sense, order, accuracy, and structure. In
the literature of the renaissance period, man was portrayed to be good; however, this genre of
writers showed man to be flawed and relatively more human. Their characters also practiced
conservatism, self-control, and restraint. A large number of literary works came out during this
period, which included parody, fables, melodrama, rhyming with couplets, satire, letters, diaries,
novels, and essays. More emphasis was given to grammar and etymology (study of words). Bhat,
S. (2018). Retrieved from https://penlighten.com/neoclassical-literature-characteristics-
examples

The Restoration
Some literary historians speak of the period as bounded by the reign of Charles II (1660–
85), while others prefer to include within its scope the writings produced during the reign
of James II (1685–88), and even literature of the 1690s is often spoken of as “Restoration.” By
that time, however, the reign of William III and Mary II (1689–1702) had begun, and
the ethos of courtly and urban fashion was as a result sober, Protestant, and even pious, in
contrast to the sexually and intellectually libertine spirit of court life under Charles II. Many
typical literary forms of the modern world—including the novel, biography, history, travel
writing, and journalism—gained confidence during the Restoration period, when new scientific
discoveries and philosophical concepts as well as new social and economic conditions came into
play. There was a great outpouring of pamphlet literature, too, much of it politico-religious,
while John Bunyan’s great allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, also belongs to this period. Much of the
best poetry, notably that of John Dryden (the great literary figure of his time, in both poetry and
prose), the earl of Rochester, Samuel Butler, and John Oldham, was satirical and led directly to
the later achievements of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Gay in the Augustan Age.
The Restoration period was, above all, a great age of drama. Heroic plays, influenced by
principles of French Neoclassicism, enjoyed a vogue, but the age is chiefly remembered for its
glittering, critical comedies of manners by such playwrights as George Etherege, William
Wycherley, Sir John Vanbrugh, and William Congreve. Retrieved from
https://www.britannica.com/art/Restoration-literature

The Augustan
The eighteenth century in English literature has been called the Augustan Age, the Neoclassical
Age, and the Age of Reason. The term 'the Augustan Age' comes from the self-conscious
imitation of the original Augustan writers, Virgil and Horace, by many of the writers of the
period. Specifically, the Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of
Alexander Pope (~1690 - 1744). The major writers of the age were Pope and John Dryden in
poetry, and Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison in prose. Dryden forms the link between
Restoration and Augustan literature; although he wrote ribald comedies in the Restoration vein,
his verse satires were highly admired by the generation of poets who followed him, and his
writings on literature were very much in a neoclassical spirit. But more than any other it is the
name of Alexander Pope which is associated with the epoch known as the Augustan Age, despite
the fact that other writers such as Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe had a more lasting influence.
This is partly a result of the politics of naming inherent in literary history: many of the early
forms of prose narrative common at this time did not fit into a literary era which defined itself as
neoclassic. The literature of this period which conformed to Pope's aesthetic principles (and
could thus qualify as being 'Augustan') is distinguished by its striving for harmony and precision,
its urbanity, and its imitation of classical models such as Homer, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, for
example in the work of the minor poet Matthew Prior. In verse, the tight heroic couplet was
common, and in prose essay and satire were the predominant forms. Any facile definition of this
period would be misleading, however; as important as it was, the neoclassicist impulse was only
one strain in the literature of the first half of the eighteenth century. But its representatives were
the defining voices in literary circles, and as a result it is often some aspect of 'neoclassicism'
which is used to describe the era.
'Neoclassicism'
The works of Dryden, Pope, Swift, Addison and John Gay, as well as many of their
contemporaries, exhibit qualities of order, clarity, and stylistic decorum that were formulated in
the major critical documents of the age: Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), and
Pope's Essay on Criticism (1711). These works, forming the basis for modern English literary
criticism, insist that 'nature' is the true model and standard of writing. This 'nature' of the
Augustans, however, was not the wild, spiritual nature the romantic poets would later idealize,
but nature as derived from classical theory: a rational and comprehensible moral order in the
universe, demonstrating God's providential design. The literary circle around Pope considered
Homer preeminent among ancient poets in his descriptions of nature, and concluded in a
circuitous feat of logic that the writer who 'imitates' Homer is also describing nature. From this
follows the rules inductively based on the classics that Pope articulated in his Essay on Criticism:
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodized.
Particularly influential in the literary scene of the early eighteenth century were the two
periodical publications by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Tatler (1709-11), and The
Spectator (1711-12). Both writers are ranked among the minor masters of English prose style and
credited with raising the general cultural level of the English middle classes. A typical
representative of the post-Restoration mood, Steele was a zealous crusader for morality, and his
stated purpose in The Tatler was "to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with
Morality." With The Spectator, Addison added a further purpose: to introduce the middle-class
public to recent developments in philosophy and literature and thus to educate their tastes. The
essays are discussions of current events, literature, and gossip often written in a highly ironic and
refined style. Addison and Steele helped to popularize the philosophy of John Locke and
promote the literary reputation of John Milton, among others. Although these publications each
only ran two years, the influence that Addison and Steele had on their contemporaries was
enormous, and their essays often amounted to a popularization of the ideas circulating among the
intellectuals of the age. With these wide-spread and influential publications, the literary circle
revolving around Addison, Steele, Swift and Pope was practically able to dictate the accepted
taste in literature during the Augustan Age. In one of his essays for The Spectator, for example,
Addison criticized the metaphysical poets for their ambiguity and lack of clear ideas, a critical
stance which remained influential until the twentieth century.
The literary criticism of these writers often sought its justification in classical precedents. In the
same vein, many of the important genres of this period were adaptations of classical forms: mock
epic, translation, and imitation. A large part of Pope's work belongs to this last category, which
exemplifies the artificiality of neoclassicism more thoroughly than does any other literary form
of the period. In his satires and verse epistles Pope takes on the role of an English Horace,
adopting the Roman poet's informal candor and conversational tone, and applying the standards
of the original Augustan Age to his own time, even addressing George II satirically as
"Augustus." Pope also translated the Iliad and the Odyssey, and, after concluding this demanding
task, he embarked on The Dunciad (1728), a biting literary satire.
The Dunciad is a mock epic, a form of satiric writing in which commonplace subjects are
described in the elevated, heroic style of classical epic. By parody and deliberate misuse of
heroic language and literary convention, the satirist emphasizes the triviality of the subject,
which is implicitly being measured against the highest standards of human potential. Among the
best-known mock epic poems of this period in addition to The Dunciad are John
Dryden's MacFlecknoe (1682), and Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714). In The Rape of the
Lock, often considered one of the highest achievements of mock epic poetry, the heroic action of
epic is maintained, but the scale is sharply reduced. The hero's preparation for combat is
transposed to a fashionable boat ride up the Thames, and the ensuing battle is a card game. The
hero steals the titular lock of hair while the heroine is pouring coffee.
Although the mock epic mode is most commonly found in poetry, its influence was also felt in
drama, most notably in John Gay's most famous work, The Beggar's Opera (1728). The Beggar's
Opera ludicrously mingles elements of ballad and Italian opera in a satire on Sir Robert Walpole,
England's prime minister at the time. The vehicle is opera, but the characters are criminals and
prostitutes. Gay's burlesque of opera was an unprecedented stage success and centuries later
inspired the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht to write one of his best-known works, Die
Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera, 1928).
One of the most well-known mock epic works in prose from this period is Jonathan Swift's The
Battle of the Books (1704), in which the old battle between the ancient and the modern writers is
fought out in a library between The Bee and The Spider. Although not a mock epic, the satiric
impulse is also the driving force behind Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels(1726), one of the
masterpieces of the period. The four parts describe different journeys of Lemuel Gulliver; to
Lilliput, where the pompous activities of the diminutive inhabitants is satirized; to Brobdingnag,
a land of giants who laugh at Gulliver's tales of the greatness of England; to Laputa and Lagoda,
inhabited by quack scientists and philosophers; and to the land of the Houhynhnms, where horses
are civilized and men (Yahoos) behave like beasts. As a satirist Swift's technique was to create
fictional speakers such as Gulliver, who utter sentiments that the intelligent reader should
recognize as complacent, egotistical, stupid, or mad. Swift is recognized as a master of
understated irony, and his name has become practically synonymous with the type of satire in
which outrageous statements are offered in a straight-faced manner.
The Nature and Graveyard Poets
Neoclassicism was not the only literary movement at this time, however. Two schools in poetry
rejected many of the precepts of decorum advocated by the neoclassical writers and anticipated
several of the themes of Romanticism. The so-called nature poets, for example, treated nature not
as an ordered pastoral backdrop, but rather as a grand and sometimes even forbidding entity.
They tended to individualize the experience of nature and shun a methodized approach. Anne
Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, was a rural poet in an urban era, and the poems of Miscellany
Poems by a Lady (1713) were often observations of nature, largely free of neoclassical
conventions. Her contemporaries regarded her as little more than a female wit, but she was
highly praised by the Romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth. A further influential
poet of this school was James Thomas, whose poetical work The Seasons, which appeared in
separate volumes from 1726 to 1730 and beginning with Winter, was the most popular verse of
the century. In his treatment of nature, he diverged from the neoclassical writers in many
important ways: through sweeping vistas and specific details in contrast to circumscribed,
generalized landscapes; exuberance instead of balance; and a fascination with the supernatural
and the mysterious, no name just a few.
This last was also the major concern of the poets of the Graveyard School. Foremost among
them was Edward Young, whose early verses were in the Augustan tradition. In his most famous
work, however, The Complaint: or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-45),
the melancholy meditations against a backdrop of tombs and death indicate a major departure
from the conventions and convictions of the preceding generation. While the neoclassicists
regarded melancholia as a weakness, the pervasive mood of The Complaint is a sentimental and
pensive contemplation of loss. It was nearly as successful as Thomas's The Seasons, and was
translated into a number of major European languages.
The Rise of the Novel
The most important figure in terms of lasting literary influence during this period, however, was
undoubtedly Daniel Defoe. An outsider from the literary establishment ruled by Pope and his
cohorts, Defoe was in some ways an anomaly during a period defined as 'Augustan,' despite the
fact that he was a writer of social criticism and satire before he turned to novels. He did not
belong to the respected literary world, which at best ignored him and his works and at worst
derided him. (In 1709, Swift for example referred to him as "the Fellow that was Pilloryed, I
have forgot his name.")
The works of fiction for which Defoe is remembered, particularly Moll Flanders (1722)
and Robinson Crusoe (1719), owe less to the satirical and refined impulse of the Augustan
tradition, and more to a contrary tradition of early prose narrative by women, particularly Aphra
Behn, Mary Delariviere Manley and Jane Barker. Since Ian Watt's influential study, The Rise of
the Novel (1957), literary historians have generally considered Robinson Crusoe the first
successful English novel and Defoe as one of the originators of realistic fiction in the eighteenth
century, but he was deeply indebted to his female precursors and probably would never have
attempted prose narrative if they had not created an audience for it in the first place.
The English novel was a product of several differing literary traditions, among them the French
romance, the Spanish picaresque tale and novella, and such earlier prose models in English as
John Lyly's Euphues (1579), Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1590) and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress (1684). The authors of these works collectively helped pave the way for the form of the
novel as it is known today. The true pioneers of the novel form, however, were the women
writers pursuing their craft in opposition to the classically refined precepts of the writers defining
the Augustan Age. Particularly influential were Aphra Behn's travel narrative Oroonoko (1688)
and her erotic epistolary novel Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1683).
In Oroonoko, Behn provides numerous details of day to day life and a conversational narrative
voice, while with Love Letters she pioneered the epistolary form for a longer work of fiction,
over fifty years before Richardson. The political prose satires of Mary Delariviere Manley were
racy exposés of high-society scandals written in the tradition of Love Letters, Behn's
erotic roman à clef. Manley's novels The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zaraians(1705)
and The New Atalantis (1709) were widely popular in their day and helped create an audience
for prose narratives that was large enough to support the new breed of the professional novelist.
Eliza Haywood also began her career writing erotic tales with an ostensibly political or high
society background. Her first novel, Love in Excess (1719) went through four editions in as
many years. In the thirties, her writing underwent a transformation suitable to the growing moral
concerns of the era, and her later novels show the influence of her male contemporaries
Richardson and Fielding (this despite the fact that she may have been the author of Anti-
Pamela (1741), an early attack on Richardson's first novel). Haywood's The History of Miss
Betsy Thoughtless (1751) in particular belongs in a more realistic tradition of writing, bringing
the action from high society into the realm of the middle class, and abandoning the description of
erotic encounters.
Particularly interesting among the work of early women novelists is that of Jane Barker. Her
novel Loves Intrigues: Or, The History of the Amours of Bosvil and Galesia (1713) tells in first-
person narrative the psychologically realistic tale of a heroine who doesn't get her man. The
portrayal of Galesia's emotional dilemma, caught in a web of modesty, social circumstances and
the hero's uncertainty and indecisiveness, captures intriguing facets of psychological puzzles
without providing easy answers for the readers. Galesia retreats from marriage, hardly knowing
why she does so or how the situation came about, and the reader is no smarter.
Many of the elements of the modern novel attributed to Defoe -- e.g. the beginnings of
psychological realism and a consistent narrative voice -- were anticipated by women writers.
Defoe's contribution was in putting them all together and creating out of these elements sustained
prose narratives blending physical and psychological realism. His most impressive works, such
as Moll Flanders and Roxana (1724), treated characters faced with the difficulties of surviving in
a world of recognizably modern economic forces. Given his capitalist philosophy, it is not
surprising that Defoe's protagonists are self-reliant, resourceful individualists who express his
middle-class values. In his attempt to balance individualism and economic realism with a belief
in God's providence, Defoe created multi-faceted characters who combine repentance for past
misdeeds with a celebration of the individual's power to survive in a hostile environment.
Although Defoe and his female contemporaries were looked down upon by the intellectual
establishment represented by Pope and Swift, later developments in literary history have shown
that it was they who would define the literature of a new age, and not the so-called Augustans.
While the novel remains the dominant literary form of the twentieth century, mock epic is at best
an element used occasionally in comedy. Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders are still widely
read; The Rape of the Lock is mentioned in history books. Jonathan Swift produced an enduring
classic as well with Gulliver's Travels, but despite his brilliance it is the merchant Daniel Defoe,
a journalist who saw writing as "a considerable branch of the English commerce" (Essay upon
Literature, 1726), who is considered the father of the English novel. Nestvold, R. (2001).
Retrieved from http://www.ruthnestvold.com/Augustan.htm
Age of Johnson
The Age of Johnson, often referred to as The Age of Sensibility, is the period in English
literature that ranged from the middle of the eighteenth century until 1798. Ending the Age of
Johnson, the Romantic Period arrived in 1798 with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by poets
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), poet, critic, and author of fiction, is the namesake for this period
in literature. Johnson wielded considerable influence over this era with works that focused on
neoclassical aesthetics (the study of natural and artistic beauty with an eye toward the great
classical writers). Johnson and his fellow writers placed great emphasis on the values of the
Enlightenment which stressed the importance of using knowledge, not faith and superstition, to
enlighten others, and led to the expansion of many social, economic, and cultural areas including
astronomy, politics, and medicine.
Writers of the Age of Johnson focused on the qualities of intellect, reason, balance, and order.
Notable publications of the Age of Johnson include Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the
Origins of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Johnson’s The Rambler (1750-52),
and Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).
One of Johnson’s most lasting legacies is his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). While
this huge undertaking of Johnson’s was neither the first dictionary in existence, nor exceptionally
unique, it was the most used and admired until the appearance of the Oxford English Dictionary
in 1928. One of Johnson’s most fervently held beliefs was that the language of the people should
be used in literature, and that a writer should avoid using grammar and vocabulary that did not
appeal to the common reader.
While the Age of Johnson and the Age of Sensibility are terms often used interchangeably,
Johnson’s age is considered to be the last of the neoclassical eras, while writers in the latter
period are famed with an anticipation of the Romantic Period with their focus on the individual
and imagination.
The Age of Sensibility is marked by works that focus more directly on anticlassical features of
old ballads and new bardic poetry. These writers began to embrace new forms of literary
expression formerly avoided by writers of the Age of Johnson such as medieval history and folk
literature. Classic prose fiction examples from the Age of Sensibility include Laurence Stern’s
Tristram Shandy (1759) and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). The poetry of
William Collins, William Cowper, Thomas Gray, and Christopher Smart are also attributed to
the Age of Sensibility. Retrieved from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-age-of-johnson.htm
The Victorian Period
Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the first English monarch to see her name given to the
period of her reign whilst still living (1). The Victorian Age was characterized by rapid change
and developments in nearly every sphere - from advances in medical, scientific and technological
knowledge to changes in population growth and location. Over time, this rapid transformation
deeply affected the country's mood: an age that began with a confidence and optimism leading to
economic boom and prosperity eventually gave way to uncertainty and doubt regarding Britain's
place in the world. Today we associate the nineteenth century with the Protestant work ethic,
family values, religious observation and institutional faith.
For the most part, nineteenth century families were large and patriarchal. They encouraged hard
work, respectability, social deference and religious conformity. While this view of nineteenth
century life was valid, it was frequently challenged by contemporaries. Women were often
portrayed as either Madonna’s or whores, yet increasing educational and employment
opportunities gave many a role outside the family.
Politics were important to the Victorians; they believed in the perfection of their evolved
representative government, and in exporting it throughout the British Empire. This age saw the
birth and spread of political movements, most notably socialism, liberalism and organized
feminism. British Victorians were excited by geographical exploration, by the opening up of
Africa and Asia to the West, yet were troubled by the intractable Irish situation and humiliated
by the failures of the Boer War. At sea, British supremacy remained largely unchallenged
throughout the century.
During the Victorian heyday, work and play expanded dramatically. The national railway
network stimulated travel and leisure opportunities for all, so that by the 1870s, visits to seaside
resorts, race meetings and football matches could be enjoyed by many of this now largely urban
society. Increasing literacy stimulated growth in popular journalism and the ascendancy of the
novel as the most powerful popular icon.
The progress of scientific thought led to significant changes in medicine during the nineteenth
century, with increased specialization and developments in surgery and hospital building. There
were notable medical breakthroughs in anaesthetics - famously publicized by Queen Victoria
taking chloroform for the birth of her son in 1853 - and in antiseptics, pioneered by Joseph Lister
(1827-1912). The public's faith in institutions was evident not only in the growth of hospitals but
was also seen in the erection of specialized workhouses and asylums for the most vulnerable
members of society.
Whilst this brief overview can only partially summarize some characteristics of the nineteenth
century, it does illustrate that society was disparate and that no one feature can serve to give a
definitive view of what it meant to be "Victorian". Rather, it is better perhaps to consider the
multifarious and diverse research that has evolved in recent years and make up your own mind.
This History in Focus may serve to begin that process. Shepherd, A. (2001). Retrieved from
https://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Victorians/article.html
The Pre-raphaelites
The name Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood referred to the groups’ opposition to the Royal
Academy’s promotion of the Renaissance master Raphael. They were also in revolt also against
the triviality of the immensely popular genre painting of time.
Inspired by the theories of John Ruskin, who urged artists to ‘go to nature’, they believed in an
art of serious subjects treated with maximum realism. Their principal themes were initially
religious, but they also used subjects from literature and poetry, particularly those dealing with
love and death. They also explored modern social problems.
Its principal members were William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. After initial heavy opposition the Pre-Raphaelites became highly influential, with a
second phase of the movement from about 1860, inspired particularly by the work of Rossetti,
making major contribution to symbolism. Retrieved from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-
terms/p/pre-raphaelite

Aestheticism and Decadence

Poetry was central to aestheticism, from the work of Pre-Raphaelites (especially Dante
Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti), Swinburne and William Morris, through to the
flourishing of poetic voices in the final decades of the 19th century. After being lost to sight for
much of the 20th century, recent literary scholarship has retrieved many important women poets
of this period, including Alice Meynell and Amy Levy. Equally important, though, were the
prose forms associated with aestheticism – and especially the essay of art appreciation. Important
essayists include Pater, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons and Vernon Lee (the name adopted by
Violet Paget). Their writing was sometimes condemned as ‘purple prose’ (i.e. writing that’s
overly elaborate and ornate), because it borrowed from the stylistic techniques of imaginative
writing and was often densely allusive and metaphoric. Wilde’s writing, especially, also threw
off Victorian ideas about earnest and serious argument, instead relishing playfulness and
paradox.
Aesthetes played with traditional oppositions or even hierarchies between art and life.
Wilde teased his readers with the claim that life imitates art rather than the other way round. His
point was a serious one: we notice London fogs, he argued, because art and literature has taught
us to do so. Wilde, among others, ‘performed’ these maxims. He presented himself as the
impeccably dressed and mannered dandy figure whose life was a work of art.
For others, similar notions propelled an interest in literature as a material thing of beauty.
Intricately crafted books were produced by William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, which opened in
1891, dedicated to printing and binding using traditional methods. In part, Morris was striving to
preserve traditional skills against the ever-increasing cheap mass production of reading matter. In
so doing, he was making an overtly political gesture. Morris was a socialist and rejected
capitalist methods of producing goods which, he believed, exploited workers and reduced them
to parts in machine-like factory processes. He rejected consumer culture as deadening to the
human spirit. However, his own work – including textile and other crafts as well as books –
quickly became associated with desirable consumer objects. Aestheticism has often been accused
of complicity with the consumer culture it overtly rejected.
By the 1890s, another term had become associated with this focus on ‘art for art’s sake’. It has
origins in common with aestheticism and the two terms often overlap and were sometimes used
interchangeably. ‘Decadence’ was initially used to describe writers of the mid-19th century in
France, especially Baudelaire and Gautier. By the century’s end, decadence was in use as an
aesthetic term across Europe. The word literally means a process of ‘falling away’ or decline. In
relation to art and literature, it signalled a set of interlinked qualities. These included the notion
of intense refinement; the valuing of artificiality over nature; a position of ennui or boredom
rather than of moral earnestness or the valuing of hard work; an interest in perversity and
paradox, and in transgressive modes of sexuality. One of the most important explicators of
decadence was the poet Arthur Symons, whose essay ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’
(1893), described decadence as ‘a new and beautiful and interesting disease’. For Symons – as
well as for others who were critical rather than intrigued and entranced – decadence was the
literature of a modern society grown over-luxurious and sophisticated.
In France, decadence became associated with a type of poetry exemplified by the writing of Paul
Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé, and also with the fiction of Joris-Karl Huysmans. Huysmans’s
most notorious work, Á Rebours – published in 1884, it was translated as Against
Nature or Against the Grain – is widely believed to be the notorious ‘poisonous’ book that
fascinates Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Huysmans’s
novel caused a shocked outcry when it appeared. Focused almost exclusively on the inner life of
its ailing aristocrat protagonist, Des Esseintes, the novel charts his obsessive sensual
experiments. Dorian Gray’s passion for studying and collecting jewels or perfumes or
ecclesiastical vestments, and surrounding himself with exotic and sensual objects, mirrors Des
Esseintes’s pursuit of ever more refined sensory experiences.
In England, it was Wilde himself who was identified as central to the English decadent tradition,
along with Arthur Symons and the poet, Ernest Dowson. Wilde was important because of his
high visibility in fashionable London clubs and theatres. He dressed flamboyantly, sparking
fashions that others copied. He was a brilliant self-publicist, and quipped that his life was a work
of art. Other important poets include Lionel Johnson and John Davidson. Although often under-
recognized until very recently, women also contributed to decadent style. The most important
voice was ‘Michael Field’, the name under which two women, Katherine Bradley and Edith
Cooper, jointly wrote. The Rhymers’ Club, set up by poets W B Yeats and Ernest Rhys in 1890s,
also explicitly rejected literary naturalism and embraced experimental modes of writing.
‘Symbolist’ poetry was closely aligned with aesthetic and decadent styles: all of them aimed to
explore the beauty of strange, subjective and unique moments. Burdett, C. (2014)
The Edwardian Period
King Edward VII had spent most of his life waiting in the wings as Prince of Wales. His
mother, Queen Victoria, became Britain's longest reigning monarch whilst Edward waited to be
granted a position and responsibilities which, Queen Victoria was reluctant to give. With time on
his hands the Prince brought scandal to the royal family with two citations in divorce cases. It
was difficult to imagine how Edward could adjust his playboy lifestyle to become King after his
mother’s death but he managed to make the role his own with the help of his long-suffering wife,
Queen Alexandria of Denmark.
Almost as if the turning of the century heralded in a new world perspective, a shift from
European dominance to a rise in the power of America and Japan and an emerging independent
India so King Edward VII came to power. Although politicians such as Joseph Chamberlain
were concerned with maintaining Britain at the heart of global trade so other politicians and the
King himself were more concerned with the threat from a previous ally closer to home,
Germany. Unification and industrialization during the latter part of the 19th century had made
Germany into a great economic and military power.
Edward VII was known as the 'Peacemaker'. He was concerned that his nephew, Kaiser
Willhelm II had a vision for the German people that would drive a rift through Europe and tip
Europe towards war. His fears proved to be well-founded.
The Edwardian Period and the period up to what is called the modern period occupies a small
time frame but one in which world and domestic politics were turned on their respective heads.
The working classes found their voice in the trade union movement and the role of women in
society began, fundamentally to change. Tumult in Government caused King Edward to become
embroiled in politics and he became involved in the debacle when the Conservatives in the
House of Lords refused to approve the Liberals "Peoples Budget". The King was so dismayed
that he introduced his son as the "the Last King of England" to the Foreign Secretary of the day.
He had tried to intervene and urged the Conservatives, Balfour and Lansdowne, to pass the
budget. Winston Churchill and Lloyd George were the 'Radicals' in the thick of the action
proposing change. The people were finding a voice and nothing would ever be the same again.
The death of King Edward in 1910 was absorbed as the politics continued to role over daily life.
The Parliament Act of 1911 would ultimately resolve the constitutional relationship between the
Commons and the Lords. The age old concerns about the role of the monarch and Parliament and
the relative roles of the Commons and the Lords had made its final transition. Never again could
the Lords of the Land ultimately stop the democratic will of the people. (2019) Retrieved from
https://www.intriguing-history.com/periods-history/edwardian-period/

The Georgian Period

The Georgian period, left us a legacy of Georgian literature and Georgian architecture
that we interact with on a daily basis. We walk past splendid doorways, sweeping stairs that
tumble onto the streets and elegant, perfectly symmetrically facades. Our schools teach us the
literature of the Georgian period, Jane Austen paints us a picture of a society in which etiquette
and gracefulness abound.
But this was a critical period, in which Britain left its Medieval past behind and emerged as a
country in which commercial trade and wealth grew exponentially. It saw a shift away from
monarchical power towards Parliamentary power and the start of what will become a wretched
and expensive war with France. It was a period of revolution in Europe, immense poverty and
terrible working conditions in Britain, which itself teetered on the brink of revolt.
Great politicians emerged, the first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole and William Pitt the
Younger. The Industrial and Agricultural Revolution changed Britain forever. The rural
economy declined rapidly and the urban industrial expanded at an unprecedented rate. From all
of this spewed forth the greatest advances in science, design and engineering the world has ever
seen, against a background of social inequity imaginable.
The Georgian Period covers the period from 1714 to 1830 and takes its name from the four
Hanoverian King Georges. Their line was assured by The Act of Settlement in 1701 which set
out in law how this line would succeed despite the stronger hereditary claim of the last in the line
of the Stuarts. (2019) Retrieved from https://www.intriguing-history.com/periods-
history/georgian-period-2/

Modern Period
The modern world history, the modern era or the modern period is the global, linear,
historical-geographical approach to the time frame that comes post the classical history. Perhaps,
this view is in contrast to the non-linear or rather the organic view of history which was initially
put forth by the famous historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler in the early 20th century.
Early Modern Period
The early modern period began approximately at the beginning of the 16th century. In this
period, the major historical milestones include the Age of Discovery, the European Renaissance
as well as the Protestant Reformation.
Late Modern Period
On the other hand, the late modern period started in the mid of 18th century. The American
Revolution, the French Revolution, the Great Divergence, the Industrial Revolution and the
Russian Revolution happened in this period. Primarily, it took most of the human history up to
the year 1804 for the population of the modern world to reach its 1 billion mark. However, the
next billion came just over a century later in the year 1927.
Contemporary History
The contemporary history includes the span of historical events starting from 1945. These events
are most relevant to the present time and scenario. Many historians describe the early modern
period as the time frame between 1500 and 1800. This period mainly follows the Late Middle
Ages period. Further, it is marked by the initial European colonies, beginnings of recognizable
nation-states as well as the rise of strong centralized governments.
Impact on the Modern World
In the Ottoman Empire and Africa, the Muslim expansion took place in East and North Africa.
However, in West Africa, several native nations existed. The civilizations of Southeast Asia and
the Indian Empires played a pivotal role in the spice trade. In the Indian subcontinent, the
presence of Great Mughal Empire was strong. Moreover, the archipelagic empires, the Sultanate
of Malacca and later the Sultanate of Johor, exercised power over the southern areas.
In the Asian subcontinent, different Japanese shogunates and the Chinese dynasties held power.
The Edo period from 1600 to 1868 in Japan is regarded as the early modern period. On the other
hand, in Korea, the period from the rising of Joseon Dynasty to the enthronement of King
Gojong is referred to as the early modern period.
In the Americas, Native Americans started a huge and distinct civilization which included the
Aztec Empire and alliance, the Inca civilization, the Mayan Empire and cities, and the Chibcha
Confederation. However, in the west, the European kingdoms and movements were in a
movement of reformation and expansion. Russia made its way to the Pacific coast in 1647. It
went on to consolidate the control over the Russian Far East in the 19th century. Retrieved from
https://www.toppr.com/guides/general-knowledge/world-history/modern-world-history/

Post-modern Period
Postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century
movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion
of reason; and an acutesensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political
and economic power.
Postmodernism is largely a reaction against the intellectual assumptions and values of the
modern period in the history of Western philosophy (roughly, the 17th through the 19th century).
Indeed, many of the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can fairly be
described as the straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for
granted during the 18th-century Enlightenment, though they were not unique to that period. The
most important of these viewpoints are the following.
1. There is an objective natural reality, a reality whose existence and properties are logically
independent of human beings—of their minds, their societies, their social practices, or their
investigative techniques. Postmodernists dismiss this idea as a kind of naive realism. Such reality
as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific
practice and language. This point also applies to the investigation of past events by historians and
to the description of social institutions, structures, or practices by social scientists.
2. The descriptive and explanatory statements of scientists and historians can, in principle, be
objectively true or false. The postmodern denial of this viewpoint—which follows from the
rejection of an objective natural reality—is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such
thing as Truth.
3. Through the use of reason and logic, and with the more specialized tools provided
by science and technology, human beings are likely to change themselves and their societies for
the better. It is reasonable to expect that future societies will be more humane, more just,
more enlightened, and more prosperous than they are now. Postmodernists deny this
Enlightenment faith in science and technology as instruments of human progress. Indeed, many
postmodernists hold that the misguided (or unguided) pursuit of scientific and technological
knowledge led to the development of technologies for killing on a massive scale in World War
II. Some go so far as to say that science and technology—and even reason and logic—are
inherently destructive and oppressive, because they have been used by evil people, especially
during the 20th century, to destroy and oppress others.
4. Reason and logic are universally valid—i.e., their laws are the same for, or apply equally to,
any thinker and any domain of knowledge. For postmodernists, reason and logic too are merely
conceptual constructs and are therefore valid only within the established intellectual traditions in
which they are used.
5. There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that
are in some sense present in human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social
forces. Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychologyare completely
socially determined.
6. Language refers to and represents a reality outside itself. According to postmodernists,
language is not such a “mirror of nature,” as the American pragmatist philosopher Richard
Rorty characterized the Enlightenment view. Inspired by the work of the Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, postmodernists claim that language is semantically self-
contained, or self-referential: the meaning of a word is not a static thing in the world or even an
idea in the mind but rather a range of contrasts and differences with the meanings of other words.
Because meanings are in this sense functions of other meanings—which themselves are
functions of other meanings, and so on—they are never fully “present” to the speaker or hearer
but are endlessly “deferred.” Self-reference characterizes not only natural languages but also the
more specialized “discourses” of particular communities or traditions; such discourses are
embedded in social practices and reflect the conceptual schemes and moral and intellectual
values of the community or tradition in which they are used. The postmodern view of language
and discourse is due largely to the French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques
Derrida (1930–2004), the originator and leading practitioner of deconstruction.
7. Human beings can acquire knowledge about natural reality, and this knowledge can be
justified ultimately on the basis of evidence or principles that are, or can be, known immediately,
intuitively, or otherwise with certainty. Postmodernists reject philosophical foundationalism—
the attempt, perhaps best exemplified by the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes’s
dictum cogito, ergo sum(“I think, therefore I am”), to identify a foundation of certainty on which
to build the edifice of empirical (including scientific) knowledge.
8. It is possible, at least in principle, to construct general theories that explain many aspects of
the natural or social world within a given domain of knowledge—e.g., a general theory of human
history, such as dialectical materialism. Furthermore, it should be a goal of scientific and
historical research to construct such theories, even if they are never perfectly attainable in
practice. Postmodernists dismiss this notion as a pipe dream and indeed as symptomatic of an
unhealthy tendency within Enlightenment discourses to adopt “totalizing” systems of thought (as
the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas called them) or grand “metanarratives” of human
biological, historical, and social development (as the French philosopher Jean-François
Lyotard claimed). These theories are pernicious not merely because they are false but because
they effectively impose conformity on other perspectives or discourses, thereby
oppressing, marginalizing, or silencing them. Derrida himself equated the theoretical tendency
toward totality with totalitarianism.
Postmodernism And Relativism
As indicated in the preceding section, many of the characteristic doctrines of
postmodernism constitute or imply some form of metaphysical, epistemological, or ethical
relativism. (It should be noted, however, that some postmodernists vehemently reject the
relativist label.) Postmodernists deny that there are aspects of reality that are objective; that there
are statements about reality that are objectively true or false; that it is possible to have knowledge
of such statements (objective knowledge); that it is possible for human beings to know some
things with certainty; and that there are objective, or absolute, moral values. Reality, knowledge,
and value are constructed by discourses; hence they can vary with them. This means that the
discourse of modern science, when considered apart from the evidential standards internal to it,
has no greater purchase on the truth than do alternative perspectives, including (for
example) astrology and witchcraft. Postmodernists sometimes characterize the evidential
standards of science, including the use of reason and logic, as “Enlightenment rationality.”
The broad relativism apparently so characteristic of postmodernism invites a certain line of
thinking regarding the nature and function of discourses of different kinds. If postmodernists are
correct that reality, knowledge, and value are relative to discourse, then the established
discourses of the Enlightenment are no more necessary or justified than alternative discourses.
But this raises the question of how they came to be established in the first place. If it is never
possible to evaluate a discourse according to whether it leads to objective Truth, how did the
established discourses become part of the prevailing worldview of the modern era? Why were
these discourses adopted or developed, whereas others were not?
Part of the postmodern answer is that the prevailing discourses in any society reflect the interests
and values, broadly speaking, of dominant or elite groups. Postmodernists disagree about the
nature of this connection; whereas some apparently endorse the dictum of the German
philosopher and economist Karl Marx that “the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas
of its ruling class,” others are more circumspect. Inspired by the historical research of the French
philosopher Michel Foucault, some postmodernists defend the comparatively nuanced view that
what counts as knowledge in a given era is always influenced, in complex and subtle ways, by
considerations of power. There are others, however, who are willing to go even further than
Marx. The French philosopher and literary theorist Luce Irigaray, for example, has argued that
the science of solid mechanics is better developed than the science of fluid mechanics because
the male-dominated institution of physics associates solidity and fluidity with the male and
female sex organs, respectively. Duignan, B. Retrieved from
https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy

American Literature
Colonial Period and Early National Period
The first European settlers of North America wrote about their experiences starting in the 1600s.
This was the earliest American literature: practical, straightforward, often derivative of literature
in Great Britain, and focused on the future.
In its earliest days, during the 1600s, American literature consisted mostly of practical nonfiction
written by British settlers who populated the colonies that would become the United States.
John Smith wrote histories of Virginia based on his experiences as an English explorer and a
president of the Jamestown Colony. These histories, published in 1608 and 1624, are among the
earliest works of American literature.
Nathaniel Ward and John Winthrop wrote books on religion, a topic of central concern in
colonial America.
Anne Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650) may be the earliest
collection of poetry written in and about America, although it was published in England.
A new era began when the United States declared its independence in 1776, and much new
writing addressed the country’s future. American poetry and fiction were largely modeled on
what was being published overseas in Great Britain, and much of what American readers
consumed also came from Great Britain.
The Federalist Papers (1787–88), by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, shaped
the political direction of the United States.
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, which he wrote during the 1770s and ’80s, told a
quintessentially American life story.
Phillis Wheatley, an African woman enslaved in Boston, wrote the first African American
book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). Philip Freneau was another
notable poet of the era.
The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, was published in
1789.
Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, The Interesting Narrative (1789), was among the earliest
slave narratives and a forceful argument for abolition.
By the first decades of the 19th century, a truly American literature began to emerge. Though
still derived from British literary tradition, the short stories and novels published from 1800
through the 1820s began to depict American society and explore the American landscape in an
unprecedented manner.
Washington Irving published the collection of short stories and essays The Sketch Book of
Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819–20. It included “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van
Winkle,” two of the earliest American short stories.
James Fenimore Cooper wrote novels of adventure about the frontiersman Natty Bumppo. These
novels, called the Leatherstocking Tales (1823–41), depict his experiences in the American
wilderness in both realistic and highly romanticized ways. Luebering, J.E. Retrieved from
https://www.britannica.com/list/periods-of-american-literature

The Romantic Period

Romanticism is a way of thinking that values the individual over the group, the subjective over
the objective, and a person’s emotional experience over reason. It also values the wildness of
nature over human-made order. Romanticism as a worldview took hold in western Europe in the
late 18th century, and American writers embraced it in the early 19th century.
Edgar Allan Poe most vividly depicted, and inhabited, the role of the Romantic individual—a
genius, often tormented and always struggling against convention—during the 1830s and up to
his mysterious death in 1849.
Poe invented the modern detective story with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841).
The poem “The Raven” (1845) is a gloomy depiction of lost love. Its eeriness is intensified by its
meter and rhyme scheme.
The short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) and “The Cask of Amontillado”
(1846) are gripping tales of horror.
In New England, several different groups of writers and thinkers emerged after 1830, each
exploring the experiences of individuals in different segments of American society.
James Russell Lowell was among those who used humor and dialect in verse and prose to depict
everyday life in the Northeast.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes were the most prominent of the
upper-class Brahmins, who filtered their depiction of America through European models and
sensibilities.
The Transcendentalists developed an elaborate philosophy that saw in all of creation a unified
whole. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote influential essays, while Henry David
Thoreau wrote Walden (1854), an account of his life alone by Walden Pond. Margaret Fuller was
editor of The Dial, an important Transcendentalist magazine.
Three men—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman—began publishing
novels, short stories, and poetry during the Romantic period that became some of the most-
enduring works of American literature.
As a young man, Nathaniel Hawthorne published short stories, most notable among them the
allegorical “Young Goodman Brown” (1835). In the 1840s he crossed paths with the
Transcendentalists before he started writing his two most significant novels—The Scarlet
Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).
Herman Melville was one of Hawthorne’s friends and neighbors. Hawthorne was also a strong
influence on Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), which was the culmination of Melville’s early life of
traveling and writing.
Walt Whitman wrote poetry that described his home, New York City. He refused the traditional
constraints of rhyme and meter in favor of free verse in Leaves of Grass (1855), and his
frankness in subject matter and tone repelled some critics. But the book, which went
through many subsequent editions, became a landmark in American poetry, and it epitomized the
ethos of the Romantic period.
During the 1850s, as the United States headed toward civil war, more and more stories by and
about enslaved and free African Americans were written.
William Wells Brown published what is considered the first black American novel, Clotel, in
1853. He also wrote the first African American play to be published, The Escape (1858).
In 1859 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Harriet E. Wilson became the first black women to
publish fiction in the United States.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first published serially 1851–52, is credited with
raising opposition in the North to slavery.
Emily Dickinson lived a life quite unlike other writers of the Romantic period: she lived largely
in seclusion; only a handful of her poems were published before her death in 1886; and she was a
woman working at a time when men dominated the literary scene. Yet her poems express a
Romantic vision as clearly as Walt Whitman’s or Edgar Allan Poe’s. They are sharp-edged and
emotionally intense. Five of her notable poems are
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?”
“Because I could not stop for Death –”
“My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun”
“A Bird, came down the Walk –”
“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”
(Luebering, J.E. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/list/periods-of-american-literature)
The Realistic and Naturalistic Period
The human cost of the Civil War in the United States was immense: more than 2.3
million soldiers fought in the war, and perhaps as many as 851,000 people died in 1861–65. Walt
Whitman claimed that “a great literature will…arise out of the era of those four years,” and what
emerged in the following decades was a literature that presented a detailed and unembellished
vision of the world as it truly was. This was the essence of realism. Naturalism was an intensified
form of realism. After the grim realities of a devastating war, they became writers’ primary mode
of expression.
Samuel Clemens was a typesetter, a journalist, a riverboat captain, and an itinerant laborer before
he became, in 1863 at age 27, Mark Twain. He first used that name while reporting on politics in
the Nevada Territory. It then appeared on the short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County,” published in 1865, which catapulted him to national fame. Twain’s story was
a humorous tall tale, but its characters were realistic depictions of actual Americans. Twain
deployed this combination of humor and realism throughout his writing. Some of his notable
works include
Major novels: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
Travel narratives: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), Life on the
Mississippi (1883)
Short stories: “Jim Baker’s Blue-Jay Yarn” (1880), “The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg”
(1899)
Naturalism, like realism, was a literary movement that drew inspiration from French authors of
the 19th century who sought to document, through fiction, the reality that they saw around them,
particularly among the middle and working classes living in cities.
Theodore Dreiser was foremost among American writers who embraced naturalism. His Sister
Carrie(1900) is the most important American naturalist novel.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and The Red Badge of Courage (1895), by Stephen Crane,
and McTeague (1899), The Octopus (1901), and The Pit (1903), by Frank Norris, are novels that
vividly depict the reality of urban life, war, and capitalism.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African American writer who wrote poetry in black dialect—
“Possum,” “When de Co’n Pone’s Hot”—that were popular with his white audience and gave
them what they believed was reality for black Americans. Dunbar also wrote poems not in
dialect—“We Wear the Mask,” “Sympathy”—that exposed the reality of racism in America
during Reconstruction and afterward.
Henry James shared the view of the realists and naturalists that literature ought to present reality,
but his writing style and use of literary form sought to also create an aesthetic experience, not
simply document truth. He was preoccupied with the clash in values between the United States
and Europe. His writing shows features of both 19th-century realism and naturalism and 20th-
century modernism. Some of his notable novels are
The American (1877)
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
What Maisie Knew (1897)
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Modernist Period
Advances in science and technology in Western countries rapidly intensified at the start of the
20th century and brought about a sense of unprecedented progress. The devastation of World
War I and the Great Depression also caused widespread suffering in Europe and the United
States. These contradictory impulses can be found swirling within modernism, a movement in
the arts defined first and foremost as a radical break from the past. But this break was often an
act of destruction, and it caused a loss of faith in traditional structures and beliefs. Despite, or
perhaps because of, these contradictory impulses, the modernist period proved to be one of the
richest and most productive in American literature.
A sense of disillusionment and loss pervades much American modernist fiction. That sense may
be centered on specific individuals, or it may be directed toward American society or toward
civilization generally. It may generate a nihilistic, destructive impulse, or it may express hope at
the prospect of change.
F. Scott Fitzgerald skewered the American Dream in The Great Gatsby (1925).
Richard Wright exposed and attacked American racism in Native Son (1940).
Zora Neale Hurston told the story of a black woman’s three marriages in Their Eyes Were
Watching God (1937).
Ernest Hemingway’s early novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929)
articulated the disillusionment of the Lost Generation.
Willa Cather told hopeful stories of the American frontier, set mostly on the Great Plains, in O
Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918).
William Faulkner used stream-of-consciousness monologues and other formal techniques to
break from past literary practice in The Sound and the Fury (1929).
John Steinbeck depicted the difficult lives of migrant workers in Of Mice and Men (1937)
and The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
T.S. Eliot was an American by birth and, as of 1927, a British subject by choice. His
fragmentary, multivoiced The Waste Land (1922) is the quintessential modernist poem, but his
was not the dominant voice among American modernist poets.
Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg evocatively described the regions—New England and the
Midwest, respectively—in which they lived.
The Harlem Renaissance produced a rich coterie of poets, among them Countee
Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Alice Dunbar Nelson.
Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 and made it the most important
organ for poetry not just in the United States but for the English-speaking world.
During the 1920s Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and E.E. Cummings expressed a
spirit of revolution and experimentation in their poetry.
Drama came to prominence for the first time in the United States in the early 20th century.
Playwrights drew inspiration from European theater but created plays that were uniquely and
enduringly American.
Eugene O’Neill was the foremost American playwright of the period. His Long Day’s Journey
into Night (written 1939–41, performed 1956) was the high point of more than 20 years of
creativity that began in 1920 with Beyond the Horizon and concluded with The Iceman
Cometh (written 1939, performed 1946).
During the 1930s Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets, and Langston Hughes wrote plays that
exposed injustice in America.
Thornton Wilder presented a realistic (and enormously influential) vision of small-town America
in Our Town, first produced in 1938. (Luebering, J.E. Retrieved from
https://www.britannica.com/list/periods-of-american-literature)

The Contemporary Period

The United States, which emerged from World War II confident and economically strong,
entered the Cold War in the late 1940s. This conflict with the Soviet Union shaped global
politics for more than four decades, and the proxy wars and threat of nuclear annihilation that
came to define it were just some of the influences shaping American literature during the second
half of the 20th century. The 1950s and ’60s brought significant cultural shifts within the United
States driven by the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. Prior to the last decades
of the 20th century, American literature was largely the story of dead white men who had created
Art and of living white men doing the same. By the turn of the 21st century, American literature
had become a much more complex and inclusive story grounded on a wide-ranging body of past
writings produced in the United States by people of different backgrounds and open to more
Americans in the present day.
Literature written by African Americans during the contemporary period was shaped in many
ways by Richard Wright, whose autobiography Black Boy was published in 1945. He left the
United States for France after World War II, repulsed by the injustice and discrimination he
faced as a black man in America; other black writers working from the 1950s through the 1970s
also wrestled with the desires to escape an unjust society and to change it.
Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952) tells the story of an unnamed black man adrift in,
and ignored by, America.
James Baldwin wrote essays, novels, and plays on race and sexuality throughout his life, but his
first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), was his most accomplished and influential.
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a play about the effects of racism in Chicago, was first
performed in 1959.
Gwendolyn Brooks became, in 1950, the first African American poet to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The Black Arts movement was grounded in the tenets of black nationalism and sought to
generate a uniquely black consciousness. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), by Malcolm
X and Alex Haley, is among its most-lasting literary expressions.
Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), launched a writing career that would put the
lives of black women at its center. She received a Nobel Prize in 1993.
In the 1960s Alice Walker began writing novels, poetry, and short stories that reflected her
involvement in the civil rights movement.
The American novel took on a dizzying number of forms after World War II. Realist,
metafictional, postmodern, absurdist, autobiographical, short, long, fragmentary, feminist, stream
of consciousness—these and dozens more labels can be applied to the vast output of American
novelists. Little holds them together beyond their chronological proximity and engagement with
contemporary American society. Among representative novels are
Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead (1948), The Executioner’s Song (1979)
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita (1955)
Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1957)
Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Eudora Welty: The Optimist’s Daughter (1972)
Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), American Pastoral (1997)
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Saul Bellow: Humboldt’s Gift (1975)
Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987)
Alice Walker: The Color Purple (1982)
Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street (1983)
Jamaica Kincaid: Annie John (1984)
Maxine Hong Kingston: Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989)
David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (1996)
Don DeLillo: Underworld (1997)
Ha Jin: Waiting (1999)
Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections (2001)
Junot Díaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)
Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad (2016)
The Beat movement was short-lived—starting and ending in the 1950s—but had a lasting
influence on American poetry during the contemporary period. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956)
pushed aside the formal, largely traditional poetic conventions that had come to dominate
American poetry. Raucous, profane, and deeply moving, Howl reset Americans’ expectations for
poetry during the second half of the 20th century and beyond.
In the early decades of the contemporary period, American drama was dominated by three
men: Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. Miller’s Death of a
Salesman (1949) questioned the American Dream through the destruction of its main character,
while Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) excavated
his characters’ dreams and frustrations. Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
rendered what might have been a benign domestic situation into something vicious and cruel. By
the 1970s the face of American drama had begun to change, and it continued to diversify into the
21st century. (Luebering, J.E. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/list/periods-of-
american-literature)