American Lit Movements

Question 0

Romanticism 1820-1865

Answer 0

• Writers celebrated creativity, imagination, nature, individualism, and emotions.
• a shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination
• natural feelings
• love of nature
• common themes: rebellion, revolution, human rights, oppression, supernatural, exotic things.
• the subjective experience

-famous writers:
Walt Whitman
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville

Question 1

Transcendentalism 19th century

Answer 1

• a philosophy and state of mind
• emphasis on this life, not afterlife
• the individual is the spiritual center of universe
• respect for the individual and pursuit of a greater truth
• nature is symbolic
• self-realization
• be one with the world
• romantic and individualistic in literature

Famous Three:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Margaret Fuller

More:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Washington Irving

Question 2

Realism 1865-1914

Answer 2

Influencing factors: civil war, industrial revolution, new machinery, and science

• present life
• authors conveyed life as it was…even the harsh moments
• fading spirituality
• emphasis on the common man and every day life of common people
• slice of life (storytelling technique about everyday events and people but without detailed plot or character development)

Famous writers:
Walt Whitman-although mostly Romantic
Upton Sinclair 
Henry James
Mark Twain
Kate Chopin 
Emily Dickenson
Willa Cather
William Dean Howells "nothing more and nothing less..."

Question 3

Naturalism (branch of Realism)

Answer 3

Characters can be studied through their relationships with their surroundings
-observing characters much like scientists would observe animals
-perceived the individual as a helpless object
Famous writers:
-Stephen Crane - Red Badge of Courage
-Jack London

Question 4

Modernism 1914-1945

Answer 4

• came about due to industrialization and globalization - the Great Depression and wars
• “what is becoming of the world?”
• themes of isolation and alienation
• loss of spirituality
• saw technology and capitalism as a negative that alienated the individual
• multiple narrators

Writers:
James Joyce
TS Eliot 
Ernest Hemingway- The Sun Also Rises
William Faulkner
The Grapes of Wrath
F Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby
Gertrude Stein

Question 5

Harlem Renaissance (New Negro Movement)

Answer 5

Famous Writers: 
Langston Hughes 
Zora Neale Hurston 
Jean Toomer
Alain Locke

Question 6

Post Modernism 1945-present

The Atomic Bomb

Answer 6

Uses parody, comedy, and satire.

• mixes styles within a text
• cynical and twisted humor
• fear of death
• loss of faith

Question 7

Native American Period (pre-1620-1840)

Answer 7

Oral traditions of song and story

Question 8

Colonial Period (1620-1750)

Answer 8

Religious influence of Puritans and establishment of new government

Famous writers:
William Bradford
Anne Bradstreet
Jonathan Edwards

Question 9

Revolutionary Period and Nationalism (1750-1815)

Answer 9

Thomas Paine
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson

Question 10

Universal themes in American Literature

Answer 10

• American individualism
• American dream
• Cultural diversity
• Tolerance