American literary movements

Question 1

What is Romanticism?

Answer 1

1800-1855

CONTENT
Sense of idealism, focus on the individual’s inner feelings, emphasis on imagination over rationalism, urbanisation vs nostalgia, the burden of Puritan past

STYLE
The literary tale, character sketch, slave narratives, political novels, transcendentalism (the inherent goodness of individual people and nature corrupted by society)

EFFECT
Fixed gender behaviour, fuels abolitionist movement, re-imagines American past

Question 2

What is Realism?

Answer 2

1855-1900

CONTENT
Includes Social Realism/ Regional Realism
Common characters not idealised (immigrants, labourers), class systems, society corrupted by materialism, moralism through observation

STYLE
objective narrator, the dialogue has many voices

EFFECT
social realism aims to change social problems, Civil war demands truer literature

Question 3

What is naturalism?

Answer 3

1880-1900

CONTENT
Survival, fate, violence, nature is indifferent,’brute within’, greed, power, fight for survival in an amoral world

STYLE
characters middle/lower class, unheroic, everyday life, dull, characters emerge heroic through violence, passion, tragic ending

EFFECT
pitting God against nature

Question 4

What is modernism?

Answer 4

1900-1946

CONTENT
alienation and disconnection, people unable to communicate effectively, grief over the loss of the past

STYLE
experimental, allusions to classics, fragmented, juxtaposition, stream of consciousness, writers seek unique style

EFFECT
alienation

Question 5

What is the Harlem Renaissance?

Answer 5

The 1920s

CONTENT
Celebrated African-American lifestyle, defines heritage and celebrates new identity

STYLE
allusions to African spirituality, superficial stereotypes which are later revealed to be capable complex moral judgements

Question 6

Examples of Romanticism works

Answer 6

• Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850).

- Edgar Allan Poe (although also Southern Gothic!)

Question 7

Who was a key figure in the transcendentalism movement?

Answer 7

Ralph Waldo Emerson published his essay ‘Nature’ (1836) arguing that humans can find their true spirituality in nature, not in the everyday bustling working world of democracy and industrial transformation. ‘Self-Reliance’ (1841) urges readers to think for themselves and reject the mass conformity in American life.

Question 8

Examples of Modernism work

Answer 8

• Willa Cather’s My Antonia (1918)
• William Faulkner (although also Southern Gothic!)
• Ernest Hemmingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929)
• Gertrude Stein

Question 9

What is Southern Gothic?

Answer 9

The 1900s-
CONTENT
Deeply flawed disturbing eccentric characters who may be involved in hoodoo, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or stemming from poverty, alienation, crime, or violence.

EFFECTS
Commentary on southern past such as racism, slavery

Question 10

Examples of Southern Gothic works

Answer 10

• William Faulkner’s A Rose For Emily (1930)

- Edgar Allan Poe

Question 11

Examples of Realism works

Answer 11

• Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925)

- Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Question 12

Example of the Harlem Renaissance works

Answer 12

• Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)