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Periods for English
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Period Name | Important People-and books | Time Frame | Beliefs/Characteristics | Misc. | Sub-Period 1 | Sub-Period 2 (if needed) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Colonial/Enlightenment | Ben Franklin "Autobiography", Crevecoeur "Letters from an American Farmer", (Alexis de Tocqueville and Arthur Schlesslinger Jr. commented on the period after the fact, Phillis Wheatley "On Being Brought from Africa to America" | 1750-1800 | reason over faith, believed in the power of reason and science to further human progress, believed that people by nature are good | no American novels or plays of significance up to this point, | none | none |
Romanticism | lots of Dickinson and Whitman (should be able to tell difference between them), Melville, Hawthorne, Thoreau "Walden", Emerson "Nature" and "Self-Reliance", some Poe like "The Fall of the House of Usher" | 1830-1861 | Transcendentalism (including Over-soul, man's connection to nature, being self-reliant, etc), favor imagination over reason and intuition over facts, interested in mystery | none | none | none |
Realism | Twain "True Story" and "Huck Finn", Copin "Story of an Hour", Jewett "White Heron" | 1865-Early 20th Century | writers wanted to open people's eyes and talk about the common people (including immigrants, prostitutes, business men, etc), tried to keep sentimentality out of their writing (in revolt against Romanticism) | causes for movement to begin: (aftermath of Civil War, large increase of population as a result of immigration, and everyone moving west), was controversial in its time | Naturalism (writers studied people and society objectively and drew conclusions from what they observed, very scientific, said that one's destiny is decided by heredity, enviornment, physical drives, and economic circumstances, N's tended to be pessimisti | Regionalism (aka local color, sought to capture the essence of life in the various different reagions of the growing nation through use of regional dialect and vivid descriptions of landscape, very popular but remains unclear why it was so popular) |
Modernism | Faulkner "Barn Burning", Hemmingway "Big Two-Hearted River" and "Hills Like White Elephants", Cather "Paul's Case", Cheever "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" | WWI - WWII | wanted to reflect confusion of modern life in literature, themes of works should be implied rather than stated | causes of start of movement: (feelings of uncertainty, disjointedness, and disillusionment after WWI) | none | none |