Revolutionary period• Revolution started in 1773 with Boston Tea Party• First autors were scientists, politicins, philosophers so
literature had political character• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)-scientist and journalist,
work: Autobiography• Thomas Pain (1737-1809) work: Common sence
Revolutionary period pt.2Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)• Author of the Declaration of the Indenpendence• Third president of the U.S.A.• Founder of the university in Virginia• Optimistic Aproach to life
First National period
1. Romantic writers
Washington Irving - (1783-1859) work: Rip Van Winkle
Edgar Allan Poe - (1809-1849)
- he mainly wrote short stories inspired by gothic novels:
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Mask of the Red Death
- Famous is his poem The Raven
- Died for alcohol poisoning
James Fenimore Cooper - (1789-1851) Last of the Mohikans
First National Period pt.2
2. Transcendentalis
Inspired by Kant and Coleridge, interested in nature and the limits of human mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson- esseys, speeches
Henry Thereau- philosopher and scientist
First National Period pt.3
3. Novelists
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Inspiredby the Transcendentalists
- work: The Scarlet Letter
Hermann Melville – worked on the whale ship
- work: Moby Dick, Typee
4. Poets
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – poet and translator, wrote the epic The Song of Hiawatha
The Critical Realism
1. Novelists
Jack London (1876-1916) journalist, inspired bysocialist ideas
works:Sea Wolf, White Fang
Mark Twain (1835-1910) printer, boater and humourist
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn
The Critical Realism pt.2
2. Poets
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote 1800 poems which weren‘t published until her death, greatest american poet
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) journalist, the first poet who wrote in the free verse
The 20th century
1. Fiction of the 1920s
[ “the Jazz Age”, the Lost Generation]
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) work: The Great Gatsby
Sinclair Lewis (1865-1951) first American writer who get Nobel prize
Ernest Hemingway(1899-1961)Work: Farewell to the Army
The 20th century pt.2
2. II. World War reflection
Joseph Heller (1923-1999)- Served as pilot
works: Catch 22
Closing hour
Norman Mailer (1923-?) Fought in Pacific works: Naked and Death
Marilyn
William Styron (1925-?) work: Sophia's choice
The 20th century pt.3
3. The Depression years
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) Nobel prize winner
works: Of Mice and Man, The Grapes of Wrath
William Faulkner (1901-1963) another Nobel prize winner
works: The Sound And Fury
The 20th century pt.4
4. Poets
Erza Pound (1885-1972) founder of “Imagism”
Thomas Stearns Elliot (1888-1965) Nobel Prize winner
Works: Wasteland
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)