Literary Heritage of the USA

Renata Dulatova

Unique American style

Washington Irving

James Cooper Edgar Allan Poe

Washington Irving

• short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" (in the book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent)

• image of St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon (A History of New York, 1812)

Sleepy Hollow (1999):• police constable Ichabod Crane (Johnny

Depp) from New York City is to investigate a series of murders in the village Sleepy Hollow by a mysterious Headless Horseman.

(1783 –1859)

James Cooper

• sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales

• a historical novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

• The American adaptations – 1920, 1932, 1936, 1992

• German adptations - Der Letzte der Mohikaner (1920), Chingachgook die Grosse Schlange (Chingachgook the Great Serpent) (1967)

(1789 –1851)

Edgar Allan Poe

• the first American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career

• tales of mystery and the macabre• practitioner of the short story and

the inventor of the detective-fiction genre

• contribution to the emerging genre of science fiction

• "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

(1809 –1849)

Realism

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Henry James

Mark Twain

• "greatest American humorist of his age“, "the father of American literature" (William Faulkner )

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

• American adaptations – 1920, 1931, 1939, 1954, 1960, 1993 (Elijah Wood )

• Russian adaptation – Hopelessly Lost (1972)

• Japanese anime – 1976, 1994

(1835 –1910)

Henry James

• the series of novels in which he portrays the encounter of Americans with Europe and Europeans

• Daisy Miller (1879), The Bostonians (1886), The Ambassadors (1903)

• a ghost story, novella The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Adaptations:• An opera, The Turn of the Screw (1954 )• TV movie, The Turn of the Screw (1974) • A film, The Others starring Nicole Kidman is

partly based upon the novel (2001) • A film, In a Dark Place (2006)

(1843 –1916)

Theodore Dreiser

Ernest Hemingway

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Jack London

Margaret Mitchell

Jack London

• one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing

• purchased plots and novels from the young Sinclair Lewis and used incidents from newspaper clippings as writing material

• The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, Hearts of Three

1876 –1916

Theodore Dreiser

• Sister Carrie (1900), The Financier, The Titan, The Stoic, An American Tragedy (1925)

1871 –1945

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

• works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age

• future wife, Zelda Sayre, the "golden girl", in Fitzgerald's words

• This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night and the most famous, the celebrated classic, The Great Gatsby (a critique of the American Dream)

1896 –1940

Margaret Mitchell

• one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies

• A highly-grossing American film adaptation (1939)

1900 –1949

Ernest Hemingway

• distinctive writing style, characterized by economy and understatement

• an enormous influence on 20th-century fiction

• 1954 - the Nobel Prize in Literature

• best novelsThe Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms

1899 –1961

Post-World War II

Nelle Harper Lee

Jerome Salinger

John Hoyer Updike Ray Bradbury

Harper Lee

• To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) - racial injustice and the destruction of innocence

Adaptation• To Kill a Mockingbird

(1962) - Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch

1926 -

Jerome Salinger

• The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

• Franny and Zooey and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour

1919 - 2010

John Hoyer Updike

• Rabbit series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and the novella "Rabbit Remembered") which chronicled the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to his death

• The Witches of Eastwick (1984), Roger's Version (1986) and In the Beauty of the Lilies

1932 - 2009

Ray Bradbury

• an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer

• best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951)

• more than 20 filmed dramatizations of his works

1920 -