-Literal authority of the Bible
-Manifest Destiny
-Predestination
-Total depravity of humanity
Indian Captivities
Mary Rowlandson-
– Covenant theology taught that although no human being can ever know for certain whether he or she is scared.
– Proven to be an intregal part of American Literature
Age of Enlightenment
Benjamin Franklin
– Intellectuals now believed in power of the human.
– Focus on HUMAN MIND; Deists, science vs. scripture
– Use of mind to comprehend universe
American Renaissance
Early 1800’s:
Women and minority writers – reform movements (slavery, temperance, women’s rights)
Literary Nationalism
Andrew Jackson- ultimate American Hero
– Republic: embodies capacities of normal, ordinary people
– Natural landscapes: vision
Transcendentalism
– Spiritualism
– Psychic powers
– All carry piece of divine Utopian society
– Inherit goodness of people
– inner spiritualism
Indian Removal Act
-Question of Native American sovereignty in the United States – more pressing matter thane ever before.
– Humans are the ULTIMATE in mind and control of the Earth.
– Walt Whitman
Realism
– real life
– ordinary people
Teacup Tragedies
William Dean Howels
– Drama of ordinary life
Feminism
– gender (women) was key to understanding literature
– Kate Chopin
Literature of Argument
– body of sociological literature that argued eloquently for reform of social life/texts with a strong reform agenda of their own
Modernist/High Modernist
– breaking away from established rules, traditions, and conventions, experiments in form and style, fragmentation, objective correlation.
– T.S. Eliot
Southern American Renaissance
– the burden of history
– south’s conservative culture
– south’s troubled history in regards to racial issues
Harlem Renaissance
– Literary and culture movement among black Americans
– African Culture
– Acceptance of Black
Surrealism/Magic Realism
– movement attempting to express the unconscious mind in art and literature to synthesize these works
– themes and subjects are often imaginary, outlandish, and fantastic, with a certain dream-like quality.