Transcript of ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE\

ANGLO OR ENGLISH LITERATURE

Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to the Angles, England, the English people, or the English
language, such as in the term Anglo-Saxon language. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to
refer to people of British Isles descent in The Americas, New Zealand and Australia.

Anglo is a Late Latin prefix used to denote English. The word is derived from Anglia, the Latin
name for England, and still the modern name of its eastern region. Anglia and England both
mean land of the Angles, a Germanic people originating in the north German peninsula of
Angeln.

LITERARY PERIODS IN ANGLO LITERATURE

Old English Literature (450-1100)

* Encompasses literature written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England
* GENRE/STYLE :Epic poetry; Hagiography; Sermons; Bible Translations; Chronicles

Sample Literary Masterpiece:

Beowulf
LITERARY PERIODS IN ANGLO LITERATURE
*Middle English Literature: 1100-1500
In this period religious literature continued to enjoy popularity and Hagiographies were written,
adapted and translated.
* GENRE/STYLE: Romance; Bible Translations
* Sample Literary Masterpieces: The Canterbury Tales
of Geoffrey Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight

English Renaissance: 1500-1660

a. Elizabethan and Jacobean period (1558-1625)
b. Late Renaissance:1625-60
*The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late
15th and early 16th centuries to the 17th century.
The Renaissance saw the rise of English theatrical drama, most notably William Shakespeare but
also from authors such as Christopher Marlowe.
* GENRE/STYLE: Vernacular Literature; Comedy; Tragedy
* Sample Literary Masterpiece: Book of Common
Prayer; Works of William Shakespeare; The Faerie Queene
by Edmund Spenser

LITERARY PERIODS IN ANGLO LITERATURE

NEO-CLASSICAL PERIOD: Restoration Age:(1660-1700)
Augustan literature (1700-1750) and Age of sensibility: (1750-1798)
* The 18th century literature reflected the worldview of the Age of Enlightenment (or Age of
Reason): a rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues that
promoted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility.
* GENRE/STYLE: Pastoral and Mock-heroic
* Sample Literary Masterpiece: Gulliver’s Travel of
Jonathan Swift

LITERARY PERIODS IN ANGLO LITERATURE

Modern Period
*English literary modernism developed out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian
era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth.
*GENRE/STYLE: Modernist novels using
the stream of consciousness technique; Science Fiction
* Sample Literary Masterpieces: The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner and Lady Chatterley’s Lover
by D.H Lawrence
AMERICAN LITERATURE

American literature is the literature written or produced in the area of the United States and its
preceding colonies. During its early history, America was a series of British colonies on the
eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked to
the broader tradition of English literature. However, unique American characteristics and the
breadth of its production usually now cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition.
GOAL!

ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE
A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST
LITERARY PERIODS IN ANGLO
LITERATURE
PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
PURITAN/COLONIAL 1650-1750

* Instructive and reinforces authority of the Bible and church.

*GENRE/STYLE: Sermons, diaries, personal narratives ; Written in plain style
* Sample Literary Masterpieces: Rowlandson's "A Narrative of the Captivity" and Edward's
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

REVOLUTIONARY/ AGE OF REASON 1750-1800

*Patriotism grows; Instills pride; Creates common agreement about issues; National mission and
the American character.
*GENRE/STYLE: Political pamphlets; Travel writing; Highly ornate style and Persuasive
writing
* Sample Literary Masterpiece: Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac

PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

ROMANTICISM 1800-1860

*Value feeling and intuition over reasoning; Journey away from corruption of civilization and
limits of rational thought toward the integrity of nature and freedom of the imagination
Helped instill proper gender behavior for men and women
*GENRE/STYLE: Character sketches; Slave narratives; Poetry; Short stories
Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle and Poems of Walt Whitman

PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE/ TRANSCENDENTALISM
1840-1860

(Note overlap in time period with Romanticism -- some consider the anti-transcendentalists to be
the"dark"romantics or gothic)
Transcendentalists: True reality is spiritual; Idealists; Self-reliance & individualism
Anti-Transcendentalists: Used symbolism to great effect; Sin, pain, & evil exist
* GENRE/STYLE: Poetry; Short Stories; Novels
* Sample Literary Masterpiece: Poems and essays of Emerson & Thoreau ; Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Black Cat"
PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
REALISM 1855-1900

(Period of Civil War and Postwar period)

Social realism: aims to change a specific social problem
Aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it
*GENRE/STYLE: Novels and short stories and Objective narrator
* Sample Literary Masterpiece: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (some say 1st modern
novel)

PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

THE MODERNS 1900-1950

* In Pursuit of the American Dream; Admiration for America as land of Eden; Optimism and
Importance of the Individual
* GENRE/STYLE: Novels ; Plays; Poetry (a great resurgence after deaths of Whitman &
Dickinson); Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness
* Sample Literary Masterpieces: Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby ; Poetry of Jeffers, Williams,
Cummings, Frost, Eliot, Sandburg, Pound, Robinson, Stevens.

PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

HARLEM RENAISSANCE (Parallel to modernism) 1920s

Allusions to African-American spirituals ; Uses structure of blues songs in poetry (repetition)

Superficial stereotypes revealed to be complex characters
*GENRE/STYLE: Gave birth to "gospel music"
Blues and jazz transmitted across American via radio and phonographs.
*Sample Literary Masterpiece: Poetry, short stories and novels of Hurston and Hughes

PERIODS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

POSTMODERNISM (1950 to present)

*Erodes distinctions between classes of people; Insists that values are not permanent but only
"local" or "historical"; Mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader ;
Usually humorless
*GENRE/STYLE: Narratives; Metafiction and Magic realism
*Sample Literary Masterpiece: Miller's The Death of a Salesman & The Crucible and Salinger's
Catcher in the Rye