![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Such events included the English capture of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1664, with the English renaming it New York and changing the administrative language from Dutch to English. Political events, however, would eventually make English the lingua franca as well as the literary language of choice for the colonies at large. Moreover, a wealth of oral literary traditions existed on the continent among the numerous different Native American tribes. Spanish and French had two of the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States, and discussions of early American literature commonly include texts by Samuel de Champlain alongside English-language texts by Thomas Harriot and Captain John Smith. The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book printed in any of the colonies before the American Revolution. However, the first European settlements in North America had been founded elsewhere many years earlier, and the dominance of the English language in American culture was not yet apparent. The Thirteen Colonies have often been regarded as the center of early American literature. (1608) can be considered America's first work of literature. In 2016, the folk-rock songwriter Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.Ĭaptain John Smith's A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Happened in Virginia . Įxamples of pioneers in these areas include Asian American authors such as Maxine Hong Kingston, the Native American Louise Erdrich, and African Americans Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and 1993 Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. In late 20th century and early 21st century there has been increased popular and academic acceptance of the literature written by immigrant, ethnic, Native American, and LGBT writers, and of writings in other languages than English. In the mid-twentieth century, drama was dominated by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as the musical theater. Prominent playwrights of these years include Eugene O'Neill, who won a Nobel Prize. America's involvement in World War II influenced works such as Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Depression era writers included John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath (1939). American modernist poets included diverse figures: Wallace Stevens, T. Scott Fitzgerald captured the carefree mood of the 1920s, but John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, who became famous with The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, and William Faulkner adopted experimental forms. ![]() Henry James achieved international recognition with novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881).įollowing World War I, modernist literature rejected nineteenth century forms and values. Mark Twain was the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast. Major American poets of the nineteenth century include Walt Whitman, Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) explored the dark side of American history, as did Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). The conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe and by slave narratives, such as those by Frederick Douglass. Ralph Waldo Emerson pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, was influenced by this movement. Edgar Allan Poe took American poetry and short fiction in new directions. Writer and critic John Neal in the early-mid nineteenth century helped advance America's progress toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing predecessors like Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts and influencing others like Edgar Allan Poe. An early novel is William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1791. The American Revolutionary Period (1775–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. Furthermore, a rich tradition of oral storytelling exists amongst Native Americans. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also includes literature of other traditions produced in the United States and in other immigrant languages. American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. ![]()
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