What makes written work american literature

The fellow whom Faulkner had met while working for Warner Bros. Novelist Frank Norris wrote in that The Great American Novel was pure myth, a hybrid creature that could never exist. He argued well, but too soon, years before the appearance of Absalom , which would have proved him wrong. It was in that Wallace arrived; I never saw anything quite like it before, and I do not expect to again.

Search no further. All the trails went cold forty-two years ago. The quest did what quests very rarely do: it ended. Everything is in here, the crushed and the exalted, and all the notches in between, from the kitchen stiff… to the American eagle.

When The New York Times Book Review asked writers to name the best work of American fiction from the preceding 25 years this was in , Beloved came out on top.

With remarkable speed, Beloved has, less than 20 years after its publication, become a staple of the college literary curriculum, which is to say a classic. When the book first began to be assigned in college classrooms, during an earlier and in retrospect much tamer phase of the culture wars, its inclusion on syllabuses was taken, by partisans and opponents alike, as a radical gesture.

The conservative canard one heard in those days was that left-wing professors were casting aside Shakespeare in favor of Morrison. But the political rhetoric of the time obscured the essential conservatism of the novel, which aimed not to displace or overthrow its beloved precursors, but to complete and to some extent correct them.

Oh, and did I mention love, death, guilt, and redemption? Yep—those too. That it also grapples with a fundamental dilemma of modern middle-class America—namely: Is it really still OK to spend your life asserting your unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, when the rest of the world is in such a state?

Six months before its official release in , the galley arrived in my mailbox. I was on my way to Switzerland, so I almost passed on reviewing the book because of its length—I had promised myself I was going to dedicate my writing time in Europe to my own work.

But on impulse I decided to accept the assignment, if anything, as an excuse to read the long-anticipated novel by the author of Drown. When I finally picked up the book, I knew I held something special in my hands. Not just for its portraiture of universal American dreams and anxieties; not for its social scope; nor for its historical and political topicality, in which it deals in spades, but rather because of its painful sincerity, its humble recognition of human failings, and its continued hope that it is not too late.

However, this hasn't stopped literary scholars from making an attempt. Here are some of the most commonly agreed upon periods of American literature from the colonial period to the present. This period encompasses the founding of Jamestown up to a decade before the Revolutionary War.

The majority of writings were historical, practical, or religious in nature. Beginning a decade before the Revolutionary War and ending about 25 years later, this period includes the writings of Thomas Jefferson , Thomas Paine , James Madison , and Alexander Hamilton. This is arguably the richest period of political writing since classical antiquity.

This era in American literature is responsible for notable first works, such as the first American comedy written for the stage—"The Contrast" by Royall Tyler, written in —and the first American Novel—"The Power of Sympathy" by William Hill, written in Also known as the Romantic Period in America and the Age of Transcendentalism , this period is commonly accepted to be the greatest of American literature.

Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller are credited with shaping the literature and ideals of many later writers. As a result of the American Civil War, Reconstruction and the age of industrialism, American ideals and self-awareness changed in profound ways, and American literature responded. Certain romantic notions of the American Renaissance were replaced by realistic descriptions of American life, such as those represented in the works of William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain.

In addition to Walt Whitman, another master poet, Emily Dickinson , appeared at this time. This relatively short period is defined by its insistence on recreating life as life really is, even more so than the realists had been doing in the decades before.

American Naturalist writers such as Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London created some of the most powerfully raw novels in American literary history. Their characters are victims who fall prey to their own base instincts and to economic and sociological factors. Edith Wharton wrote some of her most beloved classics, such as "The Custom of the Country" , "Ethan Frome" , and "The House of Mirth" during this time period.

After the American Renaissance, the Modern Period is the second most influential and artistically rich age of American writing. Its major writers include such powerhouse poets as E. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Many of these writers were influenced by World War I and the disillusionment that followed, especially the expatriates of the Lost Generation.

Beat writers, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, were devoted to anti-traditional literature, in poetry and prose, and anti-establishment politics. Literary criticism is attentive and reflective analysis and consideration of a literary work.

Literary analysis essay is an essay in which you are asked to consider and evaluate a work of literature from your own perspective. A literature review is an evaluation and a search of the literature in your chosen topic area or given subjects. Applied essay is an essay in which you are asked to explore certain issues using a text and explain your personal attitude to them. General Research paper is a paper in which student is asked to consider a chosen problem in literature.

Students also can be asked to write a theoretical essay, a prompt paper or to analyze adaptation or translation of a literature work. Over the centuries, American authors have shaped a vast body of work, often reflecting voices that are distinctly American. American voice writers demonstrate the potential of literature to capture realities of time, place and, above all, people.

Uniquely American voices illuminate the power of language. Literature allows a person to step back in time and learn about life on Earth from the ones who walked before us. We can gather a better understanding of culture and have a greater appreciation of them. We learn through the ways history is recorded, in the forms of manuscripts and through speech itself.

Here are just a few things literature can teach us: About ourselves. It was created by Paul Weyrich, a key strategist for the paleoconservative movement. At its peak, it claimed to reach more than 11 million homes. Channel: Studying American literature encompasses understanding society.

From this study, society can only improve by analyzing the writing in any culture. American literature has produced some of the most significant prose and poetry the world has seen.

Literature acts as a form of expression for each individual author. Some books mirror society and allow us to better understand the world we live in. Literature is a reflection of humanity and a way for us to understand each other. Literature is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material.

The seven literary standards are: artistry, suggestiveness, intellectual value, spiritual value, permanence, universality and style. These are a set of characteristics to determine whether or not a work is literary. The criteria was developed by writer William J. It has the ability to evoke common human responses, universally.