What is american literature?

[Quagmire]

Ok, I admit it, Im upset with you. There has been over 200 views within these past few hours, (where I've needed the most help) and yet, only the same people (who have been helping, so I greatly appreciate it so far) have continued to post. hmmmmmmm sumting wong hear

What exactly is "American Literature"?

I'm not looking for any answer like 'everyone is different and, thus, has a different perspective on things' or like 'American Literature cannot actually be really defined'
I am trying to gather as many influential factors of American literature that make it stand out. Not only literary movements such as Romanticism, Gothic, Harlem Renaissance, Puritanic, but things that make them American

Ya its pretty abstract but this should further all of our knowledge of literature.
The more in-depth and more characteristics you add to the list will be added to the list.
You dont have to put down a million things, but just find one thing that sticks out to you or is very influential of American literature that makes it, American.


list is on 3rd post



EDIT, please look at page 5, I post all my information there, its extremely important

[chasestalling]

Trunk and truck as opposed to boot and lorry, that's American Lit.

[Quagmire]

Trunk and truck as opposed to boot and lorry, that's American Lit.

well hey thats something, but what does it go to? like what movement?





also from here under Ill begin a list so its easier for everyone to see

- American idiom

- Individual struggle

-"guilt", a tradition perfected by Hawthorne, appropriated by Faulkner and very well written about by the recently deceased William Styron.

-the "lone wolf" hero who triumphs though the world is against him is an idea given its fullest expression in American Lit.

-Even narratives where the hero is not alone still see the hero and his companions fighting against nature and a hostile world. See Huckleberry Finn. This is an idea rooted in the Old West. Though the Western's most natural medium is film, it has influenced literature as well, and the idea of a lawless wilderness where every man is for himself and control is held by the strongest for good or ill has become hugely romanticised in American literature.

-The influential texts by famous American literature writers (I will look for some ways they helped create the 'American' part of American literature)

- (In a nutshell) American literature is the product of a 'melting pot,' consisting of literary movements that took place in America that blended into each other. People followed these movements (either literature changed lifestyle / vise versa ect..) both evolved from one movement to another having specific qualities that make it American and not, say European. Past styles, forms, *idioms (cant think of the word) which remained in American literature which still influenced following movements, mixed together into the 'Melting Pot' which is what American literature really is.

-regionalism

- uncertanty

- Change (of time, movements? ect)

- transience and impermanence

[chasestalling]

I don't know about movement, but the American idiom is quite distinctive from other English speaking worlds with the possible exception of Canada. Certain expressions and intonations are distinctively American, so that you won't likely hear a Briton say "you know what I mean" "and stuff like that", much less write them.

[patrickbeverley]

I don't like that big Rules thing at the top. Almost made me leave the thread just to make a point. I think you'll get more responses if you edit it out.

But in any case I can't leave a thread on American Lit alone, because it is my speciality, despite my being British.

American Lit is very much defined by individual struggle. In other literary traditions -- the English, for example -- it is common for the protagonist to be assisted by many other characters, but the "lone wolf" hero who triumphs though the world is against him is an idea given its fullest expression in American Lit. Whether the protagonist triumphs or fails is entirely down to him. (I use a generic "he" not out of laziness or sexism but because the "lone wolf" is a very masculine character.) See Moby-Dick, The Catcher in the Rye.

Even narratives where the hero is not alone still see the hero and his companions fighting against nature and a hostile world. See Huckleberry Finn. This is an idea rooted in the Old West. Though the Western's most natural medium is film, it has influenced literature as well, and the idea of a lawless wilderness where every man is for himself and control is held by the strongest for good or ill has become hugely romanticised in American literature.

Overall I would say the most important books in American literature are (in order of publication, not of importance):

The Last of the Mohicans — James Fenimore Cooper
Moby-Dick — Herman Melville
Little Women — Louisa May Alcott
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain
Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman
The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
The Catcher in the Rye — J. D. Salinger
Howl and other poems — Allen Ginsberg
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple — Alice Walker

[Trekker114]

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

[Quagmire]

I don't know about movement, but the American idiom is quite distinctive from other English speaking worlds with the possible exception of Canada. Certain expressions and intonations are distinctively American, so that you won't likely hear a Briton say "you know what I mean" "and stuff like that", much less write them.

yes thats something that deffinantly makes American literature different. thanks

I don't like that big Rules thing at the top. Almost made me leave the thread just to make a point. I think you'll get more responses if you edit it out.

But in any case I can't leave a thread on American Lit alone, because it is my speciality, despite my being British.

American Lit is very much defined by individual struggle. In other literary traditions -- the English, for example -- it is common for the protagonist to be assisted by many other characters, but the "lone wolf" hero who triumphs though the world is against him is an idea given its fullest expression in American Lit. Whether the protagonist triumphs or fails is entirely down to him. (I use a generic "he" not out of laziness or sexism but because the "lone wolf" is a very masculine character.) See Moby-Dick, The Catcher in the Rye.

Even narratives where the hero is not alone still see the hero and his companions fighting against nature and a hostile world. See Huckleberry Finn. This is an idea rooted in the Old West. Though the Western's most natural medium is film, it has influenced literature as well, and the idea of a lawless wilderness where every man is for himself and control is held by the strongest for good or ill has become hugely romanticised in American literature.

Overall I would say the most important books in American literature are (in order of publication, not of importance):

The Last of the Mohicans — James Fenimore Cooper
Moby-Dick — Herman Melville
Little Women — Louisa May Alcott
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain
Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman
The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
The Catcher in the Rye — J. D. Salinger
Howl and other poems — Allen Ginsberg
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple — Alice Walker

Well I can deff. see that your very knowledgeable in the subject.
And yes, I made the rules big to get attention, I knew it would do somewhat the opposite of what their there for, but I (personally) feel like its insulting when a thread gets hudnreds of views, but only 2 responses. Ya I know, its nothing personal, but you get the point.

[stlukesguild]

Overall I would say the most important books in American literature are (in order of publication, not of importance):

The Last of the Mohicans — James Fenimore Cooper
Moby-Dick — Herman Melville
Little Women — Louisa May Alcott
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain
Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman
The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
The Catcher in the Rye — J. D. Salinger
Howl and other poems — Allen Ginsberg
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple — Alice Walker

Louisa May Alcott, Zora Neale Hurston (who?), Salinger's "masterwork" of teen angst, Ginsberg, and Alice Walker... and no Emerson (almost certainly THE central figure in American literature), Hawthorne, Poe, Emily Dickenson, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Henry James, Hart Crane, Hemingway, Faulkner... surely you jest.

[JBI]

I'm skeptical about Hart Crane as a truly central figure (not saying his work is bad, just stating that he isn't as central as the rest you named, because of his thin output, and extreme difficulty(, but surely American means everything written in American (if we are talking in the tradition, and not in the English tradition) after and around of Emerson. His contemporaries were as American too. Irving seems the first real American voice, I find. American poetry doesn't seem to really begin until Bryant, and doesn't really become what it is until Emerson, and the poets, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, and yes, to a lesser extent since his major contribution seems to be to prose, Poe surrounding him.

[patrickbeverley]

Excellent! A dispute! This ought to lend spice to the topic.

Louisa May Alcott, Zora Neale Hurston (who?), Salinger's "masterwork" of teen angst, Ginsberg, and Alice Walker

Louisa May Alcott is in there because she deserves to be. Little Women
is a seminal and influential work in American Lit.

Zora Neale Hurston has not received the credit she deserves, because she was black and a woman, writing in the 1930s and writing about more than just the fact that she was black and a woman. However, her work has become better-known and more widely-read recently.

Say what you like about The Catcher in the Rye -- and personally I love it -- but you can't deny it marks an important point in the evolution of American Lit.

I'd say Ginsberg was the best poet of his era. He certainly managed to convince the court of appeal to remove the obscenity ban on Howl, not by convincing them it was not obscene, but by showing that its obscenity was justified by "overwhelming cultural importance". I've always thought that was rather impressive.

Okay, so I confess, I just like The Color Purple.

... and no Emerson (almost certainly THE central figure in American literature), Hawthorne, Poe, Emily Dickenson, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Henry James, Hart Crane, Hemingway, Faulkner... surely you jest.

Okay, reading your list of what ought to have been on there, I would now add:

The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Essays and Poems — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I didn't include Hemingway on my first list, though I admire him greatly, because I wanted to keep it short. But since you mention him as one of importance,

A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway

and I guess

The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner

should be there as well.

I excluded Eliot because despite his upbringing in America, the character of his poetry was essentially that of his adopted homeland, England. Edgar Allan Poe, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost and Henry James were just good writers: reading them is not essential to understanding American Lit. I dislike Emily Dickinson's poetry, and find the story of her life more intriguing than much of her work. Hart Crane, I must confess, I am not familiar enough with to venture an informed opinion.

[chasestalling]

but the "lone wolf" hero who triumphs though the world is against him is an idea given its fullest expression in American Lit.

And then there is "guilt", a tradition perfected by Hawthorne, appropriated by Faulkner and very well written about by the recently deceased William Styron.

[kelby_lake]

you won't likely hear a Briton say "you know what I mean" "and stuff like that", much less write them.

A lot of Britons use those phrases. Some, a bit like me, feel the need to add 'you know what I mean' to the end of every sentence

Of the American literature I've read, it's more tragic than British Lit. People strive for ideals but end up losing. If we're going to add drama in, which I believe counts as literature, we could also add that
it's more dramatic and exaggerated than British stuff. When things happen in American Lit, they happen big. And American happy endings.

[EricP]

Personally, I consider Langston Hughes and James Baldwin as central figures in American literature.

[patrickbeverley]

I'm not much of a Langston Hughes fan myself, but yes -- he is hugely influential and not mentioning him was a huge oversight.

James Baldwin I don't know much about. Could you point me in the direction of something of his I ought to read?

[stlukesguild]

Louisa May Alcott is in there because she deserves to be. Little Women
is a seminal and influential work in American Lit.

Minor... at best. Hawthorne's and Poe's tales, Henry James, Melville, Emerson, Faulkner, Hemingway and any number of others are aesthetically superior and far more influential upon subsequent American literature.

Zora Neale Hurston has not received the credit she deserves, because she was black and a woman, writing in the 1930s and writing about more than just the fact that she was black and a woman. However, her work has become better-known and more widely-read recently.

Race, sex, and the personal hardships faced by the writer are irrelevant in considering their artistic merit. Even if this were not so there would be choices that are far more central to the American "canon". Female: Emily Dickinson, Flannery O'Conner, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore. Black: Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Toni Morrison's (black and female) Song of Solomon. Personally, I read for intellectual and aesthetic pleasure and almost never for socio-political reasons so I have little use for reading something (far too much out there to read) primarily to rectify some perceived inequality.

Say what you like about The Catcher in the Rye -- and personally I love it -- but you can't deny it marks an important point in the evolution of American Lit.

The Catcher in the Rye is one of those books like Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Lord of the Rings... maybe even Poe's poetry, that seem greatly over-rated... no doubt due to the admiration of adolescents. personally I don't see it marking any important point in the evolution of American literature. Surely Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Donald Barthleme, Philip Roth, or any number of others mark such sch a point far more.

I'd say Ginsberg was the best poet of his era...

Perhaps the most famous poet of his day... but then again, Frost was still alive... but best?! There are any number of other American poets far more deserving of that title: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, John Ashberry, C.K. Williams, W.S. Merwin, A.R. Ammons, Anthony Hecht, Richard Howard, James Merrill. I don't think that any of these poets, let alone Ginsberg, can begin to compare with the giants of the early 20th century: T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and perhaps Hart Crane... let alone Whitman and Dickinson, who both have far more influence on subsequent American (and non-American) poetry than any other American poets.

Okay, reading your list of what ought to have been on there, I would now add:

The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I prefer the his tales myself, but certainly Hawthorne cannot be excluded.

Essays and Poems — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yes, his poems are worthy as well... but certainly his essays rank as almost the American Bible.

I didn't include Hemingway on my first list, though I admire him greatly, because I wanted to keep it short. But since you mention him as one of importance,

A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway


Again... I would go with Hemingway's short stories before any of his novels.
and I guess

The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner
should be there as well.

The choice of which Faulkner would be open to continual debate. The Sound and the Fury is great... although I still prefer As I Lay Dying, myself. Faulkner establishes a dark strain of American literature that will contue through Flannery O'Conner and Cormac MacCarthy.

I excluded Eliot because despite his upbringing in America, the character of his poetry was essentially that of his adopted homeland, England...

Unfortunately this greatly confuses matters. By this standard Henry James is also a British writer... and Ezra Pound? British? French? Italian? And Nabokov? American? Samuel Beckett? Irish? French? And Picasso? A French artist, not Spanish? In Eliot's case I would take into consideration that he was born and educated in the US and did not move to Britain until adulthood.

Edgar Allan Poe, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost and Henry James were just good writers: reading them is not essential to understanding American Lit.

"Just GOOD writers?!" I might give you Poe... although that is arguable with regard to the best of his tales, and his influence upon others... even outside the US (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Gautier) can in no way be underestimated. Henry James is a giant figure. One of the great 19th century novelists (although I would give it to Moby Dick as being THE central American novel) as well as a brilliant short story writer. Harold Bloom rates Wallace Steven as "the best and most representative American poet of our time" and places Steven and Robert Frost along with T.S. Eliot and perhaps Hart Crane as the greatest American poets of the 20th century. I certainly concur. Harmonium ranks along with Eliot's Wasteland as one of the most seminal collections of poetry of the century. Stevens is certainly the poet who has best absorbed the lessons of Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson. Steven's impact is probably second to none. (although an argument might be made Eliot... and even Pound). No subsequent American poet comes near to equaling or surpassing Stevens... although arguments have been made for Ashberry.

I dislike Emily Dickinson's poetry...

Acckk! Actually... I was more turned off by the way Dickinson was taught... by the manner in which she is presented in an almost sentimental manner as the "Spinster of Amherst" or as the great hero to feminists everywhere... with all the intimations of possible lesbianism, etc... When I finally sat down and just read her work I found that it shocked me as most of the greatest works of art do... as something far more than the stereotype presented. Her poems reminded me of the equally original art works by Joseph Cornell: taut, diamond-hard, rigorous little poems that continually challenge and throw you off... both formally and in terms of "meaning".