35 Facts About American literature

American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it.

Mark Twain was the first major American literature writer to be born away from the East Coast.

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.

The traditional territories of some tribes traverse national boundaries and such American literature is not homogeneous but reflects the different cultures of these peoples.

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.

Related searches

London printers published materials written by New England authors, so the body of American literature was larger than what was published in North America.

Back then, some of the American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonial audience.

Early American literature struggled to find a unique voice in existing literary genre, and this tendency was reflected in novels.

American literature's wrote nine novels, six theatrical works, two collections of poetry, six textbooks, and countless songs.

American literature's eventually yields to the artful libertine and gives birth to an illegitimate stillborn child at an inn.

American literature published Wieland in 1798, and in 1799 published Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn.

American literature completed his first major book in 1809 titled A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty.

American literature followed in 1827 with one of the country's first science fictions: A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians.

American literature expanded his influence with his lecture "The American Scholar", delivered in Cambridge in 1837, which called upon Americans to create a uniquely American writing style.

American literature's masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, is a drama, set in Puritan Massachusetts, about a woman cast out of her community for committing adultery with a minister who refuses to acknowledge his own sin.

American literature turned to poetry, and did not return to fiction until the short novel Billy Budd.

Mark Twain was among the first major American literature writers to be born away from the East Coast – in the border state of Missouri.

American literature's characters speak like real people and sound distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and regional accents.

At the beginning of the 20th century, American literature novelists were expanding fiction to encompass both high and low life and sometimes connected to the naturalist school of realism.

American literature writers had long looked to European models for inspiration, but whereas the literary breakthroughs of the mid-19th century came from finding distinctly American literature styles and themes, writers from this period were finding ways of contributing to a flourishing international literary scene, not as imitators but as equals.

American literature wrote about the war in the U S A trilogy which extended into the Depression.

American literature cut out unnecessary words from his writing, simplified the sentence structure, and concentrated on concrete objects and actions.

American literature adhered to a moral code that emphasized grace under pressure, and his protagonists were strong, silent men who often dealt awkwardly with women.

American literature recorded his characters' seemingly unedited ramblings in order to represent their inner states, a technique called "stream of consciousness".

American literature's style was simple and evocative, winning him the favor of the readers but not of the critics.

Related searches

American literature was honored by the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

American literature's novels are noted for achieving both commercial and critical success, several of his works having been adapted to film.

American literature is listed by Harold Bloom as being among the preeminent contemporary American writers, in the company of such figures as Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon.

American literature began his writing career in 1988 with the well-received The Twenty-Seventh City, a novel centering on his native St Louis, but did not gain national attention until the publication of his essay, "Perchance to Dream", in Harper's Magazine, discussing the cultural role of the writer in the new millennium through the prism of his own frustrations.

American literature followed it two years later with God's Controversy With New England.

Longfellow achieved the highest level of acclaim and is often considered the first internationally acclaimed American literature poet, being the first American literature poet given a bust in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.

American literature influenced many poets, notably T S Eliot, another expatriate.

One of the developments in late-20th-century American literature was the increase of literature written by and about ethnic minorities beyond African Americans and Jewish Americans.

Equally important has been the effort to recover earlier Asian American literature authors, started by Frank Chin and his colleagues; this effort has brought Sui Sin Far, Toshio Mori, Carlos Bulosan, John Okada, Hisaye Yamamoto and others to prominence.

Major poets of Puerto Rican diaspora who write about the life of American literature immigrants include Julia de Burgos, Giannina Braschi (Empire of Dreams), and Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rican Obituary).