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Native Americans
American Natives had traditions of oral literature, epic narratives, creation myths, stories, poems, and songs. They used these stories to teach moral lessons and convey practical information about the natural world, and the stories often conveyed a deep respect for nature and animals, as well as a cyclical world view. -
Puritanism
- Wrote mostly diaries and histories, which expressed the connections between God and their everyday lives. 2. Sought to “purify” the Church of England by reforming to the simpler forms of worship and church organization described in the New Testament 3. Saw religion as a personal, inner experience.
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To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet
The speaker is Bradstreet herself, who is a married woman and loves her husband very much. The title “To My Dear and Loving Husband” is a dedication to her husband, and shows amazing chemistry in their conjugal relationship. She loves him very much, saying, “If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.” -
Paradise Lost by John Milton
is about Adam and Eve--how they came to be created and how they came to lose their place in the Garden of Eden, also called Paradise. It's the same story you find in the first pages of Genesis, expanded by Milton into a very long, detailed, narrative poem. -
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery -
The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason was an important treatise written by Thomas Paine. It was published in America in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807. It promoted deism and was an attack on orthodox Christianity. In The Age of Reason, Paine affirmed the existence of God but denied supernatural occurrences in the universe. -
Townshend Act
A series of laws passed by the British government on the American colonies in 1767. They placed new taxes and took away some freedoms from the colonists including the following: New taxes on imports of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea. -
Declaration of Independence
Jefferson showed that the colonists had a right to separate from the king and have their own government. The Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4, 1776. The Declaration is still important because it says the American people believe in equal rights for all. -
The Constitution
It guarantees that the United States under the Constitution would assume all debts and contracts entered into by the United States under the Articles of Confederation. It sets the Constitution and all laws and treaties of the United States to be the supreme law of the country. -
Romanticism
-Shunned the artificiality of civilization and seek unspoiled nature as a path to spirituality
-Championed individual freedom and the worth of the individual.
-Saw poetry as the highest expression of the imagination
-Dark romantics: used dark and supernatural themes/settings (gothic style) -
"Demain Dès L'aube" De Victor Hugo( Tomorrow At Dawn)
Is one of French writer Victor Hugo's most famous poems. It was published in his 1856 collection Les Contemplations. It consists of three quatrains of rhyming alexandrines. The poem describes a visit to his daughter Léopoldine Hugo's grave. -
Transcendentalism
- the American Renaissance
- self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to tradition
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Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin
Abandoned as a baby, she was found by Monsieur Valmondé lying in the shadow of a stone pillar near the Valmondé gateway. She is courted by the son of another wealthy, well-known and respected French Creole family, Armand. They marry and have a child. People who see the baby have the sense it is different. -
A Pair of Silk Stocking by Kate Chopin
She portrays the quiet struggle of a woman searching for a balance between family life and personal satisfaction. The story's main character is Mrs. Sommers, a wife, and mother. Her family is very poor, and she is trying to pick up a few items of clothing for her children. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". -
Realism
Realism represented feelings of disillusionment, the manner, and environment of everyday life and ordinary people as realistically as possible -
Modernism
- sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American dream: the independence, self-reliant, individual will triumph
- emphasis on both experimentation in style and form over the traditional
- interest in the inner workings of the human mind
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Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
An early example of linguistic ambiguity and indeterminacy, Conrad’s tale of the corrupt imperialism that upholds “civilized” culture is constructed through a nested, layered narrative and features some of the most cryptic languages ever written. Things become increasingly surreal as Marlow approaches the mysterious Kurtz. If you think Marlon Brando’s “The horror! is chilling, wait until you reach the one-two punch of Conrad’s conclusion. -
WWI
began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). Mar 14, 2019 -
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and Franz Ferdinand's wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. This led to WWI -
The Great Migration
The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration, or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970 -
Lost Generation, Jazz Age, Roaring 20's and The Harlem Renaissance
black cultural movement in Harlem, NY
-some poetry rhythms based on spirituals, jazz, lyrics on the blues, and diction from the street talk of the ghettos
-other poetry used the conventional lyrical form
-The New Negro Movement
-Prohibition -
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
told entirely through Nick's eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story. Read an in-depth analysis of Nick Carraway. Jay Gatsby - The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. Talks about the American Dream and how people then were achieving it. -
WWII
was fought between the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) and the Allied Powers (Britain, United States, Soviet Union, France). ... It was the deadliest war in all of human history with around 70 million people killed. When was it? World War II started in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The Attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' formal entry into World War II the next day. -
The Catcher in The Rye
is set around the 1950s and is narrated by a young man named Holden Caulfield. ... Holden's story begins on the Saturday following the end of classes at the Pencey prep school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Pencey is Holden's fourth school; he has already failed out of three others. -
Civil Rights Act
is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. -
9/11 Attack
The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11) were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. These attacks changed the United States. -
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
"It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night." So begins this slightly self-conscious but ultimately successful attempt to recreate in fiction the horror of the day and the days that followed. Boy, there were some ghastly attempts at 9/11 fiction and some utterly fatuous suggestions that it was somehow too difficult to approach in a novel, but this work overcame all the pitfalls and pratfalls and manages to be heartfelt without too much sentimentality
