Study Questions for American Literature Final

Be able to list the five characteristics of each of the three time periods we have studied. By characteristics, I mean the influences that affect the writers and writings of a period of literature.

Colonial Period (Based on the Calvinist beliefs)

1. God is harsh and judgmental
2. We don’t need change
3. Nature is wild and untamed
4. Faith is the key to perfection
5. Man is totally depraved

One bullet from each author we have studied:

1. John Smith—his style is informal, adventurous, and personally elevating
2. William Bradford—his style is functional, simple truth, told plainly from memory, with moments of loftiness
3. John Winthrop—his style is precise and observant of large and small historic events
4. Anne Bradstreet—her style is lucid simplicity in a lyrical and effective way
5. Samuel Sewell—his style is moderately intelligent, often quaintly obtuse, but possess a quick sense of responsibility
6. Edward Taylor—in style, his poetry exhibits traits of the metaphysical poets of England. It reveals lofty theology, is vital and mystical; and his diction, syntax, biblical images, arcane metaphors, and spiritual intensity may make his works difficult to analyze
7. Cotton Mather—in style, he wrote ceaselessly in a heavy, scholarly, allusion-and-quotation-laden manner
8. St. Jean De Crevecoeur—his letters are lyrical and emotional in their descriptions of the joys of farm life

Revolutionary Period

1. God is kind and gentle
2. Change is inevitable
3. Nature is beautiful and bountiful
4. Reason is the key to perfection
5. Man is capable of perfection

One bullet from each author we have studied:

1. Jonathan Edwards—his style is mystical, reserved and somewhat “tiresomely scrupulous”
2. Benjamin Franklin—his style and themes center around specific issues, controversies, or observations drawn from popular eighteenth century models and forms
3. Thomas Paine—his style is simple and easily accessible to the average American, as he calls for and gains momentum for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence
4. Thomas Jefferson—his style is dual: he writes about immediate and practical issues while considering future implications
5. Phillis Wheatley—her style is neoclassical, her ideas conventional, and her voice largely impersonal
6. Olaudah Equiano—in style, much of his work concerns itself with his treatment as a slave and his advocating for freedom for slaves
7. Philip Freneau—in style, he writes in couplets of topics inspired by death and transience

Romantic Period

1. Love of nature
2. Love of common man
3. Love of imagination
4. Love of national past
5. Love of remote

One bullet from each author we have studied:

1. Washington Irving—in style, he writes from his personal life in a great and graceful style that reveals his enthusiasm for life
2. James Fennimore Cooper—his style won him fame as a master of the adventurous narrative
3. William Cullen Bryant—his style includes characteristics of the neoclassical restraint and didacticism; his themes include religion, nature, humanitarian reform and national morality
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson—in style, he is best remembered as the founder of the Transcendental movement which emphasizes optimistic individuality and mysticism
5. Henry David Thoreau—his style reflects his character in its simplistic and divine unity of nature, a faith in humanity, a sturdy individualism, and a deep-rooted love for one place as an epitome of the universi
6. Edgar Allen Poe—his style reveals an intensely creative genius, whose works often embody a world of the bizarre and macabre Satanic characters
7. Nathaniel Hawthorne—his style, he uses symbolism extensively: his themes deal with topics such as the subconscious, the loss of innocence, sin—inherited, hidden and exposed, and isolation.
8. Herman Melville—his style reveals an energy, intensity, relentlessness, and curiosity in his characters
9. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—his style is simplicity as he expresses the lives and ideals of humbler Americans
10. John Greenleaf Whittier—in style, his poetry is imaginative, impassioned and sentimental
11. Oliver Wendell Holmes—his style is refined, civilized, and limited in its use of literary techniques
12. James Russell Lowell—his style is fluent, cultivated and facile; his dialect verse and his rhymed satire crackle with witty commentary on the follies of his age and on the character of his literary contemporaries
13. Fireside Poetry—poetry that was meant to be read aloud around a fireplace
14. Fireside Poets—a group of poets who wrote moralistic, didactic, sentimental, nationalistic direct, accessible and non-threatening literature that appealed to the common man

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