Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
- wrote The
Prologue
- was the first
American published poet
Anne Bradstreet- 1612-1672, Most
famous work: "The Prologue". Notable: Immigrated to America as
a puritan, themes of feminism.
Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1784)
Works: "On being
brought from Africa to America"
Qualities/Themes: slavery and race, religion, salvation
Phillis Wheatley
1753-1784 "On Being Brought From
Africa..."
a slave who was
later freed
Philip
Freneau 1752-1832, “The
Indian Burying Ground,” Poet of American Revolution
Philip Freneau (January 2, 1752 – December 18, 1832):
he was an American poet, nationalist, polemicist, sea
captain and newspaper editor. He has been called by some the "Poet of the
American Revolution". He was born in New York and graduated from Princeton
along with his good friend James Madison.
Major Works: Newspaper editor of The National Gazette and
New York Daily Advertiser and later, with help from Madison, editor of The Gazette of the United States
which was made to counter the federalist papers. Plus poems such as "The
House of Night", "The Indian Burying Ground," and "Noble
Savage"
Themes: His poems were known to combine neoclassicism and
Romanticism . Amazingly, his poem "The House of Night" is one of the
first romantic poems written and published in America. He used gothic elements
and dark imagery, a technique later copied by Edgar Allan Poe. Furthermore his
nature poems such as "The Wild Honey Suckle" ,written in 1786, is
considered an early seed to the later Transcendentalist movement
with many more famous names to come. His view of Indians as noble was not
common at the time. In, addition he was an early abolitionist joining the cause
later in his life.
Mary Rowlandson: 1637-1711 The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson themes: providence of god,
superiority of white people
Jonathan Edwards,
1703-1758; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Personal
Narrative, Resolutions; The Great Awakening; great theologian and
philosopher
Benjamin Franklin,
1706-1790; The Autobiography; The Way to Wealth; self-improvement, rags to riches, the American
Dream, technological improvement, etc.
James Fenimore Cooper,
1789-1851; The Last of the Mohicans; the frontier, Indians and
White people; father founded Cooperstown.
Nathaniel Hawthorne- 1804-1864, Most famous works: "The Scarlet
Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables". Notable: Had
ancestors involved in the Salem Witch trials, themes of romanticism.
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
- wrote Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl
- born a slave
- escaped from
slavery and became abolitionist
- used pseudonym Linda Brent
Harriet Jacobs
(1813-1897):
· Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl
· She
wrote her novel under the pseudonym of Linda Brent; her master Dr. James Norcom
sexually abused her.
Edgar Allan Poe,
1809-1849, “The Black Cat”, “The Purloined Letter”, “The Raven”; reason vs.
emotion, the unconscious, deranged first person narrators, the first detective
stories.
Henry David
Thoreau 1817-1862
Walden, He lived in Walden Pond
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Self-Reliance,"
"Nature"--transcendentalism
Emerson:
1803-1882 Nature, self-reliance, the poet... themes: transcendentalism, nature,
self-reliance, individuality
Henry Longfellow (1807-1882)
- wrote many poems
- wife died in fire
- friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882):
· “Paul
Revere’s Ride,” The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline
· One
of the members of the Fireside Poets; he was part of the Romanticism movement;
and during his time he was incredibly wealthy.
Walt Whitman (May
31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist who
was born in Long Island New York. He was strictly anti-slavery and extending
slavery but often would not go as far as being an abolitionist. His sexuality
had often been discussed and many have debated on whether his sexual
preferences. He has been called America's first "poet of Democracy"
Major Works: Franklin Evans (1842), Leaves
of Grass (1855), Drum-Taps (1865), Memoranda During the War, Specimen
Days Democratic Vistas (1871)
Themes: His work was a big part of the transition between
Transcendentalism and realism in which both views were present. His writing is
considered the essence of America by many for its new free verse writing style,
strong unusual imagery, and unflinching references to death and sexuality. He
wrote with much authority and self confidence as well and included many
controversial subjects such as slavery, sexuality etcetera. His style was
copied by virtually every poet that came after him.
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
- liked baking and gardening
- reclusive
- eventually wore all white and
did not leave her room
- poems were heavily edited,
though she published few in her lifetime
- poems are short
and contain lots of dashes, random capitalization, personification, and a
loose rhyme scheme
- poems were untitled
works include:
-
“I'm nobody! Who are you?”
- “Much Madness is divinest Sense”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), Uncle Tom's Cabin--anti-slavery sentiment
Herman Melville
(1819-1891):
· Typee,
Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, Whitejacket, and Moby Dick
· He
was born to an aristocratic family; he taught in a school and then later became
a sailor on a merchant ship; he was part of the Romanticism movement.
Mark Twain: (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huck Finn (1885),
humorist/depressed
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Works: The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper
Qualities/Themes: slavery/race, use of dialect, wilderness
Henry James (1843-1916); Beast in the Jungle; went to Harvard Law
School and became a British Subject, most notable are his contributions to
literary criticisms
Willa Cather (1873-1947), My Antonia--prairie love story
Ernest Hemingway,
1899-1961; In Our Time, “Indian Camp,” “The End of Something,”
“Hills Like White Elephants”, etc.; stripped-down modernist prose,
understatement
TS Eliot: (1888-1965), Four Quartets (1936/40), Nobel prize in
literature
|
T.S. Eliot
|
9/26/1988-
1/4/1965
|
The Waste Land, Four Quartets,
Prufrock, The Family Reunion
|
Conservative religious themes,
disillusionment,
|
William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963, poem "The Red Wheelbarrow";
Modernism
Ezra Pound
(1885-1972)- In a Station of the Metro. As an early imagist poet,
his style focused on using very few words in describing a scene, reducing a
scene to its essence.
Langston Hughes,
1902-1967; “Let America Be America Again” etc.; leading Harlem Renaissance
writer, comfortable in rhyme and dialect, wrote a play with Hurston
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
1896-1940; The Great Gatsby; great prose stylist of the jazz age
Zora Neal
Hurston: 1891-1960; Their
Eyes Were Watching God (1937); Themes/Style: Black struggles, poverty,
nature, written partly in dialect
Arthur Millier
(1915-2005) Death of a Salesman, The Crucible. Themes included
the failure of the American Dream, the importance of the common man’s story,
and the unfair attack on communism in America (in his opinion).
Arthur
miller: 1915-2005 death of a sales man themes: american dream, family
relationships, immigrant experience (implied)
Toni Morrison
(1931- ); Song of Solomon;
complex style, sweeping, ambitious novels covering many generations, magical
realism, postmodernism
John Ashbery- 1927 - Current, Most famous works: "What is
Poetry" and "Daffy Duck in Hollywood". Notable: Won the Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry in 1976.
|
John Ashbery
|
1/28/1927-still alive
|
What is Poetry, Daffy Duck in Hollywood, Some Trees, The
Tennis Court Oath
|
Surrealism, enormous vocabulary, free-flowing style
|
James Tate
(1943- ; “The Rules”, etc.);
absurdist works written in unrhymed prosy lines
Donald Barthelme
(1931-1989) The School. Post-modern author; wrote absurd stories
that build up through seemingly unrelated details.
George Saunders,
(1958- ; “Pastoralia”)
John Barth: (1930-1995), Lost in the Funhoouse (1968),
postmodern/professor
|
John Barth
|
5/27/1930-still alive
|
Lost in the Fun House, Chimera, The Friday Book
|
Parody, repetition, historical awareness
|
Jennifer Egan (1962- )
Works: To Do, Black Box (series
of Tweets), The Invisible Circus
Qualities/Themes: post-modernist,
genre-bending, absurd, murder!
Jennifer Egan (born September 6, 1962-present) was
born in Chicago New York. She has written fiction, novels, short stories and
journalism. She won the 2011 Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction and National
Book Critics Circle Award for
fiction
Major Works: Emerald City (short
story collection) (1993), The Invisible Circus (novel)
(1995), Look at Me (novel)
(2001), The Keep (novel) (2006), A Visit From the Goon Squad (novel)
(2010), Black Box (short story) (2012)
Themes: She writes postmodern stories that are often very
metafictional and artificial. Her story A
Visit from the Goon Squad has been
hesitantly classified as either a novel or a short story and the whole book is
written in a vary artificial genre bending format of a PowerPoint. Her short
story To Do is formatted as a shopping list but subtlety points to dire motives
of the main character and the reader is left to speculate on what happened with
only a few fragments of information.
No comments:
Post a Comment