IV. ERA OF EXPANSION AND transcendentalism (1831-1870)
Transcendentalists: R.W. Emerson; H.D. Thoreau; George Ripley; Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott.
- Emerson Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)Self-Reliance (1841); Nature (1836)
– Hitch your wagon to a star. Society and Solitude, `Civilization”
- Thoreau Henry David (1817-1862)Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)
From Walden I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
– It takes two to speak the truth, - one to speak, and another to hear. Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
– Simplify, simplify. Walden, `Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
– The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Walden, `Economy”
- Hawthorne Nathaniel (1804-1864)The Scarlet Letter 1850 (Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale)
- Herman Melville(1819-1891 'Typee' (1846), 'Omoo' (1847), 'Moby-Dick' (1851)
– New England Brahmins: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882) The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
- James Russell Lowell(1819 – 1891); Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)
– Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Leaves of Grass (1855 – 1882); Song of Myself
- Harriet Beecher-Stowe (1811-1896)Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly (1851-1852)
V. The Age of Realism and Naturalism (1871-1913)
Poetry: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)A Route of Evanescence; A Narrow Fellow in the Grass; Because I Could Not Stop for Death
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of Eye –
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky
Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
Regional Prose:
- Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus) (1848-1908)
- Bret Harte (1836-1902)The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868)
- Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemence) (1835-1910)The Innocents Abroad (1869); Roughing It (1872); The Prince and the Pauper (1882); A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889); Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896); The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) Life on the Mississippi (1883); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
-
- VI. THE AGE OF REALISM (1871-1913)
- Naturalism: Stephen Crane (1871-1900)The Red Badge of Courage (1895); Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
- Norris, Frank (1870-1902) McTeague, The Octopus (1901), The Pit (1903)
- Dreiser, Theodore (1871-1945) Sister Carry (1912); Jennie Gerhardt (1911), "Trilogy of Desire": The Financier (1912). The Titan (1914), The Stoic (posthum.), An American Tragedy (1925)
VII. MODERN LITERATURE (1914–1945)
Poetry
- Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950)Spoon River Anthology (1915)
- Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) The Congo and Other Poems (1914), 'General William Booth Enters into Heaven' (1913),Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (1914).
A Study of the Negro raceThen I had religion, then I had a vision.I couldn’t turn from their revel in derision.Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,Cutting through the Jungle with a golden track.
- Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)Chicago (1914), People, Yes (1936)Hog-butcher for the World,Tool-maker, Stacker of Wheat,Player with Railroads and theNation's Freight-handler;Stormy, husky, brawling,City of the Big Shoulders.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963) Mending Wall (1914), Birches (1916),
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Afternoon
Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village, though,He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and dawny flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.
-- e e cummings (1894-1962)
c. Ezra Pound (1885-1972)Mauberly (1920); Cantos
– walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home,. home to a lie,
home to many deceits…
d. William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
–so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
e. e e cummings (1894-1962)
why
don't
be
sil
ly
, o no in-
deed;
money
can't do (never
did &
never will)any
damn
thing
: far
from it; you
're wrong; my friend.
Drama
- Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)Our Town (1938)
- Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)The Emperor Jones (1920), The Hairy Ape (1922), The Great God Brown (1926), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)
- Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), The Glass Menagerie (1944)
- Arthur Miller (1915–)Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953)
Novel
- Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) This Side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and the Damned (1921), Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender Is the Night (1934)
- Sinclair Lewis (1885-1922)Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922),
- John Steinbeck (1902-1968) The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
- John Dos Passos (1896-1970)U.S.A. (1937)
- Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)Look Homeward, Angel (1929), You can't Go Home Again (1940)
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
- William Faulkner (1895-1962)The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932). Absalom, Absalom (1936), The Fable (1964), The Town (1957)
Short Story
- Ring Lardner (1885-1933), Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), James Thurber (1894-1961), Irwin Shaw (1913-84), William Saroyan (1908-81), John O'Hara (1905-70), John Cheever (1912-82), J.D. Salinger (born 1919), and Raymond Carver (1938-88)