How
did American literature come to be?
I
must profess it is a topic I never thought to explore, not even as an English
major in college. But after reading American Lit 101: From Nathaniel Hawthorne
to Harper Lee and Naturalism to
Magical Realism, an Essential Guide to American Writers and Works by
Brianne Keith, I felt a greater appreciation for American literature and a much deeper understanding of its origins.
This
easy-to-read but engaging guide captures a narrative of how literature
developed in America, unshackling itself from Britain’s rule and later its
cultural influence. The book identifies
American writings that contributed to the development of the nation’s voice, examining Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the early American
poetry of Annie Bradstreet to the love letters of John and Abigail Adams and
Ben Franklin’s autobiography.
So
many great American writers have shaped not only the United States culture but
the views of the world, from Edgar Allan Poe and Henry David Thoreau to Mark
Twain and Jack Kerouac. Every era of
America’s growth saw a class of new writers reflect and inspire the nation’s
place in the world.
The
book wisely takes us through America’s evolution chronologicaly, paralleling
the great writers of each era to show us not only the appeal of their works but
their significance of shaping the American landscape.
So
which American writers were the best of the best? Is it Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow? Herman Melville or Walt Whitman?
What about Edith Wharton, Henry James, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, John
Steinbeck, E.E. Cummings, Robert Frost, J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Miller, William Faulkner, and any of a hundred others?
The
author labeled Emerson as “The Plato of America,” Whitman “The Bard of
Democracy, said Hawthorne “Exposes the Dark Side of America.” and declared
Twain, the “Dean of American Literature.”
So many fitting labels could be placed upon a lot of these writers. To choose between those great authors is like
trying to choose a favorite child. We
love them all, for together, they make up what American literature has become
and always was.
The
book also touches upon the literature of war from the Revolutionary War and
Civil War to both World War I and II.
The
final chapter, on contemporary American literature, was most interesting
because it highlights how writers continue to play with the boundaries of form,
where some lines blur between fact and fiction.
The author notes: “Truman Capote,
Tom Wolfe, and Norman Mailer all contributed to new forms like the non-fiction
novel and new journalism.”
He
then broke down today’s literature by faith and ethnicity, for we are now at a
time where writers no longer are white males.
We live in a melting pot where many have access to the tools of
publication. Who will be the next Saul
Bellow, Philip Roth or Elie Wiesel amongst Jewish writers who explore their
faith? Who will write of the
African-American experience as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, or Toni Morrison
have? Where is the Indian, Latino and
Asian literary voice – who will be the next N. Scott Momaday, Richard
Rodriguez, or Amy Tan?
Great
American literature leads, and does not follow, cultural trends, political movements,
and relationship values. Our books don’t
merely record or mirror what was or is, but rather, they serve as a blueprint
for what shall be and as a crystal ball into what could be.
1. It
may seem that literature has no bearing on our day-to-day lives, but it
certainly does. Writers and literature express a shared understanding of a time
and place in history—it is through their voices that we have an opportunity to
gain a greater understanding of ourselves and our world.
2. Aristotle
said that art can purge us of our emotions as they are mirrored back to us. The
same is true of literature. We understand the beliefs and values of our age as
they are reflected back to us by the words and actions of the characters we
read in a book, or the pitch and tone of a voice in a poem. Through this
understanding we can find solidarity with each other, and also find the words
to define the differences among us—all composing fabric of our lives.
3. American
literature reflects the endurance of the American spirit and surge of creative
forces at play in American culture.
4. While
pamphlets, broadsides, speeches, and proclamations dominated the American
literary landscape during the late eighteenth century, the American poetry was
still thriving—albeit in the background. The Puritan poets had set the stage,
becoming the first published poets in the New World, but their subject matter
was English. The colonists were beginning to yearn for their own, “American”
literature that expressed the new America that was beginning to form. As the
colonists broke free from Britain’s rule, they were also eager to break free of
its literature. It was time for a literature of America.
5. Shortly
after 1840, America had a burst of creativity called the American Renaissance,
during which a small group of writers produced some of the best and most
creative writing in its literary history. The movement came on the heels of the
romantic movement, which had swept across Europe in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries and cleared the way for a more dramatic,
imaginative, and instinctual literature. American writers now felt able to free
themselves from old literary forms and traditions to produce creative work that
came from their own impulses, whatever form those took.
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