american literature

American literature has had a very important mark in today's writings. Everything we read and write today is because of something someone once wrote or said. American literature is the literature written or produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked to the broader tradition of English literature
. However, unique American characteristics and the breadth of its production usually now cause it to be considered a separate path and
tradition


.

Literary Movements and Historical Change

American Passages is organized around sixteen literary movements or “units.”

A literary movement centers around a group of authors that share certain stylistic
and thematic concerns. Each unit includes ten authors that are represented

either in The Norton Anthology of American Literature or in the Online

Archive. Two to four of these authors are discussed in the video, which calls
attention to important historical and cultural influences on these authors,
defines a genre that they share, and proposes some key thematic parallels.
Tracking literary movements can help you see how American literature has
changed and evolved over time. In general, people think about literary movements
as reacting against earlier modes of writing and earlier movements. For

example, just as modernism (Units 10–13) is often seen as a response to realism

and the Gilded Age (Unit 9), so Romanticism is seen as a response to the

Enlightenment (Unit 4). Most of the units focus on one era (see the chart

below), but they will often include relevant authors from other eras to help
draw out the connections and differences. (Note: The movements in parentheses
are not limited to authors/works from the era in question, but they do cover
some material from it.)