Literary Periods of British & American Literature

Periods of British Literature:

450-1066: Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period
1066-1500: Middle English Period
1500-1660: The Renaissance
1558-1603: Elizabethan Age
1603-1625: Jacobean Age
1625-1649: Caroline Age
1649-1660: Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum)
1660-1785: The Neoclassical Period
1660-1700: The Restoration
1700-1745: The Augustan Age (or Age of Pope)
1745-1785: The Age of Sensibility (or Age of Johnson)
1785-1830: The Romantic Period
1832-1901: The Victor ian Period
1848-1860: The Pre-Raphaelites
1880-1901: Aestheticism and Decadence
1901-1914: The Edwardian Period
1910-1936: The Georgian Period
1914-1945: The Modern Period
1945-present: Postmodern Period
The Old English Period or the Anglo-Saxon Period refers to the literature produced from the invasion
of Celtic England by Germanic tribes in the first half of the fifth century to the conquest of England in
1066 by William the Conqueror.

During the Old English Period, written literature began to develop from oral tradition, and in the eighth
century poetry written in the vernacular Anglo-Saxon (also known as Old English) appeared. One of the
most well-known eighth century Old English pieces of literature is Beowulf, a great Germanic epic
poem. Two poets of the Old English Period who wrote on biblical and religious themes were Caedmon
and C ynewulf.

The Middle English Period consists of the literature produced in the four and a half centuries between
the Norman Conquest of 1066 and about 1500, when the standard literary language, derived from the
dialect of the London area, became recognizable as "modern English."

Prior to the second half of the fourteenth century, vernacular literature consisted primarily of religious
writings. The second half of the fourteenth century produced the first great age of secular literature. The
most widely known of these writings are Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, the anonymous Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, and Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur.
While the English Renaissnace began with the ascent of the House of Tudor to the English throne in
1485, the English Literary Renaissance began with English humanists such as Sir Thomas More and
Sir Thomas Wyatt.

In addition, the English Literary Renaissance consists of four subsets: The Elizabethan Age, the
Jacobean Age, the Caroline Age, and the Comm onwealth Period (which is also known as the Puritan
Interregnum).

The Elizabethan Age of English Literature coincides with the reign of Elizabeth I, 1558 - 1603. During
this time, medieval tradition was blended with Renaissance optimism. Lyr ic poetry, prose, and drama
were the major styles of literature that flowered during the Elizabethan Age. Some important writers of
the Elizabethan Age include William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter
Raleigh, and Ben Jonson.


The Jacobean Age of English Literature coincides with the reign of James I, 1603 - 1625. During this
time the literature became sophisticated, sombre, and conscious of social abuse and rivalry. The
Jacobean Age produced rich prose and drama as well as the King James translation of the Bible.
Shakespeare and Jonson wrote during the Jacobean Age, as well as John Donne, Francis Bacon, and
Thomas Middleton.

The Caroline Age of English Literature coincides with the reign of Charles I, 1625 - 1649. The writers
of this age wrote with refinement and elegance. This era produced a circle of poets known as the
"Cavalier Poets" and the dramatists of this age were the last to write in the Elizabethan tradition.

The Commonwealth Period, also known as the Puritan Interregnum, of English Literature includes
the literature produced during the time of Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell. This period produced the
political writings of John Milton, Thomas Hobbes' political treatise Leviathan , and the prose of Andrew
Marvell. In September of 1642, the Puritans closed theatres on moral and religious grounds. For the next
eighteen years the theatres remained closed, accounting for the lack of drama produced during this time
period.
The Neoclassical Period of English literature (1660 - 1785) was much influenced by contemporary
French literature, which was in the midst of its greatest age. The literature of this time is known for its
use of philosophy, reason, skepticism, wit, and refinement. The Neoclassical Period also marks the first
great age of English literary criticism.

Much like the English Literary Renaissance, the Neoclassical Period can be divided into three
subsets: the Restoration, the Augustan Age, and the Age of Sensibility.

The Restoration, 1660 - 1700, is marked by the restoration of the monarchy and the triumph of reason
and tolerance over religious and political passion. The Restoration produced an abundance of prose and
poetry and the distinctive comedy of manners known as Restoration comedy. It was during the
Restoration that John Milton published Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Other major writers of
the era include John Dryden, John Wilmot 2 Ear l of Rochester , and John Locke.
nd
The English Augustan Age derives its name from the brilliant literary period of Vergil and Ovid under
the Roman emperor Augustus (27 B.C. - A.D. 14). In English literature, the Augustan Age, 1700 - 1745,
refers to literature with the predominant characteristics of refinement, clarity, elegance, and balance of
judgement. Well-known writers of the Augustan Age include Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and
Daniel Defoe. A significant contribution of this time period included the release of the first English
novels by Defoe, and the "novel of character," Pamela, by Samuel Richardson in 1740.

During the Age of Sensibility, literature reflected the worldview of Enlightenment and began to
emphasize instict and feeling, rather than judgment and restraint. A growing sympathy for the Middle
Ages during the Age of Sensibility sparked an interest in medieval ballads and folk literature. Another
name for this period is the Age of Johnson because the dominant authors of this period were Samuel
Johnson and his literary and intellectual circle. This period also produced some of the greatest early
novels of the English language, including Richardson's Clarissa (1748) and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones
(1749).

The Romantic Period of English literature began in the late 18th century and lasted until approximately
1832. In general, Romantic literature can be characterized by its personal nature, its stong use of feeling,
its abundant use of symbolism, and its exploration of nature and the supernatural. In addition, the
writings of the Romantics were considered innovative based on their belief that literature should be
spontaneous, imaginative, personal, and free. The Romantic Period produced a wealth of authors
including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Lord Byron.
It was during the Romantic Period that Gothic literature was born. Traits of Gothic literature are dark
and gloomy settings and characters and situations that are fantasic, grotesque, wild, savage, mysterious,
and often melodramatic. Two of the most famous Gothic novelists are Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelley.


The Victorian Period of English literatur e began with the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne in
1837, and lasted until her death in 1901. Because the Victorian Period of English literature spans over
six decades, the year 1870 is often used to divide the era into "early Victorian" and "late Victorian." In
general, Victorian literature deals with the issues and problems of the day. Some contemporar y issues
that the Victorians dealt with include the social, economic, religious, and intellectual issues and
problems surrounding the Industrial Revolution, growing class tensions, the early feminist movement,
pressures toward political and social reform, and the impact of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on
philosophy and religion. Some of the most recognized authors of the Victorian era include Alfred Lord
Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her husband Robert, Matthew Arnold, Charles Dickens,
Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy.

Within the Victorian Period, two other literary movements, that of The Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1860)
and the movement of Aestheticism and Decadence (1880-1900), gained prominence.

In 1848, a group of English artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed the "Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood." It was the aim of this group to return painting to a style of truthfulness, simplicity, and
religious devotion that had reigned prior to Raphael and the high Italian Renaissance. Rossetti and his
literary circle, which included his sister Christina, incorporated these ideals into their liter ature, and the
result was that of the literary Pre-Raphaelites.

The Aestheticism and Decadence movement of English literature grew out of the French movement of
the same name. The authors of this movement encouraged experimentation and held the view that art is
totally opposed "natural" norms of morality. This style of literature opposed the dominance of scientific
thinking and defied the hosility of society to any art that was not useful or did not teach moral values. It
was from the movement of Aestheticism and Decadence that the phrase art for art's sake emerged. A
well-known author of the English Aestheticism and Decadence movement is Oscar Wilde.

The Edwardian Period is named for King Edward VII and spans the time from Queen Victoria's death
(1901) to the beginning of World War I (1914). During this time, the British Empire was at its height and
the wealthy lived lives of materialistic luxury. However, four fifths of the English population lived in
squalor. The writings of the Edwardian Period reflect and comment on these social conditions. For
example, writers such as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells attacked social injustice and the
selfishness of the upper classes. Other writers of the time include William Butler Yeats, Joseph Conrad,
Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, and E.M. Forster.

The Georgian Period refers to the period of British Literature that is named for the reign of George V
(1910-36). Many writers of the Edwardian Period continued to write during the Georgian Period. This
era also produced a group of poets known as the Georgian poets. These writers, now regarded as minor
poets, were publihed in four anthologies entitled Georgian Poetry, published by Edward Marsh between
1912 and 1922. Georgian poetr y tends to focus on rural subject matter and is traditional in technique and
form.

The Modern Period applies to British literature written since the beginning of World War I in 1914. The
authors of the Modern Period have experimented with subject matter, form, and style and have
produced achievements in all literary genres. Poets of the period include Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Dylan
Thomas, and Seamus Heaney. Novelists include James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf.
Dramatists include Noel Coward and Samuel Beckett.

Following World War II (1939-1945), the Postmodern Period of British Literature developed.
Postmodernism blends literary genres and styles and attempts to break free of modernist forms.

While the British literary scene at the turn of the new millenium is crowded and varied, the authors still
fall into the categories of modernism and postmodernism. However, with the passage of time the Modern
era may be reorganized and expanded.


Periods of American Literature:

1607-1776: Colonial Period
1765-1790: The Revolutionar y Age
1775-1828: The Early National Period
1828-1865: The Romantic Period (Also known as: The American Renaissance or The Age of
Transcendentalism)
1865-1900: The Realistic Period
1900-1914: The Naturalistic Period
1914-1939: American Modernist Period
1920s: Jazz Age, Harlem Renaissance
1920s, 1930s: The "Lost Generation"
1939-present: The Contemporary Period
1950s: Beat Writers
1960s, 1970s: Counterculture
In addition, American Literature recognizes works of:
African-American Writers
Native American Writers
Asian-American Writers

The Colonial Period of American Literature spans the time between the founding of the first settlement
at Jamestown to the outbreak of the Revolution. The writings of this time centered on religious,
practical, or historical themes. The most influential writers of the Colonial Period include John
Winthrop, Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, and Anne Bradstreet.
During the Revolutionary Age, 1765-1790, some of the greatest documents of American history were
authored. In 1776, Thomas Paine authored Common Sense and Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration
of Independence. In 1781, The Articles of Confederation were ratified. Between 1787 and 1788,
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers. Finally, in 1787, The
Constitution of the United States was drafted and in 1789 it was ratified.
The Early National Period of American Literature saw the beginnings of literature that could be truly
identified as "American". The writers of this new American literature wrote in the English style, but the
settings, themes, and characters were authentically American. In addition, poets of this time wrote poetry
that was relatively independent of English precursors. Three of the most recognized writers of this time
are Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe.
The period 1828-1865 in American Literature is commonly identified as the Romantic Period in
America, but may also be referred to as the American Renaissance or the Age of Transcendentalism.
The writers of this period produced works of originality and excellence that helped shape the ideas,
ideals, and literary aims of many American writers. Writers of the American Rom antic Period include
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthore,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman.

Following the Civil War, American Literature entered into the Realistic Period. The major form of
literature produced in this era was realistic fiction. Unlike romantic fiction, realistic fiction aims to
represent life as it really is and make the reader believe that the characters actually might exist and the
situations might actually happen. In order to have this effect on the reader, realistic fiction focuses on the
ordinary and commonplace. The major writers of the Realistic Period include Mark Twain, Henry
James, Bret Harte, and Kate Chopin.


The years 1900-1914 mark American Literature's Naturalistic Period. Naturalism claims to give an
even more accurate depiction of life than realism. In accordance with a post- Darwinian thesis,
naturalistic writers hold that the characters of their works are merely higher-order animals whose
character and behavior is entirely based upon heredity and environment. Naturalistic writings try to
present subjects with scientific objectivity. These writings are often frank, crude, and tragic. Stephen
Crane, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser are the most studied American Naturalists.

Between 1914 and 1939, American Literature entered into a phase which is still referred to as "The
Beginnings of Modern Literature". Like their British counterparts, the American Modernists
experimented with subject matter, form, and style and produced achievements in all literary genres.
Some well-known American Modernist Poets include Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Edna St.
Vincent Millay, and E.E. Cummings. Included among American Modernist Prose Writers are Edith
Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, and Willa Cather.

The American Modernist Period also produced many other writers that are consider ed to be writers of
Modernist Period Subclasses. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered a writer of The Jazz Age,
Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois writers of The Harlem Renaissance, and Gertrude Stein, T.S.
Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway writers of The Lost Generation.

The Great Depression marked the end of the American Modernist Period, and writers such as William
Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Eugene O'Neill dealt with the social and political issues of the time in
their literary works.
1939 marked the beginning of the Contemporary Period of American Literature. This period includes
an abundance of important American literary figures spanning from World War II into the New
Millenium. These writers include, but are not limited to, Eudora Welty, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut,
Sylvia Plath, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Zora Neal Hurston,
Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.
During the 1950s, a vigorous anti-establishment, and anti-traditional literary movement emerged. The
main writers of this movement, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, are called Beat Writers. Much
writing of the 1960s and 1970s, referred to as Counterculture Writing, continued the literary ideals of
the Beat Movement, but in a more exteme and fevered manner.

Currently, the contemporary American literary scene is crowded and varied. With the passage of time the
Contemporary Period may be reorganized and/or expanded. In the future will writers such as Anne Rice,
John Grisham, or Amy Tan be included in the canon of American Literatur e? We will just have to wait
and see.

Romanticism in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “OZYMANDIAS”

Romanticism shows interest in immortality. During his time, Ozymandias is a king who believed in immortality. He could manage number of people to work and build a great high beautiful statue. By making that “everlasting monument”, he imagined that his power would be last forever as he also becomes immortal and be a leader forever. He built the statue of him to glorify and represent his power, tried to let everyone knows that the statue would stand forever. He was very proud, over proud about his power and achievement. He believed that the statue proved that he have to be respected and proper to govern.

The power and beauty of nature is the main characteristic of romanticism. In Ozymandias, we can see how man built a great beautiful statue, as the writer expressed it in sentence “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair”. Trough this statue, we can see Ozymandias try to present a great comparison for nature. The statue built on a desert so it has no other things can be its comparison. Its beauty can be seen clearly as it stood alone in the desert. We can see the ability of man to make nature become more and more beautiful through works; statue, monument, building, etc.

In the other hand, the poem Ozymandias also shows the power of nature. In this poem, we can see that nature destroys the great statue which symbolizes the king’s power and immortality. Nature, which is the only truly powerful, was taken over the statue "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay” Nature proved that it cannot be defeated by human works. The statue becomes decayed, broken, and isolated in desert.

The Renaissance period: 1550–1660

Literature and the age

In a tradition of literature remarkable for its exacting and brilliant achievements, the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods have been said to represent the most brilliant century of all. (The reign of Elizabeth I began in 1558 and ended with her death in 1603; she was succeeded by the Stuart king James VI of Scotland, who took the title James I of England as well. English literature of his reign as James I, from 1603 to 1625, is properly called Jacobean.) These years produced a gallery of authors of genius, some of whom have never been surpassed, and conferred on scores of lesser talents the enviable ability to write with fluency, imagination, and verve. From one point of view, this sudden renaissance looks radiant, confident, heroic—and belated, but all the more dazzling for its belatedness. Yet, from another point of view, this was a time of unusually traumatic strain, in which English society underwent massive disruptions that transformed it on every front and decisively affected the life of every individual. In the brief, intense moment in which England assimilated the European Renaissance, the circumstances that made the assimilation possible were already disintegrating and calling into question the newly won certainties, as well as the older truths that they were dislodging. This doubleness, of new possibilities and new doubts simultaneously apprehended, gives the literature its unrivaled intensity.

Social conditions

In this period England’s population doubled; prices rocketed, rents followed, old social loyalties dissolved, and new industrial, agricultural, and commercial veins were first tapped. Real wages hit an all-time low in the 1620s, and social relations were plunged into a state of fluidity from which the merchant and the ambitious lesser gentleman profited at the expense of the aristocrat and the labourer, as satires and comedies current from the 1590s complain. Behind the Elizabethan vogue for pastoral poetry lies the fact of the prosperity of the enclosing sheep farmer, who sought to increase pasture at the expense of the peasantry. Tudor platitudes about order and degree could neither combat nor survive the challenge posed to rank by these arrivistes. The position of the crown, politically dominant yet financially insecure, had always been potentially unstable, and, when Charles I lost the confidence of his greater subjects in the 1640s, his authority crumbled. Meanwhile, the huge body of poor fell ever further behind the rich; the pamphlets of Thomas Harman (1566) and Robert Greene (1591–92), as well as Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605–06), provide glimpses of a horrific world of vagabondage and crime, the Elizabethans’ biggest, unsolvable social problem.


Intellectual and religious revolution

The barely disguised social ferment was accompanied by an intellectual revolution, as the medieval synthesis collapsed before the new science, new religion, and new humanism. While modern mechanical technologies were pressed into service by the Stuarts to create the scenic wonders of the court masque, the discoveries of astronomers and explorers were redrawing the cosmos in a way that was profoundly disturbing:
And freely men confess that this world’s spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new….
The majority of people were more immediately affected by the religious revolutions of the 16th century. A person in early adulthood at the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 would, by her death in 1603, have been vouchsafed an unusually disillusioning insight into the duty owed by private conscience to the needs of the state. The Tudor church hierarchy was an instrument of social and political control, yet the mid-century controversies over the faith had already wrecked any easy confidence in the authority of doctrines and forms and had taught people to inquire carefully into the rationale of their own beliefs (as John Donne does in his third satire [c. 1596]). The Elizabethan ecclesiastical compromise was the object of continual criticism, from radicals both within (who desired progressive reforms, such as the abolition of bishops) and without (who desired the return of England to the Roman Catholic fold), but the incipient liberalism of individuals such as John Milton and the scholar and churchman William Chillingworth was held in check by the majority’s unwillingness to tolerate a plurality of religions in a supposedly unitary state. Nor was the Calvinist orthodoxy that cradled most English writers comforting, for it told them that they were corrupt, unfree, unable to earn their own salvations, and subject to heavenly judgments that were arbitrary and absolute. Calvinism deeply affects the world of the Jacobean tragedies, whose heroes are not masters of their fates but victims of divine purposes that are terrifying yet inscrutable.

The race for cultural development

The third complicating factor was the race to catch up with Continental developments in arts and philosophy. The Tudors needed to create a class of educated diplomats, statesmen, and officials and to dignify their court by making it a fount of cultural as well as political patronage. The new learning, widely disseminated through the Erasmian (after the humanist Desiderius Erasmus) educational programs of such men as John Colet and Sir Thomas Elyot, proposed to use a systematic schooling in Latin authors and some Greek to encourage in the social elites a flexibility of mind and civilized serviceableness that would allow enlightened princely government to walk hand in hand with responsible scholarship. Humanism fostered an intimate familiarity with the classics that was a powerful incentive for the creation of an English literature of answerable dignity. It fostered as well a practical, secular piety that left its impress everywhere on Elizabethan writing. Humanism’s effect, however, was modified by the simultaneous impact of the flourishing Continental cultures, particularly the Italian. Repeatedly, crucial innovations in English letters developed resources originating from Italy—such as the sonnet of Petrarch, the epic of Ludovico Ariosto, the pastoral of Jacopo Sannazzaro, the canzone, and blank verse—and values imported with these forms were in competition with the humanists’ ethical preoccupations. Social ideals of wit, many-sidedness, and sprezzatura (accomplishment mixed with unaffectedness) were imbibed from Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano, translated as The Courtyer by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561, and Elizabethan court poetry is steeped in Castiglione’s aristocratic Neoplatonism, his notions of universal proportion, and the love of beauty as the path to virtue. Equally significant was the welcome afforded to Niccolò Machiavelli, whose lessons were vilified publicly and absorbed in private. The Prince, written in 1513, was unavailable in English until 1640, but as early as the 1580s Gabriel Harvey, a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser, can be found enthusiastically hailing its author as the apostle of modern pragmatism. “We are much beholden to Machiavel and others,” said Francis Bacon, “that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.”
So the literary revival occurred in a society rife with tensions, uncertainties, and competing versions of order and authority, religion and status, sex and the self. The Elizabethan settlement was a compromise; the Tudor pretense that the people of England were unified in belief disguised the actual fragmentation of the old consensus under the strain of change. The new scientific knowledge proved both man’s littleness and his power to command nature; against the Calvinist idea of man’s helplessness pulled the humanist faith in his dignity, especially that conviction, derived from the reading of Seneca and so characteristic of the period, of man’s constancy and fortitude, his heroic capacity for self-determination. It was still possible for Elizabeth to hold these divergent tendencies together in a single, heterogeneous culture, but under her successors they would eventually fly apart. The philosophers speaking for the new century would be Francis Bacon, who argued for the gradual advancement of science through patient accumulation of experiments, and the skeptic Michel de Montaigne (his Essays translated from the French by John Florio [1603]), who denied that it was possible to formulate any general principles of knowledge.
Cutting across all of these was the persistence of popular habits of thought and expression. Both humanism and Puritanism set themselves against vulgar ignorance and folk tradition, but, fortunately, neither could remain aloof for long from the robustness of popular taste. Sir Philip Sidney, in England’s first Neoclassical literary treatise, The Defence of Poesie (written c. 1578–83, published 1595), candidly admitted that “the old song [i.e., ballad] of Percy and Douglas” would move his heart “more than with a trumpet,” and his Arcadia (final version published in 1593) is a representative instance of the fruitful cross-fertilization of genres in this period—the contamination of aristocratic pastoral with popular tale, the lyric with the ballad, comedy with romance, tragedy with satire, and poetry with prose. The language, too, was undergoing a rapid expansion that all classes contributed to and benefited from, sophisticated literature borrowing without shame the idioms of colloquial speech. An allusion in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606–07) to heaven peeping “through the blanket of the dark” would become a “problem” only later, when, for instance, Samuel Johnson complained in 1751 that such words provoked laughter rather than awe. Johnson’s was an age when tragic dignity implied politeness, when it was below the dignity of tragedy to mention so lowly an object as a blanket. But the Elizabethans’ ability to address themselves to several audiences simultaneously and to bring into relation opposed experiences, emphases, and worldviews invested their writing with complexity and power.

Celtic Britain (The Iron Age) c. 600 BC - 50 AD

Who were they? The Iron Age is the age of the "Celt" in Britain. Over the 500 or so years leading up to the first Roman invasion a Celtic culture established itself throughout the British Isles. Who were these Celts?

For a start, the concept of a "Celtic" people is a modern and somewhat romantic reinterpretation of history. The “Celts” were warring tribes who certainly wouldn’t have seen themselves as one people at the time.

The "Celts" as we traditionaly regard them exist largely in the magnificence of their art and the words of the Romans who fought them. The trouble with the reports of the Romans is that they were a mix of reportage and political propaganda. It was politically expedient for the Celtic peoples to be coloured as barbarians and the Romans as a great civilizing force. And history written by the winners is always suspect.

Where did they come from? What we do know is that the people we call Celts gradually infiltrated Britain over the course of the centuries between about 500 and 100 B.C. There was probably never an organized Celtic invasion; for one thing the Celts were so fragmented and given to fighting among themselves that the idea of a concerted invasion would have been ludicrous.

The Celts were a group of peoples loosely tied by similar language, religion, and cultural expression. They were not centrally governed, and quite as happy to fight each other as any non-Celt. They were warriors, living for the glories of battle and plunder. They were also the people who brought iron working to the British Isles.

The advent of iron. The use of iron had amazing repercussions. First, it changed trade and fostered local independence. Trade was essential during the Bronze Age, for not every area was naturally endowed with the necessary ores to make bronze. Iron, on the other hand, was relatively cheap and available almost everywhere.

Hill forts. The time of the "Celtic conversion" of Britain saw a huge growth in the number of hill forts throughout the region. These were often small ditch and bank combinations encircling defensible hilltops. Some are small enough that they were of no practical use for more than an individual family, though over time many larger forts were built. The curious thing is that we don't know if the hill forts were built by the native Britons to defend themselves from the encroaching Celts, or by the Celts as they moved their way into hostile territory.

Usually these forts contained no source of water, so their use as long term settlements is doubtful, though they may have been useful indeed for withstanding a short term siege. Many of the hill forts were built on top of earlier causewayed camps.

Celtic family life. The basic unit of Celtic life was the clan, a sort of extended family. The term "family" is a bit misleading, for by all accounts the Celts practiced a peculiar form of child rearing; they didn't rear them, they farmed them out. Children were actually raised by foster parents. The foster father was often the brother of the birth-mother. Got it?

Clans were bound together very loosely with other clans into tribes, each of which had its own social structure and customs, and possibly its own local gods.

Housing. The Celts lived in huts of arched timber with walls of wicker and roofs of thatch. The huts were generally gathered in loose hamlets. In several places each tribe had its own coinage system.

Farming. The Celts were farmers when they weren't fighting. One of the interesting innovations that they brought to Britain was the iron plough. Earlier ploughs had been awkward affairs, basically a stick with a pointed end harnessed behind two oxen. They were suitable only for ploughing the light upland soils. The heavier iron ploughs constituted an agricultural revolution all by themselves, for they made it possible for the first time to cultivate the rich valley and lowland soils. They came with a price, though. It generally required a team of eight oxen to pull the plough, so to avoid the difficulty of turning that large a team, Celtic fields tended to be long and narrow, a pattern that can still be seen in some parts of the country today.

The lot of women. Celtic lands were owned communally, and wealth seems to have been based largely on the size of cattle herd owned. The lot of women was a good deal better than in most societies of that time. They were technically equal to men, owned property, and could choose their own husbands. They could also be war leaders, as Boudicca (Boadicea) later proved.

Language. There was a written Celtic language, but it developed well into Christian times, so for much of Celtic history they relied on oral transmission of culture, primarily through the efforts of bards and poets. These arts were tremendously important to the Celts, and much of what we know of their traditions comes to us today through the old tales and poems that were handed down for generations before eventually being written down.

Druids. Another area where oral traditions were important was in the training of Druids. There has been a lot of nonsense written about Druids, but they were a curious lot; a sort of super-class of priests, political advisors, teachers, healers, and arbitrators. They had their own universities, where traditional knowledge was passed on by rote. They had the right to speak ahead of the king in council, and may have held more authority than the king. They acted as ambassadors in time of war, they composed verse and upheld the law. They were a sort of glue holding together Celtic culture.

Religion. From what we know of the Celts from Roman commentators, who are, remember, witnesses with an axe to grind, they held many of their religious ceremonies in woodland groves and near sacred water, such as wells and springs. The Romans speak of human sacrifice as being a part of Celtic religion. One thing we do know, the Celts revered human heads.

Celtic warriors would cut off the heads of their enemies in battle and display them as trophies. They mounted heads in doorposts and hung them from their belts. This might seem barbaric to us, but to the Celt the seat of spiritual power was the head, so by taking the head of a vanquished foe they were appropriating that power for themselves. It was a kind of bloody religious observance.

The Iron Age is when we first find cemeteries of ordinary people’s burials (in hole-in-the-ground graves) as opposed to the elaborate barrows of the elite few that provide our main records of burials in earlier periods.

The Celts at War. The Celts loved war. If one wasn't happening they'd be sure to start one. They were scrappers from the word go. They arrayed themselves as fiercely as possible, sometimes charging into battle fully naked, dyed blue from head to toe, and screaming like banshees to terrify their enemies.

They took tremendous pride in their appearance in battle, if we can judge by the elaborately embellished weapons and paraphernalia they used. Golden shields and breastplates shared pride of place with ornamented helmets and trumpets.

The Celts were great users of light chariots in warfare. From this chariot, drawn by two horses, they would throw spears at an enemy before dismounting to have a go with heavy slashing swords. They also had a habit of dragging families and baggage along to their battles, forming a great milling mass of encumbrances, which sometimes cost them a victory, as Queen Boudicca would later discover to her dismay.

As mentioned, they beheaded their opponents in battle and it was considered a sign of prowess and social standing to have a goodly number of heads to display.

The main problem with the Celts was that they couldn't stop fighting among themselves long enough to put up a unified front. Each tribe was out for itself, and in the long run this cost them control of Britain.

(Note: The terms "England", "Scotland", and "Wales" are used purely to indicate geographic location relative to modern boundaries - at this time period, these individual countries did not exist).

American literature

American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and Colonial America. 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.
Colonial literature

Some of the earliest forms of American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. Captain John Smith could be considered the first American author with his works: A True Relation of ... Virginia ... (1608) and The General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Other writers of this manner included Daniel Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson.

The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were also topics of early writing. A journal written by John Winthrop discussed the religious foundations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edward Winslow also recorded a diary of the first years after the Mayflower's arrival. Other religiously influenced writers included Increase Mather and William Bradford, author of the journal published as a History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47. Others like Roger Williams and Nathaniel Ward more fiercely argued state and church separation.

Some poetry also existed. Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are especially noted. Michael Wigglesworth wrote a best-selling poem, The Day of Doom, describing the time of judgment. Nicholas Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse.

Other late writings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians, as seen in writings by Daniel Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason, Benjamin Church, and Mary Rowlandson. John Eliot translated the Bible into the Algonquin language.

Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield represented the Great Awakening, a religious revival in the early 18th century that asserted strict Calvinism. Other Puritan and religious writers include Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Wise, and Samuel Willard. Less strict and serious writers included Samuel Sewall, Sarah Kemble Knight, and William Byrd.

The revolutionary period also contained political writings, including those by colonists Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, a loyalist to the crown. Two key figures were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin are esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the formation of a budding American identity. Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and The American Crisis writings are seen as playing a key role in influencing the political tone of the period.

During the revolution itself, poems and songs such as "Yankee Doodle" and "Nathan Hale" were popular. Major satirists included John Trumbull and Francis Hopkinson. Philip Morin Freneau also wrote poems about the war's course.
Post-independence

In the post-war period, The Federalist essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay presented a significant historical discussion of American government organization and republican values. Thomas Jefferson's United States Declaration of Independence, his influence on the American Constitution, his autobiography, the Notes on the State of Virginia, and his many letters solidify his spot as one of the most talented early American writers. Fisher Ames, James Otis, and Patrick Henry are also valued for their political writings and orations.

Much of the early literature of the new nation struggled to find a uniquely American voice in existing literary genre, and this tendency was also reflected in novels. European forms and styles were often transferred to new locales and critics often saw them as inferior.
Unique American style

With the War of 1812 and an increasing desire to produce uniquely American literature and culture, a number of key new literary figures emerged, perhaps most prominently Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving, often considered the first writer to develop a unique American style[citation needed] (although this has been debated) wrote humorous works in Salmagundi and the well-known satire A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809). Bryant wrote early romantic and nature-inspired poetry, which evolved away from their European origins. In 1832, Poe began writing short stories – including "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" – that explore previously hidden levels of human psychology and push the boundaries of fiction toward mystery and fantasy. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales about Natty Bumppo (which includes The Last of the Mohicans) were popular both in the new country and abroad.

Humorous writers were also popular and included Seba Smith and Benjamin P. Shillaber in New England and Davy Crockett, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson J. Hooper, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, and George Washington Harris writing about the American frontier.

The New England Brahmins were a group of writers connected to Harvard University and its seat in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The core included James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), an ex-minister, published a startling nonfiction work called Nature, in which he claimed it was possible to dispense with organized religion and reach a lofty spiritual state by studying and responding to the natural world. His work influenced not only the writers who gathered around him, forming a movement known as Transcendentalism, but also the public, who heard him lecture.

Emerson's most gifted fellow-thinker was perhaps Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), a resolute nonconformist. After living mostly by himself for two years in a cabin by a wooded pond, Thoreau wrote Walden, a book-length memoir that urges resistance to the meddlesome dictates of organized society. His radical writings express a deep-rooted tendency toward individualism in the American character. Other writers influenced by Transcendentalism were Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Jones Very.[1]

The political conflict surrounding Abolitionism inspired the writings of William Lloyd Garrison and his paper The Liberator, along with poet John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe in her world-famous Uncle Tom's Cabin.
In 1837, the young Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) collected some of his stories as Twice-Told Tales, a volume rich in symbolism and occult incidents. Hawthorne went on to write full-length "romances," quasi-allegorical novels that explore such themes as guilt, pride, and emotional repression in his native New England. His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, is the stark drama of a woman cast out of her community for committing adultery.Hawthorne's fiction had a profound impact on his friend Herman Melville (1819-1891), who first made a name for himself by turning material from his seafaring days into exotic and sensational sea narrative novels. Inspired by Hawthorne's focus on allegories and dark psychology, Melville went on to write romances replete with philosophical speculation. In Moby-Dick, an adventurous whaling voyage becomes the vehicle for examining such themes as obsession, the nature of evil, and human struggle against the elements. In another fine work, the short novel Billy Budd, Melville dramatizes the conflicting claims of duty and compassion on board a ship in time of war. His more profound books sold poorly, and he had been long forgotten by the time of his death. He was rediscovered in the early decades of the 20th century.

Anti-transcendental works from Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe all comprise the Dark Romanticism subgenre of literature popular during this time.
American poetry
Walt Whitman, 1856.

America's two greatest 19th-century poets could hardly have been more different in temperament and style. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a working man, a traveler, a self-appointed nurse during the American Civil War (1861-1865), and a poetic innovator. His magnum opus was Leaves of Grass, in which he uses a free-flowing verse and lines of irregular length to depict the all-inclusiveness of American democracy. Taking that motif one step further, the poet equates the vast range of American experience with himself without being egotistical. For example, in Song of Myself, the long, central poem in Leaves of Grass, Whitman writes: "These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me ..."

Whitman was also a poet of the body – "the body electric," as he called it. In Studies in Classic American Literature, the English novelist D. H. Lawrence wrote that Whitman "was the first to smash the old moral conception that the soul of man is something 'superior' and 'above' the flesh."

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), on the other hand, lived the sheltered life of a genteel unmarried woman in small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. Within its formal structure, her poetry is ingenious, witty, exquisitely wrought, and psychologically penetrating. Her work was unconventional for its day, and little of it was published during her lifetime.

Many of her poems dwell on death, often with a mischievous twist. One, "Because I could not stop for Death," begins, "He kindly stopped for me." The opening of another Dickinson poem toys with her position as a woman in a male-dominated society and an unrecognized poet: "I'm nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody too?"

American poetry arguably reached its peak in the early to mid 20th century, with such noted writers as Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Stephen Vincent Benet, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Robinson Jeffers, Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and many others.
Realism, Twain and James
Mark Twain, 1907.

Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910) was the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast – in the border state of Missouri. His regional masterpieces were the memoir Life on the Mississippi and the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain's style – influenced by journalism, wedded to the vernacular, direct and unadorned but also highly evocative and irreverently humorous – changed the way Americans write their language. His characters speak like real people and sound distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and regional accents. Other writers interested in regional differences and dialect were George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, Mary Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock), Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Henry Cuyler Bunner, and William Sydney Porter (O. Henry).

William Dean Howells also represented the realist tradition through his novels, including The Rise of Silas Lapham and his work as editor of the Atlantic Monthly.

Henry James (1843-1916) confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by writing directly about it. Although born in New York City, he spent most of his adult years in England. Many of his novels center on Americans who live in or travel to Europe. With its intricate, highly qualified sentences and dissection of emotional and psychological nuance, James's fiction can be daunting. Among his more accessible works are the novellas Daisy Miller, about an enchanting American girl in Europe, and The Turn of the Screw, an enigmatic ghost story.
Turn of the century
Ernest Hemingway in World War I uniform.

At the beginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding fiction's social spectrum to encompass both high and low life and sometimes connected to the naturalist school of realism. In her stories and novels, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) scrutinized the upper-class, Eastern-seaboard society in which she had grown up. One of her finest books, The Age of Innocence, centers on a man who chooses to marry a conventional, socially acceptable woman rather than a fascinating outsider. At about the same time, Stephen Crane (1871-1900), best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, depicted the life of New York City prostitutes in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. And in Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) portrayed a country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman. Hamlin Garland and Frank Norris wrote about the problems of American farmers and other social issues from a naturalist perspective.

More directly political writings discussed social issues and power of corporations. Some like Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward outlined other possible political and social frameworks. Upton Sinclair, most famous for his meat-packing novel The Jungle, advocated socialism. Other political writers of the period included Edwin Markham, William Vaughn Moody. Journalistic critics, including Ida M. Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens were labeled The Muckrakers. Henry Brooks Adams' literate autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams also depicted a stinging description of the education system and modern life.

Experimentation in style and form soon joined the new freedom in subject matter. In 1909, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), by then an expatriate in Paris, published Three Lives, an innovative work of fiction influenced by her familiarity with cubism, jazz, and other movements in contemporary art and music. Stein labeled a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as the "Lost Generation."

The poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was born in Idaho but spent much of his adult life in Europe. His work is complex, sometimes obscure, with multiple references to other art forms and to a vast range of literature, both Western and Eastern. He influenced many other poets, notably T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), another expatriate. Eliot wrote spare, cerebral poetry, carried by a dense structure of symbols. In The Waste Land, he embodied a jaundiced vision of post-World War I society in fragmented, haunted images. Like Pound's, Eliot's poetry could be highly allusive, and some editions of The Waste Land come with footnotes supplied by the poet. In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

American writers also expressed the disillusionment following upon the war. The stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) capture the restless, pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the 1920s. Fitzgerald's characteristic theme, expressed poignantly in The Great Gatsby, is the tendency of youth's golden dreams to dissolve in failure and disappointment. Fitzgerald also elucidates the collapse of some key American Ideals, set out in the Declaration of Independence, such as liberty, social unity, good governance and peace, features which were severely threatened by the pressures of modern early 20th century society. Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson also wrote novels with critical depictions of American life. John Dos Passos wrote about the war and also the U.S.A. trilogy which extended into the Depression.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, photographed by Carl van Vechten, 1937.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) saw violence and death first-hand as an ambulance driver in World War I, and the carnage persuaded him that abstract language was mostly empty and misleading. He cut out unnecessary words from his writing, simplified the sentence structure, and concentrated on concrete objects and actions. He adhered to a moral code that emphasized grace under pressure, and his protagonists were strong, silent men who often dealt awkwardly with women. The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are generally considered his best novels; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Five years before Hemingway, another American novelist had won the Nobel Prize: William Faulkner (1897-1962). Faulkner managed to encompass an enormous range of humanity in Yoknapatawpha County, a Mississippian region of his own invention. He recorded his characters' seemingly unedited ramblings in order to represent their inner states, a technique called "stream of consciousness." (In fact, these passages are carefully crafted, and their seemingly chaotic structure conceals multiple layers of meaning.) He also jumbled time sequences to show how the past – especially the slave-holding era of the Deep South – endures in the present. Among his great works are The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, Go Down, Moses, and The Unvanquished.Depression-era literature

Depression era literature was blunt and direct in its social criticism. John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was born in Salinas, California, where he set many of his stories. His style was simple and evocative, winning him the favor of the readers but not of the critics. Steinbeck often wrote about poor, working-class people and their struggle to lead a decent and honest life. The Grapes of Wrath, considered his masterpiece, is a strong, socially-oriented novel that tells the story of the Joads, a poor family from Oklahoma and their journey to California in search of a better life. Other popular novels include Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, and East of Eden. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Other writers sometimes considered part of the proletarian school include Nathanael West, Olive Tilford Dargan, Tom Kromer, Robert Cantwell, and Edward Anderson.

Henry Miller assumed a unique place in American Literature in the 1930s when his semi-autobiographical novels, written and published in Paris, were banned from the US. Although his major works, which include Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring, would not be cleared for American sale and publication until 1962, their themes and stylistic innovations had already exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of American writers.
Post-World War II
Norman Mailer, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948

The period in time from the end of World War II up until, roughly, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the publication of some of the most popular works in American history. The last few of the more realistic modernists along with the wildly Romantic beatniks largely dominated the period, while the direct respondents to America's involvement in World War II contributed in their notable influence.

Though born in Canada, Chicago-raised Saul Bellow would become one of the most influential novelists in America in the decades directly following World War II. In works like The Adventures of Augie March and Herzog, Bellow painted vivid portraits of the American city and the distinctive characters that peopled it. Bellow went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

From J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories and The Catcher in the Rye to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, the perceived madness of the state of affairs in America was brought to the forefront of the nation's literary expression. Émigré authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, with Lolita, forged on with the theme, and, at almost the same time, the beatniks took a concerted step away from their Lost Generation predecessors, developing a style and tone of their own by drawing on Eastern theology and experimenting with recreational drugs.

The poetry and fiction of the "Beat Generation," largely born of a circle of intellects formed in New York City around Columbia University and established more officially some time later in San Francisco, came of age. The term Beat referred, all at the same time, to the countercultural rhythm of the Jazz scene, to a sense of rebellion regarding the conservative stress of post-war society, and to an interest in new forms of spiritual experience through drugs, alcohol, philosophy, and religion, and specifically through Zen Buddhism. Allen Ginsberg set the tone of the movement in his poem Howl, a Whitmanesque work that began: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness ..." At the same time, his good friend Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) celebrated the Beats' rollicking, spontaneous, and vagrant life-style in, among many other works, his masterful and most popular novel On the Road.

Regarding the war novel specifically, there was a literary explosion in America during the post-World War II era. Some of the best known of the works produced included Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). MacBird, written by Barbara Garson, was another well-received work exposing the absurdity of war. The Moviegoer (1962), by Southern author Walker Percy, winner of the National Book Award, was his attempt at exploring "the dislocation of man in the modern age."[2]
John Updike

In contrast, John Updike approached American life from a more reflective but no less subversive perspective. His 1960 novel Rabbit, Run, the first of four chronicling the rising and falling fortunes of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of four decades against the backdrop of the major events of the second half of the twentieth century, broke new ground on its release in its characterization and detail of the American middle class and frank discussion of taboo topics such as adultery. Notable among Updike's characteristic innovations was his use of present-tense narration, his rich, stylized language, and his attention to sensual detail. His work is also deeply imbued with Christian themes. The two final installments of the Rabbit series, Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), were both awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other notable works include the Henry Bech novels (1970-98), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), Roger's Version (1986) and In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), which literary critic Michiko Kakutani called "arguably his finest."[3]

Frequently linked with Updike is the novelist Philip Roth. Roth vigorously explores Jewish identity in American society, especially in the postwar era and the early 21st century. Frequently set in Newark, New Jersey, Roth's work is known to be highly autobiographical, and many of Roth's main characters, most famously the Jewish novelist Nathan Zuckerman, are thought to be alter egos of Roth. With these techniques, and armed with his articulate and fast-paced style, Roth explores the distinction between reality and fiction in literature while provocatively examining American culture. His most famous work includes the Zuckerman novels, the controversial Portnoy's Complaint (1969), and Goodbye, Columbus (1959). Among the most decorated American writers of his generation, he has won every major American literary award, including the Pulitzer Prize for his major novel American Pastoral (1997).

Ralph Ellison's 1953 novel Invisible Man was instantly recognized as among the most powerful and sensational works of the immediate post-war years. The story of a black man in the urban north, the novel laid bare the often repressed racial tension still prevailing in the nation while also succeeding as an existential character study.

Flannery O'Connor (b. March 25, 1925 in Georgia – d. August 3, 1964 in Georgia) also explored and developed the theme of 'the South' in American literature that was dear to Mark Twain and other leading authors of American literary history (Wise Blood 1952; The Violent Bear It Away 1960; Everything That Rises Must Converge, her best-known short story, and an eponymous collection published posthumously in 1965).
1970 - 2000

Though its exact parameters remain debatable, from the early 1970s to the present day the most salient literary movement has been postmodernism. Thomas Pynchon, a seminal practitioner of the postmodern style, drawing on modernist fixtures such as temporal distortion, unreliable narrators and internal monologue and coupling them with distinctly postmodern techniques such as metafiction, absurdist humor and a subversive commingling of high and low culture, in 1973 published one of the seminal works of postmodernism, Gravity's Rainbow. His other important works include The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Mason & Dixon (1997).
Toni Morrison at the Miami Book Fair International of 1986

Toni Morrison, the most recent American recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writing in the realist tradition in a distinctive poetic and deeply evocative prose style, published her controversial debut novel, The Bluest Eye, to widespread critical acclaim in 1970. Coming on the heels of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the novel includes a description of incestuous rape and explores the conventions of beauty established by a historically racist society, painting a portrait of a self-immolating black family in search of beauty in whiteness. Among her best-known novels are Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), and Beloved (1987). The latter was chosen in a 2006 survey conducted by the New York Times as the most important work of fiction of the last 25 years.[4]

Writing in a lyrical, flowing style that eschews excessive use of the comma and semicolon and recalls William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway in equal measure, rich with metaphor and polysyndeton, Cormac McCarthy is an author whose oeuvre seizes on the literary traditions of several regions in the United States and spans multiple genres. He writes in the Southern Gothic aesthetic in his distinctly Faulknerian 1965 debut, The Orchard Keeper; in the western tradition in Blood Meridian (1985), which critic Harold Bloom likened to Moby-Dick; in a much more pastoral tone in his celebrated Border Trilogy (1992-98), including All the Pretty Horses (1992), winner of the National Book Award; and in the post-apocalyptic genre in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road (2007). His novels are noted for achieving both commercial and literary success, several of his works having been adapted to film.

Don DeLillo, who rose to literary prominence with the publication of his 1985 novel, White Noise, a work broaching the subjects of death and consumerism and doubling as a piece of social criticism, began his writing career in 1971 with Americana. He is listed by Harold Bloom as being among the preeminent contemporary American writers, in the company of such giants as Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon.[5] His 1997 novel Underworld, a gargantuan work chronicling American life through and immediately after the Cold War and examining with equal depth subjects as various as baseball and nuclear weapons, is generally agreed upon to be his masterpiece and was the runner-up in a survey asking writers to identify the most important work of fiction of the last 25 years.[4] Among his other important novels are Libra (1988), Mao II (1991) and Falling Man (2007).

Among the younger generation of contemporary American writers, Paul Auster, like Thomas Pynchon an acolyte of postmodernism, stands out. Known for his experimentation with fragmented narratives, unreliable narrators, metafiction, intertextuality and multiple points of view, Auster marries absurdism with elements of crime fiction. A former translator of French literature, he brings to American letters a distinct pool of influences, among them those of Albert Camus, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Paul Sartre on the one hand and pulp fiction writer Dashiell Hammett on the other. Among his most critically successful works are The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), Leviathan (1992) and Oracle Night (2004). Richard Ford, writing in a much more realist style reminiscent of John Updike and Walker Percy, rose to literary prominence in 1986 with the publication of the acclaimed The Sportswriter, the first of a trio of novels to feature his memorable everyman character Frank Bascombe. The second, Independence Day (1995), would win Ford the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the third, The Lay of the Land, was published to critical acclaim in 2006.
Millennial and Immigrant literature
Jhumpa Lahiri

At the turn of the twenty-first century, several new writers surfaced, drawing on immigrant experiences in an ever more culturally diverse American landscape. Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), and went on to write a well-received novel, The Namesake (2003), which was shortly adapted to film in 2007. In her second collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth, released to widespread commercial and critical success, Lahiri shifts focus and treats the experiences of the second and third generation.

Chinese-American author Ha Jin in 1999 won the National Book Award for his second novel, Waiting, about a Chinese soldier in the Revolutionary Army who has to wait 18 years to divorce his wife for another woman, all the while having to worry about persecution for his protracted affair, and twice won the PEN/Faulkner Award, in 2000 for Waiting and in 2005 for War Trash. Other notable Asian-American novelists include Amy Tan, best known for her novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989), tracing the lives of four immigrant families brought together by the game of Mahjong; and Maxine Hong Kingston, best known for her memoir, The Woman Warrior (1976), and debut novel, China Men (1980). Dominican-American author Junot Díaz, spurred to writing by Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros, an icon of an emerging Chicano literature whose 1984 bildungsroman The House on Mango Street is taught in schools across the United States, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which tells the story of an overweight Dominican boy growing up as a social outcast in Paterson, New Jersey. Both authors are members of a growing community of Latin American writers and artists.

Other notable writers of the turn of the century include David Foster Wallace, whose 1996 novel Infinite Jest, a futuristic portrait of America and a withering critique of the media-saturated nature of American existence, has been consistently ranked among the most important works of the twentieth century[6]; Michael Chabon, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) tells the story of two friends, Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, as they rise through the ranks of the comics industry in its heyday; Jonathan Franzen, whose 2001 novel The Corrections, a tragicomedy about the disintegrating Lambert family, won the National Book Award; Richard Russo, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls (2002), a novel laying bare the mysteries and legacies of the flagging logging and textile industries in the fictional Maine town of Empire Falls; and Marilynne Robinson, whose 2004 novel Gilead, a family saga centered around religion and set during the Civil War, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

DSSEP Home Page Linking Literature to Social Studies to Community Resources

Elementary and middle school teachers increasingly realize that in order to meet the Delaware curriculum standards in social studies, they must teach social studies through literature, as well as through usual textbook approaches. Further, in order to bring social studies to life and enhance literature, it is desirable to link the lessons to community resources that can give hands-on and meaningful experiences associated with the literature.

During the year 2000, a new book, Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson was published. The story is about sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook who is separated from her mother during the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793 and experiences first-hand the horrors of that epidemic. The book is classified as suitable for young adult readers. I would use it with students in grades 5-8. Topics in the book present numerous opportunities for teaching social studies. Further, I see it as a springboard for a trip to Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, in order to clarify many of the words, phrases, concepts, and topics mentioned in the book. Other historic sites or museums might also serve that purpose, but I have chosen to use Winterthur as the example in this essay.

The yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793 was one of the worst epidemics in American history. Over four thousand people, about ten percent of the city’s population, died between August and November of that year. As the epidemic began to rage, twenty thousand people fled the city; this was half the population of Philadelphia, our country’s capital city at that time. Among those who fled were George Washington, Henry Knox, and Thomas Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton stayed and was stricken with yellow fever, though he was one of the lucky survivors. Dr. Benjamin Rush attended many of the victims and contracted the disease himself. Dolley Payne Todd’s husband, John Todd, died, along with the couple’s young son and John’s parents. She later became Dolley Madison. Charles Willson Peale and his family stayed in the city, holed up in their home, and escaped the pestilence. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones of the Free African Society, along with their followers, cared for the sick and dying and saw to the burial of the dead. Just these few names give you an idea of the historic figures that appear in Fever 1793.

As one reads about each of the people mentioned above, one is driven to search the Internet for further information about their experiences at that time and stories about their lives. These are golden opportunities for students to expand their historical knowledge and extend their reading. The coincidences and vagaries of history become fascinating. For instance, after he left Philadelphia because of the epidemic, George Washington laid the cornerstone for the United States Capitol on September 18, 1793 in what was to become Washington, D.C. (Anderson, p. 251). The story mentions Charles Willson Peale’s natural history museum and his extensive collection of stuffed animals and birds. When one reads that the family consumed some of the specimens (before they had been treated with arsenic and stuffed) in order to avoid hunger during the epidemic, one certainly is eager to search the Internet for more information about this extraordinary man and his multitude of interests and talents. One finds that the family had collected bird specimens at Cape Henlopen, and returned to Philadelphia in September 1793; it was those specimens they ate (Powell, 1949, p.111). Throughout the story, the Free African Society’s members ministered unflinchingly to the sick and dying. They performed invaluable service, yet they were attacked afterwards by a publisher named Matthew Carey; he accused them of overcharging the sick and bereaved and stealing from those they attended. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones refuted those charges in a pamphlet, A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in 1793, which described what African-Americans of Philadelphia had done to help the citizens of Philadelphia (Allen, 1960, p. 48-68). The readers of Fever 1793 cannot help but be incensed by Carey’s false accusations, and, again, search the Internet and libraries to find the Carey article and the Allen and Jones pamphlet. These documents provide fine opportunities for students to address Delaware History Standard Three that asks them to interpret different historical accounts of the same event. Their Internet searching provides opportunities for students to address English Language Arts Standard Three.

Early in the book, there is a brief description of the famous balloon flight of Jean Pierre Blanchard from the Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia on January 9, 1793. This required another trip to the Internet to find out that George Washington was present that day to bid the Frenchman good luck and watch the first aerial voyage in America. The whole story of the event is fascinating reading, as is the story of Jean Pierre Blanchard, himself. (See http://www.thehistorynet.com/AviationHistory/articles/0996_cover.htm.)

The horrors of yellow fever are vividly described in the book. Most students I’ve encountered in thirty years of teaching would voraciously consume those descriptive passages and would want to know more. Again, the Internet provides the desired information. (See http://www.morgansranger.com/id77_m.htm.) In fact, a mere chronological listing of epidemics in the United States from 1657 to 1918 is mind-boggling and intensely sobering. (See the web site http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/9166/epidemics.htm.) Each epidemic is an opportunity for further research.

My personal favorite among search engines on the Internet is http://www.google.com. Search under such phrases as “yellow fever 1793,” “Jean Pierre Blanchard,” “epidemics,” “Richard Allen,” “Charles Willson Peale,” and any other phrase, placed in quotation marks, for which one desires information. Of course, google.com links to numerous other search engines and web sites.

In the paragraphs above, I have suggested some history extensions that arise from reading Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. There are numerous others. The economy of Philadelphia was affected by the yellow fever epidemic in those months of 1793. Opportunities abound to develop lessons that address the Delaware Economics Standards, especially Economics Standard One.

As the fever swept through Philadelphia, thousands fled the city, especially the wealthy, as was mentioned earlier. Businesses closed; those who didn’t flee often had no source of income since their employers were gone. The businesses that closed had provided important goods and services to the people; those goods and services were then not available. Imagine not having sufficient coffin makers in a city where thousands were dying and needing to be buried.

Farmers from the country refused to come into the city with foodstuffs. The market places were empty. What food was available in the city skyrocketed in price. Abandoned homes were looted in the desperate search for food, money, or goods that could be traded for food. Sawdust was added to the little wheat flour that was available in order to make bread. People were hungry, especially the poor.

. Some ships refused to dock at the piers and unload their cargo. Dock laborers were not available to unload ships that did arrive. Buildings near the docks were crowded with sick and dying seamen from many nations. Ships that had already been in the port when the epidemic began could not leave because vital crewmen were missing. International trade was, obviously, disrupted. Think Economics Standard Four.

Many towns and farming communities outside of the city forbade anyone from Philadelphia to enter their towns to buy food. Only those who had escaped the city early in the epidemic found refuge in those towns. Even then, they were admitted only if they showed no signs of the fever.

Babies and toddlers were found whimpering in the midst of the dead bodies of their parents. People were afraid to touch the children; no one wanted to take them in for fear that they carried the disease. The funds to support the orphans were limited. Those few merciful people who tried to help them by taking them to orphanages found those institutions overflowing and with minimal food to feed the tykes.

From an economic standpoint, the demand was high; the supply was extremely slim. Inflated prices and thievery resulted.

From a civics point of view, civic responsibility was a low priority for many people remaining in Philadelphia. A notable exception was the mayor of Philadelphia, Matthew Clarkson, who stayed in the city, established the Mayor’s Committee, and sought to help the citizens with food and aid whenever possible. The Free African Society members and volunteers at Bush Hill also labored for the benefit of others. A good topic for debate might be: “Is civic responsibility suspended when one’s life is at risk?” Think Civics Standards Three and Four.

Geography lessons associated with the Philadelphia area can also be derived from the book. One important activity would involve locating on maps the towns and communities around Philadelphia to which people fled – e.g., Wilmington, Dover, and Milford, Delaware, New York City, Germantown, Hog Island, Lititz, Lancaster, Chester, Gynedd, Bethlehem, Pembroke, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. A further activity would be to calculate the mileage to each from Philadelphia’s center and how long it would have taken to reach those sites by wagon and horse. There are vivid descriptions in the book about life in Philadelphia in 1793, along with street and place locations. Based on the information in the book, children could construct maps of that early downtown area. From clues in the book the following sites would be included: the Delaware River, the Walnut Street Prison, the State House, High Street, the Court House, Christ Church, the President’s house (George Washington’s house was at 190 High Street), Water Street, Potter’s Field bounded by Sixth, Seventh, Walnut, and Locust Street, and other such locations. The Delaware Geographic Alliance can provide copies of the map of the city as originally laid out by William Penn, as well as a map showing the Fall Line that bisects the city, separating the Atlantic Coastal Plain from the Piedmont section. These along with present day maps of center-city Philadelphia could be used to surmise how the city looked at the time of the epidemic. Not only is this a good geography lesson, it is a good reading lesson in searching for the clues and details from the book that are necessary in order to construct the map. Following this mapping activity, children can then compare their maps to an actual 1793 map of Philadelphia that can be found in a book entitled Bring Out Your Dead, The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 by J.H. Powell (1949), available at the University of Delaware library.

Vocabulary development is an important part of any reading lesson. In Fever 1793 not only is the vocabulary useful for language arts lessons, but social studies concepts and understandings are imbedded in the words and phrases themselves. From the following list, I believe the reader can see what I mean.



victuals forge miasma strongbox Indian Pudding

bilious fripperies pestilence mop cap the necessary

mutton purgative almshouse apprentice Grim Reaper

broadsheet pestle fractious odiferous mangle (wringer)

respite bleeding petticoats shift (gown) mooning (romantic)

washstand noggin stays grippe Quakers

keening cajole delectables apothecary wraith



Frequently when children read an historical fiction novel, they meet words and phrases that seem foreign to them. For instance, when Matilda arose from her bed, she had on a “shift.” Over that she fastened her “stays” and her embroidered “pocket.” The final act of dressing was to tuck her hair into a “mop cap.” A child of today may not be able to visualize that scene. However, the teacher desirous of giving students first-hand knowledge of the written word can work with the staff at Winterthur to design a field trip that shows students many of the items, such as clothing and household utensils, that are mentioned in the story. Among the household utensils they can see and touch in the “Touch-It” room are the following: a mortar and pestle, a spider (skillet on three legs), and a butter churn. There they can learn the art of serving tea, play with toys reminiscent of those in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and role-play working or shopping in an eighteenth century store. Elsewhere in the museum, children may view numerous eighteenth century items, such as a lap desk, shutters (on the inside of windows, as well as on the outside), a chamber pot, a loaf of sugar, a sugar nipper, and crockery.

Throughout the story there are descriptions of hairstyles, powdered wigs, and clothing popular in 1793. One can observe at Winterthur prints and portraits of people wearing the styles and apparel the story mentions. There are vivid narratives about life on Philadelphia streets, so children can see prints or paintings at Winterthur of city life and activities in American cities of that time.

An aristocratic woman in the story, Mrs. Ogilvie, haughtily commented at a tea that the French ambassador had often dined with her. What fun it is to learn, via the Internet, that Edmond Charles Genet, the French ambassador, was dismissed in disgrace and became a political refuge in the United States, knowing that if he were to return to France he would be executed. (See the web site http:www.americanpresident.org/KoTrain/Courses/GW/GW_Foreign_Affairs.htm.) It is interesting to note that during Yuletide 2000 at Winterthur visitors could view one of the French chairs that he sold to the Washington’s.

In the home of Mrs. Ogilvie, Mattie and her mother sat on “Chippendale” chairs around a gleaming mahogany table. A visit to Winterthur reveals what Chippendale chairs look like and who Thomas Chippendale was. Children will learn about the Chippendale design books that were brought to America where American craftsman copied the designs. Further, students will see many examples of gleaming mahogany tables, some of which are carved from a single piece of mahogany.

Charles Willson Peale and Dr. Benjamin Rush are important persons in the story. Children visiting Winterthur can view a number of Peale’s paintings, but they may be especially interested in his portrait of Dr. Rush and one of Julia Stockton Rush, the doctor’s wife. After seeing the magnificent paintings, students may be stunned to learn that by the 1790’s, Peale had turned most of his attention, not to painting, but to the creation of his natural history and art museum. (See the web site http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/peale/papers2.htm.) Dr. Rush was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. At Winterthur students can view prints, needlework, and reproductions of Chinese export porcelain depicting that event and identify Dr. Rush, as well as other signers, in those works of art.

George Washington was the President of the United States in 1793, and the capital was in Philadelphia. There are numerous portraits of George Washington at Winterthur, including those by Gilbert Stuart and John Trumbull. Further, representations of Washington are on porcelain, needlework objects, and other mediums. Children learn at Winterthur that pictures of George Washington were very popular items in a Federal period (c 1790-1815) home.

It is difficult for children today to fathom that doctors drained a pint or more of blood from a desperately ill person. Doctors then believed that the pestilence boiled in the blood of the victims and that bleeding would rid the body of the offending pestilence. Doctors’ mistakes often killed people that might have otherwise recovered. There is a medical instrument at Winterthur that was used to bleed people.

In summary, Winterthur is an excellent source of information regarding, people, events, life styles, art, furnishings, clothing, food, traditions, and recreation in America from 1640-1860. More importantly, many items, such as those mentioned in Fever 1793, can be seen at Winterthur, either as three-dimensional objects or in prints and paintings. Winterthur’s school programs staff would like to develop special materials for teachers using this book in conjunction with a visit to Winterthur, and also hopes to do a teacher workshop dealing with this book in February of 2002.

By engaging students in an exciting novel, teachers can generate students’ desires to expand their knowledge about an historic time period; hence students seek information from the Internet and assorted texts. Economics, geography, and civics lessons can be generated from topics in the novel. A trip to Winterthur (or another similar museum) to view objects students have encountered in the story is the final link in this chain of educational activities to make a time period in history forever remembered in the minds of the students. Further, students will use reading, writing, speaking, and listening to learn.



References

Allen, R. (1960). A narrative of the proceedings of the black people during the late awful

calamity in Philadelphia in 1793. The Life Experiences and Gospel Labors of the Rt.

Rev. Richard Allen. New York: Abingdon Press.

Anderson, L H. (2000). Fever 1793. New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young

Readers.

Powell, J.H. (1949). Bring Out Your Dead, The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in

Biography and Work of William Blake

William Blake is commonly known as a poet. A few people know him as a painter. Blake, a well-known poet today, was not as famous and well known in his life. He was an imaginative and expressive person altogether, as it is evident from his expression of thoughts through poetry and painting. He was a true artist in the real sense of the word. In his time he was regarded as insane. But today, due to his extravagant work, William has been called “far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced” by a modern critic.

Biography:

William was born on 28th of November, 1757 in London, Great Britain. He was the third child of Catherine nee Wright and James Blake, a hosier and haberdasher, belonging to a middle class family. They at that time were residing at Broad Street in Golden Square, Soho. He was thought to be different from rest of the children from his early childhood due to his different approach of looking towards things.

At the age of ten, he started reporting as seeing the visions of god and angles, and having regular conversations with his deceased brother. The first incident was seeing the images of thirteen angles on a tree while gone for walking with his father. This can be regarded as a result of his interest in reading Bible from an early age. In very early years he started showing interest in engraving too. Due to such incidents it became apparent that his inner realm of mind was strongly at work. His parents decided to send him to drawing classes instead of sending him to attend regular school. Within two years he also showed his inclination towards poetry.

Apprenticeship

At the age of fourteen, William was sent for apprenticeship with James Basire who was the official engraver to The Society of Antiquaries, as the art school turned to be very costly. There he learnt almost every thing about the trade and he was often sent for drawing and engraving jobs. His remarkable work is still exhibited in churches like Westminster Abbey. This work at the churches exposed him to the Gothic style which continued showing up throughout the works he did in the rest of his life. He remained engaged in that job for seven years.

Royal Academy

In 17 78 Blake joined Royal Academy. But soon he left it too as he had a classical bent of mind and in art he was influenced by Michael Angelo and Raphael, and preferred to adopt their style. He highly detested the modern style of Rubens, a prolific seventeenth century painter. He also felt the ways of expression at the Royal Academy too restricted. Blake strongly rebelled against the ideas of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the president and a neoclassicist. Reynolds took art much as an academic activity rather than an imaginative activity which provoked Blake against him.

Marriage

Blake got married in on 18th August, 17 82 to Catherine Sophia Boucher, an illiterate woman. They begot no children from their marriage, even though it is regarded as a happy marriage. Later he taught his wife to read and write. She then assisted him in printing his illuminated poetry for which he is more famous today.

Residing at Felpham

In 1800, he moved to Felpham, West Sussex taking residence in a cottage. He was commissioned to illustrate works by William Hayley. There he wrote a poem “Milton: a poem”. It includes his one of the most famous works today with one of his poems starting as: “And did those feet in ancient time”. Around 18 03, he came in clash with the authorities having a brawl with a soldier and uttering ill words for the king.

Death

William’s advanced years were spent mostly in poverty. He was a true artist. Even on the day of his death, he worked on illustrations of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. He died at 6:00 in the evening with his wife sitting by his bedside on 12 August, 19 27. He was buried after 5 days of his death on his marriage anniversary

Works:

William and Catherine was a devoted couple, and due to the great help of his wife he was able to print his first collection of poetry: ’Poetical Sketches’ in 17 83. In these, his style was based upon the classical. Along with this he also took up the work of engraving and paintings, based upon the ideas projected in his own poetry. He started with experimenting sketching human anatomy and pieces of text from his poetical works on the same plate. His paintings project a metaphorical style portraying mystical images. The mediums he used for illustrations was water colour and engraving.

In 1800 he wrote his famous ‘Milton: a poem’. Influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, he started illustrations in 18 05. His illustrations of that time include also ‘Virgil’ and ‘Paradise Lost’. Blake’s longest illuminated work includes ‘Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion’.

In his advanced years he started selling his work to Thomas Butts. The works which was sold most was his Bible illustrations. Thomas Butts purchased his works more or less as a friend rather than as an admirer of art.

In 18 26, the commission for Dante’s ‘Inferno’ came to Blake through Linnell. The aim was to produce a number of series of illustrations. These illustrations were only seven in number as Blake died before the completion of the work. It is one of the most praised works he did in his life.

Blake’s illustrative work took the medium of water colours to new dimensions. He did his job with extra ordinary mastery.

Style of Poetry

His poetry has been classified as being influenced by Romantic Movement. He has also been regarded as pre-romantic too as his work largely appeared in 18th century. Blake was greatly influenced by American and French Revolutions.
His poetical style can be regarded as original, mystical, prophetic and simple in language. William wished his work to be widely read and understood without compromising on his themes. His style is innovative along with its directness and freshness. “Songs of Innocence” still is the most popular of all of his literary works. His poetry can be easily understood:
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.

Then come home, my children, the Sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise,
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.

These lines are the first verses of the “Nurse’s Song” from “Songs of Innocence”. A reader can not find any complicated ideas or complex rhetoric devices in his poetry. Simple themes are put forth as simply.

Literary Influences:

William Blake was highly influenced by Bible from the very early years. Later he developed interest in more complex study of literature such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost which is a detailed literary work. It too has a biblical topic. More over his influences include Dante’s “Divina Commedia” again a master piece of the world of literature. Another of his influences is Emanuel Swedenborg, who was also regarded as having divine influences.

Acknowledgements

During his life Blake’s poetry was not famous amongst common people. And many of his paintings were also regarded as ‘hideous’. A few people also called him ‘insane’ as he was also friend of ‘mad Shelley’. But yet, he was mentioned in ‘A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland’, published in 1816. S.T Coleridge considered him as ‘man of genius’ and William Wordsworth made several copies of ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience” himself.

Brief Discussion on History of English Literature

What is Literature? The most basic definition of literature is that it is the written records of a people. Such a broad definition includes legal and business records that have survived until today. Even though an accountant’s log book from the Middle Ages may fulfill this very basic definition, most people prefer a narrower definition of literature in which the piece of writing chosen has artistic merit and reflects the values and ideals of the people who wrote it.

Literature came into existence shortly after the creation of civilization and writing systems. Every culture has produced classic works that have stood the test of time. Whether this be the Bible produced by the Ancient Hebrews, the Iliad and the Odyssey of Greece’s Homer, or the plays of England’s Shakespeare, dubbed the bard, literature tells something about a people and it culture.


English Literature, like all other forms of literature, helps a person understand the cultures that produced it and how the language itself has developed over time. Few English speaking people today would understand or recognize the Old English of Beowulf. Modern speakers would have difficulty understanding the original text of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and even Shakespeare’s plays have needed modern language editions. Later authors, such as Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, can be read by modern speakers without the need for such interpretations, but even know the language seems quaint. Terry Pratchett, a modern satirist will likely to be remembered long beyond his death, but Discworld books and their memorable characters are still too new to be considered literature.

English Literature Helps Us Trace the Development of the Language. The language brought by the Heathen invaders Great Britain after the fall of Rome bears little resemblance to the form the language takes to day. The most accurate way to trace the development of the language is through translations of the Bible from the middle Ages to the Present. Although the earliest translations resulted in the execution of the person responsible by the Roman Catholic Church, copies of this holy text still survive. Translations of the Bible produced after the publication of the version that King James commissioned show further development since the time of Shakespeare. More modern usage in Bible translation printed after the King James version show the Modern English has developed, even if the language has been “dumbed down” from the original translation so more people can understand the text.


Good Literature Should Be a Thing of Beauty. The King James Version, despite its many translation mistakes, survived because it shows what the English language is capable of in the hands of skilled writers, as do the plays of William Shakespeare. Tolkien and Dickens are pleasing to the ear when their books are read aloud. While lyrical language is not required to make good literature, and authors such as George Orwell are considered to be literary despite not having the same gifts as many of his predecessors, become literature for another reason – they make a moral point.

Literature Makes a Moral Point. Rather than phrasing it as a moral point, it should be said that good literature has a moral. The former wording may leave the reader thinking that the moral must be religious in nature for a story to be good literature. Many good works of literature criticize prevailing social mores and such authors make an attempt to point out what the feel people should be doing in their texts. This does not mean that the reader has to agree with the author’s point, but that a moral should be present in all good literature.

English Literature Serves as a Cultural Yardstick. Not only does literature allow us to trace the changes to the language since the time of the British invasion by the Angles and Saxons shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire, the course English literature has taken through the centuries allows us to see how the cultures and values of people have changed. The humorless people who first wrote down Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon riddles are a far cry from the culture that produced bawdy tales of Chaucer and the many puns that occur in Shakespeare’s plays. Furthermore, by comparing the works of English authors to other English-speaking authors that other countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, show how their cultures diverged from the small island that many of their ancestors came from.

Literature Takes Us to Other Worlds. Even if the world of the author creates vaguely resembles our own and contains many of the same problems, the author’s world is not the same one in which we live. Escapism may have once been a dirty word to some, but that perception has since changed. Taking the time to get lost in the works of good authors gives us time to think about our own problems, or in some cases, how the problems of the heroes and villains in works of fiction seem so similar to our own. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia may seem nothing like our own, but the trials and triumphs of the hero have served to inspire generations of children around the world and will likely become a successful movie franchise, as have the works of his friend, English author and linguistics professor, J.R.R. Tolkien.

English literature has a long history. Beowulf, and the King Arthur tales may have been written down far after the original German tribes invaded England, but they tell us something about the peoples that produced them. Whether we follow Beowulf’s life, fight for the ideal kingdom of King Arthur, where justice and truth prevail, thrill to the powers of logic employed by Sherlock Holmes, or are terrified by the dystopian futures of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, we learn something about the people who lived during the times when these tales were written from reading their works. It may not be the same details that are most interesting to the archaeologist or historian, but they are the details that show us what people thought about how to live that was important enough to tell us through the written word.