Arts of the United States

Architecture Cinema Cuisine Dance Literature Music Poetry Sculpture Television Theater Visual arts www. ... Americas unmistakable contribution to architecture has been the skyscraper, whose bold, thrusting lines have made it the symbol of capitalist energy. ... Jump to: navigation, search The cuisine of the United States is characterized by the broad diversity of foods, driven by the tendency of the country as a whole to integrate widely divergent ingredients and styles of cooking. ... Closely related to the development of American music in the early 20th century was the emergence of a new, and distinctively American, art form -- modern dance. ... Jump to: navigation, search American Music, the folk, popular, and classical music of the United States—created by American-born or American-trained composers, or originating in American culture, or written primarily for American audiences. ... The poetry of the United States began as a literary art during the colonial era. ... American Sculpture came of age in the 1960s with David Smith providing large formats metal sculptures. ... Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition, mostly borrowed from the performance styles prevalent in Europe. ... Jump to: navigation, search Americas first well-known school of painting—the Hudson River School—appeared in 1820. ...

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The literature of the United States, often referred to as American literature because it could also include writings in the various American colonies before the founding of the United States, refers to written or literary work produced in the area of the United States. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. The poetry of the United States began as a literary art during the colonial era. ... Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition, mostly borrowed from the performance styles prevalent in Europe. ...

Overview

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 makes it considered a separate path and tradition. The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, or literature composed in English by writers who are not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian. ...

Colonial literature

Main article: Colonial American literature

Some of the earliest American literature would be Nicholas Barr consider pamphlets and writing extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. John Smith of Jamestown could be considered the first American author with his works: A True Relation of ... Virginia ... (1608) and The generall 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, John Hammond, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson. Jump to: navigation, search Captain John Smith John Smith (1580-1631) was an English soldier and sailor, now chiefly remembered for his role in establishing the first permanent English settlement in North America, and his brief association with the Native American princess Pocahontas. ... Thomas Samuel Ashe was a U.S. Congressman and judge from North Carolina. ... For the British admiral, see William Penn (admiral). ... George Percy (September 4, ???1588) - 1631 was an English explorer and author. ... There are two John Hammonds of note. ... John Lawson (1674-1711) was an Englishman who became the first Surveyor-General of North Carolina. ...

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 religious 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. John Winthrop was the name of several prominent figures in colonial New England. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Bay Company, for the institution that founded it) was an English settlement on the coast of North America in the 1600s, centered around the present-day city of Boston, which is now in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one... Edward Winslow (1596 - 1655) was an American Pilgrim leader on Mayflower. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall (1882) The Mayflower was the ship which transported the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth, England to North Virginia (in what was later to become the United States of America) in 1620, leaving Plymouth on September 6 and dropping anchor near... Increase Mather, 1688, by John van der Spriett Increase Mather (June 21, 1639 – August 23, 1723) was a Puritan educator and clergyman. ... Jump to: navigation, search Signing of the Mayflower Compact William Bradford (1590 – May 9, 1657) was a leader of the Pilgrim settlers of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and became Governor of the Plymouth Colony. ... Roger Williams (December 21, 1603 – April 1, 1684) was an Anglo-American theologian, a notable proponent of the separation of Church and State, an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans, founder of the City of Providence, Rhode Island and a co-founder of Rhode Island. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Reverend Nathaniel Ward (1578 — October 1652) wrote the first constitution in North America in 1641. ...

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 judgement. Nicholas Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse. Jump to: navigation, search Anne Bradstreet (ca. ... Jump to: navigation, search Edward Taylor (ca. ... Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) was a Puritan poet whose The Day of Doom was a bestseller in early New England. ... Doggerel describes verse considered of little literary value. ...

Other early 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. Alexander Whitaker (1585-1616) was a Christian theologian, who settled in Virginia Colony in 1611, and established two churches near the Jamestown colony. ... Captain John Mason (1586–1635) was born in Norfolk. ... Dr. Benjamin Church Benjamin Church (August 24, 1734 - 1776) was the first Surgeon General of the Continental Army July 27, 1775 _ October 17, 1775. ... Mary Rowlandson (1635-1711) was a colonial American woman, who wrote a vivid description of three months she spent living with Native Americans. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Algonquin (or Algonkin) is an Algonquian language closely related to Ojibwe. ...

Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather represented the Great Awakening, a religious revival in the early 18th century that asserted strict Calivinism. Other Puritan and religious writers include Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, Uriah Oakes, John Wise, and Samuel Willard. Less strict and serious writers included Samuel Sewall, Sara Kemble Knight, and William Byrd. Jonathan Edwards is the name of several individuals: An American theologian in the 18th century; see Jonathan Edwards (theology). ... Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader remembered as one of the founders of the Colony of Connecticut. ... Thomas Shepard (1605-1649) was an American Puritan minister and a significant figure in early colonial New England. ... John Wise (August 1652 — April 8, 1725) was a Congregationalist reverend and political leader in Massachusetts during the American colonial period. ... Samuel Sewall (March 28, 1652 - January 1, 1730). ... Jump to: navigation, search William Byrd William Byrd (1540? – July 4, 1623) was one of the most celebrated English composers in the Renaissance. ...

The revolutionary period also contained political writings, including 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 Almanack 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. Jump to: navigation, search Samuel Adams (September 27, 1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American revolutionary and organizer of the Boston Tea Party. ... Josiah Quincy was the name of three men in Massachusetts history. ... The list of John Dickinsons: John Dickinson (lawyer), (1732 – 1808) , was a conservative Philadelphia lawyer, known for urging reconciliation instead of revolution, for which he was later vilified. ... Joseph Galloway (1731–August 29, 1803) was an American Continental Congress Delegate from Pennsylvania; born at West River, Maryland; moved with his father to Pennsylvania in 1740; received a liberal schooling; studied law; was admitted to the bar and began practice in Philadelphia; member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives... Jump to: navigation, search Benjamin Franklin by Jean-Baptiste Greuze 1777 For the former mayor of Nepean, see Ben Franklin (politician) Dr. Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was an American publisher, journalist, author, philanthropist, abolitionist, public servant, statesman, scientist, librarian, diplomat and inventor. ... Jump to: navigation, search Thomas Paine Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737–June 8, 1809), intellectual, scholar, and idealist, is widely recognized as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. ... Poor Richards Almanac (sometimes Almanack) was a yearly almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of Poor Richard or Richard Saunders for the purpose of this work in the title. ... The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Although it had a torturous publication history after Franklins death, this work has become... Common Sense by Thomas Paine Common Sense was a pamphlet first published on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War by Thomas Paine. ...

During the revolution itself, popular 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 important poems about the war's course. Yankee Doodle is a well-known American song, often sung patriotically today (although originally satirical). ... Jump to: navigation, search Nathan Hale (June 6, 1755–September 22, 1776) was an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. ... John Trumbull, 1756–1843 John Trumbull (June 6, 1756 – November 10, 1843), was a famous American artist from the time of the American Revolutionary War. ... Francis Hopkinson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Jump to: navigation, search Philip Morin Freneau ( January 2, 1752 – December 18, 1832 ) was a United States poet and one of the most important writers/poets of The Age of Reason. He is often considered the first American poet, in a popular sense. ...

Early U.S. literature

In the post-war period, The Federalist essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay represent an important and historical discussion of government organization and republican values. Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, influence on the Consitution, autobiography, and mass of letters also make him considered often an early and talented American writer. Fisher Ames, James Otis, and Patrick Henry are also valued for their political writings and orations. Title page of an early Federalist compilation. ... Jump to: navigation, search A portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, 1792. ... Jump to: navigation, search James Madison (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was the fourth (1809–1817) President of the United States. ... John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Oil painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1794 John Jay (December 12, 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat and jurist. ... Jump to: navigation, search Thomas Jefferson (April 13 (April 2 O.S.), 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the third (1801–1809) President of the United States, second (1797–1801) Vice President, first (1789–1795) United States Secretary of State, and an American statesman, ambassador to France, political philosopher, revolutionary, agriculturalist... Jump to: navigation, search A declaration of independence is a proclamation of the independence of a newly formed or reformed independent state, usually from a part or the whole of the territory of another nation, or a document containing such a declaration. ... Jump to: navigation, search Fisher Ames Fisher Ames (9 April 1758 - 4 July 1808) was a Representative of the United States Congress from Massachusetts. ... Jump to: navigation, search James Otis James Otis (February 5, 1725 – May 23, 1783) was a lawyer in colonial Massachusetts who was an early advocate of the political views that led to the American Revolution. ... Jump to: navigation, search Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was a prominent figure in the American Revolution, known and remembered primarily for his stirring oratory. ...

The first American novel is sometimes considered to be William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy (1789). Much of the early literature of the new nation struggled to find a uniquely American voice. European forms and styles were often transferred to new locales and critics often saw them as inferior. For example, Wieland and other novels by Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) are often seen as imitations of the Gothic novels then being written in England. William Hill Brown, born November 1756, Boston, wrote what is possibly the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy(1789). ... World map showing Europe (geographically) When considered a continent, Europe is the worlds second-smallest continent in terms of area, with an area of 10,600,000 km² (4,140,625 square miles), making it larger than Australia only. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... DeFoes Robinson Crusoe, Newspaper edition published in 1719 A novel (from French nouvelle, new) is an extended fictional narrative in prose. ... Charles Brockden Brown (January 17, 1771 - February 22, 1810) was an American novelist and probably the first American to become a professional writer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1771 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1810 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Strawberry Hill, an English villa in the Gothic revival style, built by seminal Gothic writer Horace Walpole The gothic novel is an English literary genre, which can be said to have been born with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. ... Jump to: navigation, search Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population - Total (mid-2004) - Density Ranked 1st UK...

Unique American style

With the War of 1812 and an increasingly desire to produce uniquely American work, a number of key new literary figures appeared, 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 (although this is 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 1835, 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 were popular both in the new country and abroad. Jump to: navigation, search The War of 1812 was a conflict fought on land in North America and at sea around the world between the United States and United Kingdom from 1812 to 1815. ... Jump to: navigation, search Washington Irving Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. ... William Cullen Bryant William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 - June 12, 1878) was an American Romantic poet and journalist. ... Jump to: navigation, search Cooper portrait by John Wesley Jarvis, 1822 James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. ... Jump to: navigation, search This daguerreotype of Poe was taken less than a year before his death at the age of 40. ... 1835 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Categories: Edgar Allan Poe | Short stories | Literature stubs ... The Pit and the Pendulum is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story in the horror genre written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839, and included in a collection of his stories entitled Tales of the Grotesque and of the Arabesque, published the same year. ... As well as being the origins for the popular Horror Culture magazine Rue Morgue Magazine The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a short story from 1841 by Edgar Allan Poe. ... Mystery fiction is a distinct subgenre of detective fiction that entails the occurrence of an unknown event which requires the protagonist to make known (or solve). ... Jump to: navigation, search Fantasy is a genre of art, literature, film, television, and music that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of either plot, theme, setting, or all three. ... The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the hero Natty Bumppo, otherwise known as Leatherstocking, Pathfinder, Deerslayer, or Hawkeye. ... The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the hero Natty Bumppo, otherwise known as Leatherstocking, Pathfinder, Deerslayer, or Hawkeye. ...

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, Joseph G. Baldwin, and George Washington Harris writing about the American frontier. Jump to: navigation, search While the states marked in red show the core of New England, the regions cultural influence may cover a greater or lesser area than shown. ... Jump to: navigation, search Davy Crockett David Crockett (David de Crocketagne August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was an 19th century American folk-hero usually referred to as Davy Crockett. ... Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870) was an American humorist. ...

The New English Brahmins were a group of writer connected to Harvard University and its seat in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The core included James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jump to: navigation, search Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... Jump to: navigation, search Cambridge City Hall Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. ... This article needs to be wikified. ... Jump to: navigation, search Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet who wrote many poems that are still famous today, including The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Reveres Ride and Evangeline. ... Oliver Wendell Holmes was the name of two prominent men, father and son: 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. 1836 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a famous American essayist and one of Americas most influential thinkers and writers. ... 1803 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... 1882 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Transcendentalism was the name of a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that advocates that there is an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical and empirical and is only realized through a knowledgeable intuitive awareness that is conditional upon the individual. ...

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 transcendalist writers influenced by Transcendentalism were Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Jones Very. Jump to: navigation, search Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, pacifist, tax resister and philosopher who is famous for Walden (available at wikisource) on simple living amongst nature and Civil Disobedience (available at wikisource) on... 1817 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1862 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Thoreaus Cove, Concord, Mass. ... Amos Bronson Alcott (November 29, 1799–March 4, 1888) was an American teacher and writer. ... Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 - June 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and womens rights activist. ... Jump to: navigation, search George Ripley (1802-July 4, 1880) was an American social reformer, Unitarian, and Transcendentalist. ... Jump to: navigation, search Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876) was a New England intellectual and activist, preacher and labor organizer. ... Jones Very (1813 - 1880) was an essayist and poet, born at Salem, Mass. ...

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. Jump to: navigation, search This poster depicting the horrific conditions on slave ships was influential in mobilizing public opinion against slavery in the United Kingdom and the United States. ... Jump to: navigation, search William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December 12, 1805, Newburyport, Massachusetts - May 24, 1879, New York City) was a United States abolitionist and reformer. ... This article is about the abolitionist newspaper. ... John Greenleaf Whittier, November 25, 1885. ... Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, born Harriet Elizabeth Beecher (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an abolitionist, and writer of more than 10 books, the most famous being Uncle Toms Cabin which describes life in slavery, and which was first published in serial form from 1851... Jump to: navigation, search Uncle Toms Cabin is a novel by American abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe which treats slavery as a central theme. ...

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. 1837 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. ... 1804 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1864 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Twice-Told Tales was a short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne first published in 1837. ... This article is about the region in the United States of America. ... Jump to: navigation, search Salem Custom House The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is a classic American prose romance written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is generally considered to be his masterpiece. ...

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 novels. Inspired by Hawthorne's example, Melville went on to write novels rich in 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. See also: 15th century in literature, other events of the 16th century, 17th century in literature, list of years in literature. ... See also: 16th century in literature, other events of the 17th century, 1700 in literature, list of years in literature. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that Modernist project be merged into this article or section. ... Jump to: navigation, search Structuralism is a general approach in various academic disciplines that seeks to explore the inter-relationships between some fundamental elements, upon which higher mental, linguistic, social, cultural etc structures are built, through which then meaning is produced within a particular person, system, culture. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ... Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand the Western world as a network of structures, as in structuralism, but in which such structures are ordered primarily by local, shifting differences (as in deconstruction) rather than grand binary oppositions and... Jump to: navigation, search This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... -1... Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature found mostly online, characterized by non-linearity and reader interaction. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This page indexes the individual year in literature pages. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... How to describe the literature of a nation is often debatable, and is also in natural flux throughout the nations history, so this beginners guide to Canadian literature will offer links to as many actual Canadian authors as possible so the reader can weigh what is being said... Mexican literature plays an important role in Mexican culture. ... Australian literature began soon after the establishment of the country by Europeans. ... New Zealand claims as its own many writers, even those immigrants born overseas or those emigrants who have gone into exile. ... Jump to: navigation, search Tamil literature is literature in the Tamil language which most prominently includes the contributions of the Tamil country (or Tamizhagam) history, a large part of which constitutes the modern state of Tamil Nadu in India and some parts of Kerala, Karnataka and Andra pradesh. ... Jump to: navigation, search Literature in Hindi, the language spoken by the majority of people in India. ... Urdu literature has a long and colorful history that is inextricably tied to the development of that very language, Urdu, in which it is written. ... Indian writing in English (IWE) refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose mother tongue is usually one of the numerous languages of India. ... This article is about the Bengali language. ... Literature in Marathi. ... Literature written in Malayalam language. ... Japanese literature spans a period of almost two millennia of writing. ... Jump to: navigation, search Vietnamese literature is literature created by Vietnamese-speaking people. ... South Africa has a diverse literary history. ... Jump to: navigation, search // Western Theatre History Ancient Greek theatre Main article: Ancient Greek theatre The earliest days of western theater remain obscure, but the oldest surviving plays come from ancient Greece. ... This article covers the history of the literary genre of science fiction. ... Jump to: navigation, search The history of ideas is a field of research in history and in related fields dealing with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. ... Intellectual history means either: the history of intellectuals, or: the history of the people who create, discuss, write about and in other ways propagate ideas. ... Jump to: navigation, search Herman Melville Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, essayist, and poet. ... 1819 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1891 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Moby-Dick book cover Moby-Dick – the hyphen in the title is present in the original edition – is a novel by Herman Melville. ... Billy Budd is a short novel finished around 1891 by Herman Melville. ...

American lyric

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 -- and manages not to sound like a crass egotist. 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...." Jump to: navigation, search Walt Whitman Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist born on Long Island, New York. ... 1819 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1892 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search The American Civil War (1861–1865) was fought in North America within the United States of America, between twenty-three mostly northern states of the Union and the Confederate States of America, a coalition of eleven southern states that declared their independence and claimed the right... 1861 is a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1865 is a common year starting on Sunday. ... Walt Whitman, age 37, frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St. ... Song of Myself is a poem by Walt Whitman that was included in his book of poems Leaves of Grass. ...

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." D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was one of the most important, certainly one of the most controversial, English writers of the 20th century, who wrote novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, and letters. ...

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), on the other hand, lived the sheltered life of a genteel unmarried woman in small-town 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. Jump to: navigation, search A young Emily Dickinson, sometime around 1846-1847, for a long time the only known photograph of her. ... 1830 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1886 is a common year starting on Friday (click on link to calendar) // Events January 18 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. ... Jump to: navigation, search State nickname: Bay State Other U.S. States Capital Boston Largest city Boston Governor Mitt Romney (R) Senators Edward Kennedy (D) John Kerry (D) Official language(s) English Area 27,360 km² (44th)  - Land 20,317 km²  - Water 7,043 km² (25. ...

Many of her poems dwell on death, often with a mischievous twist. "Because I could not stop for Death," one 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?"

Realism, Twain, and James

Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel 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 funny -- 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). Jump to: navigation, search Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a famous and popular American humorist, novelist, writer and lecturer. ... Jump to: navigation, search State nickname: The Show Me State Other U.S. States Capital Jefferson City Largest city Kansas City (largest metropolitan area is Saint Louis) Governor Matt Blunt (R) Senators Kit Bond (R) Jim Talent (R) Official language(s) English Area 69,709 mi²; 180,693 km² (21st... Life on the Mississippi cover Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain detailing his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. ... Jump to: navigation, search Huckleberry Finn and Jim Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is commonly accounted as one of the first Great American Novels. ... George Washington Cable (12 October 1844 - 31 January 1925) was a novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana. ... Thomas Nelson Page (b. ... Jump to: navigation, search Joel Chandler Harris (December 8, 1848 - July 3, 1908) was an American journalist from Georgia, best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories: Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings (1881), Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and Uncle Remus and... Mary Noailles Murfree (January 24, 1850 - July 31, 1922) was an American fiction writer of novels and short stories who wrote under the pen name Charles Egbert Craddock. Mary Noailles Murfree was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, January 24, 1850, in the house later celebrated in her novel, Where the Battle... Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909) was an American author whose works were set in her native New England. ... Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (October 31, 1852 – March 13, 1930) was a prominent female American writer of the Victorian era known for her short stories and novels of life in New England villages. ... Jump to: navigation, search Henry Cuyler Bunner (3 August 1855 - 11 May 1896) was an American novelist and poet born in Oswego, New York. ... Author O. Henry O. Henry was the pen name of American writer William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), whose clever use of twist endings in his stories popularized the term O. Henry Ending. ...

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. William Dean Howells (March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920) was an American realist author. ... Jump to: navigation, search Realism is commonly defined as a concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary. ... The Atlantic Monthly (also known as The Atlantic) is an American literary/cultural magazine that was founded in November 1857. ...

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. This article is about the writer; for the politician who was almost his contemporary see Henry James, 1st Baron James of Hereford. ... 1843 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1916 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January-February January 1 -The first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... New York City, officially named the City of New York, is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. ... Jump to: navigation, search Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population - Total (mid-2004) - Density Ranked 1st UK... Daisy Miller is a 1878 novella by Henry James. ... The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. ...

Turn of the century

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. Naturalism refers to a number of different topics: Philosophical naturalism: the view that nothing exists but the world — that there are no supernatural entities. ... Edith Wharton Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1862 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1937 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Categories: US geography stubs ... Jump to: navigation, search The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by Edith Wharton. ... Jump to: navigation, search Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an United States|American writer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1871 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1900 is a common year starting on Monday. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a short novel (or a long short story) by Stephen Crane about the meaning of courage, as it is discovered by Henry Fleming, a recruit in the Civil War. ... Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser about a young country girl who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream by embarking on a life of sin rather than by hard work and perseverance. ... Jump to: navigation, search Theodore Dreiser photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933 Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American naturalist author known for dealing with the gritty reality of life. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1871 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Chicago, colloquially known as the Second City and the Windy City, is the third-largest city in population in the United States, following New York City and Los Angeles, and the largest inland city in the country. ... Hamlin Hannibal Garland (born September 14, 1860 in West Salem, Wisconsin; died March 4, 1940 in Hollywood, California) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. ... Benjamin Franklin Norris (March 5, 1870 - October 25, 1902) was an American novelist during the Progressive Era, the United States first important naturalist writer. ...

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 famously in 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 labelled the The Muckrakers. Henry Adams' literate autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams also depicted a stinging description of the education system and modern life. Edward Bellamy (March 26, 1850–May 22, 1898) was an American author, most famous for his utopian novel set in the year 2000, Looking Backward, published in 1888. ... Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, first published in 1888. ... Jump to: navigation, search Upton Beall Sinclair (September 20, 1878 - November 25, 1968) was a prolific (90 books) American author who wrote in many genres, often advocating Socialist views, and achieved considerable popularity in the first half of the twentieth century. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Jungle (1906) is the most famous novel by prolific U.S. author Upton Sinclair. ... Jump to: navigation, search The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ... Edwin Markham See also E. A. Markham, the poet born in Montserrat Charles Edwin Anson Markham (April 23, 1852 - March 7, 1940) was an American poet. ... William Vaughn Moody (1869 - 1910) was a U.S. dramatist and poet. ... Jump to: navigation, search Ida Tarbell Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857–January 6, 1944) was an American author and journalist, known as one of the leading muckrakers. ... Lincoln Steffens Joseph Lincoln Steffens (April 6, 1866–August 9, 1936), American journalist, was one of the most famous and influential practitioners of the journalistic style called muckraking. ... Jump to: navigation, search McClures Magazine (cover, Jan, 1901) published many early muckraker articles. ... Jump to: navigation, search Henry Adams Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian, journalist and novelist. ... The Education of Henry Adams is simultaneously an insightful autobiography written in the third person and a damning critique of modern educational theory and practice. ...

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 labelled a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as the "Lost Generation". 1909 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 - July 27, 1946) was an American writer, poet, feminist, playwright and catalyst in the development of modern art and literature, who spent most of her life in France. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1874 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Jump to: navigation, search The term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein to refer to a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. ...

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. Jump to: navigation, search Ezra Pound in 1913. ... 1885 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... Jump to: navigation, search State nickname: Gem State Other U.S. States Capital Boise Largest city Boise Governor Dirk Kempthorne (R) Senators Larry Craig (R) Mike Crapo (R) Official language(s) none Area 216,632 km² (14th)  - Land 214,499 km²  - Water 2,133 km² (0. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1888 is a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1999-The Bomb 1965 was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar). ... T. S. Eliot (by E. O. Hoppe, 1919) The Waste Land is a highly influential 433-line poem by T. S. Eliot. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, produced the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency. The work in this case generally refers to an authors work as a whole...

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. 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. Jump to: navigation, search F.Scott Fitzgerald, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1937 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an Irish-American Jazz Age novelist and short story writer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1896 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search The cover of the Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition, 1995. ... Sinclair Lewis Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885–January 10, 1951) was an American novelist and playwright. ... Sherwood Anderson, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933 Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American writer, mainly of short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. ... John Roderigo Dos Passos, born January 14, 1896, in Chicago, Illinois, United States - died September 28, 1970, in Baltimore, Maryland, was a novelist and artist. ... The U.S.A. Trilogy is the major work of American writer John Dos Passos. ...

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) saw violence and death first-hand as an ambulance driver in World War I, and the senseless 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 courage 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. Jump to: navigation, search Ernest Hemingway, 1950 Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist and short story writer whose works, drawn from his wide range of experiences in World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, are characterized by terse minimalism... Jump to: navigation, search 1899 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1961 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machine guns, and poison gas World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, the War... Jump to: navigation, search The Sun Also Rises is the first significant novel by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1926, following a group of expatriate Americans in Europe during the 1920s. ... A Farewell to Arms book cover A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway in 1929. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1954(MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, produced the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency. The work in this case generally refers to an authors work as a whole...

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. Jump to: navigation, search William Faulkner, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1954 William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist from Mississippi. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1897 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by American author William Faulkner as a setting for many of his novels. ... Jump to: navigation, search State nickname: Magnolia State Other U.S. States Capital Jackson Largest city Jackson Governor Haley Barbour (R) Senators Thad Cochran (R) Trent Lott (R) Official languages English Area 125,546 km² (32nd)  - Land 121,606 km²  - Water 3,940 km² (3%) Population (2000)  - Population 2,697... In psychology and philosophy stream of consciousness, introduced by William James, is the set of constantly changing inner thoughts and sensations which an individual has while conscious, used as a synonym for stream of thought. ... The Deep South Red states show the core of the Deep South. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Sound and the Fury is a well-known novel written by American author William Faulkner. ... Jump to: navigation, search Absalom, Absalom! is a novel by William Faulkner, published in 1936 and sometimes characterized as Southern Gothic. ... Go Down, Moses is an episodic novel, by William Faulkner, consisting of a series of short stories. ...

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 favour 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; he was probably the most social aware writer of his period. Grapes of Wrath, considered his masterpiece, is a strong, social-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 of the proliterian school, were Nathanael West, Fielding Burke, Jack Conroy, Tom Kromer, Robert Cantwell, Albert Halper, and Edward Anderson. Jump to: navigation, search The examples and perspective in this article do not represent a worldwide view. ... Jump to: navigation, search John Steinbeck John dkjfklsdErnst Steinbeck III (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was one of the most famous American writers of the 20th century. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1902 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... Salinas is the county seat of Monterey County, California. ... The Grapes of Wrath book cover The Grapes of Wrath is a work of fiction published by John Steinbeck in 1939, in which descriptive, narrative, and philosophical passages succeed one another. ... Jump to: navigation, search State nickname: The Golden State Other U.S. States Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Senators Dianne Feinstein (D) Barbara Boxer (D) Official language(s) English Area 410,000 km² (3rd)  - Land 404,298 km²  - Water 20,047 km² (4. ... Categories: Literature stubs | 1935 books | Novels | Books starting with T | John Steinbeck ... Jump to: navigation, search Wikibooks has more about this subject: Of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men book cover Of Mice and Men is a novella by John Steinbeck, first published in 1937, which tells the tragic story of George and Lennie, two displaced Anglo migrant farm workers during... Cannery Row is the waterfront street in the New Monterey section of Monterey, California (36. ... East of Eden book cover East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, produced the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency. The work in this case generally refers to an authors work as a whole... Nathanael West (October 17, 1903 - December 22, 1940) was the pen name of Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein. ... Robert Cantwell (January 31, 1908 — December 8, 1978) was a novelist and critic. ...

Theater

In addition to fiction, the 1920s and 1930s were a rich period for drama. There had not been an important American dramatist until Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) began to write his plays. The 1936 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, O'Neill drew upon classical mythology, the Bible, and the new science of psychology to explore inner life. He wrote frankly about sex and family quarrels, but his preoccupation was with the individual's search for identity. One of his greatest works is Long Day's Journey Into Night, a harrowing drama, small in scale but large in theme, based largely on his own family. Jump to: navigation, search Eugene ONeill Eugene Gladstone ONeill (New York City, October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American playwright. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1888 is a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1953 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1936 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, produced the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency. The work in this case generally refers to an authors work as a whole... Long Days Journey into Night is a dramatic play in four acts by Eugene ONeill, generally considered to be his masterwork. ...

Another strikingly original American playwright was Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), who expressed his southern heritage in poetic yet sensational plays, usually about a sensitive woman trapped in a brutish environment. Several of his plays have been made into films, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Other playwrights of the period were Maxwell Anderson, Marc Connelly, Elmer Rice, Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets, Thornton Wilder, and William Saroyan. Jump to: navigation, search Thomas Lanier Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), better known by the pen name Tennessee Williams, was a noted playwright. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1911 was a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search A Streetcar Named Desire is a play by Tennessee Williams describing a culture clash between Blanche DuBois—a pretentious, fading relic of the Old South—and Stanley Kowalski, a rising member of the industrial, inner-city immigrant class. ... Jump to: navigation, search Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. ... (James) Maxwell Anderson (15 December 1888 - 28 February 1959) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, author, poet, reporter and lyricist, and a founding member of The Playwrights Company (which included, at various times, Maxwell Anderson, S.N. Behrman, Elmer Rice, Robert E. Sherwood, Sidney Howard, Roger L. Stevens, John F... Marc Connelly photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1937 Marcus Cook Connelly (December 13, 1890 - December 21, 1980) was a member of the Algonquin roundtable and composed several musicals with playwright George S. Kaufman: 1921 Dulcy 1922 Merton of the Movies 1925 Beggar on Horseback Categories: 1890 births | 1980 deaths ... Elmer Rice was a early 20th century playwright. ... Jump to: navigation, search Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, romantically involved for thirty years with mystery writer Dashiell Hammett. ... Clifford Odets photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1937 Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 - August 18, 1963) was an American socialist playwright, screenwriter, and social protester. ... Jump to: navigation, search Thornton Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American novelist and playwright. ... Jump to: navigation, search William Saroyan (August 31, 1908 - May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American author who wrote many plays and short stories about growing up impoverished as the son of Armenian immigrants. ...

Post-World War II

There were a number of major American war novels written in the wake of World War II. Some of the most well known included Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Irwin Shaw, James Jones, and later Joseph Heller (Catch-22) and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five). Jump to: navigation, search World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb. ... Jump to: navigation, search Norman Mailer, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948 Norman Kingsley Mailer (born January 31, 1923) is an American writer and innovator of the nonfictional novel. ... The Naked and the Dead is a 1948 novel, the first written by Norman Mailer. ... Irwin Shaw (né Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff, February 27, 1913 - May 16, 1984) was an American Jewish playwright, screen writer and author. ... Notable people by the name of James Jones: James Jones, 20th century American novelist James Warren Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple religious movement during its infamous mass suicide James Earl Jones, actor James Jones, former US Ambassador to Mexico James L. Jones, American General and Supreme Allied... Joseph Heller in 1961 Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 - December 12, 1999) was an American satirist best remembered for writing the satiric World War II classic Catch-22. ... Catch 22 can refer to: A book by Joseph Heller, or the movie based on the book; see Catch-22. ... Kurt Vonnegut, Junior (born November 11, 1922) is an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. ... Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Childrens Crusade: A Duty Dance With Death is a 1969 novel by best-selling author Kurt Vonnegut. ...

In the 1950s the West Coast spawned a literary movement, the poetry and fiction of the "Beat Generation," a name that referred simultaneously to the rhythm of jazz music, to a sense that post-war society was worn out, and to an interest in new forms of experience through drugs, alcohol, and Eastern mysticism. Poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) set the tone of social protest and visionary ecstasy in Howl, a Whitmanesque work that begins with this powerful line: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...." Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) celebrated the Beats' carefree, hedonistic life-style in his episodic novel On the Road. Jump to: navigation, search The term beat generation was introduced by Jack Kerouac in approximately 1948 to describe his social circle to the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early novel about the beat generation, titled Go, in 1952, along with a manifesto of sorts in the New York... Jump to: navigation, search Allen Ginsberg, far left, at Airport Frankfurt, Germany Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: ) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American Beat poet born in Paterson, New Jersey. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1926 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1997 (MCMXCVII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Howl and Other Poems was published in the fall of 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books Howl is a poem by Allen Ginsberg that was first performed in 1955 in the Six Gallery in San Francisco. ... Jump to: navigation, search Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and part of the Beat Generation. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1922 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... Jump to: navigation, search On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Viking Press in 1957. ...

Post-Postmodernism and Other Recent Movements

Since 1970, rising along with a literary trend in literature focusing on the minorities, has been a new semi-populist literary trend which has taken hints in terms of some approaches of stylization with postmodernism but that is much more accessible. Authors of this vein include John Irving and T.C. Boyle. Post-Postmodernism, a rather heavy title for an ongoing movement that started in the 1990s, includes younger writers like Brett Easton Ellis, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Sedaris, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mark Haddon, Audrey Niffenegger, and Yann Martel. These authors typically employ a mix of soulful plots with some ideaological context, stylistic maximalism on top of the substance allowing the substance to be "turned and pinched" many ways (including an almost endless array of storyline-bending and repositioning effects), an almost pop-culture level of enhanced imagery and scene structure influenced by film and television, and a symbolism that includes images from contemporary American culture. This movement can also be called "maximalism", with its blowing melodrama, use of literary effects, and scale of cultural reference. As well, commentary on the literary process and modes of thought and storytelling and an ambiguous and very close relation between reality and fiction are often features of post-postmodernism. Many critics criticize post-postmodernism for its use of style over true substance in some worse cases, though it can often strike a fine accord between these. Jump to: navigation, search John Winslow Irving (born March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (for The Cider House Rules, based on his novel of the same name). ... T. Coraghessan Boyle (T.C. Boyle, born Thomas John Boyle on December 2, 1948) is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. ... Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, American author. ... Jump to: navigation, search Michael Chabon (born 1963) is a modern American author. ... Jump to: navigation, search Jonathan Safran Foer (born 1977) is a Jewish-American writer who lives in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, novelist Nicole Krauss, and their dog, George. ... Jump to: navigation, search David Sedaris (born December 26, 1956) is an American essayist and radio contributor. ... Jump to: navigation, search Jeffrey Eugenides (b. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mark Haddon (born 1962) is a novelist, who was educated at Uppingham School and Merton College, Oxford. ... Audrey Niffenegger is a writer and artist. ... Yann Martel (born June 25, 1963) is a Canadian author. ...

Modern humorist literature

From Irving and Hawthorne to the present day, the short story has been a favorite American form. One of its 20th-century masters was John Cheever (1912-1982), who brought yet another facet of American life into the realm of literature: the affluent suburbs that have grown up around most major cities. Cheever was long associated with The New Yorker, a magazine noted for its wit and sophistication. John Updike also continued Cheever's tradition and is best known for his Rabbit series. John Cheever (May 27, 1912–June 18, 1982) was a American novelist and short story writer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1912 was a leap year starting on Monday. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search The New Yorkers first cover, which is reprinted most years on the magazines anniversary. ... Jump to: navigation, search John Updike John Hoyer Updike (born March 18, 1932) is an American novelist, poet, and short story writer born in Reading, Pennsylvania. ...

Although trend-spotting in literature that is still being written can be dangerous, the recent emergence of fiction by members of minority groups has been striking. Here are only a few examples.

Southern literature

Main article: Southern literature

Faulkner was part of a southern literary renaissance that also included such figures as Truman Capote (1924-1984) and Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). Although Capote wrote short stories and novels, fiction and nonfiction, his masterpiece was In Cold Blood, a factual account of a multiple murder and its aftermath, which fused dogged reporting with a novelist's penetrating psychology and crystalline prose. Other practitioners of the "nonfiction novel" have included Norman Mailer (1923- ), who wrote about an antiwar march on The Pentagon in Armies of the Night, and Tom Wolfe (1931- ), who wrote about American astronauts in The Right Stuff. Other writers steeped in the Southern tradition include John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) and Tom Robbins (1936- ). Jump to: navigation, search Southern literature is defined as literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region. ... Southern literature is defined as literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region. ... Jump to: navigation, search Truman Capote photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948 Truman Capote (September 30, 1924–August 25, 1984) was an American writer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1924 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search This page is about the year 1984. ... Mary Flannery OConnor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American author. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1925 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences, by Truman Capote, details the 1959 murders of Herb Clutter, a wealthy farmer from Holcomb, Kansas; his wife, Bonnie; his sixteen-year-old daughter, Nancy; and his fifteen-year-old son, Kenyon, and... Jump to: navigation, search Norman Mailer, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948 Norman Kingsley Mailer (born January 31, 1923) is an American writer and innovator of the nonfictional novel. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1923 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search A pre-9/11 view of The Pentagon, looking east with the Potomac River and Washington Monument in the distance. ... Armies of the Night book cover Armies of the Night is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning non-fiction novel written by Norman Mailer and sub-titled History as a Novel/The Novel as History The book deals ostensibly with the March 1967 anti-Vietnam War March on... Jump to: navigation, search Tom Wolfe (born March 2, 1931) is an American author and journalist. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1931 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... The Right Stuff is both a 1979 book by Tom Wolfe, and a 1983 film adapted from the book. ... John Kennedy Toole (December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist, from New Orleans, Louisiana, best known for his novel A Confederacy of Dunces. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1937 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... Tom Robbins photo Lawrence Gerald, LaConner,WA.1985 Thomas Eugene Robbins (born July 22, 1936) is an American author, born in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1936 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Flannery O'Connor was a Catholic, and thus an outsider in the heavily Protestant South in which she grew up. Her characters are Protestant fundamentalists obsessed with both God and Satan. She is best known for her tragicomic short stories. The U.S. Southern states or the South, also known colloquially as Dixie, constitute a distinctive region covering a large portion of the United States, with its own unique heritage, historical perspective, customs, musical styles, and cuisine. ... Jump to: navigation, search The term God is capitalized in the English language as a proper noun when used to refer to a specific monotheistic concept of a supernatural Supreme Being in accordance with Christianity. ... Jump to: navigation, search Gustave Dores depiction of Satan from John Miltons Paradise Lost Satan (שָׂטָן Standard Hebrew Satan, Latin Sátanas, Tiberian Hebrew Śāṭān; Aramaic שִׂטְנָא Śiṭnâ: both words mean Adversary; accuser) is an angel, demon, or minor god in many religions. ... This article is in need of attention. ...

Jewish writers

Main article: Jewish American literature

The United States has had a community and tradition of writing by Jewish immigrants and their descendants for a long time, although many writers have objected to being reduced to "Jewish" writers alone. Key writers with Jewish origins are Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Philip Roth, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... Bellow as depicted in his Nobel diploma. ... Jump to: navigation, search Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American writer born in Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish family. ... Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 - ) is an American short story writer, poet, and political activist whose work has won a number of awards. ... Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933) is a Jewish-American novelist who is best known for his sexually-explicit comedic novel Portnoys Complaint (1969) and for his late-90s trilogy comprising the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000). ... Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער or יצחק בת־שבֿעס זינגער) (November 21, 1902 or July 14, 1904 - July 24, 1991) was a Nobel Prize-winning Jewish writer of both short stories and novels. ...

African American literature

Main article: African American literature

African American literature is literature written by, about, and sometimes specifically for African-Americans. The genre began during the 18th and 19th centuries with writers such as poet Phillis Wheatley and orator Frederick Douglass. Among the themes and issues explored in African American literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and equality. The Color Purple by Alice Walker African American literature is literature written by, about, and sometimes specifically for African Americans. ... Open Directory Project: Literature World Literature Electronic Text Archives Magazines and E-zines Online Writing Writers Resources Libraries, Digital Cataloguing, Metadata Distance Learning Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Classicism in Literature The Universal Library, by Carnegie Mellon University Project Gutenberg Online Library Abacci - Project Gutenberg texts matched with Amazon... Jump to: navigation, search An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black), is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. ... Jump to: navigation, search A genre is a division of a particular form of art according to criteria particular to that form. ... Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley (1753 - December 5, 1784), also spelled Phylis Wheatley, was the first prominent African American author. ... Jump to: navigation, search Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Jump to: navigation, search A black man drinks out of a water fountain designated for black people in 1939 at a streetcar terminal. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Buxton Memorial Fountain, celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, London. ... Equality is a social state of affairs in which certain different people have the same status in a certain respect. ...

Before the American Civil War, African American literature primarily focused on the issue of slavery, as indicated by the popular subgenre of slave narratives. At the turn of the 20th century, books by authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington debated whether to confront or appease racist attitudes in the United States. Jump to: navigation, search The American Civil War (1861–1865) was fought in North America within the United States of America, between twenty-three mostly northern states of the Union and the Confederate States of America, a coalition of eleven southern states that declared their independence and claimed the right... Jump to: navigation, search The Buxton Memorial Fountain, celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, London. ... The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the experience of enslaved Africans in the New World. ... William Edward Burghardt DuBois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an African-American civil rights leader and scholar. ... Jump to: navigation, search Booker T. Washington Booker Taliferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 15, 1915) was an African American educator and author. ... An African-American drinks out of a water fountain marked for colored in 1939 at a street car terminal in Oklahoma City. ...

African American literature saw a surge during the 1920s with the rise of an artistic Black community in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The period called the Harlem Renaissance produced such gifted poets as Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Countee Cullen (1903-1946), and Claude McKay (1889-1948). The novelist Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960) combined a gift for storytelling with the study of anthropology to write vivid stories from the African-American oral tradition. Through such books as the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God — about the life and marriages of a light-skinned African-American woman — Hurston influenced a later generation of black women novelists. This article is about the Harlem neighborhood in New York City. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African-American social thought and culture based in the African-American community forming in Harlem in New York City (USA). ... Jump to: navigation, search Langston Hughes, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1936 Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, and newspaper columnist. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1902 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1967 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Categories: People stubs | 1903 births | 1946 deaths ... Jump to: navigation, search 1903 has the latest occurring solstices and equinoxes for 400 years, because the Gregorian calendar hasnt had a leap year for seven years or a century leap year since 1600. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Claude McKay. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1889 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891–January 28, 1960) was an African-American folklorist and author. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1903 has the latest occurring solstices and equinoxes for 400 years, because the Gregorian calendar hasnt had a leap year for seven years or a century leap year since 1600. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1960 was a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Their Eyes Were Watching God, (1937), set in the Southern states of the US in the late 19th century, is perhaps Zora Neale Hurstons most well-known novel, and is considered by many to be a quasi-autobiographical novel. ...

After World War II, a new receptivity to diverse voices brought black writers into the mainstream of American literature. James Baldwin (1924-1987) expressed his disdain for racism and his celebration of sexuality in Giovanni's Room. In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) linked the plight of African Americans, whose race can render them all but invisible to the majority white culture, with the larger theme of the human search for identity in the modern world. Jump to: navigation, search World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb. ... James Baldwin, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1955 James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987) was an African-American novelist and essayist, probably best known for his novel Go Tell it on the Mountain. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1924 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Giovannis Room is a novel by James Baldwin about a gay relationship. ... Invisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison. ... Ralph Ellison (March 1, 1914 – April 16, 1994) was an African American scholar and writer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...

Today, African American literature has become accepted as an integral part of American literature, with books in the genre, such as Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley and The Color Purple by Alice Walker, achieving both best-selling and award-winning status. In addition, African American authors such as Toni Morrison are ranked among the top writers in the United States. The literature of the United States may be considered as belonging to English literature or as a distinct body of literature. ... Categories: Literature stubs | 1976 books | American novels | Books starting with S ... Jump to: navigation, search Alex Haley Alexander Palmer Haley (August 11, 1921 - February 10, 1992) was an African American writer (though he was also proud of his Irish and Cherokee ancestry). ... This article is about the novel. ... Jump to: navigation, search Alice Walker Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an African American author and feminist whose most famous novel, The Color Purple, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award. ... Toni Morrison (born February 18, 1931) is one of the most prominent authors in world literature, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. ...

Other ethnic, minority, and immigrant literatures

See also: Gay literature, Native American literature, Hispanic-American literature, Asian-American literature

Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ) uses colloquial language and traditional stories to fashion haunting, lyrical poems such as In Cold Storm Light. Amy Tan (1952- ), of Chinese descent, has described her parents' early struggles in California in The Joy Luck Club. Oscar Hijuelos (1951- ), a writer with roots in Cuba, won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. In a series of novels beginning with A Boy's Own Story, Edmund White (1940- ) has captured the anguish and comedy of growing up gay in America. Jump to: navigation, search Native Americans is a term which has several different common meanings and scope, according to regional use and context. ... Leslie Marmon Silko (born March 5, 1948) is a Native American writer of Pueblo Laguna, Mexican, and white descent. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Amy Tan (Chinese: 譚恩美; pinyin: Tán Ä’nmÄ›i) (born February 19, 1952) is a Chinese American author. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1952 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search State nickname: The Golden State Other U.S. States Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Senators Dianne Feinstein (D) Barbara Boxer (D) Official language(s) English Area 410,000 km² (3rd)  - Land 404,298 km²  - Water 20,047 km² (4. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Joy Luck Club DVD cover The Joy Luck Club is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1951 was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-04-13, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Jump to: navigation, search Edmund Valentine White III (born January 13, 1940) is a novelist, short-story writer and critic. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Other genres

Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler pioneered gritty detective fiction that has had great influence on other genres and in other countries. Raymond Chandler, in The Simple Art of Murder Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. ... Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American author of crime stories and novels. ...

The United States has also played a key role in the development of science fiction with authors like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick. Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Jump to: navigation, search Dr. Isaac Asimov enthroned with symbols of his lifes work (Rowena Morrill) Dr. Isaac Asimov (c. ... Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most influential authors in the science fiction genre. ... Jump to: navigation, search Philip K. Dick Philip Kindred Dick (16 December 1928 — 2 March 1982), often known by his initials PKD, and sometimes by the pen name Richard Phillips, was an American science fiction writer and novelist who changed the genre profoundly. ...

See the article on digital poetry for links to contemporary American work of the avant garde. Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into E-poetry. ...

See also

• Southern literature
• African American literature
• Literature of Puerto Rico
• List of Native American Writers
• The Great American Novel
• Culture of the United States
• List of literary movements

Jump to: navigation, search Southern literature is defined as literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region. ... The Color Purple by Alice Walker African American literature is literature written by, about, and sometimes specifically for African Americans. ... Puerto Rican Literature at first repressed by the Spanish Colonial Government, evolved from the art of oral story telling to the present day status of being amongst the best in Latin-America. ... This is a list of Native American writers of note: Sherman Alexie Michael Dorris Charles Eastman Joy Harjo William Least Heat-Moon Tomson Highway Leslie Marmon Silko Lee Maracle Rigoberta Menchú N. Scott Momaday Daniel David Moses Wilhelm Murg Eden Robinson Ian Ross Luther Standing Bear Drew Hayden Taylor Gerald... The Great American Novel is the concept of a novel that perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States of America at the time of its publication. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article very generally discusses the customs and culture of the United States; for the popular (pop) culture of the United States, see arts and entertainment in the United States. ... This is a list of modern literary movements: that is, movements after the Renaissance. ...

References

• New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage by Alpana Sharma Knippling (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996)
• Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook by Emmanuel S. Nelson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000)

External link

• "A man he'll rise..." by Gilbert Wesley Purdy. A book review/essay with considerable information about the history of African-American Literature.