Amerykańscy autorzy - wykłady

Edward Taylor

Impacted by Metaphysical Poets; used conceits; explored the concept of God's Grace

Anne Bradstreet

America's first published poet; wrote about religious issues and domestic life

William Bradford

One of the Pilgrim Fathers; wrote in 3rd person objective account; his main ideas were: God's Providence, Puritans and the Chosen People, America as a Promised Land and American dream

John Winthrop

He delivered a sermon on the deck of the Mayflower - "A Modell of Christian Charity"; hisi style: biblical quotations and allusions, repetition, plain style; Themes: the idea of Christian Charity, a covenant with the Lord and Puritans as Chosen People

Samuel Sewall

the Greatest Puritan diarist; the participant of Salem Witch Trials; he wrote records of gradual secularization of New England

Cotton Mather

He wrote a complete historical account of America - "Magnalia Christi Americana"

Mary Rowlandson

Captured by Nativa Americans during King Philip's War in 1676; she wrote "The Narrative of Captivity and Restoration" - a prototype for captivity narratives; it was a bestseller and a document of colonial America; it gave insight into Puritan mind

Jonathan Edwards

wanted to revive Puritan soul in people through his sermons; The Great Awakening (1730s); "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - a powerful sermon; Fire and brimstone rethoric

Thomas Paine

Known as a Father of the American Revolution; he wrote a pamphlet "Common Sense"

Thomas Jefferson

A Founding Father, President; he wrote "The Declaration of Independence"; he had direct and clear style; rational and logical

Benjamin Franklin

an inventor, publisher and politician; he believed that writing should be smooth, clear and short; began publishing "Poor Richard's Almanac"; the grandfather of American aphorism

Ralph Waldo Emerson

essayist and lecturer; initially a minister; he founded the Transcendental Club; his essays were the beginning of American cultural independence; he is believed to start Transcendentalism

Margaret Fuller

American writer, journalist and philosopher; the firts American Feminist; talked about the situation of women and integrity

Henry David Thoreau

American Transcendental writer; Emerson's friend; a naturalist and an early conservationist; a political radical and critic of society; interested in the protection of the natural environment

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

great popularity; the Fireside Poet; he wrote short lyric poems and long narrative poems; occupied with didacticism; American themes; gathered Indian folklore

Walt Whitman

a common man; a follower of Transcendentalism; revolutionary poet (no rhymes, without any standards and conventions); introduced catalog in literature; an inventor of free verse; themes: America, democracy, individualism, humanity, eroticism

Emily Dickinson

an eccenrtic recluse; idiosyncratic poetry; unpublished in the lifetime; condensed form, random capitalization, unconventional punctuation, strange syntax, ellipsis, slant rhymes, no titles, combination of technical vocabulary with spiritual issues

Charles Brockden Brown

the father of the American novel; Gothic novels/American Gothic

Washington Irving

1st American proffesional writer; Father of the American short story; local color literature pioneer; adapted German folk tales

James Fenimore Cooper

Master of historical fiction; inspired by captivity narratives; proved that American setting and history provide great material for prose

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Puritan background; wrote romances; focused on inner life of his characters; highly symbolic texts; themes: moral allegories, the dark side of human nature, the sinful man, hypocrisy, sin and guilt, internal conflicts, religion, puritan past

Herman Melville

experience-based marine fiction; bestnovels unappreciated in his lifetime; tendency towards philosophical considerations

Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens; accused of being racist; shared many of experiences of poor slave's treatment; writing style: humor, satire, social criticism, linguistic realism

Kate Chopin

another regionalist; setting: Creole Louisiana; first-wave feminism

Henry James

a realist; encouraged others to write in a realistic way; an expatriate; literature of manners and international theme; psychological realism; "The Art of Fiction"; fascinated with differences between Europeans and Americans

Charles Darwin

in "On the Origin of Species" talked about natural selection and the survival fo the fittest in the natural environment; impact on how society was perceived and how it was described in literature

Stephen Crane

his characters were determined by fate and circumstances

Theodore Dreiser

on the dark side of the American Dream

Jack London

an adventurer and a traveller; a sailor; observer of a nature; wrote experience-based works; Alaska - common setting of his works; impacted by Darwin's theories; environment + heredity; socialism; commercial succcess; extremely prolific

Edgar Allan Poe

associated with Dark Romanticism; Gothic fiction; inventor of detective story; poetry: atttention paid to the form, melodic, mysterious, and dreamlike atmosphere; supernatural stories/ tales of horror; detective stories/tales of ratiocination (INVENTOR);

Edgar Lee Masters

"Spoon River Anthology"/ the "Chicago School" of poetry/Chicago Renaissance

Carl Sandburg

The "Chicago School" of poetry/Chicago Renaissance; impacted by Whitman in both form and content

Robinson Jeffers

Californian regional poet; environmental concers; inhumanism vs anthropocentrism

Ezra Pound

key modernist; an expatriate; translations of poetry; CREATOR OF IMAGISM; condensation/compression; rejection of poetic style; direct, precise language; originatily: "Make it New!"; the reader is involved; freedom of interpretation

William Carlos Williams

represented the American variety of Modernism; rejected expatriation and international poetry; localist poetry; rejected the classicism and academicism of Pound and Eliot; impact of imagism; in favour of depicting real objects

e. e. cummings

used unconventional form; he used lowe case letters, experimentation with punctuation and syntax; concrete poetry; captured the mood of the era

Langston Hughes

representative of Harlem Renaissance; a novelist, songwriter, biographer, editor, newspaper columnist, translator and lecturer; modern urban black experience; poetry of social protest

Robert Frost

a transitional poet; a regional/rular poet (New England); deceptively simple poems with deeper meaning; dramatic narrative poems; recited his poetry at Kennedy's inauguration

Sinclair Lewis

Nobel Prize, 1930; satirical novels; small-town America; local colour

Sherwood Anderson

a link between naturalism and modernism; great impact on modernist writers; everyday lanugage. simple style; emphasis on psychological insights; narrative experimentation (fragmentation, mutltiple narration, non-linear)

Ernest Hemingway

Nobel in 1954; a novelist, short story writer; a war reporter-WW I; the Lost Generation;"grace under pressure"; "iceberg technique"; simple language; masculinity; man vs. nature; reading between the lines

William Faulkner

south. persp.+modernist style; historical, social changes in the South; experimental; psych. analysis; Old SouthvsNew South, slavery, racism, no values; stream of conscious., fragmentation, multiple narrators, flashbacks/foreshadowing, Nobel Prize in 1949

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

a novelist and short story writer; screenwriter in Hollywood; the Lost Generation; "the chronicler of the Jazz Age"; the extravagance of the upper classes; the dissolution of the American Dream; the figure of a flapper; borrowed his wife's notes

John Dos Passos

Lost Generation; experimental fiction (mixing facts and fiction, "newsreel" passages, collage, "camera eye" technique; collective focus of his novels; impact of cubism, impressionism, Jazz and film

John Steinbeck

Social protest novels; themes: Great Depression, the lives of migrant workers, unavailability of American Dream; no experimentation, realism; elements of naturalism (California - local color fiction); Nobel Prize in 1962

Richard Wright

Black Protest novel; themes: racial oppression, search of personal identity; wrote about systemic racism;

Eugene O'Neil

experimentation; psychological realism; expressionism; used Freud's philosophy; the first American playwright who won the Nobel Prize in 1936

Arthur Miller

explored issues of morality and individual responsibility; used family portraits; social realism - on the importance of success in American society; briefly married to Marilyn Monroe

Tennessee Williams

a Southern playwright; psychological realism; social realism; symbolism; naturalism; introduced the theme of homosexuality

Allen Ginsberg

the Beat Generation; influenced by Walt Whitman; style: spontaneous, taboo-breaking, emotional, long-lined poetry, free verse, oral and repetitive

Robert Lowell

started as one of the traditional poets; later turned to more emotional poetry; started a new type of poetry: confessional poetry

Sylvia Plath

the most famous representative of confessional poetry; suffered from mental problems; poetry was a reflection of her life; female perspective; a feminist voice; also wrote about sexism of American society; husband: Ted Hughes - a British poet

Isaac Bashevis Singer

a Polish-American writer; wrote in Yiddish; Nober Prize in 1972

Saul Bellow

Jewish-American characters, but his works were representative of the whole America; Nobel Prize in 1976

John Barth

precursor of postmodernism; "Literature of Exhaustion" - writer needs to "recycle" the previous works

Joseph Heller

known for writing novels with a satirical perspectibe of WW II; Catch-22 - term that has become a symbol of a difficult circumstance with no escape

Thomas Pynchon

writes about modern history, but combines it with fiction; main motif: global conspiracies and state of paranoia; encyclopedic novels

Don DeLillo

an influential American novelist, playwright and essayist; exploration of contemporary American culture; satirical take on consumer culture, technology and media saturation

Kurt Vonnegut

known for blending satife, black humour and science fiction; mocking tone, irony; grotesque ans surreal characters; style: minimalism + irony; Pacifism

J. D. Salinger

best known for the novel "The Catcher in the Rye" - exploring adolescent alienation

Vladimir Nabokov

a Russian-American novelist, poet and entomologist; intricate structure, playful use of language and complex characters

Toni Morrison

an American novelist, editor and professor; issues of race, identity, beauty, slavery, motherhood, trauma, gender; Nobel Prize in 1993, first African-American woman who received the Nobel Prize

Alice Walker

a prominent American author, poet and activist; exploration of African-American culture, feminiest themes, racism and sexism; social commentary, civil rights, women's rights and environmental sustainability

Jack Kerouac

the Beat Generation; "On the Road" - a defining work for the Beat Generation; freedom, spirituality, search for authenticity, increasingly conformist society; inprovisational rythm, vivid descriptions