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AMERICAN
LITERATURE
REVISED EDITION
Outline of
AMERICAN
REVISED EDITION
E
ARLY
A
MERICAN
AND
C
OLONIAL
P
ERIOD TO
1776
3
P
UBLISHED BY THE
U
NITED
S
TATES
D
EPARTMENT OF
S
TATE
D
EMOCRATIC
O
RIGINS
AND
R
EVOLUTIONARY
W
RITERS
,
1776-1820
14
STAFF
W
RITTEN
B
Y
:
K
ATHRYN
V
AN
S
PANCKEREN
E
XECUTIVE
E
DITOR
:
G
EORGE
C
LACK
M
ANAGING
E
DITOR
:
P
AUL
M
ALAMUD
C
ONTRIBUTING
E
DITOR
:
K
ATHLEEN
H
UG
A
RT
D
IRECTOR
/ D
ESIGNER
:
T
HADDEUS
A. M
IKSINSKI
, J
R
.
P
ICTURE
E
DITOR
:
J
OANN
S
TERN
T
HE
R
OMANTIC
P
ERIOD
, 1820-1860:
E
SSAYISTS AND
P
OETS
26
Front Cover:
© 1994 Christopher Little
T
HE
R
OMANTIC
P
ERIOD
,
1820-1860: F
ICTION
36
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathryn VanSpanckeren
is Professor of English at the
University of Tampa, has
lectured in American literature
widely abroad, and is former
director of the Fulbright-spon-
sored Summer Institute in
American Literature for
international scholars. Her
publications include poetry and
scholarship. She received
her Bachelors degree from the
University of California,
Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from
Harvard University.
T
HE
R
ISE OF
R
EALISM
:
1860-1914
47
M
ODERNISM AND
E
XPERIMENTATION
: 1914-1945
60
A
MERICAN
P
OETRY
,
1945–1990: T
HE
A
NTI
-T
RADITION
79
A
MERICAN
P
ROSE
,
1945–1990:
R
EALISM AND
E
XPERIMENTATION
97
C
ONTEMPORARY
A
MERICAN
P
OETRY
121
C
ONTEMPORARY
A
MERICAN
L
ITERATURE
136
G
LOSSARY
157
I
NDEX
163
LITERATURE
The following text materials may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder.
“In a Station of the Metro” (page 63) by Ezra Pound. From Ezra Pound Personae.
Copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Translated and reprinted by permission of New Directions
Publishing Corporation.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (page 65) by Robert Frost. From The Poetry of
Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923. © 1969 by Henry Holt and
Co., Inc., © 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted and translated by permission of Henry Holt and
Co., Inc.
“Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” (page 66) by Wallace Stevens. From Selected Poems by
Wallace Stevens. Copyright 1923 and renewed 1951 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted by per-
mission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
“The Red Wheelbarrow” (page 66) and “The Young Housewife” (page 67) by William Carlos
Williams. Collected Poems. 1909-1939. Vol. I. Copyright 1938 by New Directions
Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (page 69) by Langston Hughes. From Selected Poems by
Langston Hughes. Copyright 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and renewed 1954 by Langston
Hughes. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” (page 80) by Randall Jarrell from Randall Jarrell:
Selected Poems; © 1945 by Randall Jarrell, © 1990 by Mary Von Schrader Jarrell, published by
Farrar Straus & Giroux. Permission granted by Rhoda Weyr Agency, New York.
"The Wild Iris" (page 125) from The Wild Iris by Louise Glück. Copyright © 1993 by Louise
Glück. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
"Chickamauga" (page 126) from Chickamauga by Charles Wright. Copyright © 1995 by
Charles Wright. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
"To The Engraver of my Skin" (page 129) from Source by Mark Doty. Copyright © 2001 by
Mark Doty. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
"Mule Heart" (page 130) from The Lives of The Heart by Jane Hirshfield. Copyright © 1997
by Jane Hirshfield. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
"The Black Snake" (page 131) copyright © 1979 by Mary Oliver. Used with permission of the
Molly Malone Cook Literary Agency.
"The Dead" (page 132) is from Questions About Angels by Billy Collins, © 1991. Reprinted by
permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
"The Want Bone" (page 133) from The Want Bone by Robert Pinsky. Copyright © 1991 by
Robert Pinsky. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Facing It" (page 134) from Dien Cai Dau in Pleasure Dome: New and
Collected Poems, © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan
University Press.
A number of the illustrations appearing in this volume are also copyrighted, as is indicated on
the illustrations themselves. These may not be reprinted without the permission of the copy-
right holder.
The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the
U.S. government.
2
C
HAP T E R
1
some tales of a high god or culture were told
elsewhere. However, there are no long, stan-
dardized religious cycles about one supreme
divinity. The closest equivalents to Old World
spiritual narratives are often accounts of
shamans’ initiations and voyages. Apart from
these, there are stories about culture heroes
such as the Ojibwa tribe’s Manabozho or the
Navajo tribe’s Coyote. These tricksters are treat-
ed with varying degrees of respect. In one tale
they may act like heroes, while in another they
may seem selfish or foolish. Although past
authorities, such as the Swiss psychologist Carl
Jung, have deprecated trickster tales as express-
ing the inferior, amoral side of the psyche, con-
temporary scholars — some of them Native
Americans — point out that Odysseus and
Prometheus, the revered Greek heroes, are
essentially tricksters as well.
Examples of almost every oral genre can be
found in American Indian literature: lyrics,
chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous anecdotes,
incantations, riddles, proverbs, epics, and leg-
endary histories. Accounts of migrations and an-
cestors abound, as do vision or healing songs and
tricksters’ tales. Certain creation stories are
particularly popular. In one well-known creation
story, told with variations among many tribes, a
turtle holds up the world. In a Cheyenne version,
the creator, Maheo, has four chances to fashion
the world from a watery universe. He sends four
water birds diving to try to bring up earth from
the bottom. The snow goose, loon, and mallard
soar high into the sky and sweep down in a dive,
but cannot reach bottom; but the little coot, who
cannot fly, succeeds in bringing up some mud in
his bill. Only one creature, humble Grandmother
Turtle, is the right shape to support the mud
world Maheo shapes on her shell — hence the
Indian name for America, “Turtle Island.”
The songs or poetry, like the narratives, range
from the sacred to the light and humorous:
There are lullabies, war chants, love songs, and
merican literature begins with the orally
transmitted myths, legends, tales, and
lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures.
There was no written literature among the more
than 500 different Indian languages and tribal
cultures that existed in North America before
the first Europeans arrived. As a result, Na-
tive American oral literature is quite diverse.
Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting cultures
like the Navaho are different from stories of set-
tled agricultural tribes such as the pueblo-
dwelling Acoma; the stories of northern lakeside
dwellers such as the Ojibwa often differ radical-
ly from stories of desert tribes like the Hopi.
Tribes maintained their own religions — wor-
shipping gods, animals, plants, or sacred per-
sons. Systems of government ranged from
democracies to councils of elders to theocra-
cies. These tribal variations enter into the oral
literature as well.
Still, it is possible to make a few generaliza-
tions. Indian stories, for example, glow with rev-
erence for nature as a spiritual as well as physi-
cal mother. Nature is alive and endowed with
spiritual forces; main characters may be animals
or plants, often totems associated with a tribe,
group, or individual. The closest to the Indian
sense of holiness in later American literature is
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendental “Over-
Soul,” which pervades all of life.
The Mexican tribes revered the divine
Quetzalcoatl, a god of the Toltecs and Aztecs, and
3
EARLY AMERICAN AND
COLONIAL PERIOD TO
1 776
A
special songs for children’s games, gambling,
various chores, magic, or dance ceremonials.
Generally the songs are repetitive. Short poem-
songs given in dreams sometimes have the clear
imagery and subtle mood associated with
Japanese haiku or Eastern-influenced imagistic
poetry. A Chippewa song runs:
English, Spanish, or French. The first European
record of exploration in America is in a
Scandinavian language. The Old Norse
Vinland
Saga
recounts how the adventurous Leif Ericson
and a band of wandering Norsemen settled
briefly somewhere on the northeast coast of
America — probably Nova Scotia, in Canada —
in the first decade of the 11th century, almost 400
years before the next recorded European dis-
covery of the New World.
The first known and sustained contact be-
tween the Americas and the rest of the world,
however, began with the famous voyage of an
Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded
by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella.
Columbus’s journal in his “Epistola,” printed in
1493, recounts the trip’s drama — the terror of
the men, who feared monsters and thought they
might fall off the edge of the world; the near-
mutiny; how Columbus faked the ships’ logs so
the men would not know how much farther they
had travelled than anyone had gone before; and
the first sighting of land as they neared America.
Bartolomé de las Casas is the richest source
of information about the early contact between
American Indians and Europeans. As a young
priest he helped conquer Cuba. He transcribed
Columbus’s journal, and late in life wrote a long,
vivid
History of the Indians
criticizing their
enslavement by the Spanish.
Initial English attempts at colonization were
disasters. The first colony was set up in 1585 at
Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina; all its
colonists disappeared, and to this day legends
are told about blue-eyed Croatan Indians of the
area. The second colony was more permanent:
Jamestown, established in 1607. It endured star-
vation, brutality, and misrule. However, the liter-
ature of the period paints America in glowing
colors as the land of riches and opportunity.
Accounts of the colonizations became world-
renowned. The exploration of Roanoke was care-
fully recorded by Thomas Hariot in
A Brief and
A loon I thought it was
But it was
My love’s
splashing oar.
Vision songs, often very short, are another dis-
tinctive form. Appearing in dreams or visions,
sometimes with no warning, they may be healing,
hunting, or love songs. Often they are personal,
as in this Modoc song:
I
the song
I walk here.
Indian oral tradition and its relation to American
literature as a whole is one of the richest and least
explored topics in American studies. The Indian
contribution to America is greater than is often
believed. The hundreds of Indian words in every-
day American English include “canoe,” “tobacco,”
“potato,” “moccasin,” “moose,” “persimmon,”
“raccoon,” “tomahawk,” and “totem.” Con-
temporary Native American writing, discussed in
chapter 8, also contains works of great beauty.
THE LITERATURE OF EXPLORATION
ad history taken a different turn, the
United States easily could have been a
part of the great Spanish or French over-
seas empires. Its present inhabitants might
speak Spanish and form one nation with Mexico,
or speak French and be joined with Canadian
Francophone Quebec and Montreal.
Yet the earliest explorers of America were not
4
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