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The Puritan and Enlightenment Eras
Focused on religious expression, exploration narratives, and the emergence of the American national identity Authors: John Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley -
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Romanticism and Realism
Focused on transcendentalism, exploration of the individual and nature, social commentary Authors:
William Cullen Bryant (poetry)
Washington Irving ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow")
Nathaniel Hawthorne ("The Scarlet Letter")
Edgar Allen Poe
Frederick Douglass
Walt Whitman ("Leaves of Grass")
Herman Melville ("Moby Dick") -
Period: to
Realism and Naturalism
Focused on social and political issues, the common man, psychological realism, and was influenced by Darwinism Authors:
Harriet Beecher Stowe ("Uncle Tom's Cabin")
Mark Twain ("The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn")
Henry James ("The Portrait of a Lady")
Edith Wharton ("The House of Mirth")
Upton Sinclair ("The Jungle")
Stephen Crane ("The Red Badge of Courage") -
Period: to
Modernism
Focused on experimentation with form and style, disillusionment after WWI, and exploration of psychology and alienation Authors:
T.S. Eliot ("The Waste Land")
Ezra Pound ("The Cantos")
William Faulkner ("The Sound and the Fury")
Ernest Hemingway ("The Old Man and the Sea")
F. Scott Fitzgerald ("The Great Gatsby")
John Dos Passos ("U.S.A.")
Theodore Dreiser ("An American Tragedy") -
Period: to
Contemporary
Focused on diverse voices, social and political concerns, postmodern experimentation Authors:
J.D. Salinger ("The Catcher in the Rye")
Arthur Miller ("Death of a Salesman")