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Native American
The first native American literary texts were offered orally, and they link the earth-surface people with the plants and animals, the rivers and rocks, and all things believed significant in the life of America’s first people. The texts tie Indian people to the earth and its life through a spiritual kinship with the living and dead relatives of Native Americans. Coyote, raven, fox and other animal characters in the stories are considered by many Native Americans to be their relatives. -
The Earth Only
is a poem that celebrates the permanence of the natural world—and the wisdom of those who recognize that truth. -
The House made of Dawn
: The prologue opens the book with a scene-painting passage which describes in three paragraphs the vision of a man named Abel, running in a vast landscape. Like other descriptive passages in the novel, this one is in present tense, emphasizing the timeless beauty of the land and the ageless customs of the people who have lived on it for centuries. -
The Sun still rises in the same Sky
The fiesta of San Fermin, which will last for seven days, begins at noon on a Sunday. Musicians and dancers fill the streets — and even some of the shops, like the wine store, where Brett is placed on a cask so the Basque peasants can dance around her as if she is an idol. Locked out of his own room, Jake sleeps on one of the beds in Cohn's while the rest of the group stays out all night and then attends the running of the bulls from the corrals to the bullring, through the streets of Pamplona. -
Coyote Finishes his Work
In the beginning, there is this coyote that traveled everywhere. As he went along, he did great, wonderful things such as killed monsters and got rid of evil spirits that preyed on people. He also, made the Inidians and put them all over the world because "Old Man Above" wanted them everyone and not stuck in one place. These Indians spoke different languages, so they separated into their own Language barriers. -
The Sky Tree
a creation myth, Aataentsic (the Earth Mother) cuts down the SkyTree (the Tree of Life) because her ailing husband, the chief (the Great Spirit) of Sky Land (Heaven or the Garden of Eden) asks her for the tree’s healing fruit. When the Sky Tree falls through a hole in the sky, she throws herself after it. Animals on the water-covered earth hurry to build an island (the earth) upon Turtle’s back, where Aataentsic and the SkyTree can come to rest. Eventually, the Sky Tree takes root in the new e -
Day of Doom
was a religious poem by clergyman Michael Wigglesworth that became a best-selling classic in Puritan New England for a century after it was published in 1662. The poem describes the Day of Judgment in which a vengeful God sentences sinner to punishment in hell. The work was so popular that there was no first and second editions existed because they were shredded into pieces. This signifies the intense and passionate feelings of the readers. -
Puritan
American Puritan writers helped transform and glorify their religion and God through the emphasis of praising God’s great significance in their writings. Although the Bible was their primary reading material, they expounded upon it’s themes through poems and prose. They highly valued their beliefs and incorporated that with in their literature writings. Great -
The Crucible
The crucible was written as a response to McCarthyism in the United States. The entire theme of the story is based on paranoia. The setting and time period takes place in the days of the Salem Witch Trials, however, its real meaning is to expose McCarthyism for what it is truly based on: a ton of lies and assumption. The crucible also shows how people would not give into appeasement just to prove their innocence. -
Saducismus Triumphatus
is a book on witchcraft by Joseph Glanvill, published in posthumously in England in 1681. The book affirmed the existence of witches with malign supernatural powers of magic, and attacked skepticism concerning their abilities. Glanvill likened these skeptics to Sadducees, members of a Jewish sect from around the time of Jesus who were said to have denied the immorality of the soul. The book is also noted for the account of the Drummer of Tedworth, an early poltergeist story. -
Sinners in the hand of an Angry God.
is a sermon written by American Christian theologian Jonathan Edwards, he preached it to his own people in Northampton on July 8 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut. It combines imagery of hell with observations of the world and citations of scripture. It is Edward’s most famous written pieces as also the most fit for his preaching style. It is a typical sermon of the Great Awakening, preaching and emphasizing that Hell is a real place. The underlying point is that god gave humanity a chance to erase t -
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The Crucible
The crucible was written as a response to McCarthyism in the United States. The entire theme of the story is based on paranoia. The setting and time period takes place in the days of the Salem Witch Trials, however, its real meaning is to expose McCarthyism for what it is truly based on: a ton of lies and assumption. The crucible also shows how people would not give into appeasement just to prove their innocence. -
Wonders of Invisble World
Written by the famous writer Cotton Mather in 1693, Wonders of the Invisible World gives accounts of the Salem Witch Trials, which took place in Salem Massachusetts. The book gives an explanation of the people of God and how they are living in the devil’s territories. Mather prefaces the trials saying he will recount the trials as a historian. One of the trials includes Martha Carrier, who “ The person of whom the confessions of the witches “ -
Candide
a French Satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of the Enlightenment. Candide is characterized by its sarcastic tone, as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast moving plot. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide’s slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not, rejecting optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept. -
Robison Crusoe
a novel published by Daniel Defor, first published on 25 April 1719, publish a novel. The first edition of the work’s fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, and was published under the considerably longer original title The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. Despite its simple narrative style, Robison was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marketing the beginning of realistic literature. -
The answer to the question
a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant’s essay addressed the cause of a lack of enlightenment and the preconditions necessary to make it possible for people to enlighten them. He held it necessary that all church and state paternalism be abolished and people are given the freedom to use their own intellect. Emphasizing that Enlightenment is a man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. -
The social contract
the book in which Jacques Rousseau, 1762, theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society which he had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality. The Social Contract helped inspire political reforms in Europe, especially in France. It also argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate. Rousseau asserts, only the people, in the form of the sovereign, have that all powerful right. -
Enlightenment
: The Enlightenment, sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason, was a confluence of ideas and activities that took place throughout the eighteenth century in Western Europe, England, and the American colonies. Many great writers from both the new and old world began to publish many great works reflecting human intellectuality. The age of Enlightenment gradually moved up to Romanticism. -
Common sense
written by Thomas Paine, first published anonymously at the beginning of the American Revolution. Common Sense became an immediate success. Forgoing the philosophical and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, he structured Common sense as if it were a sermon, and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people. He connected independence with common dissenting Protestant beliefs as a means to present a distinctly American political identity. -
Romanticism
was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, it was a also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature. -
LEaves of Grass
Poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman published 1855. Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass. This book is notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual exalted body the body and material world. -
The Scarlett letter
An 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in the 17th century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores theme of legalism, sin, and guilt. -
Daffodiles
it was inspired by an event on April 15, 1802, in which Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, came across a "long belt" of daffodils. Written at some time between 1804 and 1807, it was first published in 1807. The inspiration for the poem came from a walk he took with his sister Dorothy around Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater, in the Lake District. It was a really sweet and touchy poem that made people reminisce about their beloved childhoods. -
Moby Dick
Novel by Herman Melville, first published in 1851, it is considered to be one of the great American novels and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod to see out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. Moby Dick employs stylized language, symbolism, and the metaphor to explore numerous complex themes. -
Lyrical ballads
a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic Movement in literature. The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English Literature and poetry. Wordsworth and Coleridge set out to -
Naturalism
The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. Through this objective study of human beings, naturalistic writers believed tha -
Sister Carrie
Dissatisfied with her life, 18-year-old Caroline "Sister Carrie" Meeber takes the train to Chicago, where her older sister Minnie and her husband Sven Hanson, have agreed to take her in. On the train, Carrie meets Charles Drouet, a traveling salesman, who is attracted to her because of her simple beauty and unspoiled manner. They exchange contact information, but upon discovering the "steady round of toil" she writes to Drouet and discourages him from calling on her there. -
Age of innocence
centers on an upper-class couple's impending marriage, and the introduction of a woman plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s' New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier, more brutal and critical novel, The House of Mirth. -
Therese Raquin
a story of the consequences faced by the lovers Thérèse and Laurent who murder Thérèse's husband Camille. The lovers conceal their crime and manage to escape the justice system, but find their own punishment in the course of their terrible marriage. Thérèse comes to live with her sickly cousin Camille as a small child. His mother, Madame Raquin, subjects Thérèse to the same treatments as her precious son. -
Les Raougn Macquart
is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Emile Zola. Early in his life, Zola discovered the work of Honore de Balzac and his famous La Comddie humaine. This had a profound impact on Zola, who decided to write his own, unique cycle. As a naturalist writer, Zola was highly interested by science and especially the problem of heredity and evolution. -
Maggie a Girls of the Street
Crane's first novel is the tale of a pretty young slum girl driven to brutal excesses by poverty and loneliness. It was considered so sexually frank and realistic, that the book had to be privately printed at first. It was eventually hailed as the first genuine expression of Naturalism in American letters and established its creator as the American apostle of an artistic revolution which was to alter the shape and destiny of civilization itself. -
Gothic Fiction
: is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The effect of Gothic fiction depends on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of essentially Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror, darkness and death. -
The Woman in White
Walter Hartright, a young drawing-master, has secured a position in Cumberland on the recommendation of his old friend Professor Pesca, a political refugee from Italy. While walking home from Hampstead on his last evening in London, Hartright meets a mysterious woman dressed in white, apparently in deep distress. He helps her on her way but later learns that she has escaped from an asylum. The next day he travels north to Limmeridge House. -
The Castle of Otranto
Manfred, the prince of Otranto, plans to marry his fifteen-year-old son Conrad to Isabella, the daughter of the marquis of Vicenza. On the day of the wedding, however, a servant runs into the hall and informs the assembled company that a huge helmet has appeared mysteriously in the courtyard of the castle. When Count Manfred and his guests rush into the courtyard, they find Conrad crushed to death beneath a gigantic helmet adorned with waving black plumes. -
The House of the Seven Gables
Nathaniel Hawthorne begins with a preface that identifies the work as a romance, not a novel. As such, Hawthorne prepares readers for the fluid mixture of realism and fantasy that the romance genre allows. The preface also conveys the major theme of the book, which Hawthorne refers to as a moral: “the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and . . . becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief -
The Italian
s a novel belonging to the Gothic genre and written by the English author Ann Radcliffe. The events are set in 1764, thirty-three years before the novel's publication. It is the last book Radcliffe published during her lifetime (although she did go on to produce the novel Gaston de Blondeville, which appeared posthumously in 1826). The Italian has a dark, mysterious and sombre atmosphere, and concerns the themes of love, devotion and persecution by the Holy Inquisition -
The Rime of Ancient Mariener
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Three guys are on the way to a wedding celebration when an old sailor (the Mariner) stops one of them at the door (we'll call him the Wedding Guest). Using his hypnotic eyes to hold the attention of the Wedding Guest, he starts telling a story about a disastrous journey he took. The Wedding Guest really wants to go party, but he can't pry himself away from this grizzled old mariner. -
Transcendentalism
an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered on Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. -
Nature and Self Reliance
Emerson begins his major work on individualism by asserting the importance of thinking for oneself rather than meekly accepting other people's ideas. As in almost all of his work, he promotes individual experience over the knowledge gained from books: "To believe that what is true in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius." -
The Dial
Fuller uses the opportunity provided in her writing of Woman to further lines that express the somewhat romanticized notions of her circle at the same time that they express sentiments that are, in general terms, progressive.3 In a sense, Fuller is concerned to give the same sorts of arguments that Wollstonecraft does in Vindication of the Rights of Woman: -
Never bet the devil your head
Poe begins his tale by describing how he has come under criticism because his tales do not have morals. In response to his critics, whom he refers to as "ignoramuses," Poe writes "Never Bet the Devil Your Head." The story is clearly a satire directed at these "moral mongers," who lack the intelligence to see the moral in fiction unless the author makes it obvious. -
The Blithedele Romance
novel takes place in the utopian community of Blithedale, presumably in the mid-1800s. The main character, Miles Coverdale, embarks on a quest for betterment of the world through the agrarian lifestyle and community of the Blithedale Farm. The story begins with Coverdale's chat with a character named Old Moodie, who reappears throughout the story -
Regionalism
Regional literature incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences, although in Writing Out of Place, Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse have argued convincingly that the distinguishing characteristic that separates "local color" writers from "regional" writers is instead the exploitation of and condescension toward their subjects that the local color writers demonstrate. -
The Portrait of a Lady
Isabel Archer's aunt comes to America after the death of Isabel's father in order to take her niece to Europe. On her arrival in England, Isabel meets her cousin Ralph, her uncle, Mr. Touchett, and the great nobleman of the area, Lord Warburton, who immediately falls in love with her. After a short time, Warburton proposes to Isabel, but she turns him down, maintaining that she cherishes her freedom and independence too much to marry. -
The Rise of Silas Lapham
When reading and studying The Rise of Silas Lapham, recognition of the existence of a plot and subplot is necessary. Knowledge of how they relate to each other is also important. In the William Dean Howells novel, a business story dominates a secondary love triangle. Silas Lapham earns a fortune in the paint business through opportunism, greed, and driving ambition. -
A Modern Instance
the little town of Equity, in northern New England, Bartley Hubbard is an up-and-coming young man. An orphan whose life has so far been one of great promise, he has a free and easy way about him and a ready tongue that makes him a general favorite. Squire Gaylord is pleased with his work as editor of the village paper, the Free Press, but not so pleased when Bartley becomes engaged to Marcia Gaylord, the squire’s only daughter. -
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Clemens spent his young life in a fairly affluent family that owned a number of household slaves. The death of Clemens’s father in 1847, however, left the family in hardship. Clemens left school, worked for a printer, and, in 1851, having finished his apprenticeship, began to set type for his brother Orion’s newspaper, the Hannibal Journal. -
Daisy Miller
In a Swiss resort, Winterborne meets a pretty young American girl who seems to have no qualms about talking to strangers. During the course of their conversation, she mentions her desire to visit the castle across the lake. Winterborne declares that he would be delighted to accompany her. -
Imagism
Imagism was a reaction against the flabby abstract language and "careless thinking" of Georgian Romanticism. Imagist poetry aimed to replace muddy abstractions with exactness of observed detail, apt metaphors, and economy of language. For example, Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" started from a glimpse of beautiful faces in a dark subway and elevated that perception into a crisp vision by finding an intensified equivalent image. -
The Egoist
On the day of his majority, Sir Willoughby Patterne announces his engagement to Miss Constantia Durham. Laetitia Dale, who lives with her old father in a cottage on Willoughby’s estate, loves him, she thinks secretly, but everyone, including Willoughby, is aware of it. Ten days before the wedding day, Constantia astonishes everyone by eloping with Harry Oxford, a military man. -
The Dynasts
The Spirit of Years, Shade of Earth, Spirit Sinister, Spirit Ironic, Spirit of Pities, and their accompanying choruses forgather somewhere above the earth to watch the larger movements of humans in western Europe in 1805. The design of the Immanent Will manifests itself at the time in Napoleon’s preparations for the invasion of England -
Modern Age
In its genesis, the Modernist Period in English literature was first and foremost a visceral reaction against the Victorian culture and aesthetic, which had prevailed for most of the nineteenth century. Indeed, a break with traditions is one of the fundamental constants of the Modernist stance. Intellectuals and artists at the turn of the twentieth century believed the previous generation’s way of doing things was a cultural dead end. They could foresee that world events were spiraling into unkn -
The Legend of the sleeping Hallow
The story opens with a long descriptive passage offered in the first person by the narrator, who is revealed at the end of the story to be a man in a tavern who told the story to ‘‘D. K.’’ Irving's contemporaries, and readers of the entire Sketch Book, know that ''D. K." is Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictional author of an earlier book of Irving's. -
Lady of the Lake
As he follows a stag during a hunt, James Fitz-James becomes lost in the Highlands. He wanders around until he comes to Loch Katrine, a beautiful lake surrounded by steep mountains. There he meets the lovely Ellen, who tells him that his coming was foretold by Allan-Bane, an ancient minstrel who serves her father. -
Endymion
Endymion is a long narrative poem in four books of about one thousand lines each, written mostly in heroic couplets. It is named after its hero, Endymion, a figure taken from Greek myth. According to the legend, Endymion was a shepherd who fell asleep on Mount Latmos and so entranced the goddess of the moon, Cynthia (also known as Diana or Phbe), that she fell in love with him. -
Harold the Dauntless
Despite the dismissal of the poem as having any serious import, it deals with survival of a violent, pagan past of British history. Harold’s political combat with a greedy Catholic Church may evoke some sympathy for the Viking, but the more significant battle is for Harold’s soul. At the end of the poem, Harold abandons the spirit of war which has previously ruled his way of life as a Viking berserker. -
Harlem Renaissance
It has been argued that the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, is the defining moment in African American literature because of an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among black writers. The importance of this movement to African American literary art lies in the efforts of its writers to exalt the heritage of African Americans and to use their unique culture as a means toward re-defining African American literary expression. -
Nigger Heaven
Van Vechten was born into a progressive Victorian household in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Both parents taught him to respect individuals regardless of race or socioeconomic standing. He was deeply influenced by his father, Charles Duane Van Vechten, a founder of the Piney Woods School for African American children in Mississippi, who had an unorthodox concern for African Americans, who had an unorthodox concern for African American child. -
The Messenger
While on a recent deployment to Iraq, US Army Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery is injured when an improvised explosive device goes off within close proximity to him. He is back in the States recovering from the more serious of those injuries, including one to his eye and leg. -
Let America be America Again
Langston Hughes is writing a poem of someone who feels that America does not live up to what it should be. The tone is angry and resentful. In this poem it’s not representing the point of view of one particular group. It’s saying that there are many people who’ve come here with hopes and dreams and they’re being let down. -
The Negro artist and the Racial Mountain
Hughes wants to show that African Americans always felt that being themselves was never good enough. They were told “don’t be like nigger” and always looked at “how well a white man does things” (1193) Hughes is crying for the help of his own people. -
The New Negro
was a compilation of poems, short fiction, essays, and illustrations. It celebrated the appearance of a new contingent of African American writers and artists, following the Great Migration of rural southern African Americans to northern urban meccas in the early twentieth century. An expression of the creative energy and ferment of the postwar Jazz Age, the volume was both a collection of literary and visual artifacts and, in its ideological function as a racial discrimination. -
Contemporary
By some definitions, and era or set of literary works published after the World War Time period. Usually contemporary literature express even targeted to an audience of that time period. -
The Alchemist
A recurring dream troubles Santiago, a young and adventurous Andalusian shepherd. He has the dream every time he sleeps under a sycamore tree that grows out of the ruins of a church. During the dream, a child tells him to seek treasure at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids. -
Water of Elephants
When Jacob Jankowski,parents dead and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. -
Beloved
Safely reunited with her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and her babies in Cincinnati, Sethe enjoys 28 days of contentment. Then one day as Stamp Paid replenishes the woodpile and Baby Suggs and Sethe work in the yard, schoolteacher, the sheriff, a slave catcher, and one of schoolteacher's nephews arrive to recapture Sethe and her children. -
The Kite Runner
is the story of Amir, a Sunni Muslim, who struggles to find his place in the world because of the aftereffects and fallout from a series of traumatic childhood events. An adult Amir opens the novel in the present-day United States with a vague reference to one of these events, and then the novel flashes back to Amir's childhood in Afghanistan. -
Life of Pi
Pi tells the story of his childhood in Pondicherry, India, and the origin of his nickname. One day, his father, a zoo owner, explains that the municipality is no longer supporting the zoo and he has hence decided to move to Canada, where the animals the family owns would also be sold.