What is American about American literature?

The American cultural identity and civilization are both transcribed in the body of literature that this nation has produced. The rich literary output reflects the general characteristics of the country’s ongoing reinvention and redefinition. These features are part of what makes of the American literary scene a highly representative and dynamic construction. A brief survey of examples from the different literary genres shows to what extent such works are anchored in their American context out of the writers’ great desire to affirm the American identity and values. Therefore, this essay is going to show that although American literature has a rather short history, compared with the European literary tradition, it nevertheless captures the spirit of the American nation and goes along with the significant evolution that America has known.

The first social background that shaped American literature is Puritanism. Actually, the early American tradition goes back to the Puritans and to their doctrine that they instilled in literature starting from the seventeenth century and even later on. Puritans were mostly settlers of British origin, which influenced the cultural atmosphere in New England, though, subsequently, Puritans wanted to assert their break-up from England. For instance, the founding fathers of American literature copied the formal English style of writing. Puritans’ lifestyle was rather ascetic, and came to be labelled as ‘Puritanism’. This doctrine is an assortment of values such as hard work, self-restraint, piety, sobriety, and the belief in predestination. One of the most representative works that reflects the age is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) which illustrates the stern conservatism and rigidity with which the Puritan Massachusetts’s community sanctions an adulteress and shames her in public.

Other Puritan values are defended in the early Puritan literature, journals, letters, and the like. Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac” reflects the austerity of Puritans’ social and moral codes. Their rules lay emphasis on work ethics which are consequently thought to be the very foundations of American democracy and sense of enterprise, since they point the way for the ordinary individual to rise from poverty to wealth and fame. American literature’s adoption of such values makes it diverge from British literature which enhances social hierarchy as a natural order. Soon, these differences nurtured the desire for separation from Britain. Paine’s Common Sense is among the best examples illustrating such itch for independence. Pamphlets of this kind served as a stepping-stone towards separation from Old Britain. Common Sense and American Crisis support an independent and self-governing America. They filled the audience with a strong sense of patriotism during the American Independence War. This will to cut ties with Old Britain could be found in every genre: in Paine’s pamphlets, Frenau’s poems, M. Warren’s drama, Madison’s articles, and the like.

It nearly goes without saying that exploring the Americanness of American literature should refer to the most typically American trend, namely Transcendentalism. As another intellectual product of New England, this philosophy is born from the need to give America its specific literary identity, as was Emerson’s wish. Actually, like British Romanticism, both trends meet in taking interest in nature and in ascribing imaginative and emotional qualities to poetry. However, Transcendentalism goes steps further in emphasizing the importance of the individual as a distinct being, but also as a part of the Oversoul which is the union of all human beings with the spirit of God, as Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman maintain in their works. A telling example of this tendency can be seen in Whitman’s seminal collection of poems known as Leaves of Grass, in particular in his epic poem titled “Song of Myself.” Whitman devotes this long poem to the celebration of the modern, democratic American individual who believes in the values of equality and freedom for all citizens, regardless of their race, gender, or social background. Whitman’s ideas represent a major source of inspiration to a large number of novelists and poets, such as Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson, to name but the most prominent ones.

A different set of themes and new writing styles goes along with the country’s subsequent progress. The latter half of the 19th century is marked by a widening contrast between wealth and poverty owing to the impact of the American Civil War and the growing Industrialization. This resulted in a common feeling of frustration and disillusionment among Americans, which led to the adoption of a new literary movement, namely Realism. While Realism comes as a reaction to the fantasy of Romanticism, it offers a fair portrayal of real life: the misery of ordinary people, the hardships faced by poor and middle classes, the discrimination undergone by minorities, as well as the importance of places in America, known as « Regionalism » or « Local Colorism. » Indeed, Realists stress the impact of society on the individual, as in works by Mark Twain. Known for his blatantly rough humor and coarse social satire, Twain provides a detailed illustration of the Mississipian context in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In a humorous, though seriously solemn and reverent style, Twain’s novels attempt to expose the dark facet of what writers previously idealized.

Other novelists, like Henry James, targeted the psychological side of Americans through the textualization of an innocent American’s encounter with the sophisticated European civilization. James significantly contributed new aspects to Realism by being the forerunner of the « stream of consciousness » novels and the founder of Psychological Realism. His Daisy Miller tells the story of a love affair between a European young man and an American girl, Daisy Miller. Her erratic, provocative and teasing behavior confuses her lover, since she acts against European social norms. Eventually, the fact that Winterbourne leaves her by the end of the novel spawns deeper significances beneath the lines.

During the last decade of the 19th century, American literature moved towards Naturalism as a new trend. Naturalism developed from Realism and from the influence of the nineteenth century French literature. American Naturalists, like Stephen Crane or Franck Norris, chose to be the spokesmen of American working classes. They portrayed the anguish of the miserable underdogs of American lower classes who were eventually depicted as the victims of Nature and society. The Puritans’ belief in Predestination might be very influential to Naturalists, too, since they both agree that Natural laws and forces always prevail over people. Crane’s Maggie, A Girl of The Street centers on a young girl who suffers the abuse of her brutish parents and the overwhelming misery of poverty and solitude. Such social aspects are significant in late nineteenth century literature and are considered as the repercussions of Industrialization, for even though economy was prosperous, there was no fair share of wealth. These facts were recorded in novels deploring poverty in America like Norris’ McTeague which narrates the story of an American couple falling prey to destitution; driven by the spell of greed and envy, the eponymous hero kills his beloved Trina.

Twentieth century modernism bears the imprint of a general crisis despite material prosperity. Moral standards were in absolute decline. The First World War and Industrialization engendered a spiritual shallowness alongside a dominant feeling of fear, disorientation, and disillusionment among citizens as reflected in multiple works. In fact, Modernism’s rejection of religion has resulted in writers’ focus on man’s spiritual void and triviality, as can be seen in modern poetry, for instance, in its depiction of the complacency of modern man. Ezra Pound and Robert Frost were at the origin of a Modernist poetic style characterized by a direct handling of subjects, the rejection of ornamental and superfluous language, and experimentation with verse. The importance of the individual dwindled down, and as a protest against self-importance, E.E. Cummings disregarded punctuation and capital letters, as in his use of « i » instead of « I ».

Similarly, Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are the chief representatives of the crisis of a « Lost Generation, » as coined by Gertrude Stein. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises points out the purposeless life of American expatriates in post-World War 1 Europe, while it also exposes the changing gender roles in relation to the birth of the “New Woman.” Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby deplores the failure of the “American Dream” and the decline of all traditional values. The same set of ideas is to be found in a number of plays, for instance in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. On another plane, the ideals of freedom and equality and the quest for a new identity marked the twentieth century with the emergence of black voices from the Harlem Renaissance, notably poets like Langston Hughes and Claude McKay. The language used by Modernist writers captures the variety of social backgrounds shaping American cultures.

Accordingly, this brief description of American literature has tried to expose some of the facets of the tight relationship between text and context. Through reference to history and to different trends, the essay has sought not only to show how American history and civilization are transcribed in different literary genres, but also how different ages and social backgrounds provide its literature with an American imprint. More importantly, the essay has explored a few literary features that qualify a whole body of literature as typically American.

Bibliography:

– Crane, Stephen. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Lanham: Dancing Unicorn Books, 2016. Print.

-Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1925. Print.

-Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography, and Other Writings. New York :Dodd, Mead, 1963. Print.

-Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York, U.S.A.: Signet Classic, 1988. Print.

-Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 1954. Print.

-Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. Print.

-Norris, Franck. McTeague: A Story of San Francisco. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1899. Print.

-Paine, Thomas. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense: The Call to Independence. Woodbury, New York, U.S.A.: Barron’s Educational Series, 1975. Print.

-Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. London: Penguin Books, 1994. Print. -Whitman, Walt. Leaves Of Grass. Champaign, Ill. : Boulder, Colo. : Project Gutenberg ; NetLibrary, 1990–1999. Print.

-Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. New York, Modern Library, 2002. Print.