American Studies: Literature On-Line Textbook
[ Table of Contents ] [ Index of Authors ] [ Bibliography ] [ Literary Timeline ] [ Literary Movements ] [ Short Story Index ] [ Student Profile ] [ Literary Terms ]

Purpose

Welcome! This site is designed to be an American Studies: Literature hyper-textbook.  The articles and works included on this site have been drawn from a number of resources and is designed for students in Roberts' and Eschenlohr's American Studies team at Robert Service High School, Anchorage, Alaska.

Organization

The American Studies On-Line site has been organized chronologically and is arranged accordingly.  To facilitate finding information on a specific person, group or event, or selection of literature an index will be created in the future.

Sources

The two sites that provide most of the informational articles used on this site include "From Revolution to Reconstruction: An Outline of American Literature" <http://odur.let.rug.nl/usanew/LIT/index.htm> and "PAL: Perspectives in American Literature" <http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/TABLE.HTML> 

The sites used for literature selections are varied, however two major sites include "Project Gutenberg" <http://promo.net/pg/index.html> and "Biblomania" <http://www.bibliomania.com/bibliomania-static/index.html>

Table of Contents

• Introduction to American Studies: Literature
• Early American and Colonial Period to 1776
  • Introduction
  • The literature of exploration
  • The Colonial period in New England
• Democratic Origins and Revolutionary Writers, 1776-1820
  • Introduction
  • The American Enlightenment
  • The Political pamphlet: Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
  • Neoclassism: Epic, mock epic and satire
  • Poet of the American Revolution: Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
  • Writers of fiction
  • Women and minorities
• The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets
  • Introduction
  • Transcendentalism
  • The Brahmin poets
  • Two reformers
• The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Fiction
  • Introduction
  • The Romance
  • Women writers and reformers
• The Rise of Realism: 1860-1914
  • Introduction
  • Frontier humor and realism
  • Local colorists
  • Midwestern realism
  • Cosmopolitan novelists - Naturalism and Muckraking
  • The "Chicago School" of poetry
  • Two women regional novelists
  • The rise of black American literature
• Modernism and Experimentation: 1914-1945
  • Introduction
  • Modernism
  • Poetry 1914-1945: experiments in form
  • Between the wars
  • Prose writing, 1914-1945: American realism
  • Novels of social awareness
  • The Harlem renaissance
  • Literary currents: the fugitives and new criticism
  • 20th-century American drama
• American Poetry Since 1945: The Anti-Tradition
  • Introduction
  • Traditionalism
  • Idiosyncratic poets
  • Experimental poetry
  • Women and multiethnic poets
  • New directions
• American Prose Since 1945: Realism and Experimentation
  • Introduction
  • The realist legacy and the late 1940s
  • The affluent but alienated 1950s
  • The turbulent but creative1960s
  • The 1970s and 1980s: New directions
  • The new regionalism