American Literature Outline.

I.               Historical Context

a.     The meeting of two worlds

                                               i.     Early Writers describe land and people

                                              ii.     Native Americans had well established civilizations when Europeans arrived

                                            iii.     Native Americans and Europeans both assumed wrongly about each other.

1.     Native Americans: Viewed ship as a walking island

2.     Europeans viewed land as a barren and desolate wilderness

b.     From colony to country

                                               i.     Colonists increasingly practiced local self rule

                                              ii.     Britain in turn provided protection for the new colonies

                                            iii.     When taxed the remarkable minds of our colonial thinkers were put into action to write protest documents.

1.     Declaration of Independence

2.     Constitution of the united states

II.             Cultural Influences

a.     Puritan beliefs

                                               i.     Puritans were English Protestants seeking simpler ways of worship.

                                              ii.     Puritans are also inflexible to other religious views

1.     This rule for puritans was a direct explanation for the Salem witch trials

III.           Ideas of the Age

a.     The Enlightenment

                                               i.     The enlightenment pointed people into the direction of being governed by the people for the people.

b.     The Great Awakening

                                               i.     Colonists rededicated themselves and join together with a belief that a higher power was helping them become settled in America.

IV.            Early American Literature

a.     The Native American Experience

                                               i.     There were 300 different Native American cultures and all of them had their ways of storytelling.

                                              ii.     Creation stories, the migration of people, great deeds, fairy tales, lyrics, and chants were some examples of what you might’ve heard in your tribe.

                                            iii.     Sadly Native Americans were killed off in mass numbers by European disease.

b.     Exploration and the Early Settlers

                                               i.     From the Europeans there was descriptive literature about the land.

                                              ii.     These pieces of writing then influenced people back in Britain to come to America.

                                            iii.     Captain John Smith was notorious for writing documents and journals to convince people to come to the colonies.

c.      The Puritan Tradition

                                               i.     The puritans wrote to bring clarity to their religion and viewed writing as a tool.

                                              ii.     Puritans, while they did occasionally write for pleasure, they mostly wrote sermons or journaled their lives.

                                            iii.     Most Puritan literature uses vivid images from nature and everyday life.

d.     Writers of the Revolution

                                               i.     Revolutionary writers chose to write about matters concerning government rather than religion.

                                              ii.     Between 1763 and 1783 inexpensive books called pamphlets were published to inform colonists on British rule.

                                            iii.     Thomas Jefferson wrote pamphlets and also helped write and edit the Declaration of Independence.

                                            iv.     Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington also wrote perhaps the countries most important piece of writing: The Constitution of the United States of America

                                              v.