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American literature

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
literature in English produced in what is now the United States of America. American writing began with the work of English adventurers and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers in the mother country. Some of these early works reached the level of literature, as in the robust and perhaps truthful account of his adventures by Captain John Smith and the sober, tendentious journalistic histories of John Winthrop and William Bradford in New England. From the beginning, however, the literature of New England was also directed to the edification and instruction of the colonists themselves, intended to direct them in the ways of the godly. The first work published in the Puritan colonies was the Bay Psalm Book (1640), and the whole effort of the divines who wrote furiously to set forth their views—among them Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker —was to defend and promote visions of the religious state. They set forth their visions—in effect the first formulation of the…
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Full text Article American literature

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
literature in English produced in what is now the United States of America. American writing began with the work of English adventurers and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers in the mother country. Some of these early works reached the level of literature, as in the robust…
| 3,192 words
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With the exception of a few pictographs, such as those that characterize the epic Walam Olum of the Delaware Indians, Native American literature for the most part remained an oral tradition until the nineteenth century. Tribal histories often included myths and legends, but first-person memoirs that…
| 412 words
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Hispanic American literature incorporates the writing of Chicanos, or Mexican Americans; Puerto Rican Americans; Cuban Americans; and other Americans of Central or South American heritage. Marked in contemporary times by the 1947 publication of Mario Suárez's short stories in the Arizona Quarterly , …
| 845 words
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Full text Article Asian American Literature

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
In its broadest sense, Asian American literature encompasses the oral and written literary traditions of Asian immigrants in North America, of American-born generations of Asian ancestry, and of Asian and Pacific Islander populations living in U.S. territories. The cultural texts of this last group…
| 2,990 words
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Full text Article African American Literature

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
Each period within the history of African American literature contains its own agenda. In each period, however, most African American authors have sought to provide at least a glimpse into the diverse experiences of African Americans. A cursory glance at the breadth of African American literature…
| 6,028 words
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Full text Article Native American Literature

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
The lack of Native American literature in the past was a direct result of the white conception of the Indian. That conception has varied between that of the noble savage and the bloodthirsty savage, but the latter was the dominant one because history books told white Americans that the culture of…
| 2,847 words
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Full text Article Jewish American Literature

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Jewish American literature moved from the margins to the mainstream of American culture, as the concerns of minority and ethnic communities became an intrinsic part of America's self-definition. Jewish American literature's concerns for the individual in a mass society, communal ethics over…
| 2,786 words
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In much the same way that Jewish, Hispanic, and African American writers of the postwar period succeeded in transforming themselves from marginalized outsiders to centralized voices positioned to challenge the dominant culture from within, so, too, have Native American writers found new readers…
| 862 words
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Full text Article The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
 Purchase Details  978-0-8264-1517-2  Publication date: 2005 From John Smith to Jack Kerouac , Cotton Mather to Toni Morrison , Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King , Francis Parkman to Alex Haley , the story of American literature is really many stories — of ancient indigenous peoples, early…
| 375 words
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Full text Article African American Literature

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Phillis Wheatley, Negro servant to Mr. John...
| 3,608 words , 10 images
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