Name Period The Revolutionary Period (1765-1790) 1765 – The Stamp Act ignited the first serious opposition to English rule in the American colonies. 1790 – after the implementation of the United States Constitution During this period, the majority of American writing was politically motivated, whether supportive of English rule or revolutionary in character. Poetry • Most of the poetry was neoclassical, in imitation of English poet Alexander Pope. o neoclassical = characterized by simplicity, directness, order, decorum, balance, unity, and an emphasis on reason o Poets used neoclassical forms and styles such as burlesque, satire, and epic for political ends, especially the patriotic political end of independence. o Joel Barlow, Timothy Dwight, Philip Freneau, and John Trumbull wanted to establish a classical standard for American literature. o Others were associated with the Graveyard School of Poetry and emphasized an appreciation of nature, thereby foreshadowing romanticism. o Phillis Wheatley, an American slave and poet, inaugurated the African American literary tradition with her volume Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). She became the first published African American poet. Prose • • Revolutionary prose mostly promoted the movement for independence from England and the unification of the nation. o Thomas Paine - Common Sense (1776) o Alexander Hamilton and James Madison - The Federalist Papers (1787-88) – political theory underlying the U.S. Constitution o Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography (1771) o Thomas Jefferson - The Declaration of Independence (1776) The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy (1789), was written at the end of the Revolutionary Period. Drama • • • The first play written by an American and acted in America was Thomas Godfrey’s The Prince of Parthia (1767). Drama was the most influential and widespread outside of New England, where the Puritan suspicion of the medium remained strong. Dramas of the time were historical, didactic, and patriotic in nature. Name Period The Early National Period (1790-1828) 1790 – after the implementation of the United States Constitution 1828 – election of Andrew Jackson as President • Unlike the writers of the Revolutionary Period, writers of the Early National Period began to form distinctively American voices that developed with the formation of a new nation. • William Cullen Bryant is perhaps the best known poet of the time. • Washington Irving, and essayist and storyteller, became the first American prose writer to achieve international fame. • North American Review – the first long-running American magazine • During this period, the novel flourished. o sentimental novels = “true” stories for moral instruction, warning young ladies of the perils of seduction o gothic novels = focus on horror, suspense, doom, mystery, passion, and the grotesque and supernatural. Charles Brockden Brown - Wieland (1798)