American Literature Reference Sheet

William Bradford

The 'city upon a hill' metaphor describing the Puritan mission in America

America's first published female poet, a Puritan who wrote about faith, family, and daily life

To glorify God, instruct in moral behavior, and record God's providence in the New World

Jonathan Edwards

Part of the Great Awakening

A religious revival movement in the 1730s-40s that emphasized personal religious experience and emotional preaching

A sermon warning of God's judgment upon a sinful people and calling them to repentance

Named after the prophet Jeremiah

Thomas Paine

Benjamin Franklin

Patrick Henry's speech to the Virginia Convention (1775)

The first published African American female poet, formerly enslaved

Political essays, speeches, and persuasive pamphlets arguing for independence and self-governance

It is one of the earliest and most influential American autobiographies, presenting the ideal of the self-made man

He urged Americans to persevere in the Revolution, famously writing about 'the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot'

Washington Irving

James Fenimore Cooper

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Edgar Allan Poe

Emphasis on emotion, imagination, individualism, nature, and the supernatural

Herman Melville

The effects of sin, guilt, and hidden shame in a Puritan community

Captain Ahab's obsessive quest to hunt a great white whale, exploring themes of obsession, fate, and humanity vs. nature

Detective fiction (mystery)

A young Puritan man who ventures into the forest and encounters evidence of hidden evil in his community

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

A philosophical movement emphasizing individual intuition, the divinity of nature, and self-reliance over conformity

The duty to resist unjust government through nonviolent protest

Walt Whitman

Emily Dickinson

She published fewer than a dozen poems in her lifetime

Free verse, long lines, celebration of democracy, the individual, and the body

Dickinson used short lines, slant rhyme, and dashes; Whitman used long, expansive free verse

Trusting one's own thoughts and intuition rather than conforming to society's expectations

Harriet Beecher Stowe

It galvanized anti-slavery sentiment in the North and is credited with helping start the Civil War

Frederick Douglass

Louisa May Alcott

An autobiographical account written by a formerly enslaved person describing their experiences

Its vivid first-person account, rhetorical skill, and argument that literacy and freedom are inseparable

Walt Whitman wrote it as an elegy for Abraham Lincoln after his assassination

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

A movement depicting everyday life and characters as they actually are, without idealization

Jack London

Stephen Crane

A Civil War novel written by someone who never fought in the war

An extreme form of realism showing how environment, heredity, and social forces shape human destiny

It used vernacular dialect, satirized racism, and explored moral conscience through Huck's journey with Jim

Fiction that emphasizes the setting, dialect, customs, and culture of a specific geographic area

A type of regionalism that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, and landscape of a particular area

Mark Twain's depiction of life along the Mississippi is a prime example

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway

John Steinbeck

Harper Lee

William Faulkner

A cultural, artistic, and literary movement centered in Harlem, NYC in the 1920s-30s celebrating African American culture

Robert Frost

Langston Hughes

The corruption of the American Dream, the hollowness of wealth, and the impossibility of recapturing the past

Short, direct sentences, understated emotion (the 'iceberg theory'), and sparse prose

John Steinbeck

The morally upright lawyer in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' who defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime

Flannery O'Connor

Southern Gothic style, dark humor, and themes of grace, violence, and moral reckoning

A method of narration that presents the continuous flow of a character's thoughts and feelings without conventional structure

Faulkner and Virginia Woolf are known for this technique

The Great Depression and Dust Bowl era, following the Joad family's migration to California

The central message or insight about life that the author conveys

A story where characters and events represent abstract ideas or moral qualities

A contrast between what is expected and what actually occurs

Using objects, characters, or events to represent larger ideas or concepts beyond their literal meaning

First: 'I' (inside); Third: 'he/she' (outside)

A recurring element (image, idea, symbol, or action) that reinforces the theme of a work

A character whose qualities contrast with another character's to highlight specific traits

Tom Buchanan is a foil to Jay Gatsby

When the audience knows something that the characters do not

A narrator whose credibility is compromised, so the reader cannot take their account at face value

Nick Carraway in 'The Great Gatsby' is sometimes considered one

A coming-of-age novel that follows the protagonist's growth from youth to maturity

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird' are examples

Hints or clues about events that will occur later in the story

The use of humor, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticize and expose human vices or foolishness

Mark Twain was a master satirist

A simile compares using 'like' or 'as'; a metaphor states one thing IS another without 'like' or 'as'

The author's attitude toward the subject matter or audience, conveyed through word choice and style

A sudden moment of insight or revelation experienced by a character

A brief, indirect reference to a person, place, event, or work of art that the reader is expected to recognize

Mood is the emotional atmosphere felt by the reader; tone is the author's attitude toward the subject