When did American literature become distinct from British literature?

A distinctly American literary identity took shape in the nineteenth century, especially with the transcendentalists and the American Renaissance, though debate over American cultural independence began earlier.

Is African American literature a separate field?

It is both an integral part of American literature and a tradition with its own history, forms, and critical scholarship, often studied in its own right.

American Literature

American literature traces the literary culture of the United States from colonial and early national writing through the American Renaissance to modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and contemporary multicultural fiction.

Definition

The body of literary writing produced in the United States, studied across its colonial origins, national development, and contemporary multicultural breadth.

Scope

This topic surveys the literature of the United States: Puritan and colonial writing, the literature of the early republic, transcendentalism and the American Renaissance, realism and naturalism, modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and postwar and contemporary literatures, including African American, Native American, and immigrant traditions. It treats both canonical authors and the expansion of the canon to reflect a diverse, multiethnic literary culture.

Core questions

How did a distinctively American literature emerge from and against the English tradition?
What defined the American Renaissance and its vision of national culture?
How have African American and other minority traditions reshaped the canon?
How does American literature register slavery, race, and immigration?

Key concepts

the American Renaissance
transcendentalism
realism and naturalism
the Harlem Renaissance
the multiethnic canon

Key theories

Recovering the African American literary tradition: Henry Louis Gates Jr. and collaborators argued for a continuous African American literary tradition with its own forms and signifying practices, reshaping the American canon.

History

American literature grew from Puritan and colonial writing into a self-conscious national tradition in the nineteenth century, with the American Renaissance of Emerson, Whitman, Melville, and Dickinson. Realism, naturalism, and modernism followed, while the Harlem Renaissance and later movements brought African American, Native American, and immigrant voices to the center of a continually broadening canon.

Debates

What is the shape of the American canon?: Critics debate how far the canon should be reorganized around race, gender, and ethnicity rather than a narrower set of nineteenth- and twentieth-century white male authors.

Key figures

Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Mark Twain
Toni Morrison
Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Seminal works

whitman1855
morrison1987
gates2014

Frequently asked questions

When did American literature become distinct from British literature?: A distinctly American literary identity took shape in the nineteenth century, especially with the transcendentalists and the American Renaissance, though debate over American cultural independence began earlier.
Is African American literature a separate field?: It is both an integral part of American literature and a tradition with its own history, forms, and critical scholarship, often studied in its own right.