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American Literature
Free Online Custom Essays, Research Papers, Admission Essays, Thesis, College Papers, English Papers, Analyzed Essays, Essay Papers, Non-Plagiarized Essays, Term Papers, Coursework Essays, Custom Papers
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|  Essay, Research Paper: Edgar Allan Poe |
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| Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor and critic and one of the leaders of the American Romantics. He is best known for his tales of the macabre and his poems, as well as being one of the early practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of Gothic and Detective fiction (Crime fiction) in the United States. Poe died at the age of 40, the cause of his death a final mystery. His exact burial location is also a source of controversy.
His legacy is abundant in modern pop culture, from the acclaim of his writing to the naming of the Baltimore Ravens NFL football team. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Hannah Webster Foster |
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| Hannah Webster Foster (September 10, 1758 - 1840) was an American novelist.
Born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, she wrote Coquette; or The History of Eliza Wharton in 1797. It is an epistolary novel, and one of the first of its kind in America.
She also wrote the novel The Boarding School in 1798 about education in the United States. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Harriet Beecher Stowe |
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| Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, born Harriet Elizabeth Beecher (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an abolitionist, and writer of more than 10 books, the most famous being Uncle Tom's Cabin which describes life in slavery, and which was first published in serial form from 1851 to 1852 in an abolitionist organ, the National Era, edited by Gamaliel Bailey.
Her second novel was Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, another anti-slavery novel.
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut and raised primarily in Hartford, she was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, an abolitionist Congregationalist preacher from Boston, and the sister of renowned minister, Henry Ward Beecher. In 1832, her family moved to Cincinnati, another hotbed of the abolitionist movement, where her father became the first president of Lane Theological Seminary. There she gained first-hand knowledge of slavery and the Underground railroad and was moved to write Uncle Tom's Cabin, the first major American novel with an African-American hero.
In 1836 Harriet Beecher married Calvin Stowe, a clergyman and widower. Later she and her husband moved to Bowdoin College, when he obtained an academic position there. Harriet and Calvin had seven children, but some died in early childhood. Her first children, twin girls Hattie and Eliza, were born on September 29, 1836. Four years later, in 1840, her son Frederick William was born. In 1848 the birth of Samuel Charles occured, but in the following year, he died from a cholera epidemic. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Henry David Thoreau |
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| Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, pacifist, tax resister and philosopher who is famous for Walden on simple living amongst nature and Civil Disobedience on resistance to civil government. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the radical John Brown. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet who wrote many poems that are still famous today, including The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Revere's Ride and Evangeline. He also wrote the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Hell (Inferno). Born in Maine, Longfellow lived for most of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a house occupied during the American Revolution by Gen. George Washington and his staff.
He was born in the Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, Maine, the son of Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow. His father was a lawyer and his maternal grandfather Peleg Wadsworth was a general in the American Revolutionary War. He was descended from the Longfellow family who came to America in 1676 from Otley in Yorkshire, England and from Priscilla and John Alden on his father's side.
He studied at Bowdoin College and went on to become librarian and the first professor of modern languages there after touring Europe between 1826 and 1829.
He died on March 24, 1882.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1884 he was the first American poet to have a bust of him placed in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.
His work was immensely popular during his time and is still somewhat today, but many modern critics consider him too sentimental. His poetry is based on familiar and easily understood themes with simple, clear, and flowing language. His poetry created an audience in America and contributed to creating American mythology. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Jack London |
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| Jack London, probably born John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author who wrote over 50 books.
Jack London's most famous work is The Call of the Wild. Critic Maxwell Geismar called it "a beautiful prose poem," editor Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with Walden and Huckleberry Finn," and novelist E. L. Doctorow called it "a mordant parable... his masterpiece."
Nevertheless, as Dale L. Walker[4] commented:
[Jack London was] an uncomfortable novelist, that form too long for his natural impatience and the quickness of his mind. His novels, even the best of them, are hugely flawed.
It is often observed his novels are episodic and resemble a linked series of short stories. Walker writes]:
The Star Rover, that magnificent experiment, is actually a series of short stories connected by a unifying device... Smoke Bellew is a series of stories bound together in a novel-like form by their reappearing protagonist, Kit Bellew; and John Barleycorn... is a synoptic series of short episodes.
Even The Call of the Wild, which Walker calls a "long short story," is picaresque or episodic.
In addition to The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, The Iron Heel, and Martin Eden are widely admired.
Ambrose Bierce called The Sea-Wolf "the great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen... the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime." However, many agree with Bierce that "The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful."
The Iron Heel is interesting as an example of a dystopian novel which anticipates and influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Jack London's socialist politics are explicitly on display here. Its description of the capitalist class forming an organised, totalitarian, violent oligarchy to crush the working-class forewarned in some detail the Fascist dictatorships of Europe. Given it was written in 1908, this prediction was somewhat uncanny, as Trotsky noted while commenting on the book in the 30s.
Martin Eden is a novel about a struggling young writer with a very strong resemblance to Jack London. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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| Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature.
Hawthorne is best-known today for his many short stories (he called them "tales") and his four major romances of 1850–60: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble Faun (1860). (Another book-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828.)
Before publishing his first collection of tales in 1837, Hawthorne wrote scores of short stories and sketches, publishing them anonymously or pseudonymously in periodicals such as The New-England Magazine and The United States Democratic Review. Only after collecting a number of his short stories into the two-volume Twice-Told Tales in 1837 did Hawthorne begin to attach his name to his works.
Much of Hawthorne's work is set in colonial New England, and many of his short stories have been read as moral allegories influenced by his Puritan background. "Ethan Brand" (1850) tells the story of a lime-burner who sets off to find the Unpardonable Sin, and in doing so, commits it. One of Hawthorne's most famous tales, "The Birth-Mark" (1843), concerns a young doctor who removes a birthmark from his wife's face, an operation which kills her. Other well-known tales include "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844), "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836), and "Young Goodman Brown" (1835). "The Maypole of Merrymount" recounts a most interesting encounter between the Puritans and the forces of anarchy and hedonism.
Recent criticism has focused on Hawthorne's narrative voice, treating it as a self-conscious rhetorical construction, not to be conflated with Hawthorne's own voice. Such an approach complicates the long-dominant tradition of regarding Hawthorne as a gloomy, guilt-ridden moralist.
Hawthorne enjoyed a brief friendship with American novelist Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the two authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, which Melville later praised in a famous review, "Hawthorne and His Mosses." Melville's letters to Hawthorne provide insight into the composition of Moby-Dick, which Melville dedicated to Hawthorne, 'in appreciation for his genius.' Hawthorne's letters to Melville did not survive. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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| Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a famous American essayist and one of America's most influential thinkers and writers.
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister in a famous line of ministers; Emerson was later to become a Unitarian minister himself. He gradually drifted from the doctrines of his peers, then formulated and first expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay Nature.
When he was three years old, Emerson's father complained that the child could not read well enough. Then in 1810, when Emerson was eight years old, his father died. In October of 1817, at the age of 14, Emerson went to Harvard University and was appointed President's Freshman, a position which gave him a room free of charge. He waited at Commons, which reduced the cost of his board to one quarter, and he received a scholarship. He added to his slender means by tutoring and by teaching during the winter vacations at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts.
After Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821, he assisted his brother in a school for young ladies established in their mother's house; when his brother went to Gottingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School, and emerged as a Unitaritan minister in 1829. A dispute with church officials over the administration of the Communion service, and a reticence for public prayer led to his resignation in 1832. A year earlier his young wife and reputed one true love, Miss Elena Louisa Tucker, died in April of 1831.
In 1832–33, Emerson toured Europe, a trip that he would later write about in English Traits (1856). During this trip, he met Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson maintained a correspondence with Carlyle until Carlyle's death in 1882.
In 1835, Emerson bought a house on the Cambridge Turnpike, in Concord, Massachusetts. He quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He also married his second wife Lydia Jackson here.
In September of 1836, Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement, but didn't publish its journal The Dial, until July of 1840. Emerson published his first essay, Nature, anonymously in September of 1836. While it became the foundation for Transcendentalism, many people at the time assumed it to be a work of Swedenborgianism.
In 1838 he was invited back to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School, for the school's graduation address. His remarks managed to outrage the establishment and shock the whole protestant community at the time, as he proclaimed Jesus Christ a great man, but not God. For this, he was denounced as an atheist, and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of his critics, he made no reply, leaving it to others for his defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another 40 years, but by the mid 1880s his position had become standard Unitarian doctrine.
Early in 1842, Emerson lost his first son, Waldo, to scarlet fever. Emerson wrote about his grief in two major works: the poem "Threnody", and the essay "Experience".
Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and the rest of the country outside of the south. During several scheduled appearances that he was not able to make, Frederick Douglass took his place. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects. Many of his essays grew out of his lectures.
Emerson associated closely with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau and often took walks with them in Concord.
Emerson was noted as being a very abstract and difficult writer who nevertheless drew large crowds for his speeches. A common joke heard from his audiences was that they had no idea what he was saying, but that it was beautiful. He was considered one of the great orators of the time, a man who could enrapture crowds with his own enthusiasm. His outspoken, uncompromising support for abolitionism later in life caused protest and jeers from crowds when he spoke on the subject. He continued to speak on abolition without concern for his popularity and with increasing radicalism. He attempted, with difficulty, not to join the public arena as a member of any group or movement, and always retained a stringent independence that reflected his individualism. He always insisted that he wanted no followers, but sought to give man back to himself, as a self-reliant individual. Asked to sum up his work late in life, he said it was his doctrine of "the infinitude of the private man" that remained central. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Washington Irving |
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| Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century.
Irving was born in Manhattan. A lawyer, he was a member of the American diplomatic staff in Britain and in Spain. He spoke Spanish. He was a prolific essayist who wrote widely respected biographies of George Washington and Muhammad as well as other historical figures. He also wrote books on 15th century Spain dealing with subjects such as Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra.
He is said to have invented the literary myth that everyone before Columbus thought the earth was flat. He is also credited with coining the phrase "the almighty dollar".
Irving traveled on the Western frontier in the 1830s and recorded his glimpses of western tribes in A Tour on the Prairies (1835) and was one of the few 19th century figures to speak out against the mishandling of relations with the Native American tribes by Europeans:
It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America, in the early periods of colonization, to be doubly wronged by the white men. They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenary and frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traduced by bigoted and interested writers.
Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe. He is said to have mentored authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. |
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| Essay, Research Paper: William Faulkner |
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| William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist from Mississippi. Though his works are sometimes challenging or even difficult, he is regarded as one of America's most important fiction writers.
In works of psychological drama and emotional depth, Faulkner was known for using long serpentine sentences and high, meticulously-chosen diction, in stark contrast to his long time rival Ernest Hemingway; his long sentences and ornate verbiage contrasted to Hemingway's short, 'minimalist' style. Some consider him to be the only true American Modernist prose fiction writer of the 1930s, following in experimental tradition European writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. His work is known for literary devices such as stream of consciousness, multiple narrations or points of view, and time-shifts within narrative.
The Sound and the Fury is a well known novel by William Faulkner. Published in 1929, it was his fourth novel. The novel first received commercial success in 1931 when Faulkner's novel Sanctuary, a sensationalist story which Faulkner later admitted was written only for money, drew widespread attention to the author. Curiously, the book did sell well when Oprah Winfrey selected it for her book club in the summer of 2005, four decades after Faulkner's death.
The novel takes place in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. It is written in a stream of consciousness style and is split into four sections: the first from the viewpoint of Benjy Compson, a mentally-retarded man; the second from the point of view of Quentin Compson, a depressed college student; the third from the point of view of their sardonic brother, Jason Compson; and the fourth section from a third person limited omniscient narrative point-of-view, centering on Dilsey, the Compson family's black servant, and expounding on religious faith. |
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