the division of American literary history recognizes the importance given by many literary historians to the War of Independence (1775-1781), the Civil War (1861-1865), the First World War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945). Under these rough divisions, some more widely used terms are cited to distinguish the periods of American literature from the subdivided periods. It must be noted that these terms are various; They may represent a period of time, a form of political organization, a remarkable cultural or imaginative model, or a dominant literary form.

167-1775. The period from the establishment of the first colony in Jamestown to the outbreak of the American War of Independence is often referred to as the colonial period. Most of the works in this period are religious, practical or historical. William Bradford, John winthrop and the theologian Cotton Mather are among the famous periodicals and narrative writers who wrote about the creation and early history of some colonies in the 17th century. In the next century, Jonathan Edwards was a major philosopher and theologian, while Benjamin Franklin was a clear and convincing prose master in early American writing. It was not until 1937 that edward tylor's manuscript was first published that he was found to be an outstanding religious poet with the style of British devout poet Herbert and Crashaw Metaphysics. Ann braz Tritt was a major poet in the colonial period who adopted secular, family and religious themes.

In p>1773, Phyllis whitley, then a 19-year-old slave born in Africa, published Poems on Various Themes, which announced the emergence of a large number of outstanding black writers (or, to use a more acceptable term later, African-American writers), but until recently, they were still ignored. African cultural traditions in the United States are very complex and varied-both western and African, both oral and written, both slaves and freemen, both Jewish and pagan, both plantation and urban, both advocating the abolition of apartheid and black nationalism-which has produced tension and integration, created highly innovative and distinctive literature in the long history, and is regarded as American music to the West. See: Creating a Dark-skinned Poet by J Saunders Reading (reprinted in 1939 and 1986); Black American Literature by Houston A. Baker, Jr. (1971); Black American Fiction and its Tradition by Bernard W. Bell (1987); Black Image written by Henry L. Gates Jr. (1987) and Black Literature and Literary Theory edited by him (1984); Norton Selected Works of Black American Literature (1997), co-edited by Henry L. Gates, Jr. and Nelly Y. MacKay.

The period between the Stamp Tax Law of p>1765 and 179 is sometimes divided into the period of the War of Independence. This is the era of Thomas Paine's influential revolutionary propaganda essays; It is the era of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Religious Freedom Act, the Declaration of Independence and many other works. It was the time when the Federalist Anthology (the most famous articles were written by alexander hamilton and james madison) supported the Constitution. Philip Freneau and Joel Barlow wrote patriotic satirical poems.

1775-1865. 1775-1828 is called the period of early national literature, which ended with the victory of Jackson's democracy in 1828, marking the emergence of imaginative national literature. The works of this period include the first American stage comedy [The Contrast by Royal Taylor (1787)] and the earliest American novel [The Power of Compassion by William Hill Brown (1789)]. Washington irving's prose and stories have gained international reputation; Charles Brockden Brown wrote mysterious and horrible Gothic novels with American characteristics. James fenimore Cooper, the first important American novelist, successfully started his creative career. William Cullen Bryant and edgar allan poe wrote poems that were relatively independent of their English predecessors. In 176, the first works of a large number of slave stories and autobiographies were published by African-American slaves who escaped or were freed. Most of these works were published between 183 and 1865, including Frederick Douglass's Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Harriet Jacobs's Life Events of a Slave (1861).

from 1828 to 1865, the period from Jackson's time to the American Civil War was often regarded as the The Romantic Period of the United States (see: neoclassicism and romanticism), which marked the complete arrival of the unique era of American literature. This period is sometimes called the Renaissance in the United States. This name comes from F.O. Matheson's influential book of the same name (1941), which reviews the famous writers of this period, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, henry david thoreau, edgar allan poe, herman melville and nathaniel hawthorne (see also symbolism). This stage, sometimes called the Transcendentalism period, centered on Emerson and began after the dominant philosophical and literary movements in New England (see Transcendentalism). In all literary genres except drama, the originality and high artistic achievements of the works created by writers in this period are beyond the reach of later American literature. Emerson, Thoreau and Margaret Fowler, an early feminist, influenced many American writers in that era and later generations in their thoughts, ideals and literary purposes. This is not only the time when William Cullen Bryant, washington irving and James fenimore Cooper kept coming out with new works, but also the time when Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and southern novelist william gilmore simms wrote novels and short stories. It was the time when Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emerson, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow and walt whitman, the most innovative and influential American poets, wrote poetry. It was also the time when Poe, Simms and James Russell Lowell began to show outstanding American literary criticism in their prose. Francis Ellen Watkins Harper continued the tradition of African-American female poets' poetry creation, and African-American novels were started by William Wells Brown's claudel (1853) and Harriet E Wilson's We Black (1859).

1865-1914. The great changes brought about by the bloody American Civil War, the post-war reconstruction of the south and the subsequent rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in the north have profoundly changed America's understanding of itself and its literary model. The period from 1865 to 19 is often referred to as the realistic period, which refers to the works of Mark Twain, william dean howells, Henry James, John W. deforest, Harold Frederick and African-American novelist Charles W. Chesnut. Although these works are different, they are all classified as "realistic" to distinguish them from the "legendary" works of Poe, Hawthorne and Melville, the predecessors of their prose novels (see: prose legend, realism). Some realistic writers take the region as the background of their novels; These writers (in addition to Mark Twain's novels describing the Mississippi Valley) include Brett Hart of California, Sarah Orne Jewett of Maine, Mary Wilkins Freeman of Massachusetts, George W. Cable of Louisiana and kate chopin. (See: local novels. Chopin is now famous as an early major feminist writer. Whitman continued his poetry creation until the last decade of the 19th century, and then Emily Dickinson joined the ranks of poetry creation (which was unknown to Whitman and almost everyone else). Although Dickinson wrote more than 1, short poems, only seven of them were published before her death, she is regarded as one of the most unique and outstanding poets in America today. Sidney Lanier published experimental poems of poetic rhythm based on musical beat; Paul laurence dunbar, an African-American writer, published poems and novels from 1893 to 195. In the 199s, Stephen Crane (although he was only 29 years old when he died) published free-style short poems before the experimental works of ezra pound and Imagist. At the same time, he also created talented and innovative short stories, which predicted two narrative modes: naturalism and impressionism. From 19 to 1914, although James, Howells and Mark Twain continued to write, and Edith Wharton also published her early novels, this period was divided into naturalistic period in order to express the recognition of Frank Norris, Jack London and theodore dreiser's novels which were sometimes rough but powerful (these works described the characters who were victims of the interaction of instinctive desires and external social forces). See also Naturalism in Realism and Naturalism.

1914-1939. This period was between the two world wars, marked by the trauma caused by the Great Depression that began in 1929. It was a period that is still called "modern literature", and its outstanding achievements in the United States reached a height comparable to that of the American Renaissance in the mid-19th century. But unlike most early writers, American modernist writers also enjoy a wide international reputation and influence. (See: Modernism. Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 and published many innovative writers' works. Among these famous poets are edgar lee masters, edwin arlington robinson, Robert Frost, carl sandburg, Wallace Stevens, william carlos williams, ezra pound, Robinson jeffers, Marian Moore, T.S. Eliot, Edna St.Vincent Millay and E.E. Cummings. These poets adopted an unprecedented variety of poetic creation modes, including the imagism of Amy Lowell, H.D. (Hilda doolittle) and other poets, Frost's rhythmic poems, Williams' freestyle poems written in American dialect, Cummings' experiments in form and typesetting, jeffers's poetic naturalism, and Pound and Eliot's integration of French symbolism and traditional ways with the wisdom and metaphor of English metaphysical poets. The main writers of prose novels are Edith Wharton, sinclair lewis, Ellen Glasgow, Willa Cather, gertrude stein, sherwood anderson, john dos passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, william faulkner, ernest hemingway, Thomas Ulf and John Steinbeck. During this period, the United States produced the first outstanding playwright Eugene O 'Neill and a large group of famous literary critics, including van wyck brooks, malcolm cowley, T.S. Eliot, edmund wilson and the arrogant and mean H.L. Mencken.

literary works in this period are often subdivided again in many ways. The luxurious, grandiose and pleasure-seeking 192s is sometimes called "Jazz Age", which is popular because of The Story of Jazz Age (1922) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This decade is also the harlem renaissance period. Conti Cullen, langston hughes, Claude MacKay, Joan Tumer, zora neale hurston and many other African-American writers created the major works of harlem renaissance period in various literary forms. (See: harlem renaissance. )

Many outstanding American writers in this decade were deeply disillusioned by their own war experiences after the end of World War I, and alienated by the ignorance of American culture and its "Puritan" repression, and were often labeled as the lost generation (gertrude stein first used this term to refer to French young people at that time). In order to pursue a more colorful literary and artistic environment and a freer lifestyle, some of these writers emigrated, either to London or Paris. Ezra pound, gertrude stein and T.S. Eliot died abroad, but most of the younger "exiles", as malcolm cowley called them [The Return of Exiles (1934)], returned to the United States in the 193s. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald's night is still young are novels that describe the mentality and lifestyle of two American exiles. In the "radical 193s", that is, when the Great Depression of the United States and President franklin delano roosevelt's New Deal brought about economic and social changes, some writers devoted themselves to radical political movements, while many other writers touched on the social problems that needed to be solved at that time in their literary works, including the novels of william faulkner, john dos passos, James T. Farrell, Thomas Ulf and john steinbeck, and the plays of Eugene O 'Neill, Clifford Odets and maxwell anderson. See: American 193s: A History of Literature by Peter Kang En (29); Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Maurice dickstein (29).

from p>1939 to the present, the contemporary period. The Second World War, especially the Moscow trial of the so-called treason, and the disillusionment of Soviet capitalism caused by the signing of the Soviet-German Treaty between Stalin and Hitler in 1939, largely ended the literary radicalism in the 193s. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 dealt a final blow to the few writers who still remained culturally loyal to the Soviet Union. In the following decades, those southern conservative writers who actively supported the return from industrial economy to agricultural economy in 193s, that is, the equal landowners, dominated the new criticism, which represented the general criticism trend of separating literature from the author's life and society. In formal terms, literary works were regarded as organic and autonomous entities. [See: The Burden of Time: Fugitives and Equitable Land Tenors by John L. Stewart (1965). However, prestigious and influential critics edmund wilson and lionel trilling-and other critics who were classified as new york literati, including Philip Rafer, Alfred Cassin, Dwight MacDonald and Irving Howe-still treated literary works from the viewpoint of humanity and history in the 196s, taking the author's life, temperament and social environment as the background, and the morality, imaginative quality and social impact of the works as the evaluation criteria. See: The Return of the Prodigal Son: new york Scholars and Their World by Alexander Bloom (1986); By V.B. Leach