American Literature Authors and Works Flashcards
Grade 11 · English · Flashcards
Key authors, works, and literary movements in American literature from the Colonial period through the 20th century.
Flashcards
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Modernist author of The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night; chronicler of the Jazz Age and the corruption of the American Dream.
- Ernest Hemingway
- Known for minimalist prose and the iceberg theory; The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea; Nobel Prize 1954.
- Arthur Miller
- 20th-century playwright; Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Crucible (1953) explore social pressure, identity, and the American Dream.
- Langston Hughes
- Harlem Renaissance poet and writer; The Negro Speaks of Rivers, A Dream Deferred, and I, Too; central voice in African American literary tradition.
- John Steinbeck
- Nobel Prize-winning author of Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939); naturalist depicting the struggles of working-class Americans.
- Edgar Allan Poe
- 19th-century master of Gothic fiction and poetry; The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher; pioneered the short story form.
- Walt Whitman
- Transcendentalist/Romantic poet; Leaves of Grass (1855); celebrated democracy, the body, and the American experience in free verse.
- Emily Dickinson
- Reclusive 19th-century poet known for slant rhyme, dashes, and unconventional capitalization; explored death, immortality, and nature in short lyric poems.
- Harlem Renaissance
- 1920s to 1930s cultural movement centered in Harlem, NYC; celebrated African American art, music, and literature; key figures include Hughes, Hurston, and Countee Cullen.
- Zora Neale Hurston
- Harlem Renaissance author of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); anthropologist and folklorist who preserved African American Southern culture in her fiction.
- Ralph Ellison
- Author of Invisible Man (1952); a novel about racial invisibility and identity in America, considered one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century.
- Transcendentalism
- 19th-century American literary and philosophical movement (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman) emphasizing individualism, nature, and spiritual experience over institutional religion.
- Kate Chopin
- Late 19th-century author of The Awakening (1899); a proto-feminist novel about a woman's quest for identity and autonomy, controversial when published.
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