American Novel

A American Novel is a novel that is created by an american author and typically reflects american experience, american culture, or american history.

• AKA: U.S. Novel.
• Context:
  • It can typically explore American Identity through cultural values, national history, and social development.
  • It can typically reflect American Experience through regional settings, historical periods, and demographic representation.
  • It can typically examine American Society through class structures, racial dynamics, and political context.
  • It can typically portray American Character through individualism, pragmatism, and frontier mentality.
  • It can typically address American Dream through success stories, social mobility, and aspiration disillusionment.
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  • It can often incorporate American Vernacular through regional dialects, idiomatic expressions, and conversational style.
  • It can often depict American Landscape through geographical features, urban environments, and rural settings.
  • It can often critique American Institutions through political systems, economic structures, and social conventions.
  • It can often reflect American Conflicts through cultural tensions, historical struggles, and identity crises.
  • It can often employ American Literary Innovations through narrative techniques, stylistic approaches, and structural experiments.
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  • It can range from being a Colonial American Novel to being a Contemporary American Novel, depending on its historical period.
  • It can range from being a Regional American Novel to being a National American Novel, depending on its geographical scope.
  • It can range from being a Realist American Novel to being a Experimental American Novel, depending on its literary approach.
  • It can range from being a Popular American Novel to being a Literary American Novel, depending on its critical reception.
  • It can range from being a Conservative American Novel to being a Progressive American Novel, depending on its political orientation.
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  • It can influence american cultural identity through collective narratives and shared mythology.
  • It can chronicle american historical development through period portrayals and societal transformations.
  • It can contribute to american literary tradition through stylistic innovations and thematic explorations.
  • It can challenge american social norms through cultural critiques and alternative perspectives.
  • It can shape american literary canon through educational inclusion and scholarly recognition.
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• Examples:
  • American Novel Historical Periods, such as:
    • Colonial American Novels, such as:
      • The Power of Sympathy (1789), considered the first published american novel.
      • Charlotte Temple (1791), exploring moral instruction and seduction narrative.
    • Early Republic American Novels, such as:
      • The Last of the Mohicans (1826), examining frontier life and native american interaction.
      • The Scarlet Letter (1850), exploring puritan society and moral transgression.
    • Civil War Era American Novels, such as:
      • Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), addressing slavery and abolitionist movement.
      • Moby-Dick (1851), examining american ambition and existential quest.
    • Gilded Age American Novels, such as:
      • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), portraying mississippi river life and moral awakening.
      • The Portrait of a Lady (1881), exploring american expatriate experience and societal constraint.
    • Modernist American Novels, such as:
      • The Great Gatsby (1925), examining jazz age and american dream corruption.
      • The Sound and the Fury (1929), portraying southern decay through experimental technique.
    • Post-War American Novels, such as:
      • The Catcher in the Rye (1951), exploring adolescent alienation and societal criticism.
      • Invisible Man (1952), addressing racial identity and american exclusion.
    • Contemporary American Novels, such as:
      • Beloved (1987), examining slavery legacy and historical trauma.
      • The Corrections (2001), portraying american family dysfunction in the modern era.
  • American Novel Thematic Categories, such as:
    • American Frontier Novels, such as:
      • The Pioneers (1823), depicting wilderness settlement and frontier justice.
      • Blood Meridian (1985), examining western violence and american mythology.
    • American War Novels, such as:
      • The Red Badge of Courage (1895), portraying civil war experience and psychological realism.
      • A Farewell to Arms (1929), examining world war I disillusionment and existential crisis.
    • American Social Novels, such as:
      • The Jungle (1906), exposing industrial exploitation and immigrant hardship.
      • The Grapes of Wrath (1939), depicting great depression and economic injustice.
    • American Ethnic Novels, such as:
      • Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), exploring african american experience and female empowerment.
      • The Joy Luck Club (1989), examining chinese american identity and generational conflict.
  • American Novel Stylistic Approaches, such as:
    • American Realist Novels, such as:
      • Sister Carrie (1900), portraying urban life with naturalistic approach.
      • Main Street (1920), examining small town america with social criticism.
    • American Modernist Novels, such as:
      • As I Lay Dying (1930), using multiple narrators and stream of consciousness.
      • U.S.A. Trilogy (1930-1936), incorporating newsreel technique and social panorama.
    • American Postmodern Novels, such as:
      • Gravity's Rainbow (1973), employing narrative fragmentation and encyclopedic reference.
      • White Noise (1985), exploring consumer culture through ironic detachment.
  • ...
• Counter-Examples:
  • English Novel, which is written by english authors and reflects english society rather than american experience.
  • Canadian Novel, which explores canadian identity and canadian social context despite sharing the north american continent.
  • American Short Story, which shares american thematic concerns but uses a condensed form rather than the extended narrative of the american novel.
  • American Poetry, which expresses american sensibility through poetic language rather than prose fiction.
  • American Biography, which chronicles american life through factual accounts rather than fictional narrative.
• See: American Literature, Novel, American Author, American Literary Movement, American Literary Canon.

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References

2020

• (Wikipedia, 2020) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_literature Retrieved:2020-12-22.
  • American literature is literature predominantly written or produced in English in the United States of America and its preceding colonies. Before the founding of the United States, the British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States were heavily influenced by English literature. The American literary tradition thus began as part of the broader tradition of English literature. However, a small amount of literature exists in other immigrant languages and Native American tribes have a rich tradition of oral storytelling. The American Revolutionary Period (1775-83) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. An early novel is William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1791. Writer and critic John Neal in the early-mid nineteenth century helped advance America's progress toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing predecessors like Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts and influencing others like Edgar Allan Poe. Ralph Waldo Emerson pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement, Henry David Thoreau author of Walden, was influenced by this movement. The political conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe. These efforts were supported by the continuation of slave narratives.

     Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) is an early American classic novel and Hawthorne influenced Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick (1851). Major American poets of the nineteenth century include Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Edgar Allan Poe was another significant writer who greatly influenced later authors. Mark Twain was the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast. Henry James achieved international recognition with novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881).

    American writers expressed both disillusionment and nostalgia following World War I. The short stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the mood of the 1920s, and John Dos Passos wrote about the war. Ernest Hemingway became famous with The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. William Faulkner was another major novelist. American poets also included international figures: Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and E. E. Cummings. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel Prize. In the mid-twentieth century, drama was dominated by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as the musical theatre.

     Depression era writers included John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath (1939). America's involvement in World War II influenced works such as Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

    One of the developments in late 20th century and early 21st century has been an increase in the literature written by ethnic, Native American, and LGBT writers; Postmodernism has also been important during the same period.

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