Key Characteristics (Name the Period and the Characteristic)
A story that explains how something came about.
Creation Story/Etiology Myth (Native American)
Famous theologian and minister, key figure in The First Great Awakening, known for the famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
Jonathan Edwards (Puritan)
In the beginning, the world was covered in darkness. Raven, a clever trickster, discovered an old man guarding a box that contained all the light in the world. Raven transformed himself into a spruce needle and floated into the old man's daughter's drinking water. She swallowed the needle and became pregnant, giving birth to a baby boy—who was actually Raven in disguise. As the baby, Raven cried and fussed until the old man, desperate to quiet him, gave him the box of daylight to play with. Raven immediately transformed back into his true form, grabbed the box, and flew out of the house, releasing the light into the world. From that day forward, day and night have existed, and Raven became known as the creator of light.
Native American - explaining the creation of Night and Day, trickster character.
This type of text gained major popularity during the Romantic period.
Novels
Appeal to credibility
Ethos
The idea that God has already decided who will go to Heaven and Hell.
Predestination (Puritan)
Famous figure credited with "getting the ball moving" on the American Revolution.
Patrick Henry (Rationalism)
It is a great evil, and a great snare unto souls, to be in love with the world, and to be minded to please the flesh; for thereby the soul is drawn off from God, and the heart is fixed upon that which is temporal and fading. The world hath many charms that deceive; riches, honours, and delights promise contentment, and yet they leave the soul unsatisfied. Those that set their hearts upon these things put far from them the sweet communion with God; and whilst they are taken up about the pleasures of sense, they neglect the work of grace, and so their condition is dangerous.
Puritan Lit - condemning luxuries and comforts, discussing devotion to God.
Stories about navigating the hardships and survival in the New World
Survivor Literature
Appeal to Emotion
Pathos
The philosophy that suggests that God created a perfect universe & it is up to Man to be able to control/take care of it.
Deism (Rationalism)
Descendant of the Mather family, a famous Dark Romanticism author, preoccupied with the guilt of his family's role in the Salem Witch Trials.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
One of the most consistent types of literature across all periods EXCEPT Native American and Rationalist literature.
Poetry
The specific event that prompts the creation of a text.
Exigence
Overwhelming sensation or strong passion that threatens to overwhelm.
The Sublime (Romanticism)
This person's theory of "natural selection" calls into question the role of God in the universe in the face of mass scientific advancement.
Darwin (Modernist)
The curator walked through halls that didn't exist, cataloging objects that had never been made. On the wall hung a painting of a painting of a painting—each frame containing the artist's signature, none of them original. A visitor asked, "Is this real?" The curator smiled and handed her a pamphlet that read: "Yes. No. Maybe. Please see pages 2-4 for contradictory answers." In the next room, a sculpture titled "Untitled (But Not Really)" sat beside its own artist's statement, which was written in a language the artist didn't speak. Time moved sideways here. The gift shop sold maps to rooms that had already been dismantled. A child asked her mother what everything meant. Her mother replied, "That's the point—there is no point, which is itself the point." They left through the entrance they'd entered through, or perhaps they were still inside, looking out.
Post-Modern - fragment, metafiction, rejection of grand narrative)
Three most popular forms of writing in the Rationalist period (hint: all non-fiction)
Essays, Speeches, and Pamphlets
The social, cultural, historical, or other influences that inform a text at the time of its creation.
Context
A reader may or may not be getting the whole story based on the honesty/knowledge of the person telling the story.
Unreliable Narrator (Post-Modernism)
Promoted Enlightenment ideals through writing AND invention, key figure in the American Revolution.
Benjamin Franklin (Rationalist)
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Transcendentalism - nature, symbolic language, spiritual connection to nature.
A story where the characters KNOW that they're in the story OR the author is writing ABOUT writing.
Metafiction
The process of reading and explaining the tools/techniques that an author uses to persuade their audience.
Rhetorical Analysis