American Literature

AMERICAN LITERATURE

CHAPTER 1
EARLY AMERICAN WRITING
The foundation of American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. Native American oral tradition is quite diverse. Indian stories glow with reverence for nature endowed with spiritual forces; main characters may be animals or plants, often totems associated with a tribe, group, or individual.as a spiritual, as well as physical, mother. Nature is alive and
The Indian contribution to America is greater than is often believed. The hundreds of Indian words in everyday American English include “canoe,” “tobacco,” “potato,” “moccasin,” “moose,” “persimmon,” “raccoon,” “tomahawk,” and “totem.” Contemporary Native American writing, discussed in chapter 8, also contains works of great beauty.
The first European record of exploration in America is in a Scandinavian language. The Old Norse Vinland Saga recounts how the adventurous Leif Eriksson and a band of wandering Norsemen settled briefly somewhere on the northeast coast of America—probably Nova Scotia, in Canada—in the first decade of the 11th century.
The first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world, however, began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded by the Queen of Spain, Isabella. Columbus’s journal in his “Epistola,” printed in 1493, recounts the trip’s drama.
Initial English attempts at colonization were disasters. The first colony was set up in 1585 at Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina; all its colonists disappeared. The second colony was more permanent: Jamestown, established in 1607. It endured
starvation, brutality, and misrule. However, the literature of the period paints America in glowing colors as the land of riches and opportunity. Accounts of the colonizations became world-renowned.
In the 17th century, pirates, adventurers, and explorers opened the way to a second wave of permanent...