Historical Background and Literature of Early America
Overview
As you begin your study of American literature, it is essential that you understand the relationship between literature and its historical context.
Literature is the recorded voice of the circumstances and events of its time. In a very real sense, it is the product of its environment. As such, literature both reflects and influences the course of the human events in which it is situated. Literature, therefore, ought not be examined separately or in isolation from its historical setting.
Authors are sensitive to their physical, social, political, and religious climate, creatively expressing what they observe and feel. Understanding and truly appreciating literary expression thus requires an awareness of its formative elements, the evolutionary developments along the ever-progressing historical continuum.
This study session’s brief reading assignment provides an initial overview of events in America and the world from European discovery of America through 1750. These events provided not only the motivation to create literature, but also the basis for its content and purpose.
In fact, these historical roots significantly contributed to that which makes American literature specifically American rather than a mere variation or offshoot of English literature. Its historical background has incubated American literature, providing an environment conducive to the creation of uniquely American subjects, literary devices, and central themes—all of which you are now poised to begin discovering for yourself.
