CIVIL WAR AND AMERICAN LITERATURE(GENERAL PERSPECTIVE)

1. CIVIL WAR AND AMERICAN
LITERATURE
(GENERAL PERSPECTIVE)
PRESENTERS:
• MECNUN GENÇ
• GÜRKAN ATALAR
• BÜNYAMİN
ÜNVER

2.  American literature began with the oral
traditions of the indigenous tribes.

3.  A little bit later, we see more creative
words.

4. An example of this is the poem
‘Contemplations’ in which we find the
lines:
Some time now past in the
autumnal tide...
The trees all richly clad, yet void
of pride...
Their leaves and fruits seemed
painted, but was true
Of green, of red, of yellow;
mixed hue

5.  During the years leading up to the
Revolutionary War,

6.  The question of slavery was one
which all the great writers of the time
addressed.

8.  Before the American Civil War, …

9. American Writers:
Works Pre-Civil War
 Emily Dickinson - I'm Nobody
 Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
 Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter
 Edgar Allen Poe - The Raven
 Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
 Benjamin Franklin - Poor Richard's
Almanac
 Thomas Paine - Common Sense
 Thomas Jefferson - The Declaration of

10. Civil War’s Impact on
American Literature
The war spread various view and practices.
The nature of war was a subject frequently remarked.

11.  Some prominent literary artist and their works written
during the war period:
 Ambrose Bierce Corporal and
Chickamauga
 Elizabeth Akers Allen In The Defences
 Thomas Basley Aldrich Fredericksburg
 Walt Whitman:
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
Vigil Strange I Kept On The Field One Night
The Wound-Dresser

12.  Black Spiritual Hymn ‘’Down By The
Riverside’’ was written by middle
class white college students in 1865.
 ‘’They shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.’’

13. American Literature After
Civil War

14. THE RISE OF REALISM
 The effects of the war also helped to
destroy romantic and sentimental
modes of writing, whereby writers
sought to ennoble their readers, offer
ideal visions of society, and avoid the
seamy side of life.

15.  Mark Twain's ‘‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’’
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ‘‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’’
 Herman Melville’s ‘‘Battle-Pieces’’

16. DISPLACEMENT OF GOD
 The war created a profound crisis of
faith in the collective consciousness of
Americans.

17.  . Gerald Linderman’s
Embattled Courage:
The Experience of
Combat in the
American Civil War

18.  After the war,
writers increasingly
began to secularize
religious language rather than dispense
with religious tropes altogether.

19. Rebecca Harding Davis's novella
‘‘Life in the Iron Mills’’

20. THE MASCULINIZATION OF
SOCIETY
 The mentality of war destroyed the
status of the domestic sphere as a
sacred site that would ennoble and
nurture its inhabitants. Women
increasingly sought to participate in
the battles of life along with men, in
part as a means to gain power and
basic rights.

21.  Harriet Beecher Stowe published the
books: "The True Story of Lady Byron's
Life" and " Lady Byron Vindicated: A
History of the Byron Controversy "

22.  Louisa May Alcott brilliantly captured
the emerging masculinization of
culture in her two war novels,
 ‘‘Hospital Sketches’’
 ‘‘ Little Women’’

23. References
 http://www.enotes.com/civil-war-67481-
reference/civil-war
 http://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/arti
cles/how-civil-war-transformed-
american-literature-talk-randall-fuller
 The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature
of the North & South, 1861-1865 by Alice
Fahs
 http://meagdub.hubpages.com/hub/American-
Literature-prior-to-Civil-War
 http://meagdub.hubpages.com/hub/American-
Literature-prior-to-Civil-War

24. References
 http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/civilwar.html
 http://voices.yahoo.com/the-civil-wars-impact-
american-literature-775139.html?cat=37
 http://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/
how-civil-war-transformed-american-
literature-talk-randall-fuller
 http://www.enotes.com/civil-war-67481-
reference/civil-war
 http://www.civilwarnews.com/reviews/2011br/
august/rising-fuller-b081107.html
 http://quizlet.com/8518267/american-writers-
works-pre-civil-war-flash-cards/