William Dean Howells Influence On American Writing

Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America's most renowned authors, demonstrates his extraordinary talents in two of his most famed novels, The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. To compare these two books seems bizarre, as their plots are distinctly different. Though the books are quite seemingly different, the central themes and Hawthorne's style are closely related (Carey, p. 62). American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne is most famous for his books THE SCARLET LETTER and THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, which are closely related in theme, the use of symbolism, characterization, and style.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by the pseudonym Mark Twain, has been central to American literature for over a century. His seemingly effortless diction accurately exemplified America’s southern culture. From his early experiences in journalism to his most famous fictional works, Twain has remained relevant to American writing as well as pop culture. His iconic works are timeless and have given inspiration the youth of America for decades. He distanced himself from formal writing and became one of the most celebrated humorists. Mark Twain’s use of the common vernacular set him apart from authors of his era giving his readers a sense of familiarity and emotional connection to his characters and himself.

Samuel Clemons, later known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a most famous American fiction writer, story teller, and showman in the nineteenth century. He is referred to as the father of American Literature. In fact, he was the first national and international celebrity. The most well-known man on earth. He was able to capture the spirit of youthful optimism of small town America; and the freedom and excitement of the Western Frontier. His writing was unique in that he used the simple, plain meaning language of the average American.

John was an American with a dream and plenty of drive and his work shows this. John’s father was a high school math teacher and his mother had dreams of being an author. He attended Harvard university and majored in English which gives a incite of what his writing style is. While attending Harvard his junior year he met his wife in 1953 (3). The year after he majored John went on to further his education at Ruskin School of Drawling and Fine Arts in Oxford London. His writing career started in 1954 when he published “Friends from Philadelphia”. Four years later john started his career as a poet when he published his first poetry book titled “The carpentry hen” (1). John has won two national book awards and has been nominated for six others. (2) It is said that “his work is worth reading for no reason other than to enjoy the piquant phrase, the lyric vision, the fluent rhetoric” that his style of writing has. (2)

Writing an excellent book, short story,or poem is an ability very few people posses : Nathaniel Hawthorne is someone who had this talent. Hawthorne's writing is mostly centered around romantic fiction, he has written a plethora of things but he is mostly remembered for his short stories and novels. Before divulging into his work, a reader should know where his writing comes from, his inspirations, originality and what some would call pure genius. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, is an individual whose work has been and should continue to be analyzed for years to come due to his unique twist on romantic fiction. Many of his works have casted a silhouette over America through his intricate stories and writing style that revealed the themes of psychology and human nature during the 19th century. Hawthorne’s ominous style makes his works into oddities compared to the other romantic fiction novels in his time. Many of his works, such as The Scarlet Letter, exemplifies the epitome of Hawthorne’s distinct outlook on the moralistic attitudes of

One such author, poet Langston Hughes, wrote “Let America Be America Again.” Hughes is known for his portrayal of the African American life in America during the early to mid 1900’s. Hughes was born in 1902 in Missouri where his parents divorced when he was a young child. He was raised by his grandmother until his teenage years before he moved to live with his mother and her new husband. He was a college graduate from Lincoln University and was an award winning novelist. Another author, Edward McClelland, we don’t learn as much about. We know he grew up in an auto making town in the 1970s, a time during which middle-class America was strong and prosperous. McClelland tells us his ideology through personal experience, examples, and the use of some statistics. With our last author, meet D. Watkins, a college professor who has a master’s degree in education from John Hopkins University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Baltimore. (3) We

As the new world struggled to gain impendence from its mother country, Britain, native authors also try to develop their own style of writings. It quickly became evident that the search for a native literature became a national obsession. Then with the triumph of American independence, many at the time saw this as a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Greatness came with a strong nation and thousands of poems and stories that still shape our nation. The recent revolution greatly expressed the heart of the American people. However, it would take another fifty years of development throughout American before it produced the first great generation of American writers such as, Washington Irving, Ralph

The literary rebellion, known as realism, established itself in American writing as a direct response to the age of American romanticism’s sentimental and sensationalist prose. As the dominance of New England’s literary culture waned “a host of new writers appeared, among them Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain, whose background and training, unlike those of the older generation they displaced, were middle-class and journalistic rather than genteel or academic” (McMichael 6). These authors moved from tales of local color fiction to realistic and truthful depictions of the complete panorama of American experience. They wrote about uniquely American subjects in a humorous and everyday

Some of the significant accomplishments of Richard Wright is simply that he is one of America’s greatest black writers, Richard Wright was also among the first African American writers to achieve literary fame and fortune. Not only that but his reputation has less to do with the color of his skin than with the superb quality of his work. That and he gained respect from many people in America. But also Richard Wright had helped

Samuel L. Clemens, better known for his novelist title Mark Twain, wrote an intuitive short story in 1905 as a response to the Spanish-American and Philippine-American War. He began his writing career at the age of eighteen until the commence of the Civil War; in which he then volunteered to join the war. Within two weeks he quit and set off for a new conquest much in which resembled soul searching. Expediting to move across the country he crossed paths with natives and became a familiar writer moving to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). Twain’s form of writing cultivated into a fervent style during his life in Hartford yet took an aberrant turn reaching the nineteen hundred. He began to pivot around dark writings that focused on the inner workings

There are many authors that have made a great impact on their time period and the world today. Each author has a unique writing style due to the way that each individual was raised. For example, some authors may advocate slavery, but other authors were raised to believe slavery was a horrible mistreatment of others. Thus, whichever bias was believed by each author was reflected through their writing. Opinion after opinion, writers in America still had an influential voice. Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought From Africa to America,” Henry Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” Frederick Douglass’ “A Parody,” and Fanny Fern’s “Male Criticism on Ladies Books” share a similar theme of injustice inferiority to others and bias; however, on the contrary, they differ in the seriousness

Realism can be defined as view in which the author tries to depict life as truthfully and accurately as possible. The use of realistic or lifelike settings described by the author or narrated by a character, add a layer of realism to the story, even if the story itself is fictitious. The characters themselves are often portrayed as believable as possible, to the point that the character being described could actually exist; they are often depicted as very average people, void of extreme wealth, influence, or astounding abilities. The reason characters and settings are often

Editha by William Dean Howells, will go down as one of many strong points of evidence when it comes down to literary realism. This comes into

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the most important authors in the history of American literature and the genre of Romanticism or Dark Romanticism, due to his unique style of writing and his focus upon subjects of Puritan religion and the unknown. I consider Hawthorne an important author, due to the fact that he skillfully and accurately based his fictional writings upon happenings of colonial times, was one of the first authors to display unfortunate outcomes for his characters’ immoral choices according to Puritan beliefs, and wrote of things that were considered taboo in his time, such as witchcraft, scientific innovation and experimentation. I strongly believe that Hawthorne’s influence for his writings were his Puritan ancestral background, his fascination with Puritan beliefs, and his interest in what was considered the unknown such as witchcraft and science. According to the Norton Anthology Textbook Vol. B, Nathaniel Hawthorne was “born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804” (370). Hawthorne belonged “to a family whose ancestral roots were tied to Puritan history, with his family being among the first settlers of Massachusetts and having one of his relatives serve as a judge during the Salem witch trials” (370). Hawthorne, as a young boy, “had a particular interest in writings such as John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, and by his mid-teens he took interest in British novelists such as Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollet, William Godwin, and Sir Walter Scott”

American writers have expressed their political and social views through their writing by attempting to establish a voice separate from Britain’s. Their fear of individual and national failure and their thirst for power consumes them and is evident in their writing. Washington Irving and Herman Melville involve the occupation of lawyers and Justices to bring in a patriotic element to influence residents of the young country as a way to share their concerns and inspire ambition. Their usage of metaphors and metonymy subtly convey a message of hope to white residents while, deflating the optimism of the soon to be freed slaves. This essay will prove that a critical reading of Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and Irving’s “The Legend of