American Literature:

1) List the Puritan ideas which have made their way into later systems and thus helped to shape the American mind in the following centuries.

2) What are the philosophical concepts which influenced Puritans?

3) Explain the distinguishing characteristics of Puritan literature.

4) What roles did sermons play?

5) James Fenimore Cooper as a myth maker.

6) Peculiarities of Edgar Allan Poe's style.

7) What do you understand by the American Renaissance? What are the themes explored by representatives of this literary period?

8) What do you understand by Transcendentalism in American Literature ? Consider Emerson as a transcendentalist.

9) What ado you understand by Romantic period in American literature (representatives/ style/ genre/ characteristics)

10) Compare and contrast the writing styles of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

11) Explain the distinguishing characteristics of realism and naturalism in American literature.

12) Consider Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodor Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis as the representatives of naturalism in American literature. (How "Daisy Miller," “Maggie: a Girl of the Streets,” “Sister Carrie,” “An American Tragedy,” “Main Street,” and “Babbitt”are naturalistic works.)

13) What do you understand by modernism in American literature? (representatives/ style/ genre / characteristics)

14) Literary innovations in American post-war fiction.

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