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The chapters of this section cover the five periods into which American literary history is usually divided: early American literature; the American Renaissance; realism/naturalism; modernism; and postmodern and contemporary American literature. Traditional literary historiography has situated the beginnings of American literature in the early seventeenth century, when the first English settlers arrived in Virginia and Massachusetts and wrote travel accounts, histories, and religious texts. As entry I.3.1 points out, however, the English were latecomers to American colonization, and if we look beyond national and language boundaries the beginnings of American literature can be dated back to 1492, when Columbus wrote his first letters about the new continent. More important still, there was a wide range of native cultures to whom the continent was not new at all. While our chapters focus on written literature, it must be kept in mind that Native American myths, legends, and chants were usually transmitted orally from generation to generation; they form a literary history of their own that dates back centuries before the Europeans arrived. The twentieth-century revival of Native American literature is covered in entry I.3.5.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-476-00406-2_3

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