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| North American literature | |
|---|---|
| Name | North American literature |
| Country | North America |
| Language | English; Spanish; French; Indigenous languages |
| Genre | Fiction; poetry; drama; nonfiction; oral traditions |
| Period | Precontact to present |
North American literature is the body of written, oral, and translated works produced across North America, encompassing diverse traditions from Indigenous oral narratives through colonial writings to contemporary novels, poems, plays, and essays. It spans multiple languages, geographic regions, and institutional contexts, reflecting encounters among peoples represented by figures and entities such as Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Samuel de Champlain, Jamestown, Plymouth Colony, New France, Louisiana Purchase, Mexican–American War, Canadian Confederation, and Civil Rights Movement. Its development intersects with events, migrations, and institutions including Transcontinental Railroad, Great Depression, Harlem Renaissance, Mexican Revolution, and Residential schools.
The historical trajectory reaches from precontact oral corpora tied to nations like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Navajo Nation, Anishinaabe, Inuit, and Maya through colonial-era texts connected to Spanish Empire, French colonial empire, and British Empire projects such as writings by Bartolomé de las Casas, La Malinche, Samuel de Champlain, and William Bradford. Early print cultures emerged in port cities linked to New Amsterdam, Quebec City, Mexico City, and Philadelphia with pamphlets, sermons, and travel narratives by figures like Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Junípero Serra. The antebellum and postbellum periods refracted debates seen in publications tied to Abolitionism, Reconstruction Era, and writers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Twentieth-century upheavals centered on movements and institutions including the Harlem Renaissance, Chicano Movement, Quiet Revolution, Vichy regime (as transatlantic reference), and the emergence of prize cultures like Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, and Guggenheim Fellowship supporting authors across regions.
Distinct national literatures grew within boundaries framed by polities such as the United States, Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and Caribbean islands tied historically to Spain and France. Regional schools formed around urban centers like New York City, Mexico City, Montreal, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and rural zones like the Great Plains, Appalachian Mountains, Yucatán Peninsula, and Arctic communities. Indigenous literatures retain continuity through institutions such as National Congress of American Indians and cultural repositories like the Smithsonian Institution while Creole, Afro-descendant, and diasporic literatures engage with legacies of Transatlantic slave trade, Plantation economy, and migrations to the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Periods include colonial and missionary texts tied to Council of Trent contexts and missionary orders such as the Jesuits; revolutionary-era print culture associated with American Revolution pamphleteers and figures like Thomas Paine; romantic and transcendentalist phases involving Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; realist and naturalist impulses linked to Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Upton Sinclair; modernist experiments connected to Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound; mid-century postwar developments including the Beat Generation with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; and postmodern, postcolonial, and contemporary movements engaging authors associated with Civil Rights Movement, Black Arts Movement, Chicano Movement, Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and the rise of Indigenous sovereignties.
Representative Anglophone figures include William Shakespeare only as inherited tradition through editions and performances in North America, and local authors such as Herman Melville (Moby-Dick), Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter), Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), Toni Morrison (Beloved), James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain), Joyce Carol Oates (various), Alice Munro (short stories), and Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale). Hispanic and Latino authors feature Miguel León-Portilla, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rosario Castellanos, Julia de Burgos, and Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street). Francophone contributors include Gabrielle Roy, Michel Tremblay, and Antonine Maillet. Indigenous authors and oral custodians feature Leslie Marmon Silko, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Taos Pueblo storytellers, E. Pauline Johnson, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Caribbean and Afro-descendant voices include Derek Walcott, Aimé Césaire, Alejo Carpentier, and Édouard Glissant.
Recurring themes trace contact, colonization, displacement, race, diasporic identities, sovereignty, migration, ecology, and urbanization as seen in works tied to Trail of Tears narratives, Mexican–American War accounts, and memoirs addressing Residential schools. Genres and forms range from oral epic traditions performed during ceremonies by communities like the Tlingit to formal poetry associated with Modernist magazines, the short story cultures of periodicals such as The New Yorker, experimental theater connected to venues like The Public Theater, graphic narratives influenced by print industries in Los Angeles and Toronto, and autofiction emerging in late 20th–21st centuries among writers linked to institutions like Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Languages include English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and dozens of Indigenous languages such as Cherokee, Ojibwe, Navajo, Inuktitut, and Nahuatl. Translation movements involve presses and archives like the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Fondo de Cultura Económica, and university series at Harvard University Press, University of Toronto Press, and University of California Press. Translation has enabled cross-border exchange between authors associated with literary festivals such as the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, Hay Festival Cartagena, and institutions like Casa de las Américas.
Reception is mediated by awards, critical institutions, and markets including Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, Man Booker International Prize, National Book Award, and journals such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Granta, and academic departments at Yale University, University of Oxford (comparative studies), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and McGill University. Transnational influence appears in adaptations linked to Hollywood, Bollywood exchanges, theatrical productions at Royal Shakespeare Company touring North America, and diplomatic cultural programs like those of the Smithsonian Institution and Fulbright Program. Enduring legacies shape contemporary debates over curriculum in institutions tied to Common Core State Standards Initiative and decolonization efforts promoted by organizations such as United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Category:Literature by region