anglo american literature essay

anglo american literature essay

Exploring the Evolution and Influence of Anglo-American Literature

1. Introduction to Anglo-American Literature

The literary heritage of the United States for English readers is a familiar one. For those critics and readers, however, who can imagine not one but two Shakespearean literatures flourishing in the same language at the same time, it is a record of change and growth that rather illuminates both. Yet primarily and until the American counterparts to these charismatic British figures began to put pen to paper in the opening years of the 18th century, the intellectual and artistic life of North America was overwhelmingly the creation of the most hyperbolic figures, those of Shakespeare’s London. It is this interplay of tradition and diversity, the efflorescence of surviving pre-literary folklore, the simulacrum of religious heritage, the mastery of virtually all the known forms of European poetry, the murmurings of a local literary aesthetic, that come together in colonial America to stamp American literature with its distinctive character. In sum, Anglo-American literature, as the term is defined today, has its roots in early colonial literature of the region. It remained separate from British literature until it slowly evolved toward a new maturity reflecting the American experience, offering locals an escape for indigenous values, a new self-confidence, a new sense of purpose, and a new standard of artistic expression that transformed the pre-American into the American.

Anglo-American literature, or literature written in the English language, has a unique history and provides many outstanding examples. English literature, in specific, has been praised for its grandeur and diversity. It can also be indicated that all western literature written in the English language can be termed as Anglo-American literature. The notion itself – English literature – is too narrow, and it would exclude African, Indian, Canadian, Caribbean, Australian, New Zealand, American, and others. To bring all writers who have contributed in the English language alone into a single literature is often termed as Anglo-American literature. The writers mentioned above are often divided into two dissimilar groups. Some would prefer to state “English and American writers,” but only a few possess the courage to make such a statement. Now, the people who have unselfconsciously and concordantly called themselves “modern” and have repeated the great merit by such an action have usually been those who have acted as creators of a new form of literature and benefited the world by the identity and individuality of their contribution.

2. Key Themes and Movements in Anglo-American Literature

In the literary sphere, these themes found their most direct and emotional expression in personal narratives, private diaries, published memoirs, sermons, and tracts. Typifying the literature of New England, these works differed in point of fact, but they were uniformly tethered to a single-minded purpose. Exegetic rather than aesthetic, the literature of New England privileged the exposition of religious and moral truths over flippant concerns for pleasure and amusement. Although personal difference and an honest wish to entertain and fascinate their readers neither eluded nor escaped the responsible and sometimes provocative attention of these writers. The predominant tone or the prevailing mood of American literature remained steadfastly spiritual or moral, and the general impact cultural, if not ethical. It is mainly in the nineteenth century that the attitude shifted and the emphasis changed.

Over the years, a number of key themes and social issues have emerged as characteristic themes and social issues in American literature. In the seventeenth century, Puritan extravagance of thought combined with physical struggle for existence in the New England wilderness to provide varied aspects of handling a few all-pervading themes such as sin and grace, loyalty and rebellion, love and duty, and the promise and threat of new lands. Subject to the constant tug of dual loyalties, the choice at daybreak of siding with either light or darkness meant salvation or damnation. Accordingly, American literature, marginally diverse at times in form, in the long run progressed or retrogressed only through the traditional solutions to the perennial social and moral problems or the praiseworthy if not eternal ideas of reform and progressive evolution.

3. Notable Authors and Works in Anglo-American Literature

American literature, as it is here perceived, is occasionally not primarily the place of publication; it is also not only the place of composition. There is an unusual characteristic in this body of literature; it is the peculiar belief that the period of eminence is in the works written after eminence is already an accomplished fact. A writer’s body of work is nothing if not a laboring to present in the best possible terms all one can whip up. In this literature, if one may draw such a comparison, the opposite is closer to the truth. The writer, who is also a successful citizen, has writing for personal enjoyment, solace or gratification. Not all but most of the writers of this country remove the possibility of productivity at an early stage of life by a peculiarity of ambition the New World does not know it but is unlimited in individual opportunity and personal liberty. The writer would much rather at one extreme parsley for the pot and at the other gather sage, rosemary, and thyme for some brew, mead, or stew. With the knowing gentility of how life works, those we remember most fully give over to a moment in time and freeze it in perpetuity, then carve out a new career for themselves.

Certainly, not every work written in America is American literature; nor is a work published in England necessarily restricted geographically to England and the United States. Part of the meaning of the adjective “Anglo-American” comes in the recognition of the close literary interrelations between the two countries who share the same language. A cooperative literary effort has been made in large part because we are all writing in what has become an international language. American scholars and students nourish themselves on the wisdom of dead Englishmen and expect English scholars and students to do the same with Americans. There is not the same give and take in either creative or critical literature among any other two countries. Anglo-American literature is not peculiar to the United States; one could find greater wealth of the same material in the literatures of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The emphasis, traditionally, is with England since it is from that country most of our roots derive.

4. Impact and Legacy of Anglo-American Literature

Eighteenth-century Anglo-America did provide a very few other ideas appropriate for distant imitation. Edmund Burke’s A Vindication of Natural Society, a lamentation upon the English school of political economy, Arthur Young’s Travels in France and Joseph Priestley’s admiration of Heliogabalus (the young Charles Darwin was even prepared to excuse him), all helped to teach the French of the 1790s about their native power, and Burke’s subsequent Reflections on the Revolution in France helped to demonstrate in a tangible form the sources of the national feeling which in the 19th century turned France into a Great Power.

On the face of it, the question of the impact of Anglo-American writing upon the world appears a simple one. It needs no elaborate answer. Since the early 18th century – and at that time largely because of the writings of deists and empiricists, who had been influenced by English thinking (writers like Diderot, Holbach, Condorcet, Sejjanus, Beccaria, and Feuerbach) – one American, Thomas Jefferson, could declare with confidence certain “self-evident truths”; because of English writers such as David Ricardo and Adam Smith, Karl Marx two generations later felt that he understood the bases of English ruling-class power; the South American rebels of the 1810s, unlike the revolutionaries of the 1960s, sought no guidance from Ho Chi Minh’s Trach Dinh – such was the debt that these provincials, who were writing with patronage at their back, owed.

5. Conclusion: The Enduring Significance of Anglo-American Literature

Our close relationship with the US also should not be seen as a leash; from the early twentieth century through to reconstruction following the Second World War, our relationship hints more at a two-way street. British artists became ever more receptive to American influences and many became familiar figures to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Modern British popular music is an outflow of the sounds of the southern states of America, and present-day poetry performances, influenced by the beat poets, evolved from the raw performances of the jazz poets. At the beginning of World War II, British poets such as Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, and even T.S. Eliot, journeyed to America to deliver lectures on poetry. These poetic presentations impressed influential cultural figures from the United States and became a significant element of the change in views towards Britons.

Of these numerous literary influences, the longest established, though least appreciated, revolves around the interchange between the UK’s and the USA’s numerous artists, poets, novelists, actors, and musicians. One hundred years ago, following many years as the trusty steer, leading the world, British art and entertainment became increasingly receptive to American influences and many of our most recognized artists became familiar figures to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. The years following the First World War saw the golden age of the British stage and many famous Hollywood actors, tempted by large pay packets, came to work in London. These ranged from expatriate American stars to British-born actors who had been lured to the American screen and had returned to their roots in London. This pattern matured and has been repeated over subsequent years in both musical and theatrical presentations, and also between associations in other arts, particularly literature, popular music, and poetry.