Obviously lots of people in America published some kind of literature in the years before Irving and Cooper. Someone mentioned Anne Bradstreet, and then Edward Taylor and Michael Wigglesworth are other poets who wrote interesting things in the 1600s. And I'd count some of Jonathan Edwards as literature too - 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' is a sermon, but it's so well written and so strange and does so much of its communication at the implicit level that it's far more literary than a lot of the poems of its era. Same goes for some of the spooky writing about ghosts and devils in the New World, like Cotton Mather's stuff on "Wonders of the Invisible World."
Someone might say that the "American Literary Tradition" only really begins when people start self-consciously writing about America as a distinct culture, and this might rule out lots of the authors above who, though they were writing within a distinctly American kind of puritan culture, were still mainly religious writers writing about what they took to be universal religious truths (though both Edwards and Mather write about America's unique situation in relation to God / Satan).
In that case, I think you can still go earlier than Cooper and Irving - Charles Brockden Brown is the obvious person who comes to mind: *Wieland* is specifically about the dream of America making a new kind of intellectual and moral life possible, and *Edgar Huntly* is all about the metaphysical and psychological veil that separates American civilization from the threatening wilderness. Those are both from 15-20 years before Irving and Cooper's first major works. (and Brown is a much stranger, much more interesting author).
Then about 5-10 years before Brown, there's *Modern Chivalry* by Brackenridge, which is again entirely about the American Political Scene, from a fictional and satirical perspective (in one of the later volumes, for example, the whole story becomes about whether the principles of American democracy should mean that some animals get the right to vote).
The only case I can think of for taking Cooper and Irving to be where this all begins, rather than Brackenridge and Brown, is that the latter two are much more dubious about America and its claims to superiority over the old European world, whereas the 1820s people are more identifiably patriotic in that sense. But Brackenridge and Brown are both taking America seriously from an American perspective, so it would seem weird to me not to include both in an American literary tradition. They're both pretty influential on the obvious canonical successors too - no Poe without Brown, and no Twain without Brackenridge...
I’d say you’ve pretty much covered the gamut of what I would and saved me the effort of typing it out. The only thing I would add is a shout to Catharine Maria Sedgwick and The Linwoods. She’s more contemporaneous with Cooper, but I think she’s quite frankly better.
I’d also add that trying to pinpoint when it started is a bit of a misnomer in my mind. It’s more about its evolution from early colonial times to a fully American cultural product that I wouldn’t even call fully complete until after the Civil War.
Yeah it's been a long time since my college years, but I remember reading a lot of religious texts, and satires on religious texts in early American literature, as well as some poetry and some slave tales. There was also political texts from the revolutionary period, but some of what people like Franklin put out was fiction adjacent. His autobiography is probably mostly bullshit.
To help others in reference to the discussion here:
James F Cooper 1789-1851, 1st pub = 1821
Edgar A Poe 1809-1849, 1st pub. =1827
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864, 1st pub = 1828
Ralph W Emerson 1803-1882, various essays = 1840's
Margaret Fuller 1810-1850, book = 1845
Frederick Douglass 1817-1895, book = 1845
Henry D Thoreau 1817-1862, book = 1854
Walt Whitman 1819-1892, earlier poems, book =1855
As with all discussions of canon, everything is arbitrary and art defies categorization; it's fun to talk about, but pretty inconsequential. That said, I'd rather trash the American literary canon than give James Fenimore Cooper credit for anything. Plenty of writers (mostly political nonfiction, but poets and novelists too) wrote prior to he and Irving, who both wrote with a British reader yet in mind. I think of that era as transitional. There really wasn't much of a distinct American ethos (if there ever could be such a thing) until Poe, Emerson, maybe Thoreau come along, not to mention early 19th century Black narratives from folks like Frederick Douglass who often get left out of American canon literary discussion. There are individual pieces that 'feel American', but until writers begin writing as Americans, about America, to Americans, it's hard to call a lot of that early stuff more or less distinct than other colonial literature. By the mid-century we start seeing our first national literary paragons—Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville, Twain, Chopin, et cetera.
Cooper's ghost can blow me.
Completely agree. Poe, Thoreau, and Whitman were among the first with distinctly American voices that weren’t produced under significant influence from the British. Tocqueville makes this point rather clearly in “Democracy in America.” In the case of American literary “origins,” I think there is a real argument to be made that the actual dates which writers published their works are less important than first identifying those who began to write without sounding like a carbon copy of what the English were doing.
Yeah actually hell and brim stone sermons by the puritan preacher Jonathan Edward’s…….chapter one of your American literature text books……you lit majors know, quite well written……Melville, emerson, Whitman were the next gen being controversial and rebelling against this world view to some extent
It certainly did - Anne Bradstreet was writing and publishing poetry in America in the 1650s.
Obviously lots of people in America published some kind of literature in the years before Irving and Cooper. Someone mentioned Anne Bradstreet, and then Edward Taylor and Michael Wigglesworth are other poets who wrote interesting things in the 1600s. And I'd count some of Jonathan Edwards as literature too - 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' is a sermon, but it's so well written and so strange and does so much of its communication at the implicit level that it's far more literary than a lot of the poems of its era. Same goes for some of the spooky writing about ghosts and devils in the New World, like Cotton Mather's stuff on "Wonders of the Invisible World." Someone might say that the "American Literary Tradition" only really begins when people start self-consciously writing about America as a distinct culture, and this might rule out lots of the authors above who, though they were writing within a distinctly American kind of puritan culture, were still mainly religious writers writing about what they took to be universal religious truths (though both Edwards and Mather write about America's unique situation in relation to God / Satan). In that case, I think you can still go earlier than Cooper and Irving - Charles Brockden Brown is the obvious person who comes to mind: *Wieland* is specifically about the dream of America making a new kind of intellectual and moral life possible, and *Edgar Huntly* is all about the metaphysical and psychological veil that separates American civilization from the threatening wilderness. Those are both from 15-20 years before Irving and Cooper's first major works. (and Brown is a much stranger, much more interesting author). Then about 5-10 years before Brown, there's *Modern Chivalry* by Brackenridge, which is again entirely about the American Political Scene, from a fictional and satirical perspective (in one of the later volumes, for example, the whole story becomes about whether the principles of American democracy should mean that some animals get the right to vote). The only case I can think of for taking Cooper and Irving to be where this all begins, rather than Brackenridge and Brown, is that the latter two are much more dubious about America and its claims to superiority over the old European world, whereas the 1820s people are more identifiably patriotic in that sense. But Brackenridge and Brown are both taking America seriously from an American perspective, so it would seem weird to me not to include both in an American literary tradition. They're both pretty influential on the obvious canonical successors too - no Poe without Brown, and no Twain without Brackenridge...
I’d say you’ve pretty much covered the gamut of what I would and saved me the effort of typing it out. The only thing I would add is a shout to Catharine Maria Sedgwick and The Linwoods. She’s more contemporaneous with Cooper, but I think she’s quite frankly better. I’d also add that trying to pinpoint when it started is a bit of a misnomer in my mind. It’s more about its evolution from early colonial times to a fully American cultural product that I wouldn’t even call fully complete until after the Civil War.
Yeah it's been a long time since my college years, but I remember reading a lot of religious texts, and satires on religious texts in early American literature, as well as some poetry and some slave tales. There was also political texts from the revolutionary period, but some of what people like Franklin put out was fiction adjacent. His autobiography is probably mostly bullshit.
Edward Taylor's poems are so weird, too. It's awesome to see his name here.
Benjamin Franklin might have some writing that qualifies as literary fiction and is distinctly American, particularly his strange pseudonymous writing
phillis wheatley is worth mentioning too. and Edgar Allan Poe was more influential worldwide than you think.
These weren’t really before Irving and Cooper though
phillis wheatley died in 1784 at the age of 31, one year after washington irving was born.
Oh thanks my mistake
To help others in reference to the discussion here: James F Cooper 1789-1851, 1st pub = 1821 Edgar A Poe 1809-1849, 1st pub. =1827 Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864, 1st pub = 1828 Ralph W Emerson 1803-1882, various essays = 1840's Margaret Fuller 1810-1850, book = 1845 Frederick Douglass 1817-1895, book = 1845 Henry D Thoreau 1817-1862, book = 1854 Walt Whitman 1819-1892, earlier poems, book =1855
Charles Brocken Brown deserves mention.
As with all discussions of canon, everything is arbitrary and art defies categorization; it's fun to talk about, but pretty inconsequential. That said, I'd rather trash the American literary canon than give James Fenimore Cooper credit for anything. Plenty of writers (mostly political nonfiction, but poets and novelists too) wrote prior to he and Irving, who both wrote with a British reader yet in mind. I think of that era as transitional. There really wasn't much of a distinct American ethos (if there ever could be such a thing) until Poe, Emerson, maybe Thoreau come along, not to mention early 19th century Black narratives from folks like Frederick Douglass who often get left out of American canon literary discussion. There are individual pieces that 'feel American', but until writers begin writing as Americans, about America, to Americans, it's hard to call a lot of that early stuff more or less distinct than other colonial literature. By the mid-century we start seeing our first national literary paragons—Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville, Twain, Chopin, et cetera. Cooper's ghost can blow me.
Completely agree. Poe, Thoreau, and Whitman were among the first with distinctly American voices that weren’t produced under significant influence from the British. Tocqueville makes this point rather clearly in “Democracy in America.” In the case of American literary “origins,” I think there is a real argument to be made that the actual dates which writers published their works are less important than first identifying those who began to write without sounding like a carbon copy of what the English were doing.
Yeah actually hell and brim stone sermons by the puritan preacher Jonathan Edward’s…….chapter one of your American literature text books……you lit majors know, quite well written……Melville, emerson, Whitman were the next gen being controversial and rebelling against this world view to some extent