Good question. To understand the literature of a period,
you have to know what's happening during the period.
Think
about what's going on during the Discoveries/Colonial periods, and you'll quickly know
what kinds of things were written. People were exploring and colonizing and settling,
and they were keeping journals. Thus we have writings such as Bartolome de Las Casas'
Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, John
Smith's Journal and William Bradford's Of Plymouth
Plantation. Journals, diaries, sermons (such as "Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God"), meditational poetry (such as the works of Anne Bradstreet) are all common
genres of literature for this time. Think of it as being generally more practical and
useful than creative.
The word
renaissance, of course, means "rebirth." There have been periods of
such rebirth in all places, most notably the English Renaissance of the 16th century.
The American Renaissance happens after the country has begun to settle in after its
initial "growing pains," when people can do more than just try to survive, figuratively
speaking. Life is still hard, of course, but there is now opportunity to write about
beauty and life, and reason. We see poetry (most notably Walt Whitman), novels (such
as the classics The Scarlet Letter and Moby
Dick), and reflections on reason and self (primarily from Emerson and Thoreau
in the form of essays and journal). We also have the first short stories from
Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe. The creativity and diversity of genres is
testament to the rebirth of creativity after the struggles of settlement and the battle
for independence.
This period is relatively short-lived,
however, as the next driving force of history--the Civil War--changes the dynamics and
genres of literature to a more practical bent. The literature of those early periods is
helpful for historical accuracy and understanding. The genres of the American
renaissance, in particular, though, have carried through to the
present.
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