Arnold Krupat

American Literature: 1890-1929

Spring 2010

The Closed Frontier to the Great Depression, 1890-1929: With the "closing" of the frontier in 1890, America had "manifested" its "destiny" from "sea to shining sea." But as the century turned, America was a very different place from what it had been before. The years 1880-1924 were the great age of immigration; more than three million people from China, Southern and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and elsewhere arrived here. These were also the years in which Americans were still coming to terms with the implications of Darwin's theories--only to discover the new intellectual challenges of relativity and psychoanalytic theory. If Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman had struggled to invent a distinctive literature for America, many of the writers of this period had to figure out just what America was before they could produce its literature. This question became even more complicated after 1917, when young Americans found themselves abroad, fighting in World War I.