Whether there is an American novel literature or not, is no longer in doubt. Even before 1776, a great number of people were writing in the American colonies, and sometimes specifically about America, out of close knowledge and involvement.
After the war of independence , they were Americans in a more precise sense: citizens of a nation whose new sovereignty was internationally recognized. When though would be a genuine fully fledged literature of America?.
The united states was culturally an offshoot of Europe. The colonists were Europeans, together with Africans or involuntary' immigrants, brought by slave trade.
Writing in America was therefore subsumed within the one great literature-English literature- Henry James's has noted;.
No state, in the European sense of the word, and indeed barely a specific natural name. No sovereign , no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manners., no great literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class- no Epsom or Ascot!.
James is here talking of the America of 1840. America then was a classless society or rather a society of one class- the middle- so America's literature is different' the difference lies in the fact that they consider the novel as a romance' rather than a kind of treating social conventions as in the English novel.
While the most interesting achievement of American fiction lie not in realism but in abstract forms of romance' .
American literature is rich in symbols and codes, whether or not the artist fully realizes what is being attempted. These patterns exist in all literary forms. I will attempt in this summary to propose the suggestion that American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald 91896-1940) projected the American dream in his novels THE GREAT GATSBT and TENDER IS THE NIGHT.