Am Lit Exam Notes: Questions PDF

**1. You will be asked to explain one of the following concepts/terms, with reference to texts from the reading list.** ***This is [not] a free choice question -- I will choose the term I wish you to explain.*** a. The "Great American Novel" - Modern novel often traced back to 18^th^ century E...

**1. You will be asked to explain one of the following concepts/terms, with reference to texts from the reading list.** ***This is [not] a free choice question -- I will choose the term I wish you to explain.*** a. The "Great American Novel" - Modern novel often traced back to 18^th^ century Europe, industrial revolution, rise of middle-class, mass-market popular entertainment - Novel promises to combine individual experience with social function, novel looks outward, person/family/town stands for something wider (19^th^ century) - Sum up nation, explain America to itself and the world (what does the south look to northerners) - John William DeForest coins term "great American novel", its task is to paint the American soul and depict ordinary emotions and manners of American existence - Novel as a new form is more achievable than poem - James Fanimore Cooper "The pioneers", "historical novel" set in 1793, written 30 years later - Originally "the pioneers, or the sources of the Susquehanna; a descriptive tale", long titles normal, descriptiverealism show things the way they are, taledidn't call them novels out of modestly to call them "great" - Sense of negative change only 30 years later, nostalgic though cooper himself is "pioneer" - Human beings are not to be trusted - Other 19^th^ century GAN candidates: The Scarlet Letter, Uncle Tom's cabin, Moby-Dick, Adventures of HuckFinn (DeForest addesses Hawthorne and Stower but not Melville; too old for Twain) - Nathaniel Hawthorne "The Scarlet Letter", most writing has New England setting/subject, sometimes referred to as "dark romantic" themes of guilt/evil/sin (part why DeForest doesn't consider him GAN, not interested in capturing America itself) - Preoccupation with past, Hawthorne prefers "romance" to "novel" (dreaminess, realism isn't goal), - Woman has to wear "A" for committing adultery, wears it with dignity - Melville's Moby Dick fails DeForest's tests: not social realist, not set in/explicitly about Amerian society; has still been strong candidate, as concept is hard to pin down - Twain usual GAN candidate, comic writer, satirical - Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn rare because children's literature, books about American south, set before end of slavery (try to understand that world) - Twan isn't trying to encompass America in totality (DeForest-GAN) - Writing from ani-racist pov but still stereotyping and n-wording - Theodore Dreiser "Sister Carrie" - Mentioned in GAN conversation because interested in diagnosing/critiquing questions about American values, trying to analyse contemporary American society - Critiquing emptiness of American dream - Fitzgerald Gatsby, similar to sister carrie, hollowness of what Americans long for, nyc high society seen as corruptive - Success much later because it's short and accessible - John Steinbeck "Grapes of Wrath", response to great depression - Immediately popular, GAN as "social problem/realist, state of the nation"-novel - Give voice to a collective experience of millions of Americans - 2^nd^ half of 20^th^ century more skeptical of idea of GAN, were written at rise of bourgeoisie which is now breaking up, now novelists could only capture broken pieces - Ralph Ellision "Invisible man", novel of broken pieces, fragmentary, dreamlike, Afrikan American experience distinct from white American, rejects idea that American experience can be represented as one whole - Rejects ideas of DeForest but is ironically held up as GAN - Contemporary GAN? - White/male/cis/het no longer voices of where national novel emerges from? b\) American Romanticism c\) American Naturalism d\) American Modernism e\) American Postmodernism f\. American Literary Multiculturalism - 19^th^ -21^st^ century, US goes from white settler-colonial state (non-whites excluded or seen as hindering national project) to diverse nation, vast demographic/cultural shift - Takes time for new communities (or newly recognised ones) to write and it takes time for this literature to be accepted - Questions of canonicity: whose writing gets accepted into mainstream? Canon has been extremely white and male, now changing, but this acknowledgement is late - Reading list enforces this canonicity - Kate Chopin "Desiree's baby", early example of multiethnic American literature? - Plot certainly is about it, French creoles are devastated to find out about their black ancestors - Chopin has French creole ancestry but is often seen as white writer - Is she insider or outsider? - What constitutes an ethnicity? Who is and isn't white has changed over time - From mid 19^th^ century people from everywhere started arriving - Are Irish/European/Jewish people "white"? - Nowadays clearly, but this wasn't the case back then, their writing wasn't considered fully white - 1920/30s people want to read "ethnic fiction" they want to know about immigrant experiencethis means that those authors can only write about this - White writers aren't seen as writing about white experience-they write literature - Native American lit was primarily oral, in 1950/60s native Americans are forced to move to city and assimilate, 60s civil rights movement - N. Scott Momaday "house made of dawn", being caught between the opportunities of the city vs poverty of reservation and the cost of assimilation - Asian American literature, often Asians overlooked and seen as bigger threat than European immigrants - Maxine Hong Kingston "the woman warrior", alienation of being in immigrant community but also what's special about having something your own - Latin American (esp. Mexican), seen as immigrant but actually predate Anglo-American presence - In more recent years authors are pushing against associations with multiethnic label - 2020 report shows fiction publishing still overwhelmingly white - More diversification but still limits to what non-white writers write about Question 2 ---------- a. 1630 -- 1782 - Puritans (from England) settle in New England. - "A model of Christian Charity" John Winthrop. Sermon supposedly given on ship by puritan leader. "City upon a hill" looking down on the rest of the world. - Beginnings of American Exceptionalism - Puritans see trials/hardships as good things - New American thinking 18^th^ century - Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", evangelical Christianity, God keeps them out of hell, terrifies, hyperbole, makes American exceptionalism personal "Are YOU saved?" - Thomas Paine "common sense", argument against monarchy and for republicanism. No new ideas but trying to find a way to communicate them in a persuasive way - Enlightenment "age of reason", argues in logical steps, American exceptionalism "we are no longer English, we are better in some way", uses humour, logic supported by emotions - Paine will become known as a religious sceptic but owes style to preachers like Edwards - Thomas Jefferson and others "Declaration of Independence", against unreasonableness of monarchy - J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur "Letters from an American Farmer", not written primarily for Americans, "explain" America - America is built out of cultural diversity, highly exceptionalist "new man", similar rhetoric to Paine b\. 1782 -- 1855 American Romanticism/Transcendentalism - America still finding its place as an own country - Romanticism: change in attitude towards nature, from danger to beauty, seeking out the "real and raw", locating the self in/through subjective experience of nature - Romantics afraid that the Industrial revolution causes humans to lose connection with nature, most are atheists or see higher power in nature - American romantics don't want to change something old (they don't have anything old) but want to make something new to fit the new people in the new world - **American romanticism is explicitly about figuring out and shaping national identity through literature** - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Nature", transcendentalist (believes in Individualism and nature, live in proximity of it, find true selves in nature, ) not all romantics are transcendentalists - Romantics focused on the experience of a person on Earth as they physically lived, but Transcendentalist focused on more than just what happens to one\'s physical being - Writes about what you see in nature and who sees it "The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other" - Margret Fuller "Woman in the 19^th^ century", transcendentalist, influenced by Emerson, proto-feminist, first woman to be allowed to see Harvard library - What are implications of transcendentalism for women, stakes are higher for women, patriarchy has disconnected women form their sense of self - Henry David Thoreau "Walden", transcendentalist, follows Emerson's ideas, rejects governments itself - Lived in simple cabin on Emerson's land for 2 years, experiment- does living away from society help someone to get to know yourself better, "Walden" is the record of his time there - Poetic, imagist writing combined with descriptions of plants/animals - Heavily reliant on other people, not as far away from society as he puts it - Walt Whitman "Song of Myself", attempt to stop structure getting in the way of feeling/personal experience - doing with poetic form what the Transcendentalists wanted to do with society: get away from rules, structures, and forms of organization that prevent us from having a real relationship with ourselves, the world, and each other. - Noteable (and was controversial) for frank depictions of sesuality/sexuality/bodies, he was gay (not openly) - \"I celebrate myself; And what I assume you shall assume;\ For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you." (1-3) opening lines sum up a Transcendentalist attitude to the relationship between self, world, and other. opens with a strikingly individualist declaration, but then argues that because everything in the world is connected at some universal level, to celebrate the self is to celebrate all humanity - by rediscovering a relationship with the self we find deeper bonds with others Insert slavery literature c\. 1855 -- 1905 American Naturalism/realism - New scientific discoveries (Darwin, natural selection) challenge nature of humanity, everything related might seem to accord with transcendentalism, but 3 things challenge it - Humans aren't special, no separation between us and animals - We may have less free will than we think individualism has hard limits - Reason/science not emotion/intuition hold key to understanding ourselves - Naturalism sees literature almost as a branch of scientific inquiry, using objective/observational/scientific lens on the world (not intuitive/subjective as in romantic), detached authorial viewpoint, deterministic worldview - William Dean Howells "Criticism and Fiction", advocate for realism (naturalism without explicitly scientific dimension), influenced by Emerson/Thoreau but rejected their ideas - American literature should be proud to focus on every-day world than try to transcend it - Stephen Crane "The open boat", dies young, still leaves big legacy, - Insignificance of man seen from the outside, nature does not regard us as important - Theodore Dreiser "Sister Carrie", mixed reviews at best - Carrie moves to big city, wants more from life, yearns for fame, achieves it but commits suicidestill unfulfilled - Mary Hunter Austin „The land of little rain", writes about newly American regions, bridging gap between naturalism and romanticism, very descriptive but also interested in the nature as romantics meant it, nature seen as male writing sphere - Death Valley expedition, rejecting romantisation of desert - Rebecca Harding Davis "Life in the Iron Mills", realist style, reject romanticism, to draw attention to problems in the world - Main characters works in factory, looks after disabled cousin, he sculpts, cousin steals, the go to jail where he kills himself - Wealth inequality, rich people don't think workers can have rich inner lives - Hugh's art represents his individualism not killed by the factory - - Upton Sinclair "The Jungle" (1905), combined fiction with "muckraking" journalism and social activism, challenge injustice, critiquing what capitalist modernity did to individual soul - Socialist novel, what modernity has done to individualism - There is true individualism - "American dream" often just offered to immigrants to exploit them d\. 1891 -- 1952 Modernism - Modernity is a set of social conditions, Modernism is the literary movement that responds to those conditions - Writer start to feel that realism wasn't enough to capture the changing pace of modern life - Skyscrapers/telephone later film/radio/automobilesa new artform is needed to match these conditions - WW1 affirms that the world has changed - Modernism is: - Rejection of realist representation, of objectivity in narrative (focus now on individuals or multiple views) - Complex/contradictory relationship with tradition, references to older literature but also wanting to sweep away the old and create new (Ezra Pound: make it new) (Waste land uses old lit) - Sometimes embraces speed of modern world but sometimes also sees it as dehumanising - Incorporation of new narrative forms, using fragmentation (station of a metro)/collage/nonlinearity - Carl Sandburg "Chicago" same setting as "the jungle", influenced by Whitman's free verse, freeness/rejection of convention typical for modernism but also simple when modernism is often complex - Ezra Pound "In the station of the metro" - T.s. Eliot "Waste land", Eliot not "fully American" took on British citizenship, many cultural references from all over - long, multiple narrators/locations/periods, almost impossible to say what it's about - Fisher king (Arthurian myth figure) recurring, many quotes from other works, fragmentation, disarray, destruction - F. Scott Fitzgerald "the great Gatsby", move away from realism, interpretation up to reader, e\. 1949 -- present Postmodernism - Continuity of modernism oftentimes, not always clearly opposite - Postmodernism: ontological questions (What is a world? What is to be done in it?\...), irony, against interpretation, anti-narrative, - Cold war - Atmosphere of paranoia/suspicion (also of political authorities) - nihilism - consumerism/advertising/image-obsession/disposability - Andy Warhol embodies tension of responding to postmodern conditions whilst being aware of difficulty of stepping out of those conditions - Arthur Miller "Death of a salesman" 1949 - Critique of capitalistic American dream - Willy tries to come to terms with his life having no meaning - Critiquing the Idea of AmericaAllen Ginsberg "America" - End point of postmodernism? - Cold war? - Has it ever been left behind? - Now more fiction - Historical/sincere/explicitly political Slavery writing - Phillis Wheatley "on being brought from Africa to America", first AA to publish a book, unusual circumstances, enslaved in liberal north, received education, had to defend that her poems were written by her - Frames enslavement as mercy - Doesn't follow "slave narrative" of drawing attention to evils of enslavement - Couldn't publish after being freed - Frederick Douglass "narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, slave", in 19^th^ century AA writing becomes powerful tool in abolitionist movement, purpose: 1. Prove that AA writers are intellectually/moral equals, 2. Illustrate evils of slavery - Received very little education, taught himself to read and write - First major public sensation of slave narrative - Account of his early life, conditions of enslavement, escape to freedom, focus on brutality/dehumanisation/violence - First page, not know birthday, to keep slaves from acquiring a sense of identity - Asks why slavery is just in the eyes of God (unlike Wheatley who said Christianity helped save her) - Harriet Jacobs "Incidents in the life of a slave girl", also about oppression of being a woman (proto-feminist, intersectionality), appealing to female audience, - Harriet Beecher Stowe "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (white writing on slavery), arguably the most culturally influential book in American history, - centred around Christian beliefs, Tom's death is christ-like - tries to draw attention to cruelty but also participates in displaying black stereotypes - problematic that white woman's work is more influential than black men's **3. I will ask you to tell me about one of the following topics, with reference to texts from the reading list.** Again, you are not expected to be exhaustive, but to pick out key ideas and texts, with an   accurate sense of chronology. The topics are deliberately broad, to allow you to focus the   answer as you wish. You must ***not***, however, focus exclusively on a single work or author. ***This [is] a free choice question. You should pick one of these topics in advance   and prepare it.*** a\. American Poetry - When talking about poetry Whitman was often the only poet mentioned/studied - Poetry rarely seen as defining American literature - DeForest thought AmLit could not achieve great poem for forseeable future - Novels tend to be about things, 19^th^ century trying to reflect/represent American society - First generation of poets was romantics, much of the work is turning away from society - Poetry is private/personal/inward/embracing unique subjectivity (as opposed to prose which is public, social, outward and attempting to objectivity) - Emily Dickinson "I heard a fly buzz-when I died" 1862, intensely personal, no reference to social context, not realist (describes moment after death) - Ezra Pound "a retrospect" 1918 - completely focused on form/language/style, no particular topic/theme - manifesto for imagist poetry, not to represent nation - this poetry minimises potential importance of its Americanness - poetry should be above national/social/political concerns - this is in dispute with modernist movement (tension Modernism between resisting modern world and embracing it) - American poetry gets more American in 20^th^ century because it gets harder to keep politics out of poetry - At the same time others do the exact opposite - Langston Hughes "Harlem" 1925, title shows setting, being excluded from debates about what America should be makes idea to keep politics out of poetry ridiculous - Wallace Stevens living in WW2, argues that poetry has to be living - Ironically poetry becomes less functional as a mass-medium as it becomes more elite (opposite of postwar novels) - Sylvia Plath (daddy, 1965) uses holocaust imagery, wants to turn outwards but write about personal things through the outside world - With cold war, and vietnam, poetry becomes vehicle for social critique of nation (poets usually not conservative), primarily for left-wing, losing connection to working class - American and transnational, at end of 20^th^ century poetry is outwards **4. I will ask you to explain any one text from the reading list to me in detail -- with reference to its themes, characters (where applicable), and significance in American literary history.** ***This [is] a free choice question: you can answer on any text from the reading list and should prepare in advance.*** There is only one exception to this freedom: you must **[not]** choose a text you referred to answering question 3: your two free choice answers must not substantially repeat material. In the station of a metro Ezra pound The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough. - Metro quite new - Using fragmentation typical for modernism - No verbs, no movement - Two lines, two completely different scenes - Imaginism - Urban life vs nature - People moving so fast that they seem like petals on a wet black bough