Am+Lit+II

**__Modern American Literature__**


 * **__SYLLABUS:__** Fall 2012 SYLLABUS: [[file:ghc - 2132 syll fall 2012.rtf]]
 * [|Brief Timeline of American Literature and Culture (Dr. Donna Campbell at WSU)]

//**__Ambrose Bierce__** //
 * [|The Ambrose Bierce Project (Penn State)]
 * [|Chronology of Bierce's Life]
 * [|Online Text of the Devil's Dictionary (from the Archives of UVA)]
 * [|Bierce's "Adios" Letter]
 * [|Ralphie's A+++, from //A Christmas Story// (Dream/Imagined Reality)]
 * [|Ending of //the Wizard of Oz// (Dream/Imagined Reality)]
 * [|Salvador Dali's //The Persistence of Memory// (1931)]
 * [|1962 French Film Version of the Story (Twilight Zone)]

__//**Charles Chesnutt**//__
 * [|1899 Cover of The Conjure Woman]
 * [|The Chesnutt Digital Archive at Berea College]
 * [|The Library of America's Chesnutt Page]
 * [|WSU's Chesnutt Page]
 * [|Atlantic Article About Chesnutt]
 * [|Scuppernongs]

__//**Jack London**//__
 * [|London, in his Oyster Pirate Days]
 * [|Jack London Online Collection]
 * [|London Timeline]
 * [|"To Build A Fire" 1969 Film Excerpt]
 * [|A View of the Yukon River]
 * [|Yukon River Basin Imagery]
 * [|Jack London's Cabin in the Yukon]

**//__James Weldon Johnson__//**
 * [|Skin Bleaching Ads, from the Museum of Public Relations]
 * [|Fisk Jubilee Singers Website]
 * [|Smoking Compartment in a Railroad Car]
 * [|Disney: Song of the South]
 * [|Tenant Farmers]
 * [|Tenant Farm House]
 * [|Tobacco Barn]
 * [|Farmer with Mules]
 * [|Religious Camp-Meeting]
 * [|Camp Meeting Scene (Kentucky)]
 * [|"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" (Call and Response)]
 * [|New Georgia Encyclopedia: "Lynching"]
 * [|Moore's Ford Lynching Re-enactment (Southern Spaces)]
 * [|Share-cropping house, Colbert County, Alabama, 1935]
 * [|New Georgia Encyclopedia Entry on 1906 Atlanta Race Riot]
 * [|NPR Article on 1906 Atlanta Race Riot]

__//**William Faulkner**//__
 * [|Faulkner Glossary: People, Places, and Events in Faulkner's Works]
 * [|As I Lay Dying at University of Michigan's Special Collections]
 * As I Lay Dying Character and Chapter Guide
 * [|Yocona River Bridge Crossing]

__**//Ernest Hemingway//**__
 * [|Hemingway on Safari in Africa]
 * [|Online Text of the Story (UVA)]
 * [|Hemingway's Nobel Biography]
 * [|Hemingway's house in Key West]
 * [|Photos and Map of Kilimanjaro Area]
 * [|Time Article About Climbing Kilimanjaro]
 * [|Image of Kilimanjaro's Peak]
 * [|Hemingway on Safari in Africa in 1954]
 * [|Profile of Hemingway from PBS's American Novel Series]
 * [|Snows of Kilimanjaro Film at Open Culture]


 * //__Ralph Ellison __//**
 * [|//Invisible Man// Summary of Chapters (UPenn)]
 * [|Ralph Ellison Profile at //American Masters// (PBS)]
 * [|1955 Interview with Ellison (Paris Review)]
 * [|"What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue - Louis Armstrong]
 * [|Invisible Man Sculpture in Riverside Park, Manhattan]
 * [|Invisible Man "Bulb Room," from ISPA]

__//**Flannery O'Connor**//__
 * [|O'Connor Profile at the New Georgia Encyclopedia]
 * [|New York Times Sketch, Including Linked Articles]
 * [|Nancy Marshall's Photo Essay on Andalusia, Flannery O'Connor's Family Farm]
 * [|Short PBS Piece on O'Connor]
 * [|Online Text of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"]

=//__Art Spiegelman __//=
 * [|Richard Outcault/Yellow Kid Exhibit at Ohio State University's Library]
 * [|Siegel/Schuster Superman from the 1940s]
 * [|Profile of Al Capp and Li'l Abner]
 * [|The Walking Dead Comic]
 * [|NY Times Review of]//[|In the Shadow of No Towers]//
 * [|Spiegelman's Garbage Pail Kids]
 * [|PBS Feature on the Making of Maus]

__**RESPONSE PAPER TOPICS**__ 1: In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” Bierce uses realistic details, limited third-person narration, and a tense shift to lead the reader to the twist ending. Explain how and where in the story these details and devices work, as well as how effective they are. **[Text from 8.22; Response Due 8.27; 500 words]**

2: Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine” is a framework story, with the “John and Annie” story serving as the framework for Uncle Julius’s story about Henry and the “goopher.” What is the relationship between these two stories? What is the relationship between Julius and John and Annie? What effect does Julius’s story have on John and Annie? How does the telling of each story reflect the character of the teller? **[N/A for Fall 2012]**

3: “The Open Boat” is regarded as a classic example of a man-versus-nature conflict. How is this conflict defined and demonstrated in this story? How are the two sides defined and characterized? What does the ending of the story suggest about the conclusion of the conflict, and potential victories and losses? **[Text from 8.27-29; Response Due 9.5; 500 words]**

4: Chapter X of //Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man// is often considered the climactic chapter of the novel, and it begins with the narrator returning to the United States full of hope about race relations in the country, and about the possibilities for African-Americans there. How are his hopes and positive ideas about African Americans supported in Chapter X? How and why are they undermined and complicated, and eventually ruined? **[Text from 9.5-10; Response Due 9.12; 500 words]**

5: In the introduction to Hughes's work the editors explain that "Hughes's poems demanded that African Americans be acknowledged as owners of the culture they gave to the United States and as fully enfranchised American citizens" (2027). Select one or two of these poems and explore how they reflect these demands--what kinds of social and cultural experiences are they trying to highlight? How is Hughes trying to value the African American experience and contextualize it as particularly American? **[N/A for Fall 2012]**

6: Select one of the characters in //As I Lay Dying// and analyze his/her role in the story, and their contributions to the narrative. Consider issues such as if the character changes or not (and if so, how and why), that character’s tone in his/her narrative sections, how the other characters perceive this character, and what role this character plays in the family unit and the events of the novel. **[Text from 9.17-10.1; Response Due 10.1; 500 words]**

7: What is the overall effect of the Faulkner’s use of multiple narrators in //As I Lay Dying//? Why do you think he chose to tell this story this way? How does this multiple narration affect your view of the family? Of Addie Bundren? Of the main events/action of the story? **[Text from 9.17-10.10; Response Due 10.10; 500 words]**

8: The “almost” in the title of Richard Wright’s story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” suggests that Dave is in a boundary space between one state of being and another. In this paper examine how and why Dave is not yet a man. Consider the forces that are holding Dave back from manhood, as well as those that are pushing him toward it. Does Dave achieve manhood at the end of the story, or further delay his progress toward it? **[N/A for Fall 2012]**

9: What is the function of the flashbacks (italicized) in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”? What is the relationship between the present events and the story and these flashbacks? How does this relationship culminate at the end of the story? **[Text from 10.15-17; Response Due 10.22; 500 words]**

10: In his comments near the beginning of the “Battle Royal” chapter, the narrator’s grandfather says that “our life is a war.” What does he mean? Beyond the obvious violence in this chapter, what battle is being fought? How is this battle connected to race, and to racial structures and ideas of the United States in the twentieth century? **[Text from 10.22-24; Response Due 10.29; 500 words]**

11: Many critics have read “The Swimmer” as a critique of upper-middle class suburbia and bourgeois values—a world of luxury and ease, but also problematic homogeneity and shallowness. Discuss how the story, and its main character, explores these issues as Neddy “swims home.” **[Text from 10.31; Response Due 11.5; 500 words]**

12: In the penultimate paragraph of Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” Mr. Shiflett feels “that the rottenness of the world” is about to engulf him. What is this rottenness? Where does it come from in the story? Are any forces/characters opposed to it in the story? **[Text from 11.5; Response Due 11.7; 500 words]**

13: “A Bronzeville Mother…” and “the mother” both depict difficult experiences (abortion and murder) from the particular perspectives of mothers. Select one of these poems and analyze how motherhood is depicted in the poem, and how it affects the imagery and narrative and tone of the poem. **[Texts from 11.7; Response Due 11.12; 500 words]**

14: Near the end of the first chapter of //Slaughterhouse-Five//, Vonnegut mentions Lot’s wife from the Hebrew Bible, who was turned by God into a pillar of salt for looking back—Vonnegut says that he loves “her for that, because it was so human.” How is Vonnegut dealing, like Lot’s wife, with looking back, and with human memory, and with the dangers and problems of it? **[N/A for Fall 2012]**

15: Much of Allen Ginsberg’s work is political in one way or another, either directly or indirectly. What kinds of political ideas does Ginsberg explore in his poetry? What are his “poetic” politics? How do city/urban spaces figure into his politics and imagery? What are his ideas about American democracy? **[Texts from 11.12; Response Due 11.14; 500 words]**

16: Many of Sylvia Plath’s poems are deeply personal (sometimes referred to as “confessional”) and, by extension, often potentially very feminine. Does Plath’s work reflect particularly feminine concerns, experiences, and images? Is her language or imagery gendered in any obvious ways? **[Texts from 11.14; Response Due 11.19; 500 words]**

17: Through characters like Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch, //A Streetcar Named Desire// explores the manifestations, possibilities, problems, causes, and effects of human desire. Analyze these issues and/or characters in the play. You might choose to focus on one or two characters and how desire affects them, or you might choose to argue that the play presents an overall message about desire and that the characters and events work to support that message. **[Text from 11.26-28; Response Due 12.3; 500 words]**

18: Many scholars have argued that, in spite the fact that “Falling” is ultimately about a fatal event, it is actually a poem about the affirmation of life, and about the powers and possibilities of the human spirit and imagination. Do you agree with this assessment? If so (or if not), why (or why not)? **[Text from 12.3; Response Due 12.5; 500 words]**

19: Much of the action of //Deliverance// grows out of the conflicts built into the story: character(s) versus nature, urban versus rural sensibilities, characters versus one another. Select one or two of these conflicts and analyze how they work in the context of the larger story. **[N/A for Fall 2012]**

20: Before it turns to Vladek’s memories of hiding with his first wife, Anja, in Sosnowiec during World War II, the scene from //Maus// begins with Vladek and his current wife, Mala, and his son, Art, dealing with typical family concerns like money and marriage. How is what happens in this opening sequence connected to what happens during WWII? How is the older Vladek in this sequence similar to, or different from, the younger Vladek of Poland during the war? How do these two sequences work (or not work) together? **[Text from 12.5; Response Due 12.6; 500 words]**

**__TERMINOLOGY__**
 * Beat Generation**: a group of American poets and novelists of the 1950s and 1960s in romantic rebellion against what they perceived to be the dominant American culture. The expressed this rebellion through writing that utilizes looser structures and slang. Beat writers emphasized intellectual freedom and are often associated with religious ecstasy, visionary states, and drug use and effects. The group’s ideology also included a mix of primitivism, orientalism, experimentation, eccentricity, and reliance on inspiration from modern jazz and bebop.


 * Confessional Poetry**: a movement in poetry that gained popularity in the 1950s and 1960s and which refers to poetry that features public and sometimes painful displays of private and personal matters, such as mental illness, depression, and sexuality. In confessional poetry the poet often seems to address the audience directly, without the intervention of a persona.


 * Conflict**: the struggle that grows out of the tensions between opposing forces in a story. At least one of the opposing forces is usually a person. There are four kinds of traditional conflict: (1) a struggle against nature; (2) a struggle between characters; (3) a struggle against society; (4) a struggle for mastery by two elements within a person.


 * Elegy**: a sustained and formal poem the main point of which is a meditation on death or another serious theme. This meditation is often inspired by the death of a particular person, but it may be a more general observation or expression of a solemn mood.


 * Epiphany**: an event in which the essential nature of something—a person, situation, an object—is suddenly revealed/perceived. It serves as an intuitive grasping of reality that is achieved in a sudden flash of recognition in which something is seen in a new light. It is thus a sudden insight.


 * Flashback (Analepsis**): In classical terminology //analepsis// referred to a type of vision or trance in which something from the past or the unconscious mind is restored to vivid life in the present or conscious mind. In contemporary terms, a //flashback// is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to relate events that happened before the story’s primary action or to give relevant [|backstory].


 * Foreshadowing**: the presentation of material in a work in such a way that later events are prepared for. Foreshadowing can result from the presentation of mood, events, or physical objects in the narrative.


 * Framework Story**: a [|literary technique] whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories . The frame story leads readers from a first story into another, smaller one (or several ones) within it.


 * Graphic Novel**: the graphic novel is a narrative in which the story is conveyed via sequential art. The genre encompasses both fiction and non-fiction, and graphic novels are generally longer and bound more durably than traditional comic books.


 * Harlem Renaissance**: The first major, self-conscious literary movement of African-American writers in America (although there had been much black writing earlier). After World War I, as a result of the Great Migration to the northern United States, many young, talented writers and artists congregated in the Harlem area of New York City and made it a cultural and intellectual capital. Significant figures include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer. The Harlem Renaissance diminished considerably with the onset of the Great Depression.


 * Interior Monologue**: one technique for presenting stream of consciousness. Recording the internal, emotional experience of the character, it reaches downward to the nonverbalized level where images must be used to represent sensations or emotions. It assumes the unrestricted and uncensored portrayal of interior experience. In //Direct Interior Monologue// the author seems not to exist and the interior self of the character is given directly, as though the reader were overhearing an articulation of the stream of thought and feeling flowing through the character’s mind; in //Indirect Interior Monologue// the author serves as selector, presenter, guide, and commentator on the interiority and flow.


 * Lost Generation**: a group of American writers, born around 1900, many of whom served in World War I and lived as expatriates in Paris after the war. The term “Lost Generation” was coined by the writer Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway used it as an epigraph for his novel //The Sun Also Rises//, whose protagonist, Jake Barnes, is often considered an example of the generation. Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hart Crane are significant figures.


 * Memoir**: a form of autobiographical writing that usually deals with the memories and interpretations of a person who has been a part of, or witnessed, significant events. The memoir differs from the autobiography in that it is usually concerned with personalities and events other than those of the writer, and that it usually focuses on an event or a sequence of actions, instead of the larger scale of the autobiography.


 * Naturalism**: a literary movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It draws its name from the assumption that everything real exists in nature, conceived as the world of objects, actions, and forces that yield their secrets to objective (scientific) inquiry. Naturalism is a response to Newtonian mechanistic determinism and Darwinian biological determinism; the naturalistic view of human beings is that of animals in the natural world, responding to environmental forces and internal stresses and drives.


 * Passing Narrative**: a story of a person classified as a member of one racial group attempting to be accepted as a member of a different racial group. The term relates to Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella //Passing//, which deals with two biracial women, one who identifies herself as black and the other who identifies herself as white.


 * Peripateia**: the reversal of fortune for a protagonist—possibly either a fall, as in a traditional tragedy, or a success, as in a traditional comedy.


 * Realism**: a literary movement in Europe and America that was dominant from approximately 1850 to 1900. Realistic writing deals with pragmatism, and the truth it seeks to find and express is relativistic or pluralistic, associated with discernible consequences and verifiable by experience. Realistic writing often focuses on the immediate and the here-and-now, and on specific actions and their consequences, as well as on common, everyday experiences.


 * Southern Renaissance**: a reinvigoration of writing in the American South beginning in the 1920s and carrying through the 1950s. Prior to the Renaissance southern writing had focused on the heroism, romance, history, and morality of the Antebellum South and the “Lost Cause,” but Renaissance writers focused instead on history and defeat as a burden, on the problems of slavery and racial issues, and on the complexities of place, family, religion, and identity in a conservative, religious, rural area. William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor are significant figures.


 * Stream of Consciousness**: Also sometimes called “continuous monologue,” this is a literary technique that was developed in the 1920s, as part of Modernism, and it attempts to reproduce the moment-to-moment flow of subjective thoughts and perceptions in an individual’s mind.


 * Surrealism**: An artistic and literary movement that grew out of Dadaism between 1917 and the 1920s. The movement was influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, and it seeks to explore the world of dreams and the unconscious through art and literature, emphasizing the irrational dimensions of human experience.


 * Utopia/Dystopia**: Utopia and dystopia oppose one another. Utopia describes an imaginary ideal world, and the term comes from Sir Thomas More’s 1516 book //Utopia//, which describes a perfect political state. Dystopia, which literally translates as “bad place,” is the term applied to unpleasant imaginary places, often those in which present tendencies are carried out to their intensely unpleasant culminations.

**__RESEARCH PAPER ASSIGNMENT __** For the research writing component of this course, students will write a research paper that explains a particular genre/mode/style/movement of American writing. Once the genre/mode is explained, the paper should then explore and analyze how a particular text (and writer) exemplifies/demonstrates/epitomizes that genre and its features. The paper should be 900 to 1,000 words in length, and it should feature 2-3 sources beyond the primary text (your example text). As with all formal papers, it should also feature a title, beginning/middle/end, a list of Works Cited at the end, and a thesis/purpose statement in the first paragraph.

The first step in this assignment is to define the genres/movements that are available, and what writers are associated with those genres/movements. The following is a list based on the terms and readings of the course:

Beat Generation (Allen Ginsberg) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Confessional Poetry (Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Graphic Novel (Spiegelman) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Harlem Renaissance (James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Lost Generation (Ernest Hemingway) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Memoir (Spiegelman) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Modernism (Hemingway, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Post-Modernism (Sylvia Plath, Spiegelman, John Cheever) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Naturalism (Jack London) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Passing Narrative (James Weldon Johnson) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Realism (Ambrose Bierce) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Southern Renaissance (William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Surrealism (John Cheever)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-->Sample Student Research Paper ("A" Paper on Confessional Poetry and Sylvia Plath, from Spring 2012):