American Literature Exam 3 – Flashcards
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Who is the author of A Streetcar Named Desire?
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Tennessee Williams
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Who is the author of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "Good Country People"?
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Flannery O'Connor
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Who is the author of "Middle Passage," "Homage to the Empress of the Blues," "Those Winter Sundays," and "Free Fantasia: Tiger Flowers"?
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Robert Hayden
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Who is the author of "Invisible Man"?
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Ralph Ellison
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Who is the author of "Going to Meet the Man"?
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James Baldwin
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Who is the author of "Recitatif"?
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Toni Morrison
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Who is the author of "Morning Song," "Lady Lazarus," "Ariel," and "Daddy"?
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Sylvia Plath
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Who is the author of "Entropy"?
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Thomas Pynchon
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Who is the author of "Maus"?
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Art Spiegelman
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Who is the author of "Fleur"?
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Louise Erdrich
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Who is the author of "The Gift," "Persimmons," "Eating Alone," "Eating Together," "This Room and Everything in It," and "Nativity"?
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Li-Young Li
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Who is the author of "The Echo Maker"?
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Richard Powers
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Tennessee Williams
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A prominent American playwright and well known Southern writer. His mother was a preacher's daughter, and his father was a travelling salesman. He moved to Hollywood as an adult. He was a writer for MGM. One of his famous works is The Glass Menagerie. His play A Streetcar Named Desire won him a Pulitzer Prize, and was made into a major motion picture.
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Discuss the similarities and differences between Southern Gothic and American Gothic.
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Southern Gothic: The stories often focus on grotesque themes. While it may include supernatural elements, it mainly focuses on damaged, even delusional, characters. Characteristics: sense of doom and haunting, key character types include a southern gentleman and a southern belle, legacy of slavery, supernatural/ divine providence, presence of disease or madness American Gothic: A subgenre of gothic Fiction. Characteristics include rationality/rational vs irrational, puritanism, guilt, Das Unheimliche (strangeness within the familiar as defined by Sigmund Freud), abhumans, ghosts, monsters, and domestic abjection.
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Flannery O'Connor
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An author of the Southern Gothic tradition who has a relatively small body of work because she died at a young age from lupis. She is an overtly religious author, Catholic. She uses the Southern Gothic genre of literature as a social critique against the legacy of slavery and racial tensions. Best known for her short stories, of which there were 31, and her two novels.
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Characteristics of O'Connor's Work
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1. parables -; warnings 2. dark humor 3. a biblical message 4. no resolution 5. impending doom or despair
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Analyze Good Country People
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-Joy changing her name is an act of rebellion -There is a lack of resolution in this story
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Analyze The Life You Save May Be Your Own
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Characters: -Significance of Lucynelle Senior and Lucynelle Younger having the same name (gender distinction -; male family members with same name distinguished by Jr. and Sr., this is not the case with females) -Lucynelle Younger is deaf and mute, behaves like a young child, mentally disabled -Lucynelle Senior is an older woman looking for someone to help care for her daughter -Tom Shiftlet (one-armed, "crooked cross" and shifty, force of disruption in their lives
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Robert Hayden
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His parents split up when he was young and he went into the system. He joined the Federal Writer's Project after graduating from college, and before earning his master's degree. He had a complicated poetic technique, but used conventional poetic forms. He discussed the oppressiveness of black history and slavery in his poetry, as well as spiritual renewal and emancipation. He became the highest ranked poet in the 1960s and it was very important to him that he was considered a poet, not a black poet. `
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Analyze Middle Passage
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Title: Refers to the main route in the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the "New World" Significance of quotes/allusions: Voices of civilization speaking about the a journey that is the opposite of civilized
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Ralph Ellison
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He grew up in Oklahoma and was named after Ralph Waldo Emmerson. His father wanted him to be a poet, but he wanted to be a musician. Was accepted into Tuskegee but there was a mix up with financial aid and he could not begin school right away. Went to NY, got a room with the YMCA, and became involved with the Federal Writer's project. Won the National Book Award in 1053 for his novel Invisible Man.
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James Baldwin
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He was born in Harlem, NY in the 20s. He was an African-American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet and social critic who resisted the idea of racial identity like Robert Hayden.
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Analyze Invisible Man
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Story: About a man's search for his place in society. The protagonist is never given a name, he is an everyman character. Battle Royal Scene: The protagonist is not actually there to give a speech, but rather for entertainment. Raises questions: Is it more effective to change the system from within or from the outside? Is it everyman for himself, or do we owe something to our community?
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Analyze Going to Meet the Man
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Ideas: The legacy of slavery (masters rape black women); differences in how black and white women are viewed (white women are vessels of purity that must be protected but black women are already impure) Narrator: A white man who is having trouble sleeping with his wife. His ideal sexual object is a black woman, which is not socially acceptable at this time (there are girls that you marry and girls that you don't). The lynching is a crucial moment in his sexual development.
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Toni Morrison
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Wrote eleven novels, a few children's books, a libretto, non-fiction books, and essays. Won the American Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved. Won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993 and the National Humanities Award 2000. She worked in publishing and as a teacher, before she became and author. She was almost forty when her first piece of literature was published. She is one of the most important American writers.
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What are some common themes in Morrison's works?
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1. beauty 2. gender roles 3. femininity 4. what does it mean to be a black woman?
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Analyze Recitatif
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Story: Written as an experiment. Title: Reference to a certain kind of text, a recitative is both similar to a song and formal speaking. Characters: Maggie is deaf and mute, remembering what happened to her is a focus for Twyla and Roberta. Twyla's mother danced all night, she can read, lived in a low income area, her mother didn't bring lunch on Easter, Twyla baby. Roberta's mother suffered a mental illness, 'they don't wash their hair,' smell funny, illiterate, mother had a big cross and bible, big lunch on Easter
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Sylvia Plath
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Had a passionate but "up and down" relationship/ marriage with Ted Hughes. They separated in 1962 and she committed suicide the following year, at age 30. She struggled with expectations concerning women's expectations as wives and mothers.
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Analyze Morning Song
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Tension between nursery rhyme sound and hard sounds. About a new mother trying to be a mother (motherhood is confusing and hard and does not come naturally).
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Analyze Daddy
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Poem is sing-songy and has rhythm, yet there is tension because it discusses the Holocaust and death. Discussed expectation of women to be good daughters.
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Thomas Pynchon
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He wrote for the student newspaper in college. He began writing his first novel, V, while living in Seattle and working for Boeing. He retreated from the public and has not been seen from 1970s. He is considered a post-modernist writer. His writing tends to discuss dark themes. He has a scientific background and his writing shows his interest in scientific and engineering ideas.
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Post-modernism vs. Modernism
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Modernism: philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; a quest for meaning in a world that became fragmented (the war leads to a lot of change and led to questions concerning language, religion, science, philosophy, and meaning) Postmodernism: a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of "art;" picks up where modernism leaves off; was a reaction to modernism; accepts fragmentation and chaos but rejects the despair that goes along with it; makes meaning out of the chaos The boundaries between the two movements are permeable.
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Pastiche
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literary collage/ irony; done with language and different styles
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Meta-fiction
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writing about writing fiction ex. characters may be writing or the story may be about the writing process
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Information Theory
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distribution of information to the place of equilibrium
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Art Spiegelman
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He is the son of Holocaust survivors. The story he tells is considered a second generation Holocaust story. Volume I of his story was featured in MoMA and won a Pulitzer Prize.
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Analyze Maus
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An unconventional approach/ way to write about the Holocaust. Comics tend to tell light-hearted/ funny stories, and this is neither. Cats and mice are natural born enemies. Animals make the story more bearable.
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Describe the importance of the oral tradition in relation to Jews.
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The transmission of stories from parents to children is important, but it is especially important among a community and family members who lost so many during the tragedy of the Holocaust.
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Louise Erdrich
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She is one of the most important Native American writers, who is primarily a novelist. She went to Dartmouth, the first year they admitted women. She studied in their Native American studies department and began to explore her own cultural heritage. After graduating from college, she became a residence artist at the university. She collaborated extensively with one of her previous professors, and it eventually led to a romantic relationship and they marry.
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Compare Erdrich to Faulkner
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1. Both have recurring characters in their works. 2. Their narratives are often multi-voiced. 3. Their narratives are often set in the same place. 4. Do not tell stories chronologically. 5. F. talks about the legacy of slavery whereas E. discussed the sins of the father.
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Analyze Fleur
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Drowns three times, possible because of the water demon (example of magical realism). Pauline and Fleur are co-workers. Pauline is a witness of what the men do to Fleur. The men are superstitious. One man has a cow's eye. Fleur doesn't just play cards, but she consistently wins the same amount of money. The men assault her (she is gang raped). Pauline then locks the men in the meat locker and the storm that comes in flattens the locker and kills them.
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Magical Realism
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a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy; realism with the introduction of folklore, mysticism, mythology, or the supernatural; events may or may not be caused by magic; Erdrich uses this technique in her writing
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Li Young Lee
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He is a Chinese-American writer who is the son of immigrants. As the son of immigrants he has an internal conflict concerning the old ways and blending in, which is evident in his writing. His father was a minister, and encouraged him to find his calling (turned out to be poetry).
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What are some common themes on Li Young Lee's works?
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1. relationships between the fathers and sons 2. old country vs. new country
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Analyze Persimmons
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Pattern to the language -> rhythmic repetition Free verse About precision and about sensual experiences (of eating the fruit, of making love, etc.)
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Intertextuality
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the idea that all texts are connected
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I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft-soft people have got to shimmer and glow-they've got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a-paper lantern over the light...It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be soft and attractive. And I-I'm fading now!
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A Streetcar Named Desire
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True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind. She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life. She took all his shame away and turned it into something useful.
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Good Country People
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A cloud, the exact color of the boy's hat and shaped like a turnip, had descended over the sun, and another, worse looking, crouched behind the car. Mr. Shiftlet felt that the rottenness of the world was about to engulf him.
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The Life You Save May Be Your Own
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All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which, and only I, could answer.
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Invisible Man
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It didn't start out that way. The minute I walked in and the Big Bozo introduced us, I got sick to my stomach. It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning-it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.
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Recitatif
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Some have ideas. You know how old chickens scratch and gabble. That's how the tales started, all the gossip, the wondering, all the things people said without knowing and then believed, since they heard it with their own ears, from their own lips, each word.
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Fleur
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Cranes keep landing as night falls. Ribbons of them roll down, slack against the sky. They float in from all compass points, in kettles of a dozen, dropping with the dusk.
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The Echo Maker
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Richard Powers
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American novelist interested in the effects of modern science. He lived in Thailand for the majority of his childhood because his father was the principle of an international school there. He is the author of eleven novels, his most recent novel is Orfeo (alludes to the Myth of Orpheus). He has been compared to Pynchon.
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Her remarks were usually so ugly and her face so glum that Mrs. Hopewell would say, 'If you can't come pleasantly, I don't want you at all," to which the girl, standing square and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust forward, would reply, 'If you want me, here I am—LIKE I AM.
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Good Country People
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I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country...Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.
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Invisible Man
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She hunted down the newspaper and read the flimsy accident account until it crumbled. she sat in the glass terrarium as long as she could, then circled the ward, then sat again. Every hour, she begged to see him. Each time they denied her. She dozed for five minutes at a shot, propped in the sculpted apricot chair. Mark rose up in her dreams, like buffalo grass after a prairie fire. A child who, out of pity. always picked the worst player for his team. An adult who called only when weepy drunk. Her eyes stung and her mouth thickened with scum. she checked the mirror in the floor's bathroom: blotchy and teetering, her fall of red hair a tangled bead-curtain.
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The Echo Maker
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Analyze Those Winter Sundays
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Structure: This poem is recognizably conventional, organized into three stanzas. This poem doesn't rhyme. Sort of like a sonnet because it has fourteen lines. Story: Tells the story of childhood/manhood/ and masculinity. The speaker is afraid of his father, his father has been hardened by life.
