American Literature Final Exam – Flashcards
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What is "the American Renaissance?"
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The beginning of an authentic literary tradition national movement in America.
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What are the two groups of pre-transcendentalists?
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New York Nickerbockers (Irwing) and Boston Fireside Poets (Longfellow).
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Which is the name of the European arts movement that these writers are thought to be influenced by?
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Romanticism.
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Describe the critical approach we applied to Emerson's speech "The American Scholar."
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Emerson is considered the author of this break. He contradicts himself.
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Which of the following is the context of Emerson's speech?
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Harvard University fraternity meeting.
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Emerson says who/what is the first and foremost teacher?
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Nature.
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What about Emerson's praise for labor shows that it is not as progressive as he makes it sound?
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Agriculture is being industrialized.
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What is radical about Emerson's phrase "the theory of books"?
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Books are meant to be read for education but books are only one option in learning.
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There is evidence that Emerson subscribes to...
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The Anglo-Saxon race myth.
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What is "sublimation" on the critical theory of Thoreau?
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Thoreau is a transcendentalist and embraces it through the hunter myth.
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Interpret Thoreau's line, "the frontier is wherever aman fronts a fact."
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The frontier is a state of mind not a place.
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Who are the anti-transcendentalist?
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Hawthorne and Melville.
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The anti-transcendentalists saw themselves as bringing their writing back to which original American mythology?
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Puritanism.
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According to our critical thesis of the anti-transcendentalist they bring American mythology back to...
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The American goddess.
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What example from the text of the scarlet letter is a sign that she is the traditional racially crossed character?
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Her raven hair.
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What is the "dramatic climax" of The Scarlet Letter?
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Dimmsdale confesses that he is the father and then dies.
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The standard reading of the dramatic climax of The Scarlet Letter interprets it in a gothic way. What does that mean?
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The gothic way means that his confession is his feelings of guilt.
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Whitman worked in what capacity prior to his life as a poet?
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Journalist.
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Whitmans attitude toward NYC at mid century is contrasted with what famous American writers? And what was the attitude toward the city of those writers?
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Poe and Melville. They were nostalgic for old NYC. Immigrants ruined the city.
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What does the critic mean by "urban affection"?
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Bonding with strangers.
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The life changing experience that immediately prededed his identification as the national poet was had...
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In New Orleans.
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Who are the Creoles and what place do they play in WW journey?
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All the French immigrants that exposed ethnic diversity to WW. Mixture is a source of something positive in the culture.
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Whitman's journal reveals the moment when Leaves of Grass was born with what dominant idea?
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His voice, the "I".
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Identify two aspects of Whitman's picture in the 1855 edition of Leaves that we're uniques for the times.
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It was a full body picture and he was in normal people clothing.
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What inappropriate thing did WW do with the positive comments that Emerson made about the 1855 Leaves?
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Published them.
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What transcendentalist visited WW in NYC? Describe the experience.
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Thoreau. He was disgusted by Whitmans way of life and how filthy it was.
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What is the name of the urban-artist-immigrant community that WW was a part of?
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Bohemia.
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WW thought the 1860 Leaves would do what with respect to the Civil War?
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Prevent it.
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Whom did WW see as the embodiment of his average man poet?
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Abraham Lincoln.
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In what sense was Leaves "reconceived" after the Civil War?
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The poem is about the civil war.
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What aspect of WW identity as the "poet of the body" is added in his declining years?
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He described the ways his body was decaying and accepted death and the afterlife.
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What about language does WW say american's understand intuitively?
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No language is pure, slang is important. American's understand the importance of slang to language.
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The thesis on the body is interpreted as WW's...
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Anti-Puritansim
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In what sense did Whitman's mother influence his poetic style?
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His mothers illiteracy influenced his free-verse style. He wasn't limited by correctness.
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What is our definition of the meaning of "personality" as it works in this novel?
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An unbroken series of unsuccessful guestures. Self invention and it is performance based.
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Identify two metaphors that illustrate industrialism as the end of the Argo-myth.
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Valley of ashes, fantastic farm, and grotesque gardens.
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What about the description of the band at Gatsbys party indicates the Modern Art Thesis?
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Expressing a negative attitude towards the mixture of classical and popular idea of modern art.
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Which composition/composer is thought to be the allusion in "The Jazz History of the World"?
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"Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin.
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What is the significance of the phrase "even Gatsby could happen" in chapter four?
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Gatsby's self invention is allowed because of racial self invention (for african American immigrants moving to a city).
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The "conspicuous break," in chapter four creates a "pairing" between what and what?
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Black characters and Jewish characters.
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What does the term "narcissism" mean as we are using it to interpret Gatsby?
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Infantile regression.
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Identify the context and the meaning of the phrase, "heat exploded into sound."
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He's hearing classical music through the phone receiver, which is ugly so the beauty of classical music has been twisted.
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In the scene in the suite, Tom identifies what as that which represents everything wrong with the "modern world"?
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Miscegenation.
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What attitude toward the past does Nicks memory of the train stationat Christmas time express?
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Nostalgia.
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Explain the closing metaphor of the book, "we beat on...ceaselessly into the past."
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In the closing image of the book he's imagining Dutch sailors ships who discovered America. What it was like when sailors saw the new world, for the first time.
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Name three Victorian influences on Modernist American literature.
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Emerson, Henry James, Matthew Arnold.
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What is Matthew Arnold's definition of "culture"?
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Related to high art, secular religion, shared.
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What American writer attempted to combat Arnold's idea of "culture?"
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Whitman.
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Who is the founder of American. realsim?
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William Dean Howells.
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What American writer defines literary modernism?
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T.S. Eliot.
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Name one of T.S. Eliot's poems and say what it is about.
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Prufrock. A lost soul walking the city remembering his experiences, thoughts, images, and literary references.
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What is the lyrical style of of literary Modernism?
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Images, memories, and ideas about literature are woven together to make meaning.
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What is the political ideology of literary Modernism?
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Monarchy, antisemitism, and Anglicanism.
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Name three writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
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Langston Hughes, WEB. DeBois, and Zora Neale Hurston.
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Explain DeBois' notion of "doubleness."
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He is an American and a negro. He has two mindsets, two cultures, and two souls.
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What is the relevance of the Franz Boas-Zora Neale Hurston connection - especially with respect to the ideology of "culture"?
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Hurston was an anthropology student of Boas. Going from anthropology to American literature, culture as relative to African American folklore turned into fiction.
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"The Conspiracy" - with respect to modernism and the popular front writers - is that, despite their political opposition, they both supported what?
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They both supported high art culture.
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The Popular Front was an attempt to bring what political ideology to American art and literature?
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Communist.
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What Steinbeck novel served as our example of Popular Front ideology?
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The Grapes of Wrath.
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In what respects was this novel a Popular Front novel?
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It's about the conditions of migrant farm workers who lost everything in the Dust Bowl. Written to create sympathy for the working class.
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What folk singer is the "dust bowl poet" who lived the life depicted in the Steinbeck novel?
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Woody Guthrie.
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What was "The Partisan Review"?
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A literary journal published by a Jewish scholar about how Jews couldn't work at universities.
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The Partisan Review existed because Jews could not get hired as what?
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College professors.
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That Lionel Trilling accepts Matthew Arnold suggests what issue with respect to ethnicity in America?
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Assimilation.
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Explain the context of Trilling vs. Ginsberg (according to Sean Wilentz)?
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Trilling (professor) and Ginsberg (student) are both Jews at Colombia who are debating what American literature is about.
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Contextualize the Beat movement demographically.
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20 year olds who are descendants of immigrants had a hard time with college professors.
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What African American jazz did the Beat writers imitate?
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Bebop.
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Which correctly identifies the Beat movement with respect to Modernism and the Popular Front?
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The Beat movement synthesized Modernism and the Popular Front.
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What is the lyrical style of Beat poetics?
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Jazz influence (rhythm) and modernist fragmentation.
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Name two founding examples of Beat poetry.
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Howl by Ginsberg and Mexico City Blues by Kerouac.
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Discuss Kerouac's prose style.
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Spontaneous, run on sentences, character digressions.
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Explain the ideological tension between Ginsberg and Kerouac.
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Kerouac rejected the Beat movement while Ginsberg affirms it. Kerouac goes towards a conservative right while Ginsberg explores the new political left.
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Other than jazz, Kerouac can be seen embracing the aesthetic value of popular culture in the form of...
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Hollywood movies.
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Which Beat poet did Dylan actually collaborate with?
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Ginsberg.
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Dylan going electric was a Beat move in the sense that it rejected...
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Protest.
