Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
The only way to understand the progress(?) of America through Literature…
The only way to understand the progress(?) of America through Literature is by considering many different perspectives. Considering many perspectives helps us make sense of injustice from the beginning of American history to the modern day.
Enlightenment
Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia
-Racial inferiority based on "science" (Eugenics)
-“The blacks...are inferior to the whites in the endowments of the body and the mind” (819)
Douglass “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
-Questioning American values of freedom in a country where slavery exists, reinterpreting language of Declaration
-"Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?"(1066).
Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Directed to white Northern women, highlights sexual and psychological abuse against slave women
Transcendentalism
Nature
Walden "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" (968)
Thoreau seeks refuge in the woods to escape from the overload of society as it progressed rapidly.
-
Realism
Gender
Henry James' Daisy Miller- Daisy Miller, an "American Girl" is percieved to be promiscuous and shunned by community- Why should she conform? “I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper- Woman is kept in a nursery, not treated properly by her husband, not allowed to write and is not taken seriously. Connection to Daisy Miller?- Gender roles? Role of Medicine/ Mental health care for women specifically?
-
-
New ways of thinking in a new nation, focus on science, questioning religion.
Depicting things as they are in reality, focus on mundane, every day events, focus on character instead of plot.
New ways of thinking about/creating literature after WWI.
-Focus on finding meaning in a world where tragedy exists and in a society that is rapidly changing.
Literary, Philosophical, and Political movement that focused on finding meaning through individuality and nature.
In the earliest stages of American Literature, differing perspectives on race display the racism/white supremacy that would have a lasting impact on America/ American Literature.
Progress in the way we think about society/literature, but how hard can if be for white men to not conform/act differently than society? Both men preach individualism and non-conformity, but don't speak about how much easier it is for them than others (minorities) to be self-reliant. Thoreau and Emerson's writings are important but still display issues that were halting progress.
Both these works of literature showcase female as well as male writers challenging widely accepted social norms and gender roles by writing about situations that could have been real.
These works from the modernism period showcase the "newness" of the movement but also highlight the disparity between white writers and people of color during the time period. While most of the works dealing with racism came from the Harlem Renaissance, white modernist writers like Faulkner were heavily focused on racial tension, specifically in the American South.
Contemporary- Beyonce's "Sorry" deals with issues of racism and challenging gender roles in the modern day. Still an issue of 2016? Unfortunately, yes. It can be hard to shake things so deeply embedded in the country's DNA. Fortunately, Literature is an important tool that allows us to make sense of and record injustice.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
