Literature: Harlem Renaissance and New Negro
Life and Thought in American Literature: 1865-Present
Discussion: Romanticism & Realism * All writing is always and already a political act. * All writing is an attempt to persuade or move the reader to see or believe in a point of view or to act the way the writer wants you to. To change the reader’s reality. * Who is the writer? * Who is the audience? * A grocery list is a political act is because it is written to persuade you to ignore all other items in the grocery store except the items on the list. * 1865: Civil war has ended
1850-1865: Romanticism: Fantastical(Emerson and Thoreau) * Transcendentalism: to go beyond the rules of rationalism, beyond reality. * Seeing reality through imagination. * Writers from 1850: Locke etc. * Romanticism is a reaction to the cold objectivity of the literature written in the 1850’s. * Intuition: knowing or sensing something without knowing how we know it. * Sentimentalism is another word for Romanticism, which translates to writing through emotional. * Implausible Plots * Subjective literature=romanticism: from the mind of the writer. * A construction of Good vs. Evil * Herman Millville: Moby Dick: was not written for your head; it was written for your heart. * Monsters=evil, ex. Frankenstein’s Monster * Strange and faraway places * No complex characters=flat characteristics * Scarlet letter: woman marries a man, goes to America, loses husband. * Finds a new man, gets pregnant, refuses to tell anyone who the father is . * The point is that love conquers all etc. * Constructed and consumed by the upper class * Important authors: * 1850: Ralf waldo Emerson: * Nathanial Hawthorne: scarlet letter * 1851: Herman Melville: Moby Dick * 1852: herniate beacher stow: Uncle Tom’s cabin * 1854: henry David Thoreau: Walden * 1855: Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass * The hay day of American Romanticism:
Discussion: Romanticism & Realism * All writing is always and already a political act. * All writing is an attempt to persuade or move the reader to see or believe in a point of view or to act the way the writer wants you to. To change the reader’s reality. * Who is the writer? * Who is the audience? * A grocery list is a political act is because it is written to persuade you to ignore all other items in the grocery store except the items on the list. * 1865: Civil war has ended
1850-1865: Romanticism: Fantastical(Emerson and Thoreau) * Transcendentalism: to go beyond the rules of rationalism, beyond reality. * Seeing reality through imagination. * Writers from 1850: Locke etc. * Romanticism is a reaction to the cold objectivity of the literature written in the 1850’s. * Intuition: knowing or sensing something without knowing how we know it. * Sentimentalism is another word for Romanticism, which translates to writing through emotional. * Implausible Plots * Subjective literature=romanticism: from the mind of the writer. * A construction of Good vs. Evil * Herman Millville: Moby Dick: was not written for your head; it was written for your heart. * Monsters=evil, ex. Frankenstein’s Monster * Strange and faraway places * No complex characters=flat characteristics * Scarlet letter: woman marries a man, goes to America, loses husband. * Finds a new man, gets pregnant, refuses to tell anyone who the father is . * The point is that love conquers all etc. * Constructed and consumed by the upper class * Important authors: * 1850: Ralf waldo Emerson: * Nathanial Hawthorne: scarlet letter * 1851: Herman Melville: Moby Dick * 1852: herniate beacher stow: Uncle Tom’s cabin * 1854: henry David Thoreau: Walden * 1855: Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass * The hay day of American Romanticism: