Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Last Clog Topic: Summarizing American Literature, Preparation for Memoir.
I personally thought that there was a consistent theme throughout American Lit class which is resistance. Emerson's essay about non-conformity, Thoreau's Walden both insist individual's independence from society. Beat Generation tried to go against society and chose drugs, sex, and alcohol as methods to do this. Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson isolated themselves from society and mentioned death as a total relief from the world. And I thought these all connect to common theme of resisting against society. What kind of pattern did you find in American Literature?, what did you relate to the most?
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Your idea Hae also relates to what we talked about in History. Americans have always fought against their society and ruling body. It started with revolts in early colonial history, to the revolution, to the civil war and so on.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Hae. I feel as if the majority of movements in American Literature have been a response against some form of injustice. With all of the movements Hae listed above, there was always some sort of wrong or injustice that these movements were responding to.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all three of you. I also think its interesting to track how the definitions of truth, beauty, and art change as writers and people react against various aspects of the world. As values change, these definitions adapt. This can also work in the opposite direction. Realists rejected the Romantic ideas of art, and naturalists rejected some aspects of realism. Its interesting to think about which came first and caused the other: did changes in value cause changes in art or did changes in aesthetic taste cause changes in values and ideas?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Emily, that American scholars have defined truth and beauty differently throughout history. I also wrote about this in my journal and I felt that American Literature always had been under "Modern Era" because the writers consistently searched for "Newness", changed ideas and philosophies of the world. Also, the categories of American Literature including Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Realism, Naturalism, Beats, Modernism, etc, are all related by rejecting or agreeing with each other; hence, not making even one category obsolete.
ReplyDeleteI really like what Sarah said tying in American literature's resistance against society to our history of revolt. I think American literature definitely has outsider/rebel aspects. When the British were writing depressing poems about nature, Walt Whitman rebelled and wrote optimistic poems about nature and humanity.
ReplyDeleteAnother trend I see in American literature is a quest to understand. Romanticism used exceptional heroes and supernatural events as tools to make sense of reality through narrative. Realism tried to document reality, making it easier to understand. I think this is most prevalent in Modernism where people were trying to grasp what had happened in World War I. I think Post-Modernism is a break from that. Instead of trying to understand the capitalist world, they accept that it doesn't make sense, and live with it.
There was a theme of discovery throughout the works we have read. most works talked about trying to find oneself. even the works about resistance also carried the theme of discovery, especially self-discovery.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree with everybody, I think the pattern of American literature is a combination of what Emily and Dylan said, rather than a response to injustice. I believe this pattern we see is one new style's response, usually rejection, of the previous style, offering a new method towards self-discovery.
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