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History of america in american literature
History of america in american literature
A brief history and theme of American literature
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Henry Schimmel ENGL 2000 107 Literature, History, Culture
Rev. Ronald Bieganowski, S.J. 28 January 2015
Royall Tyler’s The Contrast presents many conflicts, and each character’s story demonstrates an American crisis of cultural identity. The Contrast focuses on this internal conflict that befell the United States following the Revolution, and Tyler particularly emphasizes the importance for Americans to depart from the past with the intent of “starting over.” He challenges the ideals of the old world in favor of the ideals of the new. The Contrast is not merely patriotic, but also a subtle critique of the social duplicity of the old European culture and the new, emerging culture of the United States. The Contrast makes a clear
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However, she is chained to old-world conventions. Billy Dimple, to whom Maria is betrothed, after returning from abroad, became the very persona of Europe, England, and the old ways, and his trip transformed him into a foppish dandy, an Anglophile, and a lothario. Maria even compares Billy’s wickedness to Robert Lovelace, the “dashing villain” from the 1748 English novel, Clarissa (799). Maria’s character, on the other hand, is virtuous and dutiful, and she holds her filial duty in higher regard than her own desires. Contemptuous of Mr. Dimple, but honor bound by her filial duty, Maria falls in love with Henry Manly, who starkly contrasts Billy Dimple in every manner. Colonel Manly, as a war hero, sincere gentleman, and loyal patriot, is the very persona of America itself. Billy Dimple and Colonel Manly personify the two conflicting and contrasting cultures, and Maria personifies the American cultural identity crisis because she finds her heart split between her desire for happiness and love and her expected cultural duties. Therefore, Royall Tyler expresses the social conflict of
Before going to Alaska, Chris McCandless had failed to communicate with his family while on his journey; I believe this was Chris’s biggest mistake. Chris spent time with people in different parts of the nation while hitchhiking, most of them whom figured out that McCandless kept a part of him “hidden”. In chapter three, it was stated that Chris stayed with a man named Wayne Westerberg in South Dakota. Although Westerberg was not seen too often throughout the story, nevertheless he was an important character. Introducing himself as Alex, McCandless was in Westerberg’s company for quite some time: sometimes for a few days, other times for several weeks. Westerberg first realized the truth about Chris when he discovered his tax papers, which stated that “McCandless’s real name was Chris, not Alex.” Wayne further on claims that it was obvious that “something wasn’t right between him and his family” (Krakauer 18). Further in the book, Westerberg concluded with the fact that Chris had not spoken to his family “for all that time, treating them like dirt” (Krakauer 64). Westerberg concluded with the fact that during the time he spent with Chris, McCandless neither mentioned his
In “Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776”, Jon Butler argues that there was massive economic and a political transformation occurred in the era of 1680 and 1770 which had been less examined to the American colonial history. In this book, Butler makes a strong argument for the early modernism of American society which helps to define the growth of American identity. The transformation improved the American socioeconomic character and demonstrated itself almost in every aspect of colonial life. I totally agree with the Jon Butler’s argument that the victories and defeats of the revolutionary war would not define America; it was the middle years of the colonial period that would. And his arguments in this book also challenge the existing history. Butler supports his argument from his own note which he collected from by researching huge amount of specialized history books.
American Character by Colin Woodard, is a book about America’s history and the upcoming of how the United States has become. Woodard starts off first explaining what it was like when America was colonized by the New England colonists and goes onward to present-day America. A book like this should be deemed great for a political history class because of the vast amount of information it has. Although, this book is exceptionally very small for a book of such kind, Woodard loves jumping around from era to era and can leave his readers at a disarray. Claiming so, a strong and prior knowledge of the American history and its government is strongly encouraged. Historical and economic terms are also used immensely in this book, so a thesaurus and dictionary would be of great use. If those two resources aren’t of much help, a recommendation of facts found upon the Internet regarding an era of which Woodard is explaining would be helpful.
The authors’ literary works had a way of communicating and expressing their way of life by their own writing styles. The authors I will discuss shared their experience adapting into American culture. The authors I chosen to discuss is Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Thomas Paine who are distinctly different people who share a common background, but overcome different obstacles living in America. The criteria I have to share about their life experiences is their own writings and documented information from credible resources. The analyses and interpretations in the authors writings gives us idea about who they are because of their hardships in America, a new government, and their new culture.
In the early twentieth century, scholars gain a deeper understanding of the ideology behind those who partook in the American Revolution. People’s motivations throughout the American Revolution are a result of their desire for a new society that is not based on the old world’s standards of monarchy, privilege, and social hierarchy. Likewise, people want a society in the new world to determine one’s status based on one’s abilities, efforts, and talents and to characterize equality. A meritocracy, not monarchy become prevalent in the new world’s society, and one’s family’s reputation, wealth, and titles are no longer important. Therefore, colonists rebuke the old world system, which was questioned throughout the American Revolution. Wood explains that “republic individuals were no longer destined to be what their fathers were” (Wood 99). His explanation shows that scholars treated the American Revolution as an extension of the development America’s meritocracy and as an innovation of America’s resulting society during the early twentieth
Ever since its very creation, the United States of America has been symbolic of several ideas that were the base upon which the country was built. A period that was crucial in establishing those prominent American values was the American romantic period. American romanticism was the movement towards creating a distinct American cultural identity after a period of heavy reliance on European influence. In “Old Ironsides,” Oliver Holmes uses the Romantic characteristics of intense emotion, references to nature, and intuition over logic to portray not only the ship but also America as a proud and gallant country
The text Trans-National America' was revolutionary for the time that Bourne wrote it because nobody was actually talking against the traditional understanding what American patriotism is. In this particular text, Bourne writes about anti-Anglosaxonism and discusses the failure of the melting-pot.
“Is there a single trait of resemblance between those few towns and a great and growing people spread over a vast quarter of the globe, separated by a mighty ocean?” This question posed by Edmund Burke was in the hearts of nearly every colonist before the colonies gained their independence from Britain. The colonists’ heritage was largely British, as was their outlook on a great array of subjects; however, the position and prejudices they held concerning their independence were comprised entirely from American ingenuity. This identity crisis of these “British Americans” played an enormous role in the colonists’ battle for independence, and paved the road to revolution.
Walter Benn Michaels is an active literary theorist, and is currently a Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism, Michaels examines American literary modernism, emphasizing its “participation in a crucial shift in American conceptions of race [and identity]” (Lee). While Progressivist racism is based upon a “racial hierarchy and the assimilation of non-Negro ethnicities” (Lee), a nativist perspective focuses upon the determination of identity through racial difference, thereby refuting any form of assimilation because of the importance of preserving racial purity. Michaels analyzes a variety of American texts of the 1920s, including The Professor’s House, by Willa Cather, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and identifies a recurring insistence upon “identity as the determining ground of action or significance” (Michaels, 1). The differentiation of identities, or more specifically the pluralistic distinction between American and un-American, is the defining element of nativism, and Michaels asserts that the period immediately following World War I involved a “redefinition of the terms in which [this distinction] might be made” (2). Incidentally, while the term modernism is broadly used to “identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and styles of literature” (Abrams, 167), Michaels suggests it is particularly characterized by an interest in the “relation of sign to referent” (Michaels, 2). By exhibiting the modernist premise that a word achieves “reality by transcending rather than being the thing it names” (74), Michaels employs the notion of the...
There is a fine line between what American society looked like during World War II and contemporary America. The dilemma is that society has gone from patriotism and a fight for liberty to “everyone walking around with a chip on his or her shoulder” (Carr 2). This two distinct differences on America culture and society is manifested in, Howie Carr’s “Take $2000 and Call Me in the Morning” and Ronald Reagan’s speech, “The Boys of Point du Hoc”.
The literary rebellion, known as realism, established itself in American writing as a direct response to the age of American romanticism’s sentimental and sensationalist prose. As the dominance of New England’s literary culture waned “a host of new writers appeared, among them Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain, whose background and training, unlike those of the older generation they displaced, were middle-class and journalistic rather than genteel or academic” (McMichael 6). These authors moved from tales of local color fiction to realistic and truthful depictions of the complete panorama of American experience. They wrote about uniquely American subjects in a humorous and everyday language, replete with their character’s misdeeds and shortcomings. Their success in creating this plain but descriptive language, the language of the common man, signaled the end of American reverence for British and European culture and for the more formal use of language associated with those traditions. In essence, these new authors “had what [the author] Henry James called “a powerful impulse to mirror the unmitigated realities of life,” in contrast to the romanticist’s insistence “on the author’s rights to avoid representations of “squalid misery” and to present instead an idealized and “poetic” portrait of life” (McMichael 6).
As an American observes the life around him, noting the many advancements made in merely the last century, he must wonder how America climbed to such a level. The 21st century technology, the military and political power, education and ethics, all came from such meager beginnings, solidified by the Revolutionary War. The Revolutionary War proved to be a significant turning point in the history of our country, but what caused America to win? What were some of the most significant factors in the victory of these American patriots? By examining these three particular factors, America’s military assets, it’s aid from other countries, and its own spirit of independence, one’s understanding of the Revolutionary War, an essential root of this nation, is truly increased.
“American Crisis.” The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill 2009. Print
"From the first day that the United States won its independance, thoughtful Americans have attempted to define the new national identity" that decolonization invited. Becoming an independant political nation forced citizens to suddenly devise a "community and character" (Finkelman, 63) worthy of this newborn America. It was believed that, once free from Birtish fetters, a unique American character would emerge automatically. But this was not so, and it was left up to the artits, politictians, scientists, businessmen and women, and every other citizen to contrive the American identity. Those who were most accomplished at scrutinizing the American identity and what it was, were the many authors and writers of the 19th century.
Parrillo’s primary argument is that cultural homogenization had begun to rise during and after the Revolutionary war when cultural differences were put aside in the fight for independence. Intermingling of ethnic groups during the war was a crucial first step in the development of true American common culture and political tradition. The following step, to building an American identity, was to leave behind the Old World political and cultural values. Once the New World was able to sever ties with the Old World, the new nation was able to develop a surge of national pride and success in areas such as art, language usage, and religious authority. The independent nation bonded and was able to shape into a unique community with some distinctively