American Literature

Edwin Arlington Robinson- father/mformer(a)/ 2 br opposites died. Love of life married brother. neer Married. Wanted to be poet since age 11 and chose to live In p all(prenominal)placety. Wrote traditional verses. Old-fashi nonpareild and turns with modern problems. Philosophy Behind the peaceful and genteel communities of small- township the States lies a substrata of failure, loneliness, and terror. Conflict with light and dark with the individual. Major Works The Children of the Night, The Man Against the Sky, and The Man Who Died Twice. Quotes I finally realized I was doomed, or elected, or sentenced to life, to the penning of poetryMajor Works A Boys Will, North of Boston, West-Running Brook. Quotes l am non a teacher scarce an awakener. Education is the ability to listen Poets ar eke baseball pitchers. In three joints I can sum up e reallything A poem begins In delight and ends in wisdom The solid grounds Is full of go a dashing slew And where an epitap h to be my bilgewater Id induct a short one removey for my own. doctor Wall, Home Burial, The Road not Taken, Birches, approach and ice, S take inping by Woods, Desert Places, Design, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Out Out, De fatemental. T. S. Eliot The Hollow Men, The Love variant of J. Alfred Frock.William Carols Williams- pediatrician. Images, suggest rather than offer, present concrete Images, deform for Pictures from Brushes, Paterson, The Farmers Daughter and Other Stories. Quotes If you can consume nothing to this place The better institute men do is always When they ask me, as of late If they ap acme you lined paper, execute through the other way. It is difficult to get the news from poems Poets atomic number 18 damned but they are not blind One thing I am convinced to a greater extent than and to a greater extent is true and that is this Tract, The Great Figure, The Red transport, This Is Just to Say, A Sort of Song.E. E. Cummings- 3 months in French priso n, Harvard. Unorthodox punctuation, matte spacing, literary cubism. (Grasshopper) Images avoid clicks, create new rhythms, design common speech. Philosophy spontaneous, rebellion against conformity, authority, exploitation of life, romantic and sexual dear. Major Works Tulips and Chimneys, XSL Poems, ViVa, No Thanks, 1 * 1, Agape S chargety-One Poems, The Enormous Room. Quotes The al roughly wasted of all days is one w/o laughter. To be no torso but yourself in a serviceman which is doing A political is an erase upon which The poems to nonplus are for you and me In Just, My Sweet Old Etcetera, I sing of Loaf glad and big, If in that respect are any heavens, Plato Told, I thank you perfection, she being brand-new, Jimmies got a soil, Old age sticks, Pity this busty monster unkind, L(a), Next to of course God the States l, look at this, who are you, little l, Maggie and mills and molly and may, I carry your heart with me, I like your body when it is with your. Longboats H ughes- Lawrence, Topeka.Black writer. Rhythms of whap and blues. oral exam tradition of black culture. Philosophy direct engagement with people, pride of heritage, promotion of racial Justice. Major Works The Dream Keeper, Montage of a dream deferred, Not Without Laughter. Quotes A dream deferred is a dream denied. l have discover in life that in that location are ways Humor is laughing at what you havent got when you ought to have it. Like a wel cum summer rain l swear to the Lord l provide not take but for an answer. substantially up I like to eat sleep drink and be in love. Oh god of dust and rainbows 7 * 7 + Love = The Energy Speaks of Rivers, The Weary Blues, Song for a Dark Girl, Trumpet Player, Motto, Harlem, Dream Variations, I too sing America, theme for position B. F. Scott Fitzgerald- named after(prenominal) cousin who wrote star spang direct banner. Wife was Zelda. legal drinker. Zelda became mentally ill. Clear lyrical prose. The American Dream. Phil osophy The lost generation, all gods dead, all wars, fought, all credences hake. Major Works The Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby, Tales of the Jazz Age, Tender is the Night, The Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.Quotes In a real dark night The test of a first-rate Some measure it is harder show time you take a drink Either you think or else others have you think for you Family quarrels are bitter things Im a romantic It is in the thirties never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. The world as a rule The faces of about American women Show me a sub and I will write you a ragged. There are no second acts in American Lives. Babylon Revisited allegory, gothic romance. Philosophy southern memory, reality, myth.Major Works Sartorial, As I lay dying, light in august, Abyssal, the unvanquished, go down Moses, intruder in the dust, the sound and the fury. Quotes Given the choice The young man or cleaning woman make up today Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do If I were reincarnated A mule will labor 10 old age Loving all of it even art object he had to hate about of it I believe that man will not barely endure. He will prevail. A Rose for Emily Ernest Hemingway mother dressed him as a girl until he was 6. Suffered from malaria, skin cancer, anemia, depression, diabetes, high blood pressure.Etc. Survived 2 plane crashes in 2 days. Athletic prose, iceberg theory physical composition style. Major Works The Sun to a fault rises, in our time, men w/o women, a farewell to arms, evidence in the afternoon, the snows of Kilimanjaro, for whom the bell tolls, the old man and the sea. Quotes Always do sober But man is not made for defeat. Courage is grace below pressure. either mans life ends the same way.. Madame all stories if intended far enough end in end Never think that war no matter how necessary The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places. The Hemingway Hero suffered traumatic experience and lives.. Code Hero Big Two-Hearted River John Steinbeck Journalistic, lyrical, biblical rhythms. Philosophy iron against poverty/ friendly injustice, combo of inwroughtism, love story, and cancelism. Major Works Tortilla Flat, The long valley, the red pony, of mice and men, the grapes of wrath, the pearl, the log from the sea of Cortez, cannery row, east of Eden, the winter of our discontent, travels with charley. Valued privacy. Wrote screenplay for Lifeboat.American books?American belles-lettres is any written work of art that is created in the United States. American literature is like all literature, it has literary experiences and contextual history of America. It depicts how America has changed is cool off changing today. American literature has changed over time just like most canons of literary whole kit and caboodle. The uniqueness of American literature is that America from its startle had a special philosophy of life and freedom. The special philosophy of life and freedom that made American literature so unique was reflected in its publications.Americans believed and had faith that God was and is the given of all our rights and freedom. We as Americans had faith in ourselves that we could succeed in anything that we try doing. The literature that we Americans wrote made life worth living because it was displayed for the world to read and understand that life was what we made it. Also by Americans having the ability to spring back from vicissitude made life worth living and George upper-case letter was a perfect example of this. Literary canon is basically a suggested list of readings that belongs to a country or a trusted period in time.Literary canon contains literary whole caboodle that is mainly by authors who are accepted as an authority in their field and their writings constituting a serious body of literature in any given language. The works that are coll ected that is included in a literary canon is approved largely by cultural and academic institutions and is observed as literature of that language. Literary works popularity is not based yet on the quality, but on the relevance of what matters to the context historically, socially, and artistically.Literary canon relate very well to what is going on in society because of what is most serious at that time work is being written. The context of the society, whether it is historical, social, or artistic, that is basically the topic. Ethnic writers express the special challenges of realism, naturalism, and regionalism within the American literary experiences. Realism labels a movement in English, European, and American literature that gathered force from the 1930s to the end of the century.Realism move to record life as it was lived rather than life as it ought to be lived or had been lived in times past. William Dean Howells stated that realism is nothing more and nothing slight t han the truthful treatment of corporal. Present-day literary theorists are probably more conscious(predicate) of what may be called the crisis of representation-the disaccordence between representation and the thing represented-than were these realists of the late 19th and early twentieth century.Naturalism is unsounded by some as an extension or intensification of realism. It introduces characters from the fringes and depths of society whose fates are determined by degenerate heredity, a sordid environment, and/or a good deal of bad share. Regionalism writing, other verbal expression of the realist whim, exited from the desire two to preserve a record of distinctive ways of life before industrialization dispersed or homogenized them and to come to terms with the harsh realities that seemed to be replacing these early and allegedly happier times.By the end of the twentieth century, every region of the country had a local colorist to immortalize its natural, social, and lingual features. Ethnic writers define literature as literature that is written by people of a disparate culture, language, religion, or race. It differs from the canon of traditional American literature because literary canon is a list of work from American instead of from a polar race or religion. The historical, socio-political, and cultural topics that aptitude be covered by ethnic writers would be slavery and how the slaves were treated during that time.Slavery is a topic that can be covered under all three. Government issues are a topic that could be covered under socio-political. The debate against government issues such as health care and taxes could be something that ethnic writers could write about. It does not differ from the canon of traditional American literature because the writings have to be by authors who are accepted as an authority in their field and their writings of literature in any given language.American LiteratureA . Some of the best names that come int o mind when one speaks of modern English literature and fantasies are Editha, and Kate Chopin. Their works stand tall in the golden pages of modern literature, influencing most people of this generation and many more to follow. They have piebald and breathed life into each character of the novel, The Awakening, with great magical artistic skills. Such is the greatness and purity of the artists that they are believed to have given birth to a completely new form of writing that the modern Literature is so proud of.Hence they are considered premodern. There are some more writers such as Tolkien who have contributed immensely towards this. I believe, Mr. Tolkien has succeeded more completely than any previous writer in this genre in use the traditional properties of the Quest, the heroic journey, the numinous Object, the conflict between Good and Evil while at the same time satisfying our sense of historical and social reality (W. H. Auden, 1956). The greater the power, the more dange rous is the abuse. The truth in the statement is well proved in Tolkiens The Hobbit.The author experiences his political report in this twentieth-century f able that could be relished as an elating and exhilarating story. He, very well comments upon the abuse of political power and how the poor and down trodden fall prey to the diplomacy of sly rulers. In the center of haziness between an imagi body politic and reality this twentieth-century fable portrays the evil in Middle-Earth as totalitarian evil and that war is an immense ingredient of this malevolence. Many premodern authors have flourished on the fantasy genre. Age cannot wither their novels nor custom stale their infinite variety.The best, modern novels seem inexhaustible. They are a permanent source of inspiration for kindity. conceive of literature generally encompasses unreal, nonhuman creatures, unusual powers, created mythologies and imaginary settings. rime, who can withal be termed as a premodern poet remains stuffy to the spoken language of his time. His language, in the poem, is a mixture of playfulness and seriousness. He portrays regionalism with its rich stock of images, post and anecdotes. This in turn provides an abundant source for metaphors and symbols.The conversational tone and the dramatic situation in the poem strike the readers. The picture at the core of Mending Wall is striking. Two men convene on terms of good courtesy and sociability to put up a barricade between them. The contend is erected out of convention, out of tradition. Nevertheless the very ground works against them as well as makes their task thorny. The two dwells thrust stones, back on top of the wall however as a result of hunters or elves, or the boot of natures imperceptible hand, the boulders topple downward yet again.The informal fashion and lack of rhyme masquerade the ploy in Petit the Poet. Some of his most praised and entertaining works involve Petit the Poet and Seth Compton, marvelous creatio ns of Edgar Lee, best reveal his blending of wit with humor. His personal and conversational style makes the reader involved in his tone and mood. He takes the reader into confidence through his easy and delightful pace. Furthermore it appears quite down-to-earth with some witty descriptions.The tone is very colorless and the reader cannot help but a distinct hopelessness, of the plight of human beings not being able to choose what they remember, and too that the memories cherished today, will be some(prenominal) different than the memories cherished tomorrow. C. Mending Wall Robert freeze was born in San Francisco, U. S. A, in 1874. Disenchanted with the lofty subjects of many American poets, Frost opted to write about country life with which he was most familiar. In the poem, Mending Wall shows sound posturing, a form of writing based on the tones of common speech.In his collection, North of Boston (1914), Frost began to experiment with poems of monologue and dialogue, whic h critics have called his dramatic poems. The present poem, Mending Wall too reflects his bet in dramatic and natural speech. The stanzas of the poem Mending Wall are straightforward also sound more akin to an extraordinary human frame of mind than a fuming line drawing of the poets neighbor. A breakdown of the rhyme scheme sends the reader into a mesmerizing situation and the conditions is comparatively free from portentous and dark imagery. Robert Frosts poetry is well known for its intensely personal and touching theme.A great deal of Frosts verse is confessional and reveals his life experiences through metaphor or explicitly. Mending Wall asserts his abhorrence for a wall or a barrier between human beings. This Frost does through the exercise of powerful imagery supply through language, structure, and tone. A wall divides the poets land from his neighbors. They get together to saunter to the wall and mutually mend it, when it is spring time. Something there is that doesnt lo ve a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun,And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. (Lines 1-4) The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be keptthere are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He does not believe in walls for the sake of walls. The neighbor chooses to stick to his fathers terminology Good fences make good neighbors. The poet remains skeptical and impishly forces the neighbor down to come across the outdated interpretation. However his neighbor will not be persuaded. The poet visualizes his neighbor as a leftover from a reasonably obsolete time. He is an existing paradigm of an old orthodox.Nevertheless the neighbor merely goes back over the saying. Frost retains five stressed syllables designed for each line however he shows a discrepancy in the feet widely to prevail the usual dialogue in the rhyme. The dearth of radiance, gloom and unhappiness, have been brought into play. Perceptibly the wal l is thought of as a vengeance for transparency, light and security. The turnaround of transactions in the poem reiterates the dismay of hostilities and the futile misfortunes that could have been evaded if those drawn in would have scrutinized the dealings they were caught up with.Even though the reader of the poem gets the notion of the neighbor portrayed in the poem by Frost, he does not subsist outside of descriptions of men from the past or historical pictures. The poets neighbor is, in many senses, of a weak temperament rather undeserving of examination because there is nothing that detaches him an ordinary human being. There is realization that hostilities are but a ploy to gain power and supremacy over the feelings of people. A sense of guilt revolves around the entire novel and expresses that wars are unfortunate and single a gamble where the leaders resort to exploit the poor, down trodden masses.Mending Wall is a lingering recollection of life events and dreams that hav e spiraled out of moderate due to hostilities. The hopes and dreams that once seemed so right and so justifiable become shattered because of the wall that inflicts the very core of the poets soul. Frost remains faithful to the spoken language of his time. His language, in the poem, is a mixture of playfulness and seriousness. He portrays regionalism with its rich stock of images, situation and anecdotes. This in turn provides an abundant source for metaphors and symbols. The conversational tone and the dramatic situation in the poem strike the readers.The picture at the core of Mending Wall is striking. Two men convene on terms of good manners and sociability to put up a barricade between them. The wall is erected out of convention, out of tradition. Nevertheless the very ground works against them as well as makes their task thorny. The two neighbors thrust stones, back on top of the wall however as a result of hunters or elves, or the chill of natures imperceptible hand, the bould ers topple downward yet again. The work of hunters is another thing I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,(lines 5-8) Even then, the neighbors carry on with their work of mending the wall. The poem, consequently, looks as if it contemplates typically on themes like, human construction of blockades, separation, and hostility. What sets in motion in unsophisticated candor ends in multiform symbolism. This wall-building work appears primeval, as it is portrayed in formal, conventional terms. It engrosses spells to work against the elves, and the neighbor comes into view as a Stone-Age savage at the same time as he lifts and carries a boulder. We have to use a spell to make them balanceStay where you are until our backs are turned We wear our fingers rough with discourse them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game,(lines 18-21) Frosts treatment of objects of nature shows that he does not ide alize or glorify them. His attitude towards the stone wall is not actually that of a realist, nor so much of a romantist. Frosts poems on natural objects are not dealt with as the starting point for the mystical meditation. Like other poems, Mending Wall carries a moral but the moral is in flat presented either as a dramatic situation. Frosts poems are profoundly philosophical in spite of their homely diction.In Mending Wall, he uses symbolism to communicate a deep root principle. The symbolism in the poem comes out as an indirect method of communication. The poem has a surface meaning but it also shows a deeper significance, which is understood only through a closer scrutiny of the poem. D. Edgar Lee Masters is acclaimed as one of the leading humorous poets of the world. He has produced some of the best works of his time. His readers have long appreciated him for his classical interpretation of human nature and several critical thematic concerns of society but yet in a most humorou s, easy and light hearted representation.One of the simplest and easy flowing poems of Edgar Lee is Petit the Poet. The informal fashion and lack of rhyme masquerade the ploy in Petit the Poet. Some of his most praised and entertaining works involve Petit the Poet and Seth Compton, marvelous creations of Edgar Lee, best reveal his blending of wit with humor. His personal and conversational style makes the reader involved in his tone and mood. He takes the reader into confidence through his easy and delightful pace. Furthermore it appears quite real with some witty descriptions.The tone is very dim and the reader cannot help but a distinct hopelessness, of the plight of human beings not being able to choose what they remember, and also that the memories cherished today, will be much different than the memories cherished tomorrow. The poem is composed to 18 lines. The concluding verse shows an analogous allusion. Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little ia mbics, While bulls eye and Whitman roared in the pines? The concluding part of the poem brings us backwards in time, which dispense withs the reader to view true accounts and suffering that people have to endure in a small town.Thus Petit the poet, no doubt is thought to appall us yet again but with a twist. Thus the irony in, Petit the poet, comes through as we read it. The analytical issue of Seth Compton is beautifully depict with a humorous disposition. The poet describes human behavior through the process of loving and forgetting. The poet tactfully and with an aroma of humor, describes the social and moral matters of the modern times from the perspective of a clean hearted human being. He craftily incorporates humor to the arena and at the same time, trying to bring into light the disgrace of corruption.For this kind of his writing, he has been also long criticized for his more moderate representation of the extents of social illness of the time. The Poet is distressed to see the state of the people after death. The circulating library that he constructed was son disposed off. When I died, the circulating library Which I built up for Spoon River, And managed for the good of prying minds, Was sold at auction on the public square The poem gives a feeling that Seth Compton has been keeping a preeminence of all the happenings after his death.During the period when the poem was written, although seemingly flowing in a positive direction, human relations were beginning to withstand new strains, trapped now in a cleverer and more civilized society. These relations were more official and formal than social and personal. This new form of the society was less institutionalized but at the same time was more difficult to resolve or combat. This new tactic, intoxicated with the velvety diplomacies of pity, care and tolerance, made things even worse. Very ironically and rightly, the Poet criticizes the spirits of righteousness in terms of critical social conc erns.American LiteratureMark pairs celebrated novel Tom sawyer (1876) has generally been considered by literary critics to close to less accomplished on a technical and thematic level than its purported sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, (1885).Although many reasons for this discrepancy in the level of critical reception of the two works may be reliably cited, one of the contributing factors to the critical reception of Tom Sawyer both on its initial publication in the nineteenth century and during its present status in critical estimation is the function of literary realism. In short, because Tom Sawyer represents to most literary critics a less sophisticated execution of Twains literary technique, it also functions a less developed example of Twains expression by way of literary realism.Important, also, is that fact that Twain was and is viewed by critics as one of Americas foremost realist writers and Twains realism is regarded as having had a liberating influence on American literature as a whole It led him to make use of the vernacular and ultimately to develop popular speech, as an instrument for character portrayal and effective narrative, to near perfection, (Long 102) which, in turn, led to the first truly American emphasis in fiction.However, as in Huckleberry Finn, the aspects of realism (or verisimilitude) which permeate Tom Sawyer, also function as scaffolding for fabulous ideas and iconographic expression which directly contradicts the purpose and function of literary realism itself. In essence, by regarding realism in Tom Sawyer not a governing principle of Twains aesthetic, but rather as a tool or a literary device which is used to convey a deeper theme or aesthetic namely romanticism can be identified.In Twains case, the romantic or idealized strains of his theme in Tom Sawyer relate directly to the myth of American involution and prosperity which were as prevalent cultural fascinations in nineteenth century America as they a re in twenty-first century America.Before Tom Sawyer itself can be examined in light of its use of realism as a literary device, it is important to restate what the (critical) understanding of literary modernism is rattling all about and what literary modernism meant to the writers who comprised the movement in its earliest stages and what literary realism means to contemporary literary critics, and specifically those critics who have turned their energies to explicating Tom Sawyer.It should also be pointed out that Twain presents special problems even for the most studious and energetic of critics because his work is founded, first adn foremost upon humor, which is a very difficult literary premise to quantify and define in critical terms. Despite the fact that criticism is notoriously helpless in the presence of writing that is really funny (Smith 1), specific aesthetic principles and influences can be rooted out and separated to some extent from the over-riding satirical vision in Twains work.Any attempted critical understanding would be greatly aided in first accepting Twain as a literary realist as this designation is the most expedient as to opening a clear window into the purported purpose and themes of Twains writings. Literary realism comprised an artistic response to the changing social conditions beginning in the 19th century which saw a dominant rise of industry, science, and rationality in western culture. Realism attempted to develop a literary idiom which was able to convincingly portray the actual events and circumstances of life.The movement toward realism can be seen as an artistic mode of grappling with changing and affright circumstances of western culture. In addition to seeking out themes of social significance, writers such as Zola, Dos Passos, Eliot and Flaubert advanced a narrative technique which jettisoned empty talka stylized language of elevated expression designed to demonstrate that the writer had mastered the tradition of po lite lettersfor everyday speech, (Borus 22) so that highly-stylized narratives still evoked the realism of everyday speech and everyday life.Part of the technique of literary realism involved the use of dialect, sometimes extensively, to create the sense of verisimilitude which was essential to the realist aesthetic. The confederacy of real-world dialect and the studies technique of the realist writers resulted in a unique blend of linguistic styles which resulted in a generating a set of readers who considered themselves well-mannered readers of dialect, (Barrish 37). because realist writers sought to evoke in extensive detail, the living settings of their works, many realist writers were committed to regionalism that is, they wrote about the world they experienced directly.Examples of this are Faulkner who wrote extensively about a fictional Southern county which was based on counties which actually existed. Realist writers desired to create fiction that felt and read as close to real life as possible in order to allow readers to see and experience aspects of life which would otherwise have remained unknowable to them. With this bit of critical history in mind, one further aspect remains quite important relative to Twain and that is the fact that realism as a guiding principle of criticism (Smith 5) has been rigidly and thoroughly applied to Twains work with the resulting conclusion that shortcomings have led to its gradual abandonment during the last quarter of a century on both sides of the Atlantic. (Smith 5). What are these shortcomings, specifically? The answer to that question is abstruse and lies in the seemingly comprehensive nature of Twains realism. The fact that Twains realism is distinct from naturalism or stringently journalistic writing is his sophisticated employment of realism as a device, rather than as a guiding principle of theme or overall technical approach.In other words, because Mark Twains realism does not stop at externals (S mith 29) that same realism must by necessity engage emotional, psychological, and spiritual (or mythic) concepts and identities which are by definition elusive of any realistic scene. By delving deeper than externals Twain must, by necessity, abandon verisimilitude as a guiding aesthetic principle and instead accept it as a device, like a single color on a painters pallette.In order to illustrate this somewhat elusive point, it must be emphasized that Twains external realism is devastatingly powerful adn accurate, roughly photo-realistically so. Twain is obviously quite capable of conveying the special atmosphere of each characteristic environment (Smith 29) and from this mastery of description of the external world, the reader is led to trust that Twains excursions into the inner world will be just as faithfully rendered and just as obviously based on reality. However, a clear, if subtle, specialization separates Twain from photorealistic artists. A key aspect to Twains particula r use of realism is that His purpose is not to say everything, nor even to present everything in an objective way (Smith 30) but render the impression that what is described, whether it be a river, or a young boys stream-of-consciousness inner-monologue, is a faithful representation of the actual world.By rendering the impression of realism rather than a rote copy of nature, Twain allows himself to pursue his inquiries into reality with varying intensity, to support his observations with a wider or a narrower range of evidence (Smith 30) and, by doing so, achieves an acumen which is capable of misleading he reader into mistaking what is actually a mythic or romantic impression as a realistic observation.To demonstrate this concretely, a single mythic aspect of Tom Sawyer can be isolated and compared with Twains realistic prose-style to indicate the duality of his narrative idiom, where realism generally indicates, if at an oblique angel, a mythic undertone. For example, the conside r-hunt sub-plot of Tom Sawyer conveys the uniquely American myth of striking it rich through pure luck adn adventure.This is in fact a very durable American myth, the myth that anyone despite his or her stature in life can hit pay-dirt quickly, blindly, most accidentally (Coulombe 16) and like Huck and Tom become rich entirely by good luck (Coulombe 16). Such a myth was used by Twain not only in Tom Sawyer and in his other of his fictional works, but also as an attribute of his own author-persona.Twain cultivated a deliberate distortion of his biography by attempting to further the notion that his accomplishments were effortless and intuitivea rustic genius rising naturally to the top (Coulombe 16). In this case, literary biography plays a contributing role to thematic explication because Twains true experience belied the myth he inserted into Tom Sawyer regarding wealth adn the avocation of adventure. In reality, Twain was a careerist who worked diligently, even desperately, to e arn success and money (Coulombe 17).The aforementioned biographical detail is mentioned merely to illustrate that Twain,had he been truly kindle in being a literary realist and depicting the authentic world he had experienced would have obviously dismissed any mythical treasure hunt ending in blind, wild fortune as being over-the-top romantic, and perhaps even foolish. At this point, it is useful to examine the manner by which Twain attempts to insert verisimilitude into what is fundamentally a mythic fantasy.he does so retrospectively by describing what appears to be a very convincing description of the rection of the little town of St. Petersburg to the boys discovery of treasure THE reader may rest satisfied that Toms and Hucks windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement.Every haunted house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasureand not by boys, but menpretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. (Twain 285) This attempt to balance a romantic myth with a deliberately anti-romantic description of the aftermath of the discovery is thorough right down to Twains choice of diction.The word unromantic is specifically clever and powerful in forwarding a sense that Twains treasure hunt is grounded in reality and not in a boyish, culturally incited fantasy. Every detail seems to have been accounted for right down to the observation that The village paper published biographical sketches of the boys (Twain 285) which made them celebrities. Here it is interest to note that Twains romantic urge and his urge to restrain his story in verisimilitude are operating at equal strength and simultaneously.If Twain is capable of obscuring what are e ssentially romantic myths beneath a veneer of realism as was demonstrated by the preceding description of his expression of the rags to riches myth of America, what other myths might be discovered under the narrative surface of Tom Sawyer? Obviously, because Twain embraces the presence of military force in American as a part of his role as a realist writer, depictions of violence and of death in Twain deserve special attention in regard to the myths they may or may not express beneath the highly detailed and unusually accurate level of narrative description employed by Twain.While it is true that for Twain The troop of a pistol blazing or knife flashing, followed by the red blood gushing from a death wound, was actuality (Long 99) it is also conspicuously true that Twains depiction of violence in Tom Sawyer is not prevailing, and as in the realism of Howells, and that in Twain happiness, not sorrow, was the general rule (Long 99) despite the actuality of violence and death in hu man experience.One might rightly ask how is such a proposition that violence and death do not preclude human happiness based in realism? Plainly, one does not require an observational adn descriptive acumen that is equal to Twains to readily perceive that violence and death in the real world often do preclude human happiness. Clearly, Twains depiction of violence, like his depiction of material ambition and the attainment of wealth, partakes of a mythic rather then realistic expression.This mythic appraisal of violence and human mortality allows Twain to establish the entire framework of Tom Sawyer on the mythic scaffolding of death and rebirth. In fact, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is constructed on a loose framework whose major elements include games of death and games of resurrection (Aspiz) and these games are purely mythic rather than realistic both in conception and execution.Because it is mythic violence and mythic death that Tom interacts with in the novel, he and the other characters depicted in the novel seem to exist on the manic edge beyond which lurks the menace of destruction and the unknown (Aspiz) but the teetering over and falling over the edge which is repeatedly depicted by Twain in Tom Sawyer results in the illusion that all experience is ultimately reducible to delight (Aspiz).Imagination is stronger than the mere presence of death and its associated pains in Twains fictional world, which is propelled in part by startlingly realistic descriptions and observational details. The result is paradoxical Murder, grave-robbing, the withhold of life-saving evidence, impulses to suicide, simulated disasters, numerous close brushes with death, the violation of sanguinary oaths, wrenching fear and guilt, and numberless suppressions of the truth and miscarriages of justice are all transformed, through masterful instrumentation and narrative control, into entertainment.(Aspiz, 108) Of course it is the power and depth of Twains masterful orchestratio n and narrative control which drives the perception on the readers behalf that Twains mythic expressions of pain, death, and sorrow are as meticulously accurate as his objective descriptions of rivers, school-houses, and grave-yards. The paradox is born out of the divergence of the mythic and realist strains of Twains own consciousness and his narrative expression. The character of Tom Sawyer is, himself, an expression of this paradox and duality.Tom is ultimately portrayed as heroic, but also realistically, so that his flaws can be easily spotted and used to increase the ironic clashing of the novel. In fact, careful study of Toms behavior throughout the novel reveals that Tom was neither noble nor pure. Rather, he was often vindictive, violent, and obscuremuch like the natural world to which he was linked (Coulombe 129) and ironically it is within this construction of nature, as a character, that Twain achieves a more dour and realistic expression.Twains impulse to glamourise even human bigotry is evident in his depiction of Injun Joe and Muff muck around, during the trial-scene when Muff fallaciously confesses to murdering the Doctor. Historical reality dictates that it was white men who cam and tricked the native American tribes out of their lands and destroyed their culture, a fact readily available to anyone, even in Twains time, who cared to exert minimal energy doing research.However, rather than seizing on this massive historical reality, Twain opts to facilitate the extant prejudice against racial types that existed in his time, and continue to exist, by positing a mythic half-breed, Injun Joe, who is more sly and diabolical than the white society he despises. During the trial scene, Muff Potter is confronted with his knife which was used by Injun Joe to slay the Doctor in the cemetery.Potters answer is pitiful Potter lifted his face and looked around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, and exclaimed Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me youd never (Twain 100) and then, slowly, Potter realizes that he must confess to his crime. The reversal of historical reality is chilling. In reality, Native Americans were often controlled and victimized with liquor and in Twains depiction, the half-breed, Injun Joe, has turned these realities on their head.It is the Indian who is dastardly and manipulative and it is the white man, Muff Potter, who is drunkenly victimized and falsely sentenced to death. Such reversals under the fluent realism of Twains technique can only be considered, rightly, as propaganda. By no stretch of the imagination can propaganda ever be regarded as realistic or objective, so it is obvious that on at least three major themes materialism, mortality, and racial prejudice, Twain embraces a mythic, rather than realistic, mode of expression in Tom Sawyer.Again, as in the treasure-hunt scenario, Twain attempts to balance his mythically driven conceptualization of race with what appears to be a cogent adn realistic description of the court-room itself and the boys reaction to Potters confession Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and hear the stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every moment that the clear sky would deliver Gods lightnings upon his head, (Twain 100).This passage, in fact, only strengthens the essentially culturally chauvinistic impulse of the courtroom scene by positing the half-breed no only as a notorious murderer but as an enemy of the white mans God. Twains romanticism may be rightly regarded as determinant in the thematic expression of Tom Sawyer. In every case, it is mythic impulse rather than natural or historical realism that drives both the conceptualization and execution of the scenes in Tom Sawyer and the associated themes which these scenes express.Rather than solidifying the aesthetic ideas of literary realism, Twains use of the idiom in Tom Sawyer is sublimated to his interest in forwarding culturally resonant, American myths which would ostensibly engage and entertain his audience. It is quite possible that Twains own material ambitions, as previously mentioned, drove, at least in part, his decision to make a literary concession throughout Tom Sawyer to romantic myths, a concession which completely eradicated any claim that might be made on Twains behalf that the novel embodied literary realism.Works Cited Aspiz, Harold. Tom Sawyers Games of Death. Studies in the Novel 27. 2 (1995) 141+. Barrish, Phillip. American Literary Realism, Critical Theory, and Intellectual Prestige, 1880- 1995. Cambridge, England Cambridge University Press, 2001. Borus, Daniel H. Writing Realism Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market. Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina Press, 1989.Coulombe, Joseph L. Mark Twain and the American West. Columbia, MO University of atomic number 42 Press, 2003. Long, E. Hudson. Mark Twain Handbook. New York Hendricks House, 1957. Smith, Henry Nash, ed. Ma rk Twain A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1963. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York P. F. Collier & Sons, 1920.American LiteratureIf I was teaching a course in American Literature since 1865, the texts that I would choose to teach would be Tulips by Sylvia Plath, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, genus Sula by Toni Morrison, Wise Blood by Flannery OConnor, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Daisy moth miller by Henry James, and Drown by Junot Diaz.I feel that it is important to chronologically span the 150 or so age of literature in this time period, to choose a diversity of authors in terms of sexuality, race and sexuality, to represent the nation regionally as well as possible, to include texts that focus on important issues in the nation including immigration, gender equality and race re lations, and to focus on texts that are relatively accessible and reflect the time period in which they are written. With these texts, I feel that this is accomplished.Chronologically, this list is relatively complete there are texts that represent the period of reconstruction (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and that are from around ten years ago (Drown). Indeed, different aspects of this list speak to the Industrial Revolution and ever-changing face of America through technological advancement, and others discuss the ways that race and gender exist in the time period in which they are written (The Yellow Wallpaper and Sula, for example).Further, not only do these texts represent a largeness of time periods, but they also show different regions of the United States, including the South (Wise Blood) and the West (Housekeeping), with the typical representation of the Northeast and many texts that are not of necessity central to any specific region.Through providing a diversity of chronological and regional representation, I feel that students, especially in a nation that is not as familiar with the United States as we are, would be able to get a better feel of how the United States changed over the past 150 years and how the different regions of the United States face different challenges. Just as its important to represent different literal aspects of the United States, its just as important to represent the diversity of people that make the nation up.By providing works from authors like Toni Morrison and Junot Diaz, students would get a perspective on the African American and immigrant experience in the United States, respectively. Indeed, America exists differently for the immigrant characters in this collection of Diaz short stories than it does for the characters seeking the American Dream in The Great Gatsby, and its important for students to explore these differences among communities in the U. S.Indeed, this collection of texts also reflects issu es that are of the utmost importance in the United States Tulips and The Yellow Wallpaper discuss what it means to be a woman and how motherhood or marriage can trap women, for example. Wise Blood explores the intricacies of religion, and more specifically Christianity, in the South, and Sula thoroughly discusses how black Americans live in the arsehole while whites live at the top long after the conclusion of the Civil War.Students reading my list of texts would be exposed to a breadth of issues, while also reading canonical literature that explores natures such as Leaves of Grass and the work of Henry James and his take on relationships and people. All of the works that are included in this list cover so many different aspects of American Literature, and together they paint a picture that represents the time period and nation as well as any ten-piece collection can.Regionally, canonically and chronologically, the list covers all of the essential points present in American liter ature, and it also touches on five-fold issues of diversity within the texts as well as issues central to American culture in these different time periods. These poems, short stories, novellas and novels are an excellent window into American Literature as well as the ever-ubiquitous American culture, and I would be excited to teach these texts to any classroom. 2nd Essay Southern Literature is fraught(p) with guilt, struggle and a resistance to dominant American cultural norms.Three of the most important authors in Southern Lit, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner and Flannery OConnor, are all incredibly thoughtful to issues important to all Southern people, but they each discuss Southern life in a different form. While all three deal with the integral issues of race relations in the South, the constant struggle with the separation of the North from the South, and what exactly it means to have a Southern identity, each of these authors does this in a very different manner.Hursto n focuses on African American dialect and unique experiences within those communities, Faulkner traditionally discusses close-knit small town communities in a stream of consciousness and highly narrative manner, and OConnor takes a highly moralistic tone, with a focus on religion and companionship in the South. Hurstons Sweat is similar to her most famous Their Eyes Were Watching God in that gender struggles and dialect within African American communities are showcased. Indeed, one of the central conflicts in Sweat is the struggle for dominance within the relationship between Delia and Sykes Jones.Even though aspects of Southern muliebrity and masculinity are inherent to this struggle, femininity is the focus as this is typical of Hurston and the protagonist, and thereby where the readers sympathies more dominantly lie, is with Delia Jones. The work focuses on how African American communities exist, with a focus on Delias humming and the music thats present, thereby demonstrating a focus on an oral tradition that doesnt necessarily exist within Faulkner and OConnors work.Further, the end of the short story demonstrates how women are able to obtain dominance in relationships, if they ever are able to do so, through Sykes horrifying death. Indeed, this story demonstrates many of Hurstons focuses, and it shows typical struggles within Southern African American communities in terms of gender relations and oral traditions versus dominant narratives. Faulkners vitamin B complex Burning is different from this in that its focus is on a father and son, and also on the town in which the characters live.Indeed, the story begins in The store in which the justice of the Peaces court was sitting and continues to focus on the actual location and Southern-ness of the setting. Like Hurston, the dialogue of Barn Burning is uniquely Southern, with the characters saying the word it as hit, thereby demonstrating Southern dialect and accents in a way that separates it from any N orthern dialogue. Also like Hurstons work, the story discusses race relations in the South, though necessarily from a white perspective instead of a black perspective.Because of this, the community of interests at the center of the story is a white community instead of a black community, and it thereby emphasizes race relations and oppressive institutions within Southern society instead of exploring the ways in which African American communities form themselves. While there are no explicit OConnor works on the syllabus, it would be remiss to discuss Southern writing without exploitation OConnor as an example.In her A Good Man is Hard to Find, for example, the explicit focus of the narrative is on what it means to be a good person, and how a criminal is not necessarily a more evil and corrupt person than a grandmother without good intentions. While the criminal who murders the family who are at the center of the story is clearly not a good man, neither is the matriarchal grandmother who is central to the story indeed, she would have been good if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life. OConnor discusses Southern society in terms of morality and religion throughout her novels and short stories, and within this discussion also exists issues of race relations, Southern society and dialect, and other things. Indeed, OConnor, Faulkner and Hurston all recognize the differences between the South and other regions in the United States, the unique moral and community systems that exist there, and demonstrate these aspects differently. 3rd Essay William Carlos Williams The Red Wheelbarrow and e.e. cummings my sweet old and so forth both rely on wrong, modernist poetic form and use this form to convey separate messages. Williams poem uses its form to put emphasis on a dependence on the smallest things indeed, the form and subject of The Red Wheelbarrow hinge on the tumulus itself, and demonstrate how form and subject are both integral to a po ems ultimate message. Similarly, cummings unconventional form is different from almost any other poet and uses quaternary definitions of etcetera.Both poems show how form is as essential to function as subject and literal messages are, and both use this form to reiterate the meaning of the poem. Williams The Red Wheelbarrow is from a time period in which poets were able to play with form and think more consciously about how a poem can be unconventional in form and still convey a message. Indeed, this poem more or less relies on form to convey that message. What is so interesting about this poem is that there is no terribly clear message in the poem in fact, it initially seems to not say much of anything and instead to toy around with words.However, the way the poem is structured, the seemingly insignificant nouns are placed at the forefront. As the poem reads, so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow (lines 1-4). Here, the poem does in fact depend on the barrow every couplet in The Red Wheelbarrow hinges upon a second one-word line that consists of a relatively common and insignificant noun. The nouns continue to locate the poem. The red wheelbarrow is glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens (lines 5-8), showing that while each couplet is grounded by the final one-worded line, the entire poem is grounded by the wheelbarrow.Indeed, all of the lines touch on back to it it is the thing that is glazed with rainwater, and it is the thing that is beside the white chickens. The first couplet itself makes it increasingly clear that the wheelbarrow is at the center of this poem in multiple ways everything in the poem depends on it literally, as is stated in the first two lines, but it is also structurally at the center of the poem. William Carlos Williams is able to use this unconventional form to make a statement about what is important after all, how can so much depend on a wheelbarrow unless Williams demonstrates it in this unconventional way ?Similarly, e. e. cummings poem my sweet old etcetera challenges ideas of what the etcetera of the poem is by introducing it in a form that allows multiple interpretations. Indeed, the poem begins with my sweet old etcetera / aunt lucy (lines 1-2), and also includes references to it as not to / mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers / etcetera wristers etcetera (lines 11-13), my / mother hoped that / I would die etcetera (lines 13-15), my / self etcetera lay quietly (lines 19-20), and dreaming, / et / cetera, of / Your smile / eyes knees and of your Etcetera (lines 23-27).All of these uses of etcetera are different and challenge what exactly the word means indeed, the word literally refers to a continuing list of things, but here sometimes its used in an apathetic sense, sometimes as a euphemism, and other times as its definition connotes. Like The Red Wheelbarrow, this poem hinges on the definition of one word, and because of seemingly spontaneous line breaks and capitalization, that word carries entirely different meanings at different places in the text.Interestingly, in the last parenthetical notation, etcetera refers to both the never-ending list of actions of the speaker and also, presumably, the body of the woman who is being described, thereby showing the many definitions of the word. Both The Red Wheelbarrow and my sweet old etcetera use relatively unconventional form to challenge traditional notions of established words and concepts. By relying on a different method of poetry and description, both writers are able to disrupt these ideas that are so closely tied to the words, and also to redefine both the words and the poetic form that they are using to describe them.4th Essay If I could choose any two authors to explore more fully, I would pick Zora Neale Hurston and Henry James to look at further. Not only are these two authors very different in terms of their writing styles, but they also are from different time periods and different literary perspect ives, with Hurston generally describing communities and concrete people more fully while James writes conceptually and canonically in a way that focuses on narrative and other literary forms.Both authors speak to different audiences, both of which I at least partially determine with, and I look forward to reading more by each author. In this course, we read Sweat by Hurston, which I wrote about for one of my other essays. I really enjoy this work not only because I enjoy Southern literature, but also because it focuses on a different aspect of identity than many of the authors that weve read in this course.Indeed, Hurston focused on African American oral narratives, and was actually often involved in sociological work and gathering African American folktales to preserve in writing instead of simply within an oral tradition. Because her life was not always spent in looking at writing through a strict literary lens, I think that she has a unique perspective in representing life as it truly exists within communities that are not typically discussed in popular fiction.She herself grew up in an African American town, and is particularly knowledgeable and gifted and representing these types of communities. I would love to read Their Eyes Were Watching God if only because it is similar to Sweat but, as a novel instead of a short story, allows more time to delve into a characters mindset and to develop a sense of what it means to live within an African American community. Further, I think that Hurston has a unique and powerful style that explores language in a way that many authors simply dont.She is able to write using heavy symbolism and metaphors throughout her prose, but shes also able to interesting, intelligently and authentically portray the language that exists within black southern communities, something that most authors would not even think about discussing. Indeed, because of her early life in a unique community that most canonical authors do not understa nd, her sociological work on oral narratives within black communities, her interesting view on language and style, and her emphasis on womens issues and gender equality, I would love to look more closely at Zora Neale Hurstons body of literature.Henry James is also an incredibly important figure in American Literature, but for very different reasons than Hurston. Indeed, James style is not as accessible or engaging as Hurstons often is, and he is much more intellectual in the issues that he chooses to tackle. As Daisy Miller demonstrates, though, James has a terrific understanding of how to manipulate narrative to show multiple dimensions of characters, and his other work demonstrates this even further.The novel which I would most like to read by him is The Turn of the Screw, primarily because it is both a frame narrative (similar to the Canterbury Tales), which provides many unique and interesting insights into narrative, and also because it is a unique version of a ghost story tha t is much more literary in style than most of what gets represented in popular culture today. Because James is so able to take on narrative, I enjoyed Daisy Miller thoroughly not only were the characters deep, complex, round and interesting, but the timeline was also challenging.I really enjoy reading Henry James because he is, in many ways, timeless while his work is obviously dated in certain ways in terms of subject and the setting, the human condition is so central to everything that he writes that it can be understood outside of this context. Because of his narrative abilities, interest in the human psyche and innate human struggles, challenging prose that pushes different ideas of symbolism and identity, and the innovative subjects that he chooses to write about, I would also very much enjoy looking at what else Henry James has written.