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Overview American Literature II | Megan Hall | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Overview American Literature II
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Video Transcript
hi everyone it's professor hall and welcome
welcome
we are going to do an overview of
american literature today
part 2 1865
to present so if you're in my class
this is what we are focusing on from
basically from the civil war
until today and if you're not my class i
also have the first part of american
literature which i also teach american
lit part 1
and you can view those videos on youtube
if you would like
but for now let's just get started with
this so
i said this and if you took american lit
one with me or you saw that video
our driving questions for this class our
authors and their works really
can't be just seen in isolation on their own
own
a lot of times in a class like
introduction to literature
you might not have that historical or
cultural context you might just be looking
looking
at a story or a poem and talking about
what it means
for this class we're going to be doing
that but we're also going to talk about
the context for each
novel or piece of literature that we are reading
reading
so we're going to talk about the
literary movement
or school of thought that came before
the novel
and how the authors might be reacting
against those literary movements or
schools of thought
and sometimes how they're still kind of
reflecting some of the
um the the thoughts about culture and life
life
and then we're also going to ask what
literary movement or school of thought
is the author a part of
as they write and
i don't know if i have it here but also
how are they pushing forward
almost every i don't want to say famous
i guess that's not the right word but
almost every really well-known book
i think sits at a crossroads
where they kind of reflect the thoughts
that came in the past
they're showing what people are kind of
thinking and feeling but
they're also being a bit progressive and
looking forward toward the future
um most of the things that you'll read
in school or most of you know what we
consider classics do this
so what tensions do we see in the text
between the authors and these literary movements
movements
how are they reacting to the past and
how are they pushing forward to the future
future
i like this little pendulum because i
think it it's a great illustration
a lot of times i wish i could pause it because
because
it's driving me crazy but a lot of times
we believe something in our culture and
then we see kind of the problems with it
and so we swing wildly over here and
then we believe something completely
different and then we kind of go back
and forth
and in terms of morality
in terms of um
culture and and certainly history you
can see these things happening
over and over and over again we should
be an isolationist country we should let
everyone in
right even that is a small example so
we're going to talk about the literary
movements and how they kind of react
against each other and
and how this pendulum kind of works in
terms of literature
so first i want to just give you a brief timeline
timeline
of everything and then we'll go into
just our portion
for this class in a little bit more
depth before 1620
you get a lot of native american
literature most of which was oral
um stories that were passed down orally
that were
written down later on there's also a lot of
of
notes from explorers
letters and journals and travel logs and
things like that so columbus arriving
in the bahamas the colony at jamestown
being established
would be some notable things of that
time puritanism and colonialism come next
next
we have a lot of practical writing
in that period and in the revolutionary or
or
early nationalism the age of reason so
there are
and i think i've i don't have pictures
actually now that i think of it
but we do have for example some puritan poetry
poetry
we have some
some writing that is fiction but is really
really
meant for edification so it's meant for
you to become
um a better person either morally or
religiously or
um in terms of these new political
thoughts that were coming up
so the revolutionary war taking place
really through the war of 1812 the early
stages of our country
right at the apex of this right at the
end of this
washington irving is really known as
the grandfather of the short story and
this is a depiction
of the headless horseman and ichabod crane
crane
in his story the legend of sleepy hollow
some of the first writing that we get
in the newly formed united states that's
really meant
for pleasure and entertainment and not
so much for the moral
lesson um transcendentalism takes place
between 1830 and 1860
about and also during this time period
we have romanticism
and this is really we're going to touch
on this because it's going to inform
some of the
other things that we're looking at but
romanticism and then transcendentalism
at the same time
but romanticism really is where we get
wild stories with
these extravagant plots and faraway places
places
and strong emotions and this sense that
literature can really be an art and more
than just something to teach and instruct
instruct
also during this period of time we have
slave narratives from
the 1770s to the 1860s i
have that but really um slave narratives were
were
recorded right through
the 1950s through different projects but i
i
i have that those dates because that's
sort of the height of
popularity if you will in terms of how
many people were reading them
and and how they were published and how
they affected our country
so if you took american lit one with me
we read things like frederick douglass
we look at harriet jacobs possibly um
those narratives and and how they fit
into literature
i don't know why this all popped up all
at once but
then we start the periods that we're
going to be looking at
more closely in this class realism and
naturalism which i'll explain
in a little bit um modernism that was
really between world war one and world
war two
so world war one being from 1914 to 1918
the 1930s with the great depression kind
of informed
a lot of those writers from 1945 to
about 1980 is the postmodern period
some people would say that our
contemporary period
is still part of that post-modern period
and other people
would say that it's not and we'll talk
about that in
a couple minutes but you can tell here
this is a piece of modern art
um and it really does reflect some of
what's going on in literature as well the
the
the idea of fragmentation of taking
old shapes and old ideas and pulling
them apart and
questioning reality you could maybe find
some meaning in this this looks kind of
like a crossword puzzle and this might
be a calendar
but it really would be subjective
everybody would look at it differently
and that's kind of
the point in modernism and postmodernism
so let's get into our periods in a
little bit more depth
romanticism our class starts with
writing in 1860 but i do want to talk
about romanticism because
so much of what we're going to be
looking at is reacting against romanticism
romanticism
in this period writing included
fiction and poetry a lot less philosophy
not as much political political writings
of of people trying to think how to
best form the country literature as i
said was for entertainment
not just for political religious or
educational purposes
romanticism really then is a
philosophical reaction against the
previous decades where
the focus was on reason and rational thought
thought
a lot of the philosophers of that early
national time
were trying to think logically so you
have people like
loch and rousseau influencing american
writers you have
um the federalist papers written during
that time you have been franklin
writing how to live a perfect life
and make the best use of your time
which is quite an interesting read to
anybody who has goals and and wants to
achieve those goals
but you you know if you compare that to
the picture i have here of edgar allan poe
poe
a dark gothic romantic
writers in this period really celebrated individualism
individualism
nature imagination creativity intuition
and strong emotion some of that is going
to carry
into the next period not all of it not
as much with the imagination and creativity
creativity
but i think some of it certainly does
carry into
realism which is the period after this
but we have a blossoming of short
stories of novels
poetry the heavy use of symbolism um
and as i said some far away places now i
mentioned in the
beginning transcendentalists one of the
writers were looking at this
time depending when you're taking this
class was a transcendentalist and i'll talk
talk
more about her in another lecture
but they had this belief that man's
nature was inherently good so there's a
divine spark
or an inner light which produces individualism
individualism
and self-reliance this was a really important
important
concept during the lead up to the civil
war because
they said these people that we are using
as slaves
are individuals and they have a divine
spark within them
um they have a soul and and for many
people if they were christians at that
time they were saying you know
they these many slaves were christians
which was a a large argument for setting
them free
so the idea of self-reliance um
abolitionists and prohibitionist alcohol
led leads people away from the inner light
light
slavery denies people their divine spark and
so here you get henry david throw you
get emerson
you have um frederick douglass i would
put into this category
as well some of their writing is non-fiction
non-fiction
um things like like walden i would say
is creative non-fiction
um things like
the slave narratives i just mentioned
previously obviously would fall into
that non-fiction category as well
but a lot of poetry in addition to that i i
i i
call that a subset of romanticism
because there's still
this really strong
focus on um
his romantic ideals not love romance but
romance with a big r these romantic
ideals of individualism
creativity nature and unlike some of the
stories where there's far away plots
um you don't have that but but
you do have people who want to be
creative and who want to
tap into that creative energy inside of them
them
particularly through nature so if they
worship it's it's outdoors as you see in
the picture there
the gothic writers are on what i think
is sort of the opposite end of the spectrum
spectrum
within romanticism instead of that
divine spark or light they're looking at
the darkness
in people so there's an interest in
fantasy and supernatural
the evil thoughts of man um a lot
of um
showing how people are worthy
sorry people are capable of greatness
but they're capable of great evil as
well as great good
so what you have with the gothic writers
are um again a lot of focus
on creativity and imagination just sort
of at the opposite end
of the spectrum so here are just some
examples the scarlet letter
would be some examples again uh
the the gothic romanticism here
do not go where the path may lead go
instead where there is no path at all
and leave a trail
that idea of
self-reliance of making your own way
it's a very american idea that we're
going to see as a theme throughout
history not just during this period but
i think really during this period is
where it
comes to fruition um realism
is the next period and you can see
here in art um the
crowded streets of the city the realism
of you know how people dress what they
wear how they
act how they have you know this isn't
romanticized right this is the
everydayness of having an outdoor market
place that's crowded of having people
sitting on their stoop because it's hot
of hanging laundry
from building to building the realism
of picking up the grain
that's on the threshing floor um
so different parts of the country
different scenes that's going to become
important and i'll talk about that in a moment
moment
but the realist really rejected the romantic
romantic
view of life they said the romantics
were too idealistic
realism comes really during and after
the civil war
there are significant industrial inventions
inventions
so we have the industrialization
turbulent time in american history
obviously because of the war so
writers turned to real life and i think
that part of that is because of the
civil war the horrors
of uh you know poe describing a man
locking someone in the walls of a house
seems silly if you've been in actual
battle seeing men
die beside you right so rather than idealization
idealization
we have people seeking varys similitude
this word you can think of it meaning
very similar so
portraying life as it really is
stories in that sense are almost like
documenting history
and they're trying to accurately
represent american life
um life after the civil war the growing
middle class shifts in culture changes
due to immigration and industrialization
those types of things and we have
this leads into the regionalists which
is a type of realism i think some people
would put these as separate movements
but they kind of
happened around the same period of time
um mark twain writing about
life in the mississippi before the civil
war during the time that he was a young boy
boy
bret hart pictured here um wrote stories
of westward expansion and tried to describe
describe
what california was like during the gold
rush period
so the regionalists tried to do this verisimilitude
verisimilitude
technique tried to use that to depict life
life
in various regions of the united states
what it means to be an american now that
the nation has reformed
what are the different quirks in
regions of america um we have another writer
writer
um kate shoppin who's describing louisiana
louisiana
we have um edith wharton i kind of put
in a different
time period but she describes life in
new york amongst the the wealthy
up there um so different writers are
are writing about their life
in the place that they live and that's
the idea behind regionalism
the naturalists are quite a bit different
different
they take the philosophical position
that man is a human beast
so a lot more cynical
um coming out of the war and looking at
the horrors of war
and saying does any of this matter
trying to depict the natural forces
driving human behavior so
this is going to be informed pretty
early on
by darwin's theories of evolution um
his book on the origin of the species
was published in 1859
so right before this period so a lot of
people looking at evolution and and kind
of saying
oh if that's the driving force um
as opposed to god or if
people are destined to defeat their fate
because of genetics and because of evolution
evolution
how are we like beasts how are we ruled by
by
instincts and passions how are our lives
determined by
heredity and environment so these are some
some
questions that kind of are
driving some of the authors so books
like the red badge of courage would be
a good example looking at
someone who may not be able to
avoid fate because of things like heredity
heredity
environment where they're born
all of those types of things so what is
actually the difference if you're
confused oh okay i've read badge of
courage right here
so i have these two books because i i
think that they demonstrate
really well how many um
different types of literature even fall
within this one movement
but little women is a book that i
that is written by an author who's a trans
trans
transcendentalist or was for for a good
portion of her life
and because of that
there are some aspects of romanticism
still in that book
it was written for children sort of but
it it is
very idealized in terms of
the depiction of american girlhood
or or people in poverty who are still
genteel we'll talk about that more if we
read the book for this class but
the red badge of courage and contrast is
much more cynical
and as i said looking at some of those
more aspects of naturalism but both of
them are trying
are both of these are realist books they
are both trying to depict life as it
really was
it's just that the type of realism is
is a little bit different one is a
little a lot more
um optimistic let's say and and one is
quite a bit more pessimistic
so william harmon and hugh holman explain
explain
romanticists transcend the immediate to
find the ideal
naturalists plumb the actual or
superficial to find the scientific
laws that control its actions
and realists center their attention to a
remarkable degree
on the immediate the here and now the specific
specific
action and the verifiable consequence
so as we read our book
from this time period that is what i
would like you to look for
how are we moving a little bit away from
the ideal
how are we looking at the here and now
um things as they are those small
details that make the book seem like it
is really happening like it's something
that was that was real and true
and how do people's actions have
immediate consequences
um not a lot of symbolism in these books
for the most part um not
as much um fanciful creativity
but certainly still interesting
nonetheless so after that period comes
modernism and i have these three
pictures i'm going to zoom in here so
you can kind of see
um we have a woman here in victorian
dress the high collar and the bustle
the tightly fitted skirts we have edwardian
edwardian
these are british terms but nevertheless
we'll use them for american lit um i'll say
say
1800s um not
not quite our time period and then this
would be early 1900s
we're missing here as i see um
the period right around the civil war
where people had very large hoop skirts
sort of in between this and this
but um in comparison the flapper here
from the 1920s
and that is a real picture you can see
if you look real close the lines in her
nylon stockings um the
the cropped hair as opposed to the very
long hair put
up but i think these pictures really
show how
different the culture was um and how much
much
world war one really did change things
the modern period these writers were
affected by
world war one and then just into world
war ii
the fear of communism the beginning of
the cold war
um the roaring 20s the great depression commercialism
commercialism
we really don't think about that as much
in our culture today
but prior to this point people are you know
know
going to the the general store and
possibly ordering things through catalogs
catalogs
during this period we have radio we have
film we have um
a lot a lot more advertising and uh
the beginnings of commercialism
increased population
the lingering racial tensions after
slavery and reconstruction
um technological changes the rise of
youth culture prior to this point
you have children and you have adults
but here you sort of have the idea coming
coming
up particularly with the car um
of teenage the
the life of a teenager um
more education i don't have that in here but
but
that's a very large change progressivism
we have less
children um working so
more education less child labor but also
the fear of eroding traditions
and and some of the writers are pushing
for these traditions to
be erased and some of them are going to
be kind of anxious and worried about it
so some aspects of modernism [Applause]
[Applause]
you can see here even the changes in in art
art
um this is edith wharton and
her dogs she's a modern writer
her hat there um themes of alien
alienation and disconnect frequent use
of irony and understatement
experimentation with new literary
techniques in fiction and poetry i think
a lot of these we take for granted now
but they're things like having a
flashback or a flash forward
having a um a
a narrative that jumps around a bit as
opposed just from going you know from
point a to point b having more subplots
those kind of things
stream of consciousness writing inner dialogue
dialogue
fragments there's a lot of push to
create a new style
and to experiment there's also a rise at
this point
not a complete rise but a beginning of
more ethnic writers female writers
trying to give a voice to preach previously
previously
marginalized individuals celebrating
diverse backgrounds and points of
view i think prior to that point you
don't have that
as much here people
of different races differ different ethnicities
ethnicities
um sometimes
some writers of different genders or sexuality
sexuality
we would have that in this period
and there's one of them gertrude stein
who wrote
about her life with her lover alice
um which is not something that i
think would have been published in the
previous period
um zora neale hurston so this period
includes last generation writers
like stein and hemingway who we see here
naked with a gun
does have pants on the images poets
experimental poets harlem renaissance
writers like hurston
um southern renaissance writers drama
also becomes
a major genre prior to this point
you had plays in the united states but i
i wouldn't say that they were
as celebrated as they became during this
period and marginalized voices as i said
feminist writers
um new ethnic or racial and class
perspectives new gender and sexuality
perspectives and things of that nature
modernism released us from the
constraints of everything that had gone before
before
with a euphoric sense of freedom so
the wonderful idea that writers can be
free from constraints
that they can think outside the box so
to speak that they can experiment with form
form
and and begin to question
a lot of the traditions that came before
what modern art means is that you have
to keep finding new ways to express yourself
yourself
to express the problems that there are no
no
settled ways no fixed approach this is a
painful situation and modern art is
about this painful situation
of having no absolutely definite way of
expressing yourself
so kind of the same idea in this quote and
and
talking about art which would include
music and literature and things of that nature
nature
you have at this point jazz
experimental jazz which would be very
similar to what people are trying to do
with writing
now from a more negative point of view
the modern mind is in complete disarray
knowledge has stretched itself to the
point where neither the world
nor our intelligence can find any
foothold it is a fact that we are
suffering from nihilism
um so the idea
that kind of came out of modernism was
the rejection
of religious principles of moral
principles the belief that life is
meaningless that's that's essentially what
what
nihilism is in philosophy it's
extreme skepticism so nothing in the world
world
is real or nothing really matters
so i have this quote because it really
does inform the modernist writers there
is quite a pessimistic sense that
does any of this matter and to me a lot
of this comes out of that naturalism
um although the modernists don't look as much
much
at science at evolution or at fate
um which is not science but
kind of going along with that they don't
look at that as much but i do think that
that pessimism
kind of carried over into modernism but
it's definitely
a rejection of realism because
they're not trying to depict things as
they are
they're trying to depict a little more i
think inner life
as opposed to verisimilitude they're
trying to
throw that away that technique away and experiment
experiment
and then we have this modernism
may be seen as an attempt to reconstruct
the world
in the absence of god that kind of goes
again with the nihilism
ideas i think of modernism to me
one is this sense of freedom of um
freedom of expression and of
experimentation with
with form with characters with symbolism
um looking at themes and and questioning
things and talking about things that
couldn't be talked about before
um you know we're not victorians as
americans but that
that victorian idea of secrecy and
privacy and
and and stuffiness throwing that away
on the other hand the chaos of that when
you throw things away
and the doubt um those are the two
things driving this
freedom on the one hand and and complete
chaos and disarray and
pessimism on the other hand so post-modernism
post-modernism
takes these a little bit further um
and this includes unprecedented prosperity
prosperity
um at the same time global conflict this
ranges from
after world war ii through
1990 ish some people say 1980 some
people say 1990 i would say
1994 to be more specific but i have
my reasons for that um social protest
the civil rights movement the women's
movement the gay rights movement
um mass culture and consumerism
media saturation this is a little bit before
before
just before the internet um i say 1994
the internet went public in 93 and then
and then in 1995 um
this is going to sound strange and if
you're still listening to this but in 1995
1995
we had the um oj simpson
94 to 95 was the o.j simpson case where we
we
really saw an explosion of 24-hour news
at about the same time that everybody was
was
was getting access to the internet so
for me
i would say that post-modernism extends
from after world war ii until the mid
90s when
the internet kind of ushered in a new
era but other people can disagree with
me they'd be wrong
i'm just kidding um but the rise of
technology space exploration was during
this time
the digital revolution came just at the
i really liked this quote quite a bit
post-modernism was a reaction
to modernism where modernism was about
objectivity post-modernism was about subjectivity
subjectivity
modernism sought a singular truth
post-modernism sought the multiplicity
of truths
to me this is the key question of post-modernism
post-modernism
what is true and how does your perspective
perspective
and my perspective how are they going to
differ when looking at the same event
so the post the modernists kind of as i
said tried to get rid of
sorry about that so post-modernists
create traditional works without
traditional structure or narrative
for example multiple first-person narrators
narrators
unreliable narrators changes in time
and and really again the idea is subjectivity
subjectivity
um that modernists try to look at things objectively
objectively
without the lens of
traditional values
and they try to think about things in an
objective manner and and
question what's going on to become more objective
objective
and as the quote says here the
post-modernists are looking
at multiplicity um [Music]
[Music]
and and different people's truths and
what that means
sometimes there are no heroes and
anti-heroes are common
there are rarely happy endings writings
are often
critical and ironic so concentrating on
surface realities the absurdity of daily life
life
questioning of authority the past
morality and again the nature of truth
they address social issues related to
gender and race and youthful rebellion
the tone is often detached or unemotional
unemotional
individuals sometimes seem isolated
movement from small literary circles to
diversity and multiculturalism
that kind of happens um as
post-modernism progresses and again
another reason that i don't feel like
we're in
this period right now i think that the
idea of diversity
um with things like
changes in publishing and ebooks and
things like that anybody can
can write and be published doesn't mean
that it's going to be good or read by
many people but anybody could be published
published
whereas previously that was really not
the case
um so post modernism is going to include
some of these authors
experimental forums the beat poets
pictured here
um confessional poets genre fiction
horror science fiction fantasy
mystery all of that becomes quite
popular during this period multicultural literature
literature
more diverse voices i like hear the amy
tan quote
my work might only be words but behind
the words there's a lot of contemplation
oops sorry
it should be noted oh i already said
this so yeah um
some people would say that our current
period is post-modern other people would
say that because of the internet
the availability of publishing um
through small presses print on demand
new media ebooks podcasts blogs social media
media
really that that began a new movement or
a new literary period
i think too it's kind of too soon to
tell but
i think really that at least since the
mid 90s that
that writing has changed quite a bit so
we will be looking at books
from the realist period from modernist
period from the postmodern
and then um also a book that kind of
could be post-modern or could be thought
of as contemporary as well
a few major themes that we're going to
be talking about this is not a complete list
list
um the last time i gave this
presentation in class somebody asked me if
if
if this were all of them so i added the
words a few
what it means to be american american
individualism and the self-made man
those are going to be quite important we
talked about that with transcendentalism
but really that's a thought that comes
through american literature
throughout all time and also questioning those
those
ideals too should americans be so individualistic
individualistic
can people be self-made men if things
like genetics or
fate or discrimination are working
against them
the american dream and who can achieve
that and who struggles to achieve it
diversity and difference versus conformity
conformity
so things like sexuality gender economic differences
differences
regional differences with regionalism
racial or ethnic or cultural differences and
and
the tension between that and sort of
mainstream american culture
even differences in thought of of people
who might seem like they fit into
mainstream american culture but don't
loss of innocence and coming of age
even if that coming of age happens later
to someone who is an adult we're going
to look at that in one of our texts
um in particular alienation and
isolation versus community
a changing moral landscape in each of
these periods
um the writers are going to question the
changes to morality and ask
like are these changes really good do we
want this do we not
human nature and then truth objectivity and
and
subjectivity what it what are what does
it mean to
have truth is there universal truth
can we be objective or should we look at
things through our own lens and through
our own experiences
so i really look forward to talking with
you guys about these things and i hope that
that
in the presentations about the books
themselves you can understand
if this was a little bit confusing once
we get into those books you can
understand them a bit more
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