AMERICAN LITERATURE CONTEXT

Conspicuous consumption

Veblen 1899

a means to show one’s social status, especially when publicly displayed goods and services are too expensive

ostentatious and material consumption

Industrialisation

Late 18th and 19th centuries

two phases

remained agrarian as Western Europe industrialised

Much originated in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, where anthracite, coal, iron ore, steel and textile/ industrial sectors experienced breakthroughs and emerged as global manufacturing leaders

The Industrial Revolution saw decreased labour shortages, which had characterised the U.S. economy through its early years. This was partly due to a transportation revolution happening at the same time, low population density areas of the U.S. were better able to connect to the population centers through the Wilderness Roadand the Erie Canal, with steamboats and later rail transport, leading to urbanization and an increased labor force available around larger cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City, and labor force shortages elsewhere as workers fled to these highly populated cities. Also, quicker movement of resources and goods around the country drastically increased trade efficiency and output while allowing for an extensive transport base for the U.S. to grow during the Second Industrial Revolution.

The Roaring 20s/ Jazz Age

1920s and 30s

Jazz music and dance styles gained worldwide popularity

New Orleans

often referred to inconjunction with the Roaring 20s and overlapped in some significant cross-cultural ways with the Prohibition Era

Movement largely affected by the Jazz age- intro of radios nationwide

Intertwined with Developing youth culture

Rise of Hollywood

filmakers 1908 drawn by cheap land, labour, varied scenery and climate ideal for outdoor filming

new form of entertainment

Hollywood had also come to symbolize "the new morality" of the 1920s--a mixture of extravagance, glamour, hedonism, and fun.

During the 1920s, movie attendance soared. By the middle of the decade, 50 million people a week went to the movies - the equivalent of half the nation's population.

Wall Street Crash

1929- major stock market crash in the US

the crash began a rapid erosion of confidence in the US banking system and marked the beginning of the worldwide Great Depression, which lasted until 1939.

The Leisure Class

Veblen 1899

The political economy of a modern society is based upon the social stratification of tribal and feudal societies, rather than upon the merit, social and economic utility of individuals.

• conspicuous leisure and consumption

• favoured profits for owners, no regards for social good

The American Dream

Tensions between 2 variant definitions

1. Preserves the sense of wonder and limitless possibility at the heart of what America means- an embodiment of human potential, free from any limits set by past experience.

2. The acquisition of wealth allows certain maternal freedoms and possibilities that remain forever closed to the poor. The process of creating one’s self is equated with getting rich.

Rags to riches popularised by Horatio Alger

The term "American dream" was coined in a best-selling book in 1931 titled "Epic of America," by James Truslow Adams, Adams described it as "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement."

Faith in this dream often results in disillusionment and failure

Prarie Life

The land is a richly complex symbol representing great hardships and great rewards. It serves as a natural and vital force that begins and sustains all living things in rich abundance- If one works hard enough cultivating it!

The land is also a source of back-breaking labour, sacrifice and deprivation during bad years.

The pioneers felt challenged by the prarie land because of the packed grass and sod that covered it.

Cather once remarked that the city robbed man of his roots, heritage and continuity of feeling with the earth and mankind.

The land of the Nebraskan country symbolised permanence, freedom of spirit, timelessness, and a sense of endurance.

She viewed earth and nature as the personal, primaeval force that enriched and sustained life and creativity

Gilded Age

1870s-1900s

• term coined by author Mark Twain- 1973

• satirised an era of serious social problems, masked by a thin gold gilding

• economic growth for the wealthy and extreme poverty for the working classes

• political corruption

• rapid industrialisation

• an increase in immigration

The Frontier

• the American frontier refers to the shifting borderland between settled and ‘unsettled’ (often Indigenous) lands during the westward expansion of the United States, 1840-1890.

  - The idea of the American Frontier operates in tandem with the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

  - The ‘Frontier Thesis’ is an argument by the historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893), that the settlement and colonisation of the rugged American frontier was decisive in forming the culture of American democracy, and distinguishing it from European nations.

  - Adams, his mentor at Johns Hopkins, had argued that all significant American institutions derived from German and English antecedents.

  - Rebelling against this view, Turner argued instead that Europeans had been transformed by the process of settling the American continent, and that what was unique about the United States was its frontier history.

  - Turner held that the American character was decisively shaped by conditions on the frontier, in particular the abundance of free land, the settling of which engendered such traits as self-sufficiency, pragmatism, inventiveness, restless energy, mobility, materialism, and optimism. Turner’s frontier thesis remains the most popular explanation of American development among the literate public.

  - ‘American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier.’

  - ‘The frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people […] In the crucible of the frontier, the immigrants were Americanised, liberated.

VIRGIL’S GEORGICS

- My Antonia’s epigraph is a quote from Virgil’s Georgics: ‘Optima dies prima fugit’.

- The main subject of Virgil’s poem is of agriculture, extolling the virtues of rural life.

- Book I: Agriculture

- This book explores the practical aspects of farming grain, including ploughing, planting, harvesting, crop rotation, weather signs, and the seasons.

- Virgil emphasises the value of labour and diligence, stating that successful farming requires commitment and effort.

- Book II: Dignity of rural life

- This book explores the practical aspects of farming olives.

- Virgil emphasises the dignity of farming as a noble and patriotic pursuit.

- Book III: Animal husbandry

- This book explores the practical aspects of breeding stock, as well as the devastating plague in Noricum that causes widespread death and destruction among the flocks of sheep and goats.

- Virgil emphasises the power of nature in its generative and destructive ability.

- Book IV: Bees

- This book explores the industrious, selfless, and loyal nature of bees, which Virgil uses as a metaphor for the ideal human society.

- General themes:

- Labour and toil as a necessary part of human life.

- Humanity’s relationship with nature— both harmonious and adversarial.

- Transience—the ephemeral nature of human endeavours.

- Thus, by using a Virgilian line as her epigraph, Cather actively links her novel to a broader, longstanding literary tradition that portrays life on the land as at once beautiful, lyrical, and verdant; painful, gruelling, and unforgiving; noble, honourable and enduring. At the same time, the juxtaposition of Virgil’s ancient Roman world and Cather’s modernising American frontier serves to emphasise the novel’s central theme of change and transience amid societal transformation, and suggests that life on the land is, perhaps most stirringly, transitory and ephemeral.

Great American Desert

Nebraska was once considered the Great American Desert. One of the themes of My Antonia is the heroic idealism of the settlers.

James Schroeter had written: Within a single decade, half a million people- Yankee settlers, sod-house pioneers out of the Lincoln country, Danes, Norwegians, Bohemians, Poles- pulled up stakes or emigrated from the farms of northern and eastern Europe to settle on the plains of the region.

Manifest Destiny

1845

Westward Expansion

John Louis O’Sullivan wrote that it was “our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us”

The idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America

The process was at the expense of a devastation of Native people and culture

Regionalism

setting that highlights physical landmarks of the region

theme focuses on the changes coming to the region

local colour

works that describe a distinctive local geography and culture

value smaller-scaled representatives of place over a broad territorial range

often associated with short stay

associated with Antebellum period

Hysteria

an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterised by irrationality, laughter and weeping

Modernism

dominant trend between the world wars

highlighted innovation in the form and language of poetry and prose, as well as addressing numerous contemporary topics.

Build a self- issue is a loss of self

Development of regional trends

There was quite a bit of fragmentation, as well as experimentation with point of view in writing - just another way to create a unique style.

Some stories were thoughtful and self-reflective, while others had an overwhelming sense of alienation, as a result of differing ways of processing the changing times. Readers can see an experimentation with gender roles, an introduction of racial issues and an inclusion of pop culture in many works. While some stories showed the wealth of the middle and upper classes (through materialism and lack of limits), others illustrated the bleakness of rural life.

Naturalism

1880s-1930s

• used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity and environment had inescapably been a force in shaping human character

• Characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings

• Usually lower class characters

• urban setting

• futile attempts to exercise free will

• George Wilson??

Realism

centre attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action and the verifiable consequence

Civil War- turn of the century

Amy Kaplan- a strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change

complex ethical choices

tone is natural vernacular- not heightened or poetic

William Dean, Howells, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain

focusing on the outsider

insight

Transcendentalism

• knowledge could be admired not just through the senses but through intuition and contemplation of the internal spirit

1830s- 50s

The Eternal One- every individual carries the universe within himself and is entitled to his own personal relationship with spirituality

• individual truth, self-reliance

• idealism

• divinity of nature

Romanticism

• influenced by Romantic movement in Britain

• emphasised emotion, a love of nature and imagination

• preoccupied with questions of democracy and freedom

• the frontier and natural landscape as open and vast- seen by the structure of the novel

• imagination

• american revolution

Sentimentalism

Popular with women readers

tend to feature a young girl protagonist who must depend on her moral compass to guide her through an immoral world

shine light on social problems like the evils of slavery

associated with Christianity

The Lost Generation

a group of writers and poets

the war left them aimless, directionless and disillusioned with the world.

Agrarianism

Advocates for rural development, traditional forms of local community over urban modernity

Thomas Jefferson

Prohibition

A nationwide ban on the production, importation, transport and sale of alcoholic beverages in the US from 1920-1933

18th Amendment- ratified in 1919, established prohibition- made it illegal to manufacture, sell, or transport

Volstead Act- enacted in 1919 outlined penalties for violations

Effects- rise of speakeasies, bootlegging, organised crime and loss of tax revenue for the government, increased violence

Repeal- failure of it to achieve its intended goals, coupled with the economic impact of the Great Depression lead to the ratification of the 21st Amendment

Now seen as a social experiment with unintended consequences

Christopher Columbus

• writes about travelling to Hispana from Juana and describes the island to be bounteous and full of nature with reference to this flourishment and the colour green. The colour green is very important in Gatsby as it represents and accentuates themes of the American Dream, envy, hope, nature and revival.

• Gatsby believed that the green light was a symbol of hope, mimicking the way that Columbus saw the greenery on the island as a ray of hope in discovering new lands.

The New Woman/Flappers

We tend to associate flappers, the embodiment of the New Woman, with the 1920s. The New Woman, however,emerged during World War I, not only in the women who took on new roles to support the war but in the posters that encouraged both women and men to get involved.

middle-class, white, young American woman, probably a college student, who was a pleasure seeker and had money and time to spend having fun.

the flapper was the apex of the New Woman’s historical arc. She was the outcome of everything the New woman had done or aspired to before. She was the one who harvested the outcome of the many seeds the New Women had sawn. And after her, as the Great Depression blew away the excitement of the Roaring Twenties, the New Woman would not exist anymore, though much of what she had attained remained, if sometimes only in the mind of people.

Civil War

• 1861-65

• slavery and political control

• Northern victory- one nation, no slavery

Slavery and Abolition

13th Amendment

1865

Widespread in the south

anti-slavery originated in Age of Enlightenment

Lincoln

1868- African Americans were given the right to vote

Antebellum South

• pre war

• prevalent practice of slavery

• 1812-61

• rural

• agrarian

• male-dominated households

• the antebellum era- social conflicts and tensions between the North and South-especially over tariffs, state rights, infrastructure and slavery

• Southern belles were expected to marry respectable young men and become ladies of society dedicated to the family and community. The southern belle archetype is characterised by Southern hospitality, a cultivation of beauty and a flirtatious yet chaste demeanour.

Jim Crow and Segregation

mandated racial segregation in all public facilities

last overturned in 1965

started 1870s

The Great Depression

1929-39

a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterised by high rates of unemployment and poverty; drastic reductions in liquidity, industrial production and trade as well as widespread bank and business failures

The Harlem Renaissance

intellectual and cultural revival of the African American arts and politics

helps writers and artists gain more control over representation of Black Culture

pride in identity

rising awareness of inequality

US Constitution

1789

We the people of the US, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.

America’s motto

E Pluribus Unum

1776

Out of many, one

Motto appears on our money, seals and passports

It reveals that inherent in America’s very foundation is the ideal that diversity of opinion and of people is our greatest strength

Refers to the union formed by the separate states- united as 1 continent-union of 13 colonies- 13 letters

Declaration of Independence

1776

we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that are among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776

Gatsby has recreated himself, shedding the past, abandoning his parents, just as America tried to Jettison European history and Old World Values.

Colonial America

1565-1783

1607- colonists established 1st english settlement at Jamestown, Virginia

1640- england had multiple colonies, seventeenth century colonists continued vernacular european building traditions but they adapted them to harsher American climates

retained English medieval techniques like the overhanging second story

english- dominant culture

a wealthy upper class intent on emulating the latest english fashions arose during 18th century

postal service established by Franklin- more connected- older than the country

The Homestead Act

• most of them had to build their houses out of the prairie sod as there were very few trees.

• or they could dig into a ravine and make a cave like dugout with a shed-like shelter, with a door and window set into a front wall of sod with a roof supported by hand hew polar logs

• 1862- during the civil war - provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizens who had never borne arms against the US government could claim 1600 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to live on and improve the plot by cultivating the land. After 5 years they are entitled to the property and a small registration fee.

Double consciousness

a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One every feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. 1903 W.E DuBois

Restlessness

Alexis DeTocqueville

Democracy in America

• insatiability of American striving

• never satisfied- if more can always be achieved theoretically, more is always desired- never fully attained.

The New Collossus

Emma Lazarus

1883

written to raise money for the pedestal for the statue of Liberty

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

Manhattan Transfer

John Dos Passos

1925

disturbed by what he saw as twentieth-century America’s abandonment of its fundamental values and founding ideals

The novel depicts a society where a vast gap has opened between rich and poor and where narrow selfishness and materialism prevail.

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes

1935

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free

(America never was America to me)

The Epic of America

1931

James Truslow Adams

coined the phrase- the American Dream

that dream of a land in which life should be better and riches and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.

It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret and equate, and too many of us ourselves have grown wealthy and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high ways merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to obtain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and to be recognised by others for what they are, regardless of the circumstances of birth or position.

F.Scott Fitzgerald

1896-1940

born in Minnesota, brought up in NY

• Princeton- fell in love with Ginevra King- model for Daisy- rejected by her and joined army

• Met Zelda when stationed in Alabama- refused to marry him over wealth differences

• changed mind after success on the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920

• Novel well well-received, Zelda and Scott enjoyed a wild Jazz lifestyle for some time

• spent time in Europe- made friends with ex-patriate writers- dubbed the Lost Generation

• Gatsby- commercial failure

• struggled with alcoholism

• Zelda struggled with schizophrenia

• enduring reputation and popularity only established after death

Willa Cather

My grandfather’s homestead was about 18 miles from Red Cloud

thrown out into a country as bare as a piece of sheet iron

slavonic, germanic, scandinavian, bohemian and latin - spread across out bronze praries like the daubs of colour on a painters palette

that country was the happiness and the curse of her life- Nebraska

Mr Shimerda’s death

One of Cather’s early stories in the Hesperia is called Peter- the tragedy of a lonely, sensitive Frances Sadilek who becomes disheartened and disillusioned with Nebraska and takes his own life

true events made such an indelible impression on Cather when she first came to Nebraska that she changed his name to Mr Shimerda

Zelda Fitzgerald

remembered for personifying the carefree ideals of the 1920s flappers and for her tumultuous marriage to Fitzgerald

socialite and figure of the Roaring 20s

often referred to as the original flapper- term used to describe a new breed of young western women who flouted conventional standards of behaviour, dress and indulged in bold, modern lifestyles

bi polar and schizophrenic

entrapment- locked in by Fitzgerald after asking for a divorce

died locked in a room in a hospital psych ward- fire

The real Antonia

Cather’s friendship with Annie Sadilek- hired girl for the Miner family

Her father shot himself and was buried at the crossroads

all rest in biographical

Cather went on to univeristy in Lincoln

lost touch with Annie but renewed her friendship later

one of annie’s sons had said that his mother was happier with a crust of bread and a new baby than someone else would have been with a million dollars

Cather had said that most of her knowledge about Annie came from the impressions of young men who knew her.

Cowboys and Western

The cowboy and the Western genre are foundational to American cultural identity, deeply tied to frontier mythology, manifest destiny, and the construction of masculinity, individualism, and freedom

Owen Wister – The Virginian

Context: Early prototype of cowboy Western fiction.

Relevance: Archetypes of heroism, honour, and landscape.

John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men

Context: Post-frontier era, itinerant workers as modern cowboys.

Relevance: Explores isolation, dreams, and displaced masculinity.