American Lit II Final

What is the midcenturu modern known for being?

“Modernism without experiment”

What key aesthetic features of modernism does midcentury modern keep?

Less is more ethos, form follows function streamlining

What does midcentury modern eschew from modernism?

Rough edges of experimentation

What does “the new criticism” of midcentury modern emphasize?

“objective,” “impersonal,” and apolitical ways of reading and interpreting texts

What dominates the academy and influences writers during the midcentury modern?

A kind of formalism

What was still influential in the midcentury modern?

Existentialism; the theme of the individual tempted by the comforts and conformity of an affluent society predominate

What returns to the midcentury modern?

Realism; the inner qualities of the individual = the main emphasis

Who were key influences and player in the midcdentury moment and its critics?

I.A Richards, T.S Eliot, Randall Jarrell, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, the Fugitives

Who were the Fugitives (AKA Fugitive-Agrarians)?

Group of southern writers, mostly associated with Vanderbilt University, who reacted against northern industrialist capitalism and urged a return to rural, agrarian socio-economic policies and traditional values

What did the Fugitives promote?

Poetry and criticism that emphasized complicated rhetoric, irony, and formal verse prosody

What did many of the Fugitives become associated with?

The New Criticism

What were key journals of the Fugitives?

The Southern Review, Kenyon Review

Who were key members of the Fugitives?

John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson

What is formalism?

Poetry that utilizes traditional poetic forms in terms of stanza, meter, and rhyme

What is New Formalism?

A term that is often applied to poets of the later 20th century who, in the face of a literary culture that is quite accepting of free verse, advocate the power of more traditional forms of prosody

Who were key formalists?

X.J Kennedy, Richard Wilbur, John Hollander, Robert Pinsky, Gertrude Schnackenburg, Dana Gioia, Miller Williams, and Anthony Hecht

By the mid-1950s, The New Yorker became the most prominent place for the literary short story, and many of the most famous writers of the era published there spawned what genre tag for the magazine?

“The New Yorker Story”

Who are major “New Yorker Story” authors?

John Updike, John Cheever, Philip Roth

According to Jonathan Franzen, what made a story “New Yorker”?

Its carefully wrought, many comma’d prose, long passages of physical description, precision and sobriety making a negative emotional space, suggestion of feeling without naming it, well-educated white characters experiencing the the melancholies of affluence, doldrums of suburban marriage, or adultery, and its either elegantly oblique or frustratingly coy ending style

When did modernism as a dominant literary movement begin to evolve?

As World War II and its aftermath dominated American life in the 40s and 50s

What did “The New Criticism” strive to do?

Promote an objective, almost scientific approach to the arts

Which author was born in Shillington, PA, a town which became the material for their first literary successes?

John Updike

Which author began his literary career as a writer for The New Yorker?

John Updike

Which author settled in Ipswich, MA and led a quitet life while producing a consistently compelling oeuvre?

John Updike

Which author appeared twice on the cover of Time?

John Updike

Which author separated from his first wife, then divorced her, then married another woman a year later?

John Updike

Which author receieved two Pulitzer prizes for two works in his series?

John Updike

The Centaur (National Book Award)

John Updike

Couples

John Updike

The Rabbit Tetraology (four novels)

John Updike

Rabbit, Run

The tranquilized 50s - John Updike

Rabbit Redux

The turbulent 60s - John Updike

Rabbit is Rich

The entropic 70s - John Updike

Rabbit at Rest

The prosperous, moribund 80s - John Updike

A Month of Sundays

From Dimmesdale’s perspective - John Updike

Roger’s Version

From Chillingworth’s perspective - John Updike

S.

From Prynne’s perspective - John Updike

In the Beauty of the Lilies

John Updike

What author was known for being a post-war realist, with a keen eye for detailed verisimilitude and a shrewd sense of moral and social concerns?

John Updike

Which author was known for their ability to blend realism with tasteful figurative or symbolic description?

John Updike

Which author was known for being a chronicler of contemporary American middle-class life, especially as it concerns the changing nature of the family and religion?

John Updike

Which author once said, “I am elegiacally concerned with the Protestant middle-class.”?

John Updike

Which author was born in Quincy, MA, into a prosperous family that fell into hard times as they grew into adolescence?

John Cheever

Which author was expelled from their prestigious private school, which they wrote a story about and was published in The New Republic, starting a relationship with the influential critic Malcolm Cowley?

John Cheever

Which author marries a woman from a notable family and then joins the army and serves in WWII?

John Cheever

Which author wrote their first book of stories while stationed in the Pacific?

John Cheever

Which author maintained a rocky relationship with his family due to struggles with infidelity (both hetero and homosexual), bouts of depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction?

John Cheever

Which author was placed in a rehab center for alcoholics?

John Cheever

The Way Some People Live (short stories)

John Cheever

The Enormous Radio, and Other Stories

John Cheever

The Wapshot Chronicle (won National Book Award)

John Cheever

Which author was known for their acute description of the American suburbs (“Chekhov of the exurbs”)?

John Cheever

Which author was known for representing the flagging of the American dream as it dissolves into the dissolute luxury of upper-middle class existence?

John Cheever

Which author was known for their imaginative use of farce and mild surrealism built on a solid base of realistic description?

John Cheever

Which author was known for their clever uses of nostalgia?

John Cheever

The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (includes “The Swimmer”)

John Cheever

Bullet Park

John Cheever

The Falconer

John Cheever

Which author was born in Newark, NJ, a town that figures prominently in their fiction?

Philip Roth

Which author joined the army but was discharged after he injured his back?

Philip Roth

Which author joined University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop as a faculty member and later taught at the University of Pennsylvania?

Philip Roth

Which author was sent into a couple of nervous breakdowns by their heart surgery, failed marriage (with Claire Bloom), and poor reviews?

Philip Roth

Goodbye Columbus (short stories, National Book Award)

Philip Roth

Portnoy’s Complaint (in the mode of stand-up comedy)

Philip Roth

Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy

Philip Roth

The Counterlife (another Zuckerman novel)

Philip Roth

American Pastoral (Pulitzer Prize)

Philip Roth

The Plot Against America

Philip Roth

Which author was known for their examination of the tensions associated with being Jewish in America?

Philip Roth

Which author was known for their tone or attitude toward sex or morals in general that could be described as “serio-comic”?

Philip Roth

Which author was known for a career that began with skillful, realistic portrayals of middle-class Jewish life but which becomes much more experimental, even postmodern, in its fondness for play, mixing of high and pop culture, and its tendency toward metafiction?

Philip Roth

What is alternative history?

Speculative ficiton that is set in a world in which history has significantly diverged from the actual course of events as we know them

Which author was born in Harlem, New York, to an unwed mother?

James Baldwin

Which author adopts the last name of their stepfather and never suspects, as a child, that he is not their biological father?

James Baldwin

Which author grew up with eight (step) siblings?

James Baldwin

Which author attended Frederick Douglass Junior High where they were taught and encouraged by the poet Countee Cullen?

James Baldwin

Which author began preaching at Fireside Pentecostal Assembly at age fourteen?

James Baldwin

Which author left the church because of religious doubt after graduating high school?

James Baldwin

Which author secured a writing fellowship with the help of Richard Wright (the famed author of Native Son)?

James Baldwin

Which author moved to Paris, France after getting fed up with racism in the U.S?

James Baldwin

Which author returned to the U.S as a correspondent for Harper’s Magazine to write about the civil rights situation in the South?

James Baldwin

Which author appeared on the cover of Time magazine and led civil rights demonstrations in Paris?

James Baldwin

Which author purchased a home in St. Paul-de-Vence, France?

James Baldwin

Which author taught in various Amrican universities often traveling back to their home in France, while continuing to publish essays and work on collaborative projects?

James Baldwin

Which author died of cancer in 1987?

James Baldwin

Go Tell It on the Mountain

James Baldwin

Notes of a Native Son (essays)

James Baldwin

Giovanni’s Room

James Baldwin

Another Country

James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

Going to Meet the Man (includes “Sonny’s Blues”)

James Baldwin

The Devil Finds Work

James Baldwin

Which author was known for their essays, which vary widely in tonal range from fiery and motivational to blunt and moralistic to poetically impressionistic?

James Baldwin

Which author’s essays focus on art, popular culture (especially film), and politics?

James Baldwin

Which author was most famous in their time for essays that detailed the Civil Rights movement, always with an eye towards the complex inner workings of individual identity within the sweep of larger political or cultural movements?

James Baldwin

Which author was known for the deep tension in their essays and stories between the aesthetic and political?

James Baldwin

Which author, against much of the African-American literary tradition, insisted upon the primacy of the aesthetic, even as their essays and stories consistently provide scathing critiques of American culture and politics?

James Baldwin

Which author has increasingly been the subject of queer studies?

James Baldwin

Which author do we study for their early essays that not only critique artists whose works they believed were tainted by social or political messages, but also which devastatingly criticize American racial injustice and society?

James Baldwin

Which author do we study for their stories and essays that celebrate and insist upon artistic freedom from identity and civil-rights politics?

James Baldwin