Title: Movements in American Literature
1Movements in American Literature
2Survey of American Literature
- 1 Colonials to Revolutionaries
(1620-1820)Bradford, Bradstreet, Edwards,
Franklin, Jefferson, Mather, Paine, Wheatley.2
An Age of Renaissance (1820-1865)Emerson,
Hawthorne, Irving, Melville, Poe, Thoreau,
Whitman.3 Probing Reality (1865-1914)Adams,
Dickinson, Dreiser, Howells, James, Sinclair,
Twain.4 Between the Wars (1915-1945)Anderson,
Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O'Neill, Pound, Sandburg,
Wright.5 After the War (1945-present)Bellow,
Ellison, Heller, Kerouac, Mailer, Roth, Salinger,
Williams.
3What is post-colonial literature?
- Definition of post-colonial all the culture
affected by the imperial process from the moment
of colonization to the present day - Post-colonial literatures emerged in their
present form out of the experience of
colonization and asserted themselves by
foregrounding the tension with the imperial
power, and by emphasizing their differences from
the assumptions of the imperial centre - the local vs the metropolitan center
- Spatial metaphors center, margin, periphery
(Said a conscious affiliation proceeding under
the guise of filiationa mimicry of the centre
)
4Development and Concerns of Post-Colonial
Literature
- 1. texts produced by representatives of the
imperial power - 2. literature produced under imperial license by
natives or outcasts - Hegemony of RS-English (Received Standard
English)linguistic hierarchy - English vs englisheslinguistic continuum
- Place and displacementdislocation, cultural
denigration - The power of marginality
5Critical Models
- 1. national and regional models
- 2. race-based models
- 3. comparative models
- 4. wider comparative models
- ex. hybridity and syncretism (the process by
which previously distinct linguistic categories,
and by extension, cultural formations, merge into
a single new form) (15)
6National and Regional Models
- National model ex. American literaturedifference
from British literature ? American literatures - Metaphors parent-child, parent tree-offshoot,
stream-tributary (16) - Wole Soyinkathe process of self-apprehension
(17) - Regional model ex. West Indian literature or
Caribbean literature (18)
7Comparative Models
- the metropolitan-colonial axisBritain as a
standard in-school readers a normative core of
British literature, landscape, and history
(Wordsworths daffodils) colonial adventure
8Race-Based Models the Black Writing Model
- the African diaspora
- NégritudeCésaire, Senghoressentialist
definition of Black culture (emotional
integration and wholeness, rhythmic and temporal
principles)the danger of turning into a new
universal paradigm - ? Black consciousness movement, Black Power
movements in the US - Saidthe danger of adopting a double kind of
possessive exclusivism
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10Naming
- Commonwealth literature1960s
- Third World literatures
- new literatures in English
- colonial literatures
- post-colonial literatures
- post-European
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12Place and Language
- D. E. S. Maxwell the appropriateness of using
non-indigenous languageimported tongue alien
to the place - Settler colonies (the US, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand)transplanted civilization - Invaded colonies (India, West Africa)indigenous
culture marginalized - double vision (local metropolis)
- Limitationsnot comprehensive enough (the West
Indies and the South Africa) lack of linguistic
subtlety, essentialist -
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14Thematic Parallels
- celebration of the struggle towards independence
in community and individual - the dominating influence of a foreign culture of
post-colonial societies - the construction or demolition of houses
- the journey of the European interloper through
unfamiliar landscape with a native guide - Use of allegory, irony, magic realism,
discontinuous narrative - exile
15Colonizer and the Colonized
- Franz Fanon and Albert Memmi
- the possibility of decolonizing the culture
- full independencereturn to pre-colonial
languages (Edward Brathwaite, Chinweizu) - inevitable cultural syncreticity (Wilson Harris,
Soyinka)
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17Dominated and Dominating
- Max Dorsinville
- To account for the changes in American literature
- To account for minority literatures Irish, Welsh
and Scottish literatures - Subversion in the dominated literaturesempire
writes back to the imperial center
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19Post-colonial Language
- Language as a medium for powerabrogation and
appropriation to re-place English - 3 main types of linguistic groups monoglossic
single-language societies using english as a
native tongue - diglossic bilingualismenglish as the language
of government and commerceIndia, Africa, the
South Pacific - polyglossic or polydialectical a multitude of
dialects interweave to form a generally
comprehensible linguistic continuumlinguistic
intersectionsCaribbean
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21The Construction of English
- The world language called english is a continuum
of intersections in which the speaking habits
in various communities have intervened to
reconstruct the language. 2 ways of
reconstruction - Regional english varieties introduce new words
- National and regional peculiarities
- English is continually changing and growing
(becoming an english)
22Abrogation and Appropriation
- Abrogation is a refusal of the categories of the
imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusory
standard of normative or correct usage, and its
assumption of a traditional and fixed meaning
inscribed in the words.must be combined with
appropriation to avoid being a reversal of the
assumptions of privilege, the normal, and
correct inscription (38) - Appropriation is the process by which language
is taken and made to bear the burden of ones
own cultural experience, orto convey in a
language that is not ones own the spirit that is
ones own (38-39)
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24Abrogation
- Reactions against the notions of centrality and
the authentic in the process of decolonization
Privileges the margins refutes a standard code
(40) or rejects the possibility of returning to
some pure and unsullied cultural condition
(anti-universalist, anti-representational stance)
(41) - The english language as a tool to textually
construct a world, it also constructs
difference, separation, and absence from the
metropolitan norm. (44)
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26Metonymic Function of Language Variance
- post-colonial writing abrogates the privileged
centrality of English by using language to
signify difference while employing a sameness
which allows it to be understood. It does this
by employing language variance, the part of a
wider cultural whole, which assists in the work
of language seizure whilst being neither
transmuted nor overwhelmed by its adopted
vehicle. Signifying processpost-colonial texts
as metonymy language variance itself as
metonymic of cultural difference
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28Language Variance Allusion
- the process of allusion installs linguistic
distance itself as a subject of the text. The
maintenance of the gap in the cross-cultural
text is of profound importance to its
ethnographic functions.
29Strategies of Appropriation
- Contrast the appropriated english with SE (59)
- Editorial intrusions footnotes, glossary, the
explanatory preface, etc. (61) - Glossing the most primitive form of metonymy
(62)absence/gap between word and its referent - Untranslated words selective lexical fidelity
(64) - forces the reader into an active engagement
with the horizons of the culture in which these
terms have meaning.indicating the gap, a sign
of distinctiveness an endorsement of the
facility of the discourse situation (65)
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31- Interchange to generate an inter-culture by
the fusion of the linguistic structures of two
languagesa term coined by Nemser and Selinker
to characterize the genuine and discrete
linguistic system by learners of a second
language. The concept of an interlanguage
reveals that the utterances of a second-language
learner are not deviant forms or mistakes, but
rather are part of a separate but genuine
system. - Syntactic fusion to mix the syntax of local
language with the lexical forms of English (68) - developing (colloquial) neologisms
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33The Gothic
- Term used by 18th Century Neoclassicists as
synonymous with barbaric to mean anything that
offended classic tastes. - Romanticists of 19th century looked on the gothic
with favor. - To them it suggested anything Medieval,
primitive, natural, wild free, authentic,
romantic.
34- Elements of the Gothic that they
celebratedvariety, richness, mystery, aspiration - The gothic is a way for us to examine the realm
of the irrational and the perverse impulses and
nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly
surface of the civilized mind. - In America what does that represent?
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36The Gothic Novel
- Magic, Mystery, and chivalry are chief
characteristic - Setting of first gothic novel (Horace Walpoles
Castle of Otranto) was set in a medieval (gothic)
castle with underground passages, trap doors,
dark stairs, and mysterious rooms where doors
slam unexpectantly. - Early American Gothic novelist Charles Brockden
Brown (1771-1810) Wieland (1798)
37- Elements of the gothic have become cliche now to
the point of melodrama, but the horror movie and
gothic elements in fiction continue to abound and
to be popular - Modern authors combine the gothic, romance, and
realism - Extended to a type of fiction which lacks
medieval settings but develops a brooding
atmosphere of gloom and terror, represents events
which are uncanny, or macabre, or
melodramatically violent, and often deals with
aberrant psychological states.
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39Characteristics of Romanticism
- Idealization of rural life
- Enthusiasm for the uncivilized or natural
- Enthusiasm for the wild, irregular, or grotesque
in nature or art - Innocence over experience
- Use of fresh, even common language rather that
poetic diction - Abandonment of the heroic couplet in favor of
blank verse and experimental forms of verse
40Characteristics of Romanticism
- Sensibility (emotionalism as opposed to
rationalism) - Sentimental melancholy
- Emotional psychology
- Individualism
- Interest in human rights
- Sympathetic interest in the past (esp. medieval
gothic) - Mysticism
- Primitivism
- Love of nature
41Some Characteristics of Romanticism (American
Movement 1830-1865)
- --Sensibility (emotionalism as opposed to
rationalism) - --Primitivism
- --Love of nature
- --Sympathetic interest in the past (esp. medieval
gothic) - --Mysticism
- --Individualism
- --Abandonment of the heroic couplet in favor of
blank verse and experimental forms of verse
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43- --Use of fresh, even common language rather
that poetic diction - --Idealization of rural life
- --Enthusiasm for the uncivilized or natural
- --Enthusiasm for the wild, irregular, or
grotesque in nature or art - --Interest in human rights
- --Sentimental melancholy
- --Emotional psychology