American lit Flashcards
American dream
- Coined by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America
- Focus on meritocracy
- Idea of universal rights
- Idea of self realisation and self expression
American Dream critique
- Bollen - “a bleary eyed national obsession with having it all and coming out on top”
- A “potent social myth”
Individualism
• E Anthony Rotundo - “The dominant concerns were the concerns of the self - self improvement, self-control, self-interest, self advancement” (1994)
o Deeply ingrained into the American psyche
Mass popularity of self-help manuals - H.Laurent and Orison Morden
How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carneige
o Benjamin Franklin’s 13 precepts in his autobiography (1791)
Idolised by Gatsby
Money Howells
“Business is the only human solidarity” Howells
Money Trachtenberg
o ‘Incorporation of America’ Trachtenberg
Money Loeb
Loeb writes an essay ‘The Mysticism of Money’ -aquired an aesthetic quality
Money Kagel
o Money as the “new religion” Kagel
Money Marx
“Truly creative power”
Grapes of Wrath Seaver
“Proletariate novel” uses it to justify his own socialist views
Weibe on American society
o Robert Weibe “distended society”
Useful critical perspectives
Ecocritical - the land
Marxist - the banks
Reliability of Grapes
“Steinbeck’s book is substantially reliable”-O.B.Duncan 1940
“Not typical of those of the real migrants”-Frank J. Taylor 1939”
Hoover
“Rugged individualism”
Roosvelt
New deal democracy
Phalanx Theory
Argued by Steinbeck and originally
