Key America Lit notes

Question 1

What are the 5 key American tropes?

Answer 1

Journeys, American Dream, Communities, the hero, Land v. Frontier.

Question 2

Sarah Churchwell

Answer 2

“The phrase the American dream was invented to describe a failure, not a promise.”

Question 3

Regional realism

Answer 3

Mark Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn’. Charles Chesnutt looking at black Americans & emphasises the rumours of the plantation myth in the Deep South.

Question 4

Naturalism

Answer 4

Fact based & ultimately determined by causes external to the will (determinism = lack of control. Fate & no way out- negative perspective)

Question 5

Magnolia Myth

Answer 5

Plantation & ideas times used to be good = southern renaissance

Question 6

Lewis ‘Babbit’ (1922)

Answer 6

Exposes the moral dilemma where the world is built too big & become more capitalist in the modernist area. Modernism/ jazz age/ Harlem renaissance.

Question 7

Edith Wharton

Answer 7

Age of innocence (1921) - societial pressures on marriage
Twilight sleep (1927) - lost generation & modernism

Question 8

Ambrose Bierce ‘Chickamauga’ (1891)

Answer 8

Social realism/ brutality of war & fear/ fate density and power of nature.
Quotes: “formidable enemy” (the rabbit). “A mother’s lobe was breaking for her missing child” (fate v. Destiny). “Like a mighty conqueror” (loss of innocence).

Question 9

Upton Sinclair ‘The jungle’ (1906)

Answer 9

Man v. Nature. In flight. Naturalism & determinism. “Stockyards” & “sickening odours”

Question 10

Critical appreciation notes

Answer 10

• what is the moral dilemma? And..what is the writer trying to expose?
• Always look at opening & last sentence.
• what is being exposed about time period.
• structure: atmosphere/ tone, foreshadowing, in media’s res.. characterisation.
• Be specific about beginning, middle & ending

Question 11

Critical appreciation devices

Answer 11

Anaphora (repetition of start/ end of sentence).
Epistrophe (repetition of a word)
Polysyndeton/ Asyndeton
Chronological order
Foreshadowing/ foreboding
Point of view
Rhetorical Qs
Repetition
Time period
Fragmented short sentences

Question 12

Karl Marx - Marxist theory

Answer 12

Bourgeoise (middle class), Aristocracy (high class), proletariat (working class). Hierarchy, capitalist.

Question 13

Simone de Beauvoir

Answer 13

Gender & women. Women seen as the ‘second sex’ & less powerful & important than men. Society is therefore patriarchal. Pat more & ‘Angel in house’ - images of ideal womanhood. Feminist literary criticism.