Mark Flashcards
What path do sentimentalist novels tend to follow?
A young girl protagonist who must use her moral compass to guide herself through an immoral world to marriage.
What movement was Uncle Tom’s Cabin from?
Sentimentalism
Who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
Harriet Beecher Stowe
What religion was sentimentalism associated with?
Christianity and Christian benevolence.
What did Abraham Lincoln say the Harriet Beecher Stowe?
“the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”
When was the Romantic movement?
1820-1860
Who influenced this American movement?
The British Romantic movement.
Love of nature and emotions.
Romanticism.
What values did Romantic novels centre around?
Democracy, freedom, and individualism.
What are Romantic novels obsessed with?
Nature - trees, flowers, fields, sunsets.
What is the quintessential American value?
Individualism
What did Romantic writers believe about emotions?
They were central to our identity.
Why is the imagination important to Romantic writers?
Expressing our individuality.
What historical event influenced American Romantics?
The American Revolutionary War (war of independence)
What place/idea was central to the work of American Romantics?
The Frontier
When did the Transcendental movement develop?
1820s-1840s
Where did divinity reside for Transcendental writers?
People and nature.
How do Transcendentals view everyday life?
They see the grind of ordinary life and society as a barrier between the self and the spirit.
What does nature offer to Transcendentals?
A way to free the mind.
What values did Transcendentalists embrace?
Individualism and imagination.
What is the difference between Romanticism and Transcendentalism?
Romantics were too concerned with the ego whereas Transcendentalists wanted to actually make change.
Who created the idea of the over-soul and what movement were they from?
Ralph Waldo Emerson; Transcendentalism
When was the Realism movement?
From the Civil War to the turn of the century; 1860s-1900
When was the American Civil War?
1861-1865
What did Realist writers focus on?
An accurate representation and exploration of American lives.
What was the context in which Realist writers were writing?
Post Civil War, increased democracy, literacy, industrialisation, urbanisation, population, migration and immigration.
How did Amy Kaplan describe Realism?
“a strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change”
Define verisimilitude.
Appearing true or real.
What is the centre of a Realist novel, character or plot?
The character and their choices.
Which class interests does Realism serve?
Middle class
What will the plot of a Realism novel usually be like?
Believable and plausible, avoiding the sensational.
What is the difference between Realism and Sentimentalism?
In Realism, redemption of the individual lies in the social world, whereas in Sentimentalism, redemption of the social world lies in the individual.
What message did Naturalist literature try to convey?
That social conditions shaped human character.
Who said that people are “human beasts”
Emile Zola
What sort of people populate Naturalist novels?
Lower-middle or lower class.
What is the world of the Naturalist novel like?
Commonplace, unheroic, dull.
What is the focus of a Naturalist novel?
How characters react to their circumstances, not really focusing on the characters themselves.
What sort of tone do Naturalist writers use?
Objective and detached.
What traits characterise Naturalist novels?
Pessimism and determinism.
What narrative perspective is most commonly used for Naturalism?
Third-person omniscient.
For Naturalists, how can characters be studied?
Through their relationships to their surroundings.
“chronicle of despair” - who said and about what movement
Charles Walcutt; naturalism
Name three themes of Naturalism novels.
Survival, determinism, violence, and taboo.
What is the conflict in Naturalism novels?
Man against nature.
Which movement did these authors belong to: John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair?
Naturalism
When was the Modernism movement?
1918-1940
What topics did Modernism address?
Race relations, gender, the human condition.
What did American Modernist writers explore?
The psychological wounds and scars of the First World War.
What did American Modernist writers explore?
The psychological wounds and scars of the First World War.
What event other than the First World War did Modernist writers explore?
The Great Depression
What issue, related to the great War and the Great Depression, do Modernist writers explore?
The loss of self as workers faded into the background of city life.
Despite the negative aspects Modernists explored, what did their novels suggest in the end?
New hopes and aspirations - a new beginning.
What was the Harlem Renaissance and what sparked it?
A rebirth of African American arts, started by the Modernist search for self-identification.
When was the Declaration of Sentiments published?
1848
When were the Jim Crow Laws passed?
1877
When was the Gilded Age?
1870-1900
When was Prohibition?
1920-1933
When was the Wall Street Crash?
1929
When was the Dust Bowl?
1930s
When was President Franklin’s New Deal?
1933-1936
