Renaissance Flashcards

1
Q

American Renaissance characteristics (5)

A
  • Cultural nationalism: writing the “American way”.
  • Radical democrats.
  • Modify standard literary genres.
  • Language: unusual mixture of archaic and vernacular.
  • Tendency to symbolism and allegory.
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2
Q

Reinassance essays: The Transcendentalists. 12 characteristics, 3 authors.

A

CHARACTERISTICS
- Stems from Unitarianism
- Influence: reform movement interested in changing aspects of life.
- Libertarian and humanitarian
- Philosophy of life rather than abstract philosophical system.
- Interested in metaphysics
- Fascination with nature
- Eclectic philosophy: Western + Eastern influences (especially EMerson and Thoreau)
- Intellectual independence + social independence.
- Critical of contemporary society.
- Attention to everyday life, perceived through symbolism
- Practical orientation: to learn through direct observation of life (linking of thought and life)
- Elitist rejection against industrialization, popular culture, urban life, and crowd/popular press.

AUTHORS
R.W. Emerson “The American Scholar”, “Nature”
M. Fuller “Women in the Nineteenth Century”
H.D. Thoreau “Walden”, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”

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3
Q

Renaissance Poetry: common characteristics between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman (3)

A
  • Peculiar style
  • Innovative poetic form
  • Unconventional way of writing
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4
Q

Renaissance Poetry: Emily Dickinson characteristics (8), themes (6) and style

A

CHARACTERISTICS:
- Short formats.
- Traditional stanzas and meter.
- Concise.
- Indoor life.
- Self-restrained and introverted.
- Self-scrutiny.
- Self-relation
- Self-portraiture.

THEMES:
- Awareness of death
- Natural impression
- Psychological states
- Passing of time
- Social and political confinement
- Strong sense of difference.

STYLE:
- Allegories
- Elliptical syntax
- Short meter
- “Folk meter in ballad stanzas”

  • Most productive period 1855-1856
  • Seldom published in her lifetime.
  • Example of manuscript culture.
  • Writing = personal transaction
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5
Q

Renaissance Poetry: Walt Whitman characteristics (7), style and “Leaves of Grass”

A

CHARACTERISTICS:
- Lengthy formats
- Non-traditional structure and meter
- Expansive style: wordy, repetitive
- Outdoor life.
- Exuberant and extroverted.
- “Communion”
- Relation with the world.

STYLE:
- Unusual meter, no rhyme
- Declamatory style
- Elusive syntax
- Innovative thematic (sexual openness as homoerotic expression)

“Leaves of Grass” (“Calamus”, “Children of Adam”, “Drum Taps”, “Passage to India”, “Democartic Vistas”)
- ‘Residence of the poetic’ in all aspects of life
- Explicitly sexual imagery
- Free verse, by breathing
- Twisted language= writing can be ilusive

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6
Q

Renaissance Narrative, the Romance: characteristics (8)

A
  • Metaphysical writing.
  • Distinction between “entertainments” and “deep tales”.
  • Intensification of everyday reality through mythological and Biblical allusions.
  • “Dark Romantics” because of pessimistic view of reality.
  • Inverted Bildungsroman (toward alienation and detachment from society).
  • Broad picture of society analysing present and past.
  • Full of inferred symbolism.
  • Contemporary language with rhythmic prose, avoiding archaism.
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7
Q

Renaissance Narrative, the Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne

A

Topics: history and tradition of New England

Style:
- Reexamination of the Puritan past
- Great stylist (extremely careful writer)
- Descriptive, analytical
- Psychological insight.
- Moralist.
- Fantastic elements.
- Importance of feminine characters.

Novels
“Fanshawe”
“The Scarlet Letter”
“The House of the Seven Gables”
“The Blithedale Romance”
“The Marble Faun”

Short Stories
“Twice Told Tales”
“Moses from Old Manses”

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8
Q

Renaissance Narrative, the Romance: Herman Melville

A
  • Factual themes
  • Ideology and narrative focused on reality: need for multi-generic narratives.
  • Rhythmic-poetic prose in dramatic monologues = assymetrical and incomplete narratives.
  • Period of intermitence.
  • Episodic intensification.
  • Moby-Dick: philosophical tale about a tragedy of hatred and revenge.

Early work
“Typee”
“Omoo”
“Moby-Dick”

Short stories and novellas
“Bartleby, The Scrivener”
“Benito Cereno”
“Billy-Budd, Sailor”

Late work
“Pierre, or the Ambiguities”
“Clarel: A poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land”

Popular origins
“Dime novels”
“Wharton, the Whale Killer”
“Mocha Dick, The White Whale of the Pacific”

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