Typical of the periods

Question 1

What is typical of Transcendentalism (in the American Renaissance)

Answer 1

self-reliance, individualism and independence of thought; inner light and the oversoul

Question 2

What was typical of the Beginnings of American literature

Answer 2

questions of identity, exploring origins, individuals, colonialism, questions of religion (what and how to believe), ideas of enlightenment and the pursuit of happiness

Question 3

What is typical of the American Romanticism/Renaissance

Answer 3

A break from traditional poetry/writing, The antebellum, Transcendentalism, science and technology, questions of power, dynamics (women in the home etc.), focus on the individual, the subjective, the imaginative, the personal, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental

Question 4

What is typical of the Realism period

Answer 4

From rural to urban - immigration and industrialization, reaction against abstract Transcendentalism and utopian Romanticism, focus on: (among other things) character, region, place, class

Question 5

What is typical of the Modernist period

Answer 5

fragmentation and unusual, even trivial themes, - colloquial language, dialect, alternative languages; -compressed and direct; suggestions rather than the realism’s descriptions; alternative points of view, first world war through second world war

Question 6

What is typical of Post-modernism

Answer 6

Post world wars, a continuation of and break with modernism: - collapse of hierarchies in the arts; - rebellion of forms; - experimentation. Inclusion of previously marginalized groups (‘culture wars’), the Beats (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder and Burroughs)