Definitions Flashcards
What are American Studies?
an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, history, society, and culture. It traditionally incorporates literary criticism, historiography and critical theory.
When was the Civil War?
1861 and 1865
What is socialism?
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
When was the Spanish-American War?
April – August 1898
What is Romanticism?
- artistic and intellectual movement originated in Europe
- Between 1800 to 1850
- characterized by its emphasis: emotion, individualism, glorification - partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, and the prevailing ideology of the Age of Enlightenment, especially the scientific rationalization of Nature
Who are some authors of Romanticism?
- William Wordsworth
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- John Keats
- Lord Byron
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- William Blake
- John Clare
- Walter Scott
- Mary Shelley
- William Hazlitt
- Charles Lamb
What is Naturalism?
- late nineteenth century
- similar to literary realism
- rejection of Romanticism
- emphasizes: observation and the scientific method in the fictional portrayal of reality.
- includes detachment, in which the author maintains an impersonal tone and disinterested point of view; determinism, which is defined as the opposite of free will, in which a character’s fate has been decided, even predetermined, by impersonal forces of nature beyond human control; and a sense that the universe itself is indifferent to human life.
- N tries to get to the reality of the American experience
Naturalism vs Romanticism/Transcendentalism?
- Romanticism’s and Transcendentalism tend to idealize both the individual human will and its close relationship with a benevolent nature
- Naturalism insists on the determinism of the environment on the individual
- N is strongly influenced by the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer, which transfers the principle of the “survival of the fittest” from the zoological to the social realm.
- N inherits some traits of the Dark Romanticists, who question both Romanticism’s belief in an inherently benevolent nature, as well as Enlightenment’s belief that it is man’s task to control and dominate it.
Who are some noteworthy authors of Naturalism?
- Naturalism in American literature traces to Frank Norris
- Stephen Crane
- Bret Harte
- Jack London
- Theodore Dreiser
What is Progressivism?
The main factors that constitute the emergence of Progressivism:
- Founding Republican Party
- political hegemony of the WASPs
- The cautious retreat from the ruling laissez-faire tradition of federal economic government
What is Transcendentalism?
- 19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England
- idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of humanity, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths
Authors of Transcendentalism?
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Henry David Thoreau
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Walt Whitman
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Herman Melville
What is Realism?
- the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life
- Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favor of a close observation of outward appearances
- Influenced also by the upcoming psychoanalysis, Realism often offers close psychological studies of its protagonists.
Realism vs Naturalism?
Realism depicts characters and settings as they would actually have existed, while naturalism concentrates on the biological, social and economic aspects. Both seek to represent real life.
In contrast to Naturalism’s rather bleak and deterministic outlook, Realism strives to represent the reality of American life mostly in the form of a dialogic structure and an educational agenda.
Authors of Realism
- William Dean Howells
- Henry James
What is Modernism?
- originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
- characterized by a self-conscious separation from traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing.
- experimented with literary form and expression
- Modernism radicalizes this subjectivism even further, and tries to ‘make it new,’ break with traditional forms of literary representation, and find news forms of aesthetic
expressions (Avant-gardism)
What is Modernity?
- concept
1. beginnings at the end of the Renaissance (end of the 16th century), with the beginning of European colonialism
2. co-extensive with the advent of the Enlightenment (17th-18th centuries)
3. start at the end of the 19th century, with industrialization and the dramatic increase of technology - While many connote with modernity an all-encompassing subjection of the individual, others describe it as an all-encompassing liberation of the individual, and as the age of an unprecedented individuation and restless individualism that subverts social ties, but also sheds social restrictions.
What is Cubism?
- early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture
- inspired related artistic movements in music, literature, and architecture
Who introduced the US to Cubism?
- Pablo Picasso
- Georges Braque
What is Imagism?
- sub-genre of Modernism concerned with creating clear imagery with sharp language
- drives at even more clarity than Cubism-inspired modernism
- write succinct verse of dry clarity and hard outline in which an exact visual image makes a total poetic statement
- successor to the French Symbolist movement, but whereas Symbolism has an affinity to music, Imagism seeks analogy with sculpture
