Period Pieces

It's easy to see that the picture here harkens back to an earlier period of history. No one would mistake the horse and buggy for the usual mode of today's personal transportation. You "read" the photo historically, with a consciousness of its time. The clothing of the person, although he might be in costume, is another clue to time frame. The architectural style of the house and the picket fence also work to tell you that this photo is "old."

Literary texts are no different. Whether or not the date of composition is given, the marks on a story, novel, poem, or play are distinct. The characteristics of the work reveal its historical framework. A writer is inextricably tied to his/her time in history and geographical place. Good writers write what they know; they cannot escape their physical, philosophical, economic, and social environments.

We have read authors from a variety of time periods and places. Hamlin Garland grew up in the agricultural Midwest. Chaim Potok grew up an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn. Ernest Hemingway was profoundly affected by his experiences in WWI. And so it goes.Knowing the vital importance of understanding the time period, King College STRONGLY recommends that students fulfilling their Core Curriculum requirements for literature and history take a matched pair of lit and history courses. We always teach the pair together. Right now the history course that "goes with" American Literature II, U.S. 1877 to the Present, is being taught online.

As we have moved through this course, I have deliberately chosen the readings with two BIG outcomes in mind. The first is to help you get a sense of the history--events, places, and ideas. I wanted you to do this through good stories, through characters and people you could either identify or sympathize with. When you connect history and literature, the most important connection is the connection to ideas. The "-isms" of literary criticism--realism, naturalism, modernism, existentialism, post-modernism, feminisim, and so on--are played out in the stories, poems, plays, and novels as well as in art and philosophy.

All of you are very good at reacting to what you read. You knew instinctively that Nick Adams was lonely, even if you didn't know why. You were outraged by the treatment of black slave women you learned to know through Ain't I a Woman. I have tried to take you one step further and  introduce you to some of the "-isms" through the readings and the discussion questions. Because this is a Core class and not a course primarily for literature majors, I have not focused on the ideas as much as on other aspects of our readings.

That is because of my second BIG outcome. I chose things that I hoped would be unfamiliar to you and things that were "good reads." I wanted you, whether you like to read or not, to come away from the class saying, "Well, that wasn't so bad. I might read another book some day!" I wanted the reading to be fun and to give you some ideas you probably hadn't thought about. I wanted to expand your American experience.

So, now we are at the end of the course facing the mandated assessment. The final activity asks you to read an unfamiliar piece of literature, to think about it, and to make some observations/judgments. Both of the texts I chose for you are "period pieces." Each is a product of its time and place. Each comes from the mind and experience of a real person who lived in a particular place and who was affected by his/her time. The ideas, cultural practices, economic realities, and social constraints made a difference in how and what these writers wrote. If you want to do your very best on this assessment, the final activity, do a little digging before you fill out the table.

Before you read bell hooks, you may have thought you knew what the word "feminism" meant. However, I'm sure your understanding of the word is much enhanced from your exposure to her thinking. Before you answered the integrative question on modernist practices and themes, you may have thought you knew what the word "modernism" meant. After all "modern" just means "not old-fashioned," right? Well, not exactly.

The two texts in the final activity do have "-isms" attached to them. I have even identified them for you--realism and naturalism.Take the time to understand those terms before you decide how the piece you choose relates to one or the other or both. You will find that understanding the term might give you some things to think about that make the story or poem even more meaningful.

An analogy to what I'm writing about here is a love letter. When you receive a love letter, you prize it above all else. You know and love the person who sent it. This knowledge enables you to read between the lines. You know where your lover is, and that helps you "live" inside the reality of the relationship you share. The two of you have deep common experiences that are the background for the text before you. Every word in the text is charged with layers of meaning.

The historical background, which includes events, cultural practice, economic conditions, political climate, and ideas, is to a piece of literature what your shared experience is to your love letter.  Be aware of how your historical period, the beginning of the 21st century, informs and shapes you. Try put your framework aside to get into the time frame of the text you are looking at. Every text is definitely a "period piece," a product of its time.

Three Famous Proponents of Modernism

This question was a tough assignment. Going to the timeline and looking at the characteristics of Modernism was the first logical step. However, in order to get full credit for the question you probably needed to dig a little deeper. Doing so would have helped you feel less "at sea" about these authors and their illustration of Modernist themes.

If I were matching up the themes /ideas from the American Literature Timeline with the writers, I would do it this way:

• Faulkner--regionalism and local color (about the oddities of the South after the Civil War; he is actually a Southern Gothic writer)
• Hemingway--alienation of the self (Nick is part of the Lost Generation," damaged and disillusioned by the horrors of WWI)
• Fitzgerald--the Jazz Age (he is "King" of the Jazz Age and is credited with coining the term)

Partly, my ability to match these writers and ideas is because I have read many novels and stories by all three of them. However, probably a quick look at Wikipedia woud have hinted at these match-ups--always a good idea to get some information. Writing DQ answers is hardly like writing a reasearch paper in one respect: you do not need to have prestigiousl scholarly sources for your information. General non-scholarly sources work well to give you quick insights. HOWEVER, writing DQ answers IS like a research paper in another respect: YOU MUST cite the sources where you get your information. This necessity for including a citation is important; whether you borrow an idea or quote word-for-word, YOU MUST tell author, title, and URL (or other publication information if you looked in a book...).

Now a little bit about these authors. Information such as this would have helped you think about and write about the stories we read.

William Faulkner is the most important Southern writer in the first half of the 20^th century. Faulkner equals the South with all of its idiosyncracies—the racism, the exaggerated sense of propriety, allowing even murder to go unpunished, the strong sense of family, the overbearing male authority figure. You see these characteristics clearly in “A Rose for Emily.” Faulkner was also intrigued by insanity; several of his major characters are insane. All of his work takes place in a fictional county, Yoknapatawpha County, in Mississippi; Jefferson is the county seat of that county. All the families appear and re-appear—the Griersons, the Sartorises, as well as others not in our story.

Ernest Hemingway is the most important member of the “Lost Generation.” Disillusioned by the horrific suffering he witnessed as an ambulance driver in WWI (attending the virtual class could have helped you here…), Hemingway lost his own way. Nick Adams is a somewhat auto-biographical character. Hopkins in our story is a war buddy who was killed in some battle or other. All of you picked up on how sad and disillusioned Nick is; but few made the connection to the war. Nick (and Hemingway) suffered from what today is called PTSD (post-tramatic stress disorder). Hemingway’s mantra was “grace under pressure.” When his own health failed and he could no longer live “gracefully,” he committed suicide.

Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald wrote about the Jazz Age and lived its ways to the fullest; he was the 1920s party animal. He earned a good bit of money from his writing for popular magazines, but not enough to support his extravagant lifestyle. Many of you may have read The Great Gatsby in high school. That book and the story you read both encapsulate longing for enough wealth to live without thinking about money. The Jazz-Age living broke both Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. She had a mental breakdown and spent most of her adult life in mental institutions; he ended up with a serious alcohol addiction and broke in Hollywood trying to be a screen writer and died there of a heart attack.

We could not look at this period of the early 20^th century and not look at these writers. Their stories are more difficult to read than many of the other things on our reading list, but I wanted you to have a sense of what their work is like as you move through this course.

I also wanted you to think about the characteristics of Modernism as a philosophical and artistic movement in American culture. That experiment was moderately successful; I think most of you felt too stretched by that requirement. What I was asking you to do was to take the “definition” of Modernism and apply it to the stories you read with an overlay of similarities and differences. You all did definition papers as well as comparison/contrast papers in ENGL 1110, . . .remember?

________________________

First image is a book cover. The hardcover book was written as a guide to the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s presentation of the groundbreaking exhibition Modernism: Designing a New World: 1914-1939, Essential Modernism brings into focus the foundation and meaning of Modernism- the defining movement of twentieth-century art, design and culture. 88 pages, 100 color Illustrations.

Second image found at http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.smvblog.com/smv_lit_society/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/386614810_47e4f521cc.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.smvblog.com/smv_lit_society/%3Fp%3D98&usg=__8HO36HzT8PS-H6X6f5FZlidPh2s=&h=400&w=500&sz=174&hl=en&start=7&sig2=i--yf9FbKouoOSIlADdhMg&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=gOV9qzVXsqh7sM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsouthern%2Bgothic%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=Bq4XTIH5GJe5nAeaqMCsCg

Third image is a magazine cover by John Held, artist associated with the Jazz Age. Found at

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://collectableivy.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/charleston1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://collectableivy.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/famous-illustrators-john-held-jr/&h=450&w=356&sz=39&tbnid=q7s46ZKomGGYmM:&tbnh=127&tbnw=100&prev=/images%3Fq%3DJOhn%2BHeld&usg=__1lyaEd770_Sg80UxJ6cibL7skSU=&sa=X&ei=wZ4XTIrhMoXonQee0_iqCg&ved=0CDIQ9QEwBA

Don't Be a Victim of Circumstances: Write Well for Full Credit

One of the popular questions in the Module One Discussion Forum dealt with how characters deal with tough situations in their lives. Most of you agreed that deliberate choices could overcome difficult circumstances.



I realize that American Literature II is not life-threatening  for most of you, but, if you are not getting the scores you want on the discussion questions, it could feel discouraging. And, if you are taking the class to raise your GPA, low scores could have unwelcome consequences.

I think you can make some choices to mitigate the circumstance where you find yourself in this class. :-)

Because this is a Core Curriculum course in literature, it must have the same framework as other Core literature courses. The guidelines I received for designing the course include these as definite outcomes:

1. Students will communicate effectively in writing by showing that they can comprehend, interpret, and evaluate literary texts.
2. Students will use standard grammar and usage appropriate to the context of a college course.

These outcomes constrain all of us. I am obliged to hold your writing to these standards. When you write about the books and stories we read together, I am looking to make sure you understand both what the texts say and what they mean.I am asking you questions about the whys behind the writers' choices and the characters' actions. I am interested in how you think and assuming that the organization of your DQ answers shows the (orderly?) pattern of your thought.

I am also noticing your mechanics--punctuation, capital letters, spelling, and grammar. I print the DQ answers and actually mark them up. I take off one point per error. Common problems that surfaced in the Module One DQs related to correct representation of titles, use of commas in sentences, and apostrophes.

Let's tackle the first one first, the punctuation of titles. You can find this rule stated on the Purdue OWL website (a great resource for you as a writer!). You will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the rules for use of quotation marks and italics. Since we have both short stories and a novel in Module Two, you will need to use the titles of these works in your DQs.
Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab): Punctuation

Once you think you understand this rule, put it into practice in your Discussion Question Answers.

Good luck with this project...

Nailing the Quizzes

Several of you have asked about how to do well on the quizzes. Reading carefully with your wits about you is the way to excell. Here are some suggestions for reading actively:

• Write in your book
• Use those little plastic flags to mark important events or ideas
• Underline passages you like or that you have questions about
• Write comments in the margins
• Make a page of notes for each book/story with lists of characters, important events, ideas, descriptions and reference the things on your lists with page numbers
• Ask questions of each other or of me by email
• Read the DQs before you read the book/story; looking for answers to questions you have improves the quality of your reading

Once you are used to working within the time limit you will know how many questions you can look up answers to during the time period. Use your notes and your texts as you take the quiz.

Keep thinking as you read each assigned book/story how that particular reading illustrates the American experience. That's the big idea we're going for. We are trying to get a sense of what America was like during the period covered by a particular piece of writing. Then at the end, we will try to put everything together and take perceptions about the last 140 years away from this class.

Hope this helps you read better and get more quiz points.
KVB