Writers such as Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne became known as the key figures in the Dark Romantic sub-genre that emerged out of Transcendentalism.
American literature also found its voice through poetry during the 19th century, particularly in the works of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. The two poets produced remarkably dissimilar bodies of work. Whitman rose to prominence during the American Civil War with his free verse extolling the virtues of democracy and the
Dickinson, on the other hand, lived a sheltered, introverted life, and her verse reflects this. She was more obsessed by morbid, unusual themes than Whitman, and she utilized a distinctive style of punctuation that continues to beguile critics and scholars to this day.
The late 19th century would give rise to Realism, a style of fiction writing that intended to capture the way people in America actually spoke and lived. Mark Twain was one of the key figures in this movement. His literary style was in many ways influenced by the direct speech of journalism, and he helped capture a distinctly American vernacular through such famous works as the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Henry James was another major American realist. Although he spent most of his life in Europe, he wrote about Americans like him who were either traveling or living in Europe, and attempted to explore their psychological states in a realistic fashion.
OCTAVIO PAZ "TRANSPLANTED LANGUAGES" Octavio Paz's 1990 Nobel Lecture accentuated the issue of transplanted languages and the literature that emerged in a transplanted culture. Latin-American and Caribbean literature is good example of the use of transplanted languages since the influence of European and American cultures is quite pronounced. When people migrate from one place to another or are forced to endure foreign rule, the impact on the language is usually the
Colonialism and Imperialism in Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, And Apocalypse Now The shadow of colonization: Projecting European anxieties onto nonwhite peoples The Jungian concept of 'the shadow' is not that 'the shadow' is inherently dark or evil: rather, it is a hidden part of an individual or collective subconscious that is a repository of all of the aspects of society wishes to hide. The shadow' may contain elements of forbidden
Colonialism & Resistance There is a scene in the documentary film Jane Goodall's Path in which an elder living on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is interviewed. Looking directly at the camera, the elder tells how he lost his sixteen-year-old son to suicide. His bewilderment apparent, he tells how many other young people living in Pine Ridge have killed themselves, too. He reveals that the rate of alcoholism is 90%.
American Revolution Criticisms against and praise for colonialism in America: A comparative analysis of "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine and "Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion" by Peter Oliver The declaration of King George III of the United Kingdom that America is in an active state of rebellion in August 23, 1775, marked the opportunity for Britain's 13 colonies in the country to be liberated from British colonialism. The path towards
He notes that "anticolonialist critics have sought to "demystify the national myths" of empire and to write an alternative history of the colonial encounter" by focusing on "the politics of the early modern English-Native American encounter" with an eye towards "moments of textual rupture and contradiction in early modern texts such as The Tempest" (Cefalu 85). One may identify the scene of Prospero's accusation as one such moment, and
Blues The title of Sherman Alexie's first novel, Reservation Blues, sums up the two central themes that reverberate throughout the story: reservation life and the particular, peculiar status of blues music in American history and identity. The novel follows the story of a Native American blues rock band based near Spokane, Washington, whose rise and fall is dictated, at least partially, by the cursed guitar of blues legend Robert Johnson. However,
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