ENGLISH 339: SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE II (from 1865)

Lesley Ginsberg, Ph.D.
Office: 1007 Columbine Hall 
Email: lginsber@uccs.edu
Campus Phone: 262-4007 
Mailbox: 1042 Columbine Hall
Office Hours: Thursdays 4:30-6pm., and by appointment.

AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1865-1914: REALISM, NATURALISM, AND THE "NEW WOMAN."

Introduction: The Civil War, Photography, and the development of Realism and Naturalism in American Literature.  

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770.  Commemorates the death of General
Wolfe in the French and Indian War, 1759.  This is an example of "history painting."
click on image for a larger view.  

Library of Congress, archive of Civil War Photographs.  Here is a more selective group of Civil War Photographs from the National Archives.

To refresh your memory of the decades leading up to the Civil War, click here for a timeline.  

Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."  Click here to view an online version of Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, originally published as The Cynic's Word Book.  

Stephen Crane, "An Episode of War" (741-3, 787-90). To view a set of an army surgeon's tools from the Civil War, click on the link.  To read more about civil war medicine and the conditions soldiers faced, click here.  Images of shattered but surviving soldiers can be viewed at the National Museum of Health and Medicine (warning: these are difficult images).  

   

        Clemens as an apprentice printer, about 14 yrs. old.

Here is the U. of Virginia's hyperlinked edition of Huckleberry Finn, with original illustrations and contemporary reviews of the novel.

Click here for the comprehensive "Mark Twain in His Times" Site, by Prof. Stephen Railton, UVA. This site includes advertising materials as well as searchable editions of other Twain works.  

Here is a link to the PBS Mark Twain Scrapbook, contributed by Sarah Sosbe and Jennifer Swan.

Here are two cartoons depicting the state of race-relations in the US when Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn, cited in Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Was Huck Black? (New York: Oxford UP, 1993).

Check out the sentimental/ graveyard poetry of Lucretia M. Davidson and Julia A. Moore.

For her oral presentation, Sarah Sosbe has created a page entitled "African-American
Literature's debt to Mark Twain, Analyzed through his works Huckleberry Finn and 
Pudd'nhead Wilson."  She adds a link to the Schomberg Library's Images of African-Americans in the Nineteenth-Century.  Jennifer Swan has contributed a page on "humor in Huckleberry Finn," as both a plain page and a powerpoint slide show.  Marc Peralta uses the most controversial aspects of the novel as his starting point.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published just after reconstruction formally ended (1877) and the "Jim Crow" Laws were instituted.  Click here to discover the origins of the name "Jim Crow" and to explore the resonances between blackface minstrelsy and Twain's novel.

Frank Norris, "A Plea for Romantic Fiction." Click here for a Norris site that includes links to on-line short stories.

               

Click here for a comprehensive webiste of John Singer Sargent's
paintings.  Sargent and James were friends.  Click here to read an article that James wrote about Sargent.

Here's a humorous post-card from the progressive era, from the U.C. Davis History Project.

Click here for a site dedicated to the New Woman, focussing on the 1910s through the 
1920s.  

Henry James, "Daisy Miller."    
Click here for M. Gaffney's analysis of gender inequities in "Daisy Miller," along with a page full of useful links. Don't miss Dana Miller's page on "Daisy Miller."

Edith Wharton, "Roman Fever." View the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition, "Edith Wharton's World."
Read James Bergstrom's take on "Roman Fever" here. A story by Wharton that makes a good pair with "Daisy Miller" is "Roman Fever."  You may read it if you wish using one of two online e-texts.  Choose one link or the other.  You may print at no cost at the Computer Lab, Columbine Hall 231.  

In the stories we're reading, both Wharton and James focus on the trials and tribulations of the upper classes.  How did the other half live?  Click here to view one of late Nineteenth-Century America's most important documentaries exposing working class poverty in New York City, a hypertext edition of How the Other Half Lives (1890) by Jacob Riis.

 Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" (743-60);   Jack London, "To Build a Fire" (817-27); Upton Sinclair, excerpts from The Jungle (handout). 
    Melissa Nicoletto has contributed a page rich with information, images, links, and annotations of websites related to Jack London and the Yukon Gold Rush. Here are some quick links to the sites Melissa finds most valuable: e-texts and images from the U.C. Berkeley archives, and information about the Yukon gold rush of 1897-8 from PBS.                        
    Cynthia MacFarlane-Picard has created page of links related to London's experience in the Yukon gold rush.
   

Bonnie Jean Thornley has created a power-point slide show, some selected links, and an annotation bibliography of scholarly articles re "Upton Sinclair: Muckraker, Socialist, Naturalist." 

 

Gilman, "The Yellow Wall-paper" and "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wall-paper'" (656-70).
Gilman struggled to publish "The Yellow Wall-paper," sending it first to the Atlantic Monthly, where the story was rejected by editor Horace E. Scudder:
 

"Dear Madam, Mr. Howells has handed me this story.  I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have been made myself.  Sincerely yours, H. E. Scudder."

 Gilman was a firm believer in the right to vote (women won the right to vote on the federal level in the United States in 1920).  Click here for illustrations and texts that contextualize Gilman's work in relation to the ongoing struggle for women's suffrage.
    Gilman was famously subjected to the "rest cure," which drives the protagonist of "The Yellow Wall-paper" insane.  Gilman was treated by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, who founded and popularized the rest cure.  Read an excerpt from Mitchell's description of the rest cure.  Read literary critic Elaine Showalter on the rest cure.  Don't miss Jill Hare's Gilman page.

Dickinson, poems in the Norton, plus her letters (Norton Vol. C).  To read a contemporary poet's response to Dickinson, see Adrienne Rich, "'I Am in Danger--Sir--'" (Norton E).
    Click here for Rachel Beck's Emily Dickinson Page, which includes close reading, commentary, links, and images of Dickinson's manuscripts.  
    Danielle Vaughn has created a page that relates Emily Dickinson to the Civil War, including links and an outline.                          

Kate Chopin, The Awakening.  Click here for a scholarly article about upper and middle-class women's dress in the late nineteenth-century.  
    Compare this quotation from Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House.  

Ellen Steinke and Beth Tomerlin created a Kate Chopin page including a timeline, a discussion of symbolism, an analysis of literary movements represented in The Awakening, and links.  

Check out an authoritative and complete page on Chopin created by Debbie Grimes, entitled "Spiritual, Social, and Sexual Awakening."

Erin Boeck offers an original Chopin page that includes an abstract of senior thesis on Chopin and Gilman that explores the politics of eating disorders in the late nineteenth century.  

Zitkala-Sa, "Childhood," "School Days," "Teacher" (846-75).  See Liz Farnham's page, "Zitkala-Sa: A Bridge Between Two Worlds." Follow Kelley Fishburn's powerpoint presentation on Zitkala-Sa. For more on Zitkala Sa, click on the links below:
Images of Zitkala-Sa from Dr. C. Lavender, CUNY
 Brief biography of Zitkala-Sa, and another.
Zitkala-Sa attended the Carlisle School; she taught there briefly.
Related essay: "Naming the Indians," Frank Terry, March 1897.
Images from Indian Boarding Schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and related site from UVA.

 

  Eastman, from From the Deep Woods to Civilization, (632-45).  

 

Booker T. Washington, from Up From Slavery (579-615); Gudrun McCollum's page on Booker T. Washington includes a thoughtful review, a comparison between Washington and Frederick Douglass, and links; click here for Becky Jensen's hyperlinked page on Booker T. Washington.W.E.B. Du Bois, from The Souls of Black Folk (711-36).  

Washington and DuBois were writing at a time that saw some of the worst violence against African-Americans this country has witnessed since the era of slavery.  This page offers excerpts from authoritative sources providing historical background to the sad story of lynching in America.  Another very disturbing site is based a book, Without Sanctuary, that chillingly documents the postcard souvenirs that document actual lynchings and that were bought and sold throughout the United States.  

AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1914-1945: MODERNISM

Just as realism & naturalism developed in tandem with the photograph, modernism, it could be argued, can be understood as a response in part to the birth of the moving image.  One of the defining events of American Modernism was the Armory Show of modernist art in New York City, 1912.  One of the best-known paintings exhibited in that show was Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" (1912).  This groundbreaking painting was inspired by the motion studies on film developed by Eadweard Muybridge in California. Click here for an exhibit of Muybridge's moving images. Here's another Muybridge site from the Smithsonian.

Sherwood Anderson, from Winesburg, Ohio (1143-1160); Click here for Pierre Lorea's Andersen site.  Zora Neale Hurston, excerpts from The Eatonville Anthology, "How it Feels to be Colored Me."  The contemporary artist Glenn Ligon has incorporated Hurston's words directly into his art.  Click here for an example from the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, or here for another.  Wesleyan University has also posted some samples of Ligon's art.  Ligon's incorporation of text owes a debt to the DADA and modernism of the nineteen teens and twenties.  DON'T MISS LIGON'S ART, INCORPORATING HURSTON AND RALPH ELLISON, ON DISPLAY IN THE ART GALLERY ON CAMPUS THROUGH 12 APRIL 2002 (Ryan Ourada and Nicole Wilson highly recommend the show). Click here for Nicole Wilson's Zora Neale Hurtston page, full of links.

 

Ezra Pound, "A Pact," "In A Station of the Metro" (1235-6).  Pound was one of the founders of Imagism.

Williams, "Spring and All," "The Red Wheelbarrow" (1219, 1221-2); Click here for Brittany Doyle's slideshow on William Carlos Williams, which includes detailed commentary plus links;

 

T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men." Eliot, "The Waste Land." Don't miss Ryan Ourada's page, "T.S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' and Dante."

Click here for a hypertext edition of "The Waste Land." Here is another hypertext work-in-progress.  Review articles about Eliot at this site from U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Click here to view the first page of the original manuscript of "The Waste Land."

Don't miss Carrie Schmidt's page on "The Waste Land," which includes a close reading of the section "A Game of Chess," and a link to a sound recording of Eliot reading from "The Waste Land."

Pound and Eliot are considered "high modernists."  How does modernism compare with the popular literature of the same time period?  Click here for online versions of American best selling literature, 1900 - 1930, which includes such authors as Zane Grey, Sinclair Lewis, Frank Norris, Upton Sincliar, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night.     
In 1927, O'Neill wrote out some memoirs of his to childhood to be used as fodder for future creative work.  Read this manuscript on-line.  Report on the similarities and the differences between O'Neill's portrait of his family in A Long Day's Journey Into Night and the what you discover in the manuscript.  How does the manuscript contribute to your understanding of the play and its characters? Click here for Jennifer Fuhrman's comprehensive page on Long Day's Journey Into Night.  Click here for Suzanna Skrabo's page on Eugene O'Neill, full of informative links.  And don't miss Julie Gregory's slideshow, "Eugene O'Neill: His Life as it Relates to Long Day's Journey Into Night," which is followed by an excellent annotated bibliography.  Bobbie Umenhoffer's O'Neill page is here.  

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929); click on the link for a hypertext edition.  The University of Mississippi maintains an excellent Faulkner site, including lots of helpful information about The Sound and the Fury.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.  It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
--Macbeth 5.5 (l.19-28).

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying.  Click here for Heather Evans' Faulkner contribution.  Jennifer Tripp has also contributed a Faulkner Page.  What did James Baldwin have to say about Faulkner?  And what famous writer called him "a god damned phoney"?  Check out Andrew Lemesany's Faulkner page for answers to these questions and more. 
As I Lay Dying was published in the 1930, during the height (or rather nadir) of the Great Depression.  Click on picture for more Dorothea Lang photos.  Don't miss the copy of this print now hanging in the University Center, Lower Level.  Check out the Depression-era photography of Walker Evans, who toured the South.  Faulkner's style can also be linked to the trend toward Cubism in modern art (Charles Demuth, Sail: In Two Movements, 1919).  Click here for some artworks documenting the influence of cubism on American art during the modernist era.   

Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1685-1704).  Codi Kissick has contributed a thoughtful page on Hemingway that explores the relationship of Hemingway's life to his work, as well as including an analysis of the animal imagery in the story.  Click here for Jaime Lanotte's page on "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."  

Dos Passos, from USA, The Big Money (Norton D).  Dos Passos was a visual artist as well as a writer...see Jim Gagnon's Dos Passos page for links and more.  Don't miss the reference to Colorado Springs.    

 

Here's a link to an informative site from Ohio State University on Prohibition, the New Woman (flapper), and other historical changes that inform Fitzgerald's work. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited" (1495-1511).  Renata Perkins offers a Fitzgerald page with many links. Sarah Gillespie's Fitzgerald page includes annotated links to different sites, including a modern dramatic interpretation of Zelda's life.   

AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT: CONTEMPORARY AND POST-MODERN

Skim Introduction and Timeline, Norton E (1953-1965). 

  Click here for a page on Ralph Ellison and his novel Invisible Man.

photo by Fred W. McDarrah, "Allen Ginsberg in a 5th Avenue Peace Demonstration to End the War in Vietnam," 26 March 1966. 

Ginsberg, "Howl," "A Supermarket in California"; click here for a manuscript page from "Howl."  Click here for a Ginsberg page from the University of Virginia.  "Where are we going, Walt Whitman?" ("Supermarket," l.8). 

 

  Jack Kerouac, "The Vanishing American Hobo" (handout); Lawrence Ferlinghetti, (pictured left). Don't miss Kristal Wolf's Kerouac page, with analysis, sources, pictures, and links.  

Denise Levertov, "In Mind" (2586)(Click here or search the Academy of American Poets site for some Levertov Links);

Sylvia Plath, "Morning Song," "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," "The Applicant" (2742 ff). Anne Sexton, "Sylvia's Death," "Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman" (2703-09); Adrienne Rich, "Storm Warnings, "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" (2711-18).  Listen to an audio clip of Plath reading "Daddy" in the months before her death.  Click here for an audio clip of Ted Hughes, who recalls the first time he laid eyes on Sylvia Plath, or read a review of Hughes's memoirs, Birthday Letters.  Charise Boomsma has created a web page on Sylvia Plath.  Click here for Chelsea Morris's Plath slide-show.  

Flannery O'Connor, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," "Good Country People" (2011-34).  Don't miss Jennifer Shaner's extensive O'Connor page, which includes a reading of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own."

James Baldwin, "Going to Meet the Man" (1999-2011);  begin Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.  What does Morrison have to say about Baldwin?  Check out Blythe Owen's comprehensive Baldwin page to answer this question and more.             

 

   Finish Morrison, The Bluest Eye.  Click on the characteristic image from the Dick and Jane readers (or click here) for Sarah Dalesandry's page on The Bluest Eye, packed with excellent links (image supplied by Sarah). Kristen DiFelcie has created a slideshow on The Bluest Eye.  Click here for Emily Cowan's slideshow on The Bluest Eye.  Click here for images from the Dick and Jane readers and the Alice and Jerry readers referred to in the novel.  Click here for a page that glosses some allusions in The Bluest Eye.