Do you see the hidden figure

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Do you see the hidden figure?
Big hint Its an arrow!
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Hemingways method

• There is seven-eighths of it under water for
  every part that shows. Anything you know you can
  eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.
  It is the part that doesnt show. If a writer
  omits something because he does not know it then
  there is a hole in the story.

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Seven ways to look at American Lit

• Historical connect works to American history
• Race/ethnicity/gender examine Americans
  diversity issues
• Class/culture/economics see how Americans have
  lived since 1865
• Literary influence writers responding to those
  who came before
• Critical strategies formal, psychological,
  reader-response, feminist, etc.
• Aesthetic getting pleasure from storytelling and
  poetry
• Educational experience become familiar with our
  greatest writers

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Read literature for the pleasure of it. Whatever
else you find will be the measure of what you
brought to the reading. Hemingway
Art is a lie that makes us realize the
truth. Picasso
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A few suggestions

• Accept people in lit, rather than judging them.
• Try to understand why they do and feel as they
  do.
• no single code of behavior
• nothing learned by condemning or judging
• Resist temptation to give advice.
• people in lit cant hear you
• unsolicited advice rarely followed
• Notice hidden figures (metaphors, symbols)
• Ask what work says about human behavior.

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Some famous American writers covered in ENG 201

• Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography)
• Washington Irving (Rip Van Winkle)
• Herman Melville (Moby Dick, etc.)
• James Fenimore Cooper (Deerslayer)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance)
• Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter)
• Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven)
• Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
• Emily Dickinson (our greatest poet?)

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America before 1865

• Less of a division between high and low
  culture
• 1850s stage show might feature singers, jugglers,
  acrobats, the staging of Richard III, and a
  farce.
• 1849 Astor Place riots over two competing
  productions of Macbeth 22 killed.
• In 1850s Mark Twains steamboat pilot-mentor
  recited Shakespeare from memory by the hour.

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America after 1865

• Civil War
• seemed romantic at first turned out to be
  horrific carnage
• America lost innocence forever
• The Gilded Age (Twains term) 1870s
• conspicuous wealth for a few, little wealth for
  everyone else
• industrialization and assembly lines

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America after 1865

• Clear division between high and low culture
• cultural capitalists philanthropists, old
  families became custodians of high culture
• vulgar low culture primarily for low-income
  masses
• huge libraries, museums, and symphony halls built
  by rich philanthropists to serve cultured people
• less affluent people intimidated in this
  environment

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America after 1865

• Changing demographics
• move from rural to urban from local to national
  culture
• literature of the period reflects change
• Scientific and social change
• Darwins Natural Selection survival of the
  fittest man is just another animal.
• threatened Christianitys view of mans
  superiority

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America after 1865

• Regionalist lit of the latter 19th century
• Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman New
  England
• Mark Twain California and Mississippi River area
• Kate Chopin Louisiana
• Jack London, Bret Harte California
• Hamlin Garland Ohio, Wisconsin (lived in West
  Salem)
• often showed affection for simpler way of life
  that was beginning to disappear

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America after 1865

• Due to all these changes, America was ready for a
  type of lit known as realism
• began in France term designated accurate,
  unembellished reporting of details of daily life
• realistic novel or story set in contemporary time
  and place, psychologically true to the common
  people, and told by a neutral narrator
• problems shown, but reader is left to draw
  conclusion

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What is literature?

• imaginative writing with a complexity that
  invites multiple readings and interpretations
• involves both readers and writers imaginations
• often constructs an emotional response in reader
• doesnt rely on easy sentimentality creates
  honest sentiment
• seeks to tell the truth, rather than what you may
  want to hear

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