but here is a pretty solid beginning on review for the Comp Exam.
19th Century American (10)
1) Assorted Stories, Hawthorne .
2) Incidents in the Life…, Jacobs .
3) Little Women, Louisa May Alcott .
4) The Adventures of Huck Finn, Twain.
5) The Awakening, Kate Chopin .
6) Selected poetry, Edgar Allan Poe .
7) Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman .
8) Selected Poetry, Emily Dickinson .
9) Maggie…, Stephen Crane .
10) Autobiography of…, Douglass .
Romanticism 1800-1860 characterized by: character sketches, slave narratives, poetry, and short stories. They valued feeling and intuition over reasoning. There was a journey away from corruption of civilization and limits of rational thought toward the integrity of nature and freedom of the imagination. They helped install proper gender behavior for men and women. They also allowed people to re-imagine the American past and let themselves feel undue pride. There was a massive expansion of magazines, newspapers, and book publishing. (Novels were still not popular in the early part of the century as they were believed to incite unrest.) There was a lot of slavery debating going on. The Industrial Revolution brought ideas about how “the old way of doing things is now irrelevant.”
Major writers of the period include: Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, Emily Dickinson (though she is more important in retrospect as most of her work wasn’t published until after her death), and Walt Whitman.
Darwin published in 1859.
American Renaissance/Transcendentalism 1840-1860 characterized by: poetry, short stories, and novels. Transcendentalists: true reality is spiritual; comes from 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant; idealists, self-reliance and individualism stressed. There were also anti-Transcendentalists who tried to hold readers’ attention through dread of a series of terrible possibilities; they tended to feature landscapes of dark forests, extreme vegetation concealed ruins with horrific rooms, and depressed characters. They also used symbolism to great effect, believed sin pain and evil exist. This period has had far-reaching effects because we still see portrayals of alluring antagonists whose evil characteristics appeal to ones sense of awe, we still see stories of the persecuted young girl forced apart from her true love, and we still read of people seeking the true beauty in life and in nature, and a belief in true love and contentment.
Major writers of the period include: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Poe.
Realism 1855-19teensish characterized by: novels, short stories, an objective narrator, does not tell reader how to interpret story, and dialogue from voices from around the country. Focus on social realism: aims to change a specific social problem; aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it. The Civil War brought a demand for a “truer” type of literature that did not idealize people or places.
Major writers of the period include: Twain, Crane, Douglass, and Chopin.
Huck Finn is often considered to be the first modern novel.
20th Century American (13)
1) The Age of Innocence, Wharton .
2) The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald .
3) Their Eyes Were… , Hurston .
4) The Glass Menagerie, Williams .
5) Death … /The Crucible, Miller .
6) A Good Man is Hard…, O’Connor .
7) A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry .
8) Beloved, Toni Morrison .
9) House Made of Dawn, Momaday .
10) Howl & Selected Poems, Ginsburg .
11) Collected Poems, Frost: .
12) Selected poetry, Pound .
13) Selected poetry, Eliot .
Modern 1900-1950 characterized by: novels pays, poetry (there was a major resurgence after the deaths of Whitman and Dickinson), highly experimental writing as authors looked for unique styles, and the use of interior monologue and stream of consciousness. The attitude of the time was very optimistic, there was great admiration for America as a new Eden as everyone was obsessed with the American Dream, and there was a major emphasis on the importance of the individual. Writers were highly influenced by Marx and Darwin as well as the overwhelming technological changes happening. This period showed the rise of the youth culture as well as spanning WWI and WWII.
Major writers include: Fitzgerald, Cummings, Frost, Eliot, Pound, Rand, Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Faulkner.
Harlem Renaissance 1920’s characterized by: allusions to African American spirituals, the structure of blues songs in poetry as well as a tendency to use superficial stereotypes to reveal complex characters. This movement contributed to the birth of gospel music. There was a mass African American migration to northern urban centers so AAs had increased access to media and publishing.
Major writers include: DuBois, McKay, Toomer, Cullen, Hurston, and Hughes.
Postmodernism 1950 to present characterized by: mixing of fantasy with nonfiction so that the lines of reality are blurred for the reader, no heroes, concern with individual in isolation, social issues as writers align with feminist and ethnic groups, usually humorless, narratives, metafiction, present tense, and magical realism. This writing erodes the distinctions between classes of people and insists that values are not permanent but only local or historical. Influenced by post-WWII prosperity and a media culture that interprets values.
Major writers include: Plath, Rich, Sexton, Morrison, Walker, Miller (he’s sometimes considered Modern), Vonnegut Salinger, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kesey.
Contemporary 1970-present characterized by: fiction and non-fiction narratives, anti-heroes, concern with connections between people, emotion-provoking, humorous irony, storytelling emphasized, and autobiographical essays.
Major writers include: Cisneros, Soto, Angelou, Tan, Kingsolver, Kingston, Graham, Clancy, Walker, Butler, Card, and O’Brien.
I know these were supposed to be your reading notes, etc., but this was actually really helpful for me as a way to put many of the books I’ve read and want to read in a historical context. If only I actually had time to read for fun again. Thanks! 🙂
I know these were supposed to be your reading notes, etc., but this was actually really helpful for me as a way to put many of the books I’ve read and want to read in a historical context. If only I actually had time to read for fun again. Thanks! 🙂
whoops.
I thought I was logged in for that last comment.
whoops.
I thought I was logged in for that last comment.
showing my personal reading interest bias here, but where are
Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, J.R.R. Tolkien, Larry Niven, William Gibson, Michael Crichton, Anne McCaffrey, Philip K. Dick, or Douglas Adams? I mean, Clancy is on there (and OK, I like him, too), but are these writers any less representative of their periods and genres, or less influential on society, or of less literary merit, than Tom Clancy? Oh, I see Card is on there, too, and assuming it’s Orson Scott Card (who’s work I also like even though I think he’s personally a self-important prick) and not some other Card, then I wonder why him instead of any of these others?
I mean, I’m not at ALL suggesting that you take time right now to study something that’s not on your test, or even asking you to take the time to sate my curiosity while your test is looming. But I’m interested, afterwards, if you could explain the absence of these other authors. And I’m not trying to suggest that you’re accountable for the decision, or expecting you to defend the curriculum given to you that you didn’t design, either. I’m just curious about the choices that went into the curriculum’s makeup, and engaging you in a bit of discussion along one potential intersection of common interest.
And good luck with all this studying, BTW. Stay confident; you’re smart and well educated and you’ll do swell.
Re: showing my personal reading interest bias here, but where are
First of all I said “some important writers” not “the important writers” I listed a couple to help me keep in mind the time period and perspective. Some of the people on your list are relevant to my studies, many (most) are not. It takes a long time before most pop-fiction is considered any kind of important and Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre fiction is widely scorned whether you think they have merit or not.
I don’t create the canon, I just study from the list I am handed.
Here is my reading list: http://www.sjsu.edu/english/graduate/ma/macomps.html You can decide how you feel about it and yell at my department if you see fit. 🙂
That’s all the debate I have time for right now. I would be happy to give more opinions on this topic at a later point though. 🙂
Re: showing my personal reading interest bias here, but where are
Thanks for the note, especially the clarification. I didn’t think you made up the list, I didn’t want to debate, or yell at your department, and especially not take time from your studies. I _would_ like your opinions on the topic at a later point, especially since you offered, because I was just curious and interested.
Re: showing my personal reading interest bias here, but where are
Thanks for the note, especially the clarification. I didn’t think you made up the list, I didn’t want to debate, or yell at your department, and especially not take time from your studies. I _would_ like your opinions on the topic at a later point, especially since you offered, because I was just curious and interested.
Re: showing my personal reading interest bias here, but where are
First of all I said “some important writers” not “the important writers” I listed a couple to help me keep in mind the time period and perspective. Some of the people on your list are relevant to my studies, many (most) are not. It takes a long time before most pop-fiction is considered any kind of important and Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre fiction is widely scorned whether you think they have merit or not.
I don’t create the canon, I just study from the list I am handed.
Here is my reading list: http://www.sjsu.edu/english/graduate/ma/macomps.html You can decide how you feel about it and yell at my department if you see fit. 🙂
That’s all the debate I have time for right now. I would be happy to give more opinions on this topic at a later point though. 🙂
showing my personal reading interest bias here, but where are
Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, J.R.R. Tolkien, Larry Niven, William Gibson, Michael Crichton, Anne McCaffrey, Philip K. Dick, or Douglas Adams? I mean, Clancy is on there (and OK, I like him, too), but are these writers any less representative of their periods and genres, or less influential on society, or of less literary merit, than Tom Clancy? Oh, I see Card is on there, too, and assuming it’s Orson Scott Card (who’s work I also like even though I think he’s personally a self-important prick) and not some other Card, then I wonder why him instead of any of these others?
I mean, I’m not at ALL suggesting that you take time right now to study something that’s not on your test, or even asking you to take the time to sate my curiosity while your test is looming. But I’m interested, afterwards, if you could explain the absence of these other authors. And I’m not trying to suggest that you’re accountable for the decision, or expecting you to defend the curriculum given to you that you didn’t design, either. I’m just curious about the choices that went into the curriculum’s makeup, and engaging you in a bit of discussion along one potential intersection of common interest.
And good luck with all this studying, BTW. Stay confident; you’re smart and well educated and you’ll do swell.