ELIT 48C: Class # 16

Convince or Persuade?

You really need a vacation, You work too hard!

Hmm, am I persuaded or convinced?

Strictly speaking, one convinces a person that something is true but persuades a person to do something.

“Pointing out that I was overworked, my friends persuaded [not convinced] me to take a vacation.

Now that I'm relaxing on the beach with my book, I am convinced [not persuaded] that they were right.”

Read more: Easily Confused or Misused Words | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0200807.html#ixzz2T7jurahi

Chair Poet? [[Poetry is]...the

record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds...

- Shelley

AGENDA

Essay #1 Questions? Discussion: Applying African American

Criticism Lecture

Am Lit since 1945 Postmodernism Klages

Author Introduction: Ralph Ellison

Writing Tips Write about literature in present tense Avoid using “thing,” “something,”

“everything,” and “anything.” Avoid writing in second person. Avoid using contractions. Cut Wordy Sentences Avoid run-on sentences and fragments. Check for misused words Put commas and periods inside of quotation

marks

Miscellaneous Questions to ask yourself:

Does the paper follow MLA guidelines? For help, click on “MLA Guidelines” and view the

“Basic MLA format” video. Is the page length within assigned limits? Is the font type and size within the assigned

guidelines? Does the Header follow the assignment guidelines? Is the professor's name spelled correctly? Kim

Palmore Is your name spelled correctly? Does the paper have a title? Is it a good title? Is the

title in the appropriate location? Have you italicized book and movie titles and put

stories, articles, and poems in quotation marks?

Other Questions?

Essay #1 due Friday at noon

African American Criticism: “The Negro Artist and the Racial

Mountain” According to […] Lois Tyson one of the major tenants of African-

American criticism is the idea of the “voice of color”, or the idea that minority groups are better equipped to speak on matters regarding oppression because white people have not been put in the same compromising situations that minority groups have been placed into. Such a concept reveals itself in Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”. In it, Hughes deplores the Negro poet who wishes to shed the label of “negro” and exist solely as a poet. Such a mindset may be asserted as a form of enlightenment or racial colorblindness, but Hughes labels it as a kind of betrayal. Rather than embracing the unique set of circumstances that shaped a black artist (especially when he undoubtedly experienced some circumstances solely due to the fact that he is black), the black poet that does not wish to be a “negro poet” discards a valuable piece of his identity.

African American Criticism: “The Weary Blues”

What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of specific African American works? (Tyson)

Clearly, this poem is heavily influenced by Blues music, which originated as a type of African American folk music sung by slaves in the south. The main characteristics of Blues music, that I am aware of, are repetition of verse (repeating lines two or three times) and tone through content, which is usually defined by sadness, pain, or loss. In addition, Blues music/ poetry is written in black vernacular instead of standard white English. All these characteristics are present in Hughes poem because the subject is about a Negro playing the Blues on a piano. The first few lines of the poem establish the melancholy mood and tone through words such as, “droning,” “drowsy,” “mellow.” and “croon.” The next characteristic of Blues music appears in lines six and seven which repeat the phrase, “He did a lazy sway…” The repetition works as a means to emphasize the line and as a means to create a rhythmic quality to the verse, similar to musical lyrics.

African American Criticism: “Barn Burning”

Through the trials and tribulations of the Snopes family, Faulkner has unwittingly created a window into the life of African Americans of the time. The story opens with Sarty yearning for the pleasures that he cannot have but richer white people can experience indicating that the Snopes family is also oppressed by the white power structure. The warning from a “strange nigger” (800) is symbolic of Abner. It is as if Abner himself is warning them but the white power structure only sees him as a black man. There are other references to Abner associated with African Americans: his “stiff black back” (804) and his slave mentality “I reckon I’ll have a word with the man that aims to begin to-morrow to owning me body and soul for the next eight months” (803)

African American Criticism: The Great Gatsby

When you read Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” with the African American lens, I believe it is completely possible that Gatsby may have been African American. At this time in history fairer skinned African Americans would often attempt to pass for white to avoid the harsh effects of racism and segregation. One of the first signs that Gatsby may have be African American is he change his last name from Gats to Gatsby. African Americans attempting to pass would change their last name so they could start their new lives without the ties their last name carried. Gatsby also owned “more than 40 acres of lawn and garden”(9) and a mansion at West Egg. After slavery was abolished former slaves were promised 40 acres and mule in restitution. Tom notes that Gatsby’s “short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day” (Ch.3) he may have had curly hair he need to keep hidden to keep up his facade. Tom Buchanan on multiple occasions mentions African Americans in the beginning to possibly foreshadow the next events, “it’s up to us [white people], who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things” (17) He even goes as far as to insinuate that Gatsby may be African American, “Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.” (229)

American Literature 1945 to the Present

An Introduction

December 1, 1941, Washington, D.C. President Roosevelt addresses the people of the United States in his “fireside chat,” in which he told them “we are going to win the war and the peace that follows.”

Roosevelt’s words were prophetic: The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower. “This new power, experienced both at home and abroad, became a major force in reshaping American culture for the balance of the twentieth century” (NAAL 3).

World War II and Its AftermathThe war cost the lives of 50-70 million people world wide; almost quarter of million died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Historians and politicians continue to debate whether the use of nuclear weapons was necessary to end the war, but what remains undisputed is that the possibility of nuclear warfare radically changed the nature of global politics for the rest of the twentieth century.

World War II and Its AftermathThe Cold War between the United States and the U.S.S.R. was a delicate chess match between these two superpowers as they built up their nuclear arsenals and recruited (often aggressively) smaller nations to their sides. These "Package" shelters (1955) for large and small families were self-contained units that required no external connections and were capable of sustaining a family for three to five days without outside assistance. The fear of nuclear war was a consistent feature of post-war American life.

McCarthy group at hearings, June 7, 1954. Senator Joseph McCarthy (left), Pvt. G. David Schine (center), and Roy Cohn (right).

The Cold War was not only an arms race between the USA and the U.S.S.R. It was also an ideological battle over the merits of Western capitalism and Soviet socialism.

The efforts of Senator Joseph McCarthy to root out socialist influence in American political life became a focal point of media and popular attention. McCarthy’s allegations (which turned out to be exaggerated if not outright fabricated) that the U.S. government had been infiltrated by socialists spoke to the fear and anxiety that defined the moment.

World War II and Its Aftermath

World War II and Its Aftermath

J. Howard Miller’s We Can Do It poster from 1942.

The post World War II United States can be defined in terms of both economic prosperity and the radical transformation of cultural norms.

With men off to war “the vastly expanded workforce required increasing numbers of women. After [the war] many of these women were reluctant to return to homemaking; and then after a decade or so […], women emerged as a political force on behalf of their rights and opportunities in the workplace. This pattern extended to other groups as well. African Americans, whether they enlisted or were drafted, served in fighting units throughout the war and were unwilling to return to second-class status afterward; nor could a majority culture aware of their contribution continue to enforce segregation and other forms of prejudice so easily as before the war” (NAAL 4).

The Civil Rights Movement

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led an estimated 10,000 civil rights marchers out on the last leg of their Selma-to-Montgomery march. May 28, 1961, Montgomery, Alabama.

The Civil Rights Movement was one of the defining features of the postwar cultural revolution as thousands of African Americans took to the streets to demand their equal rights in society.

Voices of the Cultural RevolutionA group of women rally at the Statue of Liberty in support of the recent passage of the Equal Rights Amendment by the United States House of Representatives. August 10, 1970. The bill did not survive in the U.S. Senate.

Women as well as racial minorities seized upon the changing climate of the post-war years to demand greater equality.

Voices of the Cultural Revolution

Protesters at an anti-Vietnam War rally hold signs bearing antiwar and anti-draft slogans along with quotes from Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

“Active dissension within the culture emerged in response to military involvement in Vietnam, where in 1961 President Kennedy had sent small numbers of advisers to help the Republic of South Vietnam resist pressures from Communist North Vietnam. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon expanded and continued the U.S. presence; and an increasingly strident opposition—fueled by protests on American college campuses and among the country’s liberal intellectuals—turned into a much larger cultural revolution” (NAAL 6).

Voices of the Cultural Revolution

Gay and lesbian activists prepare for a Gay and Lesbian Pride parade in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. June 25, 1983, Des Moines, Iowa.

The riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City mark the beginning of the modern Gay Rights movement. Stonewall was a gay-friendly bar in the progressive Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan that was frequently subjected to police raids. On June 28, 1969, bar patrons actively resisted arrest and a series of riots broke out among the gay and lesbian residents of Greenwich Village. One year later, the first Gay and Lesbian Pride parades took place in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Such parades have been a staple of the Gay Rights movement for the last forty years.

All of this Post War Activity Stimulated another Political,

Social, and Artistic Turn: Postmodernism

According to Mary Klages, from a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.

2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.

3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).

4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.

5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.

6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.

7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.

Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage*, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.

*Bricolage is a processes by which traditional objects or language are given a new, often subversive, meaning and context. Art technique where works are constructed from various available materials ("found items" or mass-produced "junk"). A mashup or creation from a diverse range of existing items or ideas

But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then; let's just play with nonsense.

QHQs Mary Klages

1. Q: What is postmodernism?2. Q: Why is Postmodernist “mini-narratives” so important to this

time?1. Q: What might be some reasoning behind the shift away

from “grand narratives” of modernism towards the “mini narratives” of postmodernism?

2. Q: How does postmodernism’s “mini-narratives” help our way of life in an increasingly connected world?

3. Q: What are some main differences between modernism and postmodernism?1. Q: How are modernism and postmodernism different when

some of their main characteristics are the same, and why do I get the feeling that postmodernism is just a more hedonistic modernism?

4. Q: How does postmodernism’s rejection of modernism differ from modernism’s rejection of realism?

5. Q: If postmodernists believe the world has no meaning and celebrate that, then why are we still living?

1. Q: What does Klages mean when she states, “In postmodernism, however, there are only signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and with it the idea of signifieds that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signifieds.”

2. Q: Do you consider postmodernism to be progressive or regressive?

3. Q: How has the “ditching” of the conservative literary rules and methods from the Victorian Era allow writers to express themselves beyond strict forms and rigid proses?

4. Q: How has technology influenced postmodernism?5. Q: Mary Klages makes the comment that “feminist theorists

have found postmodernism so attractive” due to the fact that it often rejects conservative values. Aside from this, however, why else would postmodernism be valued by feminists?

6. Q: Could a completely postmodern society truly function? Could an ideology or society operate without a “grand narrative”, insteading favoring “mini-narratives” and as Klages states, “…making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability”?

Author Introduction: Ralph Ellison

Ralph Waldo Ellison was named after the celebrated poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, by his father who wanted his son to become a poet. Today Ellison is mostly remembered as the mastermind who wrote the emotive and gripping novel “Invisible Man” (along with many others) which met with much critical success, winning the National Book Award in 1953. 

Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on 1st March 1914. He was born to Ida Millsap and Lewis Alfred Ellison and had a brother Herbert Millsap Ellison. In his initial years Ellison and his family had to deal with difficult times. In 1965, Ellison received the honor of his book “Invisible Man” being declared the most important novel since the end of WW11 by survey of 200 prominent literary figures.

HOMEWORKRead “Postmodern Manifestos” 400-17Post #20 QHQ on one of the following:

Sukenick Gass Thompson OlsonO’Hara Bishop Ammons Lorde

Read Ralph Ellison, “The Prologue,” and “Battle Royal” from Invisible Man. 206-224Post #21 Choose one1. What does the reader know about the narrator solely on the basis of the

Prologue? Explain both what he reveals about himself explicitly and what inferences can be drawn, justifying your findings as you go along.

2. Why would the audience listening to the narrator’s speech have reacted so strongly to the narrator’s mistake? Discuss the implications of his slip of the tongue.

3. QHQ Essay #1 due Friday at noon