Literature (1)
Lecturer: Vinnichenko Oksana
Semester: Spring2011
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
What is literature?
Coming of the Word
The word "Literature" came into English from the
14th century in the sense of polite learning through
reading. Thus a man of literature, or a man of letters,
meant what we would now describe as a man of
wide reading. So, this word corresponds mainly to
the modern meaning of the word "literacy". From the
mid-18th century, literature referred to the practice
and profession of writing. This appears to be closely
connected with the heightened self-consciousness of
the profession of authorship. Since the 19th century,
literature has been the high skills of writing in the
special context of high imagination.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
What is literature?
Origin of Literature
Whence comes literature? Literature comes from
human interest in telling a story, in arranging words
in artistic forms, in describing in words some aspects
of our human experiences. This human activity
embodies human desire to express and share
experiences. At the beginning, the literary impulse
exists only in one's mind. It is the writer who turns
this impulse into literature：a story, a poem, a play, or
an essay, with the medium of language. It is a
writer's "performance in words" as Robert Frost
(American poet) once said. In this way it can be
appreciated by others. Therefore, we can define
literature as language artistically used to achieve
identifiable literary qualities and to convey
meaningful messages.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Characteristics of Literature
Literature is characterized by beauty of expression and form and by
universality of intellectual and emotional appeal. Literature as an art is
the creation of individuals and it is experienced by individuals. Yet,
creative artistic literature presents one of the essential sources for
studying the relation between humanity and society. Great works of
literature enables us to study the way in which people live out their social
roles. Literature shows not only the socialized behavior of individuals, but
also the process of their socialization as well; it speaks not only of
individual experience, but also of the meaning of that experience.
Therefore, a writer is a specialized thinker about the individual.
Literature shows us not only what a society is like in a certain age, but
also what individuals feel about it, what they hope from it, and how they
think they can change it or escape from it. The fictional characters see
and record not only the reality around them, but their hopes, wishes,
dreams, and fantacies as well. The social meanings of this inner life of the
individual are related to the central problems of social change.
Literature is important in human life because the writer of literature is not
bound to fact in quite the same way as the historian, the economist or the
scientist, whose studies are absolutely based on what has actually
happened, or on what actually does happen, in the world of reality. The
writer of literature, being less bound to fact, has more hope to comment
on the fact, to arrange it in unusual ways, and to speculate not only what
is, but on what ought to be, or what might be (for better or for worse).
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Who are the writers?
Writers are people with visionary or prophetic insight into
human life. They help all of us who read literature broaden and
deepen our knowledge of human affairs, whether in the
individual, the social, the racial, or the international sphere; they
enable us to understand the possibility of human life, both for
good and evil.
As readers of their works, we are made to understand how we
came to live at a particular time and place, with all its pleasures
and vexations and problems；we are also facilitated to be aware
of the ways onwards which are open to us, and that we shall
perhaps be able to make right rather than wrong choices.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Why do people read literature?
Reading for Pleasure
Howells (American novelist, playwright and literary critic) observed that the
study of literature should begin and end in pleasure. Apart from its role of
protest, education, cognition and aesthetic appreciation, literature is primarily to
give pleasure, to entertain those who voluntarily attend to it. There are, of
course, many different ways of giving pleasure or entertainment, ranging from
the most trivial and sensational to the most philosophical and profound. We
discover that literature which entertain us best does not keep us for long in the
other world of fantasy or unreality. The greatest pleasure and satisfaction to be
found in literature occurs when (as it often does) it brings us back to the
realities of human situations, problems, feelings, and relationships. This is
because literature is more than a copy of what is apparent to every eye. It is
imaginative and interpretative. It reflects a special view of reality.
Human interest in reading literature is universal, but different people may read
different literature and for different purposes because of their different tastes,
experience, and educational background. Individuals may change their reading
tastes depending on the current moods, on certain occasions, and on the
different stages of their lives. Books which are good to read in one's childhood
may loose attraction in one's adulthood. Student may read Ernest Hemingway
in the classroom by day and turn to a cloak-and-sword novel at home in the
evening. There is nothing strange about it, for one may have many purposes in
reading.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Why do people read literature?
Reading for Relaxation
Generally speaking, literature offers the reader an exciting narrative. It leads the way
for readers to an exciting world of experience that is different from their own. Thus,
literature succeeds in temporarily getting readers away from their own time and
place and sending them to some imaginary world that they otherwise would never
know. When readers are indulged in reading, they will put aside their problems and
obligations of everyday life for the time being. Modern life is full of pressure. It is
people's common desire to seek temporary relaxation from the stress in life. Reading
serves the purpose well and conveniently. Literature flourishes, in part at least,
because of such pleasant relaxation it affords the reader.
Reading to Acquire Knowledge
Literature gives readers not only pleasure but also knowledge and insight into the
nature of reality. The readers' interest in reading lies partly in the fact that in the
process of reading they acquire a good deal of information. Literature gives readers
an insight into the tradition, custom, beliefs, attitudes, folklore, values of the age in
which it is written. Whether it is in the form of a story, a poem, a play, or an essay,
literature always offers readers some new piece of information that broadens their
knowledge of the world. Certain other fundamental skills and capacities are also
developed through the reading of literature. They are important to readers not only in
their private pleasure or their personal philosophy, but also in the day-to-day
exercise of the responsibilities which come to them in the modern world as a result of
the educational qualifications they obtain. These skills include the capacities for
discrimination, judgment, and decision.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Why do people read literature?
Reading to Confront Experience
Doris Lessing (contemporary British novelist) states："Literature maps the
world for us, fleshing out what we get from newspaper articles and
television reports, giving us a parallel landscape infinitely rich and various
where we may stroll any time we like, tourists in imaginary world that
mirror real ones." Literature is appealing mainly because of its relationship
to human experience. It sheds light on the complexity and ambiguity of
human experiences and thus broadens readers' awareness of the
possibilities of experiences. Readers get immediate access to a wide
range of human experiences they otherwise might never know. As a
reader, he or she observes the characters' private as well as public lives,
their head thinking and heart feeling. An awareness of how other people
feel is, after all, a way of expanding and enriching one's own personality.
Literature not only gives readers a chance to participate in the experience
of others', but also tries to influence their attitudes and expectations. For
many, it is the only outlet to a large experience. For others, it is an indirect
satisfaction of some need for a philosophical or moral guidance, not set
out in rules, but work out, experimentally, in conduct.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Why do people read literature?
Reading for Artistic Appreciation
Under perfect discipline, literature can be studied for artistic
appreciation. The well-structured language manifests good
craftsmanship, and the beauty of expression and form enjoys
immortality. A story, a poem, a play or an essay is a self-contained
piece of art, with its unique structure and texture. It can be
analyzed according to literary theories and criteria. When we
approach literature in this way, we began to move in the direction
of literary criticism. Literary criticism is by no means negative or
fault finding. It is an attempt to clarify, explain and evaluate
literature from an aesthetic point of view. In fact, the more we learn
about how to analyze a story, a poem, a play, or an essay from an
artistic point of view, the greater our understanding and
appreciation of a literary work can be acquired , and greater still
the pleasure and enjoyment we can draw from it.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
How to improve reading skills?
Reading literature is different from reading texts of an average reading
course. You will have to spend less time on actual reading and language
development so that you can devote more time to gain a good
understanding of literature. Therefore, it is important to improve the skills
of reading literature. Here are a few tips for you：
1. You should form the habit of intelligent guessing at the meaning of
new words with the clues provided by the context. But for the key words
in the sentence, students need not check each new word in the dictionary.
You should gradually increase your reading speed in this way.
2. You should learn to notice details, to get the main idea, and to skim to
locate the most meaningful passages in a literary work.
3. You should cherish a strong desire to extract greater meaning from a
literary work by relating ideas found in your reading with your own
experience.
Of course, there are many other ways to improve the reading skills which
you yourself will discover in the process of your study. For example, you
would be very attentive while reading and form a habit of note-taking to
jot down your response to the literary text. You should better preview the
text and have a revision of what you have read. Besides, it helps a lot
sometimes if you compare notes or exchange ideas with someone else.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lesson Plan
American Literature:
Literary Eras and Authors
The First Semester
Section A Introduction: National Beginnings
1. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
– Selected Readings: Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanac
2. Washington Irving (1783-1859) – Selected Readings: Rip Van Winkle
3. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) – Selected Readings: The Last of Mohicans
4. Philip Freneau (1752-1832) – Selected Readings: The Wild Honey Suckle
5. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) – Selected Readings: To a Waterfrowl
6. Edgar Allan Poe (1809- 1849)
– Selected Readings: Annabel Lee, The Tell-Tale Heart
7. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) – Selected Readings: The Scarlet Letter
Section B Introduction: Romanticism and Reason
8. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Selected Readings: Nature, Self-Reliance
9. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) – Selected Readings: Walden
10. Herman Melville (1819-1891) – Selected Readings: Moby Dick
11. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) – Selected Readings: A Psalm of Life
12. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) – Selected Readings: Song of Myself
13. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) – Selected Readings: Selected poems
14. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
– Selected Readings: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
15. Stephen Crane (1871 -1900) – Selected Readings: The Red Badge of Courage
16. Henry James (1843-1916) – Selected Readings: Daisy Miller
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
The Second Semester
Section C Introduction: Realism and Reaction
17. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
18. Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
19. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
20. Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
21. Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956)
22. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1886-1940)
23. John Steinback (1902-1968)
Section D Introduction: Modern Voices in Prose and Poetry
24. Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
25. William Faulkner (1897-1962)
26. Robert Frost (1874-1963)
27. Archibald MacLeish (1892-), William Carlos Williams (1884-1963),
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
28. Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980)
29. Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
30. Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)
31. Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Theodore Roethke (1908-1963),
Randall Jarrell (1914-1965), James Wright (1927-1980)
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Why is there literature?
Wherever there are people there will be a
literature.
A literature is the record of human experience,
and people have always been impelled to write
down their impressions of life.
They do so in diaries and letters, in pamphlets
and books, and in essays, poems, plays, and
stories.
In this respect American literature is like any
other.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
American literature is the written or literary work
produced in the area of the United States and its
preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of
poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States
and Theater in the United States. During its early
history, America was a series of British colonies on
the eastern coast of the present-day United States.
Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked to the
broader tradition of English literature. However,
unique American characteristics and the breadth of
its production usually now cause it to be considered
a separate path and tradition.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Owing to the large immigration to Boston in the
1630s, the high articulation of Puritan cultural ideals,
and the early establishment of a college and a
printing press in Cambridge, the New England
colonies have often been regarded as the center of
early American literature. However, the first
European settlements in North America had been
founded elsewhere many years earlier. Towns older
than Boston include the Spanish settlements at Saint
Augustine and Santa Fe, the Dutch settlements at
Albany and New Amsterdam, as well as the English
colony of Jamestown in present-day Virginia. During
the colonial period, the printing press was active in
many areas, from Cambridge and Boston to New
York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
The dominance of the English language was hardly
inevitable.[1] The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in
German and was the largest book printed in any of the colonies
before the American Revolution.[1] Spanish and French had
two of the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that
now comprise the United States, and discussions of early
American literature commonly include texts by Álvar Núñez
Cabeza de Vaca and Samuel de Champlain alongside English
language texts by Thomas Harriot and John Smith. Moreover,
we are now aware of the wealth of oral literary traditions
already existing on the continent among the numerous different
Native American groups. Political events, however, would
eventually make English the lingua franca for the colonies at
large as well as the literary language of choice. For instance,
when the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, they
renamed it New York and changed the administrative language
from Dutch to English.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
From 1696 to 1700, only about 250 separate items were issued
from the major printing presses in the American colonies. This
is a small number compared to the output of the printers in
London at the time. However, printing was established in the
American colonies before it was allowed in most of England. In
England restrictive laws had long confined printing to four
locations: London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Because of
this, the colonies ventured into the modern world earlier than
their provincial English counterparts.[1]
Back then, some of the American literature were pamphlets and
writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a
European and colonist audience. Captain John Smith could be
considered the first American author with his works: A True
Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath
Happened in Virginia... (1608) and The Generall Historie of
Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Other
writers of this manner included Daniel Denton, Thomas Ashe,
William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe,
Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
The religious disputes that prompted settlement in
America were also topics of early writing. A journal
written by John Winthrop, The History of New
England, discussed the religious foundations of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edward Winslow also
recorded a diary of the first years after the
Mayflower's arrival. Other religiously influenced
writers included Increase Mather and William
Bradford, author of the journal published as a History
of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47. Others like Roger
Williams and Nathaniel Ward more fiercely argued
state and church separation. And still others, like
Thomas Morton, cared little for the church; Morton's
The New English Canaan mocked the religious
settlers and declared that the Native Americans were
actually better people than the British.[2]
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Puritan poetry was highly religious in nature, and
one of the earliest books of poetry published was the
Bay Psalm Book, a set of translations of the biblical
Psalms; however, the translators' intention was not
to create great literature but to create hymns that
could be used in worship.[2] Among lyric poets, the
most important figures are Anne Bradstreet, who
wrote personal poems about her family and
homelife; pastor Edward Taylor, whose best poems,
the Preparatory Meditations, were written to help him
prepare for leading worship; and Michael
Wigglesworth, whose best-selling poem, The Day of
Doom, describes the time of judgment. Nicholas
Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse.
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007
Lecture I, American Literature (1)
Autumn 2007