American Tradition in Literature PDF Download

Author: George Perkins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780075546627
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 4000

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Author: Jack David Eller
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789140358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
What really happened on the first Thanksgiving? How did a British drinking song become the US national anthem? And what makes Superman so darned American? Every tradition, even the noblest and most cherished, has a history, none more so than in the United States—a nation born with relative indifference, if not hostility, to the past. Most Americans would be surprised to learn just how recent (and controversial) the origins of their traditions are, as well as how those origins are often related to such divisive forces as the trauma of the Civil War or fears for American identity stemming from immigration and socialism. In pithy, entertaining chapters, Inventing American Tradition explores a set of beloved traditions spanning political symbols, holidays, lifestyles, and fictional characters—everything from the anthem to the American flag, blue jeans, and Mickey Mouse. Shedding light on the individuals who created these traditions and their motivations for promoting them, Jack David Eller reveals the murky, conflicted, confused, and contradictory history of emblems and institutions we very often take to be the bedrock of America. What emerges from this sideways take on our most celebrated Americanisms is the realization that all traditions are invented by particular people at particular times for particular reasons, and that the process of “traditioning” is forever ongoing—especially in the land of the free.

Author: William W. Cook
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226789985
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Considering the singular experience of the African American writer, William W. Cook and James Tatum here argue that African American literature did not develop apart from canonical Western literary traditions but instead grew out of those literatures, even as it adapted and transformed the cultural traditions and religions of Africa and the African diaspora along the way.Tracing the interaction between African American writers and the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era and on into the present, the authors offer a sustained and lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of African American writers at a moment when our understanding of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of “classic” writing, especially as it was inflected by American racial politics.

Author: R. W. B. Lewis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226476810
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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The first really original book on the classical period in American writing that has appeared for a long time.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781533836762
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 891

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Author: John Michael Vlach
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820312339
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Included in the examples are works from the Charleston and Old Slave Mart museums and the ironwork of Philip Simmons.

Author: M. Stewart
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230101526
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Esteemed contributors expand the range of possibilities for reading, understanding, and teaching children's literature as ethnic literature rather than children's literature in this ambitious collection.

Author: Gayl Jones
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674530249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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The powerful novelist here turns penetrating critic, giving usâe"in lively styleâe"both trenchant literary analysis and fresh insight on the art of writing. âeoeWhen African American writers began to trust the literary possibilities of their own verbal and musical creations,âe writes Gayl Jones, they began to transform the European and European American models, and to gain greater artistic sovereignty.âe The vitality of African American literature derives from its incorporation of traditional oral forms: folktales, riddles, idiom, jazz rhythms, spirituals, and blues. Jones traces the development of this literature as African American writers, celebrating their oral heritage, developed distinctive literary forms. The twentieth century saw a new confidence and deliberateness in African American work: the move from surface use of dialect to articulation of a genuine black voice; the move from blacks portrayed for a white audience to characterization relieved of the need to justify. Innovative writingâe"such as Charles Waddell Chesnuttâe(tm)s depiction of black folk culture, Langston Hughesâe(tm)s poetic use of blues, and Amiri Barakaâe(tm)s recreation of the short story as a jazz pieceâe"redefined Western literary tradition. For Jones, literary technique is never far removed from its social and political implications. She documents how literary form is inherently and intensely national, and shows how the European monopoly on acceptable forms for literary art stifled American writers both black and white. Jones is especially eloquent in describing the dilemma of the African American writers: to write from their roots yet retain a universal voice; to merge the power and fluidity of oral tradition with the structure needed for written presentation. With this work Gayl Jones has added a new dimension to African American literary history.

Author: Leon Howard
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Author: Tessa Roynon
Publisher: BAAS Paperbacks
ISBN: 9781474434041
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book is an invaluable survey of the allusions to ancient Greek and Roman culture in the work of seven major modern American novelists: Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth and Marilynne Robinson.