For Tuesday

Write a page or two on the following topic:

In "Tragedy and the Common Man," Arthur Miller writes: "Tragedy enlightens and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts."

Based on the above definition of tragedy: is Eddie Carbone a tragic figure? or is he not a tragic figure? Explain.

Tragedy and the Common Man

"Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949), Arthur Miller

"In this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection. For one reason or another, we are often held to be below tragedy-or tragedy above us. The inevitable conclusion is, of course, that the tragic mode is archaic, fit only for the very highly placed, the kings or the kingly, and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied.

I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classic formulations, such as the Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instance, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations. . . . " [more]

A View From The Bridge

Arthur Miller appears before HUAC (1956)

Allen Ginsberg "HOWL"

Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" can be found here. You can also hear Ginsberg read the poem here. (An alternative version - - with John Turturro reading the poem - - can be found here.)

Harlem Renaissance assignment

Here's what you'll need to do to complete this assignment:

1) choose one poem from the various Harlem Renaissance writers (Hughes, Cullen, Brown, Bennett, Toomer) that we've looked at;

2) review our discussion of modernism, particularly the four tenets of modernism that I proposed;

3) use 2 to 3 pages to answer both of the following questions:

- - - in what ways should this poem be considered a "modernist" poem?

- - - in what ways does this poem challenge or defy the aesthetics of modernism?

4) the assignment is due on Tuesday, December 9, at the beginning of class.

Good luck!

Ma Rainey

Ma Rainey (1886-1939)

You can listen to Ma Rainey sing "Prove It on Me Blues" by clicking here. Other Ma Rainey recordings can be found here.

Music of the 30s

Hat tip to Mike M. - - who emailed this info about a concert on Treasure Island this Saturday, November 1:

MILL VALLEY PHILHARMONICPRESENTS

The Works Progress Administration:
Orchestral Music and Art of the 1930s

SPONSORED BY TREASURE ISLAND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY


CELBRATE THE 75^TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGNING OF THE NEW DEALAND THE HISTORY OF YOUR OWN COMMUNITY BY ATTENDING A FREE CONCERT

More info here.

Radical Poetry (for Tuesday, October 23, 2008)

It took me a while to transcribe the poems - -but here's a selection of poetry from the 1935 anthology, Proletarian Literature in the United States. (You can print out the web page - - or download the .pdf file.) You can also read Joseph Freeman's introduction to the whole anthology here.

Hemingway, for Thursday, October 16

Read In Our Time up to Chapter XIII. Don't forget to give your hi-liter a workout on The Battler. And, don't forget to head over to the Eliot wiki to work on your motif entry.

Hemingway, "In Our Time"

Forgot to mention this on Thursday: you want to read up to Chapter 7 in Hemingway's "In Our Time." I.e. past the end of "A Very Short Story."

Got a blog?

Mike M. told me about his blog on Thursday. I noticed that a couple of other students also have blogs. If you have a blog, enter your blog url in the comments section of this post. I'll start up a list of blogs here on our motherblog. Let's get blogrolling!

Eliot Wiki

The Eliot wiki is up and running. Click here to access it. The home page contains some instructions about using a wiki. The "Project Page" contains more detailed instructions about how to use the wiki for our project. Be sure to read it. If you have questions or problems after you've looked at the wiki and tried to enter your contributions, use the "threads" feature of the wiki to communicate the questions, problems, issues to me and your classmates. (Instructions on how to do this are on the wiki home page.)

Work on adding and elaborating motifs for next class. I.e. by Tuesday morning, your motif pages should be stuffed full of text, ideas, insights, and truthiness.

Enjoy!

Review the 1913 Armory Show

Many historians point to the Armory Show of 1913 as an authentic starting point for American modernism. From February 17th to March 15th, 1913, organizers presented an exhibition of about 1250 paintings, sculptures, and other works in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in New York City. Many critics and viewers were shocked by the show; many, especially younger, artists and critics were energized and inspired by the show.

For next class, instead of meeting in the Humanities building. We'll meet in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue. Virtually, of course. Instead of coming to class on Thursday, September 25, point your browser to: the Armory galleries. Take a tour of the show. And, afterward, write a 2 page review (typed) of the show. Address your review to a friend who asks the question: what makes this stuff modern? Hand in the review on Tuesday, September 30.

Modernism

We'll obviously be talking a lot about modernism in class - - but it's worthwhile to take a look at one many consider to be one of the earliest (of many) manifestoes of modernism - - F.T. Marinetti's 1909 declaration of Italian "Futurism."

Here's a partial list of Marinetti's principles of Futurism:

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
. . .
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
. . .
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
. . .
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

Full text here.


Some of the big questions we'll try to ask and answer about modernism include:

How do literary movements and texts reflect social and cultural contexts?

What kinds of work do readers do with literary texts?

To what extent is modernism liberating? Oppressive?

What is the picture of "modernity" - - the modern world - - painted by modernism? How accurate does it feel? What does it leave out?

How does modernism attack tradition? What are the benefits of suspecting tradition? Drawbacks?

The Sonnet

SONNET XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 5
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; 10
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

Essay #1

For a copy of the assignment for Essay #1 - - click here.

Questions? Ask me.

The melting pot in action . . .

Workers at the River Rouge Ford plant - - in Ford's pageant, they enter the "melting pot" in ethnic garb and "emerge" in the plain clothes of the American workers:

Trans-national America . . .

A brief selection of American cartoons about immigration and immigrants from the end of the 19th century:

"Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"

Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk consistently juxtaposes "high," canonical poetry with musical notations of black spirituals. Here's a recording of Sam Cooke singing "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," the musical notes that lead off Du Bois's first chapter, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings." You can find the lyrics below the video.




Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Glory, Hallelujah!

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Glory, Hallelujah!

Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down;
Oh, yes, Lord.
Sometimes I'm almost to the ground;
Oh, yes, Lord.

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Glory, Hallelujah!

I wish that I could find a way;
Oh, yes, Lord.
But life is just one long, rainy day;
Oh, yes, Lord.

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen;
Glory, Hallelujah!

Technology, Change, Everyday Life

In "The Dynamo and the Virgin," Henry Adams struggles to understand the significance of the dynamo - - a huge and awesome machine. But, technology also represents and promotes changes in everyday life. The period from 1890 to 1910 was an epoch of wide-ranging and deep diffusion of new, everyday technologies - - from the telephone to the zipper, the electric kitchen range, and mass-circulation magazines. (You can find an extensive timeline of inventions here.)

Pictured above, you'll find images of three technologies that infiltrated everyday life over the course of the 1890s: Jell-O, the typewriter, and the popular genre of science fiction writing. Ask yourself some questions about each of these three changes: what changes within the culture (or, more specifically, the office or the home) are these technologies responding to? how do they reflect new social relations? what attitudes toward technology and change do they communicate? what kind of changes within the society and culture do they promote? (Clicking on the images should take you to a helpful wikipedia page on each.)

Welcome to Modern American Lit

This will be the motherblog for our course - - English 528.01 American Literature, 1914 to 1960. Here you'll find copies of our syllabus, announcements, assignments, and any other general information relating to the class. Enjoy!