Survey

· spanish
· exploitation of resources
· native people subjugated
for labor
· Catholicism

· english
· settlement
· native people driven out and
expropriated
~ Protestantism

· Journal of first Voyage 1492
· wrote a lot about his experience (for Queen Sabella

· wrote Letters to Charles V1519-1526 about experiences
wonder: sense of completely overwhelmed about newness, difference

=> encountering resistance, it's becoming difficult, need of getting control over it

determination: insist hierarchies, colonial administration

a latin American debate
Bartolome de Las Casas (1774-1566) as a important figure

very important (counter figure)
brave voice advocating to an end of colonization
Dominican missonary; bishop of central America
important reference for critics of colonialism all over the world
I to bring religion all over the world they doing an awful job:
by slavery
↓ wrote Apologia
BUT never asked for the need of missionary mission

· expedition Narvez in 1527
· 5 ships > hurricane > 2 ships
-> after this they travelled and made it through Florida to Mexico City

· genuinely American literary genre (first American genre
· narrative about one or several non-natives captured by Native Americans
· stories of cultural encounters under precarious conditions, turning around the established
power relations
· about hybridities, coming together, assimilation,acculturation
Between autobiography, sensationalism, fiction
mostly white female captives in (traditionally)Native American captivity
Thematization of racial and gender diffrence

· English colonizers not founded by the English government or king
· government issued royal charters'to companies
=> rights to settle and work the land (only right not the means)
· private sponsors or companies supported venture
· Idea of earn a little money and have terretorium

1. Information: about personal experiences; focus on details& description
2. Advertising: attracting sponsors& more settlers; focus on positivities
3. Entertaining: keep people reading a larger publikum than government
=> armchair traveler

writing a about travel but never did a travel

· first english colony in N. A.
· named after Virgin Queen Elizabeth
· Colony of Roanoke; later in Jamestown: several attempts to colonise
↳ founded by Walter Ralegh
↳
documented by Thomas Harriot& John White
· 1584: hard winter (relying on Help of Roanokes (Native Americans)

(1560 -1621)
· wrote 'A brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
↳ collection of facts and information

· New edition in 1590 with engravings by Theodor de Bry: based on John White's watercolours

(1580 -1631)
· adventure stories (turn it into a story with hero): switch from 1st person to 3rd person: better prais
· emphasised need for hard work in America
· true Relation of Virginia
· Pocahontas: mythical figure in the American cultural imagination

Colonial Settlements
· Virginia from 1584 -Anglican Anglikaner
· New England from 1620 -Puritan Puritaner
· Philadelphia from 1682-Quaker Quaker

some Puritans were still a part of the english church
agricultural subsistence
idea of a new beginning (not in mind to have a luxury life)

· Puritans themselves think they've special and part of something big
· extreme protestant movement (strong anti-Catholic turn)
· skepticism vis-a-vis church authorities: eye to eye relation to god
· to be saved: read bible, live a good life, good citizen
· covenant of grace: some are saved some not; can't do anything
· Conversion experience (conversion narrative)central aim of Puritan life
· reading bible: most important thing -> need to be able to read

1620 -Separatist (left church in England& came from Netherlands)Puritans

arriving on Mayflower

no money, hard beginning

1630 -Congregationalist Puritans (2nd Puritan settlers; left direct from England; travel was much smother)

money through industries

only men
drafted by William Bradford
declaring themselves a "Civil Body Politic"under sovereignty of James I
some degree of independence

(1589 -1657)
> 2nd Governor of Plymouth Bay Colony
-Book: Of Plimmoth Plantation (posthum)
Plain style: no ornaments, decorum Figures of speech
left out: dark a bad things

No personal aggrandizement: "relation"-full of references to the Bible, religious tract, third person

based on Biblical book of prophet Jeremiah

Lamentation (wehklage) about lost rigor, warning about impending doom

Calling for a return to earlier perfection: Making use of a narrative of declension

(everything is moving downhill)
found in literature and public speech until today

founded 1630; arriving from England
Congregationalist Puritans: part of the church England BUT autonomous& self-managing
wohlhabend
more affluent than Plymouth Bay

(1588 -1649)
· Ist Governor of Massachusetts Bay Congregation
· Formulating image of Puritan community as a "citty upon a hill"(in Bible Jerusalem)
↳ the entire world should look to it

Medieval hermeneutic method to read& interpret the Bible

Type': image/theme from the Old Testament that prefigures an eventlidea of the New Testament

re-discovered and extended by New England Puritans

New England typology: relating to lived reality (everythink is combined

as a narrative pattern (reoccur in later American literature according to Sacvan Bercovitch
↳ there is everywhere a code which is related to life

Missionary enterprise: duty to take care of heather souls (bring God to them
Defense against indigenous savagery and brutality
Agriculture as legitimation of land ownership (Native Americans did not make use of land
↳ God wanted his people to use the land

Puritan missionary ("apostle of the Indians")
translate the bible into Massachusett
Founding Natick: first praying town 1650

1675 -1676
indigenous resistance
natives fought with their techniques -> Amerikans wasn't familiar with
History of the war written by Increase Mather
war destroying many frontier towns, disrupting for a seaborne

· narrative of her captivity among the Nipmuck nation during King Philips War 1976
· one of the most popular works of literature
-> narrative first framed by preface of anonymous editor and afterword
-> ambivalent narrative: Native Americans as brutal savages vs. accounts of communication exchange
-> Typology as a central narrative device, also breakdown of typological mode

(1591 -1643)
· influenced by John Cotton
· Antinomianism: totalizing sceptism vis--vis religious authorities
questioning function of minister
· overstepped the line of what a women are allowed to
· leading a prayer circle in Boston (religious movement
· Put to trial for heresy (Ketzerei)in 1636
banished and excommunicated in 1638

· woman as deputy husband
Kaurel Thatcher Ulrich)
· woman taking over on behalf of
their husbands during their absence
· Concept of coverture (woman as
covered'legally by her husband or
male relatives
· Religion

wife as helpmate rather than soulmates
no rhetoric of romantic love

True Woman (Barbara Welter)
· true woman
· woman as essentially private and
domestic creatures
· converture still valid
· Biology and religion

(ca. 1612 -1672)
· born in England and came to New England 1630
· Poems published posthum
· initially writing conventional verse
later more unconventional topics and imageries
· turn away from Puritan ideal of marriage towards idealization of marital love

(1692)
· late in history (witchcraft craze in Europe was largely over
· 156 persons formally challenged: 19 hanged; 1 tortured to death
· more man than woman
Intervention of ministers all over the colony and of the English government ending
the witchcraft craze

new perspective on witchcraft trials in Salem (not religious)
focus on social/economy tensions
increasingly a typical victims: merchants, well-off citizens
=> Diffrence between Salem Village& Salem Town

religious revival movement
1730 - 1750/55
Pluralization and commercialization of religions in North America
religious doubts (worried about their future, financial crisis)
representatives: Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield
Affects: feelings, impressions, emotions
Puritan God:stern, unrelenting distant
relying on transnational channels of communication
→ started in Europe and swept over

Movement of political & scientific reorientation
1715 - 1815
pluralization of politics Promoting democracy, religious tolerance, liberty
Representatives: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson

1703-1758
minister in Northampton, steering the local awakening
"Sinners in the hand of an angry god"
transatlantic spread

English Methodist priest, interant preacher
Trained actor converted to Methodism .
bringing about a theatricalization and commercialization of religion

1706-1790
printer in Philadelphia
Quaker Philadelphia (vs. Puritan Boston)
Deist

constant self-improving
aiming at public good not private gain

autonomy and self- reliance in Benjamin Franklin & Frederick Douglass

Douglass emphasizing the peiversity of the system of enslavement that does not allow for human Self-determination and male independence

Protest "no taxation without representation"

1773 Boston Tea Party
1775 = 1785 Revolutionary war
1776 Declaration of Independence
1787 constitution

Linda kerber: "The revolution did not produce an egalitarian society."

9.000 freed enslaved people leaving the British after the Revolutionary war
expansion of enslavement after the revolution
Topic slavery: avoided in American constitution with exception of Fugitive Slave clause
(N)ot one of the primary founders risk(ed) a public stance on abolition

Drafting Declaration of Independence

relationship (35 years) with an enslaved black women on his plantation
member of planter class
fear of enslaved people's revolt

1790: Federalists vS. Antifederalists

John Adams (Federalist) vs. Thomas Jefferson (Antifederalist)
--> "The new American subject was male, while and increasingly middle-class" (Caroll Smith-Rosenberg )

Revolution as household politics
Republican wife: women engagin in political debates

endorsing A centralized Government
feared mob rule and anarchy

Republicans
feared totelitarian presidential control

Lauren Thatcher Ulrich:
Puritan concept of the "deputy husband" still working



Mary Beth Norton
gender roles change
women desired no return to a status of dependence after war

1744 - 1818
Husband: John Adams
significant correspondence between husband & her
wrote letters to her husband about womens rights and representation
husband didn't took her serious

in 1780s & 1790s Murray was the chief theorist of womenhood → Mary Beth Norton
Mary Wollstonecraft: British feminist
Idea of life outside of marriage
indirect political influence

Diffrence between North & South

Parents roles in North: smaller families, egalizarian ideals
Second Great Awakening (1790 - 1840): idea of a benign and loving God (paternal love rather than disciplin and punishing)
Enlightenment: children more than just small adults

legal system

by marriage husband & wife are one person in law
that's the begining of a legal existence of the woman

feme-covert: under husband wing she performs

most successful narrative format in Europe and USA in 18th & 19th century
stemming from European philosofical tradition of sentimentalism
focus on feelings, affections, intitutions
marginalized groups: women, children, ethnic minorities
more authors from marginalized groups: the feminization of literature

begining of American Novel
focus: victimization and suffering
read men (Cathy Davidson)
implied reader female
emphasis on sexuality and gender relations

Samuel Richardson: British Author Klausur

Addressing legal situation of women in 18th century (Cathy Davidson)
Feminist critics: Cathy Davidson

1762 - 1828
wrote Charlotte Temple
sensationalist
Addressing female reader
Didactic and educational purpose

story of a girl without guardians
Fear about loss of guardianship
wrong influences On children and youth
Reflecting on custom of raising children

1746 - 1797 Colonialism
Slave narrative (own expiriencess)
born in slavery

1754 - 1784
Evangelicalism
Poetry
brought from Africa to USA

1838: Gag rule i avoid debates about slavery because it's always ends in o debate about Slavery

1850: compromise California as a free state; New Mexico Utah free to decide if slaves or not

1850: Fugitive Slave Law: escape a slave into a none slave state there aren't free

romantacizing Slavery
southern plantation as an ideal patrichal system

capitalizing on images of the family and domesticity
belongs to domestic novel

most succesfull author in 19th century
wrote uncle Tom's Cabin (1851): abolitionist domestic fiction
Sister of Catherine Beecher (central figure in the cult of domesticity)

bestseller
panorama of enslavement
central message: System of enslavement spawning destruction and corruption
Melodrama, action & sentiment
while owner as a guy who wants the best for his slaves but the system doesn't allow it

plantation novel (slavery= good)


abolitionist novel (against slavery)

Thousand of texts during 19th 420th century
generally autobiographical accounts (often recorded by others
authentication, authorization and white endorsement

skepticism of many historicans (authentic sources until 1970s)
chairs and institutes of Black Studies or African American Studies from the 1970s

1818 - 1895
Born in slavery, escaped 1838

Follower of William Lloyd (one of the importanest person in process against slavery)
Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass

in San Domingo (Haiti)
led by Nat Turner in Virginia

difficulties: slaves had to learn the language to understand each others because they all came from diffrent places where they talked diffrent languages

1813 - 1897
Incidents in the Life of a slave Girl (long time nobody knew it was from her)
Incidents assumed to be a fictional narrativ BUT it was expiriences

from Harriet Jacobs
Black women
sentimental narration (domestic fiction and Seduction stories)
in her story not running away but hiding in a "loophole of retreat" ;at the heart of the system of enslavement
female target audience, female implied reader

1830 - 1860
formative epoch of a distinctly US-American literature
European Renaissance: new beginning in philosophy, science and politics
also called: American Romanticism (happens at the same time as European Romanticism)

bright side: Philosophy/Poetry (Transcendentalism)

dark side: fiction

coining the term "American Renaissance"

declaring the defining moment ( real beginning of American Literature)

exclusive focus on white male authors

Philosophical and poetical branch of the American Renaissance

strong influence of European philosophy and poetry (started in Germany)

Germany as important backdrop (much Americans travelled to Germany and brought ideas from there to USA)

informed by religion, theological movements


Reform movements (wanted change in Society, forms utopian communities)

religious reform movement

part of Second Great Awakening

liberal branch of Protestantism

God as a benign God (not punishing) → snew idea of god

Sentimentalization and feminization of religion

Transzendentalphilosophie: came from Germany (Friedrich Schlegel, wilhelm Schelling )



expirience not accessible to reason and cognition (absolute, overwhelming, metaphysical)

extreme state of mind: go to extremes (love, ecstasy, horror, intoxication)

in USA: loose system of thought (were raised in religious system then started to study philosophy, came to Germany and into a new world)
getting active in political movements

1803 - 1882
philosopher, essayist, poet
mix philosophical & theological doctrine
Unitarian minister
style of writing: associative, inspired, unconventional

optimistic, celebratory, utopian spirit: emphasise new beginning

social reform project 1841-1847
hippi movement
egalitarian principles: equality for women and religious feedome

1810 - 1850
essayist, philosopher, activist, feminist, journalist, poet
wrote: woman in the Nineteenth century (develops feminist ideals)
"Let them be sea-captains, if they will" (from women in 19th century)

concept of feminity and womenhood that competed with doctrin of "true womanhood"

1817 - 1862
essayist, political philosopher, activist, poet
individualist reform project

walden: bible of naturalising, respect for nature ideas of liberty & equality
Mix of nature writing and philosophy

wrote: civil disobedience (before Resistance to Civil Government)

central reference for civil rights and postcolonial movements

1819 - 1892
simple man, man of people, extrem self-confident
by 1892 mine editions of Leaves of Grass the last one with 383 poems
new style of poetry: free verse (no rhyme, regular metre)

1804 - 1864
dark 4 mysterious writer
face the problematic and evil side of life
wrote about own family history

The Scarlet Letter (1850)
historical novel
Typology: Puritan tradition appropriated

1819 - 1891
Moby Dick (or the Whale)1851:
mix of very diverse modes and styles

Experimental, protomodernist text

Moby Dick: quest for absolute truth and justice = totalizarian
crew as a democratic entity

1830 - 1866
wrote poems
more than 1800 poems, only a few published during her lifetime
posthumous publication (heavily edited by Higginson & Todd)
characteristic devices: Dashes, unconventional capitalization, slant rhyme, rare words mixed with everyday language

also: cult of Domesticity
concept of femininity
stemming from Great Britain

'True woman' as frail, passive, dependent, spiritual, morally strong, but intellectually weak
Piety, purity, domesticity, submissiveness

middle and upper class women

indirect power: elevation of the status of the woman
Idea of woman as morally superior
work for the poor and anti-slavery protest

Jane Tompkins: Cult as empowering
Barbara welter: Cult of true womanhood

Focus on the private household the female sphere and female experiences

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Toms Cabin

Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe: the new Housekeepers Manuel

Susan Warner: The Wide, Wide World

1818-1885
The wide wide world (1850)

Part of evangelical movement

Topics in wide wide world
objective of gaining self-control and overcoming passions
Housekeeping as a means of social distinction

First women's rights convention 1848

organized by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

exclusion of female abolitionists

Declaration of Sentiments: demanding equal rights for women

except for suffrage resolution



Reform movements: true womanhood merging with the cause of the new woman
Caroll Smith-Rosenberg: "Female world of love and ritual"

construct coming up during Reconstruction (1863 - 1877) → period after civil war

Progressivism (1890 - 1920)
→ progress into a better world

Gradual break with cult of true womanhood

Emphasis on education, independence, selfe determination

Political demands: suffrage struggle

toward 20th century: sexual self-determination

1860 - 1935
wrote: "The Yellow wallpaper" (1892)

Progressivismi political & social reform movements, feminism (core element)

Rest cure: based on idea of female excitability
→ isolation, overfeeding,no intellectual stimulation

Idea developed in antiquity

Jean-Jacques Rosseau: early theories of education swept over to USA into colonies

A Romantic cliché

taken up in American colonies and United States

→ ur American

James Fenimore cooper: Leatherstocking cycle (novels of native Americans)

Myth of 'vanishing Indian'
Manifest desting: Idea that the continent belongs to the "white race"

1817 - 1830: Indian Removal Policies
Native Americans had to emigrate West

1829 - 1837: administration of Andrew Jackson
→ violent means of expulsion & expropriation

1830: Indian Removel Bill

1838: most members of the "I civilized Tribes" forced to move to the Trail of Tears west of the Mississippi

1840: Native American population reduced to a quarter of its size before 1820

Musealization of Native American cultures in course of 19th century

7th president of US

Title of Indian Killer

Pro Slavery

1784 - 1851
A novelwriter

Fashioning his hero Nathaniel (Natty) Bumppo after legendary frontier heroes like Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone (tall tales)



Natty called Hawkeye, Deerslayer, Pathfinder, Leatherstocking

Five Leatherstocking novels between 1823 and 1841

The Last of the Mohicans

Leatherstocking as ideal link between wilderness and civilization

1837: first news of gold in California

California gold rush after 1848

1864 - 1890 Indian Wars

1876: Armed conflict at Little Bighorn River,
Custer killed with 209 of his men

after conflicts over Great Sioux Reserve

opponent in this battle: sitting Bull

Battle of wounded knee South Dakota

340 starving Sioux rounded up
150 gunned down

Buffalo Bill (william Cody): scout stagecoach, driver, showman

Ned Buntiline: writer, turning Buffalo Bill into the hero of novels and stage melodramos

1882: Buffalo Bill's wild west show

Frontier Thesis

claiming the closure of the frontier a new phase in American history

wrote The Virginian

first western, turned into numerous films

topics: straight masculinity, male friendship

wrote by Owen wister
1902
realistic novel
focus on psychological conflicts & constellation

style: Laconic, matter of fact, cool, detached, the western hero, ideal of masculinity

1865 - 1910

→ Regionalism
→ Naturalism

turn against the aesthetics and ethics of sentimentalism

Reconstruction (1865 - 1877):
political & social reorganization after Civil war


The Gilded Age (1878 8-1889)
titled after a novel by Mark Twain

Progressive Era (1890 1913) political & social planning and programmatic changes after reconstruction

1865 - 1910
Avantgarde movement: criticizing genteel culture & sentimentalism

Influenced by French & Russian literary movements

high culture ( for privledged people)
Literary and Art Magazines
Museum, Theatres, concert halls

vernacular/everyday language (voice of common man)

Turn against literary conventions

photographic representation

literature and the visual arts

Trompe l'œil
-> tromper to deceive

Technique back to Renaissance

Renewed popularity in American Realism

realistic a down-to-earth fashion

writers often stemming from the regions about which they wrote

remote, exotic, far-away emphasized

Many women writers involved

regionally non-specific audience

immigrant & ethnic minority writers

Travel writing

Tourist perspective

Naive American traveling to Europe, telling it "as it is"

Making fun of conventions, traditions, cultural diffrences

turning tall tale into his signature style of writing

Oral narrative form popular in late 18th century

Original: story with a realistic setting, getting increasingly absurd and exaggerated

1870s: tall tale as integral part of regionalist tradition

use of tall tale format

Episodic narrative of life in a small town

omniscient narrator

sequel to Tom sawyer: same characters, initially same setting

vernocular style: undisciplined unconventional, adolescent boy



Metafictional references

seemingly unorganized narration: voice & mind of an uneducated child

No steering of the reader: left to the readers' judgement

1837 - 1920

Editor of Atlantic Monthly

Theorist of realism → defining aesthetics & program

Programmatic realist fiction: A modern Instance

stream of consciousness narration

Willam James: brother & psychologist

urban novels

Upper class life & expirience
"American in Europe"

focus on young girls and on female perspective

French Naturalism (1850 - 1880)
cruelty & brutality of the modern existence

American Naturalism (1890 - 1915)
scientific turn in literature: social Darwinism (survival of the fittest)
Focus on industrialization, urbanization, working classes, lower middle class, immigration
masculine desthetics

Early Modernism (1890 - 1920):
Dadaism, Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Surrealism

High Modernism (1920s):
Time of "Gesamtkunstwerk"

Late Modernism (1930 - 1940s):
Institutionalization of modernism
political turn

sensation of living in world captured in words

literary movement

precise visual impression (an image) in words

Ezra pound → supporting Mussolini

Influenced by form of Japanese haiku

influential author

Cubism: abstract modern art form

(representative Pablo Picasso

1883 - 1963

becoming part of New York avantgarde scene of art

Friend of Ezra Pound

Create a specifically American poetics; In the American Gain

Aesthetics of democracy set against Pounds fascism

soaring immigration rates
class struggles
urbanization
commercialization

Extreme political response: anti-immigration, nativism (white Americans anti-irish)

Radical left responses: Cultural Pluralism → immigrants as the future of US: differences should be celebrated

Idea of a "Trans-national America" → need to get civilization away from the Anglo-Saxon

Psychoanalysis and anthropology:
interest in "primitive" peoples and conditions

Taken up by white and by Black artists in Europe and the United States, in the visual arts, music, dance, literature, film, and many other areas of creativity

immediate, authentic, ‘truthful’ expression

1856 - 1915

Reconstruction

founded: professional training for young black people

Doctrin of self-help

propagating separate but equal

Harlem Renaissance

professor of sociology

talented tenth

Heterogeneous and multi-
faceted movement, emanating
from Harlem, New York


African-American art and culture

1920-1930

black middle class, respectable, educated, self-confident, emancipated

Central artist figure of the Harlem Renaissance

came to New York to study; dropping out and joining Harlem scene

Walt whitman as major influence

The Weary Blues 1926: collection of poetry

Great Depression'

October 29, 1929: "Black Tuesday": Wall Street stock market crash


Franklin Delano Roosevelt ("FDR") (1882-1945), Democrat, President from 1933-1945 → new direction of politics

The New Deal


"Fireside chats": 30 radio talks given by Roosevelt to reassure and reorganize the nation

series of government programs between 1933 and 1938, aiming at 'relief, recovery, and reform

Works Progress Administration (WPA) - cultural program of the New Deal: relief and support for artists and the arts

"Red Decade"

Wrote Uncle Toms Children: Short Story Collection

with support by the Federal Writers Project

Access to unterlectual scene and literary market through institutions of New Deal

most communist novel

novel is worst what could happen to African American People

later apologized for his work

(1891-1960)

product of Federal writers Project

Grew up: all-black town

Studying anthropology with Franz Boas

Mules and Men (1935), oral history project, collection of African-American folk tales, based on a trip from 1927 to 1929

anthropological interest in cultural exchange & expression

Their Eyes Were Watching God as a "speakerly text" (Henry Louis Gates)

James Agee: author, journalist, scriptwriter, film critic
Walker Evans: photographer

Text and photographs as a dialogue - no 'photo book' in the classical sense

Rock'n'Roll and youth culture

outsider as the hero in literature and Hollywood film

Loss of committing authority figures

Beat Movement

radicalism, protest culture, civil rights struggle, peace
movement, students/women/minority movements starting

Transcendentalist utopian communities, 1930s communism

countercultural literary and cultural group, inspiring the protest movements of the 1960s

Loosely centered around three writers of the 1950s

Inspired by Walt Whitman, joining the hippie movement in the 1960s.

Themes: social outcasts as representative figures, homosexuality, drugs

Celebrating Black cultural and expression as authentic and free

Became part of the hippie movement

peacefully protests

Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)

public demonstrations against race discrimination

Signaling Henry David Thoreau's idea of civil disobedience

Novelist, essayist, activist

Fraught relationship with Richard Wright

Lived in Paris

Giovanni's Room (1956), essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955)

Involved in the Civil Rights Movement as a critic, essayist, activist

1960s to the 1990s
skepticism and speculation

Cultural definition: "after modernism," i.e. drawing upon or breaking with the conventions and forms of modernism

Political definition: end of history, end of absolute certainties, breakdown of power blocs

Economical definition: epoch of post-industrialism, late capitalism ("Turbokapitalismus"), globalization, corporate management

spirit of the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s

Literature and art seen critically, as part of a commodified world, "cultural logic of late capitalism" (Fredric Jameson)

Sense of 'anything goes': no rules, no conventions, no fixed beliefs, no taboos

Sense of 'nothing new': everything has already been tried out in literature and the arts – ideas can only be repeated and rearranged

Snow White (1967)

"Nothing new" – no new stories only variations in narrating

Irony and parody as the dominant modes of narration

exhaustion of certain possibilities

Metafictionality / metafiction: texts which reflect upon and emphasize their fictional quality, drawing attention to the fact that they are 'made up'

John Barth, "The Literature of Replenishment" (1980)

linguistic and visual constructions of reality

Media and politics as important reference points

Reclusive author

Penchant for mixing high and low, popular culture and complex theory

concerned with language varieties and their implications for meaning making and agency

Emphasis much more on the reconstruction of meaning than on its deconstruction

African-American Civil Rights movement

minority movements

Minority literature as the most popular

Reflections on what it means to be American, challenging the standards and privileges of whiteness

Re-writing history

Nobel Prize for Literature

The Bluest Eye (1970), Beloved (1987)

Novel

Speakerly text" (Henry Louis Gates about Black vernacular literature

Influenced by Zora Neale Hurston

Oral storytelling

Historical novel: neo-slave narrative

Born on a Laguna reservation in New Mexico

Ceremony (1974)

Shaman Betonie using newspapers and telephone books in his rituals

Critique of Silko by Paula Gunn Allen, Laguna member, who blamed Silko for not honoring the tribe's traditions

The Woman Warrior. Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976), China Men (1980)

Controversy with Frank Chin (writer and critic), who blamed Kingston for betraying Chinese values, tampering with Chinese tradition, and demonizing Chinese men

Alternate history, neo-slave narrative

The Underground Railroad (2016), Pulitzer prize for fiction

underground railroad' literally. Originally: metaphor for the abolitionists networks helping enslaved people escape