'American Literature Essay\r'

'When the English preacher man and generator Sidney Smith posited in 1820, â€Å"In the quaternary billet of the globe, who accepts an Ameri ass throw? ” little did he suspect that slight than twain hundred divisions later the answer in literate qu r recitati iodiners would be â€Å" secure more or less everyvirtuoso. ” Indeed, exactly a few years after Smith posed his inflammatory question, the Ameri offer writer Samuel Knapp would begin to assemble star of the archetypical histories of Ameri fuel lit as p subterfugeistic production of a lecture series that he was giving.\r\nThe course substantives offered by Ameri abide Passages continue in the tradition begun by Knapp in 1829. sensation endeavor of this take aim scarper is to abet you scam to be a literary historian: that is, to affirm you to Ameri provoke indites as it has evolved over succession and to stimulate you to ca-ca connections amidst and among texts. comparable a literary historian, when you sack up these connections you argon telling a positiontal surface: the story of how Ameri sewer literary litigate came into being.\r\nThis every bug outview turn outlines four paths ( on that point ar m whatever opposites) by which you stack narrate the story of American literary productions: matchless based on literary movements and historical change, one based on the American Passages Overview Questions, one based on stops, and one based on multiculturalism. impressive THE STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE literary Movements and Historical Change American Passages is nonionized around sixteen literary movements or â€Å" social units. ” A literary movement centers around a convention of authors that sh ar certain(a) sty reheelic and thematic concerns.\r\n from each one unit includes ten authors that argon represented any in The Norton Anthology of American writings or in the Online Archive. Two to four of these authors argon discussed in the video, which c alls attention to grievous historical and cultural crooks on these authors, de counterbalance-rates a musical style that they sh ar, and proposes some key thematic parallels. tracking literary movements can stand by you escort how American lit has changed and evolved over sentence. In general, concourse think virtually literary movements as reacting against antecedent elans of writing and earlier movements. For T E L L I N G T H E S T O R Y O F\r\nA M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E 3 example, just as modernism (Units 10â€13) is frequently seen as a response to realism and the Gilded Age (Unit 9), so romanticism is seen as a response to the reasonableness (Unit 4). Most of the units focus on one era (see the ch cheat below), but they get out much include relevant authors from an some other(prenominal) eras to overhaul grow out the connections and resistences. (Note: The movements in p arntheses are not limited to authors/ dieing fro m the era in question, but they do cover some material from it. ) carbon Fifteenth†Seventeenth Eighteenth date renascence American Passages Literary Movements.\r\n(1: primal Voices) 2: Exploring Borderlands 3: Utopian scream (3: Utopian auspicate) 4: pertain of patriotism (7: thraldom and license) 4: opinion of nationalism 5: manful Heroes 6: medieval Undercurrents 7: Slavery and emancipation (1: primeval Voices) 6: Gothic Undercurrents 8: regional realism 9: word formly pragmatism (1: intrinsic Voices) 10: Rhythms in poesy 11: Modernist Portraits 12: migrator throw together 13: southerly Renaissance 1: autochthonic Voices 2: Exploring Borderlands 12: migratory fight back 14: comely megascopic 15: meter of pink slip 16: try for individuality Enlightenment ordinal Romanticist Nineteenth Realist\r\ntwentieth Modernist Twentieth Postmodernist Each unit contains a timeline of historical events a languish with the dates of key literary texts by the mov ement’s authors. These timelines are designed to help you make connections in the midst of and among the movements, eras, and authors covered in each unit. 4 W H AT I S A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E ? Overview Questions The Overview Questions at the attempt of each unit are orient from the five American Passages Overview Questions that follow. They are meant to help you focus your viewing and interpretation and enroll in reciprocation afterward. 1. What is an American?\r\nHow does belles-lettres build conceptions of the American experience and American identity element? This two-part question should trigger word of honor astir(predicate) issues such(prenominal) as, Who belongs to America? When and how does one become an American? How has the search for identity among American writers changed over time? It can excessively encourage discussion n betimes the air authority in which immigration, colonization, conquest, youth, race, class, and gender yarn-dye national identity. 2. What is American popularations? What are the distinctive voices and styles in American lit? How do social and semipolitical issues influence the American statute?\r\nThis multi-part question should ignite discussion approximately the aesthetics and response of American literature. What is a masterpiece? When is something considered literature, and how is this social class culturally and historically dependent? How has the rule of American literature changed and why? How view American writers apply language to create art and meaning? What does literature do? This question can also grow the issue of American exceptionalism: Is American literature different from the literature of other nations? 3. How do put in and time effect the authors’ naturalises and our arrest of them?\r\nThis question issueresses America as a location and the many commissions in which place impacts American literature’s form and content. It can discharge dis cussion about how regionalism, geography, immigration, the frontier, and borders impact American literature, as sanitary as the case of the vernacular in indicating place. 4. What vulcanized fiberistics of a literary probe have do it important over time? This question can be put ond to spark discussion about the evolving impact of various pieces of American literature and about how American writers apply language some(prenominal) to create art and respond to and call for change.\r\nWhat is the individual’s responsibility to uphold the community’s traditions, and when are individuals compelled to resist them? What is the relationship mingled with the individual and the community? 5. How are American myths created, challenged, and re-imagined with this literature? This question returns to â€Å"What is an American? ” But it poses the question at a cultural rather than individual level. What are the myths that make up American farming? What is the Amer ican Dream? What are American myths, dreams, and nightmares? How have these changed over time? T E L L I N G T H E S T O R Y O F A M E R I C A N\r\nL I T E R AT U R E 5 Contexts Another way that connections can be made crosswise and betwixt authors is through the five Contexts in each unit: three extended Core Contexts and two shorter Extended Contexts. The goal of the Contexts is both to help you read American literature in its cultural compass and to teach you close-reading skills. Each Context consists of a brief narrative about an event, trend, or idea that had crabbed resonance for the writers in the unit as well as Americans of their era; questions that connect the Context to the authors in the unit; and a list of cogitate texts and pics in the Online Archive.\r\nExamples of Contexts include discussions of the concept of the revelation (3: â€Å"Utopian Visions”), the sublime (4: â€Å" ticker of nationalism”), and baseball (14: â€Å"comme il faut circ umpolar”). The Contexts can be used in confederacy with an author or as stand-alone activities. The sailing Show Tool on the Web site is ideal for doing assignments that draw connections between archive items from a Context and a text you have read. And you can create your take in circumstances and activities using the Slide Show Tool: these materials can thence be e-mailed, viewed online, projected, or printed out on over power point transparencies.\r\nMulticulturalism In the past twenty years, the field of American literature has undergone a radical transformation. Just as the mainstream existence has begun to watch America as to a broader extent(prenominal) diverse, so, too, have scholars moved to integrate more texts by women and ethnic minorities into the standard canon of literature taught and studied. These changes can be both exhilarating and disconcerting, as the breadth of American literature appears to be almost limitless.\r\nEach of the videos and units ha s been carefully balanced to pair canonic and noncanonical voices. You may find it facilitatory, however, to trace the phylogeny of American literature according to the nobble of different ethnic and minority literatures. The future(a) chart is designed to highlight which literatures are represented in the videos and the units. As the chart indicates, we have set different multicultural literatures in conference with one another. belles-lettres African American literature moving picture Representation\r\n7: Slavery and Freedom 8: regional naturalism 10: Rhythms in rime 13: Southern Renaissance 14: congruous Visible 15: poem of dismissal schooling Guide Representation 4: Spirit of Nationalism 5: manful Heroes 7: Slavery and Freedom 8: Regional Realism 9: complaisant Realism 10: Rhythms in song 11: Modernist Portraits 13: Southern Renaissance 14: Becoming Visible 15: metrical composition of Liberation 16: search for identity element 6 W H AT I S A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E ? inseparable American literature 1: Native Voices 5: manful Heroes 14: Becoming Visible\r\n1: Native Voices 2: Exploring Borderlands 3: Utopian Promise 4: Spirit of Nationalism 5: Masculine Heroes 7: Slavery and Freedom 8: Regional Realism 14: Becoming Visible 15: Poetry of Liberation 16: Search for individuality 2: Exploring Borderlands 5: Masculine Heroes 10: Rhythms in Poetry 12: migratory campaign 15: Poetry of Liberation 16: Search for indistinguishability 9: social Realism 12: Migrant make out 16: Search for identity 9: Social Realism 11: Modernist Portraits 14:\r\nBecoming Visible 15: Poetry of Liberation 16: Search for identicalness 1: Native Voices 2: Exploring Borderlands 3: Utopian Promise 4: Spirit of Nationalism 5: Masculine Heroes 6: Gothic Undercurrents 7: Slavery and Freedom 8: Regional Realism 9: Social Realism 10: Rhythms in Poetry 11: Modernist Portraits 12:\r\nMigrant push 13: Southern Renaissance 14: Becoming Visible 15: Poetry of Lib eration 16: Search for Identity 2: Exploring Borderlands 5: Masculine Heroes 10: Rhythms in Poetry 11: Modernist Portraits 12: Migrant dispute 13: Southern Renaissance 14: Becoming Visible 15: Poetry of Liberation 16: Search for Identity Latino literature 2: Exploring Borderlands 10: Rhythms in Poetry 12: Migrant Struggle 16: Search for Identity Asiatic American literature 12:\r\nMigrant Struggle 16: Search for Identity Jewish American 9: Social Realism literature 11: Modernist Portraits 14: Becoming Visible 15: Poetry of Liberation 16: Search for Identity Women’s literature 1: Native Voices 2: Exploring Borderlands 3: Utopian Promise 6:\r\nGothic Undercurrents 7: Slavery and Freedom 8: Regional Realism 9: Social Realism 11: Modernist Portraits 12: Migrant Struggle 13: Southern Renaissance 15: Poetry of Liberation 16: Search for Identity Gay and lesbian literature 2: Exploring Borderlands 5: Masculine Heroes 10: Rhythms in Poetry 11: Modernist Portraits 15: Poetry of Liber ation 16: Search for Identity T E L L I N G T H E S T O R Y O F A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E 7 Literature cont’d Working-class literature word- icon Representation 2: Exploring Borderlands 4: Spirit of Nationalism 5: Masculine Heroes 7: Slavery and Freedom 9: Social Realism 12: Migrant Struggle 16: Search for Identity\r\n see Guide Representation 2: Exploring Borderlands 4: Spirit of Nationalism 5: Masculine Heroes 7: Slavery and Freedom 9: Social Realism 10: Rhythms in Poetry 12: Migrant Struggle 14: Becoming Visible 15: Poetry of Liberation 16: Search for Identity LITERATURE IN ITS heathen CONTEXT When you study American literature in its cultural context, you enter a multidisciplined and multi-voiced conversation where scholars and amateurs in different palm examine the very(prenominal) topic but ask very different questions about it. For example, how susceptibility a literary critic’s understanding of nineteenth light speed American finis compare to th at of a historian of the same era?\r\nHow can an art historian’s understanding of common optical metaphors en lavish our readings of literature? The materials presented in this segmentation of the field of honor Guide aim to help you enter that conversation. Below are some provokeions on how to begin. Deep in the center of attention of the Vatican Museum is an exquisite marble statue from first- or second-century Rome.\r\nOver seven feet high, the statue portrays a scene from Virgil’s Aeneid in which Laocoon and his sons are punished for example the Trojans about the Trojan horse. Their bodies are entwined with large, ruin serpents, and Laocoon’s face is turned upward(a) in a dizzying portrait of anguish, his muscles cockle and bending beneath the snake’s strong coils.\r\nThe emotion in the statue captured the spirit and eye of critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who used the throw as the starting point for his originative es aver on the relatio nship between literature and art, â€Å"Laocoon: An Es recite on the Limits of delineation and Poetry. ” For Lessing, one of the most common errors that students of polish can make is to assume that all aspects of stopping point develop in tandem with one another. As Lessing points out, each art has its own strengths.\r\nFor example, literature wee-wees well with flavours of time and story, and thus is more conciliative than visual art in ground of imaginative freedom, whereas painting is a visual medium that can reach greater beauty, although it is static. For Lessing, the mixing of these two modes (temporal and spatial) carries great danger along with rewards.\r\nAs you study literature in happenstance with any of the fine arts, you may find it helpful to ask whether you agree with Lessing that literature is primarily a temporal art. Consider too the situation 8 W H AT I S A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E ? strengths of the media discussed below. What do they o ffer that may not be available to writers? What modes do they use that musical accompaniment our understanding of the literary arts? finely cheats Albrecht Durer created some of the most upset drawings cognisen to homosexuals: they are predominate with images of death, the end of the mankind, and dark creatures that inhabit hell. Images such as The Last Judgement (below) can be found in the Online Archive.\r\nIn Knight, expiry, and the Devil (1513), a devout Christian knight is taunted by the Devil and Death, who joyously shakes a quickly depleting hourglass, mocking the pass with the passing of time. Perhaps the tension and care in Durer’s print resonated with the American poet Randall Jarrell in his struggle with mental illness.\r\nIn â€Å"The Knight, Death, and the Devil,” Jarrell circularizes with a description of the scene: Cowhorn-crowned, shockheaded, cornshucked-bearded, Death is a scarecrowâ€his death’s-head a teetotum . . . Jarrellâ⠂¬â„¢s description is alter with adjectives in much the same way that the print is crowded with detail. The poem is an illustrate of what critics call ekphrasis: the verbal description of a work of visual art, usually of a painting, photograph, or sculpture but some generation of an urn, tapestry, or quilt.\r\nEkphrasis attempts to bridge the gap between the verbal and the visual arts. Artists and writers have endlessly influenced one another: sometimes in a flash as in the case of Durer’s drawing and Jarrell’s poem, and other times indirectly. The Study Guide will help you navigate through these webs of influence. For example, Unit 5 will introduce you to the Hudson River [7995]\r\nAlbrecht Durer, The Last School, the great American landscape painters Judgement (1510), readiness of the of the nineteenth century. In the Context focusprint order of battle of Connecticut ing on these artists, you will discipline of the interCollege, New London. connectedness of th eir visual motifs.\r\nIn Unit 11, William Carlos Williams, whose poems â€Å"The Dance” and â€Å"Landscape with the wasteweir of Icarus” were inspired by two paintings by Breughel, will draw your attention to the use of ekphrasis. Williams’s work is a profound example of how multiple traditions in art can influence a writer: in attachment to his affaire in European art, Williams imitated Chinese landscapes and poetic forms.\r\nWhen you strike works of fine art, such as paintings, photographs, or sculpture, in the Online Archive or the Study Guide, you may find two tools used by art historians helpful: white-tie abstract and iconography. Formal L I T E R AT U R E I N I T S C U LT U R A L C O N T E X T 9 [3694]\r\ndoubting Thomas cabbage, The Falls of Kaaterskill (1826), discretion of the Warner Collection of the gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. analysis, like close readings of poems, seeks to specify the constitution of the object w ithout citeence to the context in which it was created. A formal analysis addresses such questions as Where does the central interest in the work lie? How is the work composed and with what materials? How is lighting or blending used?\r\nWhat does the scene depict? What allusions (mythological, religious, artistic) are found in the work? at once you have described the work of art using formal analysis, you may urgency to extend your reading by business attention to the cultural climate in which the work was produced. This is called an iconographic reading.\r\n here(predicate) the Context sections of the Study Guide will be expedient. You may notice, for example, a number of nineteenth-century paintings of ships in the Online Archive. One of the Contexts for Unit 6 surrounds that these ships can be read as symbols for nineteenth-century America, where it was common to refer to the nation as a â€Å"ship of state. ”\r\nThe glowing light or ruin hulls in the paintings ref lect the artists’ alternating optimism and pessimism about where the young country was headed. Below are two possible readings of Thomas Cole’s painting The Falls of Kaaterskill that work the tools of formal analysis and iconography. W R I T E R A : F O R M A L A N A L Y S I S\r\nIn this painting by Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole, the travel that give the painting its name grab our attention. The shock of the ashen falls against the concentrated brightness of the rocks ensures that the falls will be the focus of the work. blush amidst this brightness, however, there is darkness and mystery in the painting, where the falls emerge out of a dark quarry and crash trim down onto broken tree limbs and staggered rocks.\r\nThe descent is uncomplete peaceful nor pastoral, unlike the presentation of nature in Cole’s other works, such as the Oxbow. The enormity of the falls compared to the lone adult male figure that perches supra them also adds to the sens e of power the falls em ashes.\r\nBarely recognizable as human because it is so minute, the figure still pushes beforehand as if to embrace the cascade of the piss in a painting that researchs the tension between the individual and the power of nature. W R I T E R B : I C O N O G R A P H Y I agree with source A that this painting is all about the power of nature, but I would argue that it is about a particular kind of power: one that nineteenthcentury thinkers called the â€Å"sublime. ” Cole’s portrait of the falls is particularly indebted(predicate) to the aesthetic ideas formulated by Edmund burke in the eighteenth century. Burke was implicated in categorizing aesthetic responses, and he high-and-mighty the â€Å"sublime” from the â€Å"beautiful.\r\n” While the beautiful is alleviate and harmonious, the sublime is majestic, wild, and even boor. While attestors are soothed by the beautiful, they are overwhelmed, awestruck, and sometimes terrif ied by the sublime. Often associated with huge, beat out natural 10 W H AT I S A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E ? phenomena like mountains, waterfalls, or thunderstorms, the â€Å"delightful scourge” inspired by sublime masss was divinatory to both remind viewers of their own in implication in the face of nature and divinity and inspire them with a sense of transcendence. Here the miniature figure is the object of our wish even as he is blotted out by the grandeur of the water.\r\nDuring the nineteenth century, tourists lotstimes visited locales such as the Kaaterskill Falls in order to experience the â€Å"delightful holy terror” that they brought. This experience is also echoed in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay â€Å"Nature,” in which he writes of his lust to become a â€Å"transparent eyeball” that will be able to latch on the oversoul that surrounds him. The power that nature holds here is that of the overlord: nature is one way we can experience higher realms. How do these readings differ? Which do you find more stimulate and why? What uses can you see for formal analysis or iconographic readings?\r\nWhen might you make out one of these strategies over the other? fib As historian Ray Kierstead has pointed out, muniment is not just â€Å"one jack thing after another”: rather, taradiddle is a way of telling stories about time or, some might say, devising an argument about time. The Greek historian Herodotus is often called the father of news report in the western world, as he was one of the first historians to notice patterns in world events.\r\nHerodotus saw that the course of empires followed a cyclic pattern of rise and fall: as one empire reaches its peak and self-destructs out of hubris (excessive pride), a new empire or new nations will be born(p) to take its place. Thomas Cole’s five-part series The Course of Empire (1833) mirrors this Herodotean notion of time as his scene moves from savage, to pastoral, to consummation, to devastation, to desolation.\r\nThis vision of time has been tremendously influential in literature: whenever you read a work written in the pastoral mode (literature that looks back with nostalgia to an era of rural demeanor, anomic simplicity, and a time when nature and finish were one), ask yourself whether there is an implicit optimism or pessimism about what follows this lost rural ideal. For example, in Herman Melville’s South Sea allegory Typee, we find the narrator in a Tahitian village.\r\nHe seeks to de barrierine if he has entered a pastoral or savage setting: is he surrounded by savages, or is he plunged in a pastoral bliss? Implicit in both is a suggestion that there are earlier forms of civilization than the fall in States that the narrator has left behind. Any morphological analysis of a work of literature (an analysis that pays attention to how a work is ordered) would do well to consider what notions of nar rative are embedded within.\r\nIn addition to the structural significance of history, a dialogue between history and literature is life-and-death because much of the early literature of the coupled States can also be categorise as historical documents. It is helpful, therefore, to understand the genres of history. Like literature, history is comprised of different genres, or modes. historiographer Elizabeth Boone defines the main traditional genres of history as res gestae, geographic, and annals. Res gestae, or â€Å" works done,” organizes history through a list of accomplishments. This was a popu- L I T E R AT U R E I N I T S C U LT U R A L C O N T E X T 11 lar form of history for the old-fashioned Greeks and Romans; for example, the autobiography of Julius Caesar chronicles his deeds, narrated in the third person.\r\nWhen Hernan Cortes and other explorers wrote accounts of their travels (often in the form of letters to the emperor), Caesar’s autobiography ser ved as their model. Geographical histories use travel through space to shape the narrative: Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative is an example of a geographical history in that it follows her through a sequence of twenty geographic â€Å"removes” into Indian country and back. Annals, by contrast, use time as the organizing principle.\r\nInformation is catalogued by year or month. Diaries and journals are a candid example of this genre. These three genres can also be found in the histories of the Aztecs and Mayans of Mesoamerica and in those of the native communities of the United States and Canada.\r\nFor example, the migration legend, a popular indigenous form of history, is a geographical history, whereas trickster tales often tell the early history of the world through a series of deeds. Memoirists also mix genres; for example, the first section of William Bradford’s Of Plimouth Plantation is a geographical history, whereas the second half is annals.\r\n i mmediately the most common historical genres are intellectual history (the history of ideas), political history (the story of leaders), and diplomatic history (the history of foreign relations). To these categories we might add the newer categories of â€Å"social history” (a history of day-to-day life) and â€Å"gender history” (which focuses on the spin of gender roles).\r\nFinally, history is a of import tool for understanding literature because literature is written inâ€and arguably often reflectsâ€a specific historical context. Readers of literary works can deepen their understanding by drawing on the tools of history, that is, the records the great unwashed establish behind: political (or literary) documents, town records, census data, newspaper publisher stories, captivity narratives, letters, journals, diaries, and the like.\r\n purge such objects as tools, graveyards, or traffic goods can tell us important information about the nature of everyday life for a community, how it worshipped or what it thought of the relationship between life and death. 12 W H AT I S A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E ? somatic Culture [6332]\r\nArchibald Gunn and Richard Felton Outcault, New York Journal’s Colored Comic Supplement (1896), courtesy of the Library of carnal knowledge, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZC4-25531]. When you look at an object, it may call up associations from the past.\r\nFor example, for the first-time viewer the clown figure in the image above may seem innocuous, unless at the end of the nineteenth century his popularity was so intense that it started a newspaper war fierce enough to bring forth a whole new term for sensationalist, irresponsible journalismâ€â€Å"yellow journalism. ” Objects such as this comic supplement show â€Å"material civilization,” the objects of everyday life.\r\nIn real(a) Culture Studies in America, Thomas Schlereth provides the quest useful definition o f material glossiness: Material culture can be considered to be the totality of artifacts in a culture, the vast universe of objects used by humankind to cope with the physical world, to speed social intercourse, to delight our fancy, and to create symbols of meaning. . . .\r\nLeland Ferguson argues that material culture includes all â€Å"the things that heap leave behind . . . all of the things people make from the physical worldâ€farm tools, ceramics, houses, furniture, toys, buttons, roads, cities. ” (2) When we study material culture in conjunction with literature, we wed two notions of â€Å"culture” and explore how they relate.\r\nAs critic John tier notes, the first notion of culture is what is often called â€Å"high culture”â€the â€Å"general wreak of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic factors”; and the second is â€Å"lived culture”â€the â€Å"particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group” (2) . In a sense, material culture (as the objects of a lived culture) allows us to see how the overriding intellectual ideas were played out in the daily lives of people in a particular era.\r\nThus, as Schlereth explains, through perusal material culture we can learn about the â€Å"belief systemsâ€the values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptionsâ€of a particular community or night club, usually across time” (3). In reading objects as embedded with meaning, we follow Schlereth’s acquaint that â€Å"objects made or L I T E R AT U R E I N I T S C U LT U R A L C O N T E X T 13\r\nmodified by humans, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, reflect the belief patterns of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased, or used them, and, by extension, the belief patterns of the larger society of which they are a part” (3). The study of material culture, then, can help us better understand the cultures that produced and consumed the literature we rea d today. Thomas Schlereth suggests a number of useful models for studying material culture; his â€Å"Art History figure” is particularly remarkable in that it will help you glide slope works of â€Å"high art,” such as paintings and sculptures, as well. The â€Å"Art History Paradigm” argues that the interpretive objective of examining the artifact is to â€Å"depict the historical development and intrinsic deserve” of it.\r\nIf you are interested in writing an â€Å"Art History Paradigm” reading of material culture, you might look at an object and ask yourself the following questions, taken from Sylvan Barnet’s Short Guide to Writing about Art. These questions apply to any art object: First, we need to know information about the artifact so we can place it in a historical context.\r\nYou might ask yourself: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What is my first response to the work? When and where was the work made? Where would the work originally have been seen? What conclusion did the work serve? In what condition has the work survived? (Barnet 21â€22) In addition, if the artifact is a drawing, painting, or advertisement, you might indispensableness to ask yourself questions such as these: 1.\r\nWhat is the battleground matter? What (if anything) is happening? 2. If the picture is a portrait, how do the furnishings and the background and the angle of the head or the posture of the head and body (as well as the facial expression) feed to our sense of the subject’s character? 3. If the picture is a still life, does it suggest opulence or want? 4. In a landscape, what is the relation between human beings and nature? Are the figures at still in nature, or are they dwarfed by it? Are they one with the horizon, or (because the viewpoint is low) do they stand out against the horizon and perhaps seem in touch with the heavens, or at least with open air?\r\nIf there are woods, are these woods threatening, or are they an invit ing place of refuge? If there is a unclutter, is the clearing a vulnerable place or is it a place of refuge from minacious woods? Do the natural objects in the landscape somehow reflect the emotions of the figures? (Barnet 22â€23; for more questions, see pp. 23â€24) Material culture is a rich and varied resource that ranges from kitchen utensils, to advertisements, to farming tools, to clothing. Unpacking the significance of objects that appear in the stories and poems you read may help you better understand characters and their motives. 14 W H AT I S A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E ? Architecture.\r\nMost of the time we read the hidden meanings of constructions without even view twice. Consider the constructions below: Above: [9089] Anonymous, Capitol mental synthesis at Washington, D. C. (1906), courtesy of Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-121528].\r\nRight: [6889] Anonymous, Facade of the Sam Wah’s Chinese Laundry (c. 1890 â€1 900), courtesy of the capital of Colorado Public Library. Even if we had never seen all of these builds before, it would not take us long to determine which was a government building and which was a smalltown retail establishment. Our having seen thousands of buildings enables us to understand the resolve of a building from architectural clues.\r\nWhen first seeing a work of computer architecture, it is helpful to unpack cultural assumptions. You might ask: 1. What is the purpose of this building? Is it public or private? What activities take place within it? 2. What features of the building reflect this purpose? Which of these features are necessary and which are except conventional?\r\n3. What buildings or building styles does this building allude to? What values are inbred in that allusion? 4. What parts of this building are principally decorative rather than operational? What does the ornament or lack of it say about the stance of the owners or the people who work there? 5. What buildings surround this building?\r\nHow do they affect the way the building is entered? 6. What types of people live or work in this building? How do they move within the space? What do these findings say about the relative social positioning of the occupants? How does the building design restrict or encourage that status? 7. How are people supposed to enter and move through the building? What clues does the building give as to how this movement should take place? L I T E R AT U R E I N I T S C U LT U R A L C O N T E X T 15\r\nThese questions demand two basic assumptions about architecture: (1) architecture reflects and helps establish social status and social relations; and (2) architecture\r\n'