North American Literatures & Culture

Question 1

"The landing of Columbus"

Accepted Answer

painting by albert bierstadt indigenous people covered in darkness, while the explorers are covered in light landscape in center, not Columbus

Question 2

Mappae mundi

Accepted Answer

maps based on knowledge e.g. from the bible Columbus refused to put America on a mappae mundi first person to do so: Americo Vespucci Waldseemüller Map: 1st mappae mundi including America naming the continent was a form of claiming it for Europe --> "discovery is an invention of the New World" - Edmundo O'Gorman

Question 3

Portolani

Accepted Answer

map based on geographical information; usually made by sailors

Question 4

Massachusetts Bay Colony

Accepted Answer

Purists believed in Calivinism Wanted to further enhance the Reformation in England but had to flee from there

Question 5

Puritans/Congretíonalists

Accepted Answer

Voyage to "New" World in 1630 Founded Boston and Salem

Question 6

Pilgrims/Separatists

Accepted Answer

arrived on the Mayflower (Compact) Plymouth Plantation (1620)

Question 7

Puritan Literature & Culture

Accepted Answer

puritan sermons: style usually plain; enriched by religious allusions & quotations Structure: Quotation from bible Doctrines applications

Question 8

European population in America from 1600 to 1775

Accepted Answer

15.000 people in 1630 when there were almost no fixed settlements 1775 2.5 million inhabitants 1619 first slaves indentured servants: sell their work power for several years (money, etc.)

Question 9

English/British colonies in the 17th & 18th centuries (population)

Accepted Answer

increase in colonial population: 52.000 in 1650 250.000 in 1700 2.5 million in 1775

Question 10

English/British Colonies in the 17th & 18th Centuries (culture)

Accepted Answer

Culture: imitation of english lifestylesliterary market shaped by british tastes & normsno professional writers yetLondon remained the base of publishing business

Question 11

English British Colonies in the 17th & 18th Centuries (Economics and politics)

Accepted Answer

Economics/politics: Mercantilism/economic protectionism on part of GB Colonies: economic growth & growing self-confidence American merchant marine Urbanization of the American coast Tobacco traders: monopoly on the British tobacco market; protected by the system; very lucrative crop for the southern colonies economic diversification in the colonies colonies increased in size; proserpirty and self-confidence:british and colonial interests drift apart, when England puts higher taxes on products that are imported/exported from colonies --> colonies have to pay for French-English war

Question 12

English/British Colonies in the 17th & 18th Centuries (diversification)

Accepted Answer

Economic diversification in the colonies: fostered because Britain is trying to import from colonies then from foreign countries (cheaper): Silk, tobacco, lumber, etc. New England sees a decline in land owning, soil, etc.: first poorhouse opened in Boston in 1665 Chesapeake Bay: 1660 - 1675: new immigrants, brings wealth and education; new political elite: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe (4/5 first presidents)

Question 13

Colonies boycott England examples

Accepted Answer

Colonies increased in size; prosperity and self-confidenceBritish and colonial interests drift apart, when England puts higher taxes on products that are imported/exported from colonies → colonies have to pay for French-english WarThey boycott English products and attack Boston Massacre 1770Boston Tea Party 1773

Question 14

English/British Colonies in the 17th & 18th Centuries Republicanism

Accepted Answer

Line of thought that wants virtuous citizens; ideology opposes central government; John Locke --> natural rights

Question 15

English/British Colonies in the 17th & 18th Centuries Scottish Enlightenment

Accepted Answer

European rationalism/common sense philosophy:People is invested with a moral stance that wants them to improve social and economic conditions

Question 16

Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)

Accepted Answer

Common Sense (1774) colonial bestseller argues for colonial independene from GB Reason and common insight will make it clear which way the American colonies should go --> parting ways with GB "A government of our own is natural right" "the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind" "new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty for every part of Europe."

Question 17

Declaration of Independece (1776)

Accepted Answer

didn't affect slaves, women, propertiless men Contrast to Thomas Paine (Common Sense) who wanted to include women and African American

Question 18

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Accepted Answer

Secular rationalistic ideas about the individual; example of enlightenment thought Model for American success stories seen on 100 $ bills, coins, stamps Auto-didact: self-improvement & self-education At age 42: political carreer

Question 19

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Accepted Answer

greatest achievement as a writer; started in 1771 but never completed it 1818 edition and its 3 major parts: Focus on youth and manhood "art of Virtue" rise to prosperity, work as philanthropist & politician Erratum as metaphor: error in printing or a defective font of type Franklin' "mistakes" indulgent attitude towards younger self gap between narrating I and the subject of the autobiography individual responsibility for success self-improvement, self-discipline, frugal lifestyle individual self-realization Moral perfection: wish to live without commiting fault at anytime list of virtues; that he needs to tackle one after another faced many diffculties on that way tried to schedule his day perfectly

Question 20

Philiss Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784)

Accepted Answer

Born in West Africa Brought to America on the Boat Phillis Slave of the Boston Wheatley family wrote Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) Manumission in 1773 = act of freeing a slave most famous: On being brought from Africa to America (1773)

Question 21

On being Brought from Africa to America (1773)

Accepted Answer

poem raises issues of race, slavery and religion stereotypical associations with black and white and the value system implied by them gesture of submission exposure of the ways in which Christian thought and imagery transports racists stereotypes volume & poems forgeround her status as slave --> lack of autonomy critique of racist stereotypes and affirmation of her uniqueness

Question 22

Typical features of the historical novel as established by Scott:

Accepted Answer

Man & society as products of historical change This change is the major focus of the historical novel Protagonist: average person Important historical figures are exponents of change, not its trigger Realistic descriptions of characters and settings Often adventurous plot and idealization History as process and progress (→ stadial model of history) Waverley (1814): Scotland’s Union with England (1707) depicted as part of this progress

Question 23

Antebellum U.S.: adaptation & development of Scott’s model

Accepted Answer

Individual characters with representative (national) dimensions Common settings:Puritan beginningsConflicts at frontier RevolutionChivalric South vs materialistic North Attempt at verisimilitude, historical accuracy Trying to create a truthful image of history

Question 24

James Fenimore Cooper (1789 – 1851)

Accepted Answer

Huge literary output Leatherstocking cycleThe Pioneers; The Sources of the SusquehannaThe Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 Example for US adaptation of Scott’s modelAmerican frontier: confrontation between different stages of civilization (Native Americans vs. white settlers)Impossibility of integration/assimiliation (←→ ScottCentral character: Natty Bumppo

Question 25

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789 – 1867)

Accepted Answer

Short stories & novels: A new England Tale Redwood Hope Leslie (1827)Set in colonial time / concerned with puritan cultural and social norms

Question 26

Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Hope Leslie's take on history:

Accepted Answer

Juxtaposition of Natives and Whites: none is inherently better as portrayed Parallels between the two massacres:Victims are unpreparedMassacres of men on women and childrenFamily ideology/elevation of motherhood – makes this especially atrocious Chapter 8 in part 2: Several years after massacre Hope Leslie is writing a letter to Everell (residing in England) Hope’s Panting:Forest glade – a boy is sleeping under a birch tree – a gaunt wolf looks at him – at the same time a man with a musket levelled at the animal arrivesPainting for Mr Fletcher (Everell’s father and Hope’s ward)Metaphor for Everell’s rescue (who was actually saved by Magawisca but isnt seen on the painting --> so it is portrayed like she is saved by a white man) --> Painting is perfect examplfe for "constructing history" Constructing history: cultural norms become doubtful when juxtaposed with a different point of view hierarchy between cultures mirrored by gender hierarchy deconstruction of basic dichotomies rightfulness of the law of progress not clearly confirmed ambiguity of signs

Question 27

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)

Accepted Answer

One of the best regarded American 19th century novelists Uses Puritan history as source themesAchievement and guiltImperfection of human natureInterest in moral and psychological implications of actions

Question 28

"Young Goodman Brown" (1835)

Accepted Answer

Nathaniel Hawthorne set in 17th-century Salem Village exploration of guilt, the nature of evil, psychology, suspicion ambiguity Brown meets a stranger in the forest stranger has devilish features Brown tries to resist the devils invitation to join his congregation his faith is shattered when he sees good people from his village at the congregation he is going there and also meets his wife unclear if he halluscinates Sin as part of human nature? Brown's own capacity of evil New Engladn: as plac eof suspicion, sin, bigotry Questioning of positive American self-image, cultural critique

Question 29

Nature's Nation: American Nature and National Identity

Accepted Answer

Nature: one prominent source of American identitty in 19th century = America is the nature's nation Competing conceptualizations of nature:landscape/nature in literature of colonizationwilderness or garden Eden"virgin" land American nature in poetry - example:The Prairies by William Cullen Bryant

Question 30

Slavery in British North America

Accepted Answer

1619: first slaves in British colonies Many “white” immigrants → indentured servants Profitableness of slavery Slaves were “movable property” → object; tradable → chattel slavery slavery abolished in Northern states in late 18th to early 19th centuries Civil War ends slavery in South: 13th amendment More racist than slavery in antic times or African slavery 1790: ca. 700,000 slaves (pop. 3,9 million)1850: ca 3 mill. Slaves (pop. 23,2 million)1860 ca. 4 million slaves (pop. 31,5 mill.)

Question 31

King Cotton

Accepted Answer

Rise of cotton as economic factor after 1800 – Cotton Gin (1793)Turns cotton into manufacturable cotton Slavery extremely profitable

Question 32

Atlantic Slave trade:

Accepted Answer

Slaves from Africa to N.A.; manufactured goods from Europe to Africa; Americas to Europe: non-processed goods

Question 33

Modern experience and modernist aesthetics:

Accepted Answer

“On or around December 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered or a hed had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that, but a change there was, nevertheless …” - (Virginia Woolf, “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”)paintings by Picasso influenced the modernism they broke with what was said to be good taste

Question 34

Modernism Charles Darwin

Accepted Answer

(1809-1882) The Origin of Species (doubting the literal truth of the bible; doubting what was valid at the time)

Question 35

Modernism: Sigmund Freud

Accepted Answer

(1856-1939) theory and discovery of the conscious I; it; Super-Ego The I is not the ruler of the body

Question 36

hallmarks of modernism

Accepted Answer

rejection of traditional order(s) disjunction and fragmentation concern with individual, subjective consciousness

Question 37

Modernism: Ulysses

Accepted Answer

James Joyce written in stream consciousness narrator just switches topics and uses inserts like "... said yes i will Yes." writers tried to capture how thinking works in their writing

Question 38

Modernism William James (1842-1910)

Accepted Answer

traditional psychology says that a river consists of controlled moulded forms of water, but in reality there is water flowing around them and the stream of thought is the same

Question 39

Modernism: Loeffelholz

Accepted Answer

“At the heart of the high modernist aesthetic lay the conviction that the previously sustaining structures of human life, whether social, political, religious or artistic, had been destroyed or shown up as falsehoods or, at best, arbitrary and fragile human constructions.” (Loeffelholz 13/14) “Order, sequence and unity in works of art might well express human desires for coherence rather than reliable intuitions of reality. Generalizations, abstraction, and high-flown writing might conceal rather than convey the real. The form of a story, with its beginnings, complications, and resolutions, might be an artifice imposed on the flux and fragmentation of experience. To the extent that art falsely presented such an order as given or natural, it had to be renovated.” (Loeffelholz 14)

Question 40

Modernist Literature

Accepted Answer

literature that deals with the "modern" world that is tylistically/formally innovative produced in the interwar period typical features: rejection of traditional order(s) disjunction and fragmentation concern with individual, subjective consciousness modernisms rather than modernism (not all writers subscribed to the same ideas)

Question 41

early modernism

Accepted Answer

avantgarde phase (futurism, imagism, vorticsim (early 20th century)

Question 42

high modernism

Accepted Answer

the masterpieces of modernism (1920s)

Question 43

institutionalization of modernism (new critics)

Accepted Answer

1940s & after

Question 44

American Modernisms

Accepted Answer

Ickstadt: progressivist discourserealism, regionalism, naturalism modernist discourseearly 20th-cent. American Literature shaped by tension & interaction between these discourses of modernity 1908 art exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery 1913: Armory Showboth were first exhibitions to show european modernism to an American audience

Question 45

T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888 - 1965)

Accepted Answer

The Waste Land (1922) epitomy of modernist poetry consists of 5 sections each section contains various number of stanzas of varying length lack of coherence in content and style April is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring and rainWinter kept us warm, coveringEarth in forgetful snow, feedingA little life with dried tubers.--> snow is melting and the devastation of World War II is uncovered Cary Nelson: “The poemÄs fragnets mirror a shattered world, and its allusions, however erudite, recall a civilized culture many felt they had lost

Question 46

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)

Accepted Answer

imagism using an image to convey a certain idea of an experience sometimes just a few words or syllables make up a whole poem image: "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time" Pound

Question 47

Victorianism: Queen Victoria (1819-1901, reign 1837-1901)

Accepted Answer

Victorianism as normative system of values & beliefs, practices, attitudes cultural independence, American Renaissance vs. shared cultural norms, values, etc. shared system of communication based on the English language & proliferation of print media system of values: moral principles, rational order, self-improvement, self-denial, belief in progress, didacticism, high estimation for the family, the home, and motherhood

Question 48

(U.S.) Victorian culture: gender as basic category of classification

Accepted Answer

dichotomous constructions of male & female "nature"  Barbara Welter: true womanhood (piety, purity, submissiveness, domesticity), cult ofdomesticity, separate spheres (public/private), double standard legitimization of unequal distribution of power male norm & female deviation – woman as "other", alterity  Opfermann: assumptions about "male" and "female" nature projected onto literary sphere & ostensibly reflected in male and female writing

Question 49

domestic vs woman's novel

Accepted Answer

domestic: central focus on home & the values of the domestic woman's novel (Baym) – better: novel of female development, female bildungsroman--> transatlantic phenomenon, popularity of the Brontë sisters & E. Barrett Browning

Question 50

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), Little Women (1868/69)

Accepted Answer

set in New England during CW, March family: Marmee, Jo, Meg, Beth, Amy & Mr. March (chaplain), bildung/development of March sisters, submission to dominant cultural values from aspiring girls to "little women; " pilgrimage as metaphor & plot pattern; marriage plot overt vs. covert messages: transgressive potential, costs of female self-sacrifice, dissatisfaction with cultural norms and social roles, inner struggles, repressed anger – Civil War as metaphor

Englisch (Fach) / North American Literatures & Culture (Lektion)