• Here are a few representative examples of Romanticism in art:
John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark. 1749.English 322: American Literature II
J. Gregory Brister, Instructor
This course will focus on the radical changes which have occurred in American literature after the Civil War to the end of the twentieth century. In what ways did America construct a sense of national identity through its literature? Why did the imagists and other modernists revolt against the kinds of writing favored in the nineteenth century? What influence did the emergence of movies have on literature? What is the future of American writing? We will explore and discuss these kinds of questions as we read the the fiction of writers like Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Stephen Crane, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Toni Morrison. We will also consider the major movements in poetry from the time of Whitman and Dickinson to the experimental poems of the modernists and the “confessional” poetry of writers like Sylvia Plath and John Berryman.
We will approach these texts not only as “great works” to be appreciated and enjoyed, but also as historical documents that coincided with and commented on the pressing social and philosophical issues of their time (and ours): racism, equal rights for women, economic inequalities, and individual subjectivity. To this end, we will become acquainted with several different theoretical approaches (race theory, feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis) to help us better read and talk about the literature.
Romanticism: The Precursor to Realism
"Realism" is the term used to describe the type of writing which characterized American literature between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I (1865-1914). Of course, realism never "died": as today's best seller list reveals, it's still the most prevalent (and clearly favored) form of writing. To understand the realists, it's necessary to understand what they were reacting against: Romanticism. Below are some useful (and interesting) links to help contextualize what we'll be discussing in class.
•An indexed list of Romanticism sites
• Here are a few representative examples of Romanticism in art: John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark. 1749.
William Blake's The Ancient of Days. 1794. 
John Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare.
1790.
If Romanticism (as the images above evidence) is about fantasy, the imagination, and ideals, realism is the sober, ostensibly more objective counterpoint. Realism—in writing and in art—aspires, we might say, to the photograph (a technology that was spreading rapidly around the time of the Civil War). Note the differences, not only in approach, but also in subject matter, in the above images to these below:
John Singer Sargent's Madame X. 1884. 
Alfred Steigletz'
Winter on Fifth Avenue. 1895(?)
Pictures like this one (after the Battle of Gettysburg) were calling the idealism of war into question.
Realism Links:
• Here are more Civil War photographs from the Library of Congress.
• Images of African-Americans in the nineteenth century.
• Stephen Railton's "Mark Twain in his Time" site.
• During Reconstruction, African-Americans lived under "Jim Crow" laws
• As an indication of White America's racial fear, the best selling book of 1905 was Thomas Dixon Jr.'s The Clansman, a Romantic look at the founding of the KKK, of all things. The story was later adapted by D. W. Griffith for the silver screen, retitled Birth of a Nation.
• On a more positive side, women began, en masse, to resist the roles ascribed to them by patriarchal culture. Here's a funny postcard from this time. Click the image to go to a site dedicated to the "New Woman."
Cheers!
• While we're on the subject, it's important to remember that women are still not considered equal (according to the Constitution), in America. If you think feminism is no longer necessary (as some students might), you should question why you think so—and what you can do to get women recognized as equal citizens in your lifetime. Go to the National Organization of Women site and get involved.
• Those wacky Victorians. Here's a site dedicated to the "sciences" of mesmerism and spiritualism that will give you some context for understanding what was so frightening about James' The Turn of the Screw to his contemporary audience.
• For you naysayers who don't believe in ghosts, read some stories about the supernatural in haunted Kansas to get in the proper frame of mind to read James.
Crane, Dreiser, and Naturalism
After realism established itself in American literature, it took a "naturalistic" turn towards the end of the nineteenth century. "Naturalism" is a form of realism wherein the author approaches characters as a scientist approaches lab mice. These authors, influenced by Darwin, strove to objectively present humans as animals responding to their environment. Think of naturalism as realism's grittier, more pessimistic twin. Here's a good supplement to our discussion of naturalism.
• Here's a place to learn more about Stephen Crane and, while you're at it, here's a FAQ page about nineteenth century prostitution.
"Modernism" is a term used to define the radical experimentation with language and style the coincided, roughly, with the end of the First World War. Although the range of the period is disputable, it's usually dated around 1914-1945 (but it happened in art a little earlier, as the images below evidence). To get an idea of the modernist's revolutionary break with the art that came before, take a look at Picasso's Les Demoiselle's de Avignon (1907):
and 
Picasso's Reservoir Horta (1909)
Duchamp's Nude Descending Staircase (1912).
As you can see, these paintings radically break with the realist images. Not only is there no intent to depict "lifelike" figures, but the artists are drawing attention to their own style and subjective perception (Cubist paintings like these emphasize the way the artist sees the subjects—instead of trying to paint a model the same way, day after day, as if the model hadn't moved or the light hadn't changed was false to them: rather, the cubists thought, why not show the slight changes and movements in the subject in a single image?)
• Here's a modernism links site.
• Pages on Dickinson and Whitman.
• Here are pages on some of the original imagists: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Williams (check out the links page on this one!) and H. D.
• If you don't dig Freud (the modernists sure did), there's probably something wrong with you.
• A clear dividing line between the writing of the past and the modern age can be found in the poetry of World War I. (Some of these poems are graphic and gory, so be warned). Here are some images from WWI.
• Who doesn't like flappers? 
Click on the flapper to go to a page devoted to women's fashion of the 20s. Learn about prohibition, flapper culture, the Great Depression, see Walker Evans' depression-era photos, and read up about communism in America. 
• Check out these pages on Gertrude Stein, e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Dos Passos, Hurston, Wright, and Hemingway.
• Click on Faulkner and his dogs to go to "the" Faulkner page. 
Contemporary American Literature (since 1945)
“Postmodernism” is the term most commonly used to define literature and art produced after World War II (1930-45). Although it is (as its name implies) a continuation of modernism, it is also a rejection of it. If the
modernists were angst-driven and saw art as a refuge from the horrors of the world, postmodernists, who saw
war pushed to an even more horrendous extreme (the Holocaust, the A-bomb) came to see the world (and art itself) as meaningless and absurd. Instead of seeing art as separate from mass culture, postmodern and “pop” artists made “low culture” part of their project by appropriating comics, advertising, film, and popular music.
As a literary movement, postmodernism corresponds with the poststructuralist movement in philosophy which
argues that individuals are created by language and that language is in its very nature indeterminate and inadequate.
Here are a few representative images from postmodern art:
Campbell's Soup Can, Andy Warhol, 1966 
Marilyn, Andy Warhol, 1967
Masterpiece, Ray Lichtenstein, 1962 
Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Jeff Koons,
1988.
Untitled, Barbara Kruger, 1987
View more pop art at the Andy Warhol Museum.
As the images above illustrate, postmodern art embraces popular culture, mass media (comics, advertising, popular music) and presents it at once with admiration and with criticism. The ease with whish postmodern art can be appropriated by commodity culture (cf. the Andy Warhol puzzle, owned by Campbell's, Inc., and the Barbara Kruger I Shop Therefore I Am shopping bag) might make you wonder about the efficacy of pop art as lasting and meaningful social critique.
Toni Morrison
Special acknowledgement goes to Lesley Ginsberg for many of the links and some of the images on this page.
