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The United States Civil War forever changed America's moral, economic and social structures. These huge American shifts also produced the sharpest contrast in types of materials produced by American writers. As post-war Americans transitioned with difficulty from slave-master to free men; from wealthy plantation owners to poor white struggling property owners or renters; from slaves to free laborers, post-war writers also dramatically shifted their writing gaze from life about slavery, tension and war to freedom for all, necessary but difficult adjustments and some long-held beliefs that were hard to let go.
The New American Literature works, My Contraband by Louisa May Alcott and Beat Beat Drums by Walt Whitman typify life during the war. In My Contraband, Alcott writes of being locked up in a room with a contraband former slave and his hated, dying half-brother.
Beat Beat Drums poetically tells the reader that war takes anyone and everyone in its path--that everyone, no matter your station, your business or beliefs, is immune from the fallout of war.
In contrast are two excellent Regionalism and Realism pieces, "The Goophered Grapevine" and "Dave's Neckliss" by Charles Chestnutt. Chestnutt masterfully shows in both pieces how the post-war economic climate has radically changed for both Southerners and Northerners --with large-scale economic desolation for the most of the former and economic opportunism for the latter. But the most important post-war message Chestnutt delivers in these pieces is how the white citizenry still hold onto their belief system that owning property and having cheap labor is the most natural arrangement of all and how they are the smarter of the white and black races. This aint necessarily so.
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I think that will work Deb. Thanks for the insight. I am at a complete loss as to my own project. I really love Charge of the Ligtening Brigade. Can you work that in there somewhere.
ReplyDeleteGiven that "Charge of the Light Brigade" is British and Deb is talking entirely about America, probably not.
ReplyDeleteWhat you have here are two distinct sets of observations: one focusing on wartime texts and one focusing on Chesnutt's post-Reconstruction era texts. ...and? What you need is an argument about them. So, focus very specifically, define a topic that is not just a stack of observational readings/a report, and then you will be able to find secondary material to support an argument. If you do another draft of this proposal before Friday's assignment is due, let me know so I can look at it again.
Also, just so it's clear - "New American Literature" isn't a genre. It's a term, or a category, or a grouping that people (now) tend to use to refer to certain things. It's not the same as as referring to Regionalism, which has a very specific critical tradition behind it.