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Modernism was generally based on idealism and a utopian vision of human life and society and a belief in progress.

Tate. “Postmodernism.” Tate, 1 Jan. 1963, www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism.

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The term was first used around 1970. As an art movement postmodernism to some extent defies definition - as there is no one postmodern style or theory on which it is hinged.

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Contemporary "Postmodernism" 1950-present Fact #1 

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Contemporary "Postmodernism" 1950-present Fact #1 

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Postmodernism is a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism

Sutori, www.sutori.com/en/story/post-modern-1950-s-1990-s--4wRBs7bKqHdHDgCUG7FxZvsL. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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Literary Movement Postmodern - 1950s - 1990s Postmodernism is a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship wit…

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Vietnam War
1954-1975

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Korean War
1950-1953

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Famous Authors and Works:

Alice Walker

Wallace Stevens

e.e. cummings

Maya Angelou

Anne Sexton

James Baldwin

Richard Wright

Sandra Cisneros

Amy Tan

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Period Characteristics:

1. Influenced by studies of media, language, and information technology.

2. Sense that little is unique; culture endlessly duplicates itself.

3. New literary forms and techniques:works composed of only dialogue, or combining fiction and nonfiction, experimenting with physical appearance of their work.

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For the majority of Americans, the 2000s was a “lost decade,” with wages flatlining or declining.

Cooper, Marianne. “The Downsizing of the American Dream.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 26 July 2018, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/american-dreams/408535/.

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People used to believe they would someday move on up in the world. Now they're more concerned with just holding on to what they have.

At the height of the Great Recession, Jennifer Silva, a sociology professor at Bucknell University, interviewed working-class young people (ages 24 to 34) about coming of age in turbulent economic times. With good jobs harder to find and educational opportunities financially out of reach, Silva discovered that the young adults she talked with were letting go of traditional markers of adulthood. Rather than planning to go to college, buy a home, get married, and start a family, these young adults were bouncing from one low-paid job to the next, taking on debt to weather the tough times, and were wary of romantic attachments. Lacking the resources needed to stay afloat in the new economy, these young people were no longer setting their sights on the very things that have long symbolized the American dream: a home, a job, a family.

Recent data indicates they are in good company. This year a survey by Fannie Mae found that the share of consumers who said they would buy a home if they were to move has decreased and is now at an all-time survey low of 60 percent. According to the latest employment statistics, 1.8 million Americans have not looked for work in at least the previous month, and 35 percent of them don't believe there are any jobs available. Another 6.5 million are only working part-time and would prefer to be working more. In 2015, only 28 percent of those surveyed by The Atlantic and Aspen Institute felt that a healthy marriage was an important part of their personal sense of the American dream and just 14 percent said that having children was important.

For the majority of Americans, the 2000s was a " lost decade," with wages flatlining or declining. Middle-class jobs disappeared during the Great Recession and many have never come back. Instead, many of the fastest-growing sectors are those that pay the least. Median income remains below pre-recession levels. How is all of this influencing how Americans are feeling about the American dream?

Surveys continue to show that Americans, in large numbers, still believe in many of the tenets of the American dream. For example, majorities of Americans believe that hard work will lead to success. But, their belief in the American dream is wavering. Between 1986 and 2011, around 50 percent of those polled by Pew consistently said they felt that the American dream was "somewhat alive." However, over that same time period, the share who said it was "very alive" decreased by about half, and the share that felt it was "not really alive" more than doubled.

Majorities of Americans think it will get worse in the future. Survey after survey finds that when asked about the next generation, Americans are pessimistic, saying that it willbe harder and take more effort for the next generation to get ahead.

These gloomy sentiments may be part of a more general shift: The majority of Americans once thought the playing field was more or less level. No more. Back in 1998, a Gallup poll about equal opportunity found that 68 percent thought the economic system was basically fair, while only 29 percent thought it was basically unfair. In 2013, feelings about fairness had reversed: Only 44 percent thought the economic system was fair, while 50 percent had come to feel it was unfair. Another 2013 poll found that by an almost two-to-one margin (64 to 33 percent), Americans agreed that "the U.S. no longer offers an equal chance to get ahead."

Perhaps as a result of all of this, there are signs that the very idea of the American dream is changing. The American dream has long been equated with moving up the class ladder and owning a home. But polling leading up to the 2012 election revealed something new-middle-class Americans expressed more concern about holding on to what they had than they were with getting more. Echoing these concerns, Pew reported in 2015 that when asked which they would prefer-financial security or moving up the income ladder-92 percent selected security. This is a seven percentage point increase since just 2011, when 85 percent selected security over economic mobility.

And while majorities of Americans continue to say that home ownership is a key part of the American dream in general, when a survey asked people which things were the most important to their personal American dream, only 26 percent selected "owning a nice home" as a top choice, while 37 percent chose "achieving financial security" and 36 percent chose "being debt free." In a 2013 Allstate/ National Journal Heartland Monitor poll that asked respondents to define what it means to be middle class, 54 percent of respondents chose "having the ability to keep up with expenses and hold a steady job while not falling behind or taking on too much debt," and only 43 percent defined being middle class as earning more, buying a home, and saving.

For more and more families, achieving the traditional American dream has become just that-a dream. Instead, what surveys indicate is that people are downsizing their definition of the American dream. Today, the desire to own a home or to move up economically is often replaced by a desire to be debt free and to have financial stability.

These developments point to a possible change in the underlying psychology of the American dream, and thus for the country more broadly. When people are more concerned about falling down than they are with moving up, planning ahead and having big goals is not only pointless but painful, since time and again something outside of one's control comes along and upends their plans. There are grave consequences to this: People stop making investments in their education; they delay or never have children; they stop buying homes, they are less likely to take entrepreneurial risks; and they defer their dreams, often indefinitely.

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People used to believe they would someday move on up in the world. Now they're more concerned with just holding on to what they have.

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During the 1990s, living standards have been under continual assault from all directions, such as cut in wages, loss of jobs or higher taxes.

“The End of the American Dream.” Socialist Alternative, www.socialistalternative.org/why-we-need-a-labor-party/end-american-dream/. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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“Everyone Wants the American dream. But the dream isn’t there anymore. You fall more than you climb.” — Comment by worker interviewed after November 1994 elections. During the 1990s, the idea of the American dream, that the next generation will do better than the present one, has now all but disa

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The 1980's was the year the American Dream died.

PomeroySays. “The American Dream Died in the 1980s.” Medium, Medium, 26 Sept. 2024, pomeroysays.medium.com/the-american-dream-died-in-the-1980s-a6e487af5c5c.

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Gen X cousin Lorie, 48 years old, is still trying to get her American Dream. She always dreamed of getting married, having 2 kids, a nice…

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The 1980s were the final years of the Cold War. Political tensions were rife, and social lives were getting more complex.

“A Story of 1980s, Racism and the American Dream.” The Financial Express, thefinancialexpress.com.bd/lifestyle/entertainment/a-story-of-1980s-racism-and-the-american-dream-1667912730. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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The 1980s were the final years of the Cold War. Political tensions were rife, and social lives were getting more complex. What that period looked like in the eyes of a teenager? How distant was achieving the American dream?

This is the story of Armageddon Time , directed by James Gray, based on his childhood upbringing in a New York neighbourhood. Seen through the eyes of Paul Graff, the audience can witness his realisation of systematic injustice, the guilt of being privileged, and a glimpse of social and political complexities present in '80s America.

Paul is a teenage boy living with his middle-class Jewish family in Queens, New York. He is a happy, shy and curious boy with a penchant for art. Though he is good at what he loves to do, his parents are not supportive of him: they think he should pursue a more productive skill as a person from a barely struggling middle-income family. Paul's parents and siblings barely understand him, except Grandfather Aaron, who inspires Paul to pursue his dream.

In school, Paul is a constant troublemaker. He befriends Johnny, an African-American boy who lives with his grandmother in a poor neighbourhood. They have a knack for causing a ruckus in the class, but Johnny gets the most punishment when they are caught. Paul is curious to know why he doesn't get the equal penalty.

Racist remarks by his teachers and classmates make him realise that Johnny is a part of the systemic injustice that has been happening in the United States for centuries. Even though civil rights were officially achieved in the post-Martin Luther King era, the fangs of racism are still prevalent in this reality.

Even though he realises this inequality, he first tries to take advantage of it. He makes Johnny the scapegoat to take the blame for most of his mischief, and Johnny seems to accept it without much talking.

Little does Paul know that Johnny learned to cope with this society. And when he understands, he is hit with guilt, the guilt of constantly earning the white privilege he didn't ask for, and the audience can feel that.

After causing enough trouble while being a partner in crimes with Johnny, Paul is transferred to a private school where his elder brother studied. He is soon met with the prejudice of being friends with a Black person and being from a middle-income Jewish family in an American society ruled by the 80s Reagan administration. While Paul finds it hard to fit in, Grandpa Aaron becomes his comfort zone as he is the only person who can reach out to him. Aaron motivates him with stories of his family's struggle to pursue the American dream, and Anthony Hopkins nails the role perfectly.

Although Armageddon Time refers to the hardline politics of President Reagan's administration, the friendship between different races overcoming the social stigmas played a critical role here. Moreover, the film is also a story of a family struggling for years to assimilate into American society only to achieve a better life everyone dreams of. Director James Gray perfectly portrays them, drawing from his childhood memories.

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A story of 1980s, racism and the American dream

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The 1980s were the final years of the Cold War. Political tensions were rife, and social lives were getting more complex. What that period looked like in the eyes of a teenager? How distant was achieving the American dream?

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The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in gaining more rights for African-Americans, and the United States withdrew from Vietnam.

“1960’s.” Home, transformationoftheamericandream.weebly.com/1960s.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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Music-obsessed retired lawyer, sharing a few thoughts on some choice cuts from my obscenely oversized music collection each day.

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During the 1960's, the Civil Rights Movement began and influenced the nation drastically.

“1960’s.” Home, transformationoftheamericandream.weebly.com/1960s.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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The American Dream drastically changed during the 1960’s in the United States. During the 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement began and influenced the nation drastically. Instead of focusing solely on…

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Harlem Renaissance "the Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s" Fact #2

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Harlem Renaissance "the Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s" Fact #2

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The Roaring Twenties was a period in American history of dramatic social, economic and political change.

“Roaring Twenties: Flappers, Prohibition & Jazz Age ‑ History.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/topics/1920s/roaring-twenties-history. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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Flappers: The 'New Woman'

Perhaps the most familiar symbol of the "Roaring Twenties" is probably the flapper: a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said "unladylike" things, in addition to being more sexually "free" than previous generations. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms.

They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920, though it would be decades before Black women in the South could fully exercise their right to vote without Jim Crow segregation laws.

Millions of women worked in blue-collar jobs, as well as white-collar jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have fewer children.

In 1912, an estimated 16 percent of American households had electricity; by the mid-1920s, more than 60 percent did. And with this electrification came new machines and technologies like the washing machine, the freezer and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgeries of household work.

Did you know? Because the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act did not make it illegal to drink alcohol, only to manufacture and sell it, many people stockpiled liquor before the ban went into effect. Rumor had it that the Yale Club in New York City had a 14-year supply of booze in its basement.

Fashion, Fads and Film Stars

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend-and spend it they did, on movies, fashion and consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothing and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios.

The first commercial radio station in the United States, Pittsburgh's KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920. Two years later Warren G. Harding became the first president to address the nation by radio -and three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households.

People also swarmed to see Hollywood movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week, and actors like Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Tallulah Bankhead became household names.

But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260 in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities.

By 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers' needs-as did the burgeoning oil industry.

The Jazz Age

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. (Some pundits called them "bedrooms on wheels.") What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom and the flea hop were popular dances of the era.

Jazz bands played at venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music's "vulgarity" and "depravity" (and the "moral disasters" it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the hedonism and excitement of the Jazz Age-Fitzgerald once claimed that the 1920s were "the most expensive orgy in history"-while other writers, artists, musicians and designers ushered in a new era of experimental Art Deco and modernist creativity.

Prohibition Era

During the 1920s, some freedoms were expanded while others were curtailed. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, had banned the manufacture and sale of "intoxicating liquors," and at 12 a.m. on January 16, 1920, the federal Volstead Act closed every tavern, bar and saloon in the United States. From then on, it was illegal to sell any "intoxication beverages" with more than 0.5 percent alcohol.

This drove the liquor trade underground-now, instead of ordinary bars, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies, where liquor was controlled by bootleggers, racketeers and other organized crime figures such as Chicago gangster Al Capone. (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago's police force on his payroll.)

To many middle-class white Americans, Prohibition was a way to assert some control over the unruly immigrant masses who crowded the nation's cities. For instance, to the so-called "Drys," beer was known as "Kaiser brew." Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the modern city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock to an earlier and more comfortable time

Immigration and Racism in the 1920s

Prohibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. An anti- Communist "Red Scare" in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist and anti-immigrant hysteria. This led to the passage of an extremely restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924, which set immigration quotas that excluded some people (Eastern Europeans and Asians) in favor of others (Northern Europeans and people from Great Britain, for example).

Immigrants were hardly the only targets in this decade. The Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern cities and the increasing visibility of Black culture-jazz and blues music, for example, and the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance-discomfited some white Americans. Millions of people, not just in the South but across the country, joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

By the middle of the decade, the KKK had two million members, many of whom believed the Klan represented a return to all the "values" that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were trampling. More specifically, the 1920s represented economic and political uplift for Black Americans that threatened the social hierarchy of Jim Crow oppression.

Early Civil Rights Activism

During this decade, Black Americans sought stable employment, better living conditions and political participation. Many who migrated to the North found jobs in the automobile, steel, shipbuilding and meatpacking industries. But with more work came more exploitation.

In 1925, civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph founded the first predominantly Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to draw attention to the discriminatory hiring practices and working conditions for Blacks. And as housing demands increased for Black people in the North, so did discriminatory housing practices that led to a rise of urban ghettos, where Black Americans-excluded from white neighborhoods-were relegated to inadequate, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions.

Black Americans battled for political and civil rights throughout the Roaring Twenties and beyond. The NAACP launched investigations into Black disenfranchisement in the 1920 presidential election, as well as surges of white mob violence, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

The NAACP also pushed for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, a law to make lynching a federal crime, but it was defeated by a Senate filibuster in 1922. A political milestone for Black Americans finally occurred when Oscar De Priest, a Chicago Republican, became the first Black congressman since Reconstruction to be elected to the House of Representatives in 1928.

The Roaring Twenties ushered in several demographic shifts, or what one historian called a "cultural Civil War" between city-dwellers and small-town residents, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and whites, "New Women" and advocates of old-fashioned family values.

But coming immediately after the hardships of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic, the Roaring Twenties also gave many middle-class Americans an unprecedented taste of freedom, unbridled fun and upward economic mobility unsurpassed in U.S. history.

Sources

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably). Smithsonian Magazine.
The Roaring Twenties. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The Roaring 20s. PBS: American Experience.

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Roaring Twenties: Flappers, Prohibition & Jazz Age ‑ HISTORY

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The Roaring Twenties were a Jazz Age burst of prosperity and freedom for flappers and others during the Prohibition era, until the economy crashed in 1929.

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Harlem Renaissance "the Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s" Fact #1

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Harlem Renaissance "the Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s" Fact #1

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The Harlem Renaissance was a movement in the 1920s and 1930s that brought African American art, literature, and music into the mainstream

“Roaring Twenties: Flappers, Prohibition & Jazz Age ‑ History.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/topics/1920s/roaring-twenties-history. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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Flappers: The 'New Woman'

Perhaps the most familiar symbol of the "Roaring Twenties" is probably the flapper: a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said "unladylike" things, in addition to being more sexually "free" than previous generations. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms.

They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920, though it would be decades before Black women in the South could fully exercise their right to vote without Jim Crow segregation laws.

Millions of women worked in blue-collar jobs, as well as white-collar jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have fewer children.

In 1912, an estimated 16 percent of American households had electricity; by the mid-1920s, more than 60 percent did. And with this electrification came new machines and technologies like the washing machine, the freezer and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgeries of household work.

Did you know? Because the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act did not make it illegal to drink alcohol, only to manufacture and sell it, many people stockpiled liquor before the ban went into effect. Rumor had it that the Yale Club in New York City had a 14-year supply of booze in its basement.

Fashion, Fads and Film Stars

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend-and spend it they did, on movies, fashion and consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothing and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios.

The first commercial radio station in the United States, Pittsburgh's KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920. Two years later Warren G. Harding became the first president to address the nation by radio -and three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households.

People also swarmed to see Hollywood movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week, and actors like Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Tallulah Bankhead became household names.

But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260 in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities.

By 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers' needs-as did the burgeoning oil industry.

The Jazz Age

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. (Some pundits called them "bedrooms on wheels.") What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom and the flea hop were popular dances of the era.

Jazz bands played at venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music's "vulgarity" and "depravity" (and the "moral disasters" it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the hedonism and excitement of the Jazz Age-Fitzgerald once claimed that the 1920s were "the most expensive orgy in history"-while other writers, artists, musicians and designers ushered in a new era of experimental Art Deco and modernist creativity.

Prohibition Era

During the 1920s, some freedoms were expanded while others were curtailed. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, had banned the manufacture and sale of "intoxicating liquors," and at 12 a.m. on January 16, 1920, the federal Volstead Act closed every tavern, bar and saloon in the United States. From then on, it was illegal to sell any "intoxication beverages" with more than 0.5 percent alcohol.

This drove the liquor trade underground-now, instead of ordinary bars, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies, where liquor was controlled by bootleggers, racketeers and other organized crime figures such as Chicago gangster Al Capone. (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago's police force on his payroll.)

To many middle-class white Americans, Prohibition was a way to assert some control over the unruly immigrant masses who crowded the nation's cities. For instance, to the so-called "Drys," beer was known as "Kaiser brew." Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the modern city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock to an earlier and more comfortable time

Immigration and Racism in the 1920s

Prohibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. An anti- Communist "Red Scare" in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist and anti-immigrant hysteria. This led to the passage of an extremely restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924, which set immigration quotas that excluded some people (Eastern Europeans and Asians) in favor of others (Northern Europeans and people from Great Britain, for example).

Immigrants were hardly the only targets in this decade. The Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern cities and the increasing visibility of Black culture-jazz and blues music, for example, and the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance-discomfited some white Americans. Millions of people, not just in the South but across the country, joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

By the middle of the decade, the KKK had two million members, many of whom believed the Klan represented a return to all the "values" that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were trampling. More specifically, the 1920s represented economic and political uplift for Black Americans that threatened the social hierarchy of Jim Crow oppression.

Early Civil Rights Activism

During this decade, Black Americans sought stable employment, better living conditions and political participation. Many who migrated to the North found jobs in the automobile, steel, shipbuilding and meatpacking industries. But with more work came more exploitation.

In 1925, civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph founded the first predominantly Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to draw attention to the discriminatory hiring practices and working conditions for Blacks. And as housing demands increased for Black people in the North, so did discriminatory housing practices that led to a rise of urban ghettos, where Black Americans-excluded from white neighborhoods-were relegated to inadequate, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions.

Black Americans battled for political and civil rights throughout the Roaring Twenties and beyond. The NAACP launched investigations into Black disenfranchisement in the 1920 presidential election, as well as surges of white mob violence, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

The NAACP also pushed for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, a law to make lynching a federal crime, but it was defeated by a Senate filibuster in 1922. A political milestone for Black Americans finally occurred when Oscar De Priest, a Chicago Republican, became the first Black congressman since Reconstruction to be elected to the House of Representatives in 1928.

The Roaring Twenties ushered in several demographic shifts, or what one historian called a "cultural Civil War" between city-dwellers and small-town residents, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and whites, "New Women" and advocates of old-fashioned family values.

But coming immediately after the hardships of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic, the Roaring Twenties also gave many middle-class Americans an unprecedented taste of freedom, unbridled fun and upward economic mobility unsurpassed in U.S. history.

Sources

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably). Smithsonian Magazine.
The Roaring Twenties. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The Roaring 20s. PBS: American Experience.

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Roaring Twenties: Flappers, Prohibition & Jazz Age ‑ HISTORY

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The Roaring Twenties were a Jazz Age burst of prosperity and freedom for flappers and others during the Prohibition era, until the economy crashed in 1929.

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Prohibition
1920-1933

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"The New Negro Movement"
1919-1925

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Harlem Renaissance "the Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s"

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Harlem Renaissance "the Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s"

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Famous Authors and Works:

James Weldon Johnson

Claude McKay

Countee Cullen

Langston Hughes (poetry)

Zora Neale Hurston

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Harlem Renaissance "The Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s"

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Harlem Renaissance "The Jazz Age" "The Roaring 20s"

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Period Characteristics:

Black cultural movement in Harlem, New York

2. Some poetry rhythms based on spirituals and jazz, lyrics on the blues, and diction from the street talk of the ghettos

3. Other poetry used conventional lyrical forms

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During the 1950's, everything from leisure activities to automobiles to appliances pushed for sameness and for keeping up with ones neighbors.

“1950s: An American Dream? : Online Exhibits : Exhibits.” Smoky Hill Museum, www.smokyhillmuseum.org/exhibits/online_exhibits_folder/1950s-an-american-dream.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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1950s: An American Dream?

Many have a nostalgic view of the 1950s. On the surface, this decade beamed with prosperity with new homes, automobiles and appliances. Yet, under this decade's shiny appearance, many felt pressure to conform to societal norms.

The American dream of the 1950s centered on nuclear families living in modern, suburban homes. However, not all was ideal. Family roles were changing. The business industry used color to target consumer behaviors. Everything from leisure activities to automobiles to appliances pushed for sameness and for keeping up with ones neighbors. The countryside itself shifted as new highways were built. Changes were brewing below the surface of the American dream.

After American servicemen returned home from WWII, many women lost their jobs and returned to homemaking duties. Societal norms said women should manage the household and care for children.

Feminine images shown by media shaped the stereotypical housewife. Many women embraced this image. Others rebelled. Many sought jobs to raise their status and to eliminate the boredom of suburban living.

In 1957, Betty Friedan attended a class reunion at Smith College and surveyed former classmates. She discovered women were dissatisfied with their lives. They felt the media's image of women was inaccurate. While these women were educated, many felt displaced from society. They felt stuck in the role as a housewife. This prompted Friedan to write the book, Feminine Mystique (1963) that challenged the traditional homemaker's role and prompted change for women's rights.

Friedan criticized Dr. Benjamin Spock's guidance on the mother's role in the home. Friedan's book prompted a review of the ideas on traditional gender roles in the 1950s. The term, "feminine mystique" described the cultural acceptance and erroneous ideal of the housewife. It dispelled the myths that were at the core

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1950s: An American Dream? : Online Exhibits : Exhibits : Smoky Hill Museum

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1950s: An American Dream? Many have a nostalgic view of the 1950s. On the surface, this decade beamed with prosperity with new homes, automobiles and appliances. Yet, under this decade's shiny appearance, many felt pressure to conform to societal norms. The American dream of the 1950s centered on nuclear families living in modern, suburban homes.

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The American dream of the 1950s centered on nuclear families living in modern, suburban homes.

“1950s: An American Dream? : Online Exhibits : Exhibits.” Smoky Hill Museum, www.smokyhillmuseum.org/exhibits/online_exhibits_folder/1950s-an-american-dream.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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1950s: An American Dream?

Many have a nostalgic view of the 1950s. On the surface, this decade beamed with prosperity with new homes, automobiles and appliances. Yet, under this decade's shiny appearance, many felt pressure to conform to societal norms.

The American dream of the 1950s centered on nuclear families living in modern, suburban homes. However, not all was ideal. Family roles were changing. The business industry used color to target consumer behaviors. Everything from leisure activities to automobiles to appliances pushed for sameness and for keeping up with ones neighbors. The countryside itself shifted as new highways were built. Changes were brewing below the surface of the American dream.

After American servicemen returned home from WWII, many women lost their jobs and returned to homemaking duties. Societal norms said women should manage the household and care for children.

Feminine images shown by media shaped the stereotypical housewife. Many women embraced this image. Others rebelled. Many sought jobs to raise their status and to eliminate the boredom of suburban living.

In 1957, Betty Friedan attended a class reunion at Smith College and surveyed former classmates. She discovered women were dissatisfied with their lives. They felt the media's image of women was inaccurate. While these women were educated, many felt displaced from society. They felt stuck in the role as a housewife. This prompted Friedan to write the book, Feminine Mystique (1963) that challenged the traditional homemaker's role and prompted change for women's rights.

Friedan criticized Dr. Benjamin Spock's guidance on the mother's role in the home. Friedan's book prompted a review of the ideas on traditional gender roles in the 1950s. The term, "feminine mystique" described the cultural acceptance and erroneous ideal of the housewife. It dispelled the myths that were at the core

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1950s: An American Dream? : Online Exhibits : Exhibits : Smoky Hill Museum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1950s: An American Dream? Many have a nostalgic view of the 1950s. On the surface, this decade beamed with prosperity with new homes, automobiles and appliances. Yet, under this decade's shiny appearance, many felt pressure to conform to societal norms. The American dream of the 1950s centered on nuclear families living in modern, suburban homes.

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During the 1940's, the nation leaped into World War II, forcing its economy to recover during wartime.

“1940’s.” Home, transformationoftheamericandream.weebly.com/1940s.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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The 1940's brought a whole new set of problems to the United States. Rather than picking itself out of the Great Depression, the nation leaped into World War II, forcing its economy to recover during wartime. The completion of innovative inventions also paved the way for a higher standard of living among all Americans, rich and poor, by facilitating the hardships of life. The arrival of World War II also led to the empowerment of women around the nation. While men were being shipped off to Europe to fight the war, job availability rose and women rose to fill those empty positions. Now, women were able to sustain themselves, entailing greater freedom and rights. Although the actual American Dream only slightly fluctuated throughout the 40's, great social change came about, especially regarding women. The American Dream still consisted of the white picket fence suburban home, two children, and employment; however, the standard of living started to rise. For example, the invention of the selective central heating became increasingly common throughout the nation. However small, these inventions improved the lives of millions of Americans ever so slightly.

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The 1940's brought a whole new set of problems to the United States. Rather than picking itself out of the Great Depression, the nation leaped into World War II, forcing its economy to recover during...

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During the 1930's, the ideal American Dream consisted of three criterions: two children, a marriage, and a three-bedroom house with the infamous white picket fence.

“1930’s.” Home, transformationoftheamericandream.weebly.com/1930s.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

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During the 1930's, the ideal American Dream consisted of three criterions: two children, a marriage, and a three-bedroom house with the infamous white picket fence. The American Dream rose to its greatest fame during the 1930's as a result of the on-going Great Depression from 1929 to 1939. Thousands of Americans were going through tough times and looked up to the American Dream as a goal to achieve and strive for. The American Dream also lured millions of immigrants annually into the relatively new nation, further worsening the low employment rates and increasing poverty. At the beginning of the 1930's, one quarter of all wage-earning workers were unemployed, approximately 15 million Americans. During the 1930's, another one of the parts to the ideal American Dream was the ability to feed one's family. The Dust Bowl occurred throughout the 30's, forcing farmers in the midwest to move and contributing to the rising unemployment.

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During the 1930's, the ideal American Dream consisted of three criterions: two children, a marriage, and a three-bedroom house with the infamous white picket fence. The American Dream rose to its...

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Modernism is characterized by tradition and the search for newer means of cultural expression.

“Modernism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Jan. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism#:~:text=The%20modernist%20movement%20emerged%20during,newer%20means%20of%20cultural%20expression.

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This article is about the cultural and artistic movement. For other uses of the word, see Modernism (disambiguation). For the period in sociology beginning with industrialization, see Modernity.

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Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, mainly in the years following World War I.

“Modernism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 20 Dec. 2024, www.britannica.com/art/Modernism-art.

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Modernism, in the fine arts, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I.

In an era characterized by industrialization, the nearly global adoption of capitalism, rapid social change, and advances in science and the social sciences (e.g., Freudian theory), Modernists felt a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression.

Modernism in literature

The Modernist impulse is fueled in various literatures by industrialization and urbanization and by the search for an authentic response to a much-changed world. Although prewar works by Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and other writers are considered Modernist, Modernism as a literary movement is typically associated with the period after World War I. The enormity of the war had undermined humankind's faith in the foundations of Western society and culture, and postwar Modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation. A primary theme of T.S. Eliot's long poem The Waste Land (1922), a seminal Modernist work, is the search for redemption and renewal in a sterile and spiritually empty landscape. With its fragmentary images and obscure allusions, the poem is typical of Modernism in requiring the reader to take an active role in interpreting the text.

Eliot's was not the dominant voice among Modernist poets. In the United States Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg evocatively described the regions-New England and the Midwest, respectively-in which they lived. The Harlem Renaissance produced a rich coterie of poets, among them Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Alice Dunbar Nelson. Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 and made it the most important organ for poetry not just in the United States but for the English-speaking world. During the 1920s Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and E.E. Cummings expressed a spirit of revolution and experimentation in their poetry.

A sense of disillusionment and loss pervades much American Modernist fiction. That sense may be centred on specific individuals, or it may be directed toward American society or toward civilization generally. It may generate a nihilistic, destructive impulse, or it may express hope at the prospect of change. F. Scott Fitzgerald skewered the American Dream in The Great Gatsby (1925), Richard Wright exposed and attacked American racism in Native Son (1940), Zora Neale Hurston told the story of a Black woman's three marriages in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Ernest Hemingway's early novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) articulated the disillusionment of the Lost Generation. Meanwhile, Willa Cather told hopeful stories of the American frontier, set mostly on the Great Plains, in O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918), John Steinbeck depicted the difficult lives of migrant workers in Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and William Faulkner used stream-of-consciousness monologues and other formal techniques to break from past literary practice in The Sound and the Fury (1929).

Across the Atlantic, the publication of the Irish writer James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 was a landmark event in the development of Modernist literature. Dense, lengthy, and controversial, the novel details the events of one day in the life of three Dubliners through a technique known as stream of consciousness, which commonly ignores orderly sentence structure and incorporates fragments of thought in an attempt to capture the flow of characters' mental processes. Portions of the book were considered obscene, and Ulysses was banned for many years in English-speaking countries. Other European Modernist authors whose works rejected chronological and narrative continuity included Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and the American expatriate Gertrude Stein.

The term Modernism is also used to refer to literary movements other than the European and American movement of the early to mid-20th century. In Latin American literature, Modernismo arose in the late 19th century in the works of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and José Martí. The movement, which continued into the early 20th century, reached its peak in the poetry of Rubén Darío. ( See also American literature; Latin American literature.)

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Modernism | Definition, Characteristics, History, Art, Literature, Time Period, Postmodernism, & Examples

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Modernism, in the fine arts, late 19th to mid-20th century, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. It fostered a period of experimentation in literature, music, dance, visual art, and architecture. Learn more about the history of Modernism and its various manifestations.

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World War II
1939-1945

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The Great Depression
1929-1939

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World War I
1914-1918

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Famous Authors and Works:

Lorraine Hansberry
-A Raisin in the Sun

F. Scott Fitzgerald
-The Great Gatsby

William Faulkner
-"A Rose for Emily"

Eudora Welty
-"A Worn Path"

Robert Frost
-poetry

T. S. Eliot
-The Waste Land
-"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

John Steinbeck
-Of Mice and Men
-The Grapes of Wrath

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Period Characteristics:

1. Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the "American Dream": the independent, self-reliant, individual will triumph.

2. Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and form over the traditional.

3. Interest in the inner workings of the human mind (ex. Stream of consciousness).

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Alice Walker's most popular novel was titled The Color Purple, it was published in 1982. She wrote this novel in California.

“Alice Walker.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 20 Dec. 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Walker.

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Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women.

Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Walker's first book of poetry, Once, appeared in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), a narrative that spans 60 years and three generations, followed two years later. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel, it depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004.

Walker's later fiction includes The Temple of My Familiar, an ambitious examination of racial and sexual tensions (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a narrative centred on female genital mutilation; By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998), the story of a family of anthropologists posing as missionaries in order to gain access to a Mexican tribe; and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005), about an older woman's quest for identity. Reviewers complained that these novels employed New Age abstractions and poorly conceived characters, though Walker continued to draw praise for championing racial and gender equality in her work. She also released the volume of short stories The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) and several other volumes of poetry, including Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003), A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003), Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010), and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) collects poetry from 1965 to 1990.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
Walker's essays were compiled in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001), We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006), and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way (2013). Walker also wrote juvenile fiction and critical essays on such female writers as Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. She cofounded a short-lived press in 1984. Throughout her career Walker occasionally attracted criticism. Notably, some African Americans strongly objected to the perceived negative portrayal of Black men in The Color Purple. In later years Walker, who often spoke out against Israel's policies toward Palestinians, was accused of being anti-Semitic, with her support of a Holocaust denier drawing particular attention.

In the unconventional memoir The Chicken Chronicles (2011), Walker discussed caring for a flock of chickens while also musing on her life. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2022) is a collection of her journals. The documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth was released in 2013.

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Alice Walker | Biography, Books, The Color Purple, & Facts

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Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers.

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Alice Walker's first novel was titled, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and it was released in 1970.

“Alice Walker.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 20 Dec. 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Walker.

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Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women.

Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Walker's first book of poetry, Once, appeared in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), a narrative that spans 60 years and three generations, followed two years later. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel, it depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004.

Walker's later fiction includes The Temple of My Familiar, an ambitious examination of racial and sexual tensions (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a narrative centred on female genital mutilation; By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998), the story of a family of anthropologists posing as missionaries in order to gain access to a Mexican tribe; and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005), about an older woman's quest for identity. Reviewers complained that these novels employed New Age abstractions and poorly conceived characters, though Walker continued to draw praise for championing racial and gender equality in her work. She also released the volume of short stories The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) and several other volumes of poetry, including Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003), A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003), Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010), and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) collects poetry from 1965 to 1990.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
Walker's essays were compiled in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001), We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006), and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way (2013). Walker also wrote juvenile fiction and critical essays on such female writers as Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. She cofounded a short-lived press in 1984. Throughout her career Walker occasionally attracted criticism. Notably, some African Americans strongly objected to the perceived negative portrayal of Black men in The Color Purple. In later years Walker, who often spoke out against Israel's policies toward Palestinians, was accused of being anti-Semitic, with her support of a Holocaust denier drawing particular attention.

In the unconventional memoir The Chicken Chronicles (2011), Walker discussed caring for a flock of chickens while also musing on her life. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2022) is a collection of her journals. The documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth was released in 2013.

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Alice Walker | Biography, Books, The Color Purple, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers.

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Alice Walker’s first book of poetry was titled Once. It appeared in 1968.

“Alice Walker.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 20 Dec. 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Walker.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women.

Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Walker's first book of poetry, Once, appeared in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), a narrative that spans 60 years and three generations, followed two years later. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel, it depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004.

Walker's later fiction includes The Temple of My Familiar, an ambitious examination of racial and sexual tensions (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a narrative centred on female genital mutilation; By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998), the story of a family of anthropologists posing as missionaries in order to gain access to a Mexican tribe; and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005), about an older woman's quest for identity. Reviewers complained that these novels employed New Age abstractions and poorly conceived characters, though Walker continued to draw praise for championing racial and gender equality in her work. She also released the volume of short stories The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) and several other volumes of poetry, including Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003), A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003), Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010), and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) collects poetry from 1965 to 1990.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
Walker's essays were compiled in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001), We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006), and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way (2013). Walker also wrote juvenile fiction and critical essays on such female writers as Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. She cofounded a short-lived press in 1984. Throughout her career Walker occasionally attracted criticism. Notably, some African Americans strongly objected to the perceived negative portrayal of Black men in The Color Purple. In later years Walker, who often spoke out against Israel's policies toward Palestinians, was accused of being anti-Semitic, with her support of a Holocaust denier drawing particular attention.

In the unconventional memoir The Chicken Chronicles (2011), Walker discussed caring for a flock of chickens while also musing on her life. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2022) is a collection of her journals. The documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth was released in 2013.

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Alice Walker | Biography, Books, The Color Purple, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alice Walker, in full Alice Malsenior Walker, (born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers.

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Mark Twain’s first attempt at a novel, was The Gilded Age. It is said the experience was apparently pleasant enough for him to begin writing Tom Sawyer, along with his reminiscences about his days as a riverboat pilot.

“Apprenticeships of Mark Twain.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 16 Jan. 2025, www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain/Apprenticeships.

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The next few years were important for Clemens. After he had finished writing the jumping-frog story but before it was published, he declared in a letter to Orion that he had a " 'call' to literature of a low order-i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of," he continued, "but it is my strongest suit." However much he might deprecate his calling, it appears that he was committed to making a professional career for himself. He continued to write for newspapers, traveling to Hawaii for the Sacramento Union and also writing for New York newspapers, but he apparently wanted to become something more than a journalist. He went on his first lecture tour, speaking mostly on the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1866. It was a success, and for the rest of his life, though he found touring grueling, he knew he could take to the lecture platform when he needed money. Meanwhile, he tried, unsuccessfully, to publish a book made up of his letters from Hawaii. His first book was in fact The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867), but it did not sell well. That same year, he moved to New York City, serving as the traveling correspondent for the San Francisco Alta California and for New York newspapers. He had ambitions to enlarge his reputation and his audience, and the announcement of a transatlantic excursion to Europe and the Holy Land provided him with just such an opportunity. The Alta paid the substantial fare in exchange for some 50 letters he would write concerning the trip. Eventually his account of the voyage was published as The Innocents Abroad (1869). It was a great success.

Twain, Mark Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. LC-USZ62-28851

The trip abroad was fortuitous in another way. He met on the boat a young man named Charlie Langdon, who invited Clemens to dine with his family in New York and introduced him to his sister Olivia; the writer fell in love with her. Clemens's courtship of Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a prosperous businessman from Elmira, New York, was an ardent one, conducted mostly through correspondence. They were married in February 1870. With financial assistance from Olivia's father, Clemens bought a one-third interest in the Express of Buffalo, New York, and began writing a column for a New York City magazine, the Galaxy. A son, Langdon, was born in November 1870, but the boy was frail and would die of diphtheria less than two years later. Clemens came to dislike Buffalo and hoped that he and his family might move to the Nook Farm area of Hartford, Connecticut. In the meantime, he worked hard on a book about his experiences in the West. Roughing It was published in February 1872 and sold well. The next month, Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens was born in Elmira. Later that year, Clemens traveled to England. Upon his return, he began work with his friend Charles Dudley Warner on a satirical novel about political and financial corruption in the United States. The Gilded Age (1873) was remarkably well received, and a play based on the most amusing character from the novel, Colonel Sellers, also became quite popular.

The Gilded Age was Twain's first attempt at a novel, and the experience was apparently congenial enough for him to begin writing Tom Sawyer, along with his reminiscences about his days as a riverboat pilot. He also published A True Story, a moving dialect sketch told by a former slave, in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly in 1874. A second daughter, Clara, was born in June, and the Clemenses moved into their still-unfinished house in Nook Farm later the same year, counting among their neighbours Warner and the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. "Old Times on the Mississippi" appeared in the Atlantic in installments in 1875. The obscure journalist from the wilds of California and Nevada had arrived: he had settled down in a comfortable house with his family; he was known worldwide; his books sold well, and he was a popular favourite on the lecture tour; and his fortunes had steadily improved over the years. In the process, the journalistic and satirical temperament of the writer had, at times, become retrospective. "Old Times," which would later become a portion of Life on the Mississippi, described comically, but a bit ruefully too, a way of life that would never return. The highly episodic narrative of Tom Sawyer, which recounts the mischievous adventures of a boy growing up along the Mississippi River, was coloured by a nostalgia for childhood and simplicity that would permit Twain to characterize the novel as a "hymn" to childhood. The continuing popularity of Tom Sawyer (it sold well from its first publication, in 1876, and has never gone out of print) indicates that Twain could write a novel that appealed to young and old readers alike. The antics and high adventure of Tom Sawyer and his comrades-including pranks in church and at school, the comic courtship of Becky Thatcher, a murder mystery, and a thrilling escape from a cave-continue to delight children, while the book's comedy, narrated by someone who vividly recalls what it was to be a child, amuses adults with similar memories.

© Jeff Schultes/Shutterstock.com

In the summer of 1876, while staying with his in-laws Susan and Theodore Crane on Quarry Farm overlooking Elmira, Clemens began writing what he called in a letter to his friend William Dean Howells "Huck Finn's Autobiography." Huck had appeared as a character in Tom Sawyer, and Clemens decided that the untutored boy had his own story to tell. He soon discovered that it had to be told in Huck's own vernacular voice. Huckleberry Finn was written in fits and starts over an extended period and would not be published until 1885. During that interval, Twain often turned his attention to other projects, only to return again and again to the novel's manuscript.

Twain believed he had humiliated himself before Boston's literary worthies when he delivered one of many speeches at a dinner commemorating the 70th birthday of poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. Twain's contribution to the occasion fell flat (perhaps because of a failure of delivery or the contents of the speech itself), and some believed he had insulted three literary icons in particular: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The embarrassing experience may have in part prompted his removal to Europe for nearly two years. He published A Tramp Abroad (1880), about his travels with his friend Joseph Twichell in the Black Forest and the Swiss Alps, and The Prince and the Pauper (1881), a fanciful tale set in 16th-century England and written for "young people of all ages." In 1882 he traveled up the Mississippi with Horace Bixby, taking notes for the book that became Life on the Mississippi (1883). All the while, he continued to make often ill-advised investments, the most disastrous of which was the continued financial support of an inventor, James W. Paige, who was perfecting an automatic typesetting machine. In 1884 Clemens founded his own publishing company, bearing the name of his nephew and business agent, Charles L. Webster, and embarked on a four-month lecture tour with fellow author George W. Cable, both to raise money for the company and to promote the sales of Huckleberry Finn. Not long after that, Clemens began the first of several Tom-and-Huck sequels. None of them would rival Huckleberry Finn. All the Tom-and-Huck narratives engage in broad comedy and pointed satire, and they show that Twain had not lost his ability to speak in Huck's voice. What distinguishes Huckleberry Finn from the others is the moral dilemma Huck faces in aiding the runaway slave Jim while at the same time escaping from the unwanted influences of so-called civilization. Through Huck, the novel's narrator, Twain was able to address the shameful legacy of chattel slavery prior to the Civil War and the persistent racial discrimination and violence after. That he did so in the voice and consciousness of a 14-year-old boy, a character who shows the signs of having been trained to accept the cruel and indifferent attitudes of a slaveholding culture, gives the novel its affecting power, which can elicit genuine sympathies in readers but can also generate controversy and debate and can affront those who find the book patronizing toward African Americans, if not perhaps much worse. If Huckleberry Finn is a great book of American literature, its greatness may lie in its continuing ability to touch a nerve in the American national consciousness that is still raw and troubling.

For a time, Clemens's prospects seemed rosy. After working closely with Ulysses S. Grant, he watched as his company's publication of the former U.S. president's memoirs in 1885-86 became an overwhelming success. (For an explanation of why Grant's memoirs were so successful, see Sidebar: Translating Thought into Action: Grant's Personal Memoirs.) Clemens believed a forthcoming biography of Pope Leo XIII would do even better. The prototype for the Paige typesetter also seemed to be working splendidly. It was in a generally sanguine mood that he began to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, about the exploits of a practical and democratic factory superintendent who is magically transported to Camelot and attempts to transform the kingdom according to 19th-century republican values and modern technology. So confident was he about prospects for the typesetter that Clemens predicted this novel would be his "swan-song" to literature and that he would live comfortably off the profits of his investment.

Mark Twain Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. LC-USZC4-4294

Things did not go according to plan, however. His publishing company was floundering, and cash flow problems meant he was drawing on his royalties to provide capital for the business. Clemens was suffering from rheumatism in his right arm, but he continued to write for magazines out of necessity. Still, he was getting deeper and deeper in debt, and by 1891 he had ceased his monthly payments to support work on the Paige typesetter, effectively giving up on an investment that over the years had cost him some $200,000 or more. He closed his beloved house in Hartford, and the family moved to Europe, where they might live more cheaply and, perhaps, where his wife, who had always been frail, might improve her health. Debts continued to mount, and the financial panic of 1893 made it difficult to borrow money. Luckily, he was befriended by a Standard Oil executive, Henry Huttleston Rogers, who undertook to put Clemens's financial house in order. Clemens assigned his property, including his copyrights, to Olivia, announced the failure of his publishing house, and declared personal bankruptcy. In 1894, approaching his 60th year, Samuel Clemens was forced to repair his fortunes and to remake his career.

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Mark Twain - Mark Twain - Literary maturity: The next few years were important for Clemens. After he had finished writing the jumping-frog story but before it was published, he declared in a letter to Orion that he had a " 'call' to literature of a low order-i.e. humorous.

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A fact I found interesting, because I live in Hawaii is; He wrote for newspapers, traveling to Hawaii for the Sacramento Union and also writing for New York newspapers, but he deep down wanted to become something more than a journalist.

“Apprenticeships of Mark Twain.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 16 Jan. 2025, www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain/Apprenticeships.

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The next few years were important for Clemens. After he had finished writing the jumping-frog story but before it was published, he declared in a letter to Orion that he had a " 'call' to literature of a low order-i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of," he continued, "but it is my strongest suit." However much he might deprecate his calling, it appears that he was committed to making a professional career for himself. He continued to write for newspapers, traveling to Hawaii for the Sacramento Union and also writing for New York newspapers, but he apparently wanted to become something more than a journalist. He went on his first lecture tour, speaking mostly on the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1866. It was a success, and for the rest of his life, though he found touring grueling, he knew he could take to the lecture platform when he needed money. Meanwhile, he tried, unsuccessfully, to publish a book made up of his letters from Hawaii. His first book was in fact The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867), but it did not sell well. That same year, he moved to New York City, serving as the traveling correspondent for the San Francisco Alta California and for New York newspapers. He had ambitions to enlarge his reputation and his audience, and the announcement of a transatlantic excursion to Europe and the Holy Land provided him with just such an opportunity. The Alta paid the substantial fare in exchange for some 50 letters he would write concerning the trip. Eventually his account of the voyage was published as The Innocents Abroad (1869). It was a great success.

Twain, Mark Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. LC-USZ62-28851

The trip abroad was fortuitous in another way. He met on the boat a young man named Charlie Langdon, who invited Clemens to dine with his family in New York and introduced him to his sister Olivia; the writer fell in love with her. Clemens's courtship of Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a prosperous businessman from Elmira, New York, was an ardent one, conducted mostly through correspondence. They were married in February 1870. With financial assistance from Olivia's father, Clemens bought a one-third interest in the Express of Buffalo, New York, and began writing a column for a New York City magazine, the Galaxy. A son, Langdon, was born in November 1870, but the boy was frail and would die of diphtheria less than two years later. Clemens came to dislike Buffalo and hoped that he and his family might move to the Nook Farm area of Hartford, Connecticut. In the meantime, he worked hard on a book about his experiences in the West. Roughing It was published in February 1872 and sold well. The next month, Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens was born in Elmira. Later that year, Clemens traveled to England. Upon his return, he began work with his friend Charles Dudley Warner on a satirical novel about political and financial corruption in the United States. The Gilded Age (1873) was remarkably well received, and a play based on the most amusing character from the novel, Colonel Sellers, also became quite popular.

The Gilded Age was Twain's first attempt at a novel, and the experience was apparently congenial enough for him to begin writing Tom Sawyer, along with his reminiscences about his days as a riverboat pilot. He also published A True Story, a moving dialect sketch told by a former slave, in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly in 1874. A second daughter, Clara, was born in June, and the Clemenses moved into their still-unfinished house in Nook Farm later the same year, counting among their neighbours Warner and the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. "Old Times on the Mississippi" appeared in the Atlantic in installments in 1875. The obscure journalist from the wilds of California and Nevada had arrived: he had settled down in a comfortable house with his family; he was known worldwide; his books sold well, and he was a popular favourite on the lecture tour; and his fortunes had steadily improved over the years. In the process, the journalistic and satirical temperament of the writer had, at times, become retrospective. "Old Times," which would later become a portion of Life on the Mississippi, described comically, but a bit ruefully too, a way of life that would never return. The highly episodic narrative of Tom Sawyer, which recounts the mischievous adventures of a boy growing up along the Mississippi River, was coloured by a nostalgia for childhood and simplicity that would permit Twain to characterize the novel as a "hymn" to childhood. The continuing popularity of Tom Sawyer (it sold well from its first publication, in 1876, and has never gone out of print) indicates that Twain could write a novel that appealed to young and old readers alike. The antics and high adventure of Tom Sawyer and his comrades-including pranks in church and at school, the comic courtship of Becky Thatcher, a murder mystery, and a thrilling escape from a cave-continue to delight children, while the book's comedy, narrated by someone who vividly recalls what it was to be a child, amuses adults with similar memories.

© Jeff Schultes/Shutterstock.com

In the summer of 1876, while staying with his in-laws Susan and Theodore Crane on Quarry Farm overlooking Elmira, Clemens began writing what he called in a letter to his friend William Dean Howells "Huck Finn's Autobiography." Huck had appeared as a character in Tom Sawyer, and Clemens decided that the untutored boy had his own story to tell. He soon discovered that it had to be told in Huck's own vernacular voice. Huckleberry Finn was written in fits and starts over an extended period and would not be published until 1885. During that interval, Twain often turned his attention to other projects, only to return again and again to the novel's manuscript.

Twain believed he had humiliated himself before Boston's literary worthies when he delivered one of many speeches at a dinner commemorating the 70th birthday of poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. Twain's contribution to the occasion fell flat (perhaps because of a failure of delivery or the contents of the speech itself), and some believed he had insulted three literary icons in particular: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The embarrassing experience may have in part prompted his removal to Europe for nearly two years. He published A Tramp Abroad (1880), about his travels with his friend Joseph Twichell in the Black Forest and the Swiss Alps, and The Prince and the Pauper (1881), a fanciful tale set in 16th-century England and written for "young people of all ages." In 1882 he traveled up the Mississippi with Horace Bixby, taking notes for the book that became Life on the Mississippi (1883). All the while, he continued to make often ill-advised investments, the most disastrous of which was the continued financial support of an inventor, James W. Paige, who was perfecting an automatic typesetting machine. In 1884 Clemens founded his own publishing company, bearing the name of his nephew and business agent, Charles L. Webster, and embarked on a four-month lecture tour with fellow author George W. Cable, both to raise money for the company and to promote the sales of Huckleberry Finn. Not long after that, Clemens began the first of several Tom-and-Huck sequels. None of them would rival Huckleberry Finn. All the Tom-and-Huck narratives engage in broad comedy and pointed satire, and they show that Twain had not lost his ability to speak in Huck's voice. What distinguishes Huckleberry Finn from the others is the moral dilemma Huck faces in aiding the runaway slave Jim while at the same time escaping from the unwanted influences of so-called civilization. Through Huck, the novel's narrator, Twain was able to address the shameful legacy of chattel slavery prior to the Civil War and the persistent racial discrimination and violence after. That he did so in the voice and consciousness of a 14-year-old boy, a character who shows the signs of having been trained to accept the cruel and indifferent attitudes of a slaveholding culture, gives the novel its affecting power, which can elicit genuine sympathies in readers but can also generate controversy and debate and can affront those who find the book patronizing toward African Americans, if not perhaps much worse. If Huckleberry Finn is a great book of American literature, its greatness may lie in its continuing ability to touch a nerve in the American national consciousness that is still raw and troubling.

For a time, Clemens's prospects seemed rosy. After working closely with Ulysses S. Grant, he watched as his company's publication of the former U.S. president's memoirs in 1885-86 became an overwhelming success. (For an explanation of why Grant's memoirs were so successful, see Sidebar: Translating Thought into Action: Grant's Personal Memoirs.) Clemens believed a forthcoming biography of Pope Leo XIII would do even better. The prototype for the Paige typesetter also seemed to be working splendidly. It was in a generally sanguine mood that he began to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, about the exploits of a practical and democratic factory superintendent who is magically transported to Camelot and attempts to transform the kingdom according to 19th-century republican values and modern technology. So confident was he about prospects for the typesetter that Clemens predicted this novel would be his "swan-song" to literature and that he would live comfortably off the profits of his investment.

Mark Twain Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. LC-USZC4-4294

Things did not go according to plan, however. His publishing company was floundering, and cash flow problems meant he was drawing on his royalties to provide capital for the business. Clemens was suffering from rheumatism in his right arm, but he continued to write for magazines out of necessity. Still, he was getting deeper and deeper in debt, and by 1891 he had ceased his monthly payments to support work on the Paige typesetter, effectively giving up on an investment that over the years had cost him some $200,000 or more. He closed his beloved house in Hartford, and the family moved to Europe, where they might live more cheaply and, perhaps, where his wife, who had always been frail, might improve her health. Debts continued to mount, and the financial panic of 1893 made it difficult to borrow money. Luckily, he was befriended by a Standard Oil executive, Henry Huttleston Rogers, who undertook to put Clemens's financial house in order. Clemens assigned his property, including his copyrights, to Olivia, announced the failure of his publishing house, and declared personal bankruptcy. In 1894, approaching his 60th year, Samuel Clemens was forced to repair his fortunes and to remake his career.

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Mark Twain - Mark Twain - Literary maturity: The next few years were important for Clemens. After he had finished writing the jumping-frog story but before it was published, he declared in a letter to Orion that he had a " 'call' to literature of a low order-i.e. humorous.

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After Mark Twain had finished writing the jumping-frog story, before it was published. He declared in a letter to Orion that he had a calling to literature of a low order.

“Apprenticeships of Mark Twain.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 16 Jan. 2025, www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain/Apprenticeships.

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In 1850 the oldest Clemens boy, Orion, returned from St. Louis, Missouri, and began to publish a weekly newspaper. A year later he bought the Hannibal Journal, and Sam and his younger brother Henry worked for him. Sam became more than competent as a typesetter, but he also occasionally contributed sketches and articles to his brother's paper. Some of those early sketches, such as "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter" (1852), appeared in Eastern newspapers and periodicals. In 1852, acting as the substitute editor while Orion was out of town, Clemens signed a sketch "W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins." This was his first known use of a pseudonym, and there would be several more (Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Quintius Curtius Snodgrass, Josh, and others) before he adopted, permanently, the pen name Mark Twain.

Having acquired a trade by age 17, Clemens left Hannibal in 1853 with some degree of self-sufficiency. For almost two decades he would be an itinerant labourer, trying many occupations. It was not until he was 37, he once remarked, that he woke up to discover he had become a "literary person." In the meantime, he was intent on seeing the world and exploring his own possibilities. He worked briefly as a typesetter in St. Louis in 1853 before traveling to New York City to work at a large printing shop. From there he went to Philadelphia and on to Washington, D.C.; then he returned to New York, only to find work hard to come by because of fires that destroyed two publishing houses. During his time in the East, which lasted until early 1854, he read widely and took in the sights of these cities. He was acquiring, if not a worldly air, at least a broader perspective than that offered by his rural background. And Clemens continued to write, though without firm literary ambitions, occasionally publishing letters in his brother's new newspaper. Orion had moved briefly to Muscatine, Iowa, with their mother, where he had established the Muscatine Journal before relocating to Keokuk, Iowa, and opening a printing shop there. Sam Clemens joined his brother in Keokuk in 1855 and was a partner in the business for a little over a year, but he then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to work as a typesetter. Still restless and ambitious, he booked passage in 1857 on a steamboat bound for New Orleans, Louisiana, planning to find his fortune in South America. Instead, he saw a more immediate opportunity and persuaded the accomplished riverboat captain Horace Bixby to take him on as an apprentice.

Having agreed to pay a $500 apprentice fee, Clemens studied the Mississippi River and the operation of a riverboat under the masterful instruction of Bixby, with an eye toward obtaining a pilot's license. (Clemens paid Bixby $100 down and promised to pay the remainder of the substantial fee in installments, something he evidently never managed to do.) Bixby did indeed "learn"-a word Twain insisted on-him the river, but the young man was an apt pupil as well. Because Bixby was an exceptional pilot and had a license to navigate the Missouri River and the upper as well as the lower Mississippi, lucrative opportunities several times took him upstream. On those occasions, Clemens was transferred to other veteran pilots and thereby learned the profession more quickly and thoroughly than he might have otherwise. The profession of riverboat pilot was, as he confessed many years later in "Old Times on the Mississippi," the most congenial one he had ever followed. Not only did a pilot receive good wages and enjoy universal respect, but he was absolutely free and self-sufficient: "a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth," he wrote. Clemens enjoyed the rank and dignity that came with the position; he belonged, both informally and officially, to a group of men whose acceptance he cherished; and-by virtue of his membership in the Western Boatman's Benevolent Association, obtained soon after he earned his pilot's license in 1859-he participated in a true "meritocracy" of the sort he admired and would dramatize many years later in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).

Clemens's years on the river were eventful in other ways. He met and fell in love with Laura Wright, eight years his junior. The courtship dissolved in a misunderstanding, but she remained the remembered sweetheart of his youth. He also arranged a job for his younger brother Henry on the riverboat Pennsylvania. The boilers exploded, however, and Henry was fatally injured. Clemens was not on board when the accident occurred, but he blamed himself for the tragedy. His experience as a cub and then as a full-fledged pilot gave him a sense of discipline and direction he might never have acquired elsewhere. Before this period his had been a directionless knockabout life; afterward he had a sense of determined possibility. He continued to write occasional pieces throughout these years and, in one satirical sketch, River Intelligence (1859), lampooned the self-important senior pilot Isaiah Sellers, whose observations of the Mississippi were published in a New Orleans newspaper. Clemens and the other "starchy boys," as he once described his fellow riverboat pilots in a letter to his wife, had no particular use for this nonunion man, but Clemens did envy what he later recalled to be Sellers's delicious pen name, Mark Twain.

The Civil War severely curtailed river traffic, and, fearing that he might be impressed as a Union gunboat pilot, Clemens brought his years on the river to a halt a mere two years after he had acquired his license. He returned to Hannibal, where he joined the prosecessionist Marion Rangers, a ragtag lot of about a dozen men. After only two uneventful weeks, during which the soldiers mostly retreated from Union troops rumoured to be in the vicinity, the group disbanded. A few of the men joined other Confederate units, and the rest, along with Clemens, scattered. Twain would recall this experience, a bit fuzzily and with some fictional embellishments, in The Private History of the Campaign That Failed (1885). In that memoir he extenuated his history as a deserter on the grounds that he was not made for soldiering. Like the fictional Huckleberry Finn, whose narrative he was to publish in 1885, Clemens then lit out for the territory. Huck Finn intends to escape to the Indian country, probably Oklahoma; Clemens accompanied his brother Orion to the Nevada Territory.

Clemens's own political sympathies during the war are obscure. It is known at any rate that Orion Clemens was deeply involved in Republican Party politics and in Abraham Lincoln's campaign for the U.S. presidency, and it was as a reward for those efforts that he was appointed territorial secretary of Nevada. Upon their arrival in Carson City, the territorial capital, Sam Clemens's association with Orion did not provide him the sort of livelihood he might have supposed, and, once again, he had to shift for himself-mining and investing in timber and silver and gold stocks, oftentimes "prospectively rich," but that was all. Clemens submitted several letters to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and these attracted the attention of the editor, Joseph Goodman, who offered him a salaried job as a reporter. He was again embarked on an apprenticeship, in the hearty company of a group of writers sometimes called the Sagebrush Bohemians, and again he succeeded.

The Nevada Territory was a rambunctious and violent place during the boom years of the Comstock Lode, from its discovery in 1859 to its peak production in the late 1870s. Nearby Virginia City was known for its gambling and dance halls, its breweries and whiskey mills, its murders, riots, and political corruption. Years later Twain recalled the town in a public lecture: "It was no place for a Presbyterian," he said. Then, after a thoughtful pause, he added, "And I did not remain one very long." Nevertheless, he seems to have retained something of his moral integrity. He was often indignant and prone to expose fraud and corruption when he found them. This was a dangerous indulgence, for violent retribution was not uncommon.

In February 1863 Clemens covered the legislative session in Carson City and wrote three letters for the Enterprise. He signed them "Mark Twain." Apparently the mistranscription of a telegram misled Clemens to believe that the pilot Isaiah Sellers had died and that his cognomen was up for grabs. Clemens seized it. ( See Researcher's Note: Origins of the name Mark Twain.) It would be several years before this pen name would acquire the firmness of a full-fledged literary persona, however. In the meantime, he was discovering by degrees what it meant to be a "literary person."

Already he was acquiring a reputation outside the territory. Some of his articles and sketches had appeared in New York papers, and he became the Nevada correspondent for the San Francisco Morning Call. In 1864, after challenging the editor of a rival newspaper to a duel and then fearing the legal consequences for this indiscretion, he left Virginia City for San Francisco and became a full-time reporter for the Call. Finding that work tiresome, he began contributing to the Golden Era and the new literary magazine the Californian, edited by Bret Harte. After he published an article expressing his fiery indignation at police corruption in San Francisco, and after a man with whom he associated was arrested in a brawl, Clemens decided it prudent to leave the city for a time. He went to the Tuolumne foothills to do some mining. It was there that he heard the story of a jumping frog. The story was widely known, but it was new to Clemens, and he took notes for a literary representation of the tale. When the humorist Artemus Ward invited him to contribute something for a book of humorous sketches, Clemens decided to write up the story. Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog arrived too late to be included in the volume, but it was published in the New York Saturday Press in November 1865 and was subsequently reprinted throughout the country. "Mark Twain" had acquired sudden celebrity, and Sam Clemens was following in his wake.

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In 1850 the oldest Clemens boy, Orion, returned from St. Louis, Missouri, and began to publish a weekly newspaper. A year later he bought the Hannibal Journal, and Sam and his younger brother Henry worked for him. Sam became more than competent as a typesetter, but he also occasionally contributed sketches and articles to his brother's paper.

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Realism was a major trend in French novels and paintings between 1850 and 1880.

“Realism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 9 Dec. 2024, www.britannica.com/art/realism-art.

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realism, in the arts, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close observation of outward appearances. As such, realism in its broad sense has comprised many artistic currents in different civilizations. In the visual arts, for example, realism can be found in ancient Hellenistic Greek sculptures accurately portraying boxers and decrepit old women. The works of such 17th-century painters as Caravaggio, the Dutch genre painters, the Spanish painters José de Ribera, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Zurbarán, and the Le Nain brothers in France are realist in approach. The works of the 18th-century English novelists Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett may also be called realistic.

Realism was not consciously adopted as an aesthetic program until the mid-19th century in France, however. Indeed, realism may be viewed as a major trend in French novels and paintings between 1850 and 1880. One of the first appearances of the term realism was in the Mercure français du XIX siècle in 1826, in which the word is used to describe a doctrine based not upon imitating past artistic achievements but upon the truthful and accurate depiction of the models that nature and contemporary life offer the artist. The French proponents of realism were agreed in their rejection of the artificiality of both the Classicism and Romanticism of the academies and on the necessity for contemporaneity in an effective work of art. They attempted to portray the lives, appearances, problems, customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of the unexceptional, the ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned. Indeed, they conscientiously set themselves to reproducing all the hitherto-ignored aspects of contemporary life and society-its mental attitudes, physical settings, and material conditions.

Realism was stimulated by several intellectual developments in the first half of the 19th century. Among these were the anti-Romantic movement in Germany, with its emphasis on the common man as an artistic subject; Auguste Comte's Positivist philosophy, in which sociology's importance as the scientific study of society was emphasized; the rise of professional journalism, with its accurate and dispassionate recording of current events; and the development of photography, with its capability of mechanically reproducing visual appearances with extreme accuracy. All these developments stimulated interest in accurately recording contemporary life and society.

Gustave Courbet was the first artist to self-consciously proclaim and practice the realist aesthetic. After his huge canvas The Studio (1854-55) was rejected by the Exposition Universelle of 1855, the artist displayed it and other works under the label "Realism, G. Courbet" in a specially constructed pavilion. Courbet was strongly opposed to idealization in his art, and he urged other artists to instead make the commonplace and contemporary the focus of their art. He viewed the frank portrayal of scenes from everyday life as a truly democratic art. Such paintings as his Burial at Ornans (1849) and the Stone Breakers (1849), which he had exhibited in the Salon of 1850-51, had already shocked the public and critics by the frank and unadorned factuality with which they depicted humble peasants and labourers. The fact that Courbet did not glorify his peasants but presented them boldly and starkly created a violent reaction in the art world.

The style and subject matter of Courbet's work were built on ground already broken by the painters of the Barbizon School. Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean-François Millet, and others in the early 1830s settled in the French village of Barbizon with the aim of faithfully reproducing the local character of the landscape. Though each Barbizon painter had his own style and specific interests, they all emphasized in their works the simple and ordinary rather than the grandiose and monumental aspects of nature. They turned away from melodramatic picturesqueness and painted solid, detailed forms that were the result of close observation. In such works as The Winnower (1848), Millet was one of the first artists to portray peasant labourers with a grandeur and monumentality hitherto reserved for more important persons.

Another major French artist often associated with the realist tradition, Honoré Daumier, drew satirical caricatures of French society and politics. He found his working-class heroes and heroines and his villainous lawyers and politicians in the slums and streets of Paris. Like Courbet, he was an ardent democrat, and he used his skill as a caricaturist directly in the service of political aims. Daumier used energetic linear style, boldly accentuated realistic detail, and an almost sculptural treatment of form to criticize the immorality and ugliness he saw in French society.

Pictorial realism outside of France was perhaps best represented in the 19th century in the United States. There, Winslow Homer's powerful and expressive paintings of marine subjects and Thomas Eakins 's portraits, boating scenes, and other works are frank, unsentimental, and acutely observed records of contemporary life.

Realism was a distinct current in 20th-century art and usually stemmed either from artists' desire to present more honest, searching, and unidealized views of everyday life or from their attempts to use art as a vehicle for social and political criticism. The rough, sketchy, almost journalistic scenes of seamy urban life by the group of American painters known as The Eight fall into the former category. The German art movement known as the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), on the other hand, worked in a realist style to express the cynicism and disillusionment of the post- World War I period in Germany. The Depression-era movement known as Social Realism adopted a similarly harsh and direct realism in its depictions of the injustices and evils of American society during that period.

Socialist Realism, which was the officially sponsored Marxist aesthetic in the Soviet Union from the early 1930s until that country's dissolution in 1991, actually had little to do with realism, though it purported to be a faithful and objective mirror of life. Its "truthfulness" was required to serve the ideology and the propagandistic needs of the state. Socialist Realism generally used techniques of naturalistic idealization to create portraits of dauntless workers and engineers who were strikingly alike in both their heroic positivism and their lack of lifelike credibility.

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Realism | History, Definition, & Characteristics

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Realism, in the arts, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism was a major trend in French novels and paintings between 1850 and 1880. Highlights included Gustave Courbet's painting Burial at Ornans (1849) and Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary (1857).

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Realism was first introduced in England by George Eliot then later introduced to America by William Howells

“Realism (1850-1900).” Prezi.Com, prezi.com/fauprm2ifqlh/realism-1850-1900/. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.

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"They gazed about them with looks of uplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim, always confident weapons in their hands. And they were men." - Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage - Crane portrays realistic heroes, confident men, sure of their abilities as opposed to the

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Reconstruction Era
1865-1877

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Civil War
1861-1865

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Famous Authors and Works:

Mark Twain
-Huckleberry Finn

Jack London
-Call of the Wild
-"To Build a Fire"

Stephen Crane
-"The Open Boat"

Ambrose Bierce
-"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

Kate Chopin
-"Story of an Hour"
-The Awakening

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Period Characteristics:

1. Feelings of disillusionment.

2. Common subjects: slums of rapidly growing cities, factories replacing farmlands, poor factory workers, corrupt politicians.

3. Represented the manner and environment of everyday life and ordinary people as realistically as possible (Regionalism).

4. Sought to explain behavior (psychologically/socially).

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Longfellow went to private schools. He later went to a school called Portland Academy. He knew how to speak French, Italian, and Spanish.

“Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 19 Oct. 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Wadsworth-Longfellow.

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Read a brief summary of this topic

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (born February 27, 1807, Portland, Massachusetts [now in Maine], U.S.-died March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts), the most popular American poet in the 19th century, known for such works as The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and "Paul Revere's Ride" (1863).

Early life

Longfellow attended private schools and the Portland Academy. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. At college he was attracted especially to Sir Walter Scott's romances and Washington Irving's Sketch Book, and his verses appeared in national magazines. He was so fluent in translating that on graduation he was offered a professorship in modern languages provided that he would first study in Europe.

Literary Favorites: Fact or Fiction?

On the Continent he learned French, Spanish, and Italian but refused to settle down to a regimen of scholarship at any university. In 1829 he returned to the United States to be a professor and librarian at Bowdoin. He wrote and edited textbooks, translated poetry and prose, and wrote essays on French, Spanish, and Italian literature, but he felt isolated. When he was offered a professorship at Harvard, with another opportunity to go abroad, he accepted and set forth for Germany in 1835. On this trip he visited England, Sweden, and the Netherlands. In 1835, saddened by the death of his first wife, whom he had married in 1831, he settled at Heidelberg, where he fell under the influence of German Romanticism.

The Song of Hiawatha, "Paul Revere's Ride," and other poetry

In 1836 Longfellow returned to Harvard and settled in the famous Craigie House, which was later given to him as a wedding present when he remarried in 1843. His travel sketches, Outre-Mer (1835), did not succeed. In 1839 he published Voices of the Night, which contained the poems "Hymn to the Night," "The Psalm of Life," and "The Light of the Stars" and achieved immediate popularity. That same year Longfellow published Hyperion, a romantic novel idealizing his European travels. In 1842 his Ballads and Other Poems, containing such favourites as "The Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Village Blacksmith," swept the nation. The antislavery sentiments he expressed in Poems on Slavery that same year, however, lacked the humanity and power of John Greenleaf Whittier's denunciations on the same theme. Longfellow was more at home in Evangeline (1847), a narrative poem that reached almost every literate home in the United States. It is a sentimental tale of two lovers separated when British soldiers expel the Acadians (French colonists) from what is now Nova Scotia. The lovers, Evangeline and Gabriel, are reunited years later as Gabriel is dying.

Longfellow presided over Harvard's modern-language program for 18 years and then left teaching in 1854. In 1855, using Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's two books on the Indian tribes of North America as the base and the trochaic metrics of the Finnish epic Kalevala as his medium, he fashioned The Song of Hiawatha (1855). Its appeal to the public was immediate. Hiawatha is an Ojibwa Indian who, after various mythic feats, becomes his people's leader and marries Minnehaha before departing for the Isles of the Blessed. Both the poem and its singsong metre have been frequent objects of parody.

Longfellow's long poem The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) was another great popular success. But the death in 1861 of his second wife, after she accidentally set her dress on fire, plunged him into melancholy. Driven by the need for spiritual relief, he translated The Divine Comedy by Dante, producing one of the most notable translations to that time, and wrote six sonnets on Dante that are among his finest poems.

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The Tales of a Wayside Inn, modeled roughly on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and published in 1863, reveals his narrative gift. The first poem, " Paul Revere's Ride," became a national favourite. Written in anapestic tetrameter meant to suggest the galloping of a horse, this folk ballad recalls a hero of the American Revolution and his famous "midnight ride" to warn the Americans about the impending British raid on Concord, Massachusetts. Though its account of Revere's ride is historically inaccurate, the poem created an American legend. Longfellow published in 1872 what he intended to be his masterpiece, Christus: A Mystery, a trilogy dealing with Christianity from its beginning. He followed this work with two fragmentary dramatic poems, "Judas Maccabaeus" and "Michael Angelo." But his genius was not dramatic, as he had demonstrated earlier in The Spanish Student (1843). Long after his death in 1882, however, these neglected later works were seen to contain some of his most effective writing.

Assessment

During his lifetime Longfellow was loved and admired both at home and abroad. In 1884 he was honoured by the placing of a memorial bust in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in London, the first American to be so recognized. Sweetness, gentleness, simplicity, and a romantic vision shaded by melancholy are the characteristic features of Longfellow's poetry. He possessed great metrical skill, but he failed to capture the American spirit like his great contemporary Walt Whitman, and his work generally lacked emotional depth and imaginative power. Some years after Longfellow's death a violent reaction set in against his verse as critics dismissed his conventional high-minded sentiments and the gentle strain of Romanticism that he had made so popular. This harsh critical assessment, which tried to reduce him to the status of a mere hearthside rhymer, was perhaps as unbalanced as the adulation he had received during his lifetime. Some of Longfellow's sonnets and other lyrics are still among the finest in American poetry, and Hiawatha, "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Evangeline, and "Paul Revere's Ride" have become inseparable parts of the American heritage. Longfellow's immense popularity helped raise the status of poetry in his country, and he played an important part in bringing European cultural traditions to American audiences.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Amy Tikkanen.

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Biography, Poems, & Facts

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (born February 27, 1807, Portland, Massachusetts [now in Maine], U.S.-died March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts), the most popular American poet in the 19th century, known for such works as The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and "Paul Revere's Ride" (1863). Longfellow attended private schools and the Portland Academy.

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Emily has written almost 1,800 poems. Only 10 of her poems have actually been published. Emily Dickinson is a middle child.

“Emily Dickinson.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 6 Dec. 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Dickinson.

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Maya Angelou was not only a writer, but was also a poet, dancer, singer, and activist. Maya's parents got divorced, and it caused her to have to live with her grandmother in Arkansas. Maya had a rough life growing up, because of her trauma she became mute for 6 years.

Dr. Kelly A. Spring | 2017; Updated December 2021 by Mariana Brandman. “Biography: Maya Angelou.” National Women’s History Museum, www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/maya-angelou. Accessed 6 Dec. 2024.

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California Gold Rush

1848-1855

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The War of 1812
1812-1815

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Romanticism & Industrialization:   Fact #2

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Romanticism & Industrialization:   Fact #2

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Industrialization is a time in history, that had a major development. It is when we got the steam engine, and tons of new technology.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution

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Industrial Revolution | Definition, History, Dates, Summary, & Facts

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Industrial Revolution, in modern history, the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. The process began in Britain in the 18th century and from there spread to other parts of the world, driving changes in energy use, socioecon…

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Romanticism & Industrialization:   Fact #1

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Romanticism & Industrialization:   Fact #1

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Romanticism was a very intelligent movement in the late 18th century in Europe. It showed a ton of emotion and individualism.

https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism

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Romanticism | Definition, Characteristics, Artists, History, Art, Poetry, Literature, & Music

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Romanticism is the attitude that characterized works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in the West from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. It emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the emotional, and the…

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Famous Authors and Works:

Washington Irving
—"Rip van Winkle"

Emily Dickinson
—poetry

Walt Whitman
—Leaves of Grass

Edgar Allan Poe
—"The Raven"

Nathaniel Hawthorne
—The Scarlet Letter

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Period Characteristics:

1. Valued feeling, intuition, idealism, and inductive reasoning.

2. Placed faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination.

3. Shunned the artificiality of civilization and sought unspoiled nature as a path to spirituality.

4. Championed individual freedom and the worth of the individual

5. Saw poetry as the highest expression of the imagination

6. Dark Romantics: used dark and supernatural themes/settings (Gothic style)

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1840-1860
Transcendentalism

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance": Fact #2

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance": Fact #2

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The American Renaissance is a period of time during 1840 and 1861. This ended right at the start of the Civil War.

“The American Renaissance.” Eastern Connecticut State University, www.easternct.edu/speichera/understanding-literary-history-all/the-american-renaissance.html. Accessed 22 Sept. 2024.

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance": Fact #1

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Transcendentalism "The American Renaissance": Fact #1

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The native elements had a new national culture made out of it from the Transcendentalists.

“American Renaissance.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/art/American-Renaissance. Accessed 22 Sept. 2024.

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Famous Authors and Works:

Ralph Waldo Emerson
—Nature
—"Self-Reliance"

Henry David Thoreau
—Walden
—Life in the Woods

Louisa May Alcott
—Little Women

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Period Characteristics:

1. Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul.

2. People can use their intuition to behold God's spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls.

3. Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and link conformity to tradition.

4. Important social and political movements include the Abolitionist, Utopian, and Women's Suffrage Movements

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1775-1783 Revolutionary War

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1607 Early Settlement—Jamestown

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment": Fact #2

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment": Fact #2

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During "The Age of Reason", their main beliefs was using the celebration of reason. This is when humans know and understand what the universe is, and want to improve it themselves.

“The Enlightenment Key Facts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/summary/The-Enlightenment-Key-Facts#:~:text=The%20Enlightenment%2C%20also%20known%20as,and%20improve%20their%20own%20condition. Accessed 22 Sept. 2024.

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment": Fact #1

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment": Fact #1

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During the Enlightenment, there were a lot of social ideas that were revolving around the value of knowledge from rationalism.

“Age of Enlightenment.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Sept. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment#:~:text=The%20Enlightenment%20featured%20a%20range,separation%20of%20church%20and%20state.

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Famous Authors and Works:

Benjamin Franklin
—Autobiography

Patrick Henry
—"Speech to the Virginia Convention"

Thomas Paine
—"The Crisis"

Phyllis Wheatley
—poetry

The Constitution

The Bill of Rights

The Declaration of Independence

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Rationalism "The Age of Reason" "The Enlightenment"

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Period Characteristics:

1. Mostly comprised of philosophers, scientists, writing speeches and pamphlets

2. Human beings can arrive at truth (God's rules) by using deductive reasoning, rather than relying on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or intuition

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1741: Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

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1692: Salem Witch Trials

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1507: Early Settlement of the first American colonies - Jamestown

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies: Fact #2

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies: Fact #2

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Puritans showed how important it was to them to make scripture the priority.

“Puritanism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 14 Sept. 2024, www.britannica.com/topic/Puritanism.

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies: Fact #1

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies: Fact #1

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The Puritans came and settled at Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630.

“Puritanism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 14 Sept. 2024, www.britannica.com/topic/Puritanism.

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies 

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies 

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Famous Authors and Works:

William Bradford
-"Of Plymouth Plantation"

Anne Bradstreet (poetry)

John Edwards
-"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Edward Taylor
-"Huswifery"

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies 
1600-1800

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Puritanism and Early Settlement  of First "American" colonies 
1600-1800

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Period Characteristics:

1. Wrote mostly diaries and histories, which expressed the connections between God and their everyday lives.
2. South to "purify" the Church of England by reforming to the simpler forms of worship and church organization described in the New Testament.
3. Saw religion as a personal, inner experience.
4. Believed in original sin and "elect" who would be saved.
5. Used a plain style of writing.

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1607—Early settlement at Jamestown

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2200 B.C. to 1600 A.D.

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2200 B.C.—Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)

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Back then they had a leader, Sequoyah. He spent a long time perfecting the writing system. It took him about 12 years to complete.

“Native American Cultures ‑ Facts, Regions & Tribes.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/native-american-cultures. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

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Native Americans did not have a significant written language, so their history and stories were passed down verbally from one generation to the next.

“Native Knowledge 360°-Celebrating Native Cultures through Words: Storytelling and Oral Traditions.” National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian, americanindian.si.edu/nk360/informational/storytelling-and-oral-traditions#:~:text=Indigenous%20peoples%20have%20strong%20storytelling,next%20through%20the%20spoken%20word. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

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Native Americans 2200 B.C.—Tower of Babel to 1600 A.D.1607—Early settlement at Jamestown

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Native Americans 2200 B.C.—Tower of Babel to 1600 A.D.1607—Early settlement at Jamestown

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Period Characteristics:

1. Oral literature: epic narratives, creation myths, stories, poems, songs.

2. Use stories to teach moral lessons and convey practical information about the natural world.

3. Deep respect for nature and animals.

4. Cyclical worldview.

5. Figurative language/parallelism.

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Direction Note: Be sure to add any special events according to their date as needed.

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Direction Note: Be sure to add any special events according to their date as needed.

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them

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PERIOD NAME AND DATE: Period Characteristics 

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PERIOD NAME AND DATE: Period Characteristics 

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