Category: american literature

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+ alabama literature, american history, american literature, atticus finch, boo radley, harper lee, scout finch, southern gothic, southern history, southern literature, to kill a mockingbird, william apess

American History and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”

by Unknown's avatar

Last post, I wrote about the Southern paradoxes in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Today, I want to look at the opening of the novel because Scout traces the events of the novel deep into our nation’s history, before Jem, Scout, or Atticus arrived on the scene. This is important because for all of the missed moments of reflection in the novel, the … Read More American History and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”

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+ a small place, american literature, antigua, caribbean literature, innocents abroad, jamaica kincaid, lillian e smith

Why do we travel?

by Unknown's avatar

One of my favorite quotes comes from Mark Twain. Talking about what travel does to one’s worldview, he wrote in Innocents Abroad, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” … Read More Why do we travel?

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+ american literature, Ben Railton, f. scott fitzgerald, jesmyn ward, modernism, nick carraway, nineteenth century literature, stephanie powell watts, the great gatsby, twentieth century literature

The Great Gatsby Lecture

by Unknown's avatar

For my lecture last fall on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), I decided to focus on the ways that Fitzgerald’s novel does not speak for all of its readers but also how the novel overtly challenges the myth of the American Dream. This challenging of the myth does not only occur with Gatsby. Rather, it occurs from the very beginning of the … Read More The Great Gatsby Lecture

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+ american literature, Duke of Buccleuch, f. scott fitzgerald, jardin of versailles, jay gatz, modernism, myrtle wilson, nick carraway, the great gatsby, twentieth century literature

Facades in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”

by Unknown's avatar

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) challenges the mythology of the American Dream through its multiple layers of the facade that appear throughout the novel. These facades do not merely occur with Gatsby’s house or the rumors surrounding his life. Rather, they appear elsewhere, some even on a meta-level within the text. Today,  I want to briefly discuss a few of these instances. … Read More Facades in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”

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+ american literature, modernism, playing in the dark, sapphira and the slave girl, toni morrison, twentieth century literature, willa cather

The Problematic Nature of Willa Cather’s Final Novel

by Unknown's avatar

When I was constructing my “Introduction to Modernism” course this semester, I decided to use Ernest J. Gaines’ work as the focal point, moving outwards from his work back into the past and towards he present, not limiting modernist thought to one particular temporal period. I did this, mainly, because Gaines, time and time again, has spoken about the influence of Modernists and Russian … Read More The Problematic Nature of Willa Cather’s Final Novel

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