Assignment

Discussion 1: T. S. Eliot-"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

• With critical thinking, look at the heading of this assignment and use the named personal response question (PRQ) located at the end of the Eliot Author Study Sheet to discuss the question in 50 words. Do I think that most people just exist and fail to live?

• In order to receive credit, use specific material (characters, setting, events) from the named literary work to guide your personal response. A quote is not required; however, if you use a quote, do not just give a quote without explanation of the context.

• Deductions will be made for grammar errors and misspelled words.

• Use NO OUTSIDE sources; use only your opinion and specifics from your reading of the literature.

Discussion 2: Langston Hughes-"Green Memory"

• With critical thinking, look at the heading of this assignment and use the named personal response question (PRQ) located at the end of the Hughes Author Study Sheet to discuss the question in 50 words. What do I think about war profiteers (military-industrial complex) who do not want a war to end because they are making money while people are dying?

• In order to receive credit, use specific material (characters, setting, events) from the named literary work to guide your personal response. A quote is not required; however, if you use a quote, do not just give a quote without explanation of the context.

• Deductions will be made for grammar errors and misspelled words.

• Use NO OUTSIDE sources; use only your opinion and specifics from your reading of the literature.

Discussion 3: *Identification--Twentieth Century and Twenty-First Century Characteristics

• Use ONLY the material posted on ENG 252 Content / Unit II /Background Study Notes / Notes / Eleven Twentieth Century and Twenty-First Century Characteristics

• Use correct. standard English.

• Submit a minimum of 100 words written in sentences in one paragraph with no listing using the 11 characteristics to identify the Twentieth Century and Twenty-First Century Characteristics. Write the characteristics in acceptable sentences that form one logical paragraph. Do not include any material that is not on the posted notes. Use no outside sources.

The skill you are using is to take information in one format (list) and to present it in another format (sentences to form one paragraph). They are below.

The Twentieth Century/The Twenty-first Century in American Literature

The twentieth century cannot be labeled neatly. It was a century influenced by strife and war. The Victorian Age actually extended into the 1900s, but World War I brought America and western Europe into the modern age with violence and suffering on a scale never seen before.

The following are some of the literary trends, which are strong influences on the literature of the twentieth century.

1. Reaction against the Victorian ideas of progress, morality and social responsibility, which were seen as hypocritical and smug. The twentieth century emphasized instead individual freedom to experiment in life in diverse ways.

2. Cultural fragmentation: social, moral and religious institutions were seen to collapse or at least to fragment so that no single unifying ethic appeared to have universal force. Reconciling the self to an orderless, often self-destructive world. Isolated self.

3. Marxist theories, influencing leftist writers who advocated a reconstruction of society to eliminate capitalism; important during the 1930s, leftist writers were critical of laissez-faire economics, democratic institutions, and imperialism. Supported the struggle of the masses. Reaction to Marxism, beginning in the late 1930s and continuing through the century, centered around opposition to totalitarianism.

4. Freudian/Jungian psychology, most influential during the 1920s but continuing throughout the century, centered around depth analysis of the unconscious; emphasis upon motivation, upon the irrational and the instinctive; exploration of psychological symbols expressed in actions or dreams. Also anti-Freudians who rejected the principles of depth analysis.

5. Existentialism, most influential during the later 1940s and 1950s but continuing throughout the century, emphasized the importance of individual freedom to make moral choices, to define the self, in the absence of universally accepted norms to serve as patterns of behavior. Also reaction to existentialism among writers who favored traditional religious and cultural values.

6 Absurdism, most influential as a literary type of drama and fiction during the 1950s and 1960s but continuing throughout the century, emphasized the meaningless aspects of institutions and values; nihilism, often treated humorously, in which life, void of significance, is viewed as both terrible and comic.

7. Naturalism, most influential during the first two decades but continuing throughout the twentieth century.

8. Technological and scientific discoveries result in cultural shock. Changes from new social sciences with increased understanding of sociological, political, psychological, and economic pressures upon the individual.

9. Imagism, most influential during the second two decades of the twentieth century, emphasized the sharp, clear image of poetry and rejected sentimentalism.

10. Impressionism, most influential during the second decades but continuing throughout the twentieth century, emphasized the isolation of significant impressions; stream-of-consciousness techniques in fiction reveal the moment-by-moment flux of impressions, the "interior monologues" of the subconscious mind.

11. Symbolism emphasized the use of symbolic representations from dreams, religious archetypes, visionary and mystic states of consciousness.