|
English 2327: Survey
of American Literature
Basic Concepts
(Return
to the English 2327 Table of Contents)
Underlying and supporting the selections
of literature that we will read in our course are certain "basic concepts,"
sets of ideas, ideals, and assumptions that groups of writers generally
agreed upon or who were influenced by them. These concepts appear
either directly or indirectly in their works, and for that reason, to better
understand their importance in analyzing , interpreting, and evaluating
these works, you need to be familiar with them. This page contains
links to brief discussions of these concepts.
Table of Contents
.
Mythology
Early American
Indian Literature
The Dualistic Universe
God as "First Cause"
The "Great
Chain of Being" Theory
Insight and
Inverse Logic
An Introduction
to Argument: Deductive Reasoning, Inductive Reasoning, and the Syllogism
Scholasticisim,
Rationalism, and Empiricism: Epistemology and Three Western Systems of
Reasoning
Archetypal
Theory
The
Renaissance
Divine
Right
The
Protestant Reformation: Lutheranism
The
Protestant Reformation: Calvinism
Puritanism
Separatism
(The "Separatists")
The
Salem Witch Trials: Witchcraft, Magic, and Spectral Evidence
Classicism
and Neo-Classicism
Deism
The
Freudian and Jungian "Ground of Being"
The
Turner Thesis and the Frontier
Allegory
Metaphysical
Poetry
Scansion
Mysticism,
Neurosis, and Asceticism: The Complexities of Jonathan Edwards
The
Theories of Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism
Two
Processes of Abstraction: Burlesque and Idealization
American
Literary Romanticism
The
Theory of Correspondence and "Associative Writing"
The
Romantic Conception of Nature and Spirit
The
Intuition
Unitarianism
Transcendentalism
Abolitionist
Movement
The
Flowering of Romanticism: Sentimentality and the "Ubi Sunt" Theme
Primitivism
and The Noble Savage
The
Gothic Tradition
Contrasting
Neo-Classical and Romantic Motifs
Adventurism:
The Remote and Far Away
The
Affinity and Alter Ego
Romantic
Individualism
"Arts for Art's
Sake"
Symbolism
(Symbolist Movement)
Surrealism
Expressionism
Impressionism
.
This page was
last modified on August 27, 2004,
and is maintained by
Dr. Geoffrey A. Grimes.
.
.
|
