(Extra-8)Amlit (12)
1. What is Amlit?
A:- Amlit means American literature.
2. What is American Renaissance?
A:- American Renaissance is a literary petiod that begins around 1830s and ends after the Civil War in 1865. It is a period full of cultural, religious, literary, political and geographical changes in America. The American Renaissance brought Dark Romanticism and Transcendentalism. Despite quite early political independence in 1776 from European colonizers, Amlit lately regained literary and cultural freedom in the 19th century American Renaissance times.
3. What are the characteresitics of American Renaissance?
A:- Individualism, emotions, imagination and Nature are some of the recurrent characteresitics found in the literature of American Renaissance.
4. What is Individualism in American Renaissance?
A:- Struggle for the frontier, Jacksonian Democracy and abolition of slavery and the stressing of 'I' themes covers the individualism in American Renaissance.
5. What is the imagination in American Renaissance literature?
A:- Reaction against reason, experimentation over tradition and structure of ideas are included in the imagination of Renaissance literature of America.
6. What was Jacksonian Democracy?
A:- Andrew Jackson became the common man's hero when as the President he let more American white men over the age of 21, vote and participate in politics. This came to be known as the Jacksonian Democracy of the 19th century in America.
7. What is Dark Romanticism?
A:- Dark Romanticism is a literary subgenre of Romanticism. It relates to one's fascination with the irrational, demonic, grotesque, self destructive elements and psychological effects of guilt and sin. Dark Romanticism is often traced in gothic literature. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson used it in their writings.
8. What is the struggle for the frontier?
A:- American frontier is in United States where the lands are occupied by Europeans. This frontier witnessed the most rapid Americanization where the Europeans were ready with dress, industries, tools, modes of travel and their thoughts. These Europeans together from many European countries resulted into a pot of cultures. They started expanding towards the western parts of America after the Civil War. Together they created a composite American nationality with an exceptional fusion of mixed race in history, folklore, culture and geography. This frontier never closed. Rather, it now reached to easten America.
9. What is the Civil War?
A:- Four years Civil War in America took place from 12 April 1861 to 9 Apr 1865. It was fought in between the Union(states in the North which remained loyal to the government. They won the war too. The North was more industrialized and varied in agriculture too. Northerners were called Yankees) and the Confederacy(states in the South which wanted to secede). The main cause was the status of slavery. Public opinion was divided whether the new territories should have slavery or not, if slavery be abolished and if blacks be considered citizens.
10. Who were the slaves?
A:- Natives of Africa were sent as slaves and bonded labourers away from homelands to Western metropolis. Slave trade had depleted African population too. After 1880s only it increased again.
11. What is Negritude?
A:- Negritude is related to Harlem Renaissance and influenced African American culture. Its aim was to self express, attain back self respect and get united with ancestry.
This intellectual literary movement was born in Paris in 1930s-40s. It was established through French language through their cultural identity. Langston Hughes was one of it's chief proponents.
Women who influenced Negritude movement were Paulette Nardel and Suzanne Cesarei.
12. How did Booker T Washington and others helped in developing American black literature?
A:- Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) wrote his autobiography Up from Slavery (1901) which recounts his successful struggle to better himself. His Atlanta Exposition Address (1895) is an attempt to involve the recently freed black American in the mainstream society.
Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Waddell Chestnut, Paul Laurence Dunbar and others helped in the rise of the Black American Literature through autobiographies, protest literature, sermons, poetry and song.