English 2308E Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: My Kinsman, Major Molineux, Walter Benn Michaels, Making Money
20 Jan 2016
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Document Summary
Writers who perceived themselves ot be democratic in nature, like hawthorne. Whitman wanted to transfigure the age change america. Wanted to carry american ideals into america through literature. In 19th c all ideas we"ve learned come under debate american trying to figure out what america will become faced with contradictions. Texts articulate these contradictions in the 19th century: agrarian as an ideal but in the north it"s becoming industrial. Most 19th century works are talking about vexing problems of society. Nature no longer threatening - society is threatening, the individual and. No name to narrator remains anonymous like every other figure in the story. Middle class, unnamed guy recovering from poor health sitting in a coffee house in london (huge city at the time) watching people. Peculiar, strange, unique stands out from the crowd, elderly man too. Story brings narrator through all levels of the city gets to lowest part of city: gin palace.
