scholarly journals The Indictment of God and the American Society in Countee Cullen’s Poetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 75-89
Author(s):  
Onwu Uko Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Countee Cullen ◽  
American Society ◽  
Racial Intolerance

The concept that God is as unjust as the society is so eloquently portrayed in Countee Cullen’s poems “Yet Do I Marvel’’ and “Incident”. Cullen accuses God of being unjust by making him a poet. The renowned poet does not exonerate his American society from the indictment based on racial hostilities and insensitivity that seemed to have permeated the milieu. This paper addresses the questions of the indictment, racial intolerance and the significance of Cullen’s poetry to American literature. To achieve the objective of this study, the author adopts interpretive literary study and The Reader-Response approach to analyze the selected poems. The study reveals that Cullen’s poetry like other genres lives in timeless performance, is therapeutic, is a strong vehicle for the mobilization of people, and a tool for protest. The study concludes that Countee Cullen uses his poetry to indict God and American society. From the analysis of the selected poems, it is observed that poetry lives with people, is a weapon for change in any Nation and Cullen’s poetry addresses the contemporary needs of a society. His accusation of God and American society is a concern and seems relevant. What matter most is equality, justice and love for humanity? All these ingredients must emanate from the heart and transcend color for any society to attain oneness.

scholarly journals The Theme of Infidelity in Ajo Obi: A Reader Response Approach

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-56
Author(s):  
Chioma Magdaline Akaeze ◽  
Jacinta Ukamaka Eze ◽  
Juliana Ginika Mamah ◽  
Virginus Onyebuchi Aruah
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Research Paradigm ◽  
Intensive Study ◽  
Its Analysis

Thematic study is an area in any literary study that cannot be easily overlooked. It is an area that cuts across the three major genres of literature. This paper examines the literary text Ajo Obi which is written by I.G. Nwaozuzu in form of drama with the view of studying the theme of infidelity as portrayed in the text. This work aims at showing the ambiguity of the claim of innocence by the accused in the text. It also brings to light how cultural divergence brings about different interpretations of an action. The data for this study are drawn from intensive study of the literary text Ajo Obi. Following a qualitative research paradigm the study adopts reader response approach in its analysis. Findings show that there is a kind of uncertainty in the claim of innocence by the accused in the text. Again cultural divergence is also found to bring about differences in interpretation of an action.

scholarly journals The Emperor Jones is the Reflection of the Black White Struggle: Modern American Drama

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-104
Author(s):  
Haider Ibrahim Khalil ◽  
Abdullah Mohd Nawi ◽  
Ansam Ali Flefil
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
White People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
Clash Of Cultures ◽  
American Society

The Emperor Jones is the best viewpoint of O’Neill’s plays in depicting the black white people. This play exposes the portraying of black white conflict as modernism ideology. This play is focused on the suffering and the oppression of people. In this study, the scholar uses the qualitative method as storytelling type. In theoretical framework, the critical race theory is related to this study to analyse the speech which tackles the plot, characters and setting according to the concepts of clash of cultures. This study/ this paper also shows the clashes of culture in American society. Furthermore, the implication of this paper will be presented/ indicate the social, educational, linguistic and cultural style. In fact, this paper will add something to American literature by generalizing this study to other studies about black white people. In sum, this paper is to reflect the philosophy of O’Neill in portraying the black white people. The scholar uses the critical race theory to explain the struggles/ conflicts among the human beings. The researcher also uses the qualitative approach and narrative technique to analyse data. In the same way, the data/ material is collected by textual methods and analyse by the narrative approach. This study can be generalized to another study about O’Neill’s perspectives in depicting the black white people. 

Jewish American Literature Against the World

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Schreier
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
American Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Jewish American Literature ◽  
The World

Abstract By way of a brief genealogy of the Jewish American literary field and through the lens of recent attempts to imagine how comparative literature-based thinking about a concept of “world literature” can be critically productive for Jewish literary study, this article analyzes Jewish American literary studies’ prestige problem. Because it has persistently failed to theorize the intellectual and methodological assumptions underlying its practice, Jewish American literary study remains burdened by the essentialist implications of an ethnological historicism. This article ultimately argues that Jewish American literary study needs to take more seriously the possibilities offered by a materialist epistemology rather than the Jewish studies-based historicist ontology it has mostly taken for granted. “My hope is that a Jewish American epistemology can operate outside the penumbra of a tired and played-out concept of ethnicity—a term that unavoidably, if spectrally, posits a biologistic object at the heart of its historicist project—even as it might still claim the mantle of Jewish-y-ness.”

The Past as Present: Reader Response and Literary Study

1993 ◽  
Vol 82 (5) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
R. Baird Shuman
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
The Past

Transferring and Transforming Cultural Norms

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Lee Dills
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Native American Literature ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Teaching Tools

In this essay, I describe moments in my mother's life and examine them as living narratives or "lifestories" and apply critical theory and analysis that has traditionally been reserved for written narratives. I argue that these moments are teaching tools that reinforce and sometimes challenge cultural norms and discuss how her living narratives were revised by me as I began to "tell" them to my own children. I apply performance narrative, fiction, and Native American literature theories to these narratives. I point out the cultural and generational differences in me and my mother, and discuss the influence of the different regions where we spent our childhoods. This essay is a comparative literary study of a multigenerational living text in process. (Literature, Critical Theory)

scholarly journals Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead as a Novel of Manners

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 828-838
Author(s):  
Muhammad Khallaf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Norman Mailer ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Novel Of Manners ◽  
American Society

Norman Mailer (1923-2007) is one the most important figures among the American Writers, an extremely influenced personality in the post-world war II American Literature. He is best known for his first war novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), which is a commentary on the American society. Hence, the present study is an attempt to investigate and reflect the social ills and fragmentation, misery and the overwhelming social and political restraints that formed the American atmosphere at that time. Mailer is interested in what happens in the contemporary American society. His aim is to depict the national rituals of American life. The researcher in this study seeks to identify the literary aspects reflected and drawn in The Naked and the Dead that make us categorize it as a novel of manners for it is satiric and realistic in depiction, in which Mailer unprecedentedly characterizes the social mores, evils and customs that are characteristic of a particular class of people in a specific historical context. The descriptive approach along with detailed analysis is utilized in conducting the present study. The conclusion sums up the most important findings of the study.

scholarly journals OF MICE AND MEN: NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE LIFE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY VIA READING STEINBECK'S NOVELLA

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-95
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
American People ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literature And Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Of Mice And Men ◽  
American Society

This paper investigates new perspectives in the novel Of Mice and Men by the American writer John Steinbeck. However it studies the most important issues exposed by Steinbeck in American literature and society; these issues became as their existence in different aspects, more specifically the social relationships and enhancing the economic systems. The paper also discusses different issues concerning the life of American people in the era of Great Depression; with this kind of story American people interact with the events displayed by the writer. Therefore, this story reflects their struggle and goals towards fulfilling better lives. It also studies the sense of friendship in American society in particular and society in general. Actually the soft relationship between George and Lennie depicts the hope and love and how to overcome any obstacles which sometimes we meet in our lives. The paper also explains briefly the role of women played in the American society in the thirties of the last century. Moreover, Steinbeck actually promotes women in society throughout the character Curley's Wife and how she challenged all the difficulties she faced not just to be a successful factor in society but also she proved that without woman the movement of our daily life will completely stop

scholarly journals The Concept of Power in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead: A Study in Psychological and Sociopolitical Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 2540-2555
Author(s):  
Instr. Mushtaq Abdulhaleem Mohammed, Instr. Khalid Qais Abd
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Norman Mailer ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Post War ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

As one of the literary figures in post-war American literature, Norman Mailer tackles psychological and sociopolitical issues in The Naked and the Dead (1948) that bewildered both critics and readers. He combined them in a complementary way that explained their cause and effect development. The present paper sheds light on the definition of power in comparison with megalomania, its different causes, and its devastating effects on both the victimizers and the victimized. It also aims at revealing the inner thought of the contemporary individual as suffering from the spiritual decadence as a rebellion against the political life that hovers almost every aspect of the American society. These points are rendered through Mailer's major and powerful characters like General Cummings and Lieutenant Croft who represent the victimizers as a part of their megalomaniac attitudes. An emphasis has always been directed to two other powerless characters—Lieutenant Hearn and Troop Red Valsen—whom will be victimized at the hands of the victimizers. Mailer, in this novel, calls that the individual is either supposed to surrender to wrongful forces or to endeavor to attain some spiritual independence and dignity.

scholarly journals COLORISM IN TONI MORRISONS GOD HELP THE CHILD

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 450-453
Author(s):  
Makwana Ajay
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
White Skin ◽  
White American ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
African Descendants ◽  
Dark Color ◽  
American Society

The present paper has been specifically designed to scrutinize the aspect of colorism in Toni Morrisons well acclaimed novel God Help the Child. African American literature is an academic body of writing produced by African descendants residing in America. The literary canon of African- American literature emerged in late part of 18th century in oral forms like sermon, gospel, music, jazz, blues and spirituals. African American writers have deliberately expressed their painful agony, racial segregation, social injustice and ill treatment which they tolerated in white American society. Toni Morrison was a prolific female novelist of African-American literary writing. Morrisons eleventh novel God Help the Child prominently deals with colorism, racism and child abuse. Conceptually, the term Colorism was coined by Alice Walker to address the superiority of lighter or white skin over the dark. Colorism has its genetic roots in racism because without racism the standardization of color conflict would not be exist. The novel unfolds the story of Bride, also known as Lula Ann who is born with dark black color. She receives ill treatment by her own parents and gets negative rejection because of having black skin. Brides dark color ruins her golden childhood period. Louis Bridewell rejects Bride from accepting as his baby. Similarly, Sweetness breeds Bride with harsh treatment and cruelty. The research study will primarily focus on to address the color conflict faced by child protagonist Lula Ann.

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