LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Answers to Question A1

Jeff Derrickson

Revisiting Entertaining Texts for the Whole Story

          American Renaissance is the class I’ve waited to take since I started at UHCL. I had prior experience with some of the material from an American Literature course I took at Lee College several years ago. My experience with Hawthorne’s short stories galvanized my love for literature, and I was able to really see inside the literary world for the first time. I had struggled with symbolism before I encountered Hawthorne, but his use of archetypes made an impression on me, and inspired several changes in my own writing. I’ve grown considerably in my understanding of literature since that class at Lee, and I find that my focus has shifted to time periods, and discovering where literature fits in the scheme of history. It amazes me how the literature of a certain era can breathe life into that history, which has been notorious as one of my worst subjects.

          In addition to my literature study, I have been pursuing a high school English teaching certification. As such, the framework for a teaching style has been slowly built. The teaching style that I am most comfortable with is Social Constructivism, and the structure of the three classes I’ve taken from you is congruent to this style. It is my goal to one day helm a creative writing class, and I knew even a year ago that I would be “borrowing” heavily from you in this endeavor. The idea of student-led discussion was so effective in that environment, and I was pleasantly surprised that it worked just as well in a literature course. To my surprise, student-led discussion would emerge in my Creating a Positive Learning Environments course under the Constructivism heading. Constructivism reduces the role of the teacher and empowers the students with heightened responsibilities. Suffice it to say that student-led discussion will be going right into my teaching “toolbox.”

          It was nice to see that I could learn new things about authors I had already studied. On the website, the term critical thinking is used to describe the wellspring of exploration literature provides, and I can’t agree more. I learned about Hawthorne’s penchant for symbolism and archetypes, but I never would have guessed that I would be able apply psychoanalysis to Young Goodman Brown. I’ve known the story of Rip Van Winkle since I was a child, but I never would have connected it to the American Revolution, and the prevailing thought that you could go to sleep one day only to find everything changed the next morning.

Horace’s idea that literature entertains and informs is very apropos, because it is certainly more enthralling to learn about frontier life from The Last of the Mohicans instead of a standard historical text. A wily romantic author will have no problem weaving romantic elements into his text, which may or may not be a hundred percent historically accurate, in order to convey ideas such as race relations and tolerance. I love this aspect of literature, because a child can read a text like Mohicans or Sleepy Hollow, and then rediscover those texts as they get older to discover underlying themes and motifs. That a reader can consistently experience this is a testament to the longevity of those texts. As America grew, so too did its literature. Because America had a history, there were “good ol’ days” to remember, and a bright and unknown future to look forward to. The experience one might have when reading literature from this time period is similar to that dynamic.

I have studied mythology and medieval literature, Shakespeare, masterpieces of the 20^th century, and early American literature, during my time at UHCL, and it is fitting that American Renaissance will be my final literature class for the time being. There are still historical gaps I will explore on my own, such as the American 1920’s, but I feel that I have a well-rounded idea of how things fit together. At the very least, I feel that I will be able to comfortably read the material I have not read yet for pleasure, because I know I will be able to look at them more closely to discover new worlds, and new connections to history.