LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 Student Midterm Samples #1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning American Renaissance or American Romantic literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

Jeanette Williams

1- The Challenge to Understand the Texts

     The American Renaissance and Romantic periods have been quite an interesting study thus far.  Being introduced to the different texts of the time periods has been informative in several different ways.  If a person is not knowledgeable of Romanticism and they are asked to identify what makes a text romantic it would be somewhat difficult to do.  Without knowing what Romanticism is will result in a person identifying it with what is familiarly known as romance.  This would consist of a romance novel that has to do with a love story or words that center around love.  The challenge I have been faced with in this class is to properly make or recognize the identification of what Romanticism is. 

     According to lecture notes provided by Dr. White, “Romanticism" is a style or movement in literature, music, and other arts beginning in the late 1700s that thrives even now in popular forms and attitudes.”  This definition of Romanticism removes all misconceptions of what the term means.  The definition is also inclusive of music because the common mistake for a person with no knowledge of the term would be to identify “love songs” as being romantic music but this misconception would also be wrong.  Examples of   Romantic music provided by Dr. White in lecture notes consist of composers such as Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert and, Tchaikovsky not Barry Manilow, Luther Vandrauss, or Neil Diamond.

     There are three particular texts of several assigned in class that surprisingly fall under the category of Romanticism.  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and The Last of the Mohicans.  Immediately one who is not familiar with these texts would question what they have to do with Romanticism because the titles alone do not suggest they are Romantic in content.  Therefore, I found the first course objective to be extremely essential to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle.  “These stories have been heard of if not read by most people,” as was stated by Dr. White during lecture.  However, what is not known by most people is the presence of gothic terms or descriptions as well as romantic terms and descriptions throughout each text that reveal its Romanticism content.

     After reading these two texts and participating in class discussion I as well as others students in the class began to take notice of the gothic and romantic terms, colors, and other descriptions found on everyday television shows and even some popular radio songs.  So I would say that the first objective of this class has been achieved.  It is the second objective that I believe is accomplished with the third text which is the The Last of The Mohicans.  This text takes on another aspect of the time period which is known as Historical Romanticism which would fall under the umbrella of the second class objective.  In lecture notes provided by Dr. White this time period deals with the problems and values of American culture concerning race, gender, and class.

     In The Last of The Mohicans it is the relationship between Uncas and Cora that deals with race and class. These two individuals are of a different race and class.  During the class discussion Jonathan brought this inter-racial relationship to reality. He revealed he is an inter-racial child and said he could relate to the struggles and issues faced by Cora and Uncas. He also emphasized how inter-racial love was not the societal norm, but the Romanticism in this text is that “love can be found with anyone anywhere,” while Dr. White revealed that the Romanticism is found in the fact that Uncas and Cora love each other but cannot be together.

     The overall challenge thus far is being able to analyze what each author wants to convey through each text.  Though I did not mention her in this portion of the exam, Emily Dickinson is by far the hardest reading assignment to follow.  Perhaps because The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and The Last of The Mohicans have a storyline that many are quite familiar with that can be followed. However, I must admit that once the poems were explained through class discussion I gained a greater appreciation for her.  It is by way of class discussions and listening to other interpretations that the texts are made clearer which arrives at the achievement of objective three; student leadership.