- immigrants moving westward
- Reconstruction
- By 1900, America a leading economic power
- northern industry
- Rockefeller, Morgan, Gould, Carnegie, Hill
- success and the American dream
- the Guilded Age
- themes of conformity, self-discipline, dreams of material comfort
- moral tales of rags to riches
- Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill
- regional differences- romance of Far West, rusticity of Midwest, glamour of South
- poetry, elegy, puns, allegory, satire - 37 plays and numerous sonnets
- History: power struggles with monarchs (King John in the 100 Years War with France, Joan of Arc in Henry V and struggle between House of York and House of Lancaster in War of Roses)
- Tragedies: tragic hero, a man of rank who suffers profound calamity which eventually leads to his death, always responsible for their downfalls (Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet)
- Comedies: happy ending, marriage, disguises, mistaken identities, five acts, third containing climax
- Tragicomedies, romances, or pastorals: medieval tales, nature, hero on a quest, suffering, happy ending
- Problem Plays: negotiate a contemporary social problem or moral dilemma - WWI and WWII
- truly global world
- advances in technology, transformations of modern states, rapid spread of international corporations
- interconnectedness rather than isolation
- Western countries became models
- colonial governments promised advances in literacy and standard of living
- suppressing indigenous traditions
- Industrial Revolution
- Karl Marx's proposal of a scientific theory of world history
- Frederich Nietzsche focused on the individual not society, rejected nationalism, Christianity, faith in science, loyalty to the state
- WWI: reexamination of certainty, structures of knowledge, systems of belief, repositories of authority
- Post WWII: absurdity, existentialism - Character: protagonist, antagonist
- Characterization: physical, emotional and social characteristics, thoughts, feelings, dreams, ethics, dialogue
- Round and flat characters
- Dynamic and Static characters
- Plot: Intro, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement
- Setting: Place, Social conditions, time, weather, mood
- Theme - novel
- short story, novelette, novella
- allegory: extended metaphor, social, religious, or political significance, characters personify abstract ideas
- fable: moral lesson, talking animals
- Folk legend: fact and fiction, Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan
- myth: traditional story that explains what humankind cannot understand
- romance: improbable events, extraordinary characters: Don Quixote
- modern fantasy
- science fiction
- modern realistic fiction
- historical fiction
- mystery fiction - for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so
- both...and, either...or, neither...nor
- after, although, if, unless, so, that, because, therefore - Speech developed between 100,000 to 20,000 BC.
- 5,000 to 3,000 BC, there was on common language, Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
- Germanic language by AD 0
- Jutes, Saxons, Angles brought their own Germanic dialects
- AD 600, Christian missionaries bring the Latin Alphabet: Old English
- West Saxon dialect becomes dominant: Middle English
- Latin and French become languages of power.
- End of 15th century, printing press: standardization of English
- Great vowel shift, new vocabulary, more access to books
- 19th and 20th centuries, Scientific and Industrial Revolutions brought technical vocabulary
- Dictionaries and grammars gained popularity.
- Language change inevitable