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The Geography of the Imagination
by Guy Davenport






Love and Death in the American Novel
by Leslie A. Fielder

8/31 Notes
What do Europeans think of Americans? They're, brash and rude. They are impolite and ignorant. Or are they ignorant? Dr. Sexson sugges that perhaps ignorance is really a sort of innocence. We are after all a new nation, only 200 years old. We're young, naive, and innocent. This is reminiscent of another who was newly created and innocent, Adam, thus the term "American Adam."
Agon- A contest of force or will between antagonists.

"All literature is displaced myth," Northrop Frye.
Realism is only a displacement of mythology.
This brings up another question raised in class. Can we ever really create something original? Inventions, literature, and ideas build upon those things that came before them. No thing can be created from nothing. So there can be no original literature, only myth, revamped and retold.
Marilyn

American Literature II
The Theme: "Mything America"
On our first day of class, August 29, we talked about seeing beyond the superficial aspect of literature, moving past the Wikipedia definition. Instead we want to find the myth that is the basis if the work, thus the theme "Mything America." If we were to make a pyramid out of the various levels of interpretation for a novel the myth would be the solid foundation holding up the entire work. In contrast, the Wikipedia or Google deffinition would be at the top of the pyramid, representing the basic surface understanding. To this triangle we can then add the other levels of understanding a literary work: historical, psychological, etc.
Marilyn