Hart Crane

Using Hart Crane as the modernist. The first few pages will be the annotated bibliography and the last 4 pages are analytical reading.

The modernists’ importance to the development of American Literature cannot be overstated. Much of their contribution focused on one or more of five key areas:

1) how to deal with [literary] tradition;

2) how to deal with popular culture in serious literature—high vs. low art;

3) literature taking part in politics, social reform, troubles of a time vs. exploring universal truths, questions;

4) the instability of representation;

5) individual vs. community.

In order to give you a more thorough understanding of this movement’s contribution, you’ll be more deeply into a modernist author’s work.

The assignment has two parts:

1) Annotated Bibliography: using any of a number of databases, find five scholarly articles on your chosen author’s work. Annotate these articles—that is, summarize and assess—their contents.

For more on the content of annotations, please see the OWL at Purdue’s page here. You can see examples of an annotation’s structure here.

2) Analytical Reading: The second part of the assignment is a short (4-5 pages) analysis of your chosen author’s contribution to one or more of the areas listed above. Content related to his/her biography should be directly applicable to the creative work that the essay analyzes.