User talk:Btitl2

Topics
American Renaissance (literature)

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Carl Sandburg Btitl2 (talk) 23:25, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Btitl2, any of these topics will work. I see the most opportunity in the development of the American Renaissance article, since it is so short, and includes none of the historical criticisms of the term, which could be verified and added here. If you choose to proceed with an author, keep in mind that Sandburg is a much more well known figure than Freeman, so it may be harder to find ways to contribute to his article. There are definitely opportunities to develop coverage of Freeman, however, and of her specific works. Good luck! Nadinecross78 (talk) 16:48, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

List of Contributions
on American Renaissance (literature) Btitl2 (talk) 03:28, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a lack of organization on this page. I will create more subsections, talking about things such as the criticism associated with this movement and notable figures.
 * I have also just discovered that this article is labeled as "stub-class" which (as I understand it) means that it needs added to. One way Wikipedia suggests to improve it is to show why it is, or should be, significant.  I hope to do this with my edits, especially when it comes to talking about notable authors.
 * There should be a bigger section on the criticism associated with the American Renaissance. The article already mentions something of the criticism about only discussing white, male authors. However, I plan on adding something on the criticism of "overemphasizing the separateness of English and American literary traditions" as discussed in the Norton Anthology of American Literature.
 * This article might also benefit by having some information about how the movement was started. Although the nationalist part of the American Renaissance is a bit controversial, it is also a key point when talking about it.

Btitl2, I agree that this article needs a ton of work, and that you cen certainly help improve it in the ways you've mentioned. One source that might be helpful to you is a well known book of literary criticism called Beneath the American Renaissance by David S. Reynolds. This book is a famous critique of the concept of the American Renaissance, and Im surprised it isn't mentioned on this article. To fulfill the requirements of this assignment, you'll need to make some pretty substantial changes to this article -- make sure to do thorough research to find criticism of the movement, origins of the term, and figures associated with it. Nadinecross78 (talk) 20:38, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Summary
One of the main changes to the American Renaissance page I feel need to happen is an overall clean-up and restructure. I would like to create three separate sections: Overview, Criticisms, and Notable Authors. For the Overview section, not much will be added or changed. I will update the time that this movement happened, which I have found to be about 1830 to the Civil War. Other than that, the Overview section needs a lot of work. For example, there is no need for a list of authors and their works in the opening paragraph, so I will move that to the notable authors section. Most of the information in the Overview section will remain unchanged and I will move some of the criticism aspects of it to the Criticisms section. I will also add information about how the movement began and what the intentions and styles associated with it are.

The next section I would like to work on is the criticism section. This section is where I will add the most new information. I will add information about the criticism of authors not necessarily forming new ideas but reforming old or contemporary ones, the perceived lack of popular contributions from women and minorities, and how only a handful of authors are associated with this movement. I will move the criticism parts of the existing article to this section and out of the current overview section.

The last section that will be added and worked on is the Notable Authors section. I will list, with links to their Wikipedia pages, I would include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Edgar Allan Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Emily Dickenson. I may also under each author list some of their more famous works associated with this movement as already found on this article with links to the pages associated with those works. Btitl2 (talk) 04:21, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Excellent work, Btitl2! Notice that another user made some pretty ignorant comments on the Talk page for American Renaissance (not to you) about there being no need to include controversy over the term, since the author presumes that women and minorities weren't writing in the early 19th century, or weren't educated enough to write literature. Since you and I (and pretty much all literary scholarship these days) know this not to be true, this is a prime oppurtunity for you. It's also a reason to make sure that anything you add is well documented, so ignorant folks like that guy don't delete your work! Nadinecross78 (talk) 23:41, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Annotated Bibliography
Boswell, Jeanetta. The American Renaissance and the Critics. Wakefield: Longwood Academic, 2009. ISBN 0-89341-599-5.

I found this book in the library near more literary movement books. It gives an introduction to what the style and authors of the period were like and then goes on to give criticism to a large number of works. Because this book was written by a professor, it is reputable and scholarly. This book is very different to all of my other sources because it gives small criticisms of works instead of the movement itself, with the exception of an introduction which also contains useful information.

Howe, Lawrence; Layson, Hana (2014). “The American Renaissance in Context.” Retrieved 2015-11-10.

This web article comes from the Newberry Library making it scholarly. I found it by simply doing a Google search about the American Renaissance. It contains useful information to why Matthiessen wrote what he did about the American Renaissance and also brings up the criticism of women being left out of his thoughts. This source is neat because it goes into detail about smaller aspects of the American Renaissance such as different types of genres and pictures of books. Reading about sensational and sentimental literature helped me understand more about women authors during this period.

Nina Baym; Robert Steven Levine. "American Literature 1820-1865". The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ney York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013: 445-463. ISBN 978-0-393-91885-4.

This book is a very well respected source of literature and information on different literary movements. I use this book in my American Literature class and it provides a lot of great information on the history and criticisms of the American Renaissance movement. Unlike other sources, this book is able to condense major points of the movement in a way that a reader can easily comprehend and also touches on points that others do not. This book was edited by two English professors, so it is reputable and scholarly.

Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1988. ISBN 0-394-54448-x.

This is a very famous book on criticism of the American Renaissance that I found at the Library after receiving a suggestion to take a look at it. In it, criticisms such as the lack of mentioning lesser known authors, not giving deserved credit to women and minority authors, and authors not necessarily forming new ideas can be found. I actually found this source a bit more difficult to follow because it was bringing up a lot of literary ideas and terms I am unfamiliar with. Nonetheless, I was able to pull out useful information. This would be a scholarly source because Reynolds is a literary scholar. Btitl2 (talk) 06:30, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Nice work, Btitl2! You have a few formatting errors here (like where you put the year in some entries, listing the Norton Anthology  editors by first name instead of last name, and not italicizing all book titles. Also, you seem to have some confusion over what constitutes a peer-reviewed source. Sometimes this has to do with the publisher, but not everything at the Newberry is scholarly. In any event, you've got some excellent sources here, and you do have at least 2 scholarly sources. Nadinecross78 (talk) 23:20, 23 November 2015 (UTC)