It's Friday--Praise God!

Someone had to do it first. I'm making a post yes, as a student. Bartleby's monopoly on posts has at last met a challenge, but alas, it shan't stay long.

My reason for posting is to confirm that Bartleby has indeed moved the due date of our beloved three-book-project from Thursday, April 29th, to Friday, April 30th. So there you are, I confirm it. In the words of The Crucible: "Praise God!"

I wish everyone good luck and God's assistance in the completion of your projects in the coming days. See you in class.

The Jazz Age & the Roaring Twenties

As we continue on in our study of the American dream in literature, we'll also be introduced to the Jazz Age in literature. One of the most representative literary works of the Jazz Age is American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), which highlighted what some describe as the corruption of the post-WW I age as well as the growth of individualism. It is also the finest literary example of the corruption of the original American dream.

Fitzgerald is typically credited with coining the term "Jazz Age," which he used in such books as his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), also deals with the era and its effect on a young married couple.

So, what's the Jazz Age? Here are some instructive Jazz Age links:

JazzAge1920s.com
This website is dedicated to the Jazz Age music of the 1920's and to the artists who performed the music. These Jazz Age pages feature accurately researched bios of some of the lesser known personalities of the era. Mp3s are sprinkled throughout to give a flavor of the recordings of the performer and to perpetuate these wonderful tunes that have stood the test of time.

The Jazz Age: Roaring Twenties -- Digital History
The popular image of the 1920s, as a decade of prosperity and riotous living and of bootleggers and gangsters, flappers and hot jazz, flagpole sitters, and marathon dancers, is indelibly etched in the American psyche. But this image is also profoundly misleading. The 1920s was a decade of deep cultural conflict.

The Jazz Age: Music & Dancing
The musical forms that most impacted the 1910s and 20s – ragtime, blues and jazz – rose from the African-American community and are recognized as distinctly original American art forms. Originally played in saloons and bawdy houses, ragtime was a worldwide craze for years.

Prohibition in the 1920's -- Digital History
At midnight, January 16, 1920, the United States went dry; breweries, distilleries, and saloons were forced to close their doors. Led by the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the dry forces had triumphed by linking Prohibition to a variety of Progressive era social causes.

Fashion History of the 1920's -- The Flapper Era
Flapper fashion embraced all things and styles modern. A fashionable flapper had short sleek hair, a shorter than average shapeless shift dress, a chest as flat as a board, wore make up and applied it in public, smoked with a long cigarette holder, exposed her limbs and epitomized the spirit of a reckless rebel who danced the nights away in the Jazz Age.

More forthcoming in future posts!

John Winthrop Defines the "American Dream"

John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is credited with defining what has become known as the "American dream" -- unadulterated. He set forth his idea of a religious paradise in American in his "City on a Hill" sermon, written down aboard the Arbella on his ocean voyage in 1630 under the title of "A Model of Christian Charity." Here is a link to the full text of his tract, along with the following introduction by John Beardsley:

This is Winthrop’s most famous thesis, written on board the Arbella, 1630. We love to imagine the occasion when he personally spoke this oration to some large portion of the Winthrop fleet passengers during or just before their passage.

In an age not long past, when the Puritan founders were still respected by the educational establishment, this was required reading in many courses of American history and literature. However, it was often abridged to just the first and last few paragraphs. This left the overture of the piece sounding unkind and fatalistic, and the finale rather sternly zealous. A common misrepresentation of the Puritan character.

Winthrop’s genius was logical reasoning combined with a sympathetic nature. To remove this work’s central arguments about love and relationships is to completely lose the sense of the whole. Therefore we present it here in its well-balanced entirety. The biblical quotations are as Winthrop wrote them, and remain sometimes at slight variance from the King James version. This editor has corrected the chapter and verse citations to correspond to the King James text, assuming that the modern reader will wish to conveniently refer to that most popular English version of the Bible, as the Governor lays out his argument for charity and decent human behavior in the community.

Winthrop’s intent was to prepare the people for planting a new society in a perilous environment, but his practical wisdom is timeless.

Read the whole text...