In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation[1] that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970[2] reformulating the ideas of Zellig Harris (1951,[3]) and further developed by Ray Jackendoff (1974,[4] 1977a,[5] 1977b[6]), along the lines of the theory of generative grammar put forth in the 1950s by Chomsky.[7][8] It attempts to capture the structure of phrasal categories with a single uniform structure called the X-bar schema, basing itself on the assumption that any phrase in natural language is an XP (X phrase) that is headed by a given syntactic category X. It played a significant role in resolving issues that phrase structure rules had, representative of which is the proliferation of grammatical rules, which is against the thesis of generative grammar. In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation[1] that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970[2] reformulating the ideas of Zellig Harris (1951,[3]) and further developed by Ray Jackendoff (1974,[4] 1977a,[5] 1977b[6]), along the lines of the theory of generative grammar put forth in the 1950s by Chomsky.[7][8] It attempts to capture the structure of phrasal categories with a single uniform structure called the X-bar schema, basing itself on the assumption that any phrase in natural language is an XP (X phrase) that is headed by a given syntactic category X. It played a significant role in resolving issues that phrase structure rules had, representative of which is the proliferation of grammatical rules, which is against the thesis of generative grammar. X-bar theory was incorporated into both transformational and nontransformational theories of syntax, including government and binding theory (GB), generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG), lexical-functional grammar (LFG), and head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG).[9] Although recent work in the minimalist program has largely abandoned X-bar schemata in favor of bare phrase structure approaches, the theory's central assumptions are still valid in different forms and terms in many theories of minimalist syntax.

1. CHARACTERISTICS OF AMERICAN
LITERATURE
BY
SANA NOOR

2. AMERICAN LITERATURE
 Literature that was written in America and
it’s native areas.
 With the development of American society,
questions were raised on the actual culture
and writings of American literature.
 With the advent of Post-War period,
American voices gained pace and Literature
started flourishing.

3.  American Literature in Different Eras…

4. AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM START TO
PRESENT…
 Colonialism Beginnings to 1800
 Native Americans used their myths to explain the
creation of the world and humankind’s relationships
with each other or to nature.
 Puritans (1600’s-1800’s) were a group persecuted
for religious beliefs in England who came to
America for religious freedom and wrote on and
about Biblical models.
 Rationalists believed that humans could arrive at
truth by using reason.

5.  American Romanticism 1800-1860:-
 This literary period valued feeling and intuition over reason. It
was characterized by heroes and journeys. Most of these
symbolic “trips” were moving away from the evil of civilization and
the bonds of rational thought to the purity of nature and the
freedom of the imagination. They preferred youthful innocence,
individual freedom, the wisdom of the past, fascination with the
supernatural, inspiration of folk culture, and poetry as the highest
expression of creativity. ,The Fireside poets (the Boston poets
of Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes sometimes referred
to as “Schoolroom Poets” ) were extremely popular, often
memorized, and usually recited. Their subject matter (love,
patriotism, nature, family, God) comforted their audiences but did
not challenge them to be innovative.
 Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book (“Rip Van Winkle” & “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow”)
 William Cullen Bryant’s “Than-atopsis”.

6.  American Renaissance- 1840-1860
 This literary rebirth began with the question, “Will there ever be a
greater writer than Shakespeare?”
 Transcendentalism was a belief of finding religion in nature.
Everything was a reflection of the divine soul according to
Emerson and Thoreau.
 Gothic ideals looked at the dark side of human nature using
spooky (ghostly) settings, mysterious illnesses, strange sounds,
and live burials (in works of Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne) to
make people face their feelings.
 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature and Self-Reliance.
 Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods; Resistance
to Civil Government
 Poe’s “The Fall of House of Usher,” “The Raven,” “The Purloined
Letter,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” &“The Cask of Amontillado”;
founder of modern detective story.
 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”; Twice-Told
Tales; The Scarlet Letter

7.  A New American Poetry –
 Walt Whitman (1819-1892) &
 Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
 These two people were both great innovators of a new way of
writing but were total opposites. Whitman was a spokesman
for progress, and Dickinson wrote privately of her
spiritual metaphors in nature.
 Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” and Song of Myself
 Dickinson’s “The Poems of E.D”; “Success Is Counted
Sweetest”; “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”’; “I Heard a
Fly Buzz-When I Died”.

8.  Realism – 1850-1900
 Civil War writing favored realistic characters and settings over those that
were contrived. Seeing the horrors of war made Whitman more optimistic
because heroes overcame so much suffering but make Melville more
pessimistic because of the pain he witnessed.
 Realism sought to portray ordinary life in non-romantic settings, and to
explain why people act the way they do.
 Regionalism (or local color writing) focused on a small geographical
area and tried to accurately reproduce the speech and manners of that
region.
 Naturalism was a 19th c. literary movement that wanted to show life
exactly as it is, with people behaving like animals who follow natural laws
of the universe and sometimes are not able to control their own
destinies.
 Psychological fiction occurs inside a character’s mind while the
universe is indifferent.
 Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
and Adventures of Tom Sawyer

9.  Moderns- 1900-1950
 Writers boldly experimented with new styles and rejected traditional themes. After
World War I, disillusionment abounded, and new moral codes tempted some.
 Some wrote of the American dream, which showed this country as a land of
promise, a place for optimists, and a world for the independent individualist.
(Emerson defined its elements most clearly). Rather than most writers coming from
New England, many now came from the South, the Midwest, or the West. Marxism
and Freud’s psychoanalysis drew many away from the old values. Stream of
consciousness writing used no chronology but followed a character’s random
thoughts wherever they went. The Jazz Age, of the Roaring 20’s, (The Roaring
Twenties is a term sometimes used to refer to the 1920s, characterizing the
decade's distinctive cultural edge in New York City, Paris, Berlin, London and many
other major cities during a period of sustained economic prosperity. French
speakers called it the "années folles" ("Crazy Years"), emphasizing the era's social,
artistic, and cultural dynamism. "Normalcy" returned to politics in the wake of
hyper-emotional patriotism during World War I) found people seeking pleasure to
avoid the restraints of the Prohibition. Expatriates left America in search of grace
and luxury abroad. Some rejected the ideal American hero for one who is flawed
but has honor and courage. Symbolists and Imagists dominated new poetry.

10.  E. A. Robinson and Robert Frost from New England and Edgar Lee
Masters from the Midwest wrote traditional verse forms. The *Harlem
Renaissance (1920’s – mid 1930’s) was a rebirth of African-American
art, music, and literature focused mainly in the Harlem section of New
York City. It used ghetto (slum area) speech and the rhythms of jazz and
blues to enhance poetry. As a belief in self-reliance persisted, Edenic
American (African/ African American ability to identify with their gods)
writers in the Modernist era kept asking questions about the meaning
and purpose of human existence.
 Robert Frost’s Mountain Interval(“The Road Not Taken” and “Birches”)
 F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night
 John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath
 E. Hemingway’s; A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old
Man& the Sea
 T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; The Hollow Men; “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock”
 *Zora Neale Hurstson’s “Dust Tracks on a Road”
 *Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” and “Harlem”

11.  Contemporary – 1950-Present
 Gallows humor (by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Joseph Heller, and Terry
Southern) laughed at life’s tragic ironies, acknowledging the absurd and
the grotesque. Postwar science and technology gave economic growth
but left individuals lost in a fast-paced, impersonal world.
 Post-modern work allows for multiple meanings and worlds,
nontraditional forms, and comments upon itself. It has cultural
diversity, blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction, and relied on
the past. New journalism or (Literary Journalism) has added personal
and fictional elements to nonfiction, making it more popular with readers.
Contemporary poetry became more personal and accessible and more
challenging of convention. The Beat poets, nonconformist (who do not
conform to the conventional practices) new bohemians or hippies (esp. in
1960s A person of unconventional appearance, typically having long hair
and wearing beads...) cried out against conformity of the 1950’s.
 Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Robert Lowell’s Life Studies were about
personal experiences regarding it.

12.  The Confessional School of Poets, friends or (like Sylvia
Plath, Anne Sexton and John Berryman) wrote brutal poems
about their private lives. Oral performance at poetry indicates
a fresh voice and a new attitude of poetry with a democratic
quality, but the same familiar themes, seeking spiritual
revelations in ordinary life.
 Anne Sexton’s “The Bells” , Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
and “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” , Amy Tan’s “The
Rules of the Game”; The Joy Luck, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It
on the Mountain, Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”.
 AMERICAN DRAMA
 Basic elements are exposition, characters, and conflict. A
success requires collaboration between the playwright, the
producer, the director, the actors, and the audience.

13.  Theater seems to dramatize accepted attitudes and values
because it is a social art. Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is
America’s most important playwright with plays like The Great
God Brown, Days Without End, and Strange Interlude. He
won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1936.
 European playwrights Henrik Ibsen from Norway, August
Strindberg from Sweden, and Anton Chekhov from Russia
greatly influenced American drama by shifting dramatic action
to intense inner emotional concerns of common life. This is
called “slice-of-life” dramatic technique.
 We see a realistic play through a “fourth wall” that has been
removed from real life so that we can see into the character’s
lives.
 Arthur Miller (1915- ) is a playwright of social conscience. He
uses characters’ psychological makeup, along with social,
philosophical, and economic atmosphere of their times to
work his magic. He wrote The Death of a Salesman and The
Crucible.

14.  Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) wrote realistic drama
mixed with imaginative, poetic sensibility in his plays
The Glass Menagerie, and A Streetcar Named Desire
and has been called the playwright of our souls. His
characters are often lost women dealing with their own
social tensions and problems.
 The Theater of the Absurd or Expressionist drama,
does not rely on time order but presents action in a
fragmented way. It is a revolt against realism.
Corresponding to stream-of-consciousness writing, it is
expressive and experimental. Samuel Beckett’s Waitng
for Godot, Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano,and
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? are
examples.

15. UNIQUE STYLE
 War of 1812(fought b/w America and British empire)
gave rise to new American literary style:
 Humour and fantasy: Irving’s Sleepy Hollow and
Rip Van Winkle
 Human psychology: e.g., Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit
and the Pendulum, The House of Usher.
 Nature: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays responding
to natural world.

16. AMERICAN POETRY(19TH CENTURY)
 Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass using free verse.
 Robert Frost
 Wallace Stevens
 Emily Dickinson
 Ezra Pound
 William Carlos Williams

17. REALISM
 Slavery, racism, local language.
 Social turmoil, discrimination.
 Human pschye.
 As we find in Mark Twain’s The Huckleberry Finn,
Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

18. 20TH CENTURY LITERATURE THEMES
 Experimentation continued with new literary themes
of 20th century.
 Common man,
 Political instability,
 The hollowness of modern man,
 The lose of faith,
 Restlessness,
 Defiant of mood.

19.  T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: haunted and
fragmented images of 20th century like Wilfred
Owen…depiction of horror/ destruction of war/
effects of war.
 F. Scott. Fitzgerald (1896–1940) capture the
restless, pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the
1920s. He expressed poignantly the youth's golden
dreams to dissolve in failure and disappointment.

20. ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY
 American writer (July 21, 1899 –
July 2, 1961).
 Won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
 Pulitzer Prize won in 1953.
 Published seven novels, six short stories and two non fiction
novels.
 He is considered to be greatest classics of American Literature.
 Became spokesperson of World War-I.

21. LIST OF WORKS
 Indian Camp(1926)
 The Sun Also Rises (1926)
 A Farewell to Arms (1929)
 The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1935)
 For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
 The Old Man and the Sea (1951)
 A Moveable Feast (1964)
 True at First Light(1999)

22. THEMES
 According to Scholar Frederic Svoboda( main
theme is Love, War, Wilderness and Loss, all of
which are strongly evident in the body of work”.
 Theme of Death and destruction.
 Loss of relationships as in Farewell to Arms.

23. A FAREWELL TO ARMS
 Written in 1929
 Background is set in Italian Campaign(wars fought
b/w 1915-1918)
 Title is taken from 16th century dramatist George
Peele
 Focuses on romance of Frederick Henry and a
nurse called Catherine
 Autobiographical novel

24. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL
 Novel based on real incidents of writer’s life
 Hemingway himself was Henry
 Catherine Barkley, nurse was Agnes von Kurowsky
 Kitty Cannel was replaced by Sara Ferguson

25. THEMES IN FAREWELL TO ARMS
 War (WW I)
 Destruction
 Loss of love/relationships
 Loss of faith on religion (lost generation)
 Love for women

26. SYMBOLS/IMAGERY
 Rain
 Water
 Roads
 Flood
 River
 Sun/moon
 Mountains

27. SETTINGS
Italy/Switzerland
Intermingling of seasons
Mountains
River side
Road side
Hospitals

28. LANGUAGE/STYLE
 Simple
 Conversational
 Direct
 Lucid
 Romantic
 Love
 Natural

29.  THANK YOU ALL NUMLIANS