26 May, 2016 (Week 14)
1. Social novel (over-crowding, poor sanitation) →city
The social novel, also known as the social problem (or social protest) novel, is a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel".
2. Go Ask Alice
Go Ask Alice is a 1971 novel about the life of a troubled teenage girl.
① Author: Beatrice Sparks (January 15, 1917 – May 25, 2012)
Beatrice Sparks was an American therapist and Mormon youth counselor who was known for producing books purporting to be the "real diaries" of troubled teenagers.
3. Willa Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947)
Willa Sibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918).
In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I.
→ Cather in 1912.
The Great Plains is the broad expanse of flat land (a plain), much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, that lies west of the Mississippi River tallgrass prairie states and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada.
→ View of the Great Plains near Lincoln, Nebraska
*Prairie: a wide area of flat land without trees in Canada and the northern US
⑴ O Pioneers! (1913)
O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish-American immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century.
⑵ The Song of the Lark (1915)
The book tells the story of a talented artist born in a small town in Colorado who discovers and develops her singing voice.
⑶ My Ántonia (1918)
The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are each brought to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century, as children.
⑷ One of Ours (1922)
It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native around the turn of the 20th century. The son of a successful farmer and an intensely pious mother, he is guaranteed a comfortable livelihood. Nevertheless, Wheeler views himself as a victim of his father's success and his own inexplicable malaise.
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing.
① McClure's (1893–1929)
McClure's or McClure's Magazine was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century.
The magazine is credited with having started the tradition of muckraking journalism (investigative, watchdog or reform journalism), and helped shape the moral compass of the day.
→ Cover of January, 1901 issue
⑴"Paul's Case"
"Paul's Case" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in McClure's Magazine in 1905.
Overview: Paul, a suspended high school student in Pittsburgh, is frustrated with his middle-class life and the people around him not understanding his love of beautiful things, and he runs away to New York City.
*usher (n.) someone who works in a law court whose job is to guide people in and out of the court rooms
(v.) to help someone to get from one place to another, especially by showing them the way
*commencement hooding