random posts for humanities

What was the most interesting or surprising thing about this topic?
What was the social impact on Americans today? How did this author or event affect us culturally?
What was the context? What events that were going on socially caused the people/writers to feel/write the way they did?
What is your overall impression or feeling about this author/event?


Emily Dickinson
    what i found most interesting was how she locked herself away from other people, but her poetry is still very relatable. even if she never interacted with people she seemed to understand how they think and feel. i think Dickinson’s work allowed for more loose poetry styles to develop, and changed what people view as poetry. i feel dickinson did not have manny social influences, she was rich enough to no be effected by social change. even in her friendship with a abolitionist, most of her letters concerned literary works, rather than the social changes of the civil war. i feel emily dickinson was a incredibly reflective person whose solitude and monetary status allowed her to capture her personality in poetry, making her thoughts incredibly relatable.

William Blake
    i find interesting is Blake’s strong imagery. even without his paintings to accompany the poems, you can distinctly see what is happening. Blake pulls at your heart strings, not by feeling what the suffering children feel, but seeing them sharply in times of pain and death. Blake’s poetry might have been brought up in England when discussing child labour laws, or in favor of aiding the poor. I think Blake just wrote about what he saw, projecting his own ideals of childhood purity on to the children in his poetry. but blake’s work was very much effected by current events.
Personally, i think Blake was kind of a rebel without a cause. he seemed to passively dabble in taboo topics of the time, writing on feminism,homosexuality, blasphemy, and reportedly took place in the front lines of riot because he was swept up in the mob.

Harlem Renaissance
    the most interesting part of the harlem renaissance to me is the making of creative content by black people for black people. The harlem renaissance has established America’s music,art, and manny historic buildings that are still there today. Harlem allowed black people to express themselves for the first time, and define for themselves what it meant to be black. oppressive Jim Cowe laws in the south, and open industrial jobs in the north made for a better change in life for manny. plays, poetry, stories, and music let black voices speak out against discrimination and stereotypes and define for themselves what black is.
    I like the harlem renaissance because it started to sit America’s art and music apart from Europe, and that influence has held strong today.