What do you do when you have questions built upon questions? You ask more questions! This is frustrating, I know, but it's the only way I know to excavate the foundation of knowledge. Once the foundation is known, only then can I architect the thing.
What is the thing? The truth is, "I don't know... yet." I asked the question, "How are everyday objects that are incorporated in American literature representative of the culture in which the author is writing?" Or "Are they?" Okay, I don't like the word representative because I'm not looking at them as symbols or motifs. The objects in the literature are materials. They are literary artifacts about culture. Or rather 'ideofacts' if I remember my anthropology/archaeology correctly. The book or materials of the literature such as the paper, ink, etc. are the artifacts; however, the ideas within the text are the 'ideofact.' So what do you call an 'ideofact' that is a material object within the text?
Huh....
To help my answer this question, I'm looking at several critical theories and literary criticism: Marxism, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. Each have valid source for structuring the thing.
Marxism definitely evaluates things in literature but mostly from a commodities standpoint. If I was examining purely the economic structure of things, this would be good. Culture is more than economics, it’s history, religions, and social behaviors such as class, race, and gender. New Historicism includes more of these categories and Cultural Materialism even more so, though with a more contemporary/popular focus. Therefore, I think the New Historicism methodology is best and more complicated. New Historicism requires a tedious structural balance between the education and research of a literary critic AND a historian.
Sighs… Just because I find part of the answer, doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.
“To Be Continued”
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