Epic Of America Research Articles

Social Criticism and the American Dream: An Analysis of James Truslow Adams' The Epic of America (1931)

The current paper delves into the social criticism embedded in James Truslow Adams' The Epic of America (1931), especially concentrating on his coinage of the "American Dream" and its connection during the Great Depression. Adams critiques the increasing disparity between socio-economic classes and the materialism that predicted America’s founding ideals. By tracing the historical origins of the American Dream, Adams pinpoints its early transformation from a common vision of opportunity and egalitarianism to one increasingly maneuvering into wealth accumulation. Through historical manifestation, Adams exposes how the advent of industrialization and capitalism had compromised the nation's democratic values, resulting in social and economic injustice. This research paper draws on historical and literary origins to scrutinize how The Epic of America acts as both a critique of the early 20th century's social conditions and a hopeful call for returning to the principles of equality and opportunity. By reassessing the American Dream, this work remains a relevant lens through which to grasp the significance of societal aspirations and disenchantment in American history.

Chasing Dreams, Finding Nightmares: Exploring the Creative Limits of the Music Career

Chasing Dreams, Finding Nightmares: Exploring the Creative Limits of the Music Career

Reimagining Malcolm X

At 84-pages, Reimagining Malcolm X: Street Thinker Versus Homo Academicusby Seyed Javad Miri is more of a booklet than a book. In fact, like mostof the 40 books on sociology and religion published by this scholar, many ofwhich are self-published or released by subsidy publishers, it falls into thatawkward category between an essay that is too long and a book that is tooshort. Considering the fact that most university and independent academicpresses place profit and marketability before contribution to scholarship inthe field, the fact that ambitious and prolific academics seek to be proactiveand find alternate modes of sharing their scholarship should be commended.Consequently, scholars working in the field of sociology and religion shouldbe grateful to both Miri and the University Press of America for making thiswork on Malcolm X available to readers and researchers.Reimagining Malcolm X examines the significance of el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz as a social theorist by analyzing his views on race, academia, philosophy,and politics. The work is divided into four chapters: “Novel Strategiesof Interpretation,” “Undisciplinary Fields of Knowledge,” “Violence, Religion,and Extremism,” and “The Epic of America.”In chapter 1, Miri points out that “Malcolm X has not been appropriatedwithin the body of academic social sciences as he should have been” (p. 9).This is both obvious and intentional. It is heartening, however, to see thatinterest in Malcolm’s thoughts has extended to certain segments of Iranianacademia. As the author reveals, however, some Iranian scholars are reticentto see the value of Malcolmian theories and concepts (p. xi). Despite all ofits revolutionary rhetoric, the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown little interestin el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. On the contrary, it has preferred to invitehis nemesis Louis Farrakhan, a man who admits that he created the conditionsthat lead to Malcolm’s assassination, to preach at the seminary in Qum.Considering that the Iranian regime considers itself the bastion of Shi‘iteorthodoxy and cracks down on both political critics and practitioners oftaṣawwuf (‘irfān or Sufism), it is ironic that its leaders have promoted a manwho believes that W. D. Fard was the incarnation of Allah and that ElijahMuhammad, as opposed to Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah, was Allah’s final ...

New York City as Dwelling Place: Reinventing the American Dream in Steven Millhauser'sMartin Dressler, Joseph O'Neill'sNetherland, and Atticus Lish'sPreparation for the Next Life

York City has long been emblematic of American dream, celebrated in historical and fictional accounts, photography, and film. In his founding narrative on American dream in The Epic of America (1931), James Truslow Adams points to York City as center of American economic prosperity, but he claims that in quest for material well-being Americans have forgotten how to live (56-57, 186-87, 40406). More recently Michel de Certeau, observing York City from atop (original) World Trade Center, sees himself as a voyeur, not a walker, remote from practices of everyday life {Practice 92-93). Certeau argues that a city is not just a place, a location on a map, but a space in which people read and talk and walk and dwell- a dwelling place (94-97, 117-18). This tension between vast reaches of city with its seemingly endless opportunities and realities of everyday life is captured in vivid images from early twentieth-century photography and film (Lindner, After-Images; Lindner, New York Vertical) and is explored in contemporary fictional accounts that seek to reinvent American dream not as a quest for economic and social status but as a way of life-the originary dream of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (Cullen 35-58). Steven Millhauser's Martin Dressier: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996) portrays a character who achieves, and tragically exceeds, his dream of rebuilding York City but cannot experience a meaningful personal relationship, even with his wife. Joseph O'Neill's Netherland (2009) rewrites this version of American dream in two interwoven stories: narrator's tale of a character who is destroyed by his dream of limitless and saga of his own attempts to rebuild his fragile relationship with his wife and son, played out in post-9/11 London and York. Atticus Lish's Preparation for Next Life (2014) rethinks and questions even dream of personal freedom and happiness for a man and woman at margins of York City's economic life, whose highly emotional and ultimately tragic love story is shattered by War in Iraq and trauma and neglect experienced by returning soldiers; by violence, drugs, and alcohol; and by restrictions on employment opportunities and threat of arrest, deportation, or imprisonment of illegal immigrants.Historically, American dream has been most closely associated with success as measured by economic and social status (Cullen 3-10, 59102, 133-57; Samuel 1-11, 111-16, 144-47). Contemporary fictional accounts suggest, however, that for many Americans and indeed for many others old dream of success has become a quest for something much simpler and more fundamental: a new dream of meaningful personal relationships and honest work as a means of achieving a measure of human dignity and economic or even physical survival. In cultural history, essence of American dream has long been the notion of upward mobility, idea that one can, through dedication and with a can-do spirit, climb ladder of success and reach a higher social and economic position (Samuel 7). Its most tangible instantiation is ownership of an individual family home: No American Dream has broader appeal, and no American Dream has been quite so widely realized (Cullen 136). The dream persists, Lawrence R. Samuel believes, despite changing economic and social trends, and is enriched and revitalized by continual flow of immigrants into United States, their enthusiasm and energy to achieve great things rubbing off on all of us (202). Jim Cullen maintains, moreover, that dream has evolved in part due to this flow of immigrants, as the trend... toward greater acceptance and opportunity has gradually expanded from men to women, from Irish and German to Arab and Mexican populations, and from Jews to Muslims (188).In fiction, classic portrait of American dream is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), which captures this striving for economic and social status in narrator Nick Carraway's portrayal of nouveau riche Jay Gatsby and lavish home and extravagant parties that serve as emblems of his success. …

The American Dream and the limits of transparency

Purpose – The question of whether the words “American Dream” point to something of substance is at the heart of the authors' inquiry. James Truslow Adams coined the term in his 1933 book The Epic of America as a way to re‐establish a sense of optimism decimated by the Great Depression. Adams' contribution was to move the public discourse from that of individual effort to a sense of a collective identity. The American Dream is an element of the “cultural stuff” whose singularity (“dream”) rapidly breaks down into a variety of interpretations about the American nation (“dreams”). The popular press suggests that the Dream proposes to balance collective membership in a national identity with the individual freedom to achieve prosperity and success. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Dream and the construction of an American identity by examining the accounts of men who surely represent the American Dream: US Presidential candidates.Design/methodology/approach – In order to analyze the candidates' acc...

The American Dream: A Cultural History by Lawrence R. Samuel (review)

Reviewed by: The American Dream: A Cultural History by Lawrence R. Samuel Tess Evans (bio) The American Dream: A Cultural History. By Lawrence R. Samuel. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Pp. 241. $24.95 cloth) James Truslow Adams coined the term, “American Dream” in his book, The Epic of America (1931), which explores how the concept of “American” evolved throughout our history and argues for a vision of what the American Dream should be. In The American Dream: A Cultural History, Lawrence R. Samuel takes up where Adams left off to present a myriad of perspectives that have shaped and reshaped the definition of the American Dream over the past eighty years. Samuel acknowledges not only the existence of the American Dream prior to 1931 but also its tenacity, arguing “that the term ‘American Dream’ was created in the darkest days of the Great Depression was all the more interesting given that many feared it no longer existed” (p. 13). Given that the nation is experiencing the next-worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American Dream is a timely topic to revisit. In The American Dream, Samuel has created a chronological collage of quotes and discussion on the subject, as presented by journalists mostly in print media. Between the introduction and the conclusion, Samuel has divided the years from 1931 to 2011 into roughly “six eras of mythology” covering six chapters. “The Epic of America” is the era of the Great Depression, which left Americans dreaming for some version of “Sunnyville,” a mythical place with few social or economic problems. “The Status Seekers” era is the postwar drive towards financial gain and materialism, as Americans tried to forget years of thrift and sacrifice. “The Anti-Paradise” is an era of counterculture resistance to the strains of the Vietnam War, economic recession, the energy crisis, and racial issues. “Born in the U.S.A.” is an era of renewed patriotism and optimism sparked by the Reagan years, when recessions were persistent [End Page 274] and yet expectations continued to rise. “The Anxious Society” is an era of the 1990s boom times that, ironically, left Americans feeling less in control over their lives. Finally, “American Idol” is the era that ushered in the highs-and-lows of the early twenty-first century, with the resilience of the American Dream as its theme. Samuel’s predominant use of discussions in the popular media as the barometer of the Dream clearly indicates an attempt to appeal to a mainstream audience less interested in complex analysis than in a practical synopsis of trends in American culture. Most of the citations within the work come from print sources, especially major newspapers. The New York Times dominates the discussion with more than one hundred citations. The next-most-cited source is the Los Angeles Times, with less than fifty references, followed by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and the Hartford Courant, with less than thirty references each. Published commentary about the “American Dream” is the focus of Samuel’s study, rather than editorial and advertising content appealing to the ever-shifting Dream. By limiting his sources to these discussions, rather than analyzing more tangible manifestations of the American Dream, Samuel’s own discussion becomes at times difficult to follow. He does try to clarify abstract concepts by reverting to material symbols; for example, the achievement of racial equality is discussed in terms of whether barriers to suburban neighborhoods are removed so that African Americans can buy houses there. In his effort to take on the whole concept of the American Dream over such a long time frame in such a short work, rather than focus on one aspect or one moment in time, Samuel presents an entertaining, if surface-skimming, overview. Yet The American Dream is a timely effort to generate discussion about the future of the Dream in a nation still reeling from recent economic setbacks. [End Page 275] Tess Evans Tess Evans graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, in 2012 with a PhD in rhetoric and composition. Her dissertation, “The Persuasion of Many within a Moderate Length of Time,” examines the intersections of classical, religious, and scientific rhetoric during the rise...

Bardic Aspirations: Philip Roth's Epic of America

This article focuses upon the Jewish experience of post-war optimism and ‘innocence’ in Philip Roth's American Pastoral trilogy. The epic sequence retrospectively depicts three lives, each in various ways enchanted and disappointed by the dream of a self-reliant American identity. Mediated from an indefinite moment in the present by Roth's alter-ego, the writer Nathan Zuckerman, the trilogy self-consciously addresses the role of the writer in the construction of a mythical national identity. The three novels of the sequence are presented as historical narratives. They uncover the processes whereby the memories of post-war America became, for better or worse, interlaced with the foundational myths of the United States. Their presiding themes are of disenchantment, and the slow collapse of myriad fictions of nation and race. Oscillating between expressions of escape from an entangled web of memories and explorations of the prerogatives of nostalgia, these works ultimately concern the epic process of unmaking the American ‘race’. Each subverts the phoney rhetoric of nation-building polemicists and myth-makers, yet acknowledges these myths as a formative component of their individual, national and literary identities. Like Joyce, Roth is presented as both fascinated with and repelled by the concept of the epicist as the founder of his people.

The epic of America: an introduction to Rafael Landivar and the Rusticatio Mexicana

The epic of America: an introduction to Rafael Landivar and the Rusticatio Mexicana

Mark Twain and the West

0 OTHER writer took so active part in American life in the last N century as did Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the most famous pen name in the world, certainly since Voltaire. His life makes the careers of literary men in Boston and Concord and New York resemble the flowering of talents that blossomed in too retired shade-to borrow phrase from one of the most cloistered, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mark Twain knew the greatest river of the continent as Melville knew the high seas. He saw the epic of America, the westward tide at its full, with vision keener than the shallow appraisals of Bret Harte or Joaquin Miller. When in his Autobiography Mark Twain recalls after forty years the tragedy of an emigrant lad stabbed to death by drunken comrade, and adds, I saw the red life gush from his breast, we are reminded of Whitman's affirmation, I was there-with the difference that Walt's immediacy was imaginative, Mark's actual. Also in old age, Mark let fall the mysterious remark that he had once bought revolver and traveled twelve hundred miles with the grim intention of killing man; it is almost certain that he was once, quite briefly, in jail. Can we imagine James Russell Lowell anywhere near the boiling point of homicide, or Henry Longfellow, however fleetingly, behind the bars? Here, in Mark Twain-from youth to old age-an enormous and turbulent variety of experience was gathered and compressed. Here was no Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., or Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. In old age his incurably Calvinist mind saw all the events of his life, from birth on November 30, i835, in the village of Florida, Missouri, as chain of causation forged by some power outside his will. Like his Connecticut Yankee, Mark was led to reflect upon the whole sequence of the race, a procession of ancestors that stretches back billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or

Mind—A Study in Perspective

In one of its numerous meanings “mind” has long represented, and popularly still to some extent does represent, a special non-spatial type of entity transcending and ideally complementing the world of matter. More particularly it has stood for an innate “rational faculty” characterizing men as men; an immaterial substance radically differentiating human beings from animals and by the same token serving to bind them to one another, as brothers are bound by the tie of common blood. Thus conceived, mind traditionally has justified, and so strengthened, the ingenuous a priori regard and appreciation which unlearned persons extend to their fellows for the sole reason that they are human. Upon this conception of mind numerous popular doctrines of “personal dignity,” “human equality”, “individual liberty”, “freedom of conscience”, “inalienable rights”, and so forth, have been rationally grounded. And without it as an inspiration—to name but one dependent consequence—“the American dream”, which Adams describes in The Epic of America, would doubtless never have been dreamt.

The Epic of America

The Epic of America

Book Review: The Epic of America

Book Review: The Epic of America