American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920: a Study Collection from the Harvard Graduate School of Design
Arts & Humanities
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[Detail] Yosemite National Park, Mirror Lake and Mt. Watkin
5. The Importance of Place
Drawing of New Orleans, Aerial View, 1852, New Orleans, LA.
The collection provides many opportunities to explore the importance of "place" in the literary imagination. Write an expository essay on the role of the setting in a specific work of American literature. Choose a fictional work and search the collection on the name of the city, town, or state where the story takes place, to locate images of that location, or use the State Index. Analyze the images and written work using the questions below and write an essay on the importance of the story's setting.
- Do the images and the story's descriptions of the setting convey the same sense of the location? What aspects and characteristics of the location does each emphasize?
- How does the location of the story relate to the plot? What is the relationship between the location and the characters?
- How does the story's setting, its appearance and culture, relate to the symbolism and themes of the work?
- Is there a relationship between the setting and the writing style?
- Could this story have been written with a different setting? Why or why not?
