himself sets a tone through which the connotation of the portrayal of the `generation of fathers' in Fathers and Sons can be assessed. By taking the title in the broader sense as indicating a generational, rather than a parental and filial relationship, the "generation of fathers" is represented by Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov and Yevgeny Vassilievich Bazarov. The `fathers' can be seen as the contemporaries of the "superfluous man" and romantic idealists, who had a carefully shaped taste of arts and sense in beauty. Vishnyakova (2011) puts it, "The "fathers" were reading the German idealists, admired French romanticism, unconditionally worshiped beauty, and strongly believed in a hierarchy of moral values that were not human conventions." Indeed, this characterisation is mainly brought forward by typical Turgenev's literary tools; he presents his `fathers' with a radically different generation
The origins of American literature The first Americans were explorers and settlers, adventurers and idealists who crossed the ocean in search of new opportunities or to escape the poverty and intolerance. Their writings were matter-of-fact accounts of life in America, which explained colonisation to Englishmen back in the homeland. An example of this form of writing is John Smith's A True Relation of Virginia, which is widely recognized to be the first example of Am lit. The early years of colonisation produced a mass of utilitarian writings including
One side o f the polarity exerts force on the other. W h e n a situation is extremely polarized, when the two sides have been driven out to their most extreme positions, there is a tendency for the polarity to reverse itself. According to the ancient Chinese philosophy of the I Ching, the doctrine of 324 POLARITY changes, things are always in the process of flowing into their opposites. Extreme idealists can turn into cynics, passionate lovers into cold-hearted haters. Abject cowards have the sleeping potential to become heroes, and many saints began as great sinners. T h i s eternally changing feature of reality is described by the Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang, the two comma shapes flowing into one another, each with the seed of its opposite deep in its center. T h e more polarized a system is, the more likely it is to reverse its polarity. T h i s
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