ALH - Modul 3 PDF

Module 3 – American Voices through the Civil War into the 20th Century 1. Interlude: American Transcendentalism − philosophical movement around 1830-1860 (roughly the same as Romanticism) − based in New England: Concord, Cambridge, Harvard University − centre: Hedge Club/Transcendental Cl...

Module 3 – American Voices through the Civil War into the 20th Century 1. Interlude: American Transcendentalism − philosophical movement around 1830-1860 (roughly the same as Romanticism) − based in New England: Concord, Cambridge, Harvard University − centre: Hedge Club/Transcendental Club (Frederick Henry Hedge) o hold meetings in bookshops and homes o not everyone is the same but they work, read and sometimes live together o precursor of the living movement − name/term: connection with idealist philosophy (Kant, practical reason) − stress on primacy of imagination, the idea of transcending boundaries, new ways of living and non- conformity → transgress − heterogeneous group − larger developments and contexts o American cultural nationalism after the 1810s o American Romanticism o Reform movements − major representatives o Margaret Fuller o Henry David Thoreau − major platform: The Dial (magazine) − ‘an outbreak of Romanticism on Puritan soil’: group of dissenters towards literature of the time (nostalgic, patriotic) − diversity, hybridity and multivocality o mixture of many things ▪ poems ▪ journals, diaries ▪ sermons ▪ theologies ▪ philosophy ▪ literature ▪ sociology − major positions and concerns o protest: tradition in American culture o dissent (major American ideological feature: protest) ▪ disregard of authority, formal restraints and opposing governmental restrictions (want to be different than Europe) o imagination over understanding o language ▪ medium that conveys the power of imagination ▪ ambivalent and ambiguous (shift from author to reader) o individualism (centrality of individual as a core belief of American culture): self-determined individual ▪ not limited by any conventions or God ▪ follow their own intuition and creativity ▪ active life determined not by passive reception but by something you create yourself ▪ individual must be self-confident and in union with nature o the poet ▪ special individual ▪ ideal transcendentalist  ▪ self-confidence and self-reliance (sure of his own worth) o utopian o nature ▪ place where you can look into your life ▪ spiritual regenerations ▪ finding inspiration ▪ mystic experiences and divine revelations ▪ all of nature is by nature ‘good’ ▪ place of simplicity, beauty and truth → essentials of life o reformatory impulse: individual is the source of perfect society ▪ dislike mainstream, advocate reception of different literature ▪ call for simplicity, a practical life and life in sync with nature ▪ living in harmony ▪ pragmatic dimension, fight against slavery and Indian removal policy, advocate labour movement and women’s rights movement ▪ anti-materialism, anti-profit and anti-progressivism − core text: Henry David Thoreau with Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854) o describes experience form moving away from civilisation, materialism and consumerism o very close relationship with nature and nature as the essence of life o beloved by the Hippies in the 1960s o reformatory impulse ▪ individual as the source for perfect society (pragmatic dimension) ▪ inspired movements such as women’s rights, labour, criticism of capitalisation and technological innovations o communitarian and utopian experiments (practical dimension) ▪ two major experiences create new ways of living Brook Farm near Roxbury (led by George Ripley and Hawthorne) Fruitlands in Harvard: communitarian living experience, vegetarian living experiences in the tradition of agrarianism, counterpart to the rising Industrialism (led by Alcott) 2. Reformatory Impulses: Women Writers − major ideological frameworks o women had few opportunities for higher education o severely little property rights o discrepancy between ideology and reality ▪ foundational documents VS. actual circumstances (pursuit of happiness, democracy, no right to vote, few education possibilities, …) o separation of spheres ▪ split into domestic (women) ▪ and public sphere (men) ▪ cultural and political consequences: men supported to be in the public sphere and work in politics, women trained for household (men and women different by nature, God’s divine will of a hierarchy) o illustrations ▪ Currier and Ives with Four Seasons of Life: childhood, youth, middle age and old age (important and widely spread); separation of sphere in the picture (middle age); man is in the middle of the picture with the sons and woman is coming down the stairs (household) with the daughters  o youth is about finding a husband and a pathway into a reproductive and heteronormative domestic life o ‘Republican motherhood’ (Linda Kerber 1980) ▪ assumption that women find their fulfilment only in the role of the mother ▪ no choice, primary duty to raise sons who will later go into public sphere ▪ inspire civic virtues and public morality ▪ critics: contradiction (how should women educate the sons to be in the public sphere when they are not allowed there and have no possibility to educate themselves on that in the first place) o cult of domesticity (Victorian ideas) ▪ women as the homemakers (American homes as a place of American virtues) ▪ divine destiny to preserve home, virtue, morality, piety, … o difference: men as rational thinkers who can make decisions and women as fragile, emotional and incapable of making rational decisions → men are superior − women’s rights movement o early proponents ▪ Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672, Puritan): spoke about her own feelings, disregarded Puritan conventions ▪ Abigail Adams (1735-1818): wife and mother of two presidents (John Adams, Quincy Adams), talks about policies, writes from emotional perspective and individually female perspectives, important letter: ‘Remember the Ladies’, urges the politicians to keep women in mind in the declaration of independence ▪ Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820) – ‘On the Equality of Sexes’: one of the most influential (New England) feminist, writing from context of revolution, writes on equality of sexes, insists that gender and gender roles are culturally constructed, spheres not biologically given, challenges idea that men and women are intellectually different (if there is a difference it’s because of education) ▪ Margaret Fuller (1810-1850): influenced by transcendentalism, focus on independence for women, contradiction that men fight against slavery but keep women as slaves, attacks the representation of women (emotional and irrational), gender roles as an invention by society, demands women’s rights (political, individual), there are no wholly masculine men or feminine women (spectrum of gender) − emergence of a women’s movement o into the 19th century reform movements o women’s movement and abolitionism are closely linked ▪ both groups not independent in society ▪ work together ▪ Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) with ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’: dictated by Sojourner Truth, escaped as a slave, expresses that she has this double burden because she fights for women and slaves o climax: 1848 in Seneca Falls (upstate NY) o convention: produced one of the central documents o ‘Declaration of Sentiments’/‘Seneca Falls Declaration’ ▪ signed by 100 people: 68 women and 32 men ▪ modelled on declaration of independence → used the power of declaration of independence to create their own declaration ▪ contains central statements of women’s rights ▪ two major issues: right to vote, attack on Law of Coverture (legal death after marriage)  o 1850s: movements lost its momentum due to civil war but breakthrough in spheres (women took over men’s jobs), expectations of rights were still not fulfilled after war even though 15 th amendment gave African Americans the right to vote but not yet for women − the American women’s movement and its agenda from 1869-1919 o stronger organisations → major national organisations o 1869 formation of two organisations ▪ National Woman Suffrage Organisation ▪ American Woman Suffrage Association o they merged in 1890: National American Woman Suffrage Association o voting rights ▪ 1919: 19th constitutional amendment ▪ movements towards right to vote o higher education: by 1900 30% of college students are female o ‘new woman’: Great Gatsby ▪ new ideology of women emerges ▪ more independent and self-confident ▪ ventures into the public ▪ liberal sexual dimension ▪ shorter hair, smoking, bicycle o around 1910: emergence of the term ‘feminism’ − women’s fiction – popular female writers of the first half of the 19 th century and the cultural work of sentimentality o David S. Reynolds: Beneath the American Renaissance (1988) ▪ criticises Matthiessen for his list ▪ includes women o Jane Tompkins: The Cultural Work of American Fiction o growing reading public → the feminisation of American culture ▪ women ▪ young people o women writers as the best-selling authors of the 19th century o fiction: domestic, frontier, sentimental, historic, humorous, melodramatic o Hawthorne: ‘mob of damned scribbling women’ → male writers didn’t accept them o some major names (1820s-1850s) → female protagonists and not just personifications of virtue and morality, women as victims of male violence ▪ Catharine Maria Segdwick ▪ Caroline S. Kirkland ▪ Susan Warner ▪ Harriet Beecher Stowe ▪ Maria Susanna Oummins ▪ E.D.E.N. Southworth o traits of women’s writing ▪ sentimental writing style but female protagonists that break stereotypes → women as adventurous feminists, victims of violence and sometimes criminals ▪ sentimental formula: using emotions to make character and reader reflect on politics (moral lesson and political lesson → trigger social change) ▪ key elements: suffering, innocent victim as protagonist o bipolar structure and melodramatic mode: working with oppositions like good and bad has a stronger effect ▪ formulaic/stock scenes: scenes of separation and death → trigger emotions  ▪ thesis: sentimental novels are extremely important for woman history o significance of popular/sentimental novels ▪ expose social conditions and grievances ▪ female perspectives on American history ▪ early 19th century sentimental/domestic novels are very popular in second half of 19 th century ▪ yet: women writers moving beyond pattern: more realistic fictions and different topics, narratives of ‘awakening’ stories of female solidarity and bonding − 4 transitional writers: from sentimental fiction to feminism o Elizabeth Stuart Phelps o Louise May Alcott o Elisabeth Drew Stoddard o Rebecca Harding Davis o all four ▪ extension of subject matter ▪ ‘new’ protagonists breaking with roles ▪ formal/structural innovations ▪ caught between tradition and motivation − American Feminist fiction at the turn of the 20th century o Kate Chopin (1851-1904) ▪ biography writes in mode of realism and naturalism had 6 children (fulfilled the social expectations) her central theme was the conflict between tradition and convention VS. the right to self-fulfilment setting is 19th century Louisiana talks about adultery and suicide characters are from all ethnic groups but there are prejudiced writings between the lines ▪ ‘The Story of an Hour’ (1894) plays with cultural expectations and prescribed role behaviour surprise ending 3 pages ▪ ‘The Storm’ (1898) theme is adultery contradiction to constraining gender roles symbolically explicit representation of sexual encounters portrays female determination and free will of her own body no punishment for adultery so no ‘narrative condemnation’ 3. Reformatory Impulses: African American Cultural and Literary History – Abolitionism − general sense of political disillusion o American revolution o Civil War (1861-1865) ▪ long period of disappointment ▪ brought the emancipation proclamation that brought end to slavery states ▪ that didn’t end racism, oppression and discrimination − life under slavery o first slaves: 1619 in Jamestown o southern plantation system (south historically associated with slavery)  o numbers: highly increased between 1776 (ca. 400,000) and 1861 (3.5 to 4 million) o topics ▪ legal status slaves were regarded as property and objects without human rights (auctions, advertisements) children born to slave mothers are still slaves ▪ slave code regulated public and private life of slaves and punishment were not allowed to be taught writing and reading ▪ slavery as a working system/economic system working on plantations forced to live in poorly equipped slave quarters ▪ role of religion worshipping religion together with slaves was seen as holding slavery together religion under slaves was a means of communication (through songs) ▪ slave family marriage not allowed families were often parted ▪ Black African heritage and folklore survived through oral traditions − impulses of African American Writing o slavery times: even long after emancipation o survival: reflects the will to survive despite everything o oppression and dehumanisation: reflects the feelings of not having a voice, being invisible and being an object o collectivity of experiences: relatable stories for all African American o contact/interrelations: between whites and blacks o cultural affirmation and preservation of African heritage: literature as something they brought with them from Africa − African American voices emerged and were heard − African American literature: integral part of American literature since the 18th century − significant for American literature since its beginnings − oral tradition o music o religious songs used to communicate o continues African traits but is influenced by circumstances − African American poetry o three early poets: Lucy Terry, Jupiter Hammon, Phillis Wheatley o Phillis Wheatley ▪ first volume to ever be published by an African American man or woman ▪ captured in Africa, sold into slavery ▪ permitted to educate herself and to learn how to read and write ▪ 1773: set free by her master but kept his name ▪ imitated Eurocentric conventions because she had learned them ▪ poetry is neoclassical and conventional (rather white than black) → her writings get a lot of criticism because of that ▪ perspectives and concerns race: experiences as an African American gender: experiences as a woman  colonial/postcolonial/national: considers herself American poetological: writes about what it’s like being an artist ▪ most popular poem: ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’ (passive voice) embraces Christian values and beliefs she was enslaved and brought far away from home expresses feelings of oppression African Americans should also be seen as part of God’s community warning: one day we will be equal and you will feel regret ambivalence, undertones, finding a voice, bicultural (two traditions) − Abolitionism o reform movements against slavery in the first half of the 19 th century ▪ William L. Garrison ▪ wave of publications ▪ David Walker ▪ HR Helper ▪ H.B. Stowe o anti-slavery almanacks (often including visuals) o official end to slavery ▪ Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln ▪ Civil War Amendments abolition of slavery citizenship right to vote ▪ picture centre: Abraham Lincoln (white man) slave portrayed as kneeling focus on whites and not those who overcame the problem − slave narratives o genuine African American form o most important literary genre between Revolution and Civil War o special position in ‘new canon’ o first examples ▪ Briton Hammon ▪ John Marrant ▪ Olaudah Equiano o written or dictated by ex-slaves (sometimes pseudonyms) o dictation was open for manipulation and white influence o somewhat real, somewhat imagined o didactic purpose and educational value o tries to be an American success story o autobiographical influences and elements o ‘Fugitive Slave Act’: escaped slaves who escaped to states where slavery was illegal were able to be brought back by their master o stock scenes/characters: repeating those stories stresses the collectiveness of these experiences o melodramatic: bipolar structure of good and bad, happy and sad and sentimental and affective → trying to reach the reader and make him feel o 2 major audiences ▪ fellow African Americas ▪ white middle-class women (especially)  o representation of the collective: being a slave to being a human being with desires, wishes, feelings, … − Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797): ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’ o major purpose of slave narrative: didactic and power to speak up − Frederick Douglas (1817-1895) o one of the leaders of abolitionist movement o ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave’ (1845) o preface ends with ‘no compromise with slavery, no union with slaveholders’ o international circulation o made the slave narrative popular o pattern ▪ follows slave narratives ▪ focus on reading, search towards freedom is linked to education → realises that he doesn’t deserve to be a slave but that he needs to be free − Harriet A. Jacobs (1813-1897) o ‘Life of a Slave Girl’ o female perspective → double burden o feminist perspective − neo-slave narrative o written by contemporary writers that talk about slavery in the past and its impacts on society today − Toni Morrison o ‘Beloved’ (1987) o ghosts of slaves haunt a family in the present → return in the form of ghosts o deals with real topics and experiences as well as psychological impacts o magic realism − African American writers or advocates o Margaret Walker o Octavia Butler o Edward P. Jones o Solomon Norhup ▪ 2013 movie adaptation ▪ praised for bringing slavery on the screen ▪ criticised because main character escapes as a slave through help of a white person 4. Outcome and Impact of the Civil War (1861 – 1865) and the Times Beyond − ambivalence condensed in term ‘Gilded Age’ (Mark Twain, 1873) o golden age on the one hand o fake golden on the other because of major problems and emerging interest in capitalist lifestyle − ‘Civil War Amendments 13, 14 and 15’ o abolition of slavery and civil rights for African Americans (citizenship, right to vote, equality) o but still racism and segregation o Jim Crow laws (1896): segregation as constitutional − 1869: railroad from East to West South → end of the ‘Old South’ o industrial North defeated agrarian North o rise of the industrial and capitalist North o Agrarianism and ideals remain popular in American identity o mail-order catalogues (1897) are responsible for consume culture − years after civil war: exploring the ‘Trans-Mississippi West’ o development of the infrastructure and railroad o progress of civilisation  o symbol of destruction of nature and Native American lands − capitalist lifestyle leads to o destruction of Native tribes and cultures o social consequences: poor workers who are exploited o growth of urban areas and more overcrowded living conditions → opportunity for factory system and mass production industry o Jacob August Riis: ‘How the Other Half lives’ − mass immigration o 1892: Ellis Island (Europe) o 1910: Angel Island (Asia) o increasing immigration turns America into a multicultural society − popular: pictures of immigrants going through immigration stations in the early 20th century → implying that everything is under control and good − ideologies o democracy, individualism, community, freedom, ‘American’ virtues o Frederick Jackson Turner: ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ (1893) ▪ very important interpretation of American values ▪ Frontier as merge of individualism and community → experience of people moving into the wilderness and fighting for themselves (self-made man) makes people of America feel as a community (nation) ▪ ideology that tries to keep the nation together ▪ Frontier to him: space for cradle of American virtues o rise of the (white) myth of the West: cowboy stories and space for new beginnings − America becomes an industrial nation − beginnings of the 20th century consumer society and exploitation of cheap labour o profit and competition o new type of American businessman 5. Literary/Cultural History beyond the Civil War: Local Colour Movement – American Realism – American Naturalism – Social Photography − local colour/regional literatures → realism o developing during the 1830s and years after o full bloom during 1870s to 1900 o focus on ‘local’ ▪ people: what people are like (example: the South) → stereotypes ▪ language: immigrant languages, dialects and different kinds of languages entering English ▪ history: history of particular regions ▪ landscape and nature o forms/conventions ▪ mostly brief prose ▪ describe and depict people from particular regions ▪ describe costumes, habits, local history, … ▪ foreshadows realism ▪ supposed to give people an authentic impression of different regions in America o significance and politics ▪ regional empowerment ▪ stereotypes of African Americans ▪ feminist agenda: Chopin, Freeman, Jewett, Cooke ▪ social criticism: attack on certain circumstances in society → those who discuss African Americans also contribute to stereotypifications  ▪ large impact on literary history o local colour movement in American literary history as an important factor for the development of ▪ realism and naturalism ▪ short story ▪ women’s writing ▪ humorous literature ▪ popular American literature ▪ opening and innovation ▪ modernist regional literature in the vein of Faulkner, Lewis, Wharton and Cather ▪ internationalisation (including immigration) o American realism ▪ people want authenticity ▪ want to learn more about different ways of life ▪ post-civil-war America: realistic, authentic o realist modes in visual culture: photography ▪ notion that it was real → authenticity ▪ photography merged with everyday life ▪ Matthew Brady: ‘Harvest of Death’ photography of war impact on society photographs stress mentality of the war claim to be authentic but are constructed ▪ Alfred Stieglitz with ‘The Breath of Life’ snapshots/moments pictorials o American realist writers: diversity VS. common concerns ▪ prefer novel over romance ▪ focus on the probable and ordinary ▪ ‘novel of manners’: stress manners, codes, behaviours, standards and conventions ▪ dislike romantic sentimental fiction ▪ the individual: complex, ordinary ▪ immediate narration: they like to show people what they’re doing, supposed to make their own judgments, no omniscient narrator because no one is one ▪ vernacular: language of the ordinary people ▪ not immediate mimesis but verisimilitude: ‘reality effect’ (Barthes) means that something could be true but isn’t necessarily realistic ≠ real ▪ three major figures William Dean Howells Henry James Mark Twain − Mark Twain or ‘Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ (1835-1910) o born in Missouri therefore Frontier experiences and boyhood adventures o sample text: ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ (1884) ▪ sequel to Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ ▪ plot: Huck inherits a fortune, his father wants to take it from him, he flees to an island, befriends Jim (an escaped slave boy) ▪ goes against social norms and experiences of Frontier life along the Mississippi  ▪ journey structure: longer than it needs to be → richness of experiences, illustrates human relationships and shows a panorama of American society ▪ episodic structure ▪ hybridity: juvenile adventure, travel story, frontier narrative, slave narrative, elements of social satire, autobiographical elements, traces of ‘Bildungsroman’ ▪ protagonist/narrator (Huck Finn) limited perspective of the protagonist: young, adolescent narrator, not yet corrupted by society, can be franker and more direct, almost an outsider perspective, no moral guidance or commentary, outstanding for his particular work in literary history ▪ major facets rejection of civilisation: rule breaker, favours freedom (American core value), Huck as prototypical American who wants to be free, doesn’t want to grow up and take on responsibility symbolic humanisation of the slave: friendship, criticism of pre-civil-war time and slavery, calls to overcome segregation observation of heterogeneous antebellum society: criticises society ▪ representation of Jim Jim as a runaway slave attack representation of racism and stereotypes Jim is something between victim and agency (most say he’s both) ▪ reception often perceives as juvenile literature but scholar argue that it is important American literature possibly morally wrong novel, novel style was often imitated Shelley Fisher Fishkin: ‘Was Huck Black. Mark Twain and African American Voices’ o asked if Huck was modelled on a real-life black boy Twain knew o question goes to the core of literary history (would change a lot) − post-civil-war America: American naturalism o around 1900 (reaction to civil war like realism) o interested in authentic representation of reality o but work with completely new and different perspectives on how to think about reality o people are determined by their surroundings o realists: want to change reality o naturalists ▪ depict things but want no change ▪ reaction against realism ▪ against positive attitudes of realism ▪ darker and different perception of human society than realists ▪ attack realist belief in self-determinacy and free will o major influences ▪ evolutionary, deterministic biology and Darwinism: humans are driven by their instincts and passions ▪ social Darwinism: survival of the fittest transferred into society (fittest one in literature is the author who knows how to manipulate his surroundings and not the morally superior one) ▪ sociological determinism: human beings are products of social environment and have no free will ▪ French naturalist writers (Emile Zola, Edmond and Jules Goncourt): scientific analysis of humanity through writing  ▪ economic determinism: human beings are influenced by their class, no free will − innovations of American Naturalism: different and new notions o ‘reality’: incomprehensive, overpowering and hostile environment ▪ new and different treatment of topics ▪ struggle of survival ▪ breaking taboos ▪ inhumane living conditions ▪ culture of consumption o plot ▪ self-destruction ▪ loss of control ▪ evil outlook on society ▪ contrast to realism: civilised and positive o protagonists ▪ from lower classes ▪ remain socially marginalised and do not advance ▪ ‘morally flawed’ nut not really because humans can’t be blamed for their actions (no free will), they are determined by their environment ▪ remain unpunished ▪ not civilised or well-behaved (driven by animalistic instincts, desires and existential needs) o example: Jack London with ‘The Law of Life’ ▪ old man living with his tribe ▪ tribe has to move on because of food ▪ man would not be able to make it and he accepts his death ▪ natural laws can’t be changed and should therefore just be accepted o further counter voices/sociological analysis and cultural criticism ▪ utopian/dystopian novels ▪ city novels ▪ social gospel novels/inspirational (Christian) novels ▪ social protest writing/women’s movement ▪ ethnic immigrant literature ▪ conspicuous consumption became important ▪ show everyone how much you have and own (doesn’t matter where it comes from or if you’re a morally good person ) ▪ ‘The Great Gatsby’: showing off and showing what you have to offer − th late 19 century social photography o gave people a new way to discuss and show social problems o Jacob Riis: ‘How the Other Half Lives’ (1890) ▪ sympathy VS. exploitation ▪ factual evidence and snapshots VS. construction and arrangement ▪ sentimental and melodramatic structures: people as victims, contrast between good and evil o Lewis Hine ▪ strategy of depicting social problems ▪ wider circulation ▪ becomes medium that is accessible of people speaking diverse languages ▪ critique society