Zaliczenie z Wykładu Literatura Amerykańska PDF

PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE REASONS FOR THE EUROPEAN MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT IN THE NEW WORLD 1) Economic – to establish a colony in order to get rich - Jamestown, Virginia - 1607 - Cpt. John Smith - “A True Relation of Virginia”, 1608 - “The Generall Histor...

PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE REASONS FOR THE EUROPEAN MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT IN THE NEW WORLD 1) Economic – to establish a colony in order to get rich - Jamestown, Virginia - 1607 - Cpt. John Smith - “A True Relation of Virginia”, 1608 - “The Generall Historie of Virginia”, 1624, includes the story of Pocahontas 2) Idealistic – seeking religious freedom, the Puritans believe they have a mission from God - Plymouth, Massachusetts - 1630 - William Bradford - “History of Plymouth Plantation”, 1620-47 Jamestown - Virginia was the first permanent English settlement established in the New World. It was founded by London. The legend of Pocahontas - Chief's daughter Pocahontas begs for Smith’s life. PILGRIMS AND PURITANS - Puritans – general term for English Protestants who wanted to “purify”, to reform the Church of England as they believed it was corrupt - They objected to the rituals, decorations, and organization of the Church of England - They wanted a simpler form of worship organization - The idea of forming churches through voluntary compacts or covenants was central to the Puritans’ conception of social, political and religious organizations PURITAN BELIEFS - Human nature is evil, man is sinful although Adam’s fall, most people are to be damned - God elects those to be saved – PREDESTINATION - A chosen few can be saved through the grace of God – irresistible grace - Worldly success in a sign of God’s grace – hence the importance of hard work - Religion is a personal, inner experience – stress on individual responsibility for spiritual development - Literacy is essential – everyone has to know how to read the Bible – the words of God. The Bible is the most important text for them. “THE PURITAN DILEMMA” - According to early American historian Edmund Morgan: - “Puritanism required that a man devote to his life to seeking salvation but told him he was helpless to do anything but evil. Puritanism required that he rest his whole hope in Christ but taught him that Christ would utterly reject him unless before he was born God had foreordained his salvation. Puritanism required that he rest his whole hope in Christ but taught him that Christ would utterly reject him unless before he was born God had foreordained his salvation.” PILGRIMS AND PURITANS - The Pilgrims were a part of a group of English Puritans called “Separatists” who fleeing persecution in England went to live to New World MAYFLOWER COMPACT - Earliest document of democracy in America – lays the foundation for direct popular government - Drawn up for the general good by mutual agreement of the majority of the people PURITAN LITERATURE 1) What did they read? - The Bible - Religious essays - Philosophical books - Sermons - Captivity narratives - Poetry, mostly occasional and religious - Objected to drama, no theatre, no fiction 2) What did they write? - Histories, chronicles, recording the history of their settlements - Autobiographies, diaries, meditations recording inner and outer events of their lives, searching for signs of grace, captivity, narratives - Poetry WILLIAM BRADFORD “OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION” - His work provides invaluable insight into the lives, beliefs and struggles of the Pilgrims who established the Plymouth Colony - Bradford’s writing embodies the plain style favoured by Puritan writers, prioritizing clarity and theological purpose over ornamentation - His work reflects the dominant religious and philosophical ideas of the time, emphasizing God’s providence, communal responsibility, and individual piety (pobożność) “OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION” - Bradford’s narrative mythologizes first-generation heroism, and yet exposes the all-too- human squabbling, selfishness, and greed of the Plymouth settlers - Bradford wishes to construct a place for Plymouth in a divine historical plan – there is conscious attempt at paralleling the Puritan history with that of the Jews from the Bible in the chronicle - Question of writing “history” - never objective – selection and interpretation – on the other hand trying to give an amount of the colonial reality, on the other, explaining everything though the working of divine providence - Bradrofd's concept of truth – history is true when it reflects God’s providence in people’s lives, the concept of time – progress towards a predetermined end – hence: history – a progress of mankind to a holy state - Bradford – fully conscious of the narrative techniques he employs – wants the reader to remain knowledgeable about the plight of the Puritans but he also wants to CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES - Mary Rowanson – “A Narrative Of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowaldson” - Reverend John Williams of Deerfierlds – “The Redeemed Captive, returning unto Zion” - A specifically American genre, they also establish a parallel between the Egyptian captivity of the Israelites and the experience of New England communities in Indian captivity. In  each, there is the notion that God’s providential guidance brought the survivors back to the civilized world and made them better WHY WERE THEY SO POPULAR? - - 17th century thriller adventures; tales of attack, capture and escape; showed the triumph of the godly over the harsh wilderness and pagan evil; set the stage for the American cowboy experience; early Frontier experience - Many of them were excuse for adventure and even romance stories – these two are popular precisely because they are credible and detailed and thus provide readers with a spiritual framework within which they could comprehend the harsh reality of the frontier experience. POETRY - Anne Bradstreet - “To My Dear And Loving Husband”, “Upon The Burning Of Our House July 10th 1666”, “Upon My Son Samuel Hos Goeing To England, Novem. 6, 1657” - Edward Taylor CHARACTERISTICS OF PURITAN WRITING - Purpose of Puritan Literature: spiritual enlightenment and enrichment, record history, personal reflection - Puritans were not allowed to read fiction for pleasure - Stress on reading and learning - Literature and art’s main purposes were to teach - The Puritans were able to be successful writers because they were incredibly well-educated - Supported the idea of education for all colonists AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT TIME: 18TH CENTURY SOURCE: INSPIRED BY THE IDEAS OF THE BRITISH AND FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENTS WHAT IT DID: PROMOTED MORE SCEPTICAL AND OPTIMISTIC ATTITUDES ABOUT RELIGION, HUMAN NATURE, POLITICS ENLIGHTENMENT: Isaac Newton – “Principia Mathematica” > Puritan/Calvinist thinking gives way to the new ideas/new understanding of religious experience Fundamental 18th-19th century shift calvinism > deism (rationalism) and (modified) evangelicalism Sovereign sovereign God man DEISM Understanding God’s existence as divorced from holy books, divine providence, revealed religion, etc Basing religious belief on reason and observation of the natural world Reasonable God endowed humans with rationality in order that they might discover the moral instructions of the universe in the natural law God created the universal laws that govern nature God as a watchmaker, unconcerned with His creation Humans realize God’s will through sound judgment and wise action THE GREAT AWAKENING – Jonathan Edwards The great awakening – revitalisation of the old puritanism, making people more involved to this religious sphere – trusting your heart rather than your head. Revival of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. JONATHAN EDWARDS - “There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God – Hell, the very expression of divine wrath, is prepared; the fire is made ready; the furnace is hot now; the flames do now rage and glow – Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their height, and these places are not seen. - “There is laid in the very nature of carnal men, a foundation for the torments of hell. - “It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. MANY FACES OF ENLIGHTENMENT - Humanistic – belief in free will, reason and self-improvement - Rational – development of science, belief in progress - Didactic – first encyclopaedia appear, self-education - Political and democratic – rise of the civil society/humans have natural rights, government authority is not absolute Enlightenment Thikers of the American Revolution – Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson. THOMAS JEFFERSON: - The declaration of Independence o Thomas jefferson (the declaration’s author) was a big admirer of John Lock o Locke's vbelief in all people’s natueral rights (life, liberty, property) and the consent of the gfoverned (the idea that governments make rules because the people allow them to) inspired Jefferson - The U.S. Constitution o Separation of powers, religious freedom and freedom of speech(french thinkers) The United States Declaration of Independence – 4th July 1776 Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ENLIGHTENMENT WRITING IN AMERICA - Political journalism - Political essays - Pamphlets - Newspaper articles - Memoirs/autobiographies “POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK” Contained practical information about the calendar, the sun and the moon and the weather Featured homespun sayings and observations Franklin put an aphorism at the top or bottom of most pages ◦ these sayings allowed Franklin to include many moral messages in very little space Franklin created a fictitious author/editor for this publication, the chatty Richard Saunders “POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACMK” PROVERBS - “Two wrongs don’t make a right” - “A penny saved is a penny earned” - “Little strokes fell great oaks” - “If your head is made of wax, don’t walk in the sun” - “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail” SIGNIFICANCE OF BEN FRANKLIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY - An early example of the American Dream - Chronicles his story of rising from rags to riches through hard work - One of the first autobiographies in literature - Lists virtues and ways in which the reader can achieve them; one of the first “self-help” books - Reflects 18th century Enlightenment thought JEAN HECTOR ST. JOHN THE CREVECOEUR “Letters from an American Farmer” - written before and during the American War of Independence (1775-1783); Crevecoeur was ambivalent about American independence - first published in English in London in 1782; then translated by him to French and later other lgs - significance: - shapes popular understandings of American culture and character into the 19th century, both in US and abroad; - popularizes foundational concepts of American studies, including the “melting pot”; - Letter III, “What is an American,” widely circulated in Europe - illustrates a contrast between the American colonies and European nations. His purpose is to prove superiority of the policies, systems and opportunities of the New World and to create an image of America being a better place in comparison to Europe - the Americans in his account, created a new society that sustained their new freedom and prosperity. A land of rough equality, America had “no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops… no great manufactures employing thousands” - no one has better stated what Americans have most wanted to believe about themselves and their society. He seems especially persuasive because he claimed to be a common American farmer – a pose rendered plausible by his richly detailed and affectionate descriptions of nature and rural work POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE + SEARCH FOR NATIONAL IDENTITY + (PRE)ROMANTICISM IRVING/COOPER => FORMATION OF AMERICAN CULTURAL IDENTITY WASHINGTON IRVING = THE FATHER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE THACKERAY = THE FIRST AMBASSADOR WHOM THE NEW WORLD OF LETTERS SENT TO THE OLD. 1ST WRITER OF FICTION TO GAIN INTERNATIONAL FAME IRVING AS AN EARLY ROMANTIC WRITER History – not very distant, yet showing the readers that Americans have oral history, folk history, history of first settlers Interest in the past, legends, folk traditions Nature – changeable, magical, beautiful the Hudson River Valley, the Kaatskil Mts Supernatural elements, fantastic elements, absent in earlier lit., interest in moods, feelings Writing to please, amuse, entertain THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SKETCH BOOK 1st book by an American to receive wide international acclaim “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” - 1st American short stories – adapted from German folktales Classics of American folklore, set in the Dutch-American villages of the Hudson River Valley – the heart of the American picturesque Marks the beginning of American Romanticism Helped to create literary and cultural identity “LEATHERSTOCKING TALES” – five novels about Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman “The Deerslayer” “The Last of the Mohicans” “The Pathfinder” “The Pioneers” “The Priarie” FIRST TRULY ORIGINAL, AMERICAN LITERARY HERO – Natty Bumppo Honorable – personified myth Innocent Brave Truthful Capable of living in betweenn the two worlds In harmony with nature Lonely – never marries Self-reliant A killer IMPORTANCE OF THE CYCLE 1) The first American adventure story Location: - America - Nature/wilderness - The Frontier 2) Chuj wie 3) Native Americans - Cooper read reports by J.G.E. Heckewelder the Moravian missionary who praised the noble qualities of the Indians - These ideas coincided with the romantic ideal of the “noble savage” exploited by civilization - In Cooper – Mohawks are “good” Indians, and Mingos are “bad” Indians - Both are victims of the encroaching white civilization - “His Indians, with proper respect be it said,/ Are just Natty Bumppo, daubed with red”. James Russel Lowell - Never probes historically nor deeply into the history, customs, and background of the Indians - creates and image of the Indians just as he has formed an epic and mythic hero in Natty Bumppo THE CYCLE OF DOOM “The Deerslayer” > “The Last of the Mohicans” > “The Pathfinder” > “The Pioneers” > “The Priarie” CYTATY Z “THE PEIARIE” W KONTEKŚCIE THE CYCLE OF DOOM - “What the world of America is coming to, and where the mechanitions and inventions of its people are to have an end” - “how much has the beauty of the wilderness been deformed” - “and towns and villages, farms, and highways, churches and schools, in short, all the inventions and deviltries of man, are spread across the religion” INTERCONTINENTAL RECOGNITION - at the time of his death, Cooper was more respected abroad than at home - his work was influential to European writers like Honore de Balzac and Leo Tolstoy - the weaknesses of his fiction are widespread too. Mark Twain go wyjaśnił w “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” J.F. COOPER: AMERICA’S FIRST SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST - American history – the West and the frontier as material for the novelist - central conflict – wilderness vs civilisation – forces of civilization destroy the American wilderness and all its noble simplicity - natural rights vs legal right, order vs change - original American character – frontiersman Natty Bumppo – a character whose escape from society and domesticity mark him as the first of symbolic rebels in American writing ALLAN EDGAR POE - married Virginia who was 13 yo at that timexd POE’S LITERARY REPUTATION - “Edgar Allan Poe: father of the detective story, the pre-eminent literary critic of his time, supreme artist of the short story, world-renowed poet, and the undisputed master of the macabre” – John Astin - “Poe is the prince of American literature” - “Poe, the marvellous lord of rhythmic expression” AGAINST THE “HERESY OF THE DIDACTIC” - Poe was the principal forerunner of the “art for art’s sake” movement in 19th century European literature. - Whereas earlier critics predominantly concerned themselves with moral or ideological generalities, with utilitarianism of literature, Poe focused his criticism on aesthetic qualities, on the specifics of style and construction that contributed to a work’s effectiveness or failure. - In his own work, he demonstrated a brilliant command of language and technique as well as an inspired and original imagination. - Poe’s poetry and short stories greatly influenced the French Symbolists of the late 19th century, who in turn altered the direction of modern literature. AN AMERICAN “DARK ROMANTIC” – BELONGS TO A CATEGORY OF HIS OWN - TOPICS: unlike other American romantics he writes about evil, madness, death, sin, and the macabre - explores a world of dream and of nightmare rather them American scenery of society, - interested in the workings of human mind, both rational and irrational, psychological intensity (1st person narrators) - SETTING: hardly any of his stories are set in America - not nourished by the contemplation of nature, not interested in wide, open spaces - reworking the Gothic tradition, the terror o his stories “is not of Germany but of the soul” - RECEPTION: initially more popular in Europe than in America “THE RAVEN” - Published in January 29th, 1845, it led to Poe’s immediate popularity, although it did not bring him much financial support. - Poe wrote the poem as a narrative - the main theme of the poem is one of undying devotion to his lost love – Lenore - the narrator is in gothic surroundings – studies ancient lore when he is interrupted by a raven who enters his room. He starts asking him questions to which the raven replies “Nevermore”. - “Nevermore” is all the raven says - the narrator keeps asking questions - the narrator begins as “weak and weary”, then he becomes regretful and grief-stricken, before passing into a frenzy and finally madness POE’S POETRY - some guy said that the Raven “is the poem of the sleeplessness of despair” - Poe also wrote poems that were intended to be read aloud - experimenting with combinations of sounds and rhythm, he employed such technical devices as repetition, parallelism, internal rhyme, alliteration and assonance to produce works that are unique in American poetry for their haunting, musical quality POE’S USE OF GOTHIC CONVENTIONS - The atmosphere of mystery and oppressiveness to create terror - subverts Gothic conventions – humans rather than the supernatural powers of setting are responsible for the most horrible deeds - horror lies in the awful capabilities of human beings and their minds - often uses unreliable narrator, whose haunted or obsessed or crazy mind propels the plot, psychology of a character is revealed - the workings of a mind on the verge of sanity - architecture – crypt-lie tombs, cellars, mysterious mansions, circular, closed spaces which reflect the mind of a character who dwells in them - no sunlight, air of mystery, death, doom, darkness - the figure of the revenant returning from the dead TALES OF MADNESS, REVENGE AND TRAGIC FATE - in “The Cask of Amontillado” the mad narrator takes deadly revenge on a man who insulted him by walling him in alive in the cellar - in the classic horror tale “The Pit and the Pendulum” the narrator barely escapes a horrible death in a dark dungeon built by the inquisition - in “The Tell-Tale Heart” a man commits a murder and is driven to confess to it by a beating of a dead man’s heart that he constantly hears - In “The Black Cat” the narrator, who is an alcoholic, kills the cat in a drunken fit and then believes the demonic cat returned to torment him and make him commit other atrocities “TALES OF RATIOCINATION” – DETECTIVE STORIES - “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” - “The Purioned Letter” - “The Mystery of Marie Roget” - each of them are a root from which a whole literature has developed - Poe created detective fiction as a genre, invented a character – C. Auguste Dupin – who becomes a prosecutor of future detectives in literature, including Sherlock Holmes “THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE” - the first locked-room mystery: two women are dead and only a bloody razor, two bags of gold coins and some hair are found in the locked room with their bodies - first appearance of Auguste Dupin - a gentleman of leisure who has no need to work and instead keeps himself occupied by using ‘analysis’ to help the real police solve crimes - eccentric, smart and rational - the police are incompetent and cannot think outside the box - the story’s friendly narrator, who is literally following the detective around, is his roommate ELEMENTS INVENTED BY POE AND USED IN THE GENRE OF DETECTIVE STORY/NOVEL - the reclusive genius detective - his ‘ordinary’ helper - the incompetent police force - the armchair detection - the locked room mystery, etc. PROSECUTOR OF SCIENCE-FICTION - Poe is also credited with parenting another genre: science fiction - in such works as “The Unparalleled Adventure of Hand Pfaall” and “Von Kempelen and His Discovery”, Poe took advantage of the fascination for science and technology that emerged in the early 19th century to produce speculative and fantastic narratives which anticipate a hype of literature that did not become widely practised until the 20th century POE AS A LITERARY CRITIC - wrote a lot of essays, reviews etc - was among the first to propose setting standards by which to judge literary works, and created his own vision of that constituted good literature by studying various writers - his influential theory of “unity of effect” states that the author of a poem should construct it in such way as to achieve one overall purpose or effect “PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION” 1. unity of effect – plan everything before starting to write 2. unity of effect – length; work can’t be too long to read in one sitting 3. the choice of impression – what impression the author wants to leave on the reader 4. choose the tone of the work – like melancholy? Happiness? 5. determine the theme and characterization of the work 6. establish the climax 7. determine the location RECEPTION AND LEGACY - he became an icon of a 19th century tormented artist - his “dark legend” – after his death his biographer attributed the depravity and psychological aberrations of many characters of Poe’s fiction to Poe himself - the readers in the second half of the 19th century couldn’t make a distinction between the author and the main character of his tales - identification of Poe with the murderers - added to the controversy over the sanity of at best the maturity of Poe, was the question of the value of Poe’s works as serious literature - today Poe is a cool guy TRANSCENDENTALISM - a philosophy which had influence on literature, religion, social reform, and the general state of American culture - American Transcendentalism began with the formation in 1836 of the Transcendental Club in Boston, formed by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Henry David Thoreau - Nathaniel Hawthorne - Bronson Alcott - Margaret Fuller - based on a belief in a higher reality – ideal spiritual state – which “transcends” the physical and empirical world - every individual is capable of discovering this higher reality/truth on their own, through intuition - intuitive knowledge is valued over reason (against Enlightenment ideas) RALPH WALDO EMERSON He gave direction to a religious, philosophical, and ethical movement that above all stressed belief in the spiritual potential of every person. TRANSCENDENTALISM = AMERICAN VERSION OF ROMANTICISM Emerson was influenced - Neoplatonist philosophy, - German idealism - the works of Coleridge and other European Romantics, - the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, - Hindu philosophy - and other sources RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER MOVEMENTS TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS - intuition, not reason, is the highest human faculty - non-comformity, individuality and self-reliance - rejection of materialism - simplicity is the path to spiritual greatness - nature is a source of truth and inspiration - fundamental continuity between man, nature, and God, or the divine - the Transcendentalists saw humans and nature as possessing an innate goodness. PODSUMOWANIE – BORN BAD OR GOOD? PURITANS: sinful ENLIGHTENMENT: Blank Slate TRANSCENDENTALISTS: good NATURE - transcendentalists accepted the concept of nature as a living mystery, full of signs; nature is symbolic NATURE AND OVERSOUL - transcendentalist writers expressed semi-religious feelings towards nature, Emerson adopted a pantheist approach to existence by rejecting any religious faith that separated God from the world - they saw a direct connection between the universe and the individual soul - divinity permeated all objects, animate or inanimate - Intuition, instead of the rational or logical mind, became the means for a conscious union of the individual psyche with the world psyche, also known as the oversoul. - the purpose of human life was union with the “Oversoul” – a sort of convergence of the individual, God and nature SELF-KNOWLEDGE “KNOW THYSELF = STUDY NATURE” - the structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self-all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge. This is similar to Aristotle’s “know thyself” INDIVIDUALISM - An individual is the spiritual center of the universe, and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history, and ultimately the cosmos itself. - it’s not a rejection of the existence of God, but the idea that God exists differently in each individual. HENRY DAVID THOREAU - put into practise of principles of plain living and high thinking - Walden – known for its modern style, simplicity of diction and figures of speech - “Civil Disobedience” – result of being imprisoned because he refused to pay the tax of $1,50 - “If a man does not keep peace with companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away” TRANSCENDENTALISTS VS DARK ROMANTICS SIMILARITIES BETWEEN TRANSCENDENTALISTS AND DARK ROMANTICS - true reality is spiritual - intuition is superior to logic or reason - use of symbols and forms of expression NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE – what influenced his works? - Puritan times – religious community, struggle of good and evil over human soul - many works are set in New England – interest in regional past - criticised Puritan times from the romantic perspective which valued feelings and emotions - pride – if we are all sinners than the belied that you are better than others leads to your isolation and suffering GENESIS OF “THE SCARLET LETTER” - he wrote it after being fired from the custom house - an instant success HIS OTHER WORKS - “The Blithedale Romance” – about a group of people living in an experimental community - “The House of the Seven Gables” – story of the Pyncheon family, who for generations had lived under a curse until it was removed at last by love - “The Marble Faun” – allegory of the fall of man HERMAN MELVILLE - “Typee” – his first book, an instant success “THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL” - Moby Dick is one of the two major works of American literature most frequently named ^ - as such, it is referenced constantly in pop culture - Melville wrote “I have written a wicked book and feel spotless as the lamb” – knew it was a masterpiece MELVILLE AS TRUTH-SEEKER - he called writing “The great Art of Telling the Truth” - he believed that he and Hawthorne needed to give people the truth - “Moby Dick” – meditation on truth, or a part of Melville’s great quest for truth - Ishmael and Ahab – two key characters – are on a search for truth and both pursue this truth in the form of the whale ISHMAEL’S QUEST - he is the narrator and tries to find truth by trying to understand the whale from every angle possible - for him, the whale is full of meaning; he describes the search for knowledge and truth as a branching tree that never ends - he tries to put together a complete classification system for whales, to analyse them from every angle, hence chapters on cetology - however, he realizes that this is a never-ending project – he could study the whale and pursue its meaning forever AHAB’S QUEST - he wants to avenge himself on one whale in particular - his quest for truth is not generative – it doesn’t create branches like the other guy’s – but it’s destructive. It zeroes in on one target - Ahab is endangered by his instability to understand Moby Dick, furious about the limits of understanding we have as humans. He calls his limitation a ‘wall’ that he wants to break - he views the whale as a malicious force – so for him the universe is evil THE MEANING OF THE WHITE WHALE - more than just an animal - personification of the evil in the world - a mirror in which Ahab and his crew look for their own image - a mystery – the embodiment of mankind’s quest for a reason for their existence - a symbol of GOD - the hidden and mysterious forces of powerful nature, capable of sudden and incredible acts of destruction MOBY DICK AS A HYBRID NOVEL - it’s like an encyclopedia for genres - part of it read like a dictionary, whaling manual, comedy, tragedy. Epic, prophecy, sermon, soliloquy, drama, bawdy humour and tales within tales - references to Shakespeare, Milton, the Bible, adventure narratives, whaling books - why this form? Because Melville is trying to look at the whale from every angle possible. - he’s also trying to look at the novel as a literary form from every angle possible - Melville pursues that generative - building and growing – tree branch of knowledge that Ishmael talks about ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISTS – DARK ROMANTICS - their view of world lacked optimism. They saw a dark side to human existence and recorded this aspect of human nature in their works - similarities to transcendentalism: valued intuition over reason, saw signs and symbols in events, spiritual facts lie behind physical appearances - differences: spiritual facts are not necessarily good or harmless - their view developed from the mystical and melancholy aspects of Puritan thought - their works explored the conflict between good and evil, psychological effects of guilt and sin and madness and derangement in human psyche - they saw the blankness and the horror of evil within humanity DICKINSON’S POETRY – PUBLISHING HISTORY - wrote 1800 poems - only 10 were published during her lifetime - no titles RENUNCIATION – FORMAL REJECTION OF SOMETHING conventional poetic language V poet must tell the truth “slant” by suggestion, not statement V the world, public recognition, fame V this is my letter to the world, that never wrote to me V personal yet universal ORIGINALITY - use the details of ordinary life to speak about fundamental issues – death, love, God, nature etc - ignored usual rules of versification and even of spelling, grammar, punctuation - her verse – conceit - use of rhetorical devices such as imperfect rhymes, assonance, alliteration, paradox, metaphor, ellipsis and capitalisation WALT WHITMAN - self taught - “The Preface” - “the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem” - “Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets” WHITMAN’S THEMES - transcendent power of love, brotherhood and comradeship - imaginative projection into others’ lives to stress the dignity of an individual - optimistic faith in democracy and equality, in a dynamic future of the American nation - belief in regenerative and illustrative powers of nature and its value as a teacher - equality of body and soul - praise the body and sexuality WHY WAS HE CRITICIZED - he lacked regular rhyme and meter – free verse - nontraditional poetic style - subject matter - sexual imagery and themes in his poems WHITMAN’S LEGACY - father of American poetry – the first voice distinctly new and American - Whitman created new poetic forms and subjects to fashion a distinctly American type of poetic expression - he rejected conventional themes, traditional literary references, allusions, and rhyme - used long lines to capture the rhythms of natural speech, free verse, catalogs and vocab drawn from everyday speech WHITMAN’S INFLUENCE - with Dickinson – the two giants of American poetry in the 19th century - a model for French symbolists DICKSON VS WHITMAN LOCAL COLOUR AS A TREND IN REALISM - USA – big country with many unique different regions - local colour writings focus on the specific details and eccentricities of a particular idea, usually well known to the writer dialect, manners, folklore - Hamlin Garland’s definition: “such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native” WHEN WAS IT POPULAR AND WHY - From the late 1860s, just after the end of the Civil War untill the 1890's - Contributed to the reunification of the country after the Civil War - Contributed to the building of national identity toward the end of the nineteenth century. - Reassured urban dwellers that amid social change, there was a geographic repository of traditional "American" values. - Satisfied the desire of readers to experience quaint or exotic settings and characters: a kind of travel literature that introduced readers to their own nation. WHO WERE THE REPRESENTATIVES? - Many American authors of the second half of the 19th century achieved success with vivid descriptions of their own localities. - Harriet Beecher Stowe and Sarah Ome Jewett wrote of New England - George Washington Cable, Joel Chandler Harris, and Kate Chopin were based in the South - Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Mary Austin- the West CHARACTERISTICS OF LOCAL COLOUR AND REGIONAL LITERATURE - Setting - integral to the story and may sometimes become a character in itself. - Characters - Local color stories tend to be concerned with the character of the district or region rather than with the individual: characters may become character types sometimes quaint or stereotypical. - The characters are marked by their adherence to the old ways, by dialect, and by particular personality traits central to the region. - narrator – typically an educated observer from the world beyond that learns about the characters while preserving a distance from them - plots – not much happens. Storytelling revolve around community and rituals - themes – resistance to change and a nostalgia for an always-past golden age. Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and old fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or interloper who seeks something from the community SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS = MARK TWAIN - Mark Twain means that it’s safe to navigate THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERNISM MODERNISM – a broad literary and cultural movement that spanned of the arts. WHEN? – from the 1900, between WWI and WWII, the first decades of the 20th century WHY? - Western civilization took a drastic turn in the second half of the 19th century – a loss of confidence in absolutes, political, scientific, religious authorities “TO MAKE IT NEW” MODERNIST WRITERS - T.S. Elliot - Ezra Pound - Ernest Hemingway - Virginia Wolf - Robert Frost - James Joyce - Franz Kafka - Katherine Mansfield - W.B. Yeats - William Faulkner - Joseph Conrad - F.Scott Fitzgerald REALISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE THE AGE OF REALISM Time: By the 1870s, the age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over. Term: Realism in art is based on the accurate, unromanticized observation of life and nature, it aims at the interpretation of the actualities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Topics: Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people's attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence THE GILDED AGE => modern America's formative period - The aftermath of the Civil War meant that Americans were less certain and optimistic about the future. - The idealism of the Romantics and philosophy of Transcendentalists seemed out of date and irrelevant to many readers. The Civil War led many to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalists-natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God. - agrarian society of small producers transformed into an urban society dominated by industrial corporations. - Realist novels as a literary response to these changes. THE GILDED AGE - The growth of industry and a wave of immigrants marked this period - the production of iron and steel rose dramatically and western resources like lumber, gold, and silver increased the demand for improved transportation. - Railroad development boomed as trains moved goods from the resource-rich West to the East. - Steel and oil were in great demand. All this industry produced a lot of wealth for a number of businessmen like John D. Rockefeller (in oil) and Andrew Carnegie (in steel), known as robber barons (people who got rich through ruthless business deals). - The Gilded Age gets its name from the many great fortunes created during this period and the way of life this wealth supported. TRAITS OF AMERICAN REALISM - SUBJECTS: subject matter drawn form real life experience, emphasis of the commonplace, on settings familiar to the writer - Focus on accuracy and objectivity of represenattion - PLOT Plots emphasized "the norm of daily experience", often a success story, bildungsroman - TIME: set in the present or recent past - CHARACTERS: ordinary, real-life characters not larger-than-life individuals => Huck Finn not Captain Ahab or Leatherstocking, no idealization - LANGUAGE: dialects, class and race reflected by the character's language - REGIONALITY: the awareness of regions and regional differences CHARACTERISTICS OF REALISM - Focuses on characters making ethical choices - Gives characters in-depth psychological traits - Events are plausible - Comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact tone - Language is not poetic-natural vernacular (language spoken by ordinary people) - Characters exercise free will and are superior to their circumstances REPRESENTATIVES – William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain and local colorists. HUCK FINN - Genre(s) - Satire -- A work that uses humor, irony, and extreme exaggeration to ridicule society in order to bring about change - Picaresque - book of travels, episodic structure, - Bildungsroman - a story of a young man's moral growth - Narrator & Protagonist / the American Adam - Huck Finn's growth: from innocence into experience, from boy to young man, - Conflict: natural goodness vs false ideals of the society -Setting -Time: before the Civil War; roughly 1835-1845 - Place: town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, down the Mississippi into -Arkansas THE AMERICAN ADAM - The figure of the American Adam is a prevalent myth in US cultural history. - Defined by R.W.B. Lewis in 1955 - the figure is discernable in the imagery of the frontiersman, cowboy, gangster as well as in the heroes of US action movies. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCK FINN – CONTROVERSY - In 1885, Concord Public Library banned the book, attacking the novel as "absolutely immoral in its tone." One library official noted that "all through its pages there is a systematic use of bad grammar and an employment of inelegant expressions." - Mark Twain, for his part, loved the controversy for the publicity it would generate. As he wrote to Charles Webster on March 18, 1885: "The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass., have given us a rattling tip-top puff which will go into every paper in the country. They have expelled Huck from their library as 'trash and suitable only for the slums.' That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure." - 20th c. - the fifth most-frequently challenged book in the United States during the 1990s, according to the American Libra Association. - banned from some school libraries on charges of racism. The book uses the word "nigger' in reference to Jim and other African American characters in the book - In 2011, a changed edition released by a publisher took out all uses of the N-word. MARK TWAIN’S LEGACY - made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country - its influence is clearly visible in 20th century American literature HENRY JAMES “My choice is the Old World – my choice, my need, my life; on the whole the most possible form of life. I take London as an artist and as a bachelor; as one who has the passion of observation and whose business is the study of human life.” THE INTERNATIONAL THEME IN HENRY JAMES - The clash of cultures - The Old World – Europe vs the New World – America - the emotional and moral problems of Americans in Europe - his characters are cultured, comfortably off and free to devote their lives to affairs of the emotions of heart CLASH OF CULTURES IN JAMES THE EUROPEANS THE AMERICANS - Europe stands for culture and experience - America – provincial, unrefined, cultural - Europeans are more sophisticated, aware of impoverishment yet stands for innocence social conventions but often also morally - Americans, for all their lack of manners or corrupt, rigid and categorical in thinking even vulgarity, are often presented in his novels as fundamentally good, moral - possessing inner freedom REALISM VS MODERNIM REALISM MODERNISM - dealt with everyday lives of the middle class - many characters and multiple experiences or people points of view in the story - focused on the quality of individuals life, daily - no cental heroic figure in the story tasks and that is why in realism character is - no fixed time line, we do not always follow always more important that the plot sequential connected events - fixed time line - writers experiment with language and - no poetic, romantic language is used. The narration voice of speech represents average man - use tools like “streams of consciousness” for - events and plot in realism will be reasonable representing inner mind thoughts and feelings and valid and truthful. It doesn’t discuss - variety and complexity in novels make anything that is sentimental or dramatic modernistic writing difficult to comprehend - the reader has to ba active, putting the pieces together EARLY MODERNISM – POETRY - E. Pound saw contemporary verse as affected by Victorian legacy - “a rather blurry, messy sort of period, a rather sentimentalistic, mannerish sort of period” - imagism was a reaction against art that imagists believed was soft and weakly expressive - to strip away poetry’s tendency toward dense wordiness and sentimentality IMAGISTS - an eclectic group of English and American poets working between 1912 and 1917 including - Ezra Pound - Amy Lowell - William Carlos Williams - AIM – to crystalize poetic meaning in clear, neatly juxtaposed images - early influencers of the imagists included the symbolist poets, classical Greek and Roman poetry and Chinese and Japanese verse forms, in particular the haiku. FEATURES OF IMAGISTS POETRY - clear, concentrated representation of experience - concrete as opposed to the abstract - brevity - concentration on the image not as decoration but as the essence of human language - free verse form - a haiku-like economy of language HAIKU – way of looking at the physical world and seeing something deeper, like the very nature of existence. It should leave the reader with a strong feeling or impression. MATSUO BASHO – master Haiku poet EZRA POUND – “IN A STATION OF THE METRO” - he saw a beautiful face in the Paris metro - and then another and it became a group WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS - started as an imagist but broke with it because he felt that the brevity of the imagist poem caused it to lose ‘structural necessity’ - insisted on the value of newness - sought a voice and style that was truly American - believed in the contribution of the individual to the continuum of humanity - a medic and a writer W. C. W. – MAJOR THEMES - the American idiom and the ‘local’ – urban landscape or one’s immediate environment - pays close attention to ordinary scenes, the working class and poor - his work often demonstrates the artist’s need to destroy or deconstruct what has became outworn and to reassemble with fresh vision and lg GERTRUDE STEIN - she had that Paris salon - writers and fans gathered at her place G. STEIN’S LITERARY CUBISM - she tried to break away from conventions and let the medium triumph over the subject - she re-assembled words in an abstract forms “ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE” - most often quoted line - shows her use of repetitive language to express that things are what they are but at the same time so much more - the simple naming of a thing evokes the imagery and emotions associated with it – the writer does not need to manipulate the word any further THE LOST GENERATION term used to describe the generation of writers active immediately after WWI CHARACTERIZED BY - lost values - lost belief in the idea of human progress - a mood of futility and despair leading to hedonism WRITERS OF THE MOVEMENT - Ernest Hemingway - F. Scott Fitzgerald - T.S. Eliot - Ezra Pound ERNEST HEMINGWAY – “THE SUN ALSO RISES” - portrait of young Americans in the post-war Paris, people without a homeland - expatriates - their aimlessness and despair is similar to the despair Eliot’s portrayed in his “Waste Land” - main character – Jake Barners, American newspaperman working in Paris, damaged by the war, in love with a lady – a “chap” - a Hemingway hero who acts according to a code THEMES THE AIMLESSNESS OF THE LOST GENERATION - The Code “It’s sort of what we have instead of God” – because they no longer believe in anything - Hemingway never stated that Jake and his friends’ lives are aimless, or that this aimlessness is a result of the war. This is implied through his portrayal of the characters’ mental lives, contrasting the characters’ surface actions. Their lives are empty - excessive drinking – escape - male insecurity - the re-evaluation of what it meant to be masculine - Jake feels “less of a man” because he became impotent in the war because of his injury MOTIFS - the failure of communication – Jake and his friends aren’t honest, their conversations can’t convey how much the war impacted them - understatement – characters who say little - defeat – more interesting than victory. Men all sooner or later to down to defeat HEMINGWAY HERO AND HIS CODE - self-discipline in all circumstances, a man who is always in control of the situation - rejects cultural and social morals, and he only really believes in self-discovery and blunt honesty - a man of action not a man of words – does not show emotions, does not talk much - possesses a certain skill or a passion – aficionado (those who know a great deal about bullfighting) - can never be a coward, must act in a way that is acceptable once he faces death - encounter with death as a test of manhood. Faces death with dignity. HEMINGWAY’S STYLE - stark minimalism – the iceberg principle - simple grammar structures - austere word choice, basic nouns and verbs - unvarnished descriptions - short, declarative sentences - uses lg accessible to the common reader “THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA” - last major work of his - tells a story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who has not caught a fish in 84 days and finally catches a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida but then looses it to the sharks SANTIAGO AS THE HEMINGWAY HERO - embodies the Hemingway code - despite his age and poverty he remains a man in the fullest sense of the world - faced with defeat does not quit - a story of a man on his own that is a parable of all humanity CHRONICLER OF THE JAZZ AGE – F. SCOTT FITZGERALD - popularized the term Jazz Age to convey the post-WWI era’s newfound prosperity, consumensm, and shifting sexual mores - he first came to fame at 23 by chronicling those changes in “This Side of Paradise” - before 30 he published “The Great Gatsby” - when the Depression came they started to regard him as “has-been” - he died considered a failure THEMES - great wealth, he clung to the conception of a specially privileged group, while realizing that is actually worth little and spurious - the very rich “are different from you and me. They posses and enjoy early, and it does something to them” - Richness provides them with immunity from everybody who does not belong - characters who are aristocratic, young, handsome, witty and free also immature, dreaming extravagantly and end up always disappointed, no desire to develop as development means growing old IMPORTANT TIME PERIODS - Antebellum Period (1800-1860); prior to the Civil War beginning - Reconstruction Era (1865-77); Reconstruction was a national attempt to help the South recover after the Civil War but failed after Lincoln was assassinated - during this era, Northerns came to the South in order to, according to Southerners, take advantage of the region’s weakened state - the (First) Great Migration (1910-30); African-Americans went North for a variety of reasons, mainly to find work - The Southern Literary Renaissance Era (1929-2955); an era when Southern arts flourished - The New South (1970s to present day); less agrarian and more urban (cities like Atlanta emerging at urban centers) THE CIVIL WAR (1861-65) AND LOSS - Losing the Civil War led to a great deal of disillusionment for Southerners. - this loss had a real impact on the economy resulting in poverty (depended by larger national setbacks later in the 1930s (e.g. Great Depression and the Dust Bowl) - after this loss, Southerners also began to doubt some aspects of their lives from before the war. This doubt was sometimes the catalyst for change and sometimes led to nostalgia for the past - race relations in the South continued – and still continue – to be a central issue affecting the society GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE - during the local color era wrote “Creole New Orleans” and he has been called the most important southern artist working in the late 19th cent. CHARLES WADDELL CHESTNUTT - the first African-American author, whose short story “The Goophered Grapevine” was printed by the prestigious Atlantic Monthly - used the local humour, mainly conveyed by the old ex-slave narrator who connects all stories in “The Conture Woman” (?) - second collection – short fiction - one of the first writers who noticed the potential in the stereotypical expectations of the whole audience, as well as the awareness of black strategies of survival ELLEN GLASGOW - works attempted a more realistic depiction of the strength and weaknesses of the South. - wrote 20 novels - regional writing evident “I’LL TAKE MY STAND: THE SOUTH AND THE AGRARIAN TRADITION” - By the 1930s there was a resurgence of interest in regionalism, this time as an intellectual movement - a cornerstone of the movement was the manifesto ^ by Twelve Southerners, published in 1930 - the authors of this work, among them John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren, argued that agrarian South could serve as a model for a society in which man rather than the machine was dominant. Critique of dehumanization brought about by industrialization and the assembly line - the text was attacked at the time. It ignored slavery. THE SOUTHER LITERARY RENAISSANCE - a flowering of the “literary arts-poetry, fiction and drama” in the South - early decades of the 20th cent (until the 1950s) – the time when, arguably, the best Southern works were published - 1929, the year that saw the publication of Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward”, “Angel” and William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” - 1929, the year of the great economic crisis – the whole of America found itself in the situation in which the South had been stuck since 1865. WORKS - series of baroque, brooding novels set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County – based on Lafayette County, Mississippi - characters in these novels are based on his own ancestors, Native Americans, African-Americans, shadowy backwoods hermits, and poor whites - in the first of these novels, he patterned the character Colonel Sartoris after his own great- grandfather, William Cuthbert Falkner, a soldier, politician, railroad builder and author (he restored the u in the surname) “THE SOUND AND THE FURY” - the year 1929 was crucial to Faulkner. That year “Sartoris” was followed by “The Sound and the Fury”, an account of the tragic downfall of the Compson family -the novel uses 4 different narrative voices to piece together the story and this challenges the reader by presenting a fragmented plot told from multiple points of view - the structure of “The Sound and the fury” presaged the narrative innovations Faulkner would explore throughout his career - praised for its innovative narrative technique, interior monologues - Benjy is mentally retarded, he can’t find himself in time. Faulkner takes the reader into the garbled stream of consciousness, Benjy’s thoughts are often jumbled, and cut through timelines sometimes mid-sentence, with a chronology that spans decades - the second part is narrated by the intelligent and educated yet depressed Quentin. Towards the end of his section, punctuation and grammar break down and the narrative becomes odd, and apparently random - the final section offers the biggest contrast, since it’s the only one told from the perspective of someone from outside the family: the black maid, Dilsey. It’s only once the conclusion is reached that the reader can begin to put the whole story into perspective - in 2020 they made a book with a bookmark that had all those different colours and it was colour- coded to make it less confusing ABOUT MACBETH, ACT V, SCENE V “It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” FAULKNER’S STYLE - his works demanded much of his readers - to create a mood, he might let one of his complex, convoluted sentences run on far more than one page (dłufgie zdania po propstu) CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF FAULKNER’S FICTION - multigenerational family chronicles, many characters appear in more than one book. This gives the county saga a sense of continuity that makes the area and its inhabitants seem real - the sense of being entangled in a great web of persons and events – that centers on family yet extends to region, and focuses on the present yet extends to the past - conveys a sense of place, a sense of the past and its force - rich oral traditions, customs, mores, folkways, and dialects: vegetation, geography, and wildlife of the south - explored the full range of post-Civil War Southern life, focusing both on the personal histories of his characters and on the moral uncertainities of an increasingly dissolute society. In combining the use of symbolism with a steam-of-consciousness technique, he created a new approach to fiction MODERNIST TRAITS IN FAULKNER - viewpoint of the individual - ‘flow’ of experience – stream of consciousness - language – colloquial dialogue of Mississippi, no punctuation, and plenty of repetition as it replicates different states of mind with psychological veracity - NON-LINEARITY - a break with the sequential, developmental, cause-and-effect presentation of the reality of realist fiction - experience as layered, allusive, discontinous - AMBIGUOUS ENDINGS - ‘open’ or ambiguous - TYPICAL THEMES - question of the reality of experience itself - search for a ground of meaning in a world without God - critique of the traditional values of the culture - loss of meaning and hope in the modern world and an exploration of how this loss may be faced MALCOM COWLEY - in 1946 he, a critic, was insufficiently known as appreciated, took extracts from Faulkner’s novels and put them into chronological sequence that gave the Y. County saga a new clarity and made F’s genius accessible to a new generation of readers RECOGNITION - Faulkner’s works long out of print began to be reissued - he was no longer regarded as a regional curiosity but as a literary giant whose writing held meaning - he’s got a Nobel Prize in literature - Puritans (1620-1750)  o William Bradford – “Of Plymouth Plantation” o Mary Rowlandson - “A Narrative of the Cptivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowaldson” o Anne Bradstreet o Edward Taylor o Increase Mather o William Hubbard o Cotton Mather - Enlightenment (1750-1799) o Benjamin Franklin – the autobiography o Thomas Paine o Thomas Jefferson o Jonatthan Edwards o Jean Hector St. John de Crevecoeur – “What is An American” - Pre-Romanticism o James Fenimore Cooper o Washington Irving (father of AM lit) – “Rip van Winke” - Trandescentalism o Ralph Waldo Emerson (Founding Father) – “The American Scholar” o Henry David Thoreau - “Walden” o Margaret Fuller o Bronson Alcott - Romantism o Walt Whitman – “Leaves of Grass” o Emily Dickenson – poems [numbers] - Dark-Romantism  E.A. Poe (father of detective fiction)  Herman Merville  Nathaniel Hawthorne – “The Scarlet Letter” - Realism (mid 19th – mid 20th c) o Mark Twain – “The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn” o Kate Chopin o Henry James – “Daisy Miller” o William Dean Howells - Modernism (1900-1945) o T.S Elliot o Ezra Pound – “In a Station of the Metro”, “A Pact” o William Carlos Williams “Red Wheelbarrow”, “This is Just to Say” o Ernest Hemingway – “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, “Hills like White Elephants” o Virginia Wolf o Robert Frost – “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” o James Joyce o Fratz Kafka o Katherine Mansfield o W.B. Yeats o William Faulkner o Joseph Conrad o F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Great Gatsby” o Langston Hughes “I, too” “Negro Speaks of Rivers” Imagist Erza Pound, Amy Lowell, William Carlos William Lost Generation o Ernest Hemingway o F. Scott Fitzgerald o T.S. Eliot o Ezra Pound o Gerturde Stein