Enlightenment (1607-1800)

A. The Age of Faith (1607-1750) [Puritans]

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

- “Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House”

Edward Taylor (1645-1729)

- “Upon the Sweeping Flood”

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

- “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

B. The Age of Reason (1750-1800)

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

- “Autobiography”; “Continuation of the Account of My Life, Begun at Passy, 1784”

Romanticism (1800-1855) [American Renaissance]

A. Romanticism

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

- “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”

Herman Melville (1819-1892)

- “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

- “The Cask of Amontillado”

B. Transcendentalism (1840-1855)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

- “Self-Reliance”

C. New Poetic Forms

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

• “Song of Myself”

• “Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand”

Emily Dickinson (1830-1866)

• 258 “There's a certain Slant of light”

• 712 “Because I could not stop for Death -“

• 986 “A narrow Fellow in the Grass”

Realism

A. Naturalism

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

• “The Bridge Comes to Yellow Sky”

B. Realism

Henry James (1843-1916)

• “Daisy Miller”

Modernism (1915-1945)

A. Modernism

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

- “The Great Gatsby”

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

• “A Pact”

• “In a Station of the Metro”

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

- “Mending Wall”

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

- “This Is Just to Say”

B. The Harlem Renaissance

Langston Hughes (1902- 1967)

- “Mulatto”

contemporary (1945 - present)

A. Postmodernism

John Barth (b. 1930)

- “Night-Sea Journey” (from “Lost in the Fun House)

Robert Coover (b. 1932)

- “The Babysitter”

B. Confessional poetry

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

- “Lady Lazarus”

C. The Beat Generation

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

- “Howl”

D. The New York Poets

John Ashbery (b. 1927)

- “Paradoxes and Oxymorons”

E. Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

- “The Fish”

ENLIGHTENMENT

The Age of Faith

(Bradstreet, Taylor, Edwards)

I. Historical Context:

A. Puritans and Pilgrims

- separated from Anglican Church of England;

- domination of religion;

- unreliable climate;

- Indian Wars;

- the colonists' lack of experience.

Puritans - English Protestants following teaching of Martin Luther; influenced by John Calvin.

John Calvin - doctrine of predestination - God had chosen some people for salvation (zbawienie), while others were headed for eternal damnation (wieczne potępienie); the grace cannot be earned.

B. Work ethic:

- belief in hard work and simple life

- very little room for enjoyment, sense of humor;

- self-discipline.

II. Genre/Style:

• sermons, diaries, personal narratives, slave narratives;

• instructive, plain style.

PURITANISM

• believed that people were born sinful and remained in this condition through their lives;

• opposed to novels because they divert people's attention from hard work;

• no authority but the Bible; literal interpretation of the Bible;

• proud of being the part of God's enterprise;

• had a mission to purify the Church of England;

• beauty in itself mattered very little;

• power of survival;

• men aren't equal to God;

• men are wicked and cannot earn redemption through their good deeds;

• return to primitive principles;

• provided the evidence that New World will be created in America.

The Beginning of Modern America

1620 Pilgrim Fathers settled in Plymouth. Came on Mayflower; 120 passengers - colony of Mass.

by 1630 three groups of Puritans

• the largest - recognized then established commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell

• the Separatists - purified their faith to the extremes

• the Congregationalists (seeking the middle way) - a community of visible saints

reformation - victory of Christianity over the Church of Rome

PRESBYTERIANS

• rejected all structures higher than individual churches;

• national church = work of Antichrist;

• offered church membership to those who made a public confession of their faith.

THE END OF THE WORLD (Apocalypse of St. John) - when this world is destroyed, and the sinners have been punished, a New World of perfect happiness will appear in which the elect will enjoy eternal bliss.

MYTH OF AMERICA AS A PROMISED LAND - people believed the land wasn't dominated by any hostile faction; there were economics possibilities; original and religious.

ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-1672)

• born in England;

• writes about the reality surrounding her and the world of the Bible (religion = dominant motif);

• a poet of daily life, of little acts that filled her own days as a housewife (wife and mother to 8 children);

• the first colonist to have a book of poetry (published 1650, London);

• well-educated;

• expresses personal emotions;

• describes the conflict between the flesh and the spirit;

• physical beauty of Mass.;

• insists that the Puritan mission is to alienate oneself from the things of the world.

“HERE FOLLOWS SOME VERSES UPON THE BURNING OF OUR HOUSE” 1666

• based on a true experience;

• expresses tension between the poet's attachment to earthly things and her awareness that she's supposed to dissolve her ties to the world and focus on God;

• poet isn't expecting anything terrible to happen;

• she accepts that everything she owns belongs to God; He can take anything he wants from her and her children;

• describes being filled with memories every time she passes the property - attachment to her home, and memories that occurred within it;

• home - a symbol of her entire life with her children and husband;

• she's a real person that has doubts and feels sorrow; must constantly be active in her faith in order to remain meaningful;

• visual or auditory imagery: “thund'ring noise”; “piteous shriek of dreadful voice”; “fearful sound of `fire' and `fire'”; “the flame consumes my dwelling place”;

• shows how living through a struggle can bring her closer to God;

• the greed of materialistic possession in contrast to the desire of after life.

EDWARD TAYLOR (1645-1729)

• influenced by J. Donne, G. Herbert (metaphysical poetry);

• Protestant dissenter (rebel);

• Harvard graduate;

• strict Puritan minister of Westfield, Mass.; spoke against the modified doctrine of halfway covenant -> all members of the Congregation were allowed to partake of the Sacrament of Communion, not only those that were able to give account of their conversion;

• served as a farmer and a rural physician;

• his poetry:

• unorthodox (breaking with tradition or conventions);

• drew similes from the humble occupation and common things of his community; farm imagery and animals;

• dominant themes: sin, damnation, God's salvation and sacrifice;

• language: rich in colors, metaphors and imagery; uses paradoxes, puns, conceits (unconventional, logically complex, or surprising metaphor)

“UPON THE SWEEPING FLOOD”

• meditation on natural disaster;

• the storm and flood were sent by God to drown man's carnal love;

• rain compare to excrements - water which is not purifying - conceit;

• lyrical subject - a lover, ex-lover;

• regrets about not ending the romance;

• lovers don't feel any remorse and rain (sent by God) reminds them about their sin;

• 2^nd stanza: lovers - doctors; heaven's sick; love - a cause of heaven sickness.

Sermons played a crucial role in attempts to scare the congregation back into the religious life (“jeremiads”); consisted of:

• explanation of the chosen Biblical quotation;

• its interpretation;

• its application to the life of the colony.

JEREMIAD - an American rhetorical form modeled on the texts of the prophet Jeremiah where he promised the Jews in bondage (niewola) a salvation if they return to God's ways. Expresses dissatisfaction with the present state of things and urges a return to the traditional ways and values of Puritan Fathers. A mournful critique, prophecy and promise for a better future.

COVENANT - relationship between God and Christians. God agrees to enter it and abide by its terms; He is under no such obligation to a finite and limited man.

JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758)

• graduate of Yale;

• grandson of Salomon Stoddard (halfway covenant required for a full church membership);

• Great Awakening - leading the faithful to the experience of conversion; revival of people's sense of God;

“SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD” 1741

• appeal to sinners to recognize that they will be judged by God and that this judgment will be more fearful and painful than they can comprehend;

• God's wrath will come suddenly and unexpectedly;

• it's only God's free choice to extend the day of mercy;

• Edward's view of sin - an active force that's controlled by the devil;

• servant of the devil - anyone who hasn't experienced an inward renewal or awakening;

• sinner - a spider or some loathsome insect that God is dangling over the fire in preparation for destruction;

• sinner is helpless to avoid judgment;

• “Hands of God” = protection;

• all unconverted men belong to Hell;

• God can destroy any wicked man at any moment;

• Calvinist doctrine of predestination;

• God's unlimited power over man;

• purpose: teaching his listeners about the horrors of the hell; the danger of sins and terrors of being lost;

• Hell - place of terror, pain, agonies; there is no escape from it;

• literary devices: repetition and sensory imagery; uses word “wrath” 51 times, colorful imagery to illuminate horrors.

CALVINISM

1. Men are born into sin and fundamentally flawed;

2. But they still can improve the world;

3. Through self-denied and self-discipline;

4. God demands a personal relationship; salvation cannot be achieved through one's church or society.

Man's Depravity [Total Depravity]: nothing about a human being is pure; man's corruption runs through his body, mind and soul.

God's Sovereignty: there is one God and no man or anything else can be superior.

Predestination: the idea that God has already decided who will be saved and who will be damned. Nobody/nothing affects His choices.

Limited Atonement: Christ didn't die for everyone in the world; His salvation through His death was only applicable to those predestinated for redemption.

God's Grace [Irresistible Grace]: if you're among the chosen, you can't resist His call.

Forever Saved [Perseverance of the Saints]: you can't be “unelected” if you're saved; you're forever saved.

The Age of Reason

(Franklin)

I. Historical Context

A. American Revolution (1765-1783); growth of patriotism;

B. Development of American Democracy;

C. Use of reason as opposed to faith alone;

D. birth of the “American Dream” (“from rags to riches”);

E. search for a national identity, decline of Puritanism.

II. Genre/Style

- political pamphlets, essays, travel writing, speeches, documents;

- instructive in values; highly ornate style.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)

• self-made man;

• symbol of success gained by hard work and common sense; American life model;

• logical, rational thinking;

• Deist (God was seen by Deists as a rationalistic himself, and a creator of a logical universe which men, through thinking and experimenting, could fully understand and explain; God after creating the universe, abandoned it);

• advancing “from rags to riches”;

• there is no predestination, and a man alone was responsible for what he would do with his own life;

• belief in progress;

• businessman (printing business);

• politician (a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, an American Minister to France, a delegate to Constitutional Convention);

• philosopher (American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia);

• philanthropist;

• an inventor.

“AUTOBIOGRAPHY”

• written 1771-1790; unfinished;

• division: I. Youth and rise of successful businessman;

II. “Art of Virtue” section - Franklin's road to success - the life of virtues and self-discipline;

III. Application of his principles in his adult life; second part - self made man.

“CONTINUATION OF THE ACCOUNT OF MY LIFE, BEGUN AT PASSY, 1784”

Franklin and his friends in the Junto club get together and decide to create a public lending organization, which is Philadelphia's first library. It's organized by subscription: you have to sign a contract to join and promise to pay for the books if you lose them. Even though they only have fifty subscribers at first, in just a few years other towns are imitating Philadelphia and setting up libraries of their own.

When it's created, Franklin's trying to be modest and raise money, so he says that the idea for the library comes from a group of friends, not just him. This encourages people to contribute to it so they can claim its virtue for themselves.

Franklin turns to the library for pleasure and studies there every day, while saving money for his business and his growing family. Franklin says his habits of modesty and thrift serve him well, and he gets to achieve great things with them. He's also really happy with his wife, who shares his frugality and thrift.

Even though he believes in God, Franklin doesn't go to church. Instead, he uses Sundays to read on his own. He still pays dues to the Presbyterian ministry, but doesn't go to sermons because he doesn't think the preacher is any good. The preacher works on Presbyterian ideals, while Franklin wants him to work on plain morality.

Franklin has to work on his morality himself. He makes a list of virtues with precepts to abide by. The virtues are temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. He adds humility last, after one of his Quaker friends tells him he needs to work on it.

Then, Franklin decides to work on the virtues one at a time until he gets them all down. He makes a little calendar/chart to keep track of his efforts at conquering each one, and also uses the little book to pray.

Franklin uses this system for many years, and the virtue he has the hardest time mastering is "order." This is because other people can upset it.

As he acknowledges later in life, he doesn't master all these virtues, but he becomes a better man because he tried to work on each of them.

Franklin also says that he purposefully left religion out of his virtue-scheme, so it could apply to lots of people.

In working to make his speech to appear more humble, Franklin thinks he became more successful in public and that he was able to have more influence over people because he wasn't pushy when he talked.

Franklin ends this part by saying the hardest thing to get past is pride, and that it always catches him - even he could be totally humble, he'd still be proud of that.

ROMANTICISM [AMERICAN RENAISSANCE]

(Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson)

I. Historical Context

A. Expansion of book publishing, magazines, newspapers;

B. Industrial Revolution;

C. Abolitionist Movement (against slavery)

II. Genre/Style

• short stories, novels, poetry;

• imagination over reason; intuition over fact;

• focused on the fantastic of human experience;

• writing can be interpreted in 2 ways: surface and depth;

• focus on inner feelings;

Gothic literature: use of the supernatural; character with both evil and good traits; dark land scopes; depressed characters.

ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

• American literature came of age in the 1850s;

• almost exclusively Romantic literature;

• looked at American government and the country's political problems: war and black slavery;

• waves of new immigrants were changing the character of the population and bringing strange customs and traditions to a nation that was just beginning to recognize and articulate what its own traditions were.

TRANSCENDENTALISM (1840-1855)

(Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman)

• stressed individualism;

• intuition;

• nature;

• self-reliance;

• independency.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

• “Oversoul” - the presence of God in every person;

• his writings helped establish the philosophy of individualism;

• Unitarian Minister to the Second Unitarian Church in Boston. Resigned;

• nature is reincarnation of thought; mystic idealism;

• individualist (transition from the medieval world to the modern one);

• neo-Platonic conception of nature as a living mystery full of signs ready to be reinterpreted;

• belief in democracy;

• freedom of soul;

• individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization;

• intuition and imagination (reason) vs. abstract logic and scientific method (reasoning);

• form is unique for each work of art;

• poet as a genius with mission and calling;

• rejected the Calvinist belief.

“SELF-RELIANCE” 1841

• importance of thinking for oneself rather than meekly accepting other people's ideas;

• individual experience over the knowledge gained from books;

• to rely on others' judgment is cowardly, without inspiration or hope;

• a person with self-esteem exhibits originality and is childlike - unspoiled by selfish needs - yet mature;

• bringing order out of chaos;

• children provide models of self-reliant behavior - they are too young to be cynical, hesitant, or hypocritical;

• adults have great difficulty acting spontaneously or genuinely;

• it is better to be true to an evil nature than to behave correctly because of society's demands or conventions;

• those around you never get to know your real personality;

• two enemies of independent thinker: society's disapproval or scorn, and the individual's own sense of consistency;

• corpse of memory - individual that is afraid of contradiction;

• becoming mature involves the evolution of ideas;

• history's greatest thinkers were branded as outcasts for their original ideas;

• society is not a measure of all things - individual is;

• the good or bad behavior of ordinary people can have effects as noble or as alive as the actions of the powerful;

• individual constantly changes;

• knowledge = power;

• truth, integrity, honesty;

• criticizes his contemporary Americans for being followers rather than original thinkers;

• failure is young people's greatest fear;

• four social areas in which self-reliant individuals are needed:

• religion, which fears creativity;

• culture, which devalues individualism;

• the arts, which teach to imitate;

• society, which falsely values so-called progress;

• religious creeds are dangerous because they give ready answers;

• advances in technology result in the loss of certain kinds of wisdom (a watch - inability to tell time by the sun's position in the sky);

• self-reliance is the triumph of a principle;

• tradition and history should be adjusted to the time;

• republican;

• traveling - fool's paradise;

• nature - inspiration, authority.

Gothic romance

• not optimistic;

• more problems than opportunities;

• sensitive to human frailty, weakness, limitation;

• spoke for skeptical minority;

• described not what is but what might be;

• ambiguity;

• darkness;

• short, interest in action rather than in the development of character;

• action - fantastic, allegorical;

• characters tend to have mysterious origins; tend to be ideal, exaggerated, obsessed, more like types than fully-formed human beings.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

• wrote about sin and guilt;

• his conclusions neutral and even pessimistic;

• concerned with people's relationship with one another (dark side of them);

• his characters struggle with pride and intellectual arrogance and egotism;

• often isolated, lonely;

• thorn between the intellect “head” and the emotions “heart”;

• separated from people and the other part of themselves;

• haunted by the past.

“MY KINSMAN, MAJOR MOLINEUX” 1832

(romanticism with Gothic overtones)

The journey of Robin from the tranquil life of a village to the violent, rebellious life of a prerevolutionary New England port. Robin comes to the port city in search of a relative who will help him get started on his rise into success. But he soon learn that his relative is himself a fallen and broken man.

• set in colonial America; moonlit evening in Boston (1750-1760?); part of the Mass. Bay Colony; before American Revolution (1765-1783);

• after 1686, resentment of British rule manifested itself in hostility against anyone who represented or supported British rule (Major Molineux);

• Robin:

• country lad;

• nearly 18;

• travels to Boston to find his relative;

• wore coarse grey coat, well-worn but in excellent repair; undergarments constructed of leather, blue stockings (handiwork of a mother or a sister);

• brown curly hair; well-shaped features; bright cheerful eyes;

• Major Molineux:

• promised to use his money and influence to help Robin make a start;

• tarred and feathered - because of the loyalty to Britain;

• symbolism:

• polished cane - urban, sophisticated life;

• periwig of grey hair - social status;

• cudgel carried by Robin - country life; Robin carries the root of his farm life with him but left part of it behind;

• man with divided face - emblem of war & fire (red) and death & grief (black);

• scarlet petticoat - sin and shame;

• moon hitting the open bible in the church - rejection of English religion;

• settings:

• maze of shadowy streets;

• people are wearing strange attire and speaking a strange language;

• church - innocence, purity;

• invisible signs;

• story's suspense:

• lack of information;

• selective narration;

• supernatural;

• Robin's perspective;

• irony;

• mystery;

• tension - whispering, laughing;

• people may know sth threatening;

• an individual against a crowd;

• Robin's laughter at the end:

• wants to think independently;

• wants to be a part of the crowd;

• doesn't want to be taken as a British supporter;

• by laughing becomes a patriot;

• it made him a man - capable of surviving on his own;

• age story:

• Robin loses innocence;

• gains knowledge and experience;

• could represent whole colonies;

• American maturing;

• doesn't need help from his uncle.

• dream?

• nightmare - maze of shadowy streets; strange people, strange language; he's continually frustrated in attempt to achieve his goal (common in dreams);

• “Well, Robin, are you dreaming?” Robin doesn't answer but asks for directions to the ferry or for direction out of the dream.

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891)

• an autodidact;

• concerned with the theme of innocent beings caught up in a claustrophobic world where they encounter an alien versions of themselves;

• reality of evil;

• questioning western values;

• denounce values of individualism and self-confidence;

• social commentator;

“BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER” 1853

The Story of Wall Street

• political reason;

• critique of the growing materialism;

• setting: a law office on Wall Street, New York, mid 19^th century;

• tone: Narrator's genuine emotional involvement;

• 1^st person narration - getting closer to Bartleby; we identify with feeling of the narrator trying to deal with Bartleby; we are fully engaged with the story

Bartleby

Bartleby shows up at the Narrator's office, seeking work as a scrivener.

When asked to assist the Narrator in checking a document, Bartleby refuses, saying only that he "would prefer not to."

Over the next several days, Bartleby "prefers not to" do several things, ranging from working with the rest of the office team to check a set of documents, to even going to the next room to get Nippers.

One Sunday, the Narrator discovers Bartleby at the office. Bartleby boldly demands that the Narrator leave for a while so he can get ready for the day. It turns out that Bartleby lives in the office.

Bartleby prefers not to answer any questions about his personal life or his past.

Bartleby informs the Narrator that he will not be copying any more. After a couple of days, he tells the Narrator that he will never copy anything again.

When asked to vacate the office, Bartleby refuses.

Even when the Narrator tries to pay Bartleby to leave, Bartleby just returns the money unobtrusively.

On the morning by which the Narrator demanded Bartleby leave, the Narrator discovers that the scrivener is still living in the office, and that he doesn't intend to leave.

Bartleby's presence begins to disturb clients and associates of the law practice.

Bartleby stays in the office, even when everyone else vacates, and another lawyer moves in.

Kicked out of the office, Bartleby continues to live in the building, which offends all of the other tenants.

When the Narrator returns to try and reason with him, Bartleby claims that he prefers not to do anything but stay in the building, though, as he says, he is "not particular."

Bartleby is removed from the building and taken to jail at the Tombs; he doesn't put up a fight.

Bartleby refuses to speak to the Narrator when he comes to visit; he may blame his former employer for what has happened to him.

For days, Bartleby prefers not to eat.

Bartleby dies in prison, presumably because he prefers not to live any longer.

• once worked in the Dead Letter office and lost his job after administrative shake-up. The Lawyer's theory: reading all those letters must have been so depressing that it drove Bartleby slowly to his apathy and emotional detachment; dead letters may represent Melville's unpopular novels.

• looks pale, thin and ill;

• some critics think Bartleby represents Melville himself - the Lawyer represents Melville's readers, asking Melville to write the same old fiction he had been writing all along, and Bartleby is Melville himself, replying that he would prefer not to, and eventually withdrawing into himself and misery.

• in order to survive we need to be together - Bartleby dies because he alienates himself.

The Lawyer (Narrator)

• about 60 years old;

• has two other scriveners - Turkey and Nippers and an errand boy - Ginger Nut;

• “prefer” beings to infect the Lawyer's speech and mind;

• slowly unfolds the events of the story, provides small details that better set a scene or highlight a character;

Turkey - the eldest employee; good worker in the morning; in the afternoon his face becomes husk and he gets a short temper - makes more mistakes.

Nippers - young, works best in the afternoon; in the morning troubled by stomach.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)

• adopted by a tobacco exporter Allan;

• “art for art's sake”; aesthetic over didactic;

• purity of style;

• tone of moral detachment;

• neutrality;

• interest in morbid (niezdrowy) psychology; familiar with medical theories;

• in conflict with American Renaissance.

“THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO” 1846

• Fortunato hurts Montresor a thousand times, then insults him.

• Montresor wants revenge for the insult, and he wants it to be permanent.

• He meets Fortunato and lures him into the Montresor family catacomb.

• Plying him with wine, and the promise of rare Amontillado, Montresor leads Fortunato deeper and deeper into the underground graveyard.

• Eventually, Fortunato walks into a man-sized hole in the wall of one of the crypts.

• Montresor chains him up and walls him in.

• 
  punishment without proof;

• universal feeling of revenge, deception;

• setting: Europe, Italy (Poe didn't travel):

• exotic, unknown;

• wine;

• past, vaults, ruins;

• old family, ancestry tradition;

• treatment of the death is different (religious context);

• confession (50 years later) “you” - priest (?);

• season - carnival - winter - evening - dusk - getting dark;

• changing in the setting: niter, bones, catacombs, loneliness, below river, going down - sin - trip to hell - madness, seeking revenge;

• narrative (1^st person):

• subjective;

• we don't know exactly his plan;

• we can't trust him;

• deception:

• jester costume - Fortunato was fooled;

• family motto - no one attacks me with impunity;

• wine - alcohol - loosing rational control (easy way to control sb);

• black mask - don't trust me;

• shadowing - “I will not die from cough...” “True, true”;

• reference to masonry - mysterious, secret brotherhood organization;

• description of characters - few details:

• Fortunato - expert of wine; vain - the best expert of wine;

• Montresor - playing with Fortunato, sadistic, provocative; irreparably insulted by his acquaintance Fortunato - seeks revenge - name himself judge, jury, and executioner;

• Luchesi - Fortunato's rival in wine tasting

• the sound - inhuman, animal like.

New Poetic Forms

(Whitman, Dickinson)

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

• rejects conventional themes, forms, subjects;

• uses long lines to capture the rhythm of natural speech, free verse, everyday vocabulary;

• sees himself as a representative democratic person;

• captures the largeness of the American continent and its landscape, the variety of people, the range of experiences they have, cultures, religions, passions;

• treats openly the subject of sex - poet of the Body and Soul (the Body shapes the Soul);

• rejects dualism (perfecting the soul - destroying the sensuality);

• believes in presence of God in every person (like Emerson);

• natural love of people; in love with life;

• there can't be acceptance of life without an acceptance of the inevitability of death;

• refuse to imitate older forms, doesn't reject poetic devices (repetition, alliteration, lists);

• the Bible - greatest influence;

• sees the full truth - bright and dark, good and evil.

“SONG OF MYSELF”

(“Leaves of Grass” 4^th July 1855)

• manifesto of democracy;

• manifesto of rules;

• patriotic outburst;

• individualism (Emerson);

• everybody is built from the same matter - unity;

• brotherhood;

• relationship with nature (Emerson);

• emphasis on local;

• continuity of American nation; sense of development;

• takes his chances; risk;

• natural energy, celebrating;

• not affected by society, pure, unlimited, innocent (Emerson);

• intuition (Emerson);

• rediscovering a real world;

• spokesman for everybody;

• reincarnation;

• a break from the formal traditions of the past;

• the best way to do things is to go your own way (Emerson);

• an ideal of independence, equality, optimism and brotherly love;

• against slavery;

• language:

• no rhymes;

• irregular long lines;

• enjambments;

• everyday vocabulary, simple words;

• repetition;

• alliteration;

• personal phrases;

• romantic tone.

“WHOEVER YOU ARE HOLDING ME NOW IN HAND”

• deals with a love that is physical and spiritual;

• personal, intimidate;

• poetry for seamen or soldiers;

• title: holding “Leaves of Grass” in a hand;

• ups-and-downs in relationships;

• love causes uncertainty - destructive, long, exhausting, requires each partner to lose some of his individuality;

• then imagines how and where that relationship could take place;

• finally returns to his uncertainty and says that this relationship will fail;

• suggests that the reader will fail to understand him and his book.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)

published 1955

• concrete imagery;

• forceful language;

• dashes, capitalizations;

• looks inward at her own experience;

• writes for herself and close friends;

• reads: the Bible, Shakespeare, the Brontes, Thoreau, Emerson;

• no husband or children;

• at age 17 no longer attended church;

• writes about anguish, despair, suffering, fear, denial, loss, grief, death, love, affirming, exploring nature (bird, insects), metaphysical;

• great emotional courage, strength, without self-pity;

• simple life;

• self-reliant, independent;

• doesn't follow tradition or religion;

• traditional in use of very old poetic techniques;

• cares about what our lives are all about;

• withdrawn, modest, private, isolated.

[258] “THERE'S A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT”

• it's winter, afternoon;

• "Slant" is capitalized - that's going to be important;

• "there's" and "certain" indicate the speaker's informal kind of voice;

• dashes bridge ideas together;

• "oppresses" - this kind of light is powerful, which hurt your eyes;

• this slant of light is oppresive in the same way the speaker may feel oppressed by the weightiness of cathedral music;

• compares the light to a kind of "Heavenly Hurt" - Heaven's not supposed to hurt;

• "We can find no scar" - the slant of light doesn't leave any physical evidence behind;

• image of winter light - internal conflicts and despair;

• all of these "Meanings" are located within us or in our "internal difference";

• no teacher can teach what this kind of hurt and difference is; it's impossible to define;

• that "difference" can only be understood by the person who holds it;

• "imperial" has a connotation of being everywhere;

• the dashes are acting like the staggered breath that the shadows appear to have;

• the capitalization of "Landscape" and "Shadows" gives the impression that we're dealing with proper nouns like poeple's names (personification);

• dead things and dead people have a "distant" look;

• the last dash left us with feeling as if the poem continues elsewhere.

[712] “BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH -“

• the speaker didn't have a choice about when she was to die;

• personifies Death;

• she accepts her death calmly; no drama, panic;

• Death - kind, gentle, soft, well-mannered;

• "Ourselves" - relationship between the speaker and Death;

• the speaker doesn't think of death as the end, but as a step on the way to eternal life;

• Death didn't speed or hurry;

• the speaker's given up work and free time, and seems pretty content with the ride with Death; is happy and even a little impressed with his manners;

• Dickinson is painting a little scene of what they are riding by (sort of life compression) - it makes death and dying seem like just another ordinary part of life;

• the setting sun signifies the end of the day, but might also stand for the end of life;

• there are no other people or animals and it's getting dark;

• "Gossamer" very thin and delicate material, "Tippet" is silky and thin - she's under-dressed for this journey (unprepared - she wasn't planning this trip);

• "House" - the place of burial;

• the whole story happened centuries ago - the speaker has been dead the whole time;

• this memory remains vivid for the speaker (remembers what they passed on the way, when she got chilly, what the grave looked like).

[986]” A NARROW FELLOW IN THE GRASS”

• the speaker talks about a snake;

• it's being treated more like a human than an animal;

• the snake and the person scare each other;

• "your Feet" - tries to get us to consider the experience from our own point of view;

• this snake has some human qualities ("he likes");

• the speaker adopts the point of view of a man, reflecting back on those carefree days of boyhood, when he would walk around without shoes on;

• he's a fan of animals, he feels some deeper connection to them;

REALISM (1865-1915)

(Crane, James)

I. Historical Context

A. Civil War brings demand for a “truer” type of literature that doesn't idealize people or places, dissatisfaction with the Civil War;

B. People in society defined by “class”; materialism;

C. Reflect ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and Marx (how money and class structure control a nation).

II. Genre/Style

A. Realism

- a reaction against romanticism; told it like it was;

- focus on lives of ordinary people; rejected heroic and adventure;

- anti-materialism;

- view of nature as a powerful and indifferent force beyond man's control;

B. Naturalism (sub-genre of Realism)

- like Realism but a darker view of the world;

- the universe is unpredictable; fate is determined by chance; free will is an illusion;

- character's lives shaped by forces they can't understand or control;

- role of instincts (greed, fear, hunger);

Emile Zola: an attempted objectivity, frankness, an amoral attitude toward material, a philosophy of determinism (a weak individual overwhelmed by the forces of nature), pessimism,

C. Novels, short stories;

D. Often aims to change a specific social problem;

E. Dominant themes: survival, fate, violence, nature as an indifferent force

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916)

• cosmopolitan;

• doesn't worry about problems of everyday life;

• travelled extensively with his parents (Geneva, Paris, London): no real roots in American community;

• 1876 settled in England; 1915 denounced an Am citizenship in 1915;

• influenced by Hawthorne, Balzac and Turgenev (comedy, novels of manners);

• principles advocated by William Dean Howells;

• international theme and upper middle class life, Amercian innocence encountering European decadence;

• the art of fiction and of the metropolitan setting;

• his characters: individuals isolated from society and looking for their place in it;

• psychological realism (working of consciousness of characters): paved the way for the stream of consciousness of J.Joyce and W. Faulkner;

• the story filtered through one of the characters;

• draws attention to external appearances, to the look and substance of material objects, to peculiarities of dress, gesture, or movement because such details defined his characters' social position;

• “The Art of Fiction” (1884): novel as a serious genre; the writer must depict the picture of a more fully realized life: sharper, more significant; fiction should be read not for its instruction or entertainment but for its craft; reconstruction - an active process of not pure imitation but intensification of reality;

• shift from action to presentation of manners of characters.

DAISY MILLER (1878)

• American traveling;

• American femininity;

• key words: politeness, niceness, reputation, taste;

• American innocence even roughness (and lack of education) against European refinement and observance of social conventions;

• European society strictly regulated by a set of norms that stifled women

• tragedy of manners

Daisy:

• cousin of Henry James, died at age of 24;

• fresh, straightforward attitude;

• innocence;

• purity of heart;

• significance of her name - Daisy - flower, innocence; Winterbourne - winter; Daisy dies after she meets Winterbourne.

• influence of Emerson

• shallow, ignorant, provincial

• spiritual, independent

• interested in manipulating men and making herself the center of attention

Expectation of women who wants to be a part of society:

• no flirting;

• don't address man - older women are entitled to be opened;

• conventions of what to wear;

• don't hang out with a man who's not your fiancée/husband,

• meet only with Americans.

Daisy Miller - Anglo-Saxon race; Giovanelli - Italian race

Mother:

• doesn't have control over their children (weak);

• simple American woman;

• not intelligent;

• naive;

• misreads society codes.

Brother:

• rude;

• not controlled;

• natural;

• cynical;

• not educated;

• honest.

Narrator (Winterbourne):

• “studies” at Geneva - is extremely devoted to a lady that lived there

• personality: stiff;

• knows how to control his emotions;

• rational, logical;

• attracted to a girl, always playing a game;

• treating Daisy: curious, tries to help her, puts himself as more knowledgeable than her;

• ending: I've been in Europe too long - European decadence, poisoned by European conventions - it turned him in a sad person (European decadence, the Old World based on hypocrisy)

• obsessed with a question whether Daisy is a nice girl or not, preoccupied with analyzing Daisy's character

• the story's consciousness - we see and experience the event through his eyes

symbolism: background: the Coliseum, Cross - crucified in Europe (Old World); America - New World

ROME

• antithesis of everything that Daisy stands for

• city of contrasts: ruins - death and decay; sophistication, birth place of Renaissance

• a society whose greatness brought about its own destruction

AMERICAN ABROAD

• after the Civil War Americans went to European countries and expose themselves to art and culture of the Old World

• the clash between two cultures were a widespread phenomenon

• Henry James as he himself lived in Europe saw his compatriots as boorish, undereducated and provincial, unaware of the world outside their own BUT he was fascinated with their earnestness.

STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900)

• naturalist (the main representative);

• lived in New York;

• a journalist studying slums of New York - the Bowery;

• influenced by impressionism - colors; operates by means of images;

• pessimism and blind fate;

• indifferent nature;

• attempts to render faithfully the sounds of common speech as it is really spoken, without any embellishments or grammatical corrections;

• believes that the writer should first experience whatever it was that he intended to describe;

• often uses irony;

“THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY” 1898

• ironic glimpse of frontier town (myth; belongs to the past);

• genre:

• western story;

• violent, cruel characters;

• characters of bottom, average or below average, try to control themselves;

• set in the American West;

• setting:

- a little town in the middle of nowhere;

- myth of the little town in Western;

- nature + American civilization;

- industrialization of the desert;

- saloon for men;

• lifestyle in the West:

- violence;

- confrontation between good and evil;

- frontier (true American spirit was constructed there);

• description of characters:

- described in sarcastic and ironic way;

- clothes of Scratchy - from the East;

- Potter - not a great sheriff;

- Lady - not young, not pretty, coming from poor family, easily impressed, simple person, not inspirational woman;

- awkwardly behave - people laugh at them;

• no fight in the end:

- code of masculine behavior;

- community governs by rules (the lady upsets it - she's the outsider);

• the saloon:

- six men - some from Texas (independent identity);

- lying dog - slow life;

- diversity in a little town

• social determinism (naturalism)

• section I: San Antonio to Yellow Sky (Pullman train journey)

I: Pullman -> Jack Potter & the bride

II: Yellow Sky

III: Yellow Sky

IV: Yellow Sky -> Jack Potter (the town marshall)

JACK POTTER - section I

- shy

- not talkative

- self-conscious

- ridiculous (out of place)

THE TRAIN

- stands for civilization (which goes from the East to the West)

- the train ride is luxurious

THE BRIDE (what matters about her)

- the gender

- out of place

- obedient

JACK POTTER - section II

- impressive

- people feel safe around him

ENVIRONMENT SHAPES THE INDIVIDUAL (NATURALISM) -> in San Antonio Jack is out of place, lost & and in Yellow Sky he's confident

THE STORY

• an allegorical story about the wild West that undergoes a change

• westerns (wild, open space), gold rush as a literary genre (appears in the '90)

• Crane ironically remarks upon western (a story about the wild West that is dying)

• grotesque, irony in the story

• Jack Potter (a symbol of honesty, strength, masculinity but taken out of the West he's lost, shy and self-conscious)

• the bride interferes (a symbol)

• a classic western: a villain - Scratchy Wilson

• women in westerns: mostly prostitutes, lovers, excuses for men's vengence, etc.

• Scratchy Wilson

• his clothes are from the East (easternized = civilized)

• infantilized (presented as a little boy), Yellow Sky = playground

• the shooting game: the woman spoils the fun (the game is over)

• funnel-shaped tracks (an unimpressive ending)

• death-connected wording (`tomb', `grave' - emplifying the theme of the death of the West)

• a caricature of a western (like a cartoon), although it predates western movies

• disillusion with the western myth (periodic light)

MODERNISM (1915-1945)

(Pound, Frost, Williams, Hughes, Fitzgerald)

I. Historical Context

A. Overwhelming technological changes;

B. World War I (the Great War); first war of mass destruction, The USA entered the war in 1917;

C. Grief over the loss of past; fear of eroding traditions;

D. Rise of youth culture.

E. Analyzing the human personality: Freud - human behavior - irrational and amoral, difficult to control and never known directly, only through dreams and neuroses, Jung - the importance of archetypes;

F. Paris was the cultural capital of the Western world;

G. The Great Depression (started by the crash on Wall Street in 1929)

H. drugs, violent experience, mysticism and art, fascination with primitivism and exoticism, art replaces religion

I. intuition and imagination valorized above reason

J. Art for Art's sake

II. Genre/Style

• dominant mood: alienation/disconnection;

• writing highly experimental: use of fragments, stream of consciousness, interior dialog;

• writers seek to create a unique style

• fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, symbolism, imagism

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940)

• lower middle-class background - underprivileged;

• religious formation - Catholic school;

• went to Princeton (didn't finish) - then to army - met Zelda (she turned him down)

“THE GREAT GATSBY” (1925)

• wasn't successful at first;

• American jeremiad (Expresses dissatisfaction with the present state of things and urges a return to the traditional ways and values of Puritan Fathers.) corrects people;

• meditation on American 1920s as a whole

• novel of manners

• “The Sun Also Rises” was influenced by “the Great Gatsby.”

Themes:

• the decline of American Dream

• the spirit of the 1920s

• the difference between social classes

• the role of past in dreams of the future

American elements in the novel:

• pursuit of happiness (money is happiness);

• work ethic (hard work);

• The American Dream;

• myth of success (Ben Franklin “from rags to riches”);

• “tomorrow” - progress;

Critic:

• Fitzgerald is addressing those myths;

• rise of cities;

• poverty;

• unemployment;

• inequality;

• hard work - they cheat;

• scientific racism - eugenics -  is the belief and practice which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population. It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics) - Tom's reading “The Rise of the Colored Empires”

Tom

• says that family should be strong;

• needs Daisy for breeding purposes;

• ignorant (Goddard - Stoddard);

• doesn't know what he's talking about;

• multimillionaire;

• polo player;

• seduced by wrong kind of discourses (racism);

• faithless self-assured brute;

• pushes people around.

Daisy

• careless;

• spoilt;

• vain;

• shallow;

• ends up with Tom;

• kills woman;

• not capable of deeper emotions

Gatsby

• true (?) fake language ”old sport,” fake identity James Gats - Jay Gatsby (self-made man), fake style - wants to be sb else

• genuine;

• believes that by pilling up great wealth and its material symbols and setting on top of the pile the young woman he had loved and lost a few years earlier he can redeem the past and give it the happiest of endings;

• misreads the American Dream (green light - Daisy becomes his own myth);

• idealist;

• parody of an American self-made man

Nick

• decent;

• sets the moral tone for the story;

• maintains old-fashioned standards of morality and values;

• prone to corruption;

• see Gatsby as a victim;

• pure;

• idealist;

• East is not a place for him;

• stockbroker;

• not judgmental;

• loyal friend;

• see NYC as Dutch settlers.

Gatsby's parties:

• glitter and shallowness;

• people compared to moths attracted by the light;

• displaced party-goers cultivating hedonism

EAST COAST

East Egg - old money, stable incomes, fast-paced aristocracy, Tom, Daisy;

West Egg - lower-middle class, new money, self-made rich, Gatsby, Nick

NICK RETURNS TO MINNESOTA

The green light on Daisy's dock:

• Gatsby's hopes for the future

• Gatsby's dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object (Daisy that is idealized by him)

• Gatsby didn't understand that what he wanted to achieve had passed him by and he wasted his whole life

The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg - God starring down upon and judging American society

The valley of ashes - represents moral and social decay; the plight of the poor - George Wilson that lose his vitality

Gatsby's fortune - the rise of organized crime

1920s

• women smokes, shorter dresses, divorce is an option, jazz is forbidden music

• era of decayed social and moral values

• cynicism, greed, empty pursuit of pleasure

• corruption of the American Dream - desire for easy money and pleasure surpasses more noble goals - dream that doesn't have value

• the generation of young Americans that fought in WWI became disillusioned

• materialism and consumerism

• prohibition

ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)

• local poet;

• puts human being in the centre of his poetry;

• quiet reflective poetry of actual life;

• colloquial speech avoiding formalism;

• classical emotional restraint;

• uses old patterns; a traditionalist - distanced himself from modernist poetry (even realist);

• a humanist, against the naturalist tradition of aligning the human with the animal world;

• rejected the Romantic tradition of nature as benevolent (dobroczynny) and sympathetic;

• rejected symbolism;

• the language should be expressive of the character and the mood of the speaker;

• traditional verse forms

• psychological interest

• rejected cosmopolitanism.

“MENDING WALL” 1914

• basic level of interpretation - one neighbor thinks that the wall is unnecessary, the second that good fences make good neighbors;

• nature is against the wall - hunters - animals;

• every spring is a mending time (ritual);

• spring - radical changes;

• distance between the neighbors (line);

• Frost is aware of the power of the borders - idea of opening up on many levels;

• “Good fences make good neighbors” repeated - emphasis, condition to coexist;

• neighbor - traditionalist, distrustful, not independent thinker, primitive (darkness);

• language: simple, everyday vocabulary, monolog, keeps formal properties of the poetry - alliterations, meter, enjambment, number of syllables.

EZRA POUND (1885-1972)

• impersonal, concrete poetry;

• imagism - ordinary language, free verse, concentrated word pictures;

• spent a decade in a mental hospital;

• cosmopolitan;

• demanded a new, sharp, hard, clear, dry verse, free from emotional slither (foundations of IMAGISM);

• insisted on objectivity, clarity, and simplicity;

• direct treatment of the thing;

• use no word that doesn't contribute to the presentation;

• compose in the sequence of the musical phrase;

• common speech, exact word, new rhythms, freedom of subject.

• “The Cantos” his major work begun in 1917, published in 1925. A modern epic - the tale of the tribe. Poet becomes cultural hero. The poem offers a compendium of history, philosophy, Confucian principles, myth, and economic and social critique.

“A PACT” 1916

• In 1909, Pound wrote an essay titled “What I Feel About Walt Whitman,” in which he denounced the older poet's “crudity” and “barbaric yawp.” He believed that Whitman was the epitome of American authenticity. Also disliked his work because he felt that the poet did not show enough restraint (powściągliwość).

• once saw Whitman as his creative antithesis, but has since matured;

• Whitman = paternal figure; Pound was “pig-headed” but his views appropriately evolved;

• Pound felt intimidated by Whitman's success;

• Pound was reluctant to take inspiration from others;

• describes Whitman's purpose in the poetic world as lesser than his own;

• insinuates that W. paved the way simply by finding this new wood and offering it to the world; now it is Pound's turn to craft the raw material into refined artistic masterpieces;

• his true opinion will never change;

• nature is crude, raw, and unpolished in its purest state, which is how Pound saw Whitman's writing;

• Pound sees his role as carving/refining the raw wood;

• conflict: romantic tradition vs. modernism.

“IN A STATION OF THE METRO” 1913

• the poet is trying to get us to see things from his perspective;

• “apparition” means that faces are becoming visible to him very suddenly and probably disappearing just as fast;

• he may be seeing the faces reflected in a puddle over black asphalt;

• probably at night, after the rain;

• the entire poem is a single metaphor;

• where you see a bunch of faces crammed in a station, he sees beautiful petals;

• doesn't have to go out into the forest or the countryside to find natural beauty;

• the situation is so common that it could be any station.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963)

• local experience;

• inspired by his medical practice;

• influenced by the Imagist of Pound

• everyday situations;

• topics close to life's beauty and ugliness;

• called himself “United Stateser” - proud US; aware of American diversity; generation of new immigrants; doesn't have links with England;

• objective;

• against romanticism;

• against allusive and referential poetry

• everything can be a topic for a poem;

• “A Sort of a Song” is a confession about the type of poetry that he writes;

• precision, consciousness of the language, keep the reader awake; powerful

• “Patterson” - attempts to describe as specifically as possible the geographical, social, and psychological realities of the city and the people who live there.

“THIS IS JUST TO SAY” 1934

Poem about a man who has eaten somebody's plumps. They were delicious. No depth in it.

The Harlem Renaissance (1915-1929)

(Langston Hughes)

A black cultural movement that emerged in Harlem during the 20s; literature and art flourished. - Freud, Jazz (abandoning of Puritan purity)

Harlem - district of New York, black people move in, white move out.

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)

• spontaneous poetry;

• call and response (churches, black music);

• experiments with the blues and jazz idioms;

• repetition and simple monosyllabic and dissyllabic words;

• the speech and culture of average African Americans;

• topics: African American identity, miscegenation (skrzyżowanie ras); racism and segregation in the South; disappointment with the American dream, endurance of his people and race pride

“MULATTO” 1927

• deep South - strict segregation rules, racially mixed children;

• play of light - black is also natural;

• writes from the voice of several different characters;

• little yellow bastard boy = a son of a white father and a black mother (a slave) - women were often raped by their masters;

• the body of female slave is just a toy;

• white children were taught to be prejudiced from a very young age;

• even though the father refuses to accept him, this “little yellow bastard boy” won't feel alone.

CONTEMPORARY (1945 - present)

POST-MODERNISM

I. Historical context

A. social movements - protests against racial segregation; pacifists movement against the war in Vietnam, black power movement, feminism movement, Chicano movement, Indian movement;

B. the rise of media culture - development of new information - overload of information;

C. disappointment of American society

II. Genre/Style

A. no depth in fiction - linguistic product to entertain you;

B. literature as social and political critique;

C. collage, parody, break down of genres, metafiction, art is artificial, anti-mimetic art

JOHN BARTH (b. 1930)

• rejects the Modernist concern for who we are and why we behave as we do;

• the self-reflexive writer - is often a participant, a character in his own fiction, both acting within it and commenting upon it; reminds reader that what he is reading is a fabrication that has no significant connection with actual life;

• influenced by J. L. Borges “The Garden of Forking Paths;”

• well-familiar with the canon of British literature;

• “The Literature of Exhaustion” 1967 - against the Pound era, rejecting the illusion of novelty, certain literary genres have been exhausted, the only option is a parody of existing ones: parodies of thrillers, science fiction, the war novel, the historical romance

“NIGHT-SEA JOURNEY” [from “LOST IN THE FUN HOUSE”] 1968

• question about human being; why we struggle;

• depicts our lives as absurd that doesn't have any meaning;

• purpose of life: reproduction;

• it's story about fertilizing the egg;

• Gnosticism - God withdrew his knowledge from the world, prizes journey of getting knowledge;

• theory of the Darwinism - survival of the fittest, natural selection, competition, being strong, life is a struggle;

• there are plenty of references to other works - various interpretation of our lives, society uses language full of quotes - it's not your language;

• journey is hallucination.

ROBERT COOVER (b. 1932)

• metafiction - fiction about fiction

“THE BABYSITTER” 1969

• experimenting with the form;

• writing is a play;

• it's not serious;

• technique of collage

• reality and fiction

• sexual desire

• deconstructs the image of a perfect family (father that has a job, mother, 3 kids)

• they hire a babysitter and go to a party

• sexual fantasies:

- father and the babysitter

- Mark wants to rape a babysitter

- Jack and the babysitter

- Dolly in the girdle

- Jimmy playing around with the babysitter

• it's not specified whether the fantasies are fulfilled

• narration: 1^st person and 3^rd person

• themes: water, TV, games - life is a game

• sometimes the shows on TV are a commentary to the events in the plot; we don't know if it's reality or sth on TV

POSTWAR POETRY

• a desire to destroy the modernist fathers (Eliot and Yeats)

• poetry stressed the personal again

• based on the direct voices of oral readings

• denied the authority of tradition

• denied that poetry should be meditative, difficult to interpret and explore religious sacramental aspects of secular experience;

• direct contact with experience

CONFESSIONAL POETS

• major confessional poets: Robert Lowell (Life Studies [1959] - the failure of communication within the family), Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton

• was as authentic as possible - what was private was also public

• description of one's most intimate life: nervous breakdowns, abortions, love-hate relationships with parents, suicidal fears

• first-person voice

• direct recording of experience

• exploration of the most drastic states of consciousness, emotional poetry

• challenge to the decorum of the time

• reaction against modernism, anonymity of the modern world

• confessional poets: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton

SYLVIA PLATH (1932 - 1963)

• confessional poetry - personal, describing poet's life

• Lowell's students at Boston University

• committed suicide shortly after writing her most important pieces

• tried committing suicide before, having been depressed since her teenage years

• had two young kids with her husband Ted Hughes from whom she had separated (he left her for another woman, after her death he took care of the children)

• her father was German and during WWII people were hostile to him and his family (even though the Plath weren't supporting the Nazis); she hated her father

• obsessive with death

• talks about her personal conflict and suffering in terms of the Jewish holocaust in order to render the scale of her emotional suffering

"LADY LAZARUS" 1962

• written a few months before her death

• the form has a poem of an extended monologue on the tortures she has to endure on the part of those who keep her alive

• the speaker in the poem can be identified as her

• she discusses her suicide attempts

• association with Lazarus from the Bible, the difference: he was grateful for his resurrection, she wasn't

• doctor = enemy

• she mentions Jews & Nazis; the resemblance is in the attitude to the body; doctors objectified her body (like Nazis did when they were making soap from the ashes of their victims) because it gives a proof of their skill

• she says that she'll soon be back to normal PHYSICALLY

• "And like the cat I have nine times to die." - autoirony; she jokes about her suicide attempts, she's detached from her life, she doesn't take herself seriously

• "dying is an art" and she "has a call to do it"

• she sees her suicide attempts as performance, the audience are the people who rushed to the hospital after having heard about her suicide attempt because they wanted to see a girl who almost died, look at her body and examine it

• she fears the public display of her body and her suffering, yet the personal tone she adopts seems to contradict the intention to keep her privacy

• she compares her body to the body of Christian martyrs (relicts)

• she says she's doctor's great work of art

• last four stanzas: a "promise" that she will finally kill herself and they won't be able to save her

• she shows herself as a phoenix who rises again and again

• gender dynamic (a little bit of feminism): "And I eat men like air" (why not just doctors? or people?) - seeks vengeance on her male tormentors

• three-line stanza: an Italian tradition of terza rima but experiments with the rhyme structure and rhythm

THE BEAT GENERATION

• major writers: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights Bookstore founded in 1953), Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso

• break down conventional taboos

• revolt against the commercialized society, conventions and sexual repression

• rejection of any limitations of art

• free and spontaneous artistic repression

• description of the experience of crime, madness, drugs, anarchy

• attempt to reach higher states of consciousness: hallucinogenic drugs and meditation and Eastern religions

• no taboos - return to the body, sexuality, homosexuality; blasphemy, obscenity

• they failed to offer any solid moral or aesthetic values to substitute for the tired American values they criticize

• influence of Whitman and visionary poets: Blake, Rimbaud or Artaud

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997)

“HOWL” 1955

• laments the 1950s wastes - good minds being destroyed

• a social protest

• marginalized and outcasts: criminals, homosexuals, the vagabonds are transformed into the visionary rebels, true poets who refuse to compromise their vision and freedom to the constraints of the society

• urban life fosters isolation and madness

• homosexual drug cult

• form influenced by Walt Whitman - the form of catalogs

• spontaneous composition

• he juxtaposes, enumerates and lists various images and attempts to shorten a distance between poetry and experience, and the poet and the audience

• the second part of the poem tries to exorcise Moloch - youth devouring God of social oppression and mechanical consciousness

• the third part laments bums, dissidents, madman haunted by Moloch and brings some kind of hope into the poem through insistence on compassion and love

• chaos, bombarding with images

THE NEW YORK POETS

• major writers: Frank O'Hara (Lunch Poems), Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, James Schuyler

• cosmopolitan in spirit

• treated themselves with self-irony and detachment

• poetry is not to impose order

• relies on colors and play

• technique of collage

• influence of abstract expressionism (Jackson Pollock)

• priority of the creative process over the result

• everyday experience

JOHN ASHBERY (b. 1927)

• open to experiment

• influenced by avant-garde painting (Pollock)

• fascinated by pure poetry

• recording raw sensations - sounds, smells, colors

• opens himself to chaos

• Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)

“PARADOXES AND OXYMORONS” 1981

• a poem becomes live when it's being read

• reverse of the roles of reader and speaker

• reaching out to grab reader's attention

• the author cannot control the reader's interpretation

• instead of the reader's analysis of the poem, “Paradoxes and Oxymorons” presents an analysis of the reader

• it's up to a reader to truly decide the poem's meaning

ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979)

• influenced and encouraged to write by a modernist poet Marianne Moore

• a student of Robert Lowell, befriended him and encouraged to confessional poetry, yet was against the personal in her own poetry

• insisted on a detached impersonal voice that focuses on the details of description

• never part of any literary movement

“THE FISH” (from North and South 1946)

• moral purpose of nature

• the speaker is a little conflicted about catching the fish

• there's a difference between how the speaker thought she would feel and react, an how it actually went down

• the speaker comes to respect the fish and lets it go

• the colors migh symbolize victory (brown-white-red-black-pink-yellow-green-orange-rainbow)

• the rainbow might symbolize the speaker putting all pieces together in order to make the decision to release the fish

• the speaker is attentive - plenty of details, isn't impulsive - didn't let the fish go for the whole poem (cruel bastard!!!)

AMERICAN DRAMA

Beginning of the American drama: immigrants come from cities that had supported art theaters. American upper classes were traveling to Europe and picked up new ideas. The immigrants brought “city culture” as well as urbane cultural criticism to America. The new theater came to America during the decade of World War I, a time when the country was forced to look toward Europe. The birth of drama in America coincided with the first publication of the psychological theories of S. Freud.

• the heritage of colonial America: theatrical performances illegal (repealed in 1789)

• drama considered inferior to poetry and fiction

• plays prior to the 1920s derivative of Europe, using lower genres such as burlesque

• 1920s the real beginning of the American Drama

• Provincetown Players (1915-1929) in Mass. a theatre company dedicated to staging original plays by new American dramatists, in 1916 they moved to Greenwich Village in NYC and were joined by Eugene O'Neill

• theories of Freud and Jung, the “Jazz Age”

Broadway

• was giving a lot of technical virtuosity and melodramatic display but little of the spirit of the time

• commercial success

Off Broadway

• born with the Provincetown Players and the Washington Square Players (1915)

• revolt against the established theatre

• plays for a more demanding audience

• a number of well-known actors debuted there

• in 1949 The Off Broadway League of Theatres formed

• in late 60s: an experimental theatre open to ethnic and gay theatre

EDWARD ALBEE (b. 1928)

• wrote: The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, The American Dream (off Broadway productions)

“WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?” 1962

• full-length play stage on Broadway

• theme of existential loneliness in a modern city

• people seeking communication and failing to reach out to each other - violence

• the setting: a campus of small New England University

• a middle-aged couple initiates a young romantic couple into the life of disillusionment and mutual cruelty

• exposing pretensions and lies of a middle class life

• tripartite structure: “Fun and Games,” “Walpurgisnacht” (the night of witches, a night of horror), “The Exorcism”

• brutal realistic everyday language

• impossibility to distinguish between truth and imagination

• Freudian theme of a powerful domineering father overshadowing the relationship (the case of both women)

• the theme of failure: George's failure as a professional and a father; Martha's failure as a woman of ambition and as a mother

• criticism of the American dream understood as a rat race: George's competing with a young ambitious professor of biology

• science vs. humanities: genetic perfection vs. chaos of human life; George as a guardian of old type of humanity vs. the promise of a new biologically perfect humanity (Nick and his work); Nick's perfection: an athlete, good looking and bright, an ambitious man of success

• the title from a song: “who's afraid of a big bad wolf?” - being afraid of being psychoanalyzed, love-hate relationship, impossibility to differentiate the truth and imagination

• old couple: lost values, cynical, no energy, disillusioned, George - past, accepts imperfections

• new couple: new generation, not honest, built on a lie, interest in money

Gosia & Pacuś

American Independence 4^th July 1776

American Revolution 1765-1783

Civil War 1861-1865

End of Slavery 1865

USA in the Great War 1917

Great Depression 1929

Gothic story:

- abnormal psychology;

- the supernatural;

- provoking excitement and terror.

---