Early American Literature

Indians: At the beginning – myths, legends, tales, lyrics – orally transmitted by Indians cultures. Literature was diverse – narratives from quasi nomadic (pseudo koczownicze) cultures, agricultural tribes, desert tribes etc.

• Indian stories:

• glow with reverence for nature

• nature is alive

• main characters - animals or plants

Am Indian literature genres – chants, myths, fairy tales, riddles, proverbs, epics, etc.

Puritan Times 1650-1750

The Pilgrim Fathers

Plymouth – Mayflower – (December 1620) – (102 passengers half of them died - harsh winter) Mayflower Compact (we work, stick together), they left England (to America), because they didn’t agree with the king James I – didn’t agree with religion rules, they were against rich churches & bishops

William Bradford (1590 – 1657)

• deeply pious

• he reached prosperity (Holland)

• well educated (self educated – knowledge of several languages.)

• signed the Mayflower Compact

• became Governor Carver (of Plymouth in Massachusetts Bay Colony)

• 1^st historian of his colony

From of Plymouth Plantation Book I ( 1651) chronicle

In the fragment we had in a book there is a description of America as a new land:

• no help “no houses, no friends”,

• barbarians – Indians “showed them no small kindness”

• sharp and violent winter

• a hideous and desolate wilderness – “full of wild beasts and wild man”

• new land full of wood & thickets (trees and bushes)

• separate from civil parts of the world

• Holland - little help

• England - trials (prosecutions)

Religion

• John Calvin’s followers

• depravity (man evil, sinful, weak- humans are wicked & evil by nature)

• predestination (God chooses who go to hell\Heaven)

• the Elect believed that they go to Heaven and will be saved)

• some people doomed for hell or heaven

• they believe in power of money (hypocracy today)

Theocracy

• people, instrument of God,

• believed that God chose them,

• following rules of religion if not  persecution (205’witches’ of Salem)

John Winthrop (1588 – 1649)

A model of Christian Charity

• the idea of unity comes to work together, the idea of togetherness

• 1630 migration to Massachusetts Bay

• agreement with God (prosper future generations)

• Unity, togetherness of Puritan members – body.

America

• A city upon a hill (For we must consider, that we shall be as a City upon a hill The eyes of all people are upon Us’ – model for other nations, ideal community to learn from)

• the Promised Land

• the New World

• A new Zion – heaven, Eden, The New Jerusalem,

A perfect Puritan (character traits):

• religious pious

• prosperous,

• brave, strong though

• self reliant

• togetherness

• hard working

• determined

• looking inward  self analysis, deeds (God’s watching) analyzing themselves, the tendency to self-analyzing, because God is observing us

• pragmatic (God +money)

• strict morals

• democracy

• enjoyed drinking (not in public) and making pleasures

criticism

• notion of democracy (some laws for everybody while -> killing Indians

• they liked to drink a lot (but they were criticizing other drinkers)

• two-faced people

Historiography

• letters

• diaries

• histories

• sermons

• chronicles

Jonathan Edwards:

• Sinners in the hands of an Angry God (1733)

• a sermon (“if people don’t go to church, they’ll go to hell)

reaction J. Edwards

• a campaign to call people to convert, to go to church to save people -> GREAT AWAKENING , to teach people a lesson

The age of Reason 18^th century the 18^th c. \The Enlightenment

Age

• the age of science (Isaac Newton – gravitation, English; Voltaire –French philosopher; Locke –English philosopher)

• politics ( revolution -War of Independence)

• Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) & Constitution (1789)

• people in power - new believe in science not God

Deism

• God is creator, not ruler\ reasoned faith in God \separation of church and state\ end of theocracy

• study of the mankind\ no longer God but man -Man is naturally good, capable of improvement\ reaction against the depravity of man)

• Pilgrims’ progress is now the progress of society – American movements

Motto: Reason is supreme

• political pamphlets\ Thomas Paine: Common Sense, newspapers, almanacs, essays: (poetry, drama, novels started late\ immoral)

B. Franklin. (1706-1790)

• scientist, writer, publisher, thinker, philanthropist, diplomat,

• self-educated man – well read in John Locke, Lord Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison etc.; thought himself lgs;

• had Puritan capacity of hard, careful work ; desire to better himself

• tried to help ordinary people  the self-help book

The epitomize (być typowym przykładem) of the age of Reason\ The embodiment of rational man of 18^th c.

• The project of self -improvement blends with Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny (self-analysis).

• Franklin’s ‘Autobiography’ image of the American Dream; Franklin recipe for success and career: self-mode man\ account of his life

  • he lists his 13 virtues:

    • temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility.

• to establish good habits invented calendrical record book

• He was a prosperous man – he wrote it to show people how to be a prosperous man

• The Way to Wealth (1757); maxims, sayings\ created new American consciousness, proverbs newly minted for Americans e.g. “ Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

• Poor Richard’s Almanac (1732 – 1757)

• plain style\ practical literature: almanacs\

• story about Poor Richard and his family

• useful tips for farmers and sailors -

Franklin stands between:

• the Puritans – pragmatic, workaholic

• Romanticism: sensitive to beauty, nature, emotions,

Hector St John De Crevecoeur (1735-1813)

• Letters from American Farmer (1782)

  • Americans are called: new man, new race of man, the western pilgrims

  • p

    man in America

    rosperous, laborious

  • loving their country

  • acting upon new principles

• American personality, ideal American: social, cooperative, good neighbor

• enthusiastic picture (there is flood, work)

• Crevecoeur’s enthusiasm and optimism: the basis of the American Myth: transition & mentally changes from European to American : Man has to regenerate it new conditions, use the opportunity / chance

Puritan and Enlightenment poetry

Puritan poetry

• ( not too much: afraid of it,  secret message between lines, dangerous for morality)

• religious

• moral (the lesson – didactic)

Michael Wigglesworth

• puritan minister

• typical poetry of puritans ‘The Day of Doom’

  • a long poem in ballad measure using horrific imagery to describe the Last Judgment.

  • the awful wrath of an offended God

  • includes numerous poetic addresses to the reader, prayers, and short digressions on related themes

• very long 225 stanzas

• became very popular

Ann Bradstreet

• woman who published poetry

• very well educated

• happily married

• love and family

The Prologue

• lack of skills to write about history (humble)

• To my Dear and Loving Husband – writing about passion and physical love

• A letter to Her Husband

Edward Taylor

• minister

• physician

• public servant

• learned person

• pious, rigorous and strict, against liberalizing tendencies

• hard working

• unknown in that times (until 1930)

• never published his poems

• speak directly and frequently (passionately) to God

• metaphysical lyrics (John Donne, Gorge Herbert)

• salvation through fallen nature

Preparatory Mediations – 43 years, 217 poems

• He never treated it seriously written for pleasure

• emotional and intellectual

• he wrote funeral elegies, lyrics, a 500 page Metrical History of Christianity

Mediation 8

• we don’t accept God’s gift  we suffer (we choose ‘forbidden food’ – we take poison)

• allegoric poem

- literal meaning

- methorical meaning

• God shows us mercy  sends his son Jesus  another chance

• He sticks to rules but there is different picture of god’s mercy

• God leaves us but we will be always his children

Enlightenment

• essays

• political literature

• didacticism

• description of nearly new republic

• nothing original

Poetry of Revolution

• political\ practical purpose

• Harfort\ Connecticu: Wits (Yale) – 1^st poetic ‘circle’

• John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, Joe Barlow

influences:

• British Swift, Pope, Dryden, (satire), Milton (epic)

• Greek, Roman: Homer, Virgil (neoclassicism)

• form

  • epic

  • mock heroic epic

  • satire

  • couplets

  • blank verse

  • iambic pentameter

• style

  • patriotic\religious visions

  • old fashioned lg

  • elevated tone

Romanticism

• wild nature

• legends historical events legends, myths, historical events, the original tradition

• mystified Indians, frontier, countryside, Revolution

• Americans don’t have long history therefore they referred to local folklore & Culture (Indians)

3 views on nature

• Am literature – branch of British literature (am. Lit. was too young to be independent, so there was a continuation of British lit)

• Am literature – notional, based on Am experience, character (they described Indians, wrote about pioneers, frontier)

• Am lit. universal (product of mankind, we should share & think about lit. that belongs to everybody)

Novel

• Puritans: novel, drama – dangerous, immoral ideas

• XVIIIc – British influences: Defoe, Fielding, Richardson

• 1^st Am novel (1789) William Hill Brown – Power of Sympathy

• pragmatic purpose: religious, moralistic advice (didactic novel)

Gothic novel

• setting: mysterious: castle, ruins, exotic

• characters: lonely, insane, insane people, lonely, supernatural products of human imagination that don’t really exist

• elements of a horror story: suspense, fear, sleepwalking

Washington Irving and Knickerbockers

• Early XIX c New York – centre of Am lit. writing

• 1810 – 40 Knickerbockers’ era

• Irving – popular in USA, Bryt. – 1^st who makes a living through literature

• 1809 – history of new York by Diedrich Knickerbockers (mixture of facts and legends of New York)

  • elements of European culture, history, tradition

  • events and legends – invented

  • local history of NY

  • humorous, mocking

• 1819 The Sketch, Book of Geoffrey Crayon ‘Rip van Winkle’

  • plot  old German folk tales

  • local geography  collar

  • accepted as authentic Am legend

Rip Van Winkle as gothic story

• remote forest

• 20 years of dream

• Dutch knows his name

James Fennimore Cooper

• Am Walter Scott

• Am characters: pioneer, Indian, Yankee sailor

• sea stories – romantic and realistic

• criticized for weak style, lg, plot

• Letherstocking series – Am experience – moving westward

• “The last of the Mohicans”

• Letherstocking – outcast, he doesn’t want to belong to white people group, but he can’t fully belong to Indians

• Natty Bamboo – frontiersman, nature lover, isolated, idealistic, spiritual, peaceful – better than society – Am. Adam

• Chingachgook – loyal, affectionate, brave – noble savage

• Am Adam  young character, idealistic, has to mature, “go through hell to mature & emerge as a new man, he gains experience”

Philip Freneau between enlightment and romanticism

• Poet of the Am Revolution – passion, rhetorical gift

• lyrical gift  political pampering

• the sensous  the didactic

• imagination  reason

• that’s what he reveals in his poetry, so it can’t be easily classified as romantic poetry or other phase of his career

• strong romantic strain – nature – beautiful & transient

• paring way for Cooper & Irving

The Indian Burying Graund

• starting romantic strain – nature – beautiful and transistent

• Attitude towards Indian 9I speaker)

• admires their culture

Indians :

• feast

• hounting

• eating

• sitting with friends

• active (normal life in another reality)

• circle of life and death

• white people

  • rest (sleeping until judgement)

  • moment of death  the end of life

• objects : bow, arrow

Romantic elements

• reason is superior where it comes to fancy \ imagination

• feelings are more important than logical thinking

William Cullen Bryant

• lawyer, editor poet, translator

• pantheistic view of nature – God revealed through Nature, it combined God with nature

• nature – source of moral teaching

• the great spring of poetry is emotion”- world understood through emotions

• “prepared the way for transcendentalism

• his style:

  • serious, philosophical tone

  • archaic syntax

  • blank verse

  • Miltonic, artificial, lofty diction

  • inversion for emphasis

WC Bryant To a Waterflow

Parts of poem

1. picture seen by the poet

2. mediation about the birds

3. application of these thoughts to his life

Admiration of the birds

• inspired by a stroll, solitary bird on the horizon

• divine, protecting & guiding power in nature

• eternal wish to fly

• flying:

  • freedom

  • perspective – they see in different way

  • lack of lmits

• power

  • God

  • instinct

  • imagination

  • mother nature

    • birds never loss their way

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

• prof. at Harvard – Europ. Lit.

• translated Dante’s “divine Comedy”

• anthology – “The poets & poetry of Europe”

• “The sing of Hiawatha”

• no shock, no surprise, no new truths

• Calm, clear, simple, easy to understand, sentimental dreams of the average

• Teacher of the masses – popularized poetry

• The Boston Brahmis (india class)

• writers from aristocratic , rich, old, Boston families

• English “excellence”, copying styles

• Boston  thinking centre of Am

• “Saturday Club” – Longfellow, Hawsthorne, Holmes, Lowell

• “the Atlnatic Monthly” – leading intellectual magazine

Poems (general view):

• optimistic

• full of energy

The sonnet :

PETRARCHAN SONNET/ Italian sonnet

As first used it and made it famous.

1 stanza: octave- descriptive part (generalization) presents problem

Sestet- reflexive part (examples) presents resolution

A

descriptive part (generalization)

reflexive part (examples)

B B A A B B A|C D E C D E

Octave | Sestet

Volta

English

SHEAKSPEARIAN SONNET/ English sonnet

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

Quatrach Couplet

Mezzo Cammin

• As the title of this sonnet is a clear reference to Dante\'s Inferno:

• gloomy vision – the middle of our life

• in the future we find death; nothing else

• This poem is a refelection on longfellows past, but it also expresses longfellows fears and admiration on his future.

• lines 1-8 longfellow is explaining his regret for letting love get in the way of \"fulfilling his aspiration\".

• first he thinks that he's wasted his life and neglected to pursue his childhood dreams,

• as he reflects deeply on the past, he begins to realize that his life was still happy, perceiving it as a city with \"smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights.\"

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864)

• Salem (his ancestors were judges)

  • His family has responsibility for burning withes

• debut ‘fanshawe’

• ‘Seven Tales Of My Native Land’ 1^st collection of short stories

• ‘Twice Told Tales’ – success

• contract with transcendentalists

• 1850’ ‘The Scarlet Letter’ ‘The House Of The Seven Gables’

• historical sketches, allegorical tales, romance

superficial -enjoyment 1^st meaning

underlying message interpretation of the text ( read between lines)

• a llegories  stories that have at least two levels of meaning

• dream – a character falls asleep and have a dream

• journey – discovering important truths about ourselves, mankind, the world (journey underworld)

• psychomachy  battle between evil and good voices ,

• personified features of characters (e.g. Brown’s wife-Faith), names represents features of character

Goodman brown – he becomes gloomy, suspicious, (memory of Sabbath day)

Major themes:

• past and present

• human weakness

• limitation

• dark side of human relationship

• sin and devil

Pillory scene – in the center of a town, punishing of sb, sb was suffering in front of society

“Scarlet letter”

• 2 types of sins

• Unpardonable sin – intellectual pride, misdirected ambition “The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man & reverence for God & scarified everything to its own mighty claims”.

• “He has violated in cold blood, the sanctity of human heart”.

• Fortunate fall – from innocence into wisdom, a sin that helps you understand sth

Herman Melville

Omoo, Typee  1^st novel

Moby dick 1851

- turning point for the worse ( he was criticized, misunderstood- they didn’t appreciate his works,)

- 1920s rediscovered by later generations

- Novel - Call me Ishmael (Bible) (1^st son of Abraham, who was illegitable, outcast  has to leave and cannot find his place)

• RESTLESS person

• cannot settle

• doesn’t belong to society

• he wants to belong & be identified

Moby dick

1. Form mixture of genres

• realistic adventure novel + allegory +metaphysics

• 1^st Am prose epic

• prose poem

• drama – chapter 40 - chorus, dramatic peronae

2. language and narration

• 1^st person narration Ishmael – lowest in rank – nobody – perfect observatory

• double perspective (starbucks narration 1^st chapter)

• old fashioned lg. (dialogue  archaism)

• sailors’ jargon

• PEQOUD - Indian tribe extinct, so the ship will vanish

• Element of democracy on the ship – there are 3 races of men, everybody has its own reputation

• Symbolic names : Ahab, Baal, Ishmael

• Paradox – Ishmael saved by a coffin, the fact that he is saved is that he has doubts & regrets joining in the idea of killing Moby Dick, he feels sorry for it

• symbol of a battle between men & nature

Transcendentalism

Am Renaissance

• national expansion – frontier

• optimistic affirmation of democracy

• growth of industrialization

• experiments in: science, culture, institution, social reform

• lectures, lyceums culture, science (free of charge)

T

adult education programe, very of ten free of the charge

ranscendentalism

• rejected Puritanism,

• unity: word = God; nature = Bible; man = universe

• development in awareness, realization, expression, reliance

• knowing oneself = knowledge of nature, humanity, universe

• interest in Hinduism, Confucianism, Sufism

• human soul is the part of “the Oversoul” - returns to it after death

• institution – transcending senses and mind  truth

• inner light – leading man to goodness, natural moral

Transcendentalists:

• actively engaged in Am problems,

• defending rights of the individual

• anti-slavery

• tone of essays: didactic, lofty, moralizing

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Concord

• Transcendental Club

• 1836 – Nature – unofficial manifesto

• Brook farm Institute  community of artists who shared their views and worked together.

• The Dial  magazine

• essays, lectures: The Poet, Experience, The Am scholar

Self reliance (Emerson)

• The article emphasis originality, insist on yourself,

• Never imitate be original

• to be genius  universal truth about ourselves and others

• imitation is suicide  cheating

• foolish consistency is wrong  being blind to changes

  • conformity non-conformity

  • imitation  creativity, freshness

  • society  individual

  • other’s people opinion  our opinion

  • dead customs & traditions  new ideas & traditions

  • consistency  being spontaneous, flexibility

  • received truth  self discovery

Henry David Thoreau

• non-conformist

• simple leaving, reducing material needs

• abolitionist, criticizing government – Civil Disobedience

• self-discovery

Civil disobedience

• government is passive

• against slavery, government do nothing to solve this problem

• War with Mexico, That war was unfair  just to conquer

• if the law is unfair we should break it

• prisons unjust, much more difficult to prison mind, spirit, prison affects only physical part

• he thinks of government that respects the right of every individual

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

• Boston - Tamerlane and Other Poems ( 1827)

• Made up stories about himself

• Philadelphia – The fall of the House of Usher, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

• New York – The Raven and Other Poems (1845)

Alone

• not happy person

• miserable life of the I-speaker

• nothing common with others

• no happy moment in his life

• demon  insanity

• sorrow, loneliness,

• since childhood he is seemed to be doomed

Eldorado

• City of gold

• worth trying?

• important process  don’t lose hope

• the poem epitomizes the never-ending search for happiness and truth

Poetry:

• goal – beauty\pleasure

• metrical, musical, rhythmic, strong, varied beat – ‘jingle man’

• sound more important than content e.g.  the bells

• poetry –‘the rhythmic creation of beauty’

• melodious names – Eulalie, Lenore, Ulalume, Annabel Lee

• p

  no brakes

  leasure: melancholy, gentle sadness

• d eath of a beautiful woman

• Verse, section which should be repeated

  
  
  

  mixing dream and reality

• T he Raven – death + dream + melancholy

• refrain + stanzas

  The Raven – critical – the Philosophy of Composition

not to long max 120 lines because when reading a poem , you should do it at one sitting, otherwise, you lose concentration & you may not understand it

Musicality of metrical

musical

The Raven

• man was reading a book, studying at night,

• he was alone

• His beloved Lenore passed away

• he hears the noise

• he thinks that sb is knocking but there were nobody

• there is only darkness outside and nothing more

• he thinks that he made the noise subconsciously

• then he thinks that noises were made by the wind

• The raven appears, he sits above the door

• He asks questions but the raven gives him the same answer “Nevermore”

• He begs him to go away - the same answer --. meaning – no possibility to recover

• raven – symbol of pain

Short story

• detective fiction

  • precursor of Raymond Chandler:

    • person bored with life

    • brilliant mind

    • do not paying attention to clothes

    • has problem with alcohol

  • complicated, a lot of misery

• tales of horror

  • precursor of Stephen King

  • science fiction, fantasy  inspired others,

  • gothic elements

  • character: doomed, introspective, mad, aristocrat, lover, buried alive, vampires returning;

  • setting: exotic, castles, libraries, graveyards,

  • atmosphere: death-in-alive, madness, extreme emotions, oblivion, loss, darkness, mixing dream with reality.

  • psychology: exploring disturbed psyche

• The Fall of the House of Usher :

• Narrator : unknown name, a man, 1^st person, narrator he decides to visit mr Usher, they were friends in school. They lost the contact after school. Usher had a serious disease & wrote a letter to the narrator, so he came there.

• The place of action : remote, secluded house, probably surrounded by forest, old, gloomy, created negative emotions.

• Usher’s sister : Madeleine – twins, they symbolise the whole person – body & mind, she appears in the background, wearing white, looks & behaves like a ghost, she’s mentally sick, at the end she dies.

• Strange voices : moaning, screaming – Madelaine was buried alive & tried to get out. She comes back only to die for good.

• The narrator, when saw it, run away just in time to save his life & be the witness of the final collapse of Usher’s house.

• The fissure makes the house collapse. Every person has a kind of fissure (hidden) which is reveals after some time & causes the collapse of mental health.

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

• born in New York

• self-taught – little formal education

• teacher, printer, carpenter, editor, odd jobs

• democrat, abolitionist

• travels, new Orleans, Chicago Western frontier,

• Civil war – volunteer nurse

• 1855 leaves of grass - shock to the public, mostly negative – content & the form.  “leaves…” – lifelong project – changed – rearranged, revised, added, experimental

• New structure – free verse.

• favorable relieves- by himself

• rearranged, revised, added, experimental

• poem as autobiography

• innovation form – free verse

  • no fixed beat or regular scheme

  • anaphora and parallelism,

  • apostrophe ‘o democracy’ ‘o Capitan’ turning directly to a person

  • alliteration (optional)

• influence on XXI poetry – Sandbury, Ginsberg (Whitmanized poems) those who used free verse

Emily Dickinson (recluse in white 1830 - 1886)

• born in Amherst, Massachusetts

• little travelling, gradual retreat, recluse

• light circle of family and friends

• limited communication

• like Thoreau: simple, deliberate, essential facts of life

• few intellectual, literary & formal resources

  • classic myths, the bible, Shakespeare

  • English romantics: Keats, the Bronte’s, Tennyson but little influence on her poetry

  • Thoreau, Emerson

• Poetry: 1775 Poems, 7published

• slow recognition, 1^st editions- corrected and smoothed grammar and pronunciation,

• 1955 – complete works – Thomas Johnson, Theodora Ward, (aphoristic poems)

• formal model: Hymnals (4-line stanza, rhymes, ABCB, ABAB)

• simple pattern of meter and rhyme,

• irregular punctuation and capitalization,

• abundance of dashes (normally as a pause before sth important appears used to draw attention)

• dense structure, short, condensed, aphoristic, generalizing, contradictions,

Historical background of the USA

before the civil war:

• rural

• isolated

• idealistic, religious

before WWI

• industrialized, urbanized

• world power

• changes in values

Principles of realism:

1. attack on Romanticism (accused them of being irrelevant)

2. Pragmatism:

• Charles Pierce, William James

• Free will + knowledge +experience  discovering and shaping reality

3. Purpose – to instruct and entertain

4. Subject matter: daily experience, the common, average, non-extreme relations between individuals and the society

5. setting  familiar to the winter

6. Character more important than the plot – humans control their…… ordinary characters studied in depth

7. little symbolism or allegory

Dominating literary genres:

• Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells,

Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material

• Regional writing – local colorists

• Hamlin Garland --. miserable, life of Midwest farmers

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

• Hannibal – idyll and nightmare ( charming nature| poverty, slavery)

• short childhood – at 12 – printer

• travelling in search of adventure, wealth, fame

• riverboat pilot – childhood ambition

• work for the press – humorous distinctive articles

• Innocents Abroad (refers to Americans) – letters, funny, satirical, cynical

• The Notorious Jumping Frog – hoax- tall tale(story originated in oral tradition)

• Mississippi stories – Old times on the Mississippi, life on the Mississippi, The adventures of the Tom Sawyer,