First English Settlements in America:

1607 - Jamestown (Virginia)

• secular settlement (gentlemen adventurers and their bond servants)

• trading post of the Virginia Company of London

• main survival crop : tobacco

• gave rise to the South of the plantation system & slavery

• 1^st governor: John Smith

• his chronicle of the colony: “A Description of New England”

• story of Pocahontas

1620 - Plymouth (New England)

• religious settlement (Pilgrim Fathers)

• relatively poor and austere Puritans

• arrived on the Mayflower

• out of 100 barely 50 survived

• main survival crop: corn

• 2^nd governor: William Bradford

• his chronicle of the colony: “Of Plymouth Plantation” (1620-50)

• Thanksgiving established

1630 - Massachussetts Bay Colony (Boston)

• religious settlement (prosperous, worldly Puritans)

• “Bible Commonwealth” (theocracy)

• 17 ships, 1000 settlers

• 1^st governor: John Winthrop

• chronicle of the colony: Samuel Sewall's “Diary”(1673-1729)

• religious persecution of Quakers, Jews, etc.

• Salem witchcrafr trials (1692)

Intellectual Background of American Literature

• Cosmopolitanism

• Puritanism

• Frontier

• Mysticism (Transcendentalism)

Five Calvinist Points (TULIP)

• Total Depravity

• Unconditional Election (Predestination)

• Limited Atonement

• Irresistable Grace

• Perseverance of Saints

Effects of Puritanism

• bondage of will

• theocracy

• special providence of God

• God's sovereignty

• righteousness

• elitist, aristocratic tendencies

• mood of gloom, severity, despair, fatalism (“once a sinner, always a sinner”)

• social inequality

Influence of the Frontier spirit:

• democracy

• egalitarianism (social equality and equal opportunities)

• spirit of enterprise & competition

• individualism

• free will

• self- reliance

• mood of buoyancy, enthusiasm, optimism

• political and economic independence

• uniformity of life

• idea of Christian perfection

Phases of Puritanism

• early, strict colonial times, requirement of second baptism (1620-1662)

• abolition of the requirement in Half-Way Covenant (1662)

• decline of Puritanism by 1725 (deism and rationalism of Locke, Shaftsbury, Paine)

• Great Awakening (1740s) - Jonathan Edwards & his sermons

Forms of Puritan Literature

• sermon (J. Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”))

• chronicle (W. Bradford: “Of Plymouth Plantation”)

• diary (S. Sewall: “Diary”)

• spiritual diary (J. Edwards: “Personal Narrative')

• biography (Cotton Mather: “Magnalia”)

Puritan Poetry

• simplicity of diction (imitation of biblical style)

• homely imagery (a spinning wheel, a loom Taylor's “Houswifery”)

• metaphysical conceits (Taylor's “Meditation Six”)

• allegory (Taylor's “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly”)

Unorthodox Puritan Poets

• Anne Bradstreet:

“To My Dear and Loving Husband”:

• gentle, tender v. strict, austere

• lover's passion v. wife's duty

• human love v. love of God

• Edward Taylor:

“Houswifery”:

• questions predestination: “Make me, O Lord...”(=possibility of earning salvation) v.

“Communicate Thy Grace ...” (“Upon a Spider...”=

revealing the fact of salvation or damnation)

“Meditation Six”

• questions Total Depravity (man=God's angel, coin, gold, purse)

• questions predestination (“make,” “enfoil,” “write”...)

Echoes of the Puritan Doctrine in Puritan Poetry and Prose

E. Taylor's “Upon a Spider...”

• Unconditional Election (a spider, a wasp, a fly, a nightingale)

• Irresistable Grace (ll. 42-3)

• Perseverance of Saints (ll. 42-3)

• Total Depravity (ll.36-40)

W. Bradford's “Of Plymouth Plantation”:

• Unconditional Election/Total Depravity (passengers v. the crew)

• God's special providence (corn; scurvy)

• Perseverance of Saints (overcoming hardships, illness, etc.)

• solemn tone: sense of mission (Puritan view of history as God's plan of salvation for mankind)

W. Bradford's Chronicle v. S. Sewall's “Diary”

• historical v. personal

• early colonial period v. early “Yankee” period

• serious, solemn tone v. humorous, light-hearted

• religious v. secular

• sense of mission v.provincial

• lofty concerns v. down-to-earth matters

• idealistic v. pragmatic

Samuel Sewall (1652-1730)

• the only judge on the Salem witchcraft trials (1692) who acknowledged his guilt

• wrote the first tract against slavery in America - “The Selling of Joseph”

• a champion of women (argued for the presence of women in heaven as a result of resurrection)

THE GREAT AWAKENING

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

• responsible for the Great Awakening in the 1740s (revival of Puritanism in the era of deism)

• preached `fire and brimstone' to abolish Half-Way Covenant and restore second baptism in:

• a short biography of his wife “Sarah Pierrepont” (a case of mystical enlightenment required for second baptism)

• his own spiritual diary “Personal Narrative” (maturation of faith; acceptance of God's sovereignty)

• his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (man seen as a repulsive vermin held over the pit of hell by Old Testament revengful God)

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (deism)

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

• the epitome of the Age of Enlightenment in America, who

gave America its characteristics:

• scientific spirit (invented the lightning rod, bifocals, etc.)

• rationalism (e.g. his vegetarian diet v. eating fish in Autobiography)

• pragmatism (“nothing was useful which was not honest,” “time is money,” evil acts are forbidden because they are bad for you; self-improvement - his Autobiography)

• democracy, equality of all people (“Declaraction of Independence”)

• self-reliance (a self-made man)

• public service for the community:

• founded the first city hospital in America

• “ the first public library

• “ the first learned society

• “ Univ. of Pennsylvania

• introduced street lights in Philadelphia

• “ street gutters “

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

• author of “The Declaration of Independence”

• Jeffersonian ideals:

• agrarianism (a farmer - a guardian of moral values)

• democracy of the frontier

• meritocracy (as opposed to hereditary aristocracy)

• separation of the church & the state

• abolition of slavery

• “ of capital punishment (except for treason and murder)

• religious tolerance

• government as a guardian of the citizens' individual happiness

• the right to abolish a tyrannical government

• stress on education (sciences rather than humanities)

• freedom of the press

also

• an inventor (a swivel chair, etc.)

• founder of Univ. of Virginia

• public servant

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

• pain in the neck of Europe and America (persona non grata in England, France and U.S.A.)

• Common Sense(1776) & The American Crisis (1776-1783) - said to have saved the American Revolution from failing

• The Age of Reason (1794-95) - written in a French prison; subjected him to accusatiuons of atheism (“my church is my own mind”)

• belief in one God and eternal happiness (written in defence of faith & morality against the Reign of Terror)

• distrust of all churches (manipulatory & enslaving institutions)

• God's universal language - his Creation (not the Bible)

PRE-ROMANTICISM

• Different than European romanticism

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)

• a loyalist turned a revolutionary

• romantic elements in “The Indian Burying Ground”:

• native element of American Indian history

• mystery (ghosts)

• importance of tradition/ritual

• Imagination superior to Reason

Washington Irving (1783-1859)

• used German lore and English historical romance of Sir W.Scott to create a myth of America's past - writers decided that they were impoverished , so they did not have history, cause American history is very short, so this is a kind of usable past created as a concept - it was supposed to replace the `real past' and provide material for writers.

• He decided to write only about America, even though he was influenced by European culture

• Was also a diplomat. Wrote a story of Alhambra - name for the castle in Grenada. He was well-known and celebrated in Spain.

• romantic elements in ”Rip Van Winkle” (the first truly Am. short story) - man given magic potions fell asleep for 20 years (Dutch colony) - everything changed

• interest in the past (colonial America: Hudson)

• elements of mystery (Dutch wine; twenty-year sleep) - potion, magic 20 years sleep, history turned into legend

• history turned into a legend (Hudson and his companions; game of nine pins)

• interest in the national geography (Kaatskill Mountains; colonial America; American Revolution)

• imagination (Rip Van Winkle) v. practicability (the surrounding political reality) - the little town is completely transformed into a very lively area after revolution.

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) -

• creator of the usable past of the American nation, of the American myth (The Laetherstocking Tale) - revises American West, and the American hero (Natty Bumppo - the last noble trapper))

• The Leatherstockiung Tales (reversed chronology of Bumppo's life - rebirth of the American hero):

• The Deerslayer (his chivalric youth: conflict of moral codes - Christian, Indian, frontier) (1841)

• The Last of the Mohicans (superiority of the Indian code over that of whites) (1826)

• The Pathfinder (1840)

• The Pioneers (1823)

• The Prairie (solitary death; end of an era of wilderness in America)

(1827)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

• Tales of the Grotesque and Arabeqsque (1840)

• an aesthete & a decadent romantic indulging in strained emotion for its own sake

• with his 48 poems established a new symbolic poetry (French symbolists)

• invented a detective story

• broadened science fiction

• introduced a new fiction of psychological analysis

• “The Philosophy of Composition” - a new theory of the short story & the requirements of a good poem/short story:

• poetry - a result of mathematical calculation rather than divine inspiration

• brevity - a short story should be brief enough to be read in one sitting in order to sustain a single effect

• unity of effect - all elements of the short story (plot, setting, character, etc.) should contribute to a single effect (e.g. horror or melancholy, etc.)

• priority of the effect - the effect is of primary consideration for the author and everything else (the plot, the setting and the characters) should be subjected to it to achieve onenness and totality of impression

• “The Raven” - the effect of melancholy is achieved through:

• choice of topic - death of a beautiful woman (“the most melancholic of all topics,” as Poe says)

• setting - solitary chamber, midnight, November, a stormy night, “dying” embers produce a ghostly effect)

• character - poet suffering from lost love

• refrain - - a pleasing repetition of a recognizable word Nevermore after each stanza, with a new meaning attached to it each time

• sound - repetition of a sonorous vowel [o:] in the refrain

• “The Cask of Amontillado” - the effect of horror is achieved by:

• a reversed focus of the story (how it was done rather than who did it)

• suspense

• vagueness of motives

• verbal irony (Montresor's toast to Fortunato's long life)

• dramatic irony (“I won't die of a cough”)

• situational irony (Fortunato's name)

• pun (a mason; masonry) - conversation about masons is a play of words, mason, like this laying bricks, Montresor says he is a mason, meaning not a member of the brotherhood, but a bricklayer - towel, like kielnia, and the symbol of the brotherhood.

• Reaction to the horror is laugh, which is also ironic, as he is laughing at his own death

• names - Forunato - good luck, Montresor - My treasure

• time of action - carnival is an irony generating factor, supposed to bring joy, brings death

• setting - Italy, Venice

• costume - Montresor's black mask, it is an irony, it is used to hide true intensions of narrator, Fortunato - king's fool

• secrecy, avoiding punishment

• making Fortunato envious was insisted to make him follow the narrator who insist on his death (metaphorically)

• the crime is discovered - by using present perfect we can reveal it. Narrator is telling the story to someone,

It is a kind of detective, crime story, but not a typical one. He wanted to create the effect, by describing how the crime is commit, not who did it.

• “The Fall of the House of Usher” - it is a kind of fantasy story

• mirror imagery (house & family; twins; “wild inconsistency” in the structure of the building and the personality of Usher - crack in the house which is main cause of the final fall; reflection of the house in the tarn) - at the end the family, the house, the reflection in the tarn are all united as the house falls into it

• interpretation: schizophrenic personality; alter ego; incest

• suggestions of incest: isolation & antiquity of the family; “family evil;” fungi on the walls; Roderick's and Lady Madeline's illness

• the effect of horror

• the narrator: increases the credibility of the story, he doesn't come from the same world as Ushers, without him it would be definitely a fantasy story, his presence and that he comes from our world increases the credibility. Also the friendship with Usher suggest that he also used to come from `our world'

• story within the story, about a dragon, as sister attacks Rodrick as a dragon

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

• a New England anti-Puritanical writer and a moralist

Main themes:

• guilt v. salvation

• head v. heart

• the Unpardonable Sin (overgrowth of the head over the heart)

• appearances v. reality - derives from his being Puritan

• Twice-Told Tales (1837)

• “Young Goodman Brown” - a story of initiation

Main themes:

• initiation into evil: meeting the devil (serpent-like stick); black sabbath (evil baptism) - he reveals evil in those who are thought to be “The Elect”

• ssignificance of names - they all have “good” or sth in them, so that means they belong to “The Elect”

• Item held by the 1^st person he meets, might be just an illusion. Hawthorne warn us not to perceive things only by their appearance.

• Puritan hypocrisy (YGB, Goody Cloyse, minister Gookin) - he reveals it and loses his faith at the end of it

• destructive psychological effects of the doctrine of predestination (YGB's alienation)

• inability to accept the sinfulness of all people, including the elect (Faith's pink ribbons)

• archetype - “wstąpienie do piekieł” - Harrowing of Hell

• white- puritan, red - sin, connected with blood.

• Puritans believed that man are either Evil (damned) or Good (Elect)

• Ambiguity is his typical feature

• archetypal interpretation (the biblical story of Christ's Harrowing of Hell) - he does not follow it

• structure: opposites

sunset - sunrise

dark - light

good - evil

town - forest

temptation - innocence

appearances - reality

• Rappacinni's Daughter” - appearances v. reality

Main themes:

• unreliability of sensory perceptions

• ambiguity of science (Prof. Rappacinni & Beatrice), faith (Giovanni) and morals (Prof. Baglioni)

• the Unpardonable Sin (Professor Rappacinni)

• feminist interpretation (Beatrice - a victim of male exploitation)

• archetypal interpretation (biblical archetype of the Garden of Eden)

• structure: allegory

Other works:

• The Scarlet Letter (1850) - criticism of the Puritan community of Salem

• The House of the Seven Gables (1851) - family guilt; visitation of the sins of the fathers upon posterity

• The Blithedale Romance (1852) - a utopian experiment in communal living based on his own experience at Brook Farm

• The Scarlet Letter - a psychological romance

Main themes:

• criticism of the Puritan hypocrisy (Dimmsdale's sin of falsehood)

• criticism of predestination (Hester's felix culpa, cf. Young Goodman Brown's response to the discovery of evil in the human heart))

• the Unpardonable Sin (Chillingworth)

• a Transcendental view of nature as a source of goodness and compassion (anti-puritanical)

• appearances v. reality (Pearl: an imp of evil; a nature elf; “a pearl of great price”= God's Grace to Hester; a moral agent to her parents)

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

• a moralist and a symbolist

• Moby Dick (1851) - one of the most important symbolic novels of world literature (regarded at first as an adventure book for BOYS

• Two main characters - Ishmael - a narrator, the only one who survived - he presents exactly the values of Church , and captain Ahab - he's obsessed with hunting Moby Dick, to find him and kill him as a revenge, because Moby Dick bited out his legs and destroyed his ship, his character is opposite to Ishmael. Ahab dies even though he looks like a powerful man, kind of god. Ishmael is much humbler and he survived, because he treated journey as a cure, as a substitute for suicide. When it comes to ship it is quite odd. It is very ancient one, venerable, even symbolic. The quest for Moby Dick represents every human being, symbol of Adam, disobedience of God. Epitomy of ancient quest.

• Ungraspable phantom of life - story of Narcissus, of fatal love. In this book cpt. Ahab is this Narcissus, overwhelmed by his aspirations that distracts him

• Land is treated as a promise land, for those who are on see (shown in Merry Christmas chapter)

• Whereas in chapter 23 sea is treated as an independence, liberty of the soul, and land is slavish, enslaves man spiritually. Although land promises safety, when you settle there it enslaves you, only the sea can give you freedom. It is better to die (perish) being free, that to live on the land which enslaves you. A balance has to be found between the sea and land (not literally).

• What appears is not necessarily what it is (Chapter 58). Ambition leads to strain, refers to Ahab, he gives in to his obsession, then he discovers horror about himself.

• The whole book is about images of family, mother, child .

• Once Ahab starts journeys, he cuts all connections with land. He is obsessed with revenge,

• Light of the fire is misleading, is false, distorts reality, making the crew obsessed. Whereas in the light of the Sun, during the day you will see thing as they are, so they can recognize the evil of Ahab(Chapter 96)

• Ishmael sees the evil, and this becomes a source of wisdom for him, Ahab is here `damed', Ishmael is eagle, whereas Ahab is rest of birds. Eagle can fly in the mountains, gorgeous, is superior to others, and the wisdom makes Ismael superior to Ahab.

• The quadrant - navigational instrument, Ahab destroys it, as a result of his pride (he destroys the means by which they can find a proper way, and they lost direction, literally and metaphorically) - he destroys it because he is fed up with it, it is useless object for him, because it doesn't help in the quest for Moby Dick - Ahab wants to be like a Sun, like a God, so be superior, he curses the Science and quadrant which are man-made. It sets limits to our knowledge, and that is what the book is about. By presuming Moby Dick he wants to possess knowledge, forbidden for man by God. Here we can see Ahab as a kind of rebel,

• Moby dick - impossible to locate, ubiquitous, omniscient, like a God. It signifies purity, innoscence (its whiteh colour) - Godly creatures. For Ahab Moby Dick is something evil. It is unique, symbol of royalty, white also symbolizes the void, vanity. It's elusive. Whiteness might be treacherous. It covers something which indeed is evil. Off all those things, Moby Dick was representative.

• Ishmael survived - because of a coffin that belonged to…….., . Human bond saves Ishmael, because he did it by using the item of his only friend from the board. This gives the idea of transcendentalism,

• humanity's ancient quest after “the ungraspable phantom of life” (forbidden knowledge)

• sin of hubris (pride) and disobedience of God (the quadrant)

• ambiguity of the whale's whiteness (godliness, royalty, evil, void, absence of colour, treachery, etc.)

• Melville's anti-Transcendentalist view (nature- evil, treacherous; Ahab's self-reliance=sin of pride & isolation; Ishmael's altruism- life-saving; Ahab's death-ironic union with nature)

Other works:

• Typee (1846) & Mardi (1849) - based on his experience among cannibals at the Marquesas

• Omoo (1847) - based on his voyge to Tahiti

• White-Jacket (1850) - based on his service on an American man-of-war

• Pierre (1852) - an allegorical novel about the nature of evil

• short stories: “Billy Budd,” Bartleby, the Scrivener,””Benito Cereno.”

• The Confidence-Man (1857) - a satire on the commercialism of the era

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) - a Unitarian minister, philosopher, essayist, poet

• founder of Transcendentalism (Nature, 1836 - date of the beginning of transcendentalism in America) combining Unitarianist - (Unitarianism - religious denomination , counter reaction to Puritanism) ideas (divinity of man), German idealism (Immanuel Kant's `innate ideas') and mysticism (the Quakers' belief in `inner light,' or `Christ within every individual') -

• was Unitarianist minister, was a rector of………., he gave the remarkable speech at the beginning of academic year. His poetry expounds philosophy of transcendentalism.

• founder of Brook Farm - a Transcendentalist utopian community (N. Hawthorne was its member for 6 months in 1841) - little community, but some people were joining it, like the author of Moby Dick and Hawthorne, but they didn't like it? Moby Dick was written in reaction to transcendentalism

• founder of The Dial (1836), a journal of Transcendentalism.

• other New England Transcendentalists: Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau

Transcendental experience can be achieved by a direct contact with Nature; sensing its greatness and divinity leads a man to comprehending the divine within himself, thus making him aware of the world's spirit (the Over-soul), which flows through him as intensely as it does through Nature. Once man achieves this awareness, he desires to “elevate his life through a conscious endeavour” so as to assume ultimate responsibility for himself.

They believed in unity of man, God and nature. God is called `The Oversoul'. Man is submerged by things of second importance, is offered them instead of nature, has no possibility of recapturing the divine spirit. Man's aim should be going back to nature, to God's spirit running through him ( resembles second Baptism in Puritanism).American mentality, which significant feature is individualism, comes from transcendentalism, from the essay - `Self-reliance'. Another name for it is `non-conformism', which is main obligation to be a real man. It means to free yourself from the enslaving ties of society. This enslavement relies on offering man food, clothing, and shelter. He wanted to be non-cconformism, that's why he decided to go the wood (Walden).

RELY ON YOURSELF !!!!!!!!!!! American philosophy !! Egoistic, stupid Americans.

This indivudalism sprang from puritanism, Calvinism and Unitarianism?. It powstało jak grzyby po deszczu in New York. Każdy sobie rzepkę skrobie. No communal thinking in America, non communal spirit, wcale.

American scholar - kind of cultural and literally declaration of independence. He had a right to write so, as he was the creator of transcendentalism, which is significant for America. Againts mentality of Puritanism, have sth in common with the Frontier.

Nature - it is opposed to tradition, he believes that 4 Fathers created arrays of tradition, cultures, we are supposed to divest ourselves from it. We should go back to the basis, Nature. Poetry is kind of transformation of it, so we should not only read it but robić coś więcej. Source of everything is in Nature, so that is why he is opposed tradition. Solitude means not being alone, but being on your own with nature, one to one correspondence with nature. Man does not appreciate nature, because it is always around him. Tree of a poet is a kind of esthetic object, the question of poets relation to the Nature. He unites all universe in the poem. Farmers claim a piece of land as their property and they think aboit it that way. Transcendentalism advocates sth completely different, integrating the horizon. Eyeball integrating landscape into one unity.

Child is innocent and can see the Sun. You have to became like a child, to be able to recapture the Nature.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) - a practitioner of Transcendentalist ideas - pracctised what Emmerson state as a theory

• Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854) - an account of his two-year solitary experience of transcendental living on Walden pond, away from civilization (1845-7)

• “Civil Disobedience”(1847) - an essay on passive resistance to the government's rules (his refusal to pay the poll tax while at Walden)

19^th Century Innovative American Poetry

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) - “a Good Gray Poet”

Main features of his poetry:

• all-encompassing (life&death, present, past&future, happinness&sadness)

• panoramic in its vision of America

• democratic in spirit (celebrating presidents and prostitiutes)

• celebrating brotherly love (Whitman - “the wound-dresser”)

• optimistic (eternal cycle of life with no death to it)

• celebrating the superiority of animals over humans (no existential worries)

• stressing the equality of the body and the soul as subjects of poetry

• placing an individual at the center of the universe (“I am the cosmos...”)

• sensuous and sexual in imagery (a love act between the body and the soul, between the soul and nature)

• innovative in the use of language (“barbaric yawp” of new coinages, slang, colloquialisms, jargon)

• written in free verse (sprawling unrhymed lines, similar to rhythmic prose)

Selected literary output:

• Leaves of Grass (1855), which included:

• “Song of Myself”

• “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856)

• “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (1860)

(an allegorical poem)

• “Whe Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd”

(1867) - an elegy for president Lincoln

- “O Captain! My Captain!” (1867)

• Democratic Vistas (1871) - a collection of essays on Am.democracy

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) - an existentialist in the age of

Transcendentalism

Reverse to Whitman. Her poetry is so contained, self-centered, self-sufficient, Whitman's was more panoramic. It's because she spent almost her all life at home, leaving it to the doctor's etc. She also met very few people. Her poetry tells us how different she is from Whitman. She is more economic, she choose words with care, she emphasize with capitals. She uses dashes very often, it's a kind of innovation. Whitman was very optimistic, whereas she is very pessimistic, Whitman didn't believe in death. She is practically existential. Whitman was closer to optimistic transcendentalism, but he was not a transcendentalists. Dickinson anticipates the coming epoch. Her attitude is different; Whitman told the reader to look for God in his creation of other people, Dickinson disbelieved in the existence of God in humanity

Main features of her poetry:

• self-contained (egotistical, self-sufficient & self-centred)

• concise, economical and precise in the choice of words

• innovative in prosody (dashes as punctuation marks & capitalised words for emphasis)

• pessimistic in spirit (existential concerns)

• stressing man's insignificance in the universe

• warring with God over His indifference to man's plight

• centering on death and suffering rather than life and joy

• unconventional rhyme (e.g. eye rhyme: come-home; identical rhyme: come-come; imperfcect rhyme: time-thine; suspended rhyme: thing-along)

• alliteration - her favorite device

I'm nobody (288) - perception of man. Whitman perceived man as extremely important, Dickinson here seems to believe that man is nobody, nothing. She thinks that she is exceptional. A person in society is like the frog in the bog - not really important because there are many of them in the bog. Frogs are identical, anonymous, it is hard to distinguish one from another. Human is not significant, and cannot admit it, she derives man's pride and his concede, vanity. A message of pessimism.

How happy is the little stone (1510) - it's about a man: words like career, happy, fears etc. shows that. Stones cannot do such things. Stone is free from problems, cares. Human concerns come from career, human's ambitions. Stone is happy because it wears the same coat as the Earth. Its colour is brown. Man can resist God, because of his free will, the stone doesn't need to have it. It is natural for the stone to live in peace with God, because it's natural for it, to live in harmony with nature. Referring to Whitman, Dickinson sees human as inferior to nature, but Whitman claims human is a part of it.

The grass so little has to do - there are many words suggesting that it refers to human, not only to the grass. Threading dews - making pearls. The grass is as carefree as the stone. The grass spend life waving to the wind, catching sunshine, entertaining bees. The grass after death continues to exist in sovereign barns - comparison to heaven. It is easy for the grass to end as hay, it has little to do about it, the existence after death is ensured. By analogy, human life doesn't have such comfort, there are many doubts about it. Dickinson seems to envy the grass,

318 - I'll tell you how the Sun rose.. - Sunrise is presented as kind of joyful awakening. Child said the sentence: It must have been the Sun. - There is a line with yellow boys and girls. Sun is raising up, so they are yellow. They are at a very early stage of their life, there is a comparison to growing up. Dominine is God, who is wearing Gray, not very optimistic. He behaves gently. Bars suggest some definite end. There is some kind of confusion because of something good from the one side, like flock, and the bars from the other. God is unpredictable, incomprehensible.

There's a certain Slant of light (258) - Heavenly hurt - an oxymoron suggesting…. Winter afternoons are rather dark. The 1^st stanza is not positive - there is only a certain slant of light, that is very small, hardly exists. 2^nd stanza - hurts, but leaves no scar, so it is internal suffering. Heavenly means perfect, she accuses God of maliciously hurting man. We cannot change it, we are not prepared, unaware. Imperial affliction is like heavenly hurt. She doubts the existence of God. She compares despair to death.

I felt a funeral in my brain - it is mental suffering, there are few words suggesting mental suffering, through the whole poem. Suffering is presented as kind of funeral. Last stanza - about lifting the coffin down, an ultimate point of suffering, no possibility to run. The world bang at the end adds some kind of informality. The dash at the and suggests hesitation, and the bang suggests the end, an ultimate one. Similar is “I heard a fly buzz when I died”.

Features of the Modernist Novel (turn of the 19^th and 20^th cent.)

• psychological introspection into the character's mind rather than his/her outer observation

• focus on psychological rather than logical and chronological time

• limited point of view rather than omniscient narration

• relativity of observation depending on the point of view, mood, experience of the narrator/character, etc.

• relativity of the moral & social standing of the character torn by doubts, contradictions, incomprehensibilities as to the system of values, social norms and even his own identity

First American Realists

Henry James (1843-1916) - the founder of psychological realism

(perception of outer reality through the character's retrospection, reflection,

analysis of his/her and other people's motives, emotional states, fleeting

impressions etc.)

• In The Art of Fiction (1884) he attacks the English novel for its:

• didacticism and sentimentality

• `happy endings' & positive characters

• omniscient narrator

• captivating plot

which falsify reality

Mainly interested in:

• Americans in Europe and Europeans in America

• European sophistication, but also corruption and cynicism

v. American ignorance, but also generic American freshness

and innocence

• emotional relations within the cultural elites of America

Main stress laid on:

• aesthetic rather than moral values of a work of literature (`art for art's sake') - in Portrait

• the method of “motionlessly seeing” (reflection, retrospection, memory) rather than a gripping plot

• the heroine `making herself' before the readers' eyes rather than being subjected to `being made' by the writer

Selected literary output:

• Daisy Miller (1879) - the spontaneity of an American girl is taken for

promiscuity in Europe, which leads to a tragedy

• The Portrait of a Lady (1881) -

• an example of psychological realism

• direction of her travel foreshadows her failure (the American dream)

• unconventional heroine (an orphaned girl rising in the world)

• Isabel Archer - a transcendental heroine consistent in her

choices (Emerson: “I make my circumstances, my own misery”)

• her rejection of her two suitors for fear of social restraints (Lord

Wharburton) and personal (sexual) ties (Caspar Goodwood)

• her marriage to Osmond as another transcendental figure (no

titles, no honours, no property, etc.) - a false transcendentalist

• Life is in art, you can get know about life by experiencing art, but this is only in Europe, America is not sophisticated enough to be able to see life in art.

• Elizabeth is different from other heroines of literature, no edifice suits to her, she wants to be someone, just for herself, she is not a passive heroine, an active one

• James is the creator of psychological realism.

• Omniscient narration

• How judgmental is James as a writer? - his attitude towards Isabel is very mild, there are some foolishness in her, but in her wisdom, so he gives her sympathy. His judgment is not moral.

• 3^rd person narration, all the events are filtered through the point of view of the narrator. Psychological realism - the events are filtered through the mind of main heroine, It became a very popular type of narration. Crane followed and Edith Wharton as well.

• “motionlessly seeing” - refers to the scene where Isabel is sitting in her armchair, and is rethinking events that led to her marriage, considering where did she make a mistake. She sees things in her mind's eye

• Marriage of Tutchets - they are indifferent to each other. It foreshadows what is going to happen in the lovers life

• James avoided sexual aspects. He has been deemed homosexual, because he never got married, and because of his writing - he preferred siblings-like relationships

• She rejects her 2 other suitors, because she thought that she would lose her independence. When it comes to Lord, his social background would threaten her independence, because of an obligation of following rules. Goodwood, was an American, but he was bent on her, following her, so she resented his emotionality, he was too intense for her. She was overwhelmed by it and found it limiting. Her wife is a free spirit, an artists. She admires it.

• Transcendental heroine - self-reliance: an individual is trying to cut himself out of the society and follow his convention. Isabel Archer is like that, she resents all limits. She perceived her husband as another transcendental figure, devoted to the free spirit, without rules, money consideration, etc. Actually he was pre-occupied by marrying her daughter with someone with money. Isabel became a part of convention by marrying him, without knowing that.

• For Osmond aristocracy was a convention, for Isabel, it was noblesse oblige. If U are rich, you have to share with others. For Osmond it was just following conventions. He treats her like things in his collection; worth to have it, if only she is unique. He uses it for pragmatic reasons. He disliked that she had so many ideas and spoke her on mind. Her opinions were different that his, so they were her own, she was independent. She married him for the independence of spirit and that was the mistake.

• The film ends that she runs away, but she hesitates. The book ends that she came back, because of the respect of marriage bond. She is consistent in being independent. As she comes back it is still this consistency, coming back to the decision of marrying Osmond. She's undefeated, as she is consistent in her choice, but she suffers from them.

• Washington Square (1881) - ordinary Am. setting (rare in James)&

starightforward language; James makes an unremarkable, virtuous and

simple heroine an interesting figure

• What Maisie Knew (1897) - an ingenious narrative told from the point of

view of a child caught in the intricate web of adult relationships

• The Turn of the Screw (1898) - a ghost story with a Freudian message of

sex-starved imagination of a spinster governess

• The Ambassadors (1903) - an ironic reversal of the original role of

Strethers as an `ambassador' who is supposed to bring a young man back

from the corrupted Europe into America in order to save his soul, but

advises him to the contrary in order to save him from the emptiness,

banality and materialism of America and from going back on his

obligations to his English mistress

Crane - in both his novels he broke grounds of taboo; Maggie - taboo on prostitution, in the Red Badge of Courage on talking about war in a different way than usual, he DE glorified it. The Open Boat is based mostly on dialogue, the technic that Hemingway used most of the time.

The Red Badge of Courage - it's a wound - the main character, as well as some others are called by their nicknames, to bring up the features of their character that nobody has unique, but not here. They become anonymous during the war. This is already the kind of comments on the nature of war. He didn't fight in any war, but the description is very realistic. He based on his imagination, but he used all kind of Civil War records, memoirs etc. The author uses psychological realism, impressionism, naturalism, symbolism. There is 3^rd person narration, but it focuses on the thoughts and reflections and anticipations of the main character. It shows the war from the inside of human psyche. His image of war comes from Homeric reading. The protagonists wants to join the army, because he wants to become a hero, although his mother discouraged him from doing that. The way he received the wound disqualify him from being a hero. The author implies here that the wound doesn't make a hero. The notion of the hero comes also from the way soldiers are greeted and how soldiers goodbye them, form their behavior. War turns out to be very boring, he is disillusioned at the very beginning. He thinks that they are superior, they are heroes and he is coward, but he realized that they just pretended to be courageous, they lied about they courage. They have to prove themselves whether they are heroes or cowards. Crane's method of impressionism - (in art it provides an impression, does not focus on details. Colors are important). The description of the uniforms is not detailed, they just create an impression of how did they look, by the colors.

About gigantic figures, or horse, gives the impression of the size. Impressionistic elements of sound, light; trampling feet, mystic gloom. Naturalism - because of the topics he touched. A realists would just render the scene or the object just the way they are. Naturalist would describe repulsive apsects of such. In desperation he is trying to hide. Nature is not trying to help him, it behaves unfriendly. The nature is against man, this is not a naturalistic description. Naturalisms stresses the bond between a man and nature. Then in next scene the squirrel ran away. He found a justification from his behavior in the behavior of squirrel. This is the naturalistic description. The religion that soldiers follow is killing and yet they are devoted to it. War is an act of glory, he discovers that it is not. It is not about heroism and wounds are not symbols of courage. He reveals the truth about the war, the mountains of the idealistic beliefs fell like they were made of paper.

He matures at the end of the book. Red Badge of Courage is the example of initiation into manhood, adulthood, as Huckleberry Finn is the story of initiation into the society. Marching soldiers doesn't look like victorious, they are exhausted, sick, accompanied by sticks, however the youth smiles.

Hucklebery Finn - another story of initiation, this time in the society. At first recognized as an adventurous book for boys. But Twin added some passages, that made it more for adults. These passages were criticizing the society of South. Huck is an individualist. At the beginning he is a rebellious person, creative in coming up with lies, so he is troublemaker. He steals, he uses foul language, he refuses to go to school, learn table manners, etc. So at the beginning we stand at the society site.

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