american literary periods

American Literary Periods

1. American Renaissance/Romanticism: 18001855

The Romantic Movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread, reached America around the year 1820. Romantic ideas centered on the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and the importance of the individual mind and spirit. The Romantics underscored the importance of self-expressive art for the individual and society. The development of the self, became a major theme; self-awareness a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead-end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If ones self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of self which suggested selfishness to earlier generations was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: self-realization, self-expression, self-reliance.As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology. Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states. The sublimean effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop)produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension.Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists. Americas vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values. Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero Is young or possesses youthful qualities Is innocent and pure of purpose Has a sense of honor based not on societys rules but on some higher principle Has knowledge of people and of life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning Loves nature and avoids town life Quests for some higher truth in the natural world

ROMANTICISMIndustrialization / War of 1812 / California Gold Rush

Content:Historical Context:Effect:Authors:

writing that can be interpreted2 ways, on the surface for common folk or in depth forphilosophical readerssense of idealismfocus on the individual's inner feelingsemphasis on the imaginationover reason and intuition over factsurbanization versus nostalgia for natureburden of the Puritan pastexpansion of magazines,newspapers, and bookpublishing slavery debates-Industrial Revolution -Abolitionist movement helps instill proper gender behavior for men and womenfuels the abolitionistmovementallow people to reimaginethe American pastProse:Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 1864)Herman Melville (1819 1891),

Social background:

Industrial Revolution Western expansion Immigrants contributionPolitical ideal of equality and democracy the influence of EuropeanRomanticists

Genre/Style:

literary tale character sketch slave narratives, political novels poetry transcendentalism

-Values feeling and intuition over reason-Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination-Shuns the artificiality of civilizations and seeks unspoiled nature-Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication-Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual-Contemplates natures beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development-Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress-Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination-Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination-Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture-Imagination over reason; intuition over fact -Focused on the fantastic of human experience -Writing that can be interpreted 2 ways: surface and in depth -Focus on inner feelings -Gothic literature (sub-genre of Romanticism) -Use of the supernatural -Characters with both evil and good characteristics -Dark landscapes; depressed characters

The Transcendentalists Part ofRomanticism but to a New Level(known as American Renaissance)

Content:Characteristics:Authors:

-a reaction against 18th century Rationalism, and closely linked to the Romantic movement. -in general, was a liberal philosophy favoring nature over formal religious structure, individual insight over dogma, and humane instinct over social convention. -Also known as a reaction to a too rational Unitarian religious movement-Nature is always going to be key-Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul-The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world-People can use their intuition to behold Gods spirit revealed in Nature or in their own souls-Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition-Spontaneous feelings and intuitions are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality-Emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul a transparent eyeball the stress of the importance of the individual as the most important element of society -A fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God -Inspiration of a whole new generation of famous authors such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

1. wrote about sin and guilt; consequences of pride, selfishness, etc. 2. The Scarlet Letter 3. Short stories ("The Minister's Black Veil")The dark Romantic Cornered the market on sin and guilt, including consequences of pride, selfishness, and concealed culpability Known for endings that are ambiguous Almost all of his work, including The Scarlet Letter, deals with people who are torn between tragic evil of human nature and a human sympathy for our natural passions Showed keen psychological insights that paved the way for his friend Melville and the 20th century novelist William Faulkner

Hawthorne was imbued with an inquiring imagination, an intensely meditative mind, and an unceasing interest in the ambiguity of man's being. He was an anatomist of "the interior of the heart, "conscious of the loneliness of man in the universe, of the darkness that enshrouds all joy, and of the need of man to look into his own soul. In both his novels and his short stories, Hawthorne wrote essentially as a moralist. He was interested in what happened in the minds and hearts of men and women when they knew they had done wrong. He focused his examination on the moral and psychological consequences that manifested themselves in human beings as a result of their vanity, their hatred, their egotism, their ambition, and their pride. He was intrigued by the way they felt and the way they acted when they knew they had done wrong. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, "Hawthorne illustrates several sides of his writing: his disenchanted view of human nature, his use of symbolism, and his interest in the supernatural. In addition, the story treats one of the new nineteenth century ideas that concerned Hawthorne: scientific experiment. The story itself is a stimulating and rewarding study of right and wrong in human conduct.Many of Hawthornes stories are set in Puritan New England, and his greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850), has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America. It tells of the passionate, forbidden love affair linking a sensitive, religious religious young man, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and the sensuous, beautiful townsperson, Hester Prynne. Set in Boston around 1650 during early Puritan colonization, the novel highlights the Calvinistic obsession with morality, sexual repression, guilt and confession, and spiritual salvation.For its time, The Scarlet Letter was a daring and even subversive book. Hawthornes gentle style, remote historical setting, and ambiguity softened his grim themes and contented the general public, but sophisticated writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville recognized the books hellish power. It treated issues that were usually suppressed in 19thcentury America, such as the impact of the new, liberating democratic experience on individual behavior, especially on sexual and religious freedom.The book is superbly organized and beautifully written. Appropriately, it uses allegory, a technique the early Puritan colonists themselves practiced.

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, Personal Issues

Hawthornes major themes and thematic patterns include self-trust versus accommodation to authority; conventional versus unconventional gender roles; obsessiveness versus open-mindedness; hypocrisy versus candor; presumed guilt or innocence; forms of nurturance and destructiveness; the penalties of isolation; crimes against the human heart; patriarchal power; belief in fate or free will; belief in progress (including scientific, technological, social, and political progress) as opposed to nostalgia for the past; the truths available to the mind during dream and reverie; and the impossibility of earthly perfection.Historical issues include marketplace factsfor example, where Hawthornes short stories first appeared (unsigned and low-paid) and which stories he chose to collect in Twice-Told Tales and in later anthologies. Related issues include how each book was advertised, how well it sold, how much money Hawthorne earned for it, and how it was reviewed. Students should also know something about the whys and wherefores of Hawthornes career options during and after college, of his undertaking literary hackwork and childrens books, of his interlude at Brook Farm, of his appointments to the Boston Custom House, the Salem Custom House, and the Liverpool consulate, and of his efforts to win reinstatement at the Salem Custom House. Additional historical issues include Puritan versus Whig ideas about the self and the historical past; the political practices and social climate of Jacksonian democracy; and genteel assumptions about womens roles. Still other historical issues concern the particular place and period in which Hawthorne set each story.Personal issues include the various ways Hawthornes family history and specific events in his life informed his writingsmost obviously the introduction to Rappaccinis Daughter and his letters and journals. Students can easily recognize how Young Goodman Brown incorporates facts about his Puritan ancestors, and they are interested in asking such questions as whether the concern with female purity in Rappaccinis Daughter and The Birth-mark may reflect Hawthornes anxieties in the aftermath of his marriage, and how Hawthornes anxieties about his role as an artist are expressed in The Birth-mark and the Custom House introduction to The Scarlet Letter.Students might also speculate about how Hawthornes experiences of intimacy and deprivation in the aftermath of his fathers death inform his fiction (e.g., Robins nostalgia for a home that excludes him). Other personal issues that interest students include Hawthornes relationship tothe Mannings mercantile values, his antipathy to Salem, his experiences at Bowdoin College (including his nonconformity and his friendships with Bridge, Pierce, and Longfellow), his lifelong strivings to develop his talents and support himself by his pen (during his self-defined twelve lonely years, during his political appointments, and so forth), his secret engagement, and his identity as doting but fallible husband and father.

Significant Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions

1. Sketch versus tale and short story.2. Romance versus novel.3. Characters: recurrent types and interrelationships; authorial intrusion or objective display; heroism, villainy, and what Hawthorne seems to condemn, admire, or sadly accept.4. Image clusters and patterns (for example, dark versus light, natural versus unnatural, sunshine and firelight versus moonlight and reflections, labyrinths).5. Subjective vision (including fantasies, reveries, dreams, and narrators questions about objective reality).6. Narrative antecedents, including biblical parable, Spenserian romance, allegory (Dante, Bunyan, and others), gothic horror tales, sentimental love stories, old wives tales, fairy tales, and so on.7. Reworking of notebook entries into fiction, and the relationship between earlier works and later ones.8. Hawthornes open-ended endings.9. The relation of prefaces and expository introductions to Hawthornes plots.10. Narrators options to the reader (e.g., saying, Be it so, if you will after asking if Goodman Brown had only dreamed about a witch meeting).

Comparisons, Contrasts, Connections

Poe: Use of gothic settings, themes, and characters; interest in dreams and other threshold states, and in sensitive individuals propensities to madnessMelville: Plumbing of the dark depths of the human mind, antipathy to authority, celebration of individual striving and sympathetic nurturingEmerson: Celebration of striving toward self-fulfillment, criticism of hereditary privilege, egalitarian visionStowe and the damned mob of scribbling women: Celebration of womens capacities for dignity and heroism, religious pietyJames: Sensitive hero/narrator; psychological scrutiny; unresolved questionsConrad: Journeys to the heart of darkness; parallel of outer and inner experience

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891)

1. ranked as one of America's top novelists, but recognized by few in his own time 2. Moby Dick a. didn't sell: only his friend NH liked it; not reprinted for 60 yrs. b. now considered America's greatest prose epic Though recognized now as one of Americas top novelists, Melville was not recognized by many of his peers for his genius Born into a distinguished family but due to his father going bankrupt when he was young, finances went sour he ended up going out to sea when he was 20 as a cabin boy. Later was out on whaling boats, spent time on islands inhabited by cannibals, roamed the South seas, ended up in US Navy Moby Dick is considered Americas greatest prose epic a tale of mans pursuit of revenge

HERMAN MELVILLE was a descendant of an old, wealthy family that fell abruptly into poverty upon the death of the father. Despite his upbringing, family traditions, and hard work, Melville found himself with no college education. At 19, he went to sea. His interest in sailors lives grew naturally out of his own experiences, and most of his early novels grew out of his voyages. His first book, Typee, was based on his time spent among the Taipis people in the Marquesas Islands of the South Pacific.Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Melvilles masterpiece, is the epic story of the whaling ship Pequod and its captain, Ahab, whose obsessive quest for the white whale, Moby-Dick, leads the ship and its men to destruction. This work, a seemingly realistic adventure novel, contains a series of meditations on the human condition. Whaling, throughout the book, is a grand metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge. Although Ahabs quest is philosophical, it is also tragic. Despite his heroism, Ahab is doomed and perhaps damned in the end. Nature, however beautiful, remains alien and potentially deadly. In Moby-Dick, Melville challenges Emersons optimistic idea that humans can understand nature. Moby-Dick, the great white whale, is an inscrutable, cosmic existence that dominates the novel, just as he obsesses Ahab. Facts about the whale and whaling cannot explain Moby-Dick; on the contrary, the facts themselves tend to dissolve into symbols. Behind Melvilles accumulation of facts is a mystic visionbut whether this vision is evil or good, human or inhuman, is not explained.Ahab insists on imaging a heroic, timeless world of absolutes. Unwisely, he demands a finished text, an answer. But the novel shows that just as there are no finished texts, there are no final answers except, perhaps, death. Certain literary references resonate throughout the novel. Ahab, named for an Old Testament king, desires a total, Faustian, god-like knowledge. Like Oedipus in Sophocles play, who pays tragically for wrongful knowledge, Ahab is struck blind before he is finally killed.Ahabs ship Pequod is named for an extinct New England Indian tribe; thus the name suggests that the boat is doomed to destruction. Whaling was in fact a major industry, especially in New England: It supplied whale oil as an energy source, especially for lamps. Thus the whale does literally shed light on the universe. The book has historical resonance. Whaling was inherently expansionist and linked with the historical idea of a manifest destiny for Americans, since it required Americans to sail round the world in search of whales (in fact, the present state of Hawaii came under American domination because it was used as the major refueling base for American whaling ships). The Pequods crew members represent all races and various religions, suggesting the idea of America as a universal state of mind, as well as a melting pot. Finally, Ahab embodies the tragic version of democratic American individualism. He asserts his dignity as an individual and dares to oppose the inexorable external forces of the universe.

Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City. Though both his parents came from well-to-do families, a family business failure and, soon after, the death of his father made it necessary for him to leave school at the age of 15. He worked as clerk, a farmer and a teacher, before be-Coming a cabin boy on a ship. His shipboard experience served as the basis for a semiautobiographical novel, Redburn, concerning the sufferings of agent eel youth among brutal sailors. This theme of a youth confronted by realities and evils for which he is unprepared is a prominent one in Melville's works. Though based on Melville's experiences, the hero of the novel was more callow and unhappy than Melville himself was, for the sailing experience also gave him a love of the sea, and aroused his desire for adventure.In 1841 Melville went to the South Season a whaling ship, where he gained the information about whaling that he later used in Moby-Dick. After jumping ship in the Marquesas Islands, he and a friend were captured by some of the islanders. They lived with these people for a month, and then escaped on an Australian ship, deserting the latter in Tahiti, where they worked for a time as field laborers. Melville finally returned to the United States as a seaman on an American ship. These experiences provided material for his first and most popular books, which are primarily adventure stories. In 1850 Melville moved to a farm in Massachusetts where Nathaniel Hawthorne was his neighbor. The latter soon became a confidant with whom Melville often discussed his work. As he changed from writing adventure stories to philosophical and symbolic works, Melville's popularity began to wane. From the writing of complex novels such as Moby-Dick, Pierre, and The Confidence Man, Melville turned to writing poetry. But unable to support himself by his writing, he secured political appointment as a customs inspector in New York. When he retired from that job, after 20 years, he wrote the novelette, Billy Budd, completing it just before his death. It was not until the 1920sthat his work again came to the attention of literary scholars and the public. His reputation now rests not only on his rich, poetic prose, but also on his philosophy and his effective use of symbolism. Melville composed the first American prose epic, Moby-Dick. (An epic is generally a long poem on an important theme.) Al-though Moby-Dick is presented in the form of a novel, at times it seems like a prose poem. It is difficult to read for two reasons. Much of the talk in the novelist sailor talk, and much of the language is purposely old-fashioned, for effect. This technique of Melville's style was inspired by the great authors of Elizabethan England. The plot of Moby-Dick deals with the ceaseless conflicts between good and evil, of nature's indifference to man "visibly personified and made practically assail-able." Melville makes this conflict live for us not by putting it into simple statements but by using symbols that is, objects or persons who represent something else. The white whale, Moby-Dick, symbolizes nature for Melville, for it is complex, un-knowable and dangerous. For the character Ahab, however, the whale represents only evil. The prime symbol of good is the first mate of the ship Pequod, a man named Starbuck. And the prime symbol of the good that is destroyed by evil and in this case is destroyed by a consuming desire to root out evil is the captain of the Pequod, Ahab. A man with an overwhelming obsession to kill the whale which had crippled him, he is Melville's greatest creation. He burns with a baleful fire, becoming evil himself in his thirst to destroy evil.Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Melvilles masterpiece, is the epic story of the whaling ship Pequod and its ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab, whose obsessive quest for the white whale Moby-Dick, leads the ship and its men to destruction. This work, a realistic adventure novel, contains a series of meditations on the human condition. Whaling, throughout the book, is a grand metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge. Realistic catalogues and descriptions of whales and the whaling industry punctuate the book, but these carry symbolic connotations. In chapter 15, The Right Whales Head, the narrator says that the Right Whale is a Stoic and the Sperm Whale is a Platonian, referring to two classical schools of philosophy.Although Melvilles novel is philosophical, it is also tragic. Despite his heroism, Ahab is doomed and perhaps damned in the end. Nature, however beautiful, remains alien and potentially deadly. In Moby-Dick, Melville challenges Emersons optimistic idea that humans can understand nature. Moby-Dick, the great white whale, is an inscrutable, cosmic existence that dominates the novel, just as he obsesses Ahab.Facts about the whale and whaling cannot explain Moby-Dick; on the contrary, the facts themselves tend to become symbols, and every fact is obscurely related in a cosmic web to every other fact. This idea of correspondence (as Melville calls it in the Sphinx chapter) does not, however, mean that humans can read truth in nature, as it does in Emerson. Behind Melvilles accumulation of facts is a mystic vision but whether this vision is evil or good, human or inhuman, is never explained. The novel is modern in its tendency to be self-referential, or reflexive.In other words, the novel often is about itself. Melville frequently comments on mental processes such as writing, reading, and understanding. One chapter, for instance, is an exhaustive survey in which the narrator attempts a classification but finally gives up, saying that nothing great can ever be finished (God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught nay, but the draught of a draught. O Time, Strength, Cash and Patience).Melvilles notion of the literary text as an imperfect version or an abandoned draft is quite contemporary.Ahab insists on imaging a heroic, timeless world of absolutes in which he can stand above his men.Unwisely, he demands a finished text, an answer. But the novel shows that just as there are no finished texts, there are no final answers except, perhaps, death.Certain literary references resonate throughout the novel. Ahab, named for an Old Testament king, desires a total, Faustian, god-like knowledge. Like Oedipus in Sophocles play, who pays tragically for wrongful knowledge, Ahab is struck blind before he is wounded in the leg and finally killed. Moby-Dick ends with the word orphan. Ishmael, the narrator, is an orphan like wanderer. The name Ishmael emanates from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament he was the son of Abraham and Hagar (servant to Abrahams wife, Sarah). Ishmael and Hagar were cast into the wilderness by Abraham.Other examples exist. Rachel (one of the patriarch Jacobs wives) is the name of the boat that rescues Ishmael at books end. Finally, the metaphysical whale reminds Jewish andChristian readers of the Biblical story of Jonah, who was tossed overboard by fellow sailors who considered him an object of ill fortune.Swallowed by a big fish, according to the biblical text, he lived for a time in its belly before being returned to dry land through Gods intervention.Seeking to flee from punishment, he only brought more suffering upon himself.Historical references also enrich the novel.The ship Pequod is named for an extinct New England Indian tribe; thus the name suggests that the boat is doomed to destruction. Whaling was in fact a major industry, especially in New England: It supplied oil as an energy source, especially for lamps. Thus the whale does literally shed light on the universe. Whaling was also inherently expansionist and linked with the idea of manifest destiny, since it required Americans to sail round the world in search of whales (in fact, the present state of Hawaii came under American domination because it was used as the major refueling base for American whaling ships). The Pequods crew members represent all races and various religions, suggesting the idea of America as a universal state of mind as well as a melting pot. Finally, Ahab embodies the tragic version of democratic American individualism.He asserts his dignity as an individual and dares to oppose the inexorable external forces of the universe.The novels epilogue tempers the tragic destruction of the ship. Throughout, Melville stresses the importance of friendship and the multicultural human community. After the ship sinks, Ishmael is saved by the engraved coffin made by his close friend, the heroic tattooed harpooner and Polynesian prince Queequeg. The coffins primitive, mythological designs incorporate the history of the cosmos. Ishmael is rescued from death by an object of death. From death life emerges, in the end.Moby-Dick has been called a natural epic a magnificent dramatization of the human spirit set in primitive nature because of its hunter myth, its initiation theme, its Edenic island symbolism, its positive treatment of pre-technological peoples, and its quest for rebirth. In setting humanity alone in nature, it is eminently American.


A major source of Melvilles continuing power is the prescient insight he displays into the central problems of our culture: alienation; violence against women and the repression of the feminine in man that usually accompanies it; the widening gap between a decadent ruling class and the workers it immoderate; racism and an ever-more-brutal assault against the worlds peoples of color; an unbridled militarism that threatens our very existence while demanding that we resign our civil liberties and human rights in the name of national security. Thus the most effective way of teaching Melville is to encourage students to draw contemporary lessons from the historical predicaments he dramatizes so compellingly.Each story, of course, centers on a different theme. In teaching Bartleby and The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, I emphasize Melvilles critique of capitalism and the alienation it produces.The Communist Manifesto and Marxs essays Estranged Labor, The Meaning of Human Requirements, and The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society from The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 are extraordinarily relevant to these two stories and illuminate them in startling ways. However, I find it preferable to let Marx indirectly inform the approach one takes to the stories, rather than to get sidetracked into a discussion of Marx. A secondary theme in Bartleby is the Christian ethic of Matthew 25, which Melville counterpoises against the capitalist ethic of Wall Street (see Bibliography for useful articles on this subject).The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids naturally invites a feminist as well as a Marxist approach. Margaret Fullers Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Sarah Grimks Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman, and Lydia Maria Childs Letters from New York #34 (Womens Rights) provide a ready-made framework for a feminist analysis of that story. Though Benito Cereno and Billy Budd do not focus on women, a feminist approach can enrich the students understanding of key episodes and subthemes.In Benito Cereno, for example, Delanos racist stereotypes not only prevent him from recognizing that a slave revolt has occurred onboard the San Dominick, but also distort his perception of the African womens role in that revolt. Just as Babo protects his fellow rebels from discovery by catering to Delanos stereotypes about blacks as faithful slaves, so the African woman Delano ogles does so by catering to his stereotypes about African women as sexual objects and primitive children of nature. By reading between the lines of the Deposition from a feminist perspective, we see that the African women have probably been sexually victimized by both their master and Don Benito and that they have played an active role in the revolt. Melvilles references to the inflaming songs and dances they sing while their men are fighting indicate his possible familiarity with such sources as Equianos narrative, which speaks of African womens participation in warfare.Similarly, in Billy Budd, Melville connects his critique of militarism and the dehumanization it generates with a critique of Western cultures polarization of masculine and feminine. The feminine imagery Melville uses to describe Billy suggests that he represents what Vere later calls the feminine in man, instructing his drumhead court that she must be ruled out of their deliberations. It also suggests that one of the roots of Claggarts and Veres homosexual attraction to Billy is his embodiment of the feminine in man that they have repressed i n themselves and must continue to repress by killing Billy. Here again, Margaret Fullers analysis of the ways in which patriarchy victimizes men as well as women is relevant.Benito Cereno obviously needs above all to be set in the contexts of the antebellum slavery controversy and of the prior historical events to which the story refers (summarized in the footnotes): the Spanish Inquisition; the introduction of African slavery into the Americas underCharles V; the African slave trade and its relationship to the activities of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English buccaneers; the Santo Domingo slave uprising of 17971804; the slave revolt on board the Spanish ship Tryal that the real Captain Delano had helped suppress; and the uncannily similar slave revolt that occurred on board the Spanish slave-trading schooner Amistad in 1839 (for useful articles on these aspects of the story, see the Bibliography below). As mentioned under Classroom Issues and Strategies above, the easiest means of teaching Benito Cereno in historical context is to assign it in conjunction with other texts on slavery.Billy Budd reverberates with implications for the nuclear age and its strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Readers will also find Melvilles exploration of Veres and Claggarts repressed homosexuality highly pertinent to debates over ending the ban against gays in the military. Teachers should not be afraid to exploit the storys contemporary relevance, but they should also set the story in its twin historical contexts1797, the date of the action, and 18861891, the period of composition. See H. Bruce Franklins From Empire to Empire, cited below, for an invaluable discussion of these historical contexts.Teachers might point out that Bartleby draws on Melvilles experiences of working as a clerk for a brief period and also reflects attitudes he must have associated with his brother Allan, a lawyer; that Elizabeth Shaw Melvilles debilitating pregnancies, as well as an actual visit to a paper mill, helped generate the feminist insights Melville displays in The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids; that Judge Lemuel Shaws conservative views on slavery and controversial role as the first Northern judge to send a fugitive slave back to his master may explain the circuitous form Melville adopts in Benito Cereno; and that the suicide of Melvilles son Malcolm in 1867 may have some bearing on Billy Budd.Significant Form, Style, or Artistic ConventionsThe traditional grouping of Melville with Hawthorne and Poe obscures not only the social vision but also the concept of art differentiating Melville from such canonical figures. Unlike them, Melville persistently rejects the symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction, holding instead to the principle that Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges. Teachers should point out the way in which Melville deliberately subverts formalist conventions in Benito Cereno and Billy Budd by appending the Deposition and the three chapters of sequel that force readers to determine the truth for themselves. It might also be useful to point out that the concept of art Melville articulates at the end of Billy Budd directly opposes Veres doctrine of measured forms (see Edgar A. Dryden, cited below). In contextualizing Melville with writers like Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, Margaret Fuller, Alice Cary, Fanny Fern, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others, teachers might suggest comparisons between their aesthetic of Art for Truths Sake (as Elizabeth Stuart Phelps called it) and Melvilles concept of literature as the great Art of Telling the Truth (delineated in his review Hawthorne and His Mosses). Although Melvilles short fiction is much less accessible and more oblique than the protest writings of these other authors, it is important to remember that four out of his first five books were autobiographical accounts of his life as a sailora genre not very different from the White-Jackets powerful appeal for the abolition of flogging in the navy, another parallel with the slave narrative.Stylistically, I like to emphasize Melvilles use of irony and grim humor. If one adopts Babos point of view in reading Benito Cereno, one is struck again and again by the humor of the story. The shaving scene i s one of the best examples, and I like to go over it at length, beginning with the way in which Babo responds to Don Benitos slip of the tongue about Cape Horn by suggesting that Don Benito and Delano continue the conversation while he shaves his master.Bartleby, too, presents many examples of Melvilles incisive irony and grim humor. See, for instance, the scene in which Bartleby announces that he will do no more writing and asks the narrator, Do you not see the reason for yourself?to which the narrator, who does not see, responds by postulating that Bartlebys vision has become temporarily impaired.

TRANSCENDENTALISM

The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th-century rationalism and a manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of 19th-century thought. The movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The soul of each individual was thought to be identical with the world a microcosm of the world itself. The doctrine of self-reliance and individualism developed through thebelief in the identification of the individual soul with God.

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

a. rejected conventional themes, forms, subjects b. used long lines to capture the rhythm of natural speech, free verse, everyday vocabulary c. "Song of Myself" d. "I Hear America Singing" e. "O Captain My Captain" Whitman created new poetic forms and subjects to fashion a distinctly American type of poetic expression He rejected conventional themes, traditional literary references, allusions, and rhyme all the accepted customs of the 19th century He used long lines to capture the rhythms of natural speech, free verse, and vocabulary drawn from everyday speech. I Hear America Singing catalog poem Song of Myself empathized with all people (black, Indian, women). Didnt care about race or sexual orientation. O Captain, My Captain a tribute to the fallen Lincoln

Born on Long Island, New York, WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892) was a part-time carpenter and man of the people, whose brilliant, innovative work expressed the countrys democratic spirit. Whitman was largely self-taught; he left school at the age of 11 to go to work, missing the sort of traditional education that made most American authors respectful imitators of the English. His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains Song of Myself, the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American. The poems innovative, unrhymed, free-verse form, open celebration of sexuality, vibrant democratic sensibility, and extreme Romantic assertion that the poets self was one with the universe and the reader, permanently altered the course of American poetry.

Whitman was one of the great innovators in American literature. In the cluster of poems he called Leaves of Grass he gave America its first genuine epic poem. The poetic style he devised is now called free verse that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. Whitman thought that the voice of democracy should not be haltered by traditional forms of verse. His influence on the poetic technique of other writers was small during the time he was writing Leaves of Grass but today elements of his style are apparent in the work of many poets. During the20th century, poets as different as Carl Sandburg and the "Beat" bard, Allen Ginsberg, have owed something to him. Whitman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and worked there as a school-teacher, as an apprentice to a printer, and as the editor of various newspapers. He had very little schooling but read a great deal on his own. He was especially intrigued by the works of Shakespeare and Milton. Strangely enough, his only contact with the Eastern religions or with German Transcendentalists, whose ideas he frequently used in his poetry, was what he had read of them in the writings of Emerson.In the 1840s Whitman supported Jackson's Democratic Party; he also favored the exclusion of slavery from new states in his newspaper writing and be-cause of this, in 1848, he was dismissed from his job. He then worked sporadically at carpentry and odd jobs, and had some of his writing which was conventional and undistinguished printed in news-papers. In 1848 he visited New Orleans, Chicago, and the Western frontier; the latter impressed him greatly. There is speculation that some of his experiences on this trip marked a turning point in his career, though it is more likely that he was gradually developing as an artist. At any rate, soon after this period he began to write in a new style the "free verse" for which he became famous. He published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, setting the type for the book himself, and writing favorable reviews of it in the papers, anonymously. He continued to add new poems to the collection, and to rearrange and revise them; until his death in 1892.His best work is usually considered to have been done before 1871.Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass are about man and nature. However, a small number of very good poems deal with New York, the city that fascinated Whitman, and with the Civil War, in which he served as a volunteer male nurse. In his poetry, Whitman combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. He envisioned the poet as a hero, a savior and a prophet, one who leads the community by his expressions of the truth. With the publication of Leaves of Grass Whitman was praised by Ralph Waldo Emerson and a few other literati but was attacked by the majority of critics because of his unconventional style. He wanted his poetry to be for the common people but, ironically, it was ignored by the general public.His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains Song of Myself the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American. The enthusiastic praise that Emerson and a few others heaped on this daring volume confirmed Whitman in his poetic vocation, although the book was not a popular success.A visionary book celebrating all creation, Leaves of Grass was inspired largely by Emersons writings, especially his essay The Poet, which predicted a robust, open-hearted, universal kind of poet uncannily like Whitman himself. The poems innovative, unrhymed, free verse form, open celebration of sexuality, vibrant democratic sensibility, and extreme Romantic assertion that the poets self was one with the poem, the universe, and the reader permanently altered the course of American poetry.Leaves of Grass is as vast, energetic, and natural as the American continent; it was the epic generations of American critics had been calling for, although they did not recognize it. Movement ripples through Song of Myself like restless music:My ties and ballasts leave me...I skirt sierras, my palms cover continentsI am afoot with my vision.The poem bulges with myriad concrete sights and sounds. Whitmans birds are not the conventional winged spirits of poetry. His yellowcrownd heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs. Whitman seems to project himself into everything that he sees or imagines. He is mass man, Voyaging toevery port to dicker and adventure, / Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any. But he is equally the suffering individual, The mother of old, condemnd for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on....I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs....I am the mashd fireman with breast-bone broken....More than any other writer, Whitman invented the myth of democratic America. The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States is essentially the greatest poem. When Whitman wrote this, he daringly turned upside down the general opinion that America was too brash and new to be poetic. He invented a timeless America of the free imagination, peopled with pioneering spirits of all nations. D.H. Lawrence, the British novelist and poet, accurately called him the poet of the open road.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)

a. her poetry broke with convention: didn't look right; didn't rhyme; too bold; too radical b. concrete imagery, forceful language, unique style d. wrote 1775 poems, published only 7 in her life e. "Because I could not stop for Death--" f. My life closed twice before its close g. The Soul selects her own Society Success is counted sweetestBy those who neer succeed.To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need. An agoraphobic afraid of open spaces from age 23 until her death 33 years later dressed only in white and never left her house (rarely her room). Wrote nearly 2,000 poems in her lifetime, but published only seven each anonymously Her poems were published posthumously, by her sister Lavinia Her Five Main Themes: LOVE , NATURE, FRIENDSHIP, DEATH, and IMMORTALITY Considered one of the founders of Modern American PoetryHer Poems Were Different They looked different where were the sentences, the commas, semi-colons, the periods? Why all the dashes???? Her poems didnt rhyme used slant rhyme Her figures of speech were too striking for the day Her ideas were too radical she didnt stick with warm and fuzzy topics. Favored startling images and outlooks. Paved the way for the Imagists of the 20th century.

EMILY DICKINSON is, in a sense, a link between her era and the literary sensitivities of the 20th century. A radical individualist, she was born and spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, a small village. She never married, and she led an unconventional life that was outwardly uneventful but was full of inner intensity. She loved nature and found deep inspiration in the birds, animals, plants, and changing seasons of the New England countryside. Dickinson spent the latter part of her life as a recluse, due to an extremely sensitive psyche and possibly to make time for writing. Dickinsons terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitmans. She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Her clean, clear, chiseled poems, rediscovered in the 1950s, are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature.Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinsonas well as their contemporaries, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poerepresent the first great literary generation produced in the United States. In the case of fiction writers, the Romantic vision tended to express itself in the form Hawthorne called the Romance, a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel. As defined by Hawthorne, Romances were not love stories, but serious novels that used special techniques to communicate complex and subtle meanings.Instead of carefully defining realistic characters through a wealth of detail, as most English or continental novelists did, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe shaped heroic figures larger than life, burning with mythic significance. The typical protagonists of the American Romance are haunted, alienated individuals. Hawthornes Arthur Dimmesdale or Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, Melvilles Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the many isolated and obsessed characters of Poes ales are lonely protagonists pitted against unknowable, dark fates that, in some mysterious way, grow out of their deepest unconscious selves. The symbolic plots reveal hidden actions of the anguished spirit.One reason for this fictional exploration into the hidden recesses of the soul was the absence at the time of settled community. English novelistsJane Austen, Charles Dickens (the great favorite), Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, William Thackeraylived in a complex, well-articulated, traditional society and shared, with their readers, attitudes that informed their realistic fiction.American novelists were faced with a history of strife and revolution, a geography of vast wilderness, and a fluid and relatively classless democratic society. Many English novels show a poor main character rising on the economic and social ladder, perhaps because of a good marriage or the discovery of a hidden aristocratic past. But this plot does not challenge the aristocratic social structure of England. On the contrary, it confirms it. The rise of the main character satisfies the wish fulfillment of the mainly middle-class readers of those days in England.In contrast, the American novelist had to depend on his or her own devices. America was, in part, an undefined, constantly moving frontier populated by immigrants speaking various languages and following strange and crude ways of life. Thus, the main character in an American story might find himself alone among cannibal tribes, as in Melvilles Typee, or exploring a wilderness like James Fenimore Coopers Leatherstocking, or witnessing lonely visions from the grave, like Poes solitary individuals,or meeting the devil walking in the forest, like Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown. Virtually all the great American protagonists have been loners. The democratic American individual had, as it were, to invent himself. The serious American novelist had to invent new forms as well: hence the sprawling, idiosyncratic shape of Melvilles novel Moby-Dick and Poes dreamlike, wandering Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Emily Dickinson wrote her whimsical, darting verse with sublime in-difference to any notion of being a democratic or popular poet. Her work, far different from that of either Whitman or Long fellow, illustrated the fact that one could take a single household and an inactive life, and make enchanting poetry out of it. Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father was a prominent lawyer and politician and where her grandfather had established an academy and college. Emily's family was very closely knit and she and her sister remained at home and did not marry. Emily seldom left Amherst; she attended college in a nearby town for one year, and later made one trip as far as Washington and two or three trips to Boston. After 1862she became a total recluse, not leaving her house nor seeing even close friends. Her early letters and descriptions of herself in her youth reveal an attractive girl with a lively wit. Her later retirement from the world, though perhaps affected by an un-happy love affair, seems mainly to have resulted from her own personality, from a desire to separate her from the world. The range of her poetry suggests other limited experiences but the power of her creativity and imagination. When she began writing poetry Emily had relatively little formal education. She did know Shakespeare and classical mythology and was especially interested in women authors such as Elizabeth Browning and the Bronte sisters. She was also acquainted with the works of Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. Though she did not believe in the conventional religion of her family, she had studied the Bible, and many of her poems resemble hymns inform. There were several men who, at different times in her life, acted as teacher or master to Emily. The first was Benjamin Newton, a young lawyer in her father's law office who improved her literary and cultural tastes and influenced her ideas on religion. She refers to him as "a friend, who taught me Immortality. Emilys next teacher was Charles Wads-worth, a married, middle-aged minister who provided her with intellectual challenge and contact with the outside world. It appears that she felt affection for him that he could not return, and when he moved to San Francisco in 1862, she re-moved herself from society even more than she had before. Wadsworth may have been the model for the lover in her poems, though it is just as likely that the literary figure is purely imaginary. Miss Dickinson's greatest outpouring of poems occurred in the early 1860s, and because she was so isolated, the Civil War affected her thinking very little. At this time she sent some of her work to Thomas Higginson, a prominent critic and author. He was impressed by her poetry, but suggested that she use a more conventional grammar. Emily, however, refused to revise her poems to fit the standards of others and took no interest in having them published; in fact she had only seven poems published during her lifetime. In Higginson she did, nevertheless, gain an intelligent and sympathetic critic with whom to discuss her work. In the last years of her life Emily seldom saw visitors, but kept in touch with her friends through letters, short poems and small gifts. After her death in 1886, her sister found nearly 1,800 poems that she had written. Many of the poems were finally published in the 1890s, and Emily Dickinson, like Melville, was rediscovered by the literary world in the 1920s.Emily Dickinson's poetry comes out in bursts. The poems are short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol. But within her little lyrics Miss Dickinson writes about some of the most important things in life. She writes about love and a lover, whom she either never really found or else gave up. She writes about nature. She writes about mortality and immortality. She writes about success, which she thought she never achieved, and about failure, which she considered her constant companion. She writes of these things so brilliantly that she is now ranked as one of America's great poets. Her poetry is read today throughout much of the world and yet its exact wording has not been completely determined, nor has its arrangement and punctuation. Since Emily never prepared her poems for publication, one of the bitterest battles in American literary history has been fought over who should publish and edit what she wrote. However, regardless of details or conflicts, there is no doubt that the solitary Miss Dickinson of Amherst, Massachusetts, is a writer of great power and beauty.Dickinsons terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitmans. She never uses two words when one will do, and combines concrete things with abstract ideas in an almost proverbial, compressed style. Her best poems have no fat; many mock current sentimentality, and some are even heretical. She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Like Poe, she explores the dark and hidden part of the mind, dramatizing death and the grave. Yet she also celebrated simple objects a flower, a bee. Her poetry exhibits great intelligence and often evokes the agonizing paradox of the limits of the human consciousness trapped in time. She had an excellent sense of humor, and her range of subjects and treatment is amazingly wide. Her poems are generally known by the numbers assigned them in Thomas H. Johnsons standard edition of 1955. They bristle with odd capitalizations and dashes.A nonconformist, like Thoreau she often reversed meanings of words and phrases and used paradox to great effect. Dickinsons 1,775 poems continue to intrigue critics, who often disagree about them. Some stress her mystical side, some her sensitivity to nature; many note her odd, exotic appeal. One modern critic, R.P. Blackmur, comments that Dickinsons poetry sometimes feels as if a cat came at us speaking English. Her clean, clear, chiseled poems are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature.


Students need to know something about Dickinsons life, her schooling, religious upbringing and subsequent rebellion, her family members, and the close friends who became the audience for her poems. (Much of this i s outlined in the headnote.) They will be helped by having some historical sense of women and men in nineteenth-century New England. They need information on womens habits of reading and writing, on friendships among women, religious revivalism, and life in a small college town like Amherst. Awareness of class, class consciousness, and social customs for families like the Dickinsons and their circle of friends will help prevent questions like the one cited above on why Dickinson didnt just move and go for it in a city. Students should be discouraged from discussing the poems as feminine or as demonstrating the womans point of view.A discussion of homophobia is necessary. Here the headnote should be helpful. The love poems are not exclusively heterosexual. Students should be encouraged to examine the erotics of this poetry without being limited to conventional notions of gender. Dickinson uses a variety of voices in these poems, writing as a child (often a boy), a wife-to-be, a woman rejected, and as a voice of authority which we often associate with maleness. These voices or roles or poses, as they are sometimes called, need to be identified and examined. Here are the multiplicities of self. Do we need to reconcile these voices? What happens when we dont? Students may reflect on or write about multiplicities of experience, perspective, and voice in themselves.


Information should be provided about other American and British writers publishing at this time, those whom Dickinson read, and those especially popular at the time but not as well known, as well as those still recognized: Emerson, Longfellow, Stowe, Helen Hunt Jackson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Dickens. Dickinsons poetry is very dissimilar to poetry being published at the same time. Attention needs to be drawn to this fact and to the originality, the intentional and consistent innovativeness, of her style. Questions of style can also lead to observations concerning the thin l ine between poetry and prose in Dickinsons letters, and about the complex and integral relationships between the two genres throughout her writing.There is also the question of the editing: What did a given poem look like when early editors published it, and when Thomas Johnson published the same poem in the variorum edition? Students should be made familiar with Thomas Johnsons variorum as well as R. W. Franklins Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson. What did the variorum edition of the poems bring to Dickinson scholarship? What was available before? What has R. W. Franklins publication of the manuscript books meant? And what about Susan Howes argument that Dickinsons original line breaks must be honored? Some students may wish to take up the question of how to represent in type Dickinsons marks of punctuation.For two poems in our selection we include in footnotes all the variants, or alternate word choices Dickinson noted for each poem.Using Franklins Manuscript Books, students can observe in detail the poets system for marking possible changes and listing variants. Furthermore, study of the facsimiles in the Franklin edition will give students an opportunity to observe the artistic conventions in Dickinsons manuscriptslineation and punctuation as well as her handwriting, or calligraphy, and her use of space between letters, words, and at the end of a line. Investigation of the manuscripts will give students the opportunity to discuss what has been lost in her visual art in the print transcriptions of the poems. In addition, reading the poems in the manuscript volumes encourages students to test out the theories of some critics that these volumes are artistic units with narrative and thematic cohesion.It is important to point out that the number that appears at the head of each poem in our selection is not a part of the space of the poem, and that these numbers were never used by the poet. They were established by Thomas Johnson in his attempt to arrange the complete poems chronologically. Since so few of Dickinsons manuscripts can be dated, the Johnson numbers are most often speculative. Their standard use has been as a system of reference, and as convenient as this system may be, a less artificial way of referring to a poem is to use the first line.

Realism: 1855-1900THE RISE OF REALISM

Realism a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towardsRomance and self-creating fictions a great interest in the realities of life, everyday existence, what was brutal or sordid and class struggleThe U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) between the industrial North and the agricultural, slave-owning South was a watershed in American history. Before the war, idealists championed human rights, especially the abolition of slavery; after the war, Americans increasingly idealized progress and the self-made man. This was the era of the millionaire manufacturer and the speculator, when the Darwinian theory of biological evolution and the survival of the fittest species was applied to society and seemed to sanction the sometimes unethical methods of the successful business tycoon.Business boomed after the war. The new intercontinental rail system, inaugurated in 1869, and the transcontinental telegraph, which began operating in 1861, gave industry access to materials, markets, and communications. The constant influx of immigrants provided a seemingly endless supply of inexpensive labor as well. Over 23 million foreignersGerman, Scandinavian, and Irish in the early years, and increasingly Central and Southern Europeans thereafterflowed into the United States between 1860 and 1910. In 1860, most Americans had lived on farms or in small villages, but by 1919 half of the population was concentrated in about 12 cities.Problems of urbanization and industrialization appeared: poor and overcrowded housing, unsanitary conditions, low pay (called wage slavery), difficult working conditions, and inadequate restraints on business. Labor unions grew, and strikes brought the plight of working people to national awareness. Farmers, too, saw themselves struggling against the money interests of the East. From 1860 to 1914, the United States was transformed from a small, agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modern, industrial nation. A debtor nation in 1860, by 1914 it had become the worlds wealthiest state. By World War I, the United States had become a major world power.As industrialization grew, so did alienation. The two greatest novelists of the periodMark Twain and Henry Jamesresponded differently. Twain looked South and West into the heart of rural and frontier America for his defining myth; James looked back at Europe in order to assess the nature of newly cosmopolitan Americans.

*Mark Twain the true father of American literature by H. L. Mencken pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens rough humor and social satire magic power with language, the use of vernacular and colloquial speech representative works: Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventure of Tom Sawyer

RealismCivil WarReconstruction

Content:Genre/Style:Effect:Authors:

A. Civil War brings demand for a "truer" type of literature that doesn't idealize people or places 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)

common characters notidealized (immigrants,laborers)people in society defined byclasssociety corrupted bymaterialismemphasizes moralismthrough observation novel and shortstories are important prefers objectivenarrator dialogue includesmany voices fromaround the countrydoes not tell thereader how tointerpret the story

1. a reaction against romanticism; told it like it was 2. focus on lives of ordinary people; rejected heroic and adventurous 3. anti-materialism; rejected the new "class" system 4. view of nature as a powerful and indifferent force beyond man's control

social realism: aims tochange a specific socialproblem aesthetic realism: artthat insists on detailingthe world as one sees it

1. Feelings of disillusionment 2. Common subjects; slums of rapidly growing cities, factories replacing farmlands, poor factory workers, corrupt politicians 3. Represented the manner and environment of everyday life and ordinary people as realistically as possible (regionalism) 4. Sought to explain behavior (psychologically/socially).

Prose:Mark Twain (18351910)Henry James (1843 1916)

Social background:-the impact of American Civil War -increasing industrialization-the widening contrast of wealth and poverty -popular feeling of frustration anddisillusionment

Historical Context: Civil War brings demandfor a "truer" type ofliterature that does notidealize people or places

MARK TWAIN (Samuel L. Clemens) (1835-1910)

B. The Frontier (1865-1915) a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens is widely thought to be the greatest American humorist and one of our greatest novelists b. used vernacular, exaggeration, deadpan narrator to create humor c. Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (tall tale) d. Adventures of Tom Sawyer e. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (one of America's most influential novels) f. Life on the Mississippi (a memoir) g. The Prince and the Pauper h. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

SAMUEL CLEMENS, better known by his pen name of MARK TWAIN, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. Ernest Hemingway said that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatiousin part because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. Twains style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave. American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Thus it was profoundly liberating and potentially at odds with society. The most well-known example is his story of Huck Finn, a poor boy who decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though Huck thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.Twains masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg. The son of an alcoholic bum, Huck has just been adopted by a respectable family when his father, in a drunken stupor, threatens to kill him. Fearing for his life, Huck escapes, feigning his own death. He is joined in his escape by another outcast, the slave Jim, whose owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of selling him down the river to the harsher slavery of the deep South. Huck and Jim float on a raft down the majestic Mississippi, but are sunk by a steamboat, separated, and later reunited. They go through many comical and dangerous shore adventures that show the variety, generosity, and sometimes cruel irrationality of society. In the end, it is discovered that Miss Watson had already freed Jim, and a respectable family is taking care of the wild boy Huck. But Huck grows impatient with civilized society and plans to escape to the territoriesIndian lands. The ending gives the reader another version of the classic American purity myth: the open road leading to the pristine wilderness, away from the morally corrupting influences of civilization. James Fenimore Coopers novels, Walt Whitmans hymns to the open road, William Faulkners The Bear, and Jack Kerouacs On the Road are other literary examples.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) is the penname of Samuel L. Clemens, the writer H.L. Mencken called "the true father of our national literature." This title may be justified, for Twain made a more extensive combination of American folk humor and serious literature than previous writer shad done. Clemens was born in the backwoods of Missouri, but while he was yet a small boy the family moved to Hannibal on the Mississippi River. There Sam developed a passion for the river and a desire to become the pilot on a riverboat. This was the dream of all the boys along the river, and Twain was very proud of himself when, later on, he actually became a pilot. Clemens' father had wanted to be a lawyer, and did actually serve as a justice of the peace and judge, but had to make his living as a farmer and storekeeper. He was a popular man in Hannibal, but remained poor, and when he died Sam was apprenticed to a printer. Thus at age 11 Sam's formal schooling ended, though he continued to read extensively. As was the case with many 19th-century writers, the print shop and journalism served as preparation for his literary career. After working on his brother's news-paper for a while, in 1854 Sam set out on his own, working as a printer in various Eastern and mid-western towns. In 1856 he fulfilled his boyhood dream by becoming a river boat pilot. When the boats stopped operating during the Civil War, Clemens served for a time as a volunteer soldier and then, in 1862, he went West .Clemens first wrote for a newspaper in Nevada and then moved to San Francisco. During this period he wrote mainly humorous sketches, the most famous being "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Between 1865 and1870, Clemens went on tours of Hawaii, Europe, and the Middle East as a correspondent; later his adventures served as the subject of several books. His news-paper accounts of his travels spread his popularity, so that on his return he also became a successful humorous lecturer.In 1870, Clemens married a wealthy and rather aristocratic girl and settled in the East, first in Buffalo and then permanently in Hartford, Connecticut. When he moved to Hartford, Clemens gave up journalism to make fiction writing his career. His writing was popular and sold well, although he sometimes found lecture tours necessary to supplement his income. In Hartford, Clemens was surrounded by a wealthy, genteel society including several other popular authors of the time, and it has been assumed that this influence modified the boisterous writer of news-paper days, curbing his wit and social criticism. This assumption is not entirely true, for the "Mark Twain" who appeared autobiographically in the stories of the West, and the Samuel Clemens of Hartford society were both, to some degree, social poses. Clemens' work does not suffer from being overly genteel, and his satirical writing is a sharp attack on society. In his last years, Clemens became increasingly bitter; some of his writing of this period is so pessimistic that he withheld it from publication. The typical motif in Clemens' writing was the narration of a story by a young or naive person or a story in which the main character was an Easterner unaccustomed to frontier life. In Clemens' stories the over-refined Easterner was usually outwit-ted by Westerners. When he wrote from a youth's perspective, the youth was usually wise beyond his years but retained an idealism which Clemens contrasted with the hypocrisy and cruelty of the adult world.Ernest Hemingways famous statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, indicates this authors towering place in the tradition. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious partially because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantlyas the English. Twains style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gaveAmerican writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions.Thus it was profoundly liberating and potentially at odds with society. The most well-known example is Huck Finn, a poor boy who decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though Huck thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.Twains masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg.The son of an alcoholic bum, Huck has just been adopted by a respectable family when his father, in a drunken stupor, threatens to kill him. Fearing for his life, Huck escapes feigning his own death. He is joined in his escape by another outcast, the slave Jim, whose owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of selling him down the river to the harsher slavery of the Deep South.Huck and Jim float on a raft down the majestic Mississippi, but are sunk by a steamboat, separated, and later reunited. They go through many comical and dangerous shore adventures that show the variety, generosity, and sometimes cruel irrationality of society. In the end, it is discovered that Miss Watson had already freed Jim, and a respectable family is taking care of the wild boy Huck. But Huck grows impatient with civilized society and plans to escape to the territories Indian lands. The ending gives the reader the counter-version of the classic American success myth: the open road leading to the pristine wilderness, away from themorally corrupting influences of civilization. James Fenimore Coopers novels, Walt Whitmans hymns to the open road, William Faulkners The Bear, and Jack Kerouacs On the Road are other literary examples.Huckleberry Finn has inspired countless literary interpretations. Clearly, the novel is a story of death, rebirth, and initiation. The escaped slave, Jim, becomes a father figure for Huck; in deciding to save Jim, Huck grows morally beyond the bounds of his slave-owning society. It is Jims adventures that initiate Huck into the complexities of human nature and give him moral courage. The novel also dramatizes Twains ideal of the harmonious community: What you want, aboveall things, on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied and feel right and kind toward the others.Like Melvilles ship the Pequod, the raft sinks, and with it that special community. The pure, simple world of the raft is ultimately overwhelmed by progress the steamboat but the mythic image of the river remains, as vast and changing as life itself.The unstable relationship between reality and illusion is Twains characteristic theme, the basis of much of his humor. The magnificent yet deceptive, constantly changing river is also the main feature of his imaginative landscape. In Life on the Mississippi, Twain recalls his training as a young steamboat pilot when he writes: I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was the chief. Twains moral sense as a writer echoes his pilots responsibility to steer the ship to safety. Samuel Clemenss pen name, Mark Twain, is the phrase Mississippi boatmen used to signify two fathoms (3.6 meters) of water, the depth needed for a boats safe passage. Twains serious purpose combined with a rare genius for humor and style keep Twains writing fresh and appealing.


Like Walt Whitman, Twain works the poetic elements of the English language. Repetition, both of phrases and of syntax, is one of his stylistic highlights. A useful close reading exercise could be created from examining sections of the extract from the Autobiography or from A True Story to see how Twain manipulates the language for poetic or emotional effect.Dialect, including variants of standard middle-class white dialect, i s another area in which Twain excels. Buck Fanshawes Funeral and A True Story both show how Twain delighted in projecting particular points of view through regional dialect. Social class is an issue as wel l here; students may enjoy trying to sort out ways that Americans classify each other in terms of race, class, and region.The framed story, in which a Standard-English-speaking narrator introduces characters and then sits back while they take over the storys narration, was a standard convention in nineteenth-century American storytelling, especially in the regionalist stories produced during the antebellum period. Twain used this convention in stories such as Jumping Frog, Buck Fanshawes Funeral, and A True Story. A discussion of the relationship between the framing narrator and the audience, on the one hand, and the framing narrator and the dialect characters, on the other, can help students understand some of the literary politics of establishing the legitimacy of dialect voices for a readership for whom Standard English was the only linguistic variant considered to carry authority.

Comparisons, Contrasts, Connections

Mark Twain is always cited as one of the artists responsible for creating a uniquely American form of the English language. Linguistically, he can be compared with writers such as Walt Whitman, whose experiments with words, syntax, rhythms, and voice are similar. His short stories are heavily dependent on forms created by earlier regionalist writers, including the dialect stories in the African-American tradition, so it i s useful to examine his stories along with those by Augustus Longstreet, George Washington Harris, and Charles Chesnutt as well as African- American folktales. Both for comparisons and contrasts, the spectrum of late-nineteenth-century depictions of American characters can be seen by comparing and contrasting the regionalists who were being published in the Atlantic Monthly in the late nineteenth century: Twain, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Bret Harte, George Washington Cable, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and others. And for contrasts, its always interesting to contemplate the fact that William Dean Howells was close friends with both Mark Twain and Henry James.On a different note, in the early twentieth century Twain, Howells, and William James were all members of the Anti-Imperialist League.Teachers interested in working with world events might want to create a unit in which issues of national concern (questions of the color line, for instance) are considered in tandem with international issues (the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion). Twain wrote occasional pieces on all these events, one sign that this writer, like several of his friends, was ready to begin assessing Americas standing in a global context.

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916)

Psychological approach to his subject matter Concerned more with the inner life of human beings than with overt human actions The forerunner of the 20th century stream of consciousness novels and the founder of psychological realism International theme or American innocence in face of European sophistication Representative works: The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassador, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl point of view

HENRY JAMES once wrote that art, especially literary art, makes life, makes interest, makes importance. Jamess fiction is the most highly conscious, sophisticated, and difficult of its era. James is noted for his international themethat is, the complex relationships between nave Americans and cosmopolitan Europeans.What his biographer Leon Edel calls Jamess first, or international, phase encompassed such works as The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879), and a masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady (1881). In The American, for example, Christopher Newman, a nave but intelligent and idealistic self-made millionaire industrialist, goes to Europe seeking a bride. When her family rejects him because he lacks an aristocratic background, he has a chance to revenge himself; in deciding not to, he demonstrates his moral superiority.Jamess second period was experimental. He exploited new subject mattersfeminism and social reform in The Bostonians (1886) and political intrigue in The Princess Casamassima (1885). In his third, or major, phase James returned to international subjects, but treated them with increasing sophistication and psychological penetration. The complex and almost mythical The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) (which James felt was his best novel), and The Golden Bowl (1904) date from this major period. If the main theme of Twains work is the often humorous difference between pretense and reality, Jamess constant concern is perception. In James, only self-awareness and clear perception of others yields wisdom and self-sacrificing love.Henry James helps in his subtle way to lead us from the 19th into the20th century, just as he leads us from America to Europe. His principal interest, especially in his many fine novels, is the confrontation of American and European culture. He is also concerned with the clash between the old and the new, between the dying century and the one just beginning.James was born in New York City, the second child of wealthy, somewhat aristocratic parents. His father, Henry James, Sr., was a philosopher and a friend of Emerson's; his brother William became a prominent philosopher and psychologist. Henry James, Sr. disapproved of most schools and consequently, sent his sons to a variety of tutors and European schools in search of the best education for them. The children received the major part of their education at home, however, in lively conversations with their father and the other children. The James family's travels in Europe were another source of education for Henry. When he was growing up in New York, Henry was given a great deal of independence, so much in fact, that he felt isolated from other people. A quiet child among exuberant brothers and cousins, Henry was more often an observer than a participant in their activities. When, as a young man, a back injury prevented his fighting in the Civil War, he felt even more excluded from the events of his time. While the adult Henry James developed many close friendships, he retained his attitude of observer, and devoted much of his life to solitary work on his writing. Henry's family lived for a time in Boston, where he became acquainted with New England authors and friends of his father, began his friendship with William Dean Howells, and attended Harvard Law School. After 1866, James lived in Europe much of the time and in 1875 decided to make it his permanent home. He lived in Paris for a year, where he met Turgenev, Flaubert, and Zola. The next year he settled in London and lived there and in the English countryside for the rest of his life. In 1915, a year before his death, to show his support of England in World War I, James became a British citizen. Henry James first achieved recognition as a writer of the "international novel "a story which brings together persons of various nationalities who represent certain characteristics of their country. The Europeans in James' novels are more cultured, more concerned with art, and more aware of the subtleties of social situations than are James' Americans. The Americans, however, usually have a morality and innocence which the Europeans lack. James seemed to value both the sophistication of Europe and the idealism of America. Of the prominent New England writers who had dominated American literature, James preferred Hawthorne, with his recognition of the evil present in the world, to the Transcendentalists, whose optimism seemed unrealistic to him. James' later books put less emphasis on the international theme and are more concerned with the psychology of his characters. His most mature, and perhaps his best, novels are considered to be his last three: The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. James himself considered The Ambassadors his best work.Henry James once wrote that art, especially literary art, makes life, makes interest, and makes importance. Jamess fiction and criticism is the most highly conscious, sophisticated, and difficult of its era. With Twain, James is generally ranked as the greatest American novelist of the second half of the 19th century.James is noted for his international theme that is, the complex relationships between nave Americans and cosmopolitan Europeans.

Modernism: 1900-1946MODERNISM AND EXPERIMENTATION

Many historians have characterized the period between the two world wars as the United States traumatic coming of age, despite the fact that U.S. direct involvement was relatively brief (1917-1918) and its casualties many fewer than those of its European allies and foes. Shocked and permanently changed, Americans soldiers returned to their homeland, but could never regain their innocence. Nor could soldiers from rural America easily return to their roots. After experiencing the world, many now yearned for a modern, urban life.In the postwar big boom, business flourished, and the successful prospered beyond their wildest dreams. For the first time, many Americans enrolled in higher educationin the 1920s college enrollment doubled. The middle class prospered; Americans began to enjoy the worlds highest national average income in this era. Americans of the Roaring Twenties fell in love with modern entertainments. Most people went to the movies once a week. Although Prohibitiona nationwide ban on the sale of alcohol instituted through the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitutionbegan in 1919, illegal speakeasies (bars) and nightclubs proliferated, featuring jazz music, cocktails, and daring modes of dress and dance. Dancing, movie going, automobile touring, and radio were national crazes. American women, in particular, felt liberated. They cut their hair short (bobbed), wore short flapper dresses, and gloried in the right to vote assured by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1920. They boldly spoke their mind and took public roles in society.In spite of this prosperity, Western youths on the cultural edge were a state of intellectual rebellion, angry and disillusioned with the savage war, as well as the older generation they held responsible. Ironically, difficult postwar economic conditions in Europe allowed Americans with dollarslike writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Poundto live abroad handsomely on very little money, and to soak up the postwar disillusionment, as well as other European intellectual currents, particularly Freudian psychology and to a lesser extent Marxism.Numerous novels, notably Hemingways The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Fitzgeralds This Side of Paradise (1920), evoke the extravagance and disillusionment of what American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein dubbed the lost generation. In T.S. Eliots influential long poem The Waste Land (1922), Western civilization is symbolized by a bleak desert in desperate need of rain (spiritual renewal).The large cultural wave of Modernism, which emerged in Europe, and then spread to the United States in the early years of the 20th century, expressed a sense of modern life through art as a sharp break from the past. As modern machinery had changed the pace, atmosphere, and appearance of daily life in the early 20th century, so many artists and writers, with varying degrees of success, reinvented traditional artistic forms and tried to find radically new onesan aesthetic echo of what people had come to call the machine age.

ModernismWorld War IThe Great DepressionWorld War II

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dominant mood: alienation anddisconnectionpeople unable to communicateeffectivelyfear of eroding traditions and griefover loss of the past

common readers are alienated by this literature.-booming industry and material prosperity in contrast with a sense of unease and restlessness underneath -a decline in moral standard described as a spiritual poverty -the impact of war feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment1. Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American Dream: the independence, self-reliant, individual will triumph. 2. Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and form over the traditional reflecting the fragmentation of society.3. Interest in the inner workings of the human mind (ex. Stream of consciousness).

-Rejection of traditional themes and subjects-Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American Dream-Rejection of the ideal hero as infallible in favor of a hero who is flawed and disillusioned but shows grace under pressure

Prose:Ernest Hemingway (18991961)F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 1940)William Faulkner (1897 1962) Poetry:Thomas Stearns Eliot (18881965) Drama:Eugene ONeill (1888 1953)

Historical Context:overwhelming technologicalchanges of the 20th CenturyWorld War I was the first war ofmass destruction due to technological advancesrise of the youth cultureModern life seemed radically different from traditional life more scientific, faster, more technological, and more mechanized.Genre/Style:A. Dominant mood: alienation/disconnection B. Writing highly experimental: use of fragments, stream of consciousness, interior dialogue C. Writers seek to create a unique style

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940)

1. The Great Gatsby (ironic and tragic treatment of the American success myth) 2. his work and life illustrate American culture of the 1920's

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY FITZGERALDS (1896-1940) life resembles a fairy tale. During World War I, Fitzgerald enlisted in the U.S. Army and fell in love with a rich and beautiful girl, Zelda Sayre, who lived near Montgomery, Alabama, where he was stationed. After he was discharged at wars end, he went to seek his literary fortune in New York City in order to marry her.His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), became a best-seller, and at 24 they married. Neither of them was able to withstand the stresses of success and fame, and they squandered their money. They moved to France to economize in 1924, and returned seven years later. Zelda became mentally unstable and had to be institutionalized; Fitzgerald himself became an alcoholic and died young as a movie screenwriter.Fitzgeralds secure place in American literature rests primarily on his novel The Great Gatsby (1925), a brilliantly written, economically structured story about the American dream of the self-made man. The protagonist, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, discovers the devastating cost of success in terms of personal fulfillment and love. More than any other writer, Fitzgerald captured the glittering, desperate life of the 1920s.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, but the Middle West was not the setting for any of his major works. After he entered New Jersey's socially prestigious Princeton University he tried to eradicate his origins, though he was unhappy at college in many ways and felt keenly his inferiority to such classmates as the brilliant literary critic, Edmund Wilson, and to all those others who were born rich and born Easterners. When the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the Army, and in a training camp in Alabama met Zelda, the Southern belle who became his wife and who was the model for most of the beautiful, gay heroines of his fiction. He became a wr

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