AMERICAN STUDIES

movements

• Modernism really began in America but went to Paris to happen.

• Gertrude Stein

• 3 major periods/traditions:– genteel– modernist– postmodernist

Writing strategies

• anxieties of influence • appropriations of influences• borrowing• assimilating• intertextualizing

background

• 1517 Protestant Reformation– Protestors who wished to reform the Catholic Church

• Martin Luther’s 95 Theses • 1532 Henry VIII, King of England creates the Anglican

Church (Church of England)• Protestantism - in name only • King same as Pope with appointed cardinals• Anglican Church was Catholicism practice & rituals• “Catholic church in disguise”

Puritanism & England

• Local Englishmen protest against the Anglican Church

• Want to “purify” England – Against Henry’s mild English theocracy

• Belief in Predestination• Priesthood of the individual

Puritanism & the English colonies

• Puritans CHOSE to leave England• not because of persecution• needed a place to go where they could find government

support • The New World became a Puritan Commonwealth

– charter to go to the New World– “city on a hill”– a beacon light for others

• Return to England– The idea was to purify America and then return to England to save her

central issues

• The Puritans established their own religious and moral principles known as American Puritanism.

• American Puritanism stressed:– predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited

atonement (or the salvation of a selected few) from God's grace.

• puritans left Europe for America in order to establish a theocracy in the New World.

• they built a way of life that stressed:– hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.

features

• individual election and damnation• the pursuit of God’s work• predestination: – God decided everything before things occurred – original sin: “in Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”

• limited atonement: – only the “elect” can be saved.

• personal life was emphasized as a theater for inner drama (journals, diaries)

• seek patterns for salvation• self-scrutiny

Puritan writings and literature

NOT an imaginative literature, but:• history• annals• travel record• scientific observation• diary• sermon• meditation• elegy

Magnalia Christi Americana

Cotton Mather 1633-1728

• Advocate of the “plaine style” but his book exhibits:– elaborate imagery– prose rhythm– complex metaphor– scriptural analogy– only apparently naïve

and devoid of eloquence

Platonism and Puritanism

• Platonism– the word is a reflection of pure idea

• Puritanism– word and world reflect divine things, coherent

systems, and transcendental meaning

Puritan influences

• a group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature

• it led to the everlasting myth– All literature is based on a myth – Garden of Eden

• symbolism: distinctly American

poetry

• doggerel• verse anagrams• acrostics• riddles• epitaphs and elegies

Ann Bradstreet

“I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits, A Poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong; For such despite they cast on Female wits:If what I doe prove well, it won’t advance,They’ll say it’s stolne, or else it was by

chance”(1650)

Narratives

• adventure stories but still with a focus on transcendental meaning

• the captivity narrative: sermon, moral lesson, revelatory history, the precursor of later sensationalist fiction and gothic tale– the Indians were the devils

Cpt. John Smith & Pocahontas

John Smith

“What so truly suits with honor and honesty as the discovering things unknown: erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue; and again to our native country a kingdom to attend her”

( A description of New England, 1616)

The Puritan quest

• NOT to know the land but to redeem it• the negative legacy of puritan writing and ideology of

redemption consisted of belatedness:• they were late in acquiring what the Indians already

possessed: – the ability to: “bathe in, to explore always more deeply, to see, to feel,

to touch… the wild beauty of the New World” (William Carlos Williams, in his anti-puritan In the American Grain, 1925)

• the Indian qualities regarding American landscape and nature were appropriated by later writers beginning with transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman

criticisms

• failure to open out to experience or the ambiguity of the symbol

• lack of inclusiveness• dull response to the world of nature• rigorous moralism• Anglo-Saxonism

awakening

• Puritanism – tradition– unquestioning religious

dogma– monarchy

Enlightenment

• New Thought– rationality– scientific inquiry– representative

government

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

• puritan preacher and idealist

• introduced typology in his studies of nature and influenced a number of writers in the Romantic and transcendentalist period

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

• political man and materialist

• a secularized puritan• introduced the idea that

the American is a new man

Henri de Crèvcoeur (1735-1813)

• “What then is the American, this new man?...He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds… the American is a new man, who acts on new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions”

Franklin: the New Man• inventions: bifocals, the stove, the lightning rod, discovery of

electricity, understanding of earthquakes and ocean currents• editor: Poor Richard’s Almanack (a farmer’s how to manual)• negotiates the peace treaty with Britain, drafting the

declaration of independence and constitution• 1st postmaster general• ambassador to France• moves with ease from resolution to humility as his aphorisms

show:– on resolution: “resolve to perform what you ought; perform without

fail what you resolve”– on frugality: “waste nothing”– on industry: “lose no time; be always employed in something useful”– on humility: “imitate Jesus and Socrates”

Legacy of Puritanism

Passed values to future generations1. Prudence - clear thinking

– not making emotional decisions– Biblical direction

2. Thrift – a penny saved is a penny earned– Ben Franklin's "waste not - want not"

3. Discipline - self discipline – moderation

4. Hard work is rewarded – “ idle hands are the devil's workshop”

The Enlightenment

• neo-classical era• took place from 1700-1820• was a reaction to the excesses of Puritanism• believed in the power of the mind to overcome life’s

difficulties rather than grace• moved away formal communal based society to one

that emphasized individualism

Thinkers of the Enlightenment

• believed that the individuals should be balanced in their life

• believed that through reason the whole universe could be understood

• science can help answer the questions about the universe (this is the era of Newton)

• believed that human beings relate to each other because of shared experiences, not faith

forms of expression

• newpapers• satires• pamphlets• political poems • drama• the rise of the novel

things to look for

• inference• parallelism• personification• aphorisms (of Franklin)

Philip Freneau 1752-1832

• America was on the doorstep of epic change

• revolution signaled the coming of the muses

• the dawn of a golden age of liberty

• enlightenment• artistic deliverance

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

• “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the roman church, by the Greek church, by the protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church”

American History Timeline

• animated atlas• colonial era and revolutionary war• American memory timeline

The Female American

Unca Eliza Winkfield:The Female American

• Appeared in 1767• Published in London• Published in America in 1790 and 1814

reviews

The Monthly Review; or Literary Journal, vol. 36 (1767) 238

• “A sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wonders; and well calculated to make one sort of readers stare”

reviews

The Critical Review; or Annals of Literature vol. 23 (1767) 217

• Mrs. Unca Eliza Winkfield is a most strange adventurer, and her memoirs seem to be calculated only for the wild Indians to whom she is so closely allied. We could therefore have wished, as well for her sake as our own, that this lady had published her adventures at the Fall of Niagara, or upon the Banks of Lake Superior, as she would then, probably, have received the most judicious and sincere applause from her enlightened countrymen and princely relations, and have saved us six hours very disagreeable employment.

title page

• the narrative chronicles the adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield

• compiled by herself• anonymous author– no evidence regarding the gender of the author:

to what extent has this novel been written by a man or a woman?

tremaine mcdowell

• The first novel to introduce “the South American Indian into the North American novel”

• The first “American Robinson Crusoe”• The “first close imitation of any English

novelist done by an American hand”(American Literature, 1929)

similarities with Crusoe

• novel of wanderlust (extraordinary adventures)• shipwreck and adventure• both protagonists are castaways on an island• both endure physical and psychological trials• both survive and prosper• both become ill but overcome illness (also by

praying)• both survey the island from atop• both experience hurricanes and an earthquake• both use the goats• both ascribe their experience to providence

differences: Eliza

• biracial• multilingual• boasts a transnational heritage• takes on several identities evolves• obedient to her father• interprets the shipwreck as sign of undeserved fate• avoids engaging in tasks that require masculine

knowledge

differences: Crusoe

• disobeys the father• sees the shipwreck as sign of punishment• spends years fortifying his place on the island• offers elaborate descriptions of everything

that he does and invents• kills other men

setting

• shifts between representations of paradise (home) the unfamiliar island (place of confinement) familiar island (home)

• the house of her father• the island• the Indian mainland• England place of estrangement• Exchanges:

daughterwomanprophetgodessmissionarywife

themes• Survival • Dedication/Education • Power

– related to voice: the idol is a symbol and a literal representation of the narrator’s anonymity and power

– masking and controlling– establishes the dominant speaking subject– the discourse is essentialist (there is only one God, one Truth, one

Reality)• Renunciation • Texts

– manuscripts – Defoe’s book– The Bible– intertexts (allusions to reports, the Pocahontas myth)

context

• Colonialism: – in the colonial discourse identities are invented

and imagined

• Christianity (SPG)– romantic primitivism

narrative structure/style/tone

• 1st person narrative• 3 parts• dialogue within dialogue (final pages)– incoherence – a reflection of Unca’s self-sustained authority– breakups

• uses the idol to create a dramatic scene • the tone is melodramatic• silence

The Female American follows in the footsteps of Robinson Crusoe, yet

makes its own imprints