¡Descarga Colonial Literature and its Evolution in the 19th Century: From Imitation to Innovation - y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura y Desarrollo solo en Docsity! COLONIAL LITERATURE Colonial Literature is produced after 1776 and before the appearance of Irving. America still had colonies and that Literature was a imitation of European Literature. Then, we actually start dealing with American Literature from 1819–20 onwards because of a publication of a book called The Sketch Book (1891) by Washington Irving, in a time that there were no writers. He went to London and started writing by imitating English Literature. The book consisted in short stories, it was printed in the Uk first and then in America. Moreover, there are two stories that stand out because they were placed in America, written in American language with American characters: 1. “Rip Van Winkle ” story about the creation of the River Hudson by the Europeans. 2. “The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow” Then, many writers started to publish their novels seeing that Irving had succeeded, so he was a crucial figure for the AL. THE 19th CENTURY … - 1861: Antebellum/Prebellum 1865 - …: Postbellum The 19th century was split in two periods because of The Civil War (1861-1865). Before the war (Antebellum), this century was a period of: • New country: the American Independence (1776) • Optimism, hope, joy, excitement, possibilities… • 1849: discovery of gold in California; the promise of The New World • Transcontinental Railroad, finished in 1869 crossing the country by train • Financial stability, the economy was based on slavery Everything was broken by the war, some of the issues surging before were: • The government tried to get rid of the natives, forcing the, to go to the West, genocides… Strong idea of Christianity: the christians had a task to do, that is, purge the garden for God, therefore, christianize the country and exterminate the pagans. • “The Land of the Free” ended slavery (1865). However, the white people of the South defended slavery since it was morally justified because it was in the Bible. • Union of the woman: 1. They hid the alcohol from their husbands who beat them up drunk. 2. Radical women that asked for rights, better conditions at work and the right to vote. 3. The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in Seneca Falls, New York, 1848. 4. Immigration: The arrival of the Irish (catholics) in the East Coast in a Protestant America. The arrival of the Chinese in California for the gold, they worked in the railroad. The Jewish… 5. In the photos of the inauguration of the railroad, 10th of May 1869, all the Chinese did not appear in them, just the white people. 6. Toni Morrison, an African–American woman writer who won a Nobel Prize in Literature. She wrote fiction yet one of her works was non–fiction, a literary criticism titled Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992). In here, she develops a theory of the White people in 19th century. She said that Americans was obsessed with the Blackness because whites people, who were theoretically happy, they were actually terrified. This is due that these people did not do well in Europe, so coming to US they must succeed because if they did not do well in America as well, they had no one to blame their own incapacity and failure. That is why white people were pressured and terrified. On the other hand, Morrison says that America was open and free but the paradox is that freedom was scary for the whites. So, how could they reconcile with freedom? By reminding them that non– freedom was even scarier and worse, that is, slavery. Whiteness depends on Blackness, ontologically as a concept. Without slavery, there is not Americanness, parasitical nature of white freedom. FOB: Fresh of the Boat
