Literatura Norteamericana hasta finales del siglo XIX., Apuntes de Filología Inglesa

¡Descarga Literatura Norteamericana hasta finales del siglo XIX. y más Apuntes en PDF de Filología Inglesa solo en Docsity! 1 Literatura Norteamericana hasta finales del s. XIX 2 I THE COLONIAL PERIOD 1607-1776 5 (1) Natural depravity: All men are born in original sin and can do nothing to save themselves. (2) Unconditional election: God, in his absolute sovereignty, saves some and dams others as he pleases. (3) Predestination: God knows from the beginning who has been elected. (4) Irresistible grace: Man cannot earn his saving grace, nor can he refuse it. restore simplicity to church services and the authority of the Holy Bible to theology. Puritans became noted in the 17th century for a spirit of moral and religious earnestness that affected their whole way of life, and they sought to make their lifestyle the pattern for the whole new world. The Puritans who settled in New England represented a different type of colonist, one that emigrated for religious rather than economic reasons. They wanted to start a new world governed by the Bible. In contrast to the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, the New England settlements had a common ideological goal, to establish a true “religious society”. To explain the Puritanism that dominated New England and its literature during the seventeenth century it is necessary to distinguish between the founders of Plymouth Colony and the founders of Massachusetts Bay: • The Plymouth Colony in Cape Cod. The settlers—known as Pilgrim Fathers— were Separatists; they believed that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must separate themselves from it. They were poor and uneducated. They arrived in New England (at Plymouth Rock) on board of the Mayflower in 1620. William Bradford was the leader of the settlement and church they founded in Massachusetts. They were escaping from persecution in Europe, and their main reason to the new land was to find religious freedom. • The Massachusetts Bay Colony. These were true Puritans and got to America on board of the Arbella in 1630. They wanted to purify the Church of England of its popish customs, not to withdraw from it. In contrast to the Pilgrims, they were wealthy and well educated, many of them being substantial property owners or professional men, university-trained as was their governor, John Winthrop, who believed in reform but not separation. Most Massachusetts colonists were Non-separatist Puritans. Both Pilgrims and Puritans were Calvinists, followers of the Swiss theologian John Calvin. Calvinism emphasizes original sin, man’s fall, and sees man as an utterly corrupt being who can only be reborn through God’s grace. They accepted the main doctrines of Calvinism: 6 Both Pilgrims and Puritans also held that, The Bible was the guide for all aspects of life. Thus the Puritan theocracy was modelled on the covenant between God and man in the Old Testament, and persecution of nonbelievers was justified by scriptural example. Popular Puritan nicknames for the Indians were: Savages, Animals, Natives, Wild-men, Barbarians, Heathen, Pagans... Puritan settlers believed themselves chosen by God to create a new order in America. They came to view their arrival in America as an “errand into the wilderness”, referencing the Biblical Israelites’ exodus from Egypt into the desert for 40 years before entering the Promised Land. The errand refers to the Puritans’ belief in their sacred mission to serve God by evangelizing the North American continent and the world; and the “wilderness” symbolized the wild, untamed world that needed civilization and religion, that needed saving. To achieve this, the Puritans dreamed of creating the Bible’s “city upon a hill” used by the Puritan leader John Winthrop as the title of his 1630 sermon, a utopian community serving as a beacon for the rest of the world, a model of how to organize and live under the religious ideals that they believed a corrupted and crowded Europe had left far behind. God´s Providence—that is, they believed that God continuously directs the affairs of men. A successful business, for example, might very well indicate divine favor and approval. They lived in a very symbolic world, in which every material object, action, and outcome might represent profound meaning. The so called Protestant work ethic originated with the Puritans, who believed that a person’s duty was to achieve success through hard work, thrift, and self- discipline. Material prosperity was a sign of God’s grace. Avoiding frivolous pleasures that would distract them from thoughts of God, Puritans instead trained their energy on hard, useful work. I.3. Characteristics of Puritan literature: The purposes of literature were utilitarian. They believed writing should be useful, a tool to help readers understand the Bible and guide them in their daily lives. For this reason, logic, clarity, and order were more prized in writing than beauty or adornment. Religion was very important, and all things were made to serve it. Many Puritans considered books not of religious nature a threat. Therefore, most of the literature from the Puritan period was what we can call “non- imaginative” literature: sermons, theological treatises, journals, biographies, histories, scientific observations were most popular for they all had a didactic purpose. They distrusted, however, fiction and drama or any literature. New England Puritan writers thought that truth should be expressed plainly, therefore, they utilized what is known as plain style: 7 • Plain style doesn´t mean rude. It means unadorned, direct, clear. It stressed order, clarity of expression and avoided complicated figures of speech. • Used Biblical analogies, metaphors, and examples, and avoided purely ornamental figures and sensuous language. • Employed homely expressions in order to be understood by all kinds of readers and hearers: figures are drawn from daily incidents and situations, such as fishing, farming, Indian warfare, travel on land and sea, and Biblical allusions. WILLIAM BRADFORD (1590-1657) William Bradford was a founder and longtime governor of the Plymouth Colony settlement. Born in England, he emigrated to Holland as a teenager. He traveled to New England with other Pilgrims on the Mayflower in September 1620. They wanted to found a community in which they live according to their beliefs. After fierce storms and the loss of lives, they landed near Cape Cod, MA, not in Virginia as intended, in mid-November, 1620. Bradford was elected governor of the Plymouth Colony and held that position for more than 30 years. He began writing Of Plimouth Plantation (usually called History of Plymouth Plantation, published in 1856) in 1630 and continued working on it for two decades. Of Plimouth Plantation provides a detailed, firsthand account of the Mayflower voyage, the establishment of Plymouth Colony, relations with various Indian communities, exploration of surrounding areas, and the daily life of New England’s first settlers. The purpose was DIDACTIC: to convince future generations of the struggles and achievements of the Pilgrims to inform his readers about the Pilgrims' history to inspire the new generation to confirm Puritan values 10 Puritan Poetry: Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672) and Edward Taylor (1642?-1729) Puritan poets such as Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor viewed poetry primarily as a means of exploring the relationship between the individual and God. America´s first poet of talent, Anne Bradstreet, arrived with her husband at Massachusetts on the Arbella in 1630. Her poems, the first volume of collected verse by an American poet, were published in London in 1650 as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, a title chosen without her knowledge by her brother in law. Most of her poems are long and show a tendency to imitate minor English writers. Brasdstreet’s reputation today is founded on a few shorter pieces included in the posthumous collection, Several Poems (1678). Her poems reflect her wide learning, deep faith, and love for her husband and children. They also provide insight into the position of women in the male dominated Puritan society. For over 200 years, the work of Edward Taylor remained unread. His poetry did not come to light until the 1930s when his long-forgotten manuscripts were discovered in the Yale University Library. He was born in England and went to America in 1668 to escape religious persecution. After graduating from Harvard, he became a minister in Massachusetts. Like Anne Bradstreet, Taylor wrote his poetry to glorify God. He found his subjects in human life, nature and everyday activities. His poems on these topics served as a form of worship. ANNE BRADSTREET (c.1612-1672) To My Dear and Loving Husband (audio clip To My Dear and Loving Husband) If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought26 but love from thee, give recompense27. Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold28, I pray. Then while we live, in love let's so persevere29 That when we live no more, we may live ever. 26 Ought: archaic word meaning “anything.” 27 Recompense: repayment. 28 Manifold: in many ways. 29 Persevere: continue despite hardship; persist. 11 EDWARD TAYLOR (1642-1729) Huswifery30 (audio clip Huswifery) Make me, O Lord, Thy spinning wheel complete. Thy holy word my distaff31 make for me. Make mine affections32 Thy swift flyers33 neat, And make my soul Thy holy spool to be. My conversation make to be Thy reel And reel the yarn thereon spun of Thy wheel. Make me Thy loom then, knit therein this twine: And make Thy holy spirit, Lord, wind quills34: Then weave the web Thyself. The yarn is fine. Thine ordinances35 make my fulling mills36. Then dye the same in heavenly colors choice, All pinked37 with varnished38 flowers of paradise. Then clothe therewith mine understanding, will, Affections, judgment, conscience, memory; My words and actions, that their shine may fill My ways with glory and Thee glorify. Then mine apparel shall display before Ye That I am clothed in holy robes for glory. 30 Huswifery means “housekeeping” 31 Staff on a spinning wheel for holding the wool to be spun. 32 Emotions. 33 Parts of spinning wheels that twist fibers into yarn. 34 Rods used to wind and hold yarn. 35 Sacraments or religious rites. 36 Fulling mills: machines that beat and process woven cloth to make it denser and more compact. 37 Decorated. 38 Embellished. A- wheel B - distaff C - flyer D - spool E - bobbin 12 II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD (1776-1790) 15 Characteristics of the literature of the period: For colonists living in the 1700s, there was one topic around which most conversation and writing revolved: the Revolution. The writing of this period as political writing (political speeches, political essays and pamphlets), and it was persuasive. It had a life-and-death purpose: to win over the hearts and minds of American colonists—and the rest of the world—to the belief that rebellion was necessary. During the American Revolution, one important literature piece is Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776) a political pamphlet that encouraged separation of the colonies from Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence (adopted July 4, 1776), and found inspiration in the “social contract theory”: governments are a contract between the governed and the people governing who have their power from the consent of the people and whose purpose is to protect everybody’s rights. The main purpose of The Declaration of Independence was to explain to foreign nations why the colonies had chosen to separate themselves from Great Britain. A final example of literature during the American Revolution is the United States Constitution. The purpose of this document was to establish a federal government for the United States and delegate to the federal government certain, limited powers. The content of American literature between 1790 and 1820 was largely determined by the peculiar circumstances of American life and shows the dominant nationalistic patterns of thought of the period; the main preoccupation of the period was to create their own identity as a new country, that is, the desire for a declaration of literary independence and a truly American literature. At the end of the 18th century literature did not yet exist in the United States as a profession that allowed a writer to earn a living by it. To British observers, the idea of a distinct American literature seemed absurd: since it was written in English, made use of English forms and relied on an English publishing market, literary production in America could at best be regarded as a sub-category of English literature. Because it was a young country, with a short history and hardly any monuments, many people believed that America did not offer adequate subjects for literature. 16 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) embodied the 18th century American Enlightenment. Writer, printer, publisher, inventor, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time. Born in 1706 into a poor candle-maker's family "poor and obscure" as he says of himself in his Autobiography, he had very little formal education. As he was a voracious reader, however, he managed to make up for the deficiency by his own effort. Self-educated but well-read in Enlightenment writers, Franklin learned from them to apply reason to his own life and to break with the old-fashioned Puritan tradition. While a youth, Franklin taught himself languages, read widely, and practiced writing for the public. When he moved from Boston to Philadelphia, Franklin already had the kind of education associated with the upper classes. He also had the Puritan capacity for hard, careful work, constant self-scrutiny, and the desire to better himself. These qualities steadily drove him to wealth, respectability, and honor. Never selfish, he tried to help other ordinary people become successful by sharing his insights and initiating a characteristically American genre—the self-help book. His book Poor Richard's Almanack, begun in 1732 and published for many years, made him prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies. It contained factual information and advice for being socially successful and achieving wealth in a series of proverbs, maxims and popular aphorisms dealing with all kinds of matters. Some of the aphorisms were to reappear in The Way to Wealth (1757), a key document to the understanding of the new American ideal. Franklin also wrote hundreds of newspaper articles on social and political subjects. Only in his Autobiography did Franklin write about himself. His story is the story of the growth and development of a self. With his account of his life from 1706 to the 1750s, moving from Boston to Philadelphia, to England and back, he establishes the basic myth of the “rise from rags to riches” providing the model for a story that would be told again and again. It appears in the enormously popular moralistic dime novel stories for boys whose heroes struggle against adversity to achieve great wealth and acclaim and in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925). Because his primary motive for writing the story of his life was to provide a model for public conduct, Franklin translated his personal experiences into general propositions which could be usefully applied to other people. In his plan for self-improvement— moral perfection, as he calls it—he sets out for himself the virtues that he believes anyone can attain with strong will and determination. Even as a young man, he decided that, by industry and frugality, he would win the respect of colleagues as well as influential persons in his community. The book demonstrates 17 Franklin's confident belief that the new world of America was a land of opportunities which might be met through hard work and wise management. He became the living example of what later became identified as the American Dream. II.2. The Beginning of the African-American literary tradition: Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784) Given the hardships of life in early America, it is ironic that some of the best poetry of the period was written by an exceptional slave woman. The first African-American author of importance in the United States, Phillis Wheatley was born in the Senegal/Gambia region on the west coast of Africa around 1753. In 1761, when she was just seven or eight, she was captured by slave traders and transported on the slave ship Phillis to Boston, where she was purchased by the pious and wealthy tailor John Wheatley to be a companion for his wife. The Wheatleys recognized Phillis's remarkable intelligence and, with the help of their daughter, she learned to read and write. She studied the Bible, read Latin poets, and was influenced by Milton, Pope, and Gray. Phillis published her first poem when she was thirteen years old, and in 1773 with the publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, she was the first African American to publish a book of poetry. That same year, John Wheatley emancipated her. Phillis Wheatley achieved international renown, traveling to London to promote her book and being called upon as well as received by noted social and political figures of the day -- including George Washington, to whom she wrote a poem of praise at the beginning of the war, and Voltaire, who referred to her "very good English verse." In 1778 she married a free black man From Rags to Riches: From rags to riches is a very common phrase in English that is often used to describe either people or stories about people who begin their lives in extreme poverty and end up comfortable and wealthy, often through hard work or exceptional talent. The phrase is tied to the American Dream, to the dream of individual success through work rather than privilege. Franklin’s Poor Richard's Almanac admonished readers that “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”, “God helps them that help themselves”, or "A penny saved is a penny earned". Aphorisms like these filled the almanac, and taught as much as amused. 20 Definition of Romanticism: In A Handbook to Literature, William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman describe Romanticism as “…the reaction in literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics from the neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period…. the predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules (Classicism)…The term designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual at the very center of all life... Romanticism often sees in nature a revelation of Truth, the “living garment of God”, and a more suitable subject for art than those aspects sullied by artifice. Romanticism seeks to find the Absolute, the Ideal, by transcending the actual… “. Typical Romantic characteristics: In The Oxford Companion to American Literature the following are mentioned: “sentimentalism, primitivism and the cult of the noble savage; political liberalism; the celebration of the natural beauty and the simple life; introspection; the idealization of the common man, uncorrupted by civilization; interest in the picturesque past; interest in remote places; antiquarianism; individualism; morbid melancholy; and historical romance”. To all these we may add: Remoteness and strangeness; use of the far- away and non- normal A disdain for the city or a “distrust” of civilization Gothicism Nostalgia for the past Escapism, a desire to escape the realities of the present 21 Characteristics of the romantic movement in American literature: After winning independence from the British, Americans began to form their own cultural identity. The American Romantic period, which lasted from about 1820-1865, represents an astonishing growth, in every sense, of the United States. From twenty seven states with a population of just over seven million in 1810, the nation grew to forty-two states with a population of thirty one million in 1860. The spread of industrialism, the sudden influx of immigration, and the “pioneers” pushing the frontier further west---all these produced something of an economic boom and with it, a tremendous sense of optimism and hope among the people. Politically, democracy and equality became the ideal of the new nation. It was a time of peace and expansion. In the mid-1800’s, many reform movements began as people sought to fix the many injustices they saw in society. The changes and reforms made would help improve the lives of countless Americans. Some of the major movements include: (a) The Abolition Movement (b) Women’s Rights (c) The Temperance Movement (d) Education Reforms (e) Factory & Workplace Reforms. It was also America's first great creative period. New England (especially Boston and its nearby areas) held literary and intellectual leadership and unprecedented literary renaissance took place from the 1840s until the 1860s. During these years, the nation came of age and entered its literary and cultural maturity. In 1941, the literary critic F.O. Matthiesen introduced the term “American Renaissance” to refer to this literary and cultural rebirth or maturation of America. It was the most fruitful period when the writers used American imagery, adopted American themes and thought in American terms. It was an explosion of American literary genius. American writers produced a remarkable body of work, enough masterpieces for a national literature. No more mere imitation of European models but their own style and place among literature. During a brief five- year period, 1850-1855, for example, many of the most enduring of American books appeared: 1850: Hawthorne´s The Scarlet Letter. 1851: Melville´s Moby Dick, and Hawthorne´s The House of the Seven Gables. 1852: Hawthorne´s The Blithedale Romance, and Melville´s Pierre. 1854: Thoreau´s Walden. 1855: Walt Whitman´s Leaves of Grass. For the first time in history, the literature of the U.S. was not written to fit into the tradition of other countries; instead, it created a tradition of its own. Nevertheless, the American Romantics 22 borrowed from the forms exhibited in Europe—particularly England-- during the early 19th century. American Romantics combined elements of Gothic literature, Romanticism and the British novel to create a new form: the American romance. The romance is a long work of fiction that is less realistic than a novel. Instead of everyday events, a romance describes exciting adventures or strange events. Writers often use the romance to explore dark passions or to examine the problem of evil. The purpose of the American romance was to examine the intersection between fantasy and reality, intended to be read primarily on a figurative level. Melville, Hawthorne and Poe often elaborated their figurative representations through the use of allegory and symbolism. American Romantics used symbols, myths, or fantastic elements (for example, the White Whale, the House of Usher, etc.) as the focus and expression of the protagonist’s mental processes or to express deeper psychological or archetypal themes. During the American Renaissance, writers could generally be placed into one of two subgenres, or categories: the Dark Romantics and the Transcendentalists. American painters started choosing subjects that were specifically American. Instead of looking to Europe for inspiration and models, they developed their own styles and explored American themes. After 1820, artists also focused on the landscape around them or the daily lives of Americans. One group of painters influenced by romanticism worked near the Hudson River in New York State, called the Hudson River School. These artists stirred emotion by painting about the beauty and power of nature. The Hudson River School expressed the romantic age's fascination with the natural world. Romanticism was not an organized cultural movement, and the problem when we attempt to define literary movements and particular literary/cultural periods is that authors seldom fit neatly into the boxes we construct for them. On the surface, the most prominent American Romantic writers—R.W. EMERSON, N. HAWTHORNE, H. MELVILLE, E.A. POE, H. THOREAU, EMILY DICKINSON and WALT WHITMAN—seem to be more dissimilar than alike. Attempts to unify the group by applying the characteristics commonly associated with Romanticism are often fruitless. For example, Emily Dickinson and Whitman are bridge poets between American Romanticism and the 20th century. However, Emerson and Thoreau are Romantic, self-consciously members of a literary and philosophical movement known as Transcendentalism, an idealistic form of Romanticism that sought to transcend ordinary life A “BRIGHT” and a “DARK” vision of the world 25 POE, HAWTHORNE and MELVILLE • did not believe in the innate goodness of people. • explored the human capacity for evil. • probed the inner life of characters. • explored characters’ motivations. • agreed with romantic emphasis on emotion, nature, and the individual. • included elements of fantasy and the supernatural in works. 26 WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) became the first American fiction writer to achieve an international reputation. His work helped to win European respect for American writing for the first time. He was a figure of literary transition in a society where American literature was still a hybrid. Irving Irving's career can be roughly divided into two important phases, the first of which span from his first book up to 1832, the other stretching over the remaining years of his life. In 1809 appeared his comic book A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, a supposed account of New York during the Dutch settlement told by the fictitious narrator Dietrich Knickerbocker, a kindly but eccentric old Dutch historian. It was one of the earliest fantasies of history and the highest expression of neoclassical satire in American letters. The book is a comic masterpiece and shouldn´t be regarded as a historical model. Entertainment was its primary goal; humor, its primary tone. As a historian Knickerbocker is confused and confusing, and what he gives is not history but a parody of history: he tries to write seriously but doesn’t distinguish the good from the bad, the important from the trivial, and descriptions of persons and places are full of exaggerations, incongruous juxtapositions.... In 1815, Irving began traveling through Europe, remaining there for 17 years. With the encouragement of Walter Scott he began writing a series of stories that blended the legends of Europe with the tales he had heard while wandering as a young man through New York’s Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley. The short story as a genre in American literature began with The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-1820); it also marked the beginning of American Romanticism. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon is a collection of 34 essays and stories that have no continuity of subject matter, no central purpose, no unity. A great deal of the material in the collection concerned England and English topics not America. The only thing that unifies the book together is the character of Geoffrey Crayon presented as a sentimental, sensitive, American traveler, an observer with a taste for the old fashioned, who is trying to understand the character of English life. Crayon, the narrator of the book, expresses his attachment to British culture and its old monuments. Indeed, Crayon doesn't hesitate to express his preference for tradition, aristocracy and rurality rather than for innovation, democracy and urbanization. The Sketch Book, then, is essentially a book about an American in England, whose purpose is cultural discovery and self- 27 analysis. Only a few of Geoffrey Crayon´s sketches deal with American materials, but they include `The Legend of Sleepy Hollow´ and `Rip van Winkle´, the two tales with Hudson River Valley settings that are the most famous and popular of Irving´s writings. Both turn German folk tales into distinctly American narratives, and both are attributed to his old narrator, Diedrich Knickerbocker, and described as oral legends of American life. In spite of this, the most important thing was Irving´s decision to shift these two stories into the American landscape, rather than simply retelling them as his version of old German tales. Their main characters—Ichabod Crane, the nervous Sleepy Hollow schoolteacher harassed by a headless horseman, and Rip Van Winkle, the lazy colonist who slept for decades—have become classic figures of American literature. Irving chose his settings carefully, shifting the tales to the sleepy Dutch-American villages along the Hudson River valley which he, as Diedrich Knickerbocker, had already used in his History of New York. He wants the American reader to identify those two legends as American; the United States as a country can also create legends and mystery, a sense of history. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon showed that Irving had gradually become a romantic writer as result of his residence in Europe for many years and his contact with Walter Scott. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851): the Leatherstocking Tales Cooper was romantic in his love of the past, his fondness for wild nature, and his sympathy for the `noble savage´ as represented by the Indians at their best. His representation of the Frontier certainly appears as his greatest contribution to an authentically American literature: he transformed the American Frontier into a symbol of a national myth. The Leatherstocking Tales form a five-volume “biography” of their protagonist Natty Bumppo from his young manhood to his death, in his early eighties. They cover the period from 1740 to shortly after 1800. Natty Bumppo (also known as Leatherstocking, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, Deerslayer or the trapper) is the central character of the five novels. One can read the novels either in the order of their composition or in the order of Natty’s life, from youth to old age. In The Deerslayer (1841), Bumppo is in his early twenties; he reaches his early maturity in The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Pathfinder (1840). In The Pioneers (1823) he has become an aged hunter, who dies in his eighties in The Prairie (1827). In the “Leatherstocking Tales” Cooper explored the struggle between wilderness as symbolised by the Indians and civilization, nature and progress, the lone individual and society. Natty Bumppo, a 30 Fair forms, and hoary seers53 of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.—The hills Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,—the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods—rivers that move 40 In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and pour'd round all, Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. […] So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 75 His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged54 to his dungeon, but sustain'd and sooth'd By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 80 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 53 White-haired prophets. 54 Whipped. 31 In practical terms, the Transcendentalists were a group of intellectuals and reformers living in New England between the late 1830s and late 1840s. Although they defied categorization, they did have an organization of sorts. The Transcendentalist Club was a discussion group that began its irregular meetings in 1836. It brought together the most prominent intellectuals of New England: Ralph Waldo EMERSON, Bronson ALCOTT, Margaret FULLER, and Henry David THOREAU. For the Transcendentalists, the individual was at the center of the universe, more powerful than any institution, whether political or religious. The Transcendentalist 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. It taught that the spiritual world is more important than the physical world. It also taught that people can find the truth within themselves—through feeling and intuition. The essence of Transcendentalism was the philosophy known as Idealism. For Idealists, realists not “out there” in material objects but instead exists in our ideas about those objects. The Transcendentalists believed that intuition is a more valuable guide than sensory experience in understanding what nature really is. Origins: Transcendentalism began as an outgrowth of the Unitarian Church. Unitarianism challenged the Calvinistic belief that man was inherently corrupt. Instead, it offered an optimistic view of mankind: they rejected the Puritan notions of the depravity of man, original sin, eternal punishment, and talked in favor of man’s innate goodness and his spiritual freedom. The transcendentalists embraced Unitarianism’s faith in the individual, but were dissatisfied with this religion’s emphasis on rationalism. The major difference between the transcendentalists and the Unitarians was that while the Unitarians believed that knowledge was found in the rational exploration of the universe, the transcendentalists believed that knowledge of God was found through intuition. They believed that one should guide his life by what he feels to be true. While the Unitarians expressed confidence in `our rational faculties´, Emerson drew a sharp distinction between the `UNDERSTANDING´, by which he meant the rational faculty, the knowledge that comes from the senses, and the `REASON´ by which he meant the suprarational or 32 BASIC PRINCIPLES OF AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM There is a direct connection or “correspondence” between the universe and the individual soul. The physical world is a doorway to the spiritual world. By contemplating objects in nature, people can transcend the world and discover union with the OVERSOUL that unites us all. Follow your own intuition and own beliefs, however divergent from the social norm they may be. The individual’s intuitive response to any given situation will be the right thing to do. Everything, including people, is a reflection of the divine: people are basically good. intuitive faculty, the knowledge independent of the senses; he regarded the `Reason´ as much more authoritative in spiritual matters than the `Understanding´. Reason, the knowledge that comes by intuition, was, in Emerson´s view, the highest form of knowledge. Therefore, according to Transcendentalism, the most profound knowledge comes from the self, not from God or the world. Definitions: The term comes from the verb “to transcend”, to move beyond, not to be limited. Transcendentalism supports the belief that humans can “transcend” the physical world, that humans are not limited by the five senses, but through imagination or intuition can know more than what they physically see. “Transcend” the limits of intellect and allow the emotions to create an original relationship with the Universe. Transcendentalism holds that the basic truths of the universe lie beyond the knowledge we obtain from our senses, logic or laws of science. We learn these truths through our intuition, our “Divine Intellect”. Transcendentalism is, therefore, a belief that the transcendental (or spiritual) reality, rather than the material world, is the ultimate reality. This transcendental reality can be known not by the rational faculty or logic, but only by intuition. 35 more simple, honest, and pure life which he contrasted to the lives of "quiet desperation" led by most of his contemporaries. In Walden, Thoreau delights in attacking the unthinking materialism of his neighbors. He rejects the things ordinary people desire in life, such as money and possessions. Instead he emphasizes the search for true wisdom: “while civilization has been improving our homes, it has not equally improved those who live in them”. HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) Selections from Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) Economy …men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost… Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious55 cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them….Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest56 relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. …The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation....Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor… Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art... To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life… Still we live meanly, like ants … Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a 55 False, artificial. 56 Strongest. 36 thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb- nail….Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion … Conclusion …I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, nor weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. …..Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? 37 Poe believed that strangeness was an essential ingredient of beauty, and his writing is often exotic. His stories and poems are populated with doomed, introspective aristocrats. These gloomy characters never seem to work or socialize; instead they bury themselves in dark, moldering castles symbolically decorated with bizarre rugs and draperies that hide the real world of sun, windows, walls, and floors. The hidden rooms reveal ancient libraries, strange art works, and eclectic oriental objects. The aristocrats play musical instruments or read ancient books while they brood on tragedies, often the deaths of loved ones. Themes of death-in-life, especially being buried alive or returning like a vampire from the grave, appear in many of his works, including “The Premature Burial,” “Ligeia,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poe’s twilight realm between life and death and his gaudy, Gothic settings are not merely decorative. They reflect the overcivilized yet deathly interior of his characters’ disturbed psyches. They are symbolic expressions of the unconscious, and thus are central to his art. In every genre, Poe explores the psyche. Profound psychological insights glint throughout the stories. To explore the exotic and strange aspect of psychological processes, he delved into accounts of madness and extreme emotion. POETRY: Poe firmly believed in the Platonic idea of the world as an imperfect copy of the eternal beauty in a higher sphere. Poetry deals exclusively with Beauty, the Ideal. Like the English Romantics Poe insisted that this beauty, the taste that apprehends it, and the pleasure it produces are the main business of the poet. Poetry is the highest literary expression that tries to reproduce that eternal beauty that exists in a different place from this world. “The Poetic Principle is the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty", he says, and for the ideal poet the contemplation of this beauty produces an elevation of the soul, but of that beauty the poet can only give sudden flashes, “brief and indeterminate glimpses”. His poetic principles can be summarized as follows: 40 EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) Selection of poems SONNET TO SCIENCE (audio clip Sonnet - to Science) SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit, he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana57 from her car? And driven the Hamadryad58 from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad59 from her flood, The Elfin60 from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind61 tree? ANNABEL LEE (audio clip Annabel Lee) It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE;— And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. She was a child and I was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee— With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven Coveted62 her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud by night chilling 57 Roman goddess who drove the cart to heaven. 58 Nymph who lived in trees. 59 The naiads of classical myth were nymphs associated with fresh water (lakes, rivers, fountains). 60 Lived in forests. 61 Huge tropical tree, suggesting an exotic location for a dream. 62 Envied. 41 My beautiful ANNABEL LEE; So that her high-born kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me: — Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of a cloud, by night, Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in Heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever63 my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the side of the sea. THE RAVEN (audio clip The Raven) Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 5 "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow 10 From my books surcease64 of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; 63 To separate. 64 An end. 42 15 So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visiter entreating65 entrance at my chamber door— Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;— This it is, and nothing more". Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 20 "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you”-- here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there, and nothing more. 25 Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" 30 Merely this and nothing more. Then into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon I heard again a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; 35 Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore— Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind, and nothing more!" Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore66; Not the least obeisance67 made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he; 40 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas68 just above my chamber door— Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling69 my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance70 it wore, 45 "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven71, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian72 shore!" Quoth the Raven "Nevermore". Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 50 Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no sublunary73 being 65 Asking humbly. 66 Long ago. 67 A movement or gesture, such as a bow, that expresses respect. 68 Pallas Athene, the Greek goddess of wisdom. 69 Tricking. 70 Facial expression. 71 A thorough coward. 72 Black, as in the underworld of Greek mythology. 73 Eartly, beneath the moon. 45 The term ‘Romance’ is frequently used to talk about a particular type of prose which has been considered as the distinctive voice of American fiction. The novel and the Romance are considered separate entities by early 19th century critics, and the term romance indicates an approach to writing novels characteristic of several of the writers from the period most associated with the Romantic impulse in the United States: Melville, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe. The ROMANCE is a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel. Instead of carefully defining realistic characters through a wealth of detail, as most English or continental novelists did, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe were more interested in the larger-than-life characteristics of their protagonists than they were in presenting realistic figures. Hawthorne’s Arthur Dimmesdale or Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville’s Ahab in Moby-Dick (1851), and the many isolated and obsessed characters of Poe’s tales are lonely protagonists pitted against unknowable, dark fates that, in some mysterious way, grow out of their deepest unconscious selves. They struggle with their own anguished souls in the mystery of life that rises from the dark and unknown unconscious. The drama is centered in the human interior. The symbolic plots reveal hidden actions of the anguished spirit. One reason for this fictional exploration into the hidden recesses of the soul is the absence of settled, traditional community life in America. English novelists — Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, William Thackeray — lived 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. American novels frequently reveal a revolutionary absence of tradition. 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 buried 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 The romantic writers' focus on the individual led to the creation of a different kind of hero: unique, bold, sometimes brooding or eccentric. From the obsessed Captain Ahab, searching for his white whale in Moby Dick, to The Last of the Mohicans’ noble Natty Bumppo, living on the fringes of society as both a white man and a Native American, romantic heroes were often larger than life, and always unforgettable. 46 readers. In contrast, the American novelist had to depend on his own devices. America was, in part, an undefined, constantly moving frontier populated by immigrants speaking foreign languages and following strange and crude ways of life. Thus the main character in American literature might find himself alone among cannibal tribes, as in Melville’s Typee (1846), or exploring a wilderness like James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking, or witnessing lonely visions from the grave, like Poe’s solitary individuals, or meeting the devil walking in the forest, like Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”. Virtually all the great American protagonists have been “loners.” The serious American novelist had to invent new forms, new creative techniques. The Romance tends to recreate through a physical setting the state of mind of the characters. This means that romances are not mimetic, they do not represent society as it is, but represent a closed space that is a recreation of the psychological world of their characters. Settings give symbolic expressions of the inner states of characters. The Romance form is dark and forbidding, indicating how difficult it is to create an identity without a stable society. Most of the Romantic heroes die in the end: All the sailors except Ishmael are drowned in Moby- Dick, and the sensitive but sinful minister Arthur Dimmesdale dies at the end of The Scarlet Letter. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864). Already in his own lifetime Hawthorne was recognized as one of the most important writers of fiction the United States had yet produced, and his status as a classic American author has only grown in the century and a half since his death. Hawthorne's view of Puritanism: Hawthorne was particularly fascinated with the Puritan settlers, and many of his tales focus on their morality, their sense of sin and guilt, their intolerance of religious diversity, their hypocrisy, and their belief in the reality of witchcraft and Satan. His best work is inspired by Puritan culture. His view of man and human history originates, to a great extent, in Puritanism. He was not a Puritan himself, but he had Puritan ancestors who p1ayed an important role in his life and works. He believed that "the wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones", and often wondered if he might have inherited some of their guilt. This sensibility led to his understanding of evil being at the very core of human life, which is typical of the Calvinistic belief that human beings are basically depraved and corrupted, hence they should obey God to atone for their sins. His greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter, has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America. It tells of the passionate, forbidden love affair linking a sensitive, religious young man, the 47 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. This novel together with some other of Hawthorne's work, assumes the universality of guilt and explores the complexities and ambiguities of man's choices. Hawthorne does not intend to tell a love story nor a story of sin, but focuses his attention on the moral, emotional, and psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people in general and those main characters in particular, so as to show us the tension between society and individuals. Black vision of life and human beings: Hawthorne agreed on the romantic emphasis on emotion and the individual; however, he did not see these as completely positive forces. His works examine the darker facets of the human soul—for example, the psychological effects of sin and guilt may have on human life. He rejected the Transcendentalists' transparent optimism about the potentialities of human nature. The blackness of vision has become his characteristic trade mark. It illustrates to some extent the influence that the Calvinist doctrine of "original sin" and total depravity had upon his mind. Melville showed his own fascination with the darkness in Hawthorne’s work when he writes that Hawthorne is "shrouded in a blackness, ten times black". He found Hawthorne's understanding of evil, that blackness of vision, very impressive. For Hawthorne human beings are evil-natured and sinful and this sin and evil are always present in the human heart and will pass on from one generation to another. He cannot look upon any aspect of reality, either human or natural, without finding the germ that corrupts and destroys. Evil exists in the core of the human heart, and everyone possesses some evil secret as tales like "Young Goodman Brown" set out to prove. “There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity”. 50 the nature of the individual, the realm of the spiritual versus the realm of the material, and how we as humans comprehend and interpret all things. Apart from the literal reading of the book, Ahab´s vengeful search could also be interpreted as a deeper level, just like any allegory. From the beginning, it is clear that the voyage of the whaling ship “Pequod” will be a symbolic voyage. It is also clear that Moby-Dick, the great white whale, represents God or fate, although Melville gives the reader a great deal of factual information about whale-hunting in order to make the world of Moby-Dick seem real. Captain Ahab, the central character of the novel, is “a grand, ungodly, God-like man” (chapter 16). His obsessive pursuit of the white whale amounts to a challenge of God. He is torn between his humanity and his desire to destroy the white whale. These two sides—the light and the dark—fight each other in Ahab. The dark side wins. To Ahab, Moby-Dick is part of a “universal mystery” which he hates, because he cannot understand it. He sees the whale as the incarnation of evil and is determined to risk his life, his ship and his crew in the attempt to destroy the whale. When he finds the whale and attacks him, his ship is destroyed. Ahab himself is pulled down into the sea to his death. Melville seems to say that personal identity is only an illusion: “There is no life in thee now. Except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God” (chapter 35). There is something heroic about Ahab hurling his anger at a God who allows evil to exist, but in his hatred of the whale Ahab also appears demoniac, if not evil himself. The story is told by Ishmael, the only survivor of the immense whiteness, associated with nothingness, indifference and death, as a symbol of the “demonism of the world”. Unfortunately, the public didn’t like Moby-Dick. It was many years before the genius of its author was recognized. His style became more humorous and conversational. But in his short story Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) his philosophy never changed. The young hero, like Ahab, feels that evil fills the world and spoils everything. But instead of actively hating it, he becomes completely passive. It is the sad story of a young man who is unable to act; in the end, he even refuses to eat and so dies. The hero of Benito Cereno (1855) is equally unhappy with reality. Billy Budd (1924) is the story of the young sailor Billy (who represents the goodness of human nature) and his evil enemy, Claggart. In the end, they destroy each other. Melville seems to be saying that the world has no place for pure goodness or pure evil. 51 The literary genre known as the slave narrative, inaugurated in the eighteenth century, had its period of greatest production between 1820 and 1860. During the five decades immediately preceding the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the system of slavery was ideologically attacked in a great number of first-person narratives in which hundreds of fugitives and former slaves recorded the harsh conditions they suffered at the hands of their owners and provided ready evidence for the abolitionist cause. By bearing testimony to the cruelties of the "peculiar institution," these autobiographies exerted a strong influence on public opinion and thus were recognized as very effective tools in advancing the antislavery movement. Slave narratives became immensely popular because such thrilling accounts of heroic journeys into freedom captivated the imagination of readers. They reveal a common pattern of representation consisting of the narrator’s experiences in slavery, his/her heroic journey from slavery to freedom, and his/her subsequent dedication to abolitionist principles and goals. The slave narratives also told of the horrors of family separation, the sexual abuse of black women, and the inhuman workload, and described the brutality of flogging and the severe living conditions of slave life. Not simply autobiography, they were testimony, giving lie to Southern claims that slaves were happy and well-treated, that slavery was a “positive good” for both master and slave, and that people of Africa descent were inferior to whites. More than that, the narratives made readers care by showing that slaves were real human beings who suffered and wept and long for freedom. Though the slave narratives were immensely popular, the anti-slavery document which would reach the broadest audience was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), the most popular novel published in nineteenth century and the most influential as well. Packed with dramatic incidents and vivid characters, Uncle Tom’s Cabin shows slavery as a cruel and brutal system. The most famous example of the slave narrative genre was and still is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, which has become a classic in African American literature. It was an immediate best-seller by the standards of its time, since it 52 sold 5,000 copies in the first four months of publication and about 30,000 within five years. This warm reception created a favorable climate in which other fugitives were also encouraged to publish their own narratives. In addition, former slaves became anti-slavery lecturers and went on tour. They told their stories to audiences throughout the North and in Europe. FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1818-1895) was the most famous. For white audiences who had perhaps never seen an African American man or woman, the effects of these articulate people telling their stories was electrifying and won many to the abolitionist cause. The Narrative is a moving account of the courage of one man's struggle against the injustice of antebellum slavery. Published in 1845, sixteen years before the Civil War began, it describes Douglass' life from early childhood until his escape from slavery in 1838. He became a respected American diplomat, a counselor to four presidents, a highly regarded orator, and an influential writer. He accomplished all of these feats without any formal education. Douglass himself published a second revised and extended version under the title of My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and again a third one entitled The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), years after slavery ceased to exist in America. Douglass was born into slavery around 1818 in Maryland. The date is uncertain; it was part of slavery’s strategy to deprive blacks of all the elements of identity, even a birthday. "By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs," he writes in the opening lines of the Narrative, "and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant". Slaves rarely identified their birth dates. Knowledge was denied to the slave because it would bring discontent. Reasons for writing the Narrative: • To present the reality of slavery. • To generate enthusiasms for the abolitionist struggle. • In his own words, “Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds—faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my humble efforts—and solemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred cause”. 55 • One great America: the geographic immensity and the rich diversity of peoples in the USA thrilled him. • Democracy: liberty and equality are key words for Whitman. He is an egalitarian and he opposed any tyranny, any discrimination. He encourages independence and self-reliance and asserts that love is an essential force in the universe. • Individualism: for Whitman the highest praise of democracy was its opportunity for the fullest development of the self. • Glorification of the common man: He sees him as a noble part of humanity, and he finds no one, regardless of occupation or condition, unworthy of being saluted in his poetry. • The body and the soul: he asserts the equality of all things, of all people, and of the body with the soul. As the body is as precious as the spirit, so he finds the material as sacred as the spiritual. Pantheistically, he gives his idea of deity material presence in, and identity with, everything in the world. Whitman denies evil in the traditional sense. “In the faces of men and women I see God…” • Sexual frankness: The passionate celebration of the self and of sexuality is his great revolutionary theme. In the group of poems “Children of Adam,” he is the procreative father of multitudes, a champion of heterosexual love and the “body electric”. In “I Sing the Body Electric”, for example, Whitman celebrates the perfection of well-made male and female bodies (Sections 5 and 9 are explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse and physical “apparatus,” respectively), and “A Woman Waits for Me” specifically states that sex contains all—bodies and souls. • Pursuit of love and happiness. WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892) Selection of poems I Hear America Singing (audio clip I Hear America Singing) I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe82 and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, 82 Blithe: joyous. 56 The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's83 on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young fellows, robust84, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs. When I Heard the Learn´d Astronomer (audio clip When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer) When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. Beat! beat! drums! (audio clip Beat! Beat! Drums! by Walt Whitman - YouTube) Beat! beat! drums! -- blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows -- through doors -- burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet -- no happiness must he have now with his bride, Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound you drums -- so shrill you bugles blow. Beat! beat! drums! -- blow! bugles! blow! Over the traffic of cities -- over the rumble of wheels in the streets; Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds, No bargainers' bargains by day -- no brokers or speculators -- would they continue? 83 Ploughboy: a boy who leads the animals that draw a plow (horse, cow, etc.). 84 Robust: strong and healthy. 57 Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing? Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge? Then rattle quicker, heavier drums -- you bugles wilder blow. Beat! beat! drums! -- blow! bugles! blow! Make no parley85 -- stop for no expostulation86, Mind not the timid -- mind not the weeper or prayer, Mind not the old man beseeching the young man, Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties, Make even the trestles87 to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses, So strong you thump O terrible drums -- so loud you bugles blow. Miracles (audio clip Version 5) Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place. To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. To me the sea is a continual miracle, The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships with men in them, What stranger miracles are there? 85 A discussion. 86 Argument. 87 Tables, in this case, upon which coffins sit until the undertaker comes to take them away. 60 465 (Audio clip I heard a fly buzz -- when I died) I heard a Fly buzz—when I died— The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air— Between the Heaves88 of Storm— The Eyes around—had wrung them dry— And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset—when the King89 Be witnessed—in the Room— I willed my Keepsakes90—Signed away What portion of me be Assignable—and then it was There interposed91 a Fly— With Blue92—uncertain stumbling Buzz— Between the light—and me— And then the Windows93 failed— and then I could not see to see— 632 (audio clip Brain is wider than the sky, The) The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and You—beside— The Brain is deeper than the sea— For—hold them—Blue to Blue— The one the other will absorb— As Sponges—Buckets—do— The Brain is just the weight of God— For—Heft them—Pound for Pound— And they will differ—if they do— As Syllable from Sound— 88 Rising and falling movements. 89 God. 90 Mementoes kept in memory of the dead person. 91 Came between. 92 The adjective Blue is connected to Buzz and creates the illusion of blurred perception because sight and sound are confused. 93 The eyes. 61 712 (audio clip Because I could not stop for Death) Because I could not stop for Death— He kindly stopped for me— The Carriage held but just Ourselves— And Immortality. We slowly drove—He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility94— We passed the School, where Children strove95 At Recess—in the Ring— We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain96— We passed the Setting Sun— Or rather—He passed Us— The Dews drew quivering and chill— For only Gossamer97, my Gown— My Tippet—only Tulle98— We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground— The Roof was scarcely visible— The Cornice99—in the Ground— Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised100 the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity— 94 Civility: a formal politeness. 95 Attempted, made an effort to. 96 Grain leaning toward the sun. 97 A thin, light cloth. 98 My Tippet—only Tulle: my shawl was only a fine net cloth. 99 Decorative molding at the edge of a roof or at the top of a wall. 100 Formed an idea or a notion. 62 IV THE AGE OF REALISM AND NATURALISM (1865-1914) 65 communities actually declined in population, while cities mushroomed to enormous dimensions: New York, with a population of 3 million, was the second largest in the world. Chicago expanded even more spectacularly, swelling this period from 100,000 to over a million. In the four decades after 1860, more than 14 million immigrants entered the USA, plus an additional 5 million in the opening decade of the new century. 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. Immigrants from countries as diverse as Italy, Greece and Poland were viewed with both hostility and fear, and American cities became polarized not only by wealth and social status, but by race and ethnicity. Slum housing, crime, and the segmentation of cities into immigrant ghettos, middle class suburbs, and exclusive neighborhoods for the rich became facts of urban life. American cities came to fascinate the Realists and later the Naturalists. Cities seemed to perfectly embody the Darwinian idea of existence as a savage, purposeless struggle for survival, in which the strongest and most adaptable survived while the weak went under. The Civil War changed not only American society but its literary and artistic culture as well. In the years following the war, American readers, writers, and artists found they had lost their taste for romanticism. Many had witnessed war’s grim nature firsthand, and it shaped their view of life. Gallant heroism and adventure no longer suited America’s tastes, nor did meditations on the beauty of nature or the worth of the individual. Writing became more honest, unsentimental and ironic. A new style in art and literature, known as realism, would predominate in the years to come. American realism attempted to portray people realistically instead of idealizing them as romantic artists had done. It was an attempt to accurately represent life as authors saw it through the use of concrete descriptive details that readers would recognize from their own lives. 66 • Realism in Art: Realist painters rejected the idealistic depictions of the world of the earlier 1800s. One such painter, Thomas Eakins of Philadelphia, considered no day-to-day subjects beneath his interest and careful observation. On his canvases, with their realistic detail and precise lighting, young men swam, surgeons operated, and scientists experimented. He even dared to paint President Hayes working in shirtsleeves instead of in more traditional formal dress. • Realism in Literature: Writers also attempted to capture the world as they saw it. The major spokesman for literary realism was William Dean Howells, whose influence as a novelist, editor, and critic was powerful. Other major writers who are usually considered realists were Mark Twain and Henry James, although their realism often differs from that of Howells, and even more significantly from each other. 67 After the Civil War, a new group of American writers, known as Regionalists of Local Colorists, emphasized local cultures. Not all of these Regionalist writers were born and educated in the East, as most previous American writers had been. Many came from the South, Midwest, or West. Under the influence of the new emphasis on Realism in art and literature, they didn’t present the unusual characters and exotic settings familiar in Romantic writings. Instead, local colorists depicted the ordinary people and everyday places around them. Aware of the speed with which the nation was changing, regional writers sought to record for the future the unique character of their areas. “Local color” is a convenient designation for a literary movement that between 1870 and the end of the century dominated in American literature, especially in the magazines, and the short story proved the best medium for the local-colorists. They display a careful fidelity to the landscape, customs, dialect, and thought of their chosen area. Often the life-style of this area appears to be vanishing, and the author sees himself as its first, last, or only recorder. With such emphasis on faithful depiction, these stories obviously belong to the realistic movement; yet many also contain such romantic ingredients as sentimentality and primitivism. Several factors brought about the great vogue of local color literature during the late nineteenth century: – It was often a reaction against the economic impact of industrialization and modernization after the Civil War. – Regionalist writers began to produce a literature that celebrated the unique language, rituals, and other cultural traits of their part of the country. – Regionalism also served a kind of nostalgic function: as more and more Americans moved to the city and lost their regional identities, they sought out a literature that reminded them of their lost origins. Definition: According to The Oxford Companion to American Literature, “In local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description”. Its weaknesses may include nostalgia or sentimentality. Its customary form is the sketch or short story. 70 The ideal woman of 1850s culture had been portrayed as a figure who asserted her personality and gained identity by cultivating domestic perfection. The dominant middle class ideology of the time associated women with an idealized image of home as a haven of Christian virtues and moral purity, a place of comfort, safety and support. The idea of "the cult of true womanhood," or "the cult of domesticity", found in women's magazines, advice books, religious journals, newspapers, fiction, provided a view of women's duty and role while cataloging the cardinal virtues of true womanhood for a new age. It was founded on the fact that 19th century women were considered to be both physically and mentally inferior to men. The cult established separate spheres of influence for men and women. A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a refuge from the cruel world outside), and her role was to “civilize” & educate her husband and family. The domestic novel sought to assert that womanly virtue resided in her family and home, and was expected to possess piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. This ideal of womanhood had essentially these four characteristics that any good and proper young woman should cultivate. AFTER THE CIVIL WAR women gained unprecedented access to higher education, and economic expansion after 1865 led to more job opportunities. The final three decades of the 19th century saw the beginning of a change in the image and role of women in American life. Whether through the medium of education, work, reform organizations, or women’s clubs, there is no question that the Age of Realism coincided with a broad struggle on the part of women to move out of the private and into the public arena. Women writing in this period tended to be realists, whether working as regionalists or naturalists. As in the mid-century, the high presence of women on the literary scene continued to be judged ambivalently well into the second half of the 19th century. Female creativity was considered a contradiction in terms, since creativity itself appeared to be incompatible with a woman’s prescribed gender roles. Creativity was, by definition, ascribed to masculinity, whereas procreation was ascribed to femininity. A significant number of female authors published novels and short stories in the 1890’s and early 1900’s. Writers such as Kate Chopin, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and Willa Cather came from different regions of the country and have often been characterized as “local color” writers. However, all of them confronted in one way or another themes impacting women, such as marriage, sexual freedom, individual identity, and the female subconscious. Little by little a new type of femininity emblematized by the NEW WOMAN evolved as a reaction to the cult of domesticity. The New Woman was the term used at the end of the nineteenth century to describe women who were pushing against the limits which society 71 imposed on women. The New Woman—independent, outspoken, iconoclastic and mature— was encouraged to liberate herself from male domination, take her life into her own hands and pursue happiness and self-fulfillment. She believed in legal and sexual equality and often remained single because of the difficulty of combining such equality with marriage. She was more open about her sexuality than the woman of the past. Rather than submitting herself to circumstance, the New Woman wished to probe into possibilities of self-realization. She both embodied new values and posed a critical challenge to the existing order. Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and many other women writers began to incorporate a feminist point of view, often subtly, but sometimes quite openly, in their work. These writers portrayed a universal condition in women as they struggled for independence among hardship or convention, and helped to push the novel in new directions, although their efforts were often viewed pejoratively. They fully documented the complex challenges facing women. All explore the contradictions of a society that both offered and withheld opportunities and freedoms for women. Feminism was part of a free‐ranging spirit of rebellion at the turn of the century. It was part of the broader ʺrevolt against formalismʺ in American culture—refusal to heed the abstraction of womanhood, the calcified definitions of female character and nature handed down to them by previous generations. These new feminists were determined to ʺrealize personalityʺ, to achieve self‐determination through life, growth, and experience. As Charlotte Perkins Gilman described her: ʺHere she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal; chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live womanʺ. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) became one of the most well-known advocates for women. Fleeing a repressive marriage, Gilman moved from the East Coast to California where she wrote and spoke out on behalf of women’s rights and against male domination. One of her most famous stories is “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), about a woman writer who, as treatment for her “serious condition”, is forbidden to write. Kate Chopin (1851-1904) wrote fiction that articulates the frustration of generations of women confined to a sort of extended childhood by the men of their lives. The female characters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) often succeed in asserting their will and in making free choices within their restricted surroundings. Most of her stories present a woman whose quiet life conceals “the elements of revolution”, her wish to revolt. The young female protagonist of A Country Doctor (1884), written by Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), wishes “she had been trained as boys are, to the work of their lives!”, then feels like “a reformer, a radical, and even like a political agitator”, as she proposes to seek personal fulfilment through work instead of matrimony. 72 In American literature, the term `realism´ covers the period of time from the Civil War to the turn of the century during which Henry James, Mark Twain, and others wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives in various contexts. The emergence of American Realism was in part a reaction to and a rejection of the Romanticism of the previous era. Romanticism’s glorification of the imagination became unappealing to Realists, who wanted to explore the motivations, behaviour, and actions of real people. They focused their attention on everyday life and ordinary human behavior. The birth of realism: Before Realism appeared in American literature, it was already flourishing in Europe. French novelist Balzac is commonly considered the father of Realism. Advanced by such authors as Flaubert, Tolstoy, G. Eliot and Dickens, Realism soon became the most prominent literary movement in Europe. The rise of Realism in the USA can be traced to disillusionment following the Civil War. For many the war had destroyed the Romantic view of humanity. The best writers felt strongly a decline of traditional values and loss of easy optimism. Many looked at the sordidness beneath the gilt coating of the age. The result was turn away from romanticism toward realism; that is, the representation in literary works of the world as it actually was. The Realists wanted to present life as it actually was— often cruel and never embellished. In fact, the rise of photography fundamentally altered the ways in which Americans perceived reality. Photography enabled artists to capture and convey with stark objectivity the world as it appeared through the camera’s lens. Definition: “Realistic fiction is often opposed to romantic fiction: the romance is said to present life as we would have it be, more picturesque, more adventurous, more heroic, than the actual; realism, to present an accurate imitation of life as it is….The typical realist sets out to write a fiction which will give the illusion that it reflects life as it seems to the common reader. To achieve this effect the author prefers as protagonist an ordinary citizen…The realist, in other words, […] prefers the average, the commonplace, and the everyday over the rarer aspect of the contemporary scene. The characters, therefore, are usually of the middle class or (less frequently) the working 75 • Other realistic novelists viewed life as a much rougher clash of contrary forces. Frank Norris, for example, agreed with Howells that the proper subject for fiction was the ordinary person, but he found Howells’s fiction too narrow—“as respectable as a church and proper as a deacon” Norris was interested in the impact of large social forces on individuals. Norris is generally considered to be a naturalist. Following the lead of the French novelist Emile Zola, naturalists relied heavily on the growing scientific disciplines of psychology and sociology. In their fiction, they attempted to dissect human behavior with as much objectivity as a scientist would dissect a frog or a cadaver. For naturalists, human behavior was determined by forces beyond the individual’s power, especially by biology and environment. • On the other hand, Henry James, considered America’s greatest writer of the psychological novel, concentrated principally on fine distinctions in character motivation and the interplay of motives and inhibitions. In his finely tuned studies of human motivation, James opened the inner mind to the techniques of fiction. He was mainly interested in complex social and psychological situations. Many of his novels, including Daisy Miller (1878) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), take place in Europe, because James considered European society to be both more complex and more sinister than American society. He frequently contrasts innocent, eager Americans with sophisticated, more reserved Europeans. Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was as profound a psychologist as James, but his principal interest was the human character at moments of stress—on the battlefield, the streets of a slum, or a lifeboat lost at sea. Although Crane is sometimes referred to as a naturalist, he is probably best thought of as an ironist; he was the first of many modern American writers to juxtapose human pretensions with the indifference of the universe. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS From Criticism and Fiction (1891) “Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material […] the fidelity to experience and probability of motive are essential conditions of a great imaginative literature [...] I confess that I do not care to judge any work of the imagination without first of all applying this test to it: We must ask ourselves before we ask anything else, Is it true?—true to the motives, the impulses, the principles that shape the life of actual men and women? […] Let fiction cease to lie about life; let it portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motives and the passions 76 in the measure we all know; let it leave off painting dolls. [...] Let it speak the dialect, the language, that most Americans know—the language of unaffected people everywhere […] We invite our novelists, therefore, to concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and to seek the universal in the individual rather than in the commonplace”. HENRY JAMES From The Art of Fiction (1884) “[…] a novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression… The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life… Humanity is immense, and reality has a myriad forms… It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one must write from experience … What kind of experience is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web ...suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and the mind is imaginative … it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations…. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as they are the very air we breathe”. MARK TWAIN (1835-1910), the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, first came to fame with stories that captured the “local color” of the West. Much of his writing was humorous and used the dialect of the region he was portraying. As a typical realist, he aimed at accurately portraying the daily life of common people. In his truthful rendering of reality, one of his main concerns was to record precisely the way he heard ordinary people talk. He did not simply use slang and dialect words, but strove to reproduce in print the sounds as they were pronounced in order to suggest authentic regional accents. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867) was his first book, and in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court (1889) and Life on the Mississippi (1883), Twain attacked feudalism and its survivals wherever he found them, whether in Europe or in 77 the pre-war South. The material for all of Twain’s best narratives was his boyhood home and the prewar Mississippi Valley. More accurately, the stuff of his best books was not the actuality but his memory of the scenes and of the life he had known in childhood and youth. With The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) he found his essential subject matter, the pastoral days of the Mississippi Valley before the Civil War, the homeland of American energy and innocent childhood simplicity. Tom is the living embodiment of an anarchic love of freedom and fun. It took Twain eight years to write The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), with several stops and starts. Although now it is considered by many as the greatest American novel and certainly the most important one in 19th century America, at the time, it was believed to be vulgar and unfit for young readers. Twain’s use of dialect and first person narration from an unschooled child’s perspective were shocking to the cultural elite of the time. Many even called it racist and it was banned in many libraries. The novel combines a lyrical portrait of an American landscape with a biting picture of the inherent social injustices of pre-Civil War life. Twain conceived The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the successor to Tom Sawyer; the story is set in the Mississippi River Valley, around 1840. It occurs after the events described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But the most obvious change from this book is a shift of narrative viewpoint. The story of Tom Sawyer was told in the third person, but Huck recounts his own story. Huckleberry Finn is an uneducated boy of 13 or 14 who runs away from the "sivilizing" pressures of respectable widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson, but above all from his heavy-drinking father. Huck is kidnapped by his father and imprisoned in an isolated cabin; Huck frees himself by making it appear as if he has been murdered and then flees to Jackson Island. While hiding out there he meets Jim, Miss Watson's good-hearted slave who has run away after overhearing that he was to be sold. Huck’s narrative is a superb rendering of dialect speech and idiom. One of the attractions of this novel is Huck as the hero. Where Tom is the conventional high-spirited child— bad but always lovable, Huck is an outlaw: he is dirty, near-illiterate, indifferent to the religious teachings of his elders and eternally itching to `light out for the Territory´-- to leave for the unsettled frontier region beyond the confines of the orderly, civilized world, to break away from the restraints of civilization. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an example of a bildungsroman (a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character). Another attraction is the image of his long, comradely journey down the Mississippi River with 80 Why do people do the things they do? Are humans capable of choice, or do they act on instinct, like other animals? What do you think contributes most to shaping a person’s life? Is it the biological factor of heredity? Is it the social and economic factor of environment? Or is it the result of other factors, such as an individual’s own will? Is life a losing battle? Realistic writers, for the most part, didn’t concern themselves with these philosophical questions. Toward the end of the 1890s, however, a group of writers known as Naturalists (such as Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Jack London and Stephen Crane), followed the lead of the French novelist Émile Zola and relied on new scientific understandings to dissect human behavior. For Zola “a novelist must be only a scientist, an analyst, an anatomist, and his work must have the certainty, the solidity, and the practical application of a work of science…”; he believed that novelists should think of their fiction as a scientifically controlled experiment, where characters´ behaviors are closely observed as they interact with the forces of nature and society. The Naturalists were also strongly influenced by Charles Darwin’s scientific theory of evolution by natural selection, adopted the view that people had little control over their own lives, and saw human beings as helpless creatures moved by forces beyond their understanding or control. Backgrounds: In the nineties, French naturalism appealed to the imagination of the younger generation of American writers. For Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Jack London and Stephen Crane, realism’s effort to depict life accurately was insufficient; they tore the mask of gentility to pieces and wrote about the helplessness of man, his insignificance in a cold world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity. They reported truthfully and objectively, with a passion for scientific accuracy and an overwhelming accumulation of factual detail. They painted life as it was lived in the slums, and were accused of telling just the hideous side of it and making a god of the dull commonplace. These young writers wanted the dark and unspoken of the "real" world to be the subject of literature--the outcasts, the down-trodden, prostitutes, the depraved to be the characters to fill the pages of their books and poems. Naturalism was an extreme outgrowth of Realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late 19th century. It had been shaped by the war, by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age, and by the disturbing teachings of Darwinism. The work of Charles Darwin held that all animal and human behavior was determined by biological impulses rather than divinely inspired 81 reason. He characterized the natural world as a constant struggle for survival and from this vision came the principle of natural selection. His controversial findings undermined the biblical explanation for existence. Various thinkers of the day felt that Darwin’s theory of natural selection could be applied to human society. An English philosopher named Herbert Spencer called this idea survival of the fittest, claiming that those who rose to the top of society were “fit”, while those who suffered at the bottom were best left to die out. Social Darwinists used these ideas to justify the huge gap between rich and poor and so to push a governmental policy of laissez faire, meaning that business should not be regulated, because the law of nature would ensure success for the “fittest” and inevitable failure for everyone else. The insights of Sigmund Freud suggested that people are driven by subconscious motives they don’t understand. Definition: The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since humans beings are, in Emile Zola´s phrase, `human beasts´, characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. Influences on American Naturalism CHARLES DARWIN SIGMUND FREUD KARL MARX EMILE ZOLA 82 Naturalistic writers thus used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters´ lives were governed by forces of heredity and environment. Lars Ahnebrink (The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction, 1961) explicitly says that in contrast to a realist, a naturalist believes that a character is fundamentally an animal, without free will. To a naturalistic writer, a character can be explained in terms of the forces, usually heredity and environment, which operate on him/her: “Realism is a manner and method of composition by which the author describes normal, average life, in an accurate, truthful way” [while] “Naturalism is a manner and method of composition by which the author portrays `life as it is´ in accordance with the philosophic theory of determinism”, One of the key concepts in understanding naturalism in its several forms and kinds is DETERMINISM. As a philosophical doctrine, determinism is the idea that in human life every event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedents, a strict cause-and-effect notion. Characteristics of Naturalistic fiction: The naturalists believed that human destiny was shaped by powerful forces, including heredity, social and economic pressures, and the natural environment. Like the Realists, the Naturalists wrote about ordinary people, but they often focused on the working class and the poor presenting the futile battles of individuals against a brutal society or an indifferent universe. The Naturalists took a darker view of the world. In general, literary naturalism sees our lives as DETERMINISM the philosophical belief that events are determined by forces beyond the control of human beings Biological determinism: man is an animal endlessly engaged in a brutal struggle for survival (Darwin) Socio-economic determinism: man is victim of environment and has little control over social & economic factors (Marx) Psychological determinism: man can’t control his emotions and actions, and is an animal dominated by fundamental needs: fear, hunger… (Freud) Characters don’t have free will, external and internal forces (the environment, heredity, society, etc.) control their behavior. 85 Varieties of Naturalism For this new generation of writers, confronting a new American social experience, naturalism offered a view which questioned the conviction that man was a conscious and rational creature, that happiness is secured by virtuous behavior, that the landscape of familiar experience offered all the moral pointers men needed. Their world is not a world of culture and morals, or of individual hopes and satisfactions. It is a world of iron forces that `really´ determine existence: the biological constituents of man, the impersonal, machine-like operations of society, engaged in a climatic warfare seen at an analitic distance. American Naturalism can be divided into two camps: First were those writers who emphasized the biological nature of humans and showed them attempting to utilize their instincts to survive in a hostile natural world. These characters are prone to what Frank Norris (1870-1902) called in McTeague (1899) “the foul stream of hereditary evil”, and what Theodore Dreiser called “chemical compulsions” (Hurstwood in Sister Carrie (1900). In both cases, this irrational, innately primitive impulse leads to the destruction of the character in question. Besides Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Norris’s McTeague, an example of this kind of hard determinism is found in the character Wolf Larsen in Jack London’s The Sea Wolf (1904). JACK LONDON (1876-1910) was one of Naturalism’s leading voices, and his work brought the movement’s stack perspective into popular culture. In his gripping wilderness tales or “survival” narratives, nature is a merciless force, indifferent to the humans who struggle for survival. Despite this bleak point of view, his characters demonstrate the vitality of the human spirit in the face of futility. As a naturalist, London tries to show us humanity as it is in a cold universe—adrift but aware, like his main character in the shot story “To Build a Fire” who struggles to survive in a harsh environment, reflecting the idea that a person’s destiny is shaped largely by his or her environment. London spent time in the Alaskan wilderness and the South Seas, and many of his stories demonstrate the power of nature over civilization. In his story “The White Silence” (1899) we are told that “Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity—the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven’s artillery…” London’s allegorical portraits of human and animal struggles, The Call of the Wild (1903), and White Fang (1906), and stories like “The Law of Life” (1901–2) and “To Build a Fire” (1908) 86 concentrate on how the natural environment determines both human and animal behavior, and won him enormous popularity. His novels illustrate the appeal of animal primitivism and offer versions of the maxim “Eat or be eaten”. The initially domesticated half-dog, Buck, in Call of the Wild steadily regresses to primitive savagery. Like Buck, the half-wolf, White Fang, has to learn that the “law of nature” is the “law of club and fang”; he has to survive before he can learn anything else. Wolf Larsen in The Sea Wolf justifies his brutality as the only way to survive in a hostile universe. But other London characters accept their death without anger or gloom. In “The Law of Life” (1901–2), an old Indian chief, abandoned by his tribe, faces his freezing to death as a matter of course. In “To Build a Fire,” a solitary traveler, a man trapped between his limited intellect and weak instincts, turns aside from the main trail that runs hundreds of miles through the Yukon Territory. His thinking is inadequate even in practical terms. This point is emphasized by contrast with the big native husky, “the proper wolf-dog,” that trots at his heels. By an instinct stronger than the man’s intellect, the dog knows it is too cold…. to keep traveling. Aside from London’s achievements, nature’s hostility and indifference to human survival is brilliantly illustrated in Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat” (1898), his best known. The subject grew out of the sinking of a ship which Crane had experienced first-hand in 1896, and which he reported in some newspapers. In the story the account is restricted to the thirty hours that Stephen Crane and his three companions spent in the boat. “The Open Boat” concerns the conflict between humanity and nature. The sea, a symbol of nature, is indifferent to people. Alternately cruel and kind, teasing or menacing, the sea is heartless. Survival on the sea is a matter of total chance. Humanity’s struggles are grimly ironic. The cook, the injured captain, the oiler and the correspondent are representatives of mankind in the same boat together. The characters of this story are all unnamed, an important detail for the kind of universe Crane evokes: they find themselves alone and in danger, and they are forced to realize their insignificance in the face of an indifferent nature. In his writings, Crane was attracted to war and other forms of violent struggle. He used the Civil War as the subject of his best known book, The Red Badge of Courage (1895). The second kind of Naturalism is more common and less “programmatic” in its approach to characters and action. Writers in this group adopt a “softer” kind of Naturalism, more concerned with humans in their social environment, and present them as products of socioeconomic (rather than natural) forces against which they struggle but can hardly hope to prevail. Examples of this kind of Naturalism can be found in Stephen Crane´s Maggie: A Girl of 87 the Streets (1893), and Frank Norris’s later two novels The Octopus (1901) and The Pit (1903). This second kind of Naturalism was widely adopted and endured well into the twentieth century, largely because the specter of “socioeconomic forces” could take many forms. In Kate Chopin´s The Awakening (1899) and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), female characters struggle against and are ultimately consumed by a powerful unyielding social code that stipulates women must be either nurturing mothers or objects of male desire. Progressive writers such as Upton Sinclair, whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to reform of the meatpacking industry, also created a Naturalistic framework within which the injustices of society could be questioned and explored. Later in the twentieth century, Naturalism was adopted by the school of Social Realism, which emerged as a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the perceived need to communicate the plight of the poor and effect social change. Naturalistic influence is seen in the novels of John Steinbeck or Richard Wright, and even William Faulkner’s great Modernist novels, The Sound and the Fury (1929) and Absalom! Absalom! (1936) utilized strains of Naturalism.