Origins of American Lit: Native Autobiographies, Slave Narratives & Early Short Stories, Appunti di Letteratura Angloamericana II

Scarica Origins of American Lit: Native Autobiographies, Slave Narratives & Early Short Stories e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Angloamericana II solo su Docsity! LETTERATURA ANGLOAMERICANA 2 – 2021/2022 Module A: Autobiographies, tales, short stories, and the rise of the national literature (Norton Anthology, Ninth Edition,Volume A-B) 1: Course introduction. Stories from the Beginning of the World: “The Iroquois Creation Story”; “The Navajo Creation Story” (31-43) The Origins of American literature Locating the origins of literature means locating the identity of it; it’s not only the origins but the development of literature that determines what it’s important and what’s not  it depends on the moment, on social and political contexts. The oral tradition of the Natives wasn’t written down until recent times, therefore many critics believe that we don’t have direct testimonials of their culture. Native American culture and literature  Native American literature is recognized as such only from the Sixties onward because at first their literature was oral, then it became written, and started being considered with the Civil Rights Movement. From that time on their writings were considered not just as documents, but also as literary writings.  However, at first, they were mainly oral, in fact there was no written document before the beginning of the 19th century. This was a reason why Native American literature was not recognized as such, but also because their literature was performative, which means that it was told and made to be shared with communities. Collectivity was privileged over individuality, in fact there wasn’t one single main character, but several, and even autobiographies did this.  We can find ecosystem models rather than anthropocentric ones, which means that men are seen as part of a bigger environment, as part on an ecosystem and not like the focus of the world. All these premises go against the Western ideas of literature and culture.  In Native American Literature animals are significant because they represent virtues and vices, for example the rabbit is symbol of intelligence. Native American literature or literatures?  There isn’t just one Native American literature or culture, but many of them because when Europeans reached North America, they found there more than 300 Native tribes (Iroquois, Navajo).  William Carlos Williams one stated: “The pure products of America go crazy”, which means that we can’t consider cultures pure because they constantly influence each other’s.  The Iroquois’ tribe (North-East, New York, Ontario, north Pennsylvania) and the Navajo’s (North Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico) share some cultural similarities even if they come from two different areas of the continent. We can find even find Asian elements in their tales. Stories from the beginning of the world: “The Iroquois Creation Story” and “The Navajo Creation Story” Iroquois Creation Story  the 1st version was translated in 1623, and two centuries later the native David Cusick wrote it down in 1827.  It tells the story of a woman (Sky Woman), who gives birth to two twins without any sexual intercourse. She dies soon after the travail (typical tradition occurrence) and her body is used to create the universe. One of her sons is the good mind, the other is the bad mind. The good mind creates stars, rivers, the moon, the sun, and female and male creatures; the bad mind creates high mountains, waterfalls (wilderness), apes (= a mere imitation of human beings), and snakes. They fight for whom will have the power, and the good mind prevails over the bad one. The good twin leaves the Earth and gives it to mankind, and this leads to the separation between God and humans.  The origin is located in a woman giving birth to her twins and dying for it.  A turtle becomes island, and it is a very important element in American tradition.  There are elements that are good in the environment: sun, moon, stars, animals. Captivity narratives is a typical American genre, and this one by Rowlandson was the first one to be written, but of course they existed before; it officially started with her and went on until 19th century. Mainly captivity narratives are true narratives, but a lot of them mix reality and fantasy. The most famous ones are Rowlandson’s and Reverend John Williams’ written in 1707. Captives, after being kidnapped, became possession of the tribes they were brought in, they could even be traded or purchased. Her captivity lasted 11 weeks and 5 days, on May 3rd 1776, she was released, whereas her son and daughter were released before. Captivity Narrative by Mary Rowlandson This genre constituted a sort of insight in the Native world because it was written by people who had been kidnapped by the Natives and survived, and then decided to share their experience. It allowed to understand how this society functioned from the inside where they were kidnapped, they were forced to live with the Native Americans even for years before they were set free or rescued. The most famous literary work belonging to this genre is “A narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mary Rowlandson” written by Mary Rowlandson. Why is this book so important? 1. It is written by a woman, and women are not usually authors of autobiographies. 2. Captivity narratives were mainly written for the experience they told rather than for the literary qualities of the book itself. 3. The purpose of this book stems from the Puritan doctrine: it’s not only the account of an experience but a description of the struggle that Rowlandson had to face. People saw this experience as a test of God, to which people had to survive and prove they were one of the chosen people. 4. The title is important for 3 reasons: it tells us the name of the protagonist already, emphasizes the concept of restoration, and it is defined by Rowlandson as a true story. i. Rowlandson insists on the truthfulness of the story because authenticating personal experience was very important for the Puritans. ii. The story is defined as a history, because she wanted to convert her personal experience into a collective experience for everyone, and the truth is important because it helps to make it more real. Again, Puritans insisted on the importance of history as a vehicle to set good examples. iii. The term Captivity means that in order to be saved, you must suffer and again this idea stems from the Puritan doctrine, and it’s compared to the captivity in the Old Testament. iv. Restoration is circular narrative and is possible only after a struggle. How is this autobiography structured?  The preface is signed “Per Amicum”, and written by a person (maybe a friend, Increase Mather) who authenticates the experience. The autobiographies written by women or slaves had to validated by an authority.  What happens? A group of Native Americans kidnap Mary in Massachusetts, Lancaster, 12 people are killed, 1 is able to escape, 24 are kidnapped.  The narrative parts  she was born in New England, Salem, then moved to Massachusetts since her family was among the original settlers of Lancaster. She was the wife of a minister, she was a devout Puritan, and captivity and restoration were seen as a punishment of God. During the kidnap, her sister was killed by Natives, and Mary was not only forced to move with them but also to live. After she came back, her family had moved to Connecticut because the village of Lancaster was destroyed.  At the very beginning this text was conceived as private, but then she decided to make it public. It is significant because it tells us how her perspective changed due to that experience; therefore she emphasized the key points in order to teach them.  It starts in media res with the attack. Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative:  It was written shortly after the main events, but its first release took place 4 years later (1682).  This narrative is so important not just because it’s the 1st one, but also because it’s the first piece of a certain length written by a woman in the 17th century.  The first tile of the book was “The Sovereignty and Goodness of God”, a very short title which doesn’t specify the content of the book.  It was an instant success; people were extremely curious about it.  The original tile was “A true history of the captivity and restoration of Mrs, Mary Rowlandson”. This title is so significant because it mentions the true, the history, the captivity and the restoration. i. Truth = telling the truth authenticates individual experience and it means looking for God and following his will. ii. History = means personal experience which turns into a collective one. iii. Captivity = is the event balanced through the restoration. iv. Restoration = Captivity is not only seen as a punishment rather as a way to salvation. v. This is not a story but a true history, because she wanted to convert her personal experience into a collective experience for everyone, and the truth is important because it helps to make it more real. Aims of this Narrative? A. Teach God’s will through the description of a personal, subjective experience B. Confirm that the colonists were the chosen people. Kidnapping and fights with the Natives were tests sent by God. C. Practical aim: an historical aim. By the way Natives were depicted, the story was used to justify the colonies’ actions and expansion. D. The most important quality is that the events were not meant to thrill the readers, but to instruct them.  There are 2 levels coexisting in the text: a physical one represented by the suffering of the bodies, and a symbolic/spiritual one represented by the suffering of the hearts.  She used the device of repetitions, and a very simple and descriptive style, and she recalls the physical and social details of the route she was forced to do with the Natives. This descriptions are not only physical, but also symbolic  The narrative is not divided in chapters but in Removes, which are read as going far away from civilization of the village to the darkness of the wilderness, compared to the darkness of her soul; these Removes are very similar to Jesus’ Via Crucis, because each Remove is a source of suffering for her, but in the end, she won’t be executed like Jesus.  There are 2 Rowlandson: the character, who is suffering, and the narrator who is looking back and is remembering her suffers. The Rowlandson narrator gives the story a symbolic meaning.  There are also 2 different perspectives in the narrative, because the captivity narrative comes from the autobiography and travel narratives, two genres grounded on two different principles. A. Travel Narratives: based on empiric knowledge, on reality, on observation B. Autobiographies: based on subjective knowledge, on personal perception. C. The captivity narrative is a mixture of them, because there is a spiritual/individual element (autobiographies) and an account of the facts (travel narrative). These two different genres create a kind of conflict in the text.  At the very beginning (page 271), there is a metaphorical death when she writes “Almost gone” even though she is alive, and this means that her faith is almost gone, as well as her social self. Until before the kidnap she was a woman in the community and the wife of a minister, but then she loses everything. The only thing she can do is defining what her life is and find a meaning in her suffering, but at first, she thinks of a punishment. She holds to the faith, she feels guilty and tries to figure out what she did wrong to be punished like this, she submits to God. On the one hand she surrenders to God’s will but on the other if she will totally surrender to him, she will die. Here we can see the first contradiction because if she surrendered completely to God she would have been totally passive, but throughout the story we can see how active she is.  There are 2 different voices/personae in conflict in Rowlandson as the main character: the voice of the survival and the Christian one crying out to her God from the wilderness (270, 271, 272). This struggle of surviving is evident even in the First Remove, where she says Theis tension between secular and religious can be seen in the Diary of Cotton Mather, who was the son of Increase Mather, who had a very difficult life. He was a contradictory and complex figure, because on the one hand he was one of the leaders of the Puritan community and struggled in order to maintain the Puritan doctrine, on the other he was also interested in scientific discoveries. He struggled all his life to believe that all tragedies he had had in his life occurred to him as a sort of trial. For the Puritans, God’s presence manifested itself through history, therefore it was important to record it  histories and chronicles were the first ones to be produced, followed by explorers’ journals (Columbus, John Smith), histories of the colonies, sermons and autobiographies. History 1. WILLIAM BRADFORD (Of Plimmoth Plantation)  he wrote the story of the first settlement from 1608 to 1647, and he tells us about the journey, the arrival, the conflict with the Natives. It’s so important because it gives us the coordinates of what writing puritan is about. In 1647 he stopped writing because he couldn’t find any more a significance between historical facts and biblical episodes. Bradford started drawing parallels between history and biblical events because of the Puritan tradition which implies that by looking at past events, you can understand God’s design. This is the concept of providential design, used to justify colonization. Puritans’ history had two different models (Middle Ages): i. Universal histories (St Augustine City of God): the aim was showing the pattern of God’s plan and presenting history as something confirmed in God’s mind. ii. Chronicles: it’s a more straightforward and detailed account of the events. 2. A similar attempt was made by JOHN WINTHROP, who wrote The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, which is more a diary and a chronicle than a history compared to the one of Bradford. However, it is anyway an official history because it keeps on looking for God’s presence in each life event. All these texts were not printed in the 17th century because they were not known at the time and therefore, they were not considered important. The idea of history and knowledge of the Puritans we have today is different from the one they had in the past. 3. The most important attempt of history was made by COTTON MATHER who wrote Magnalia Christi Americana. He chose this title in order to show that American people were the chosen people. It is a kind of encyclopaedia that mixes stories and history in order to glorify the New England conquest and criticize the second generation of colonists, who, according to him, were losing their faith. He decided to write down the lives of the most important figures of the community and to compare them with the most important characters of the Old Testament in order to demonstrate how England was still part of a Christian theology that did not only want to affirm its legacy but increase the bond between the colonies and the mother country; he was against the political independence of America. Each of these histories were religious but at the same time had a political agenda because religion was often used to justify things that normally were too complex to be justified with actual facts. The interest of Puritan scholars was also in connecting small/specific events to God’s design and will. A clear example of it is the Salem witch trial. - COTTON MATHER was a prolific author, who wrote several chronicles where he tried to explain all events, not just the more specific ones but even the supernatural ones, with an objective approach, in fact he had two cultures: a puritan one and a scientific one. He wrote The Wonders of the Invisible World:  published in 1693  the “Wonders” of the title refer to the main theme of the book, that is the Salem witch trials.  These trials were the result of a “collective hysteria” due to a series of crisis (floods, fires, diseases) in the society. People were accused of spreading illnesses, of making the animals die mysteriously; of course, these events were due to natural causes, but the more people denied, the less they were believed. People started accusing witches who had been seen with black men or been using weapons or pins to torture others, and even those who hadn’t participated to the witchcraft’s meetings testified against other witches (Martha Carrier) in order to survive.  What it’s interesting is that a high percentage of the people who were accused were women who owned lands. Therefore, many historians read these trials as a repression of a possible economic independence that women could gain.  Writing about witchcrafts is strange because it’s not part of the Puritan culture, but all these things started to happen after the confession of a Caribbean woman, who gave a testimony of what she saw, and therefore a lot of elements belonging to the Caribbean culture (ex. black magic) were added to the Puritan one.  What’s more, a racial dimension was added because the devil was depicted as black, witches were accused to have interactions with the Natives, and Cotton Mather believed that witchcraft started among the Indians. Basically, what the Puritans were doing was finding causes outside their community, because so catastrophic events could not happen according to God’s will, they believed.  The subtitle of the book “A people of God’s in the devil territories” show how Puritans perceived themselves and the environment. They were still holy, but the wilderness was evil and corrupted.  Cotton Mather made a chronicle about these witch trials, he wasn’t judgemental, but he simply reported the events. However, there is a difference of tone in his prose between the first and the second part of the book: 1. he explains the reason why these trials took place giving his own interpretation. 2. he writes down what he witnesses in the trials and how Martha Carrier tries to defend herself from the accusations. What is more, he also writes down all the contradictions of the trial like the fact that Martha is not given right to defend fully and that there isn’t evidence. There were 11 testimonies against her, at first she refuses them, but in the end, she confesses of having accepted to become the Queen of the Devil. 5 Jonathan Edwards “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (390-402)”  This text is a spiritual work, but it’s very logically structured since reason is important, for the Puritans, to ground the religious experience into reality.  The tone is redundant and repetitive, and this has to do with the fact that sermons were told by priests who had to grab the attention of the listeners, so they repeated the same concepts several times. Moreover, repetitions were useful to increase the emotional tension.  It’s a circular narrative, which means that it seems to repeat the same thing, but it repeats it with variations.  The text is rich in figures of speech (metaphors), images (ex. hell represented as a furnace) in order to describe God and in order the people to feel.  There is not a specific explanation why God is angry.  In his sermons, Edwards was so catastrophic that he was sent away from the community, but actually he was worried that the youngest generation could depart themselves from Puritanism.  In Edwards’ work we can find an opposition: Dream VS Reality, and this could remind Rowlandson because they both attempted to mix real events with God. Their works are also similar not because Rowlandson’s is a sermon, but because they both try to achieve God’s award.  The sudden turning point is the exhortation to act quickly. He invites the community to act fast and this had to do with the emotional side of the sermon. There is a mix of logic (ex. the structure) and emotion.  Sermons are the 40% of everything it was published between the end of 17th century and the beginning of 18th century, but there are sermons also in the 19th century. They circulated from 1645 up to 1834, but they started being printed only after the 1667, at first they were just oral speeches.  Why were sermons so popular at the time? They were aimed at making the puritan doctrine of the origins popular again, since many, among the youngest generations, were forgetting it.  There is a sort of fixed scheme for all sermons: 1. Plain, simple style 2. Redundancy 3. Metaphors and figures of senses • 1859: abolitionist John Brown is arrested when trying to get hold of an armoury and start a fight against pro-slavery part of society in Virginia. Arrested and executed. • 1861: South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana e Texas (Confederate States) VS The Union. • 1861-1865: Civil War. • 1866, Ku-Klux-Klan is born. Key words:  Middle Passage and Black Atlantic are extremely different even though the space is almost the same.  The Middle Passage refers to the journey that Africans, often kidnapped from their tribes, had to make to reach the colonies. Slavery was already known and practiced, but in a very different way, because in Africa slavery was conceived to allow slaves to have their family connections and buy their freedom by working. So, when the Europeans arrived to Africa, it was easier for them to get slaves because this practice was already known. Usually, the tribes living on the coast, in order to trade with the Europeans, used to kidnap people from other tribes and sell them to the Europeans. The middle passage refers to the traumatic experience of the journey itself, that was traumatic not only because they were taken away from their lands, but also because slaves were separated from their families and relatives. More than 20% of slaves died during the journey, and there were a lot of rebellions. One of the most powerful image about the middle passage comes from a legend that was recently retold by an African American writer, who in her novel retold the story of the evil warrior.  The Black Atlantic is the symbol of the African American experience, and it’s a space where different cultures (African, American, European) merge. This theory of a cultural experience that helped to explain the complexity of African American experience and culture was theorized in the 20th century. SLAVE NARRATIVES Slave narratives are the accounts of the life of fugitives or former slaves; written or orally related by the slave personally; it usually refers to the life of African slaves who escaped from the southern plantations to reach the freedom in the North.  From 1760 to the end of Civil War in the United States, thousands of slaves crossed the Mason-Dixon line, and approximately 100 autobiographies of fugitive or former slaves appeared.  After slavery was abolished in the US in 1865, at least 50 former slaves wrote or dictated accounts of their lives.  The most famous slave narrative is The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845), who established several recurrent elements of the genre.  Slave narrative is fundamental for the abolitionists because it provided evidence of the brutality of this phenomenon.  How to connect the concept of the Black Atlantic with slave narratives? African slaves didn’t share the same path: some of them didn’t live on the colonies but, for example, on ships since they were purchased by merchants.  Slave narratives usually valued more as historical documents than literary texts, because of their values as testimony. However, they should be valued also for their stylistic and rhetorical devices. Some elements typical of slave narratives are:  The importance of authenticity: slave narratives had to persuade the readers that African Americans were not less important than the whites - they had to prove that African- descended people had the same intellectual capabilities that whites had - this «inferiority theory» was used by the slaveholding society to justify enslavement.  Importance and values of work  Patriarchal authority  The importance of religion  The Importance of writing and of education  The slave narrative is the 1st literary genre created by a minority  It prompts a universal dialogue while focusing on the collective value of a universal experience  The structure is very coherent, precise and accurate  Slave narrative is NOT the first example of African American experience in literature, because in the 16th century there were already African American writers. What slave narratives question: Slave narratives examine US culture’s racial, gendered, sexual, and religious terms of personhood and question its borders: • The institution of slavery made whiteness—and the gender associated with it— the normative and the necessary trait for humanity and US citizenship. • By demonstrating slaves intellectual capabilities and their moral consciousness, slave narratives questioned and asked more inclusive categories of personhood and US citizenship. What is the aim? • The aim of these narratives is to shape the events of their lives in a coherent and meaningful pattern. • but also make their own story an emblem of black people’s potential for higher education and freedom. • Individual becoming collective – as far as inspiration and testimony. • Individual story generated by collective experience as far as its genesis: before writing his / her own story, the writer had often already read narratives of other former slaves. • Political form of writing, because it has a political purpose: by demonstrating the same capabilities, black people also demanded the same rights. 6 Slave Narratives: Olaudah Equiano, from “The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, written by himself” (733-769) He was born in Nigeria (or North Carolina?) in 1745, he grew up before he was kidnapped at 11 and sold to slave traders, he is first sent to the Barbados then to Virginia where he had to look for a landowner. His 1st owner, the Lieutenant Pascal who gave him the name of Gustavus Vassa, sold him to his 2nd owner, Robert King, who recognized that Equiano was really smart and took him as a sort of secretary; in 1766 he was able to buy his freedom, by also working in the slave trade, then he returned to England, but since he didn’t earn enough money, he started working as a sailor. Finally, he settled in England in 1777, he married a white girl, had two daughters and died in 1797.  Equiano thought religion was a weapon that could be used to assess his humanity and to have his rights considered as valid.  The text is a sort of ethnography, which derives from the mixture of different genres, and in order to frame his narrative one of the sources that helped him are the explorers’ chronicles. Throughout slavery, he understands how to behave.  This text was written between the colonial period and the early republic, in 1789, and both contexts influenced these narratives. Some documents have been discovered suggesting that Equiano was born in North Carolina and not in Nigeria: if he was born in Carolina and made up the first part, this doesn’t’ discredit its work but makes it more inclusive because he wanted his experience to represent the experience of a large group of people, the one of Americans and the one of Africans.  The focus of his works are not the colonies nor the US, though he can be considered as an American author even though he wasn’t born in the US, he didn’t live there, he wanted to come back to England because slavery in the US was worse than in England and didn’t want to be considered as American. Anyway, what he wrote can be considered American because it is really valuable to understand the US history. He focuses on the contaminations and contacts between Europe, the colonies, Africa and the US, and with this narrative he is basically decentering the perspective geographically, socially, culturally, and politically.  He was writing at a time (1780s and 1800s – early republic) in which slavery expanded the most.  It’s a slave narrative but also a travel narrative, and what distinguishes Equiano from other slave narratives’ writers is that he travelled a lot. These journeys are in space but also within cultures, for example the 1st part of the narrative (experience in Africa) presents his life before being kidnapped. He records the differences between cultures, the spoken languages, religions, and the relationships between African communities and slavery.  The more he got closer to the coast, the nearer he was to the corruption of slave traders, that he believed came from the white world. He sees whites as devils, he is even afraid of them and of cannibalism, of being eaten by them.  For Equiano authenticating his experience was very important, as well as it was believing that his text was considered true.  Book cover  he adds a picture of him in order to prove that that was the real face of the man who lived this experience; he writes both his names, his original name (Olaudah Equiano) and the name he was given (Gustavus Vassa); he quotes the Bible as a form of sketch is more concerned with describing a particular environment. “The Voyage” by Washington Irving: there is an event taking place, the author is travelling through the sea, the focus is on the space around him waiting for something to happen. The sketch is preparatory to the short story. YARD: the word comes from the sailors’ slang, and it refers to the rope making that came to be seen as metaphor of storytelling; spinning the yard is a synonym of telling a story. A yard is mainly a series of anecdotes/single fragmentary episodes that involve men or women, that are somehow involved in exceptional events. It’s a straightforward account of what unusual happens, it’s narrated in a colloquial and causal tone, as if it was a continuation of the oral tradition. Part of the yarn tradition is the TALL TALE that describes highly improbable or impossible events presented as if they were true and factual. The exceptional of America is transferred to the short story through strange events. TALL TALE: it describes highly improbable or impossible events presented as if they were true and factual. Davy Crockett was considered a man of the frontier (Tennessee), he constructed the myth of the self-made men through his legend, and he was not afraid that that image was related to improbable events because he thought this was a way to boost his image. A Tennessee Tall Tale tells us about the cruelty of the environment, about the relationship between men and environment (the environment is against men, and they have to intervene), it tells us about the creation of the myth, and of an exceptional man who is able to survive in this landscape. HOAX (beffa): Petrified Man by Mark Twain he invented the story of a petrified man, that was considered to be true, but it wasn’t, and he had to publish another work saying it was false. We can understand it’s not true because it’s difficult to find a person with a wooden leg petrified. He is questioning the border between fiction and reality, saying that people are easily fool, because they easily believe to what newspapers said (this hoax was published in newspapers and was seen as a sort of news), he was basically mocking his readers. This exceptional event entered in the culture of the short story. NOVELLA: it’s in between a long story and a short novel coming from the European tradition. The novella contributed to the creation of the short story, it developed in the second half of the 18th century in England and represented the values of the middle class. English novels were widely read in the US. They contributed to the short story because had self-contained episodes, and they also contributed to the themes and techniques. Short story most of 19th century short stories focus on individuals rather than community because the short story is short, and it can’t tell the story of a community. The 19th century fiction short stories focus on strangers or outsiders, and there is the importance of the narrator who often says he is part of the short story. Main problems in defining the short story: 1. Lexicon doesn’t help us: we can’t translate in Italian the term short story, because it’s not neither a racconto, nor an anecdote. It’s impossible to translate the term because the name itself is the sign of the discrepancy between cultures, the name tells us about the different ways each culture conceived the short story, and each culture gives a different response. Melville, or Irving, didn’t t call them short stories, and each of the name they used, implied a specific approach to their telling, Irving for example named them tales which is different from short story because tales implied the presence of allegories. 2. Poe said it is a tale capable of being pursued at one sitting… but how long can people sit? 3. Brevity is essential, but how can we distinguish between a long short story and a novella? The length depend on culture, but Poe said that a tale should be pursued in one sitting. 4. Short stories were usually considered a minor genre and were not studied or conceived as important as the novel, they started to become important as far as criticism around 1950s and 1960s, because after World War II people were disillusioned and felt lost, and this sense of alienation increased. Especially the Fifties understood that this genre talked about within the community, short stories talked about individual alienated from the community, one of the most important critics who suggested the most important theory of the short story was Conrad. 5. Theories made by critics:  Gerald Prince tried to explain what a short story was using the linguistics principles and tried to see the differences between linguistics principles in the short story and those in the novel.  Norman Friedman  Charles May  Others said that the short story was the primordial form of the story, although it came out and started developing in the 19th century, because resembled most the narrative at the beginning of the act of telling. It’s not by chance that the short story in the US came before the great American novel, the short story resembles more to the Euro principles. Again, it’s not by chance that the new criticism, who thought this, was located in the US, so they had a very US centered perspective. We know that the novel came before the short story, not before the tale. Why is the short story so popular even nowadays? Main features: 1. It is apparently easier, it seems more spontaneous and less artificial than the novel, it appears to be more like real life because it answers to the feeling of fragmentation. 2. It focuses on individuals rather than groups, on microcosmic relationship of modern life – not on a whole society, class, etc. 3. There are no grand questions (where are we going?), rather one aspect of man’s experience. 4. There is an “elementary sequence”: three elements with at least two of them taking place in two different moments. 5. From a structural point of view, there are mainly 2 possibilities in all stories: either a stranger comes to town, or a man of the village leaves town. 6. the short story needs a disequilibrium: something has to change otherwise there is no narrative. 7. it needs a development in time and space, it needs an agent: something or someone that acts. 8. it usually concerns the present and not the past, it creates something reaching a climax: according to Poe the story had to have a climax, an act of thought or an action, which is usually placed at the end. In Detective Stories by Poe the climax=act of thought is at the end; he also invented the Horror Story where at the end of the story there is the climax which is an action; the climax can also be something missing that solves the mystery. 9. it has the unity of effect. 10. it focuses on particular characters or episodes: it’s not a development or an action, but an act that can be not only physical/material but also an act of thought. The act of thought is more important because usually the murder is the preface and understanding what happened is the development; often this development is not related to a series of events but it’s their intensification of their meaning. 11. the role of the reader in a short story is different from the one of a novel: the reader of the short story has to work a lot unlike the novel, because the short story, in order to be named like this, must leave something unknown. Often the most important thing is missing and not always it’s possible to solve the mystery because sometimes the author doesn’t want the reader to understand all. 12. the short story usually contains teleology which is the retrospective sense of a design: the reader understands the design when he reaches the end, and he is able to perceive his movement from ignorance to knowledge. 13. the voids that the short story has, are not only because the reader is unaware but because the short story often asks a question rather than giving an answer, and in order to do so, it needs an active involvement of the reader. It wants the reader to experience what the characters are experiencing, it’s not only a logical but also an experiential involvement of the reader. 14. The short story is not short only because of its length, what is shorter is the distance between the reader, the story, the narrator and the author, and this can be problematic because the reader is so engaged that he often misses important elements, and he doesn’t think about trusting or not who is telling the story. Difficulties in the short story derive from the fact that critics have always been interested in the short stories:  they represent reality, but they try to interpret the world.  more than the novel, the short story allows to have many interpretations, and since its aim is giving the idea of fragmentation, it became a very important tool in American literature, because it’s difficult creating stories able to embrace all American experiences, and with the short story is easier. 8: The sketch and the short story: Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (Volume A 1003- 1015),  Irving was a very important figure because he invented the first attempts of the American short story, he is a sort of bridge between American and European culture also because he spent a lot of time in Europe and he was influenced by European traditions, especially the German one. He wrote different kinds of literature, and the sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon is only one of the main literary attempts he did. He calls tale sketches, it has to do with the context and with the characteristics of this tale: sketch concerns more a static condition, it implies that characters are quite flat. He has been the founder of the sketch genre, he mainly deals with the cultural foundation of American society, he was the first to use the short story to define and express American values, in particular he focused on a specific 9: The sketch and the short story: Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (Volume B 41-61)  Irving was very influenced by Gothic, not only the one coming from Europe, but also the one that was created in the US.  The story takes place in Sleepy Hollow, it has a lot of Gothic elements, and the finale is open.  Elements in common with Rip Van Winkle: A. Detailed description of the landscape. B. Magic: in Rip Van Winkle it’s focused on the secluded valley, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is more pervasive. C. Both co-protagonists are outsiders, Rip is an outsider by birth and Crane is an outsider by birth and by culture because he has an English past. D. Both stories are about the Dutch but this one is about the Dutch present, whereas Rip’s about the past. E. They both will contribute to the making of a national American literature. F. Both Rip and Ichabod’s are stories about settling down, about finding a place in the world; solitary men in “foreign territories”. G. Context  it resembles to Rip Van Winkle because it reconnects the story to Knickerbocker; the town Tarrytown resembles to the village Rip came back to when he woke up after 20 years. H. the geography of Rip Van Winkle is constructed as the overlapping of two times (past & present), that here coexist and intertwine. Though the matter of this story is contradictive because Irving explains that Sleepy Hollow is left out of time and hasn’t been touched neither by time nor by history. I. The legend of the headless horse man is told at the very beginning. J. Rip was married but he skipped his duties, Crane is a man with no family and this being bachelor will become a characteristic of many protagonists of American literature. The bachelor becomes the symbol of the new state of the union and of masculinity that doesn’t convert into being part of a family. Only a few of American authors had a family, because family requires stability and American literature is keener on talking about instability. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow presents a dichotomy since the two main characters (Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones) are the embodiment of two ideals of masculinity. The hero and the antihero. Though it’s hard to define which one represent the present and which one the past because they are mixed.  What is it about? It’s a fight between two men (Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane) for a woman (Kathrina). The two main characters: Brom Bones:  a young brave reckless man who all the characteristics of the American Adam.  belongs to the village. He has an “herculean” structure that gave him the nickname “Bones”, whereas “Brom” is the abbreviation of Abraham in Dutch.  being a member of the Dutch past, doesn’t represent the expansional spirit, but another type of order.  He is the archetype of the static Dutch community of the time: he doesn’t want to leave, and his mansion as the land are built to last. He is a defender of this lifestyle, a kind of guardian of the Garden of Eden, and he is less related to the wilderness and more to the pastoral and agricultural myth  the opposite of Crane!  At first, he represents the man of the frontier, but he is also part of the Dutch community. If he would marry Kathrina he would settle there, he would never leave his community. He is willing to defend his community. Ichabod Crane:  tall and extremely thin (as the crane, the animal!).  he’s a stranger coming to village.  represents the intellectual type linked more to books than to life.  is fascinated by Puritan times and culture, in fact his favorite author is Cotton Mather, and he believes in Puritan principles.  is defined as a Yankee because he comes from Connecticut; he wants to conquer the Yankee environment.  is an outsider, and he is trying to find his place in the world.  is described as a hungry person who needs to be constantly fed.  is a schoolmaster but he’s not wise, in fact he administers justice through discrimination and not through severity.  what connects his Puritan background to the fact that he is a man of the frontier, is that he is an English descendant.  is extremely superstitious; he believes in this story because he is fed in a culture full of witchcraft’s elements. He is vulnerable because he believes otherwise, he wouldn’t have been shocked by seeing the ghost.  to give the idea that time runs very fast, the author introduces Crane. He is associated with the idea of movement: he comes to town, he runs away. From the headless horseman and comes and goes throughout the whole story.  He is interested in Kathrina because she is the inheritor of an estate, and he doesn’t want to settle down with her. He behaves in a very Yankee way: he wants to sell everything, get the money and then go westwards and living as a pioneer. He doesn’t have the physical capability to live in the Frontier, but he has the mentality since he is interested in speculation. Even if Crane seems to resemble the past (because of his Puritan writings) and Bones seems like the bright future, we can see a contradiction: Bones is part of the village and of the heirs of the Dutch community that inhabited the land first, while Crane is a Yankee because he comes from Connecticut. Crane is also the symbol of the frontier and of the development of the nation. What’s the connection between the Puritan past and the Frontier World? They seem to be very opposed, since Crane represents the past and the exploration, whereas Bones the future and conservation. There is a connection because Crane is part of the same culture, so there is a continuity. Bones doesn’t represent the expansion but the ideal of a static society: we can see this in the description of the characters and the relation they have with space. Setting  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is set in a depression in between the hills near Tarrytown and they are opposed towns: Sleepy Hollow is quiet, while Tarrytown has a very crowdy market and is the symbol of a troubled life. All of Crane’s qualities are negative: he is constantly hungry meaning that he always wants more, and this is a sort of personification of avidity because on the one hand there is the Frontier society and on the other the agricultural society  Crane wants to turn land into money. The element that connects Crane to Bones is being an English descendant, with the difference that Crane is the contradiction of his own culture. ?? Crane and Bones are also the opposition of two systems: the agricultural and the proto-capitalistic one. At the end of the story, Bones marries Kathrina, and Crane seems to be the defeated one, but there are rumors about what happened to him: he might be married to a widow and have had children, perhaps he is a politician or a lawyer; he represents a set of value that are more ambitious than Bones’. What he does is more related to the future of the country since politics has become the core of the new nation. What’s important is that despite the fact of not having the virtue of being a good judge, he becomes one of them. Through Crane, Irving is presenting a different kind of society from the Van Tassel’s where aspiration and ambition and not genealogy are important. So, who is the winner? In American novels, protagonists with families and love interests are few because families required stability, but authors were keener on instability. So, the answer to the question is NOBODY! Sleepy Hollow alludes to the idea of voids: the story presents the void of time and of history. The void of history is only partial because we can see the European past of this village. Violence is a key point for the village and the villagers  from the Revolutionary War to the violence the Indians had to suffer  this idyllic Dutch colonial past is based on violence. The headless horseman becomes part of the community: people are not afraid of him but treat him as an exotic figure. The headless horseman represents the violence of war (because he was shot in the head during the Revolutionary War) and the nation itself where the body is the colonies, whereas the missing head is the mother country since (after the Revolutionary War) the colonies cut out every relation with England. Also, the ghost’s head might be the symbol of democracy. The story also focuses on New England, in fact at the very beginning American literature was keen on it. Then, after the War of Independence, different cultures started to appear, and New England tradition became just one of the plenty of American literature traditions. 10: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Man of the Crowd” (Volume B, 654-666) Edgar Allan Poe How does he improve the short story already started in the US by Irving? The narrative and the plot are clearer structured; he uses psychology investigating the human mind from the inside; he  Language: vast use of figures of sound and of speech, very artificial, presence of elements coming from poetry.  Description and personification of the house: A. the house is compared to a head, where windows are vacant eyes. What happens in the house, happens within the protagonist’s mind. B. Usher is both the family and the house: the house mirrors the family, and the fall of the house is the fall of the family as well. A man, a brother and a sister live together, but what’s the relation between them? This is the mystery that remains unsolved. They are alienated individuals who have no contact with the outside, and it’s like the house is holding them. This is one element that Poe took from Gothic fiction. C. He doesn’t say where the house is located, even if it’s quite obvious that it’s in the South. D. The house and the landscape have the power to turn everything that is positive into negative. Usually, water is a symbol of life (even in Irving), whereas here it’s a symbol of death. The nature surrounding the house is a sort of barrier that doesn’t let anybody/anything go. When the narrator approaches to the house, he is approaching to something that is imploding. The landscape is a fourth dimension, a dimension of time. E. The excessive antiquity of the family is the excessive antiquity of the house as well. The burden of the family is the burden of the house, and the family is decaying because of the passing of ages. F. The house is seen as a protagonist. G. The house starts as a head but turns into a monster  during the Cold War, the war was represented through monsters and aliens. The monster is the representation of what is feared, that is the heaviness of the past.  Who is the protagonist of the story? Fear. All the three characters (two Ushers and the narrator) share un unspeakable fear; Roderick states at one point that he’s afraid of fear itself.  The fear of decadence in the Southern society: even before the Civil War, there were several hints that the social structure (agricultural society based on slavery) could no longer last. In Southern States, the mansions had the name of the families, because the families stayed there for generations. Therefore, the fall of the house is also the fall of the whole Usher family.  The alienation and claustrophobia: both Madeline and Roderick never leave the house, the narrator is the only element coming from the outside. They look as if they were imprisoned in the house, and this might represent the power of the family to cage individuals.  The burden of the present is the past: the two characters are pressured because they are afraid that their genealogic line will end with them. Actually, it’s mentioned that the family is very old.  Structure: unity of time, of space and of effect, since Poe was influenced by Greeks. The climax is the real death of the woman.  It’s a story about the present, but at the same time the burden of present is the past: about a family past and a larger cultural past; the Usher are the representatives of a larger society; the protagonist (Roger Corman) is obsessed by the past.  Family: there is strange relation between the three members of the family, and there is an important element that is doubleness. Characters are not only individuals but can mirror what is outside them; borders of identities are deconstructed; Poe blurs these individuals which means that they are not completely different, but they look alike. Madeline and Roderick are twins: 1. Madeline and Roderick as a first double: we can see her only through Roderick’s eyes, she is quite mysterious and a ghostly, vampire-like figure. She has been interpreted as a personification of Roderick’s guilt/fear/desire which would explain why he tries to bury her prematurely. 2. Roderick is the name of a Visigoth King and Madeline is the lady of the house, their names resemble the ones of a couple. 3. The narrator and Roderick as a second double: they are described as brothers who haven’t seen in ages; Roderick’s fears mirrors the narrator’s. The narrator fears that he will become Roderick and he is afraid of losing his mind. While the doubleness between Roderick and Madeline doesn’t cause any structural problems, the one between Roderick and the narrator does, because it implies that Roderick is a projection/a creation of the narrator’s mind. 4. In the 30s and 40s the relation between the Northern and the Southern States was a problem, this is a third double. The nation was the house of all Americans, and it was a House Divided  which means that it was politically divided.  What are the elements that tell us this story is true? We don’t know whether the story is true or not, whether or not we can trust the narrator  even Poe questions his own storytelling. 5. How has this tale been read from an historical point of view? This idea of family cut of time, of a house as an anachronism in the history, is similar to what Irving told us about the Dutch past, but here Poe is not talking about a different time, rather he is making an anachronism of a Southern society. In the 30s and 40s the relation between the Northern and the Southern States was a problem, this is another double. The nation was the house of all Americans, and it was a House Divided  which means that it was politically divided.  What roles do tales/poems play in his story? Poe wants to show the dark side of a specific environment, but he is also presenting a view of what he considered to be the future.  Possibility of interpretation: the house as a metaphor for the nation (parallelism with Sleepy Hollow). Poe, being a Southern man, saw the fall of the South as a tragedy.