Tragedy vs Comedy

Tragedy

• Must come in catastrophe involving death of the main character
• The catastrophe can't be the result of accident but brought on by some trait in the character of the hero ("Tragic flaw") either by direct action OR through its effect on others
• The hero must have something in him which outweighs his defect/s and makes us interested in him so we care about his fate–the tragic satisfaction 
• In Shakespeare it can be more complex. What IS it in Shakes' view? Did he even believe in it?
• Lear may be a better man at play's end than at play's beginning–without suffering he would not have learned sympathy–but this doesn't apply to Hamlet or Othello.

Comedy

• 17 plays - Many are funny from start to finish. Others, like The Merchant of Venice have a serious tone and strong dramatic aspects
• All have these in common:
• Young lovers struggling to overcome obstacles (often brought on by elders/parents–are kept apart figuratively or literally and must find their way back together.
• Mistaken identity–mixed-up twins or gender identity–women masquerading as men
• Clever plot twists
• Wordplay–puns–innuendo–double entendre
• Stock characters
• Happy endings–always in Shakespeare. Marriage, impending marriage–love always wins in the end.

Norman Invasion and Its Aftermath

Pre-Norman Invasion

• Anglo-Saxon aristocracy
• Anglo-Saxon (Old English) main language
• Oriented toward Scandinavia
• Tribal society & loyalties
• Heroic code
• Women - Strong culturally

Post-Norman Invasion

• Norman-French aristocracy (10,000 nobles)
• Norman-French supplants Old English
• Oriented toward the Continent
• Strong centralized gov't (feudalism)
• Doomsday Book
• Chivalric Code
• Women - celebrated, but socially weak 

Timeline

1066: Death of Edward the confessor; Harold Godwinson made king (Harold II)
1066: Harold II defeats Harald Hardrada of Norway at Stamford Bridge (Yorkshire) (25 Sept)
1066: William of Normandy defeats Harold II at Hastings (14 October)
1066-1071: William suppresses Anglo-Saxon resistance to his rule
1086: Doomsday Book compiled
1087: William dies while campaigning in France

1095-1204: Crusades I-IV
          I: 1095-1099
          II: 1147-1149
          III: 1189-1192
          IV: 1202-1204

1337-1453: Hundred Years' War between England and France
1343: Chaucer born (dies 1400)
1340: Black death in Europe; at height in England 1348-1349
1362: English restored as language of the law
1375: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight composed
1380-1390: Canterbury Tales composed
1385: English again the language of education

1425-1450: Letters and records mostly written in English
1450: Gutenberg invents movable type
1476: Printing in England (Caxton)

The Canterbury Tales

• 29 pilgrims
• 27 described
• knight
• squire
• yoeman
• prioress
• Monk
• Friar
• Merchant
• Clerk
• Man of Law
• Franklin
• Haberdasher
• Carpenter
• Weaver
• Dyer
• Tapestry Weaver
• Cook
• Shipman
• Physician
• Wife
• Parson
• Plowman
• Miller
• Manciple
• Reeve
• Summoner
• Pardoner
• Host
• Telling stories as they journey to Canterbury
• Chivalry plays big role
• Medieval
• Time isn't really serious - poking fun at people
• not kind to them
• Criticizing the church
• Provide justification for the things they do - each of the individual members
• Franklin's Tale - has a knight & lady, so Chivalry is applicable
• Chaucer gives people personailities
• Invented English novel form
• Integrated characters from all classes

Anglo- Saxon and Medieval Terms

• Anglo-Saxon
• started 8th C
• Old English
• Norman Conquest
• take over England, speak French --> Latin, church language
• Oral tradition/oral formulaic poetry
• alliterative verse
• epic
• tells story, usually adventure
• heroic code/warrior culture
• peace weaver/cup bearer
• comitatus/comitatus bond
• loyal group who work together - war band. Rules based on loyalty through the leader. Leader loyalty comes before members
• Beowulf, Grendel, Grendel's mother, Wyglaf, Wealtheow, Unferth
• Ship burial/sutton hoo 
• late 20th C. A-S ship burial found
• Danegeld
• gold paid to Danes so they don't kill you (tribute)
• Viking
• Fate
• Apocalypse
• English always were in battle, thought end was near.
• elergy
• riddle
• Bede
• Latin first work of Literature in England; mythology/origin story gives cultural legitimacy
• Caedmon's Hymn
• horse groomer in monestary in English. First written one. Short stanza about god. Short relationship between English & Christianity
• clerk/cleric/clerical
• lay/laity
• Christ/Mary/Queen of Heaven
• Rood
• dream vision
• lets speaker discuss an allegory that never really took place - counter - factual based in Christianity
• saint's life
• homily
• Genesis/Adam and Eve
• Morality play 
• stories through Bible - creation -->end/Genesis - Revelation
• Passion/Passion play
• Middle English
• Lyric poetry
• may resent a moment, relate/etc, but not a story/narrative
• fabliau
• Nun's tale
• exemplum
• fable/beast fable
• allegory
• seven deadly sins
• Roman Empire
• Mabinogion
• Welsh/Governish language. Lit collect of ancient. Oral tales of British A-S people. Wanted to record legends. 18th C
• Chivalry
• Chivalric code
• courtly love
• getillesse
• qualities of goodness, we expect gentlemen to have a high civilization (nobles)
• Griselda
• matter of Arthur/Arthur cycle
• Arthur, Guinevere, Morgan, Gawain, Lancelot, Camelot
• lai/Breton lai 
• Romantic, Chivalric fantasy story
• Wheel of fortune
• Chaucer
• Canterbury Tales, General Prologue
• Bob and wheel
• Christian knight
• Host
• Miller's Tale
• Wife of Bath's prologue and tale
• Nun's Priest's Tale
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Bertilak
• Lady Bertilak
• Piers Plowman
• Poetry terms

The Monsters in Beowulf & The Heroic/Chivalric Codes

The monsters in Beowulf represent distinct threats to the social and political order provided to Anglo-Saxon society by the heroic code

Source of Order             Comitatus Bond:          Alliances:                    Treasure:
Monster:                        Grendel                        Grendel's Mother         Dragon
Threat to Order:            Fratricide                      Blood-feud                   Avarice
Human Example:          *Unferth, Hrothulf       *Hildeburh & Finn      Heremod
                                      Heremod                       (Danes and Frisians) 
                                      *The Geats                   *Freawaru & Ingeld
                                                                            (Danes & Heathobards)
                                                                           *Geats & Swedes



Beowulf's Career
Beowulf's career follows an ideal path for the Anglo-Saxon warrior:

Despised Wastrel -->

"He had been despised/ for a long while.../ people thought he was a sluggard, a feeble princeling" (129

Thane to Hygelac -->

• Destroys five giants
• Slays "monsters of the waves"
• "Crushed [the Geats'] fierce foes" (84)

Adventurer/Hero -->

• Breca
• Grendel
• Grendel's Mother

Counsellor -->

"But he stood at [Heardred's] right hand,/ ... / until the boy came of age / and could rule the Geats himself" (133-134)

King -->

"[The Geats] said that of all kings on earth / he was the kindest, the most gentle, / the most just to his people, / the most eager for fame" (154)

Good death -->

"The warrior king, / lord of the Geats, had died a wondrous death" (150)

Beowulf (the man):

• is the ideal embodiement of the heroic code
• is an ideal that is unrealizable in this world (Beowulf is markedly superior to all others in the epic)
• is an ideal that is inadequate even as an idea, for he is undone by the Heroic Code (betrayed by his men) and, eventually, by his inevitable mortality (his fate)

Beowulf (the epic):

• is used by the Christian poet to instill a pattern of right conduct (Beowulf the hero)
• is used to show the limitations of human, worldly codes, and ideals
• insinuates the superiority of Christian codes and aspirations 

The Heroic and Chivalric Codes

• The Anglo-Saxon Warrior
• Germanic in origin
• Origins in Pagan tribal culture
• Martial Code of Conduct (comitatus bond)
• Guided by history, tradition, real-world necessity & experience
• The Medieval Knight
• French in Origin
• Full Explicitly Christian
• Must defend the church, its officials, and adherents
• Must fight for the Church (Crusades)
• Uphold the Church's social principles (protect the weak, repress wrongdoers, be an agent of justice, order, etc)
• Codes of Social Conduct (Chivalry):
• Respect for, deference to women
• service (platonic) to a particular lady
• manners appropriate for a court (courtesy)
• wit, graciousness of speech
• pursuit of love
• Literary models:
• Chansons de geste (Charlemagne & his court; 11th c)
• Songs of troubadours (12th C onward)
• Romances (from Romance languages in which they were written)
• Arthur cycle (from C790 onward)
• Handbooks of knightly behavior
• Shared Characteristics
• Strong
• Brave
• Militarily adept
• Loyal (comrades, lord, king)
• Fame through deeds

Realistic: Emily Dickinson Poetry

Nature

• #207 (#214) I Taste a liquor never brewed
• talks about nature and how beautiful it is
• bee, flower, pearl, Rhine, butterflies
• summer day/Nature=alcohol
• #320 (#258) There's a Certain Slant of Light
• Death imagery: winter afternoon, weight/oppression, Cathedral tunes, despair, imperial afflictions, shadows, look of death
• Nature imagery: landscape, slant of light, winter, afternoon, air
• #359 (#328) A bird came down the walk 
• biting worm in half, moving aside for beetle, bird is afraid, she offers food, he runs away
• symbol for soul?
• #905 (#861) Split the lark - and you'll find the music
• Nature & Love

Death, Immortality, Religion

• #124 (#216) Safe in their Alabaster Chambers
• Imagery of coffins while world goes on without the people inside
• #236 (#324) Some keep the Sabbath going to church
• Heaven is on Earth in nature with orchard birds, wings, birdsong
• "Instead of getting to heaven, at least, I'm going all along"
• #202 (#185) "Faith" is a fine invention
• For gentlemen that see
• But microscopes are prudent
• In an Emergency!

Mind, Soul, & Self

• #620 (#435) Much Madness is divinest sense
• If you agree with majority, you are deemed to have sense
• If you disagree you are considered dangerous
• #339 (#241) I like a look of Agony
• Because that look is not faked
• Because death cannot be faked
• #598 (#632) The brain - is wider than the sky
• The mind is the greatest thing that is because it can contain the sky & ocean & is the same weight/importance of God
• #312 (#252) I can wade Grief
• Author is used to Grief, can stand it easy
• Can't do joy/happiness as well
• Grief when controlled is turned into power
• Give balm to giants & they'll weaken
• Give rockiness/hardship, they'll do the impossible.

Emily Dickinson - December 10, 1830-May 15, 1886

• An American Poet
• Born in Amherst, MA
• Highly introverted
• Eccentric (locals)
• Reluctant to greet guests early in life
• Reluctant to leave her bedroom later in life
• Relationships were through correspondence
• Fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published in her lifetime
• The work that was published often altered by publishers to fit conventional poetic rules of the time
• Poems unique to the era:
• short lines
• typically lacked titles
• slant rhyme
• formed by words with similar but not identical sounds
• unconventional capitalization and punctuation.
• Common themes death and immortality
• First collection of poetry published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd
• 1955 Thomas H Johnson published a complete and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry: The Poems of Emily Dickinson
• Celebrates limitations of self; not a transcendentalist
• accepts her isolation and limitations
• all life is about exclusion
• Moments only exist now
• Religion does not behave as active agent
• Early stream of consciousness
• Aware of being one of the few women in poetry
• Wanted to provide POV of women, even women who died
• Knowledge possessed by no man
• Rejected patriachal attitude of Calvinism
• Immorality conferred thru poet's voice in poem, not in soul/by God
• Uses dashes to show anxiety and instill it in the reader.
• Nature
• Split the lark
• bulb=tulip
• you'll understand the water if you lose it
• Scarlet Thomas = doubting Thomas
• you heard the music, why do you have to split it? You know the music was true
• Hymn stanza - Ironic yet not 8/6/8/6
• Refused to convert
• Would need to discuss rhyme scheme if asked
• ABCB type Rhyme in "Because I could not stop for death"
• Death
• Faith is a fine invention
• "Faith" in quotes
• Uses "invention" for faith
• Seeing for men with vision
• "Slant of Light"
• Light is oppressive
• Cathedral tunes = funeral
• Light gives heavenly _________
• depressing, makes you feel mourn, winter
• Despair = seal of the 4 horsemen
• Overwhelming, kingly affection
• not sent by God
• hymn stanza - mocks idea of hymn, which praises, but this despairs
• enjambed lines
• of a line, couplet, or stanza of verse ending partway through a sentence or clause that continues in the next.

Realistic: The Awakening - Kate Chopin

• Published in 1899
• Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf Coast at the end of the 19th Century
• Plot centers around Edna Pontellier & her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South
• One of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without concession
• Landmark of early feminism
• Precursor of American Modernist literature back of the novels blend of:
• realistic narrative
• incisive social commentary
• psychological complexity
• Prefigures works of American novelists such as William Faulkner & Earnest Hemingway
• Echoes works of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and Henry James

Main Characters

• Edna Pontellier ~ a respectable Presbyterian from Kentucky, living in Creole society in Louisiana. She rebels against conventional expectations & discovers an identify independent from her role as a wife & mother
• Léonce Pontellier ~ Edna's husband, a successful businessman who is unaware of his wife's unhappiness
• Mademoiselle Reisz ~ Her character symbolizes what Edna could have been if she had grown old and had been independent from her family. Despite viewing Reisz fas disagreeable, Edna sees her as an inspiration to her own "awakening."
• Madame Adéle Ratignolle ~ Edna's friend, who represents the perfect 19th century woman, as she is totally devoted to her husband and children.
• Alcée Arobin ~ known for seducing married women and pursues a short-lived affair with Edna, satisfying her while her husband in away.
• Robert Lebrun ~ has a history of charming women he cannot have but finds something different with Edna and falls in love. Robert's flirting with Edna catalyzes her "awakening," and she sees him what she has been missing in her marriage.

Themes

• Solitude
• Through Edna Pontellier's journey, Kate Chopin sought to highlight the different ways that women could be in solitude: Because of
• the expectations of motherhood
• ethnicity
• marriage
• social norms
• gender
• Chopin presents Edna's autonomous separation from society & friends as individually empowering while still examining the risks & self-respecting and subsequent loneliness
• In an attempt to shed her societal role of mother & wife, Edna takes charge of her limited life and makes changes to better discover her true self.
• For example, Edna leaves her husband and moves into a house to live by herself, a controversial action since  a true woman would never leave her husband
• Although Edna's journey ultimately leads to an unsustainable solitude due to lack of societal support, "her death indicates self-possession rather than a retreat from a dilemma." She takes control over what she still has agency over: her body and herself.
• By making Edna's experiences critically central to the novel, Chopin is able to send a cautionary note about society's capacity to support women's liberation
• As shown through Edna's depressing emotional journey, isolation, and eventual suicide, Chopin claims that the social norms and traditional gender roles of the 19th century could not tolerate an independent woman.
• Chopin's The Awakening questions the value of solitude & autonomy within a society unable to positively sustain women's freedom
• Women's Independence, Desire, & Sexuality
• Feminism
• The themes of romance and death in The Awakening aid Chopin's feminist intent of illuminating the restrictive & oppressive roles of women in Victorian society.
• Edna's longing for Robert Lebrun and affair with Alcée Arobin explicitly show Edna's rejection of her prescribed roles as housewife and another as she awakens to her sexuality & sense of self.
• Edna has an emotional affair with Robert, who leaves in order to avoid shaming her in society afterwards, Edna has a physical affair with Alcée.
• Through these affairs
• Edna exercises agency outside of her marriage & experiences sexual longing for the first time
• Edna also discovers that no matter which man she is with, there is no escape from general oppression women face.
• Edna's society has no place for women like her, as she must either be an exemplary housewife & mother like Adéle Ratignolle or an isolated outsider like Mademoiselle Reisz
• Edna's ultimate decision to commit suicide at the end of the novel exemplifies how few options women had in society at this time.
• Leaving society altogether was Edna's way of rejecting & escaping this oppresive dichotomy
• Patriarchy
• Awakening
• Refers to Edna's sexual & feminist awakening
• Marriage and Motherhood
• Expression
• how people expressed themselves in relation to sexual expectations

Symbol's

• Music
• In turn-of-the-century literature, music is often used to reveal & interpret the dreams & hopes of the main characters
• i.e. the parrot, caged at beginning
• the mocking bird
• birds description in novel parallels life of Edna Pontellier
• Children
• Children are traditionally symbols of innocence, naivety, & purity
• Alsoused as contrasts to adult, showing how life experiences change & shape a person's character and values.
• The Sea
• Symbol of rebirth & cleansing
• Symbol of freedom & escape
• Often seen as perilous & filled with mystery, both of which need to be overcome to achieve the aformationed freedom
• Subplot: Edna's attempts to learn to swim
• Symbolic meaning? Trying to reach freedom/escape
• look at descriptions offered of Edna as she heads to the beach for her first lesson versus final swim
• Black and white
• symbolizes the presence of evil and goodness 
• "The Lady in Black" mentioned in The Awakening exemplifies, in Edna's mind, someone who is evil and untrustworthy
• HOwever
• Edna is still preoccupied with thoughts of the lady suggesting perhaps her own leanings or thoughts about those less innocent than first presented

Plot

• The Awakening opens in the late 1800's in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans
• Edna Pontellier is vacationing with her husband, Léonce, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun, which house affluent credes from the French Quarter
• Léonce is kind and loving but preoccupied with his work. His frequent business-related absences mar his domestic life with Edna
• Consequently, Edna spends most of her time with her friend, Adéle Ratignolle, a married Creole who epitomizes womanly elegance and charm.
• Through her relationship with Adéle, Edna learns a great deal about freedom of expression
• Because Creole women were expected and assumed to be chaste, they could behave in a forthright and unreserved manner.
• Explosive to such openness, liberates Edna from her previously prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires
• Edna's relationship with Adéle begins Edna's process of "awakening" and self-discovery, which constitutes the focus of the book.
• The process accelerates as Edna comes to know Robert Lebrun, the elder, single son of Madame Lebrun
• Robert is knowing among the Grand Isle vacationers as a man who chooses one woman each year--often a married woman--to whom he then plays "attendant" all summer long.
• This summer he devotes himself to Edna and the two spend their days together lounging and talking by the shore.
• Adéle Ratignolle often accompanies them.
• At first, the relationship between Robert and Edna is innocent.
• They mostly bathe in the sea or engaged in idle talk!
• As the summer progresses, however, Edna and Robert grow closer, Robert's affections and attention inspire in Edna several internal revelations.
• She feels more alive than ever before
• She starts to paint again, as she did in her youth.
• She learns to swim
• She becomes aware of her independence & Sexuality
• Edna and Robert never openly discuss their love for one another, but the time they spend alone together kindles memories in Edna of the dreams and desires of her youth
• She becomes inexplicably depressed at night with her husband and profoundly joyful during her moments of freedom, whether alone or with Robert
• Recognizing how intense the relationship between him and Edna has become, Robert honorably removes himself from the Grand Isle to avoid consummating his forbidden love.
• Edna returns to New Orleans a charged woman.
• Back in New Orleans, Edna actively pursues her painting and ignores all of her social responsibilities.
• Worried about the charging attitude and increasing disobedience of his wife, Léonce seeks the guidance of the family physician, Doctor Mandelet
• A wise and enlightened man, Doctor Mandelet suspects that Edna's transformation is the result of an affair, but he hides his suspicions from Léonce.
• Instead, Doctor Mandelet suggests that Léonce let Edna's defiance run its course, since attempts to control her would only fuel her rebellion.
• Léonce heeds the doctor's adivce, allowing Edna to remain home alone while he is away on business.
• With her husband gone and her children away as well, Edna wholly rejects her former lifestyle
• She moves into a home of her own and declares herself independent--the possession of no ore.
• Her love for Robert still intense, Edna pursues an affair with the town seducer, Alcé Arobin, who is able to satisfy her sexual needs.
• Never emotionally attached to Arobin, Edna maintains control throughout their affair, satisfying her animalistic urges but retaining her freedom from male domination.
• At this point, the self-sufficient and unconventional old pianist Mademoiselle Reisz adopts Edna as a sort of Protégé, warning Edna of the sacrifices required of an artist.
• Edna is moved by Mademoiselle Reisz's piano playing and visits her often. She is also eager to read the letters from abroad that Robert sends the woman.
• A woman who devotes her life entirely to her art, Mademoiselle serves as an inspiration and model to Edna, who continues her process of awakening and independence.
• Mademoiselle Reisz is the only person who knows of Robert and Edna's secret love for one another and she encourages Edna to admit to, and act upon, her feelings.
• Unable to stay away, Robert returns to New Orleans, finally expressing openly his feelings for Edna.
• He admits his love but remains her that they cannot possibly be together, since she is the wife of another man.
• Edna explains to him her newly established independence, denying the rights of her husband over her and explaining how she and Robert can live together happily, ignoring everything extraneous to their relationship
• But despite his love for Edna, Robert feels unable to enter into the adulterous affair
• When Adéle undergoes a difficult and dangerous childbirth, Edna leaves Robert's arms to go to her friend. She pleads with him to wait for her return.
• From the time she spends with Edna, Adéle senses that Edna is becoming increasingly distant, and she understands that Edna's relationship with Robert has intensified. She reminds Edna to think of her children and advocates the socially acceptable lifestyle Edna abandoned so long ago.
• Doctor Mandelet, while walking Edna home from Adéle's, urges her to come see him because he is worried about the outcome of her passionate but confused actions.
• Already reeling under the weight of Adéle's admonition, Edna begins to perceive herself as having acted selfishly.
• Edna returns to her house to find Robert gone, a note of farewell left in his place. ("Goodbye, because I love you.")
• Robert's inability to escape the ties of society now prompts Edna's most devastating awakening.
• Haunted by thoughts of her children and realizing that she would have eventually found even Robert unable to fulfill her desires and dreams, Edna feels an overwhelming sense of solitude.
• Alone in a world in which she has found no feeling of belonging, she can only find one answer to the inescapable and heartbreaking limitations of society
• She returns to Grand Isle, the site of her first moments of emotional, sexual, and intellectual awareness, and in a final escape, gives herself to the sea.
• As she swims through the soft embracing water, she thinks about her freedom from her husband and children, as well as Robert's failure to understand her, Doctor Mandelet's words of wisdom, and Mademoiselle Reisz's courage.
• The text leaves open the question whether the suicide constitutes a cowardly surrender or a liberating triumph.
• Edna is called away to help Adéle with a difficult childbirth
• Adéle pleads with Edna to think of what she would be turning her back on if she did not behave appropriately
• When Edna returns home, she finds a note from Robert stating that he has left forever, as he loves her too much to shame her by engaging in a relationship with a married woman
• In devastated shock, Edna rushes back to Grand Isle, where she had first met Robert Lebrun
• Edna escapes in an ultimate manner by committing suicide, drowning herself in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Kate Chopin's Style

• Narrative style - narration
• Maupassant's style - a perceptive focus on human behavior & complexities of social structures
• Demonstrates Chopin's admiration for the French short story writer Guy de Maupassant
• Hybrid that captures contemporary narrative currents & looks forward to various trends in Southern & European literature
• Chopin becomes skeptical of religion which is seen in The Awakening
• Kate Chopin's narrative style in The Awakening can be categorized as naturalism
• Naturalism -->A literary movement or tendency from the 1880's to 1930's that used detailed realism to suggest that social condition, hereditarily, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character, a mainly unorganized literary movement that sought to depict believable everyday reality as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic idealistic or even supernatural treatment.
• Mixed into Chopin's overarching 19th century realism is an incisive and often humorous skewering of upper class pretension reminiscent of direct contemporaries such as 
• Oscar Wilde
• Edith Wharton
• Henry Lares
• George Bernard Shaw
• Chopin's lyrical portrayal of her protagonist's shifting emotions is a narrative technique that Faulkner would expand upon
• Aspects of Chopin's style also prefigure the intensely lyrical and experimental style of novelists such as Virginia Woolf and the unsentimental focus on female intellectual and emotional growth
• Most important stylistic legacy? --> detachment of the narrator
• One of the main issues 19th Century readers had with The Awakening was the idea of a woman abandoning her duties as a wife and mother. As this was so strictly reinforced as the main purpose of women's lives, a character who rebels against those social norms shocked readers. An "Etiquette/Advice book" of the time proclaimed "If she has the true mother-heart the companionship of her children will be the society which she will prefer above that of the others."

Realistic: Mark Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

• Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorn Clemens - Florida, Missouri - 1835
• Huck Finn - 1884 (following Tom Sawyer in 1876)
• Twain worked as type set for his brothers newspapers, Hannibal Journal
• Gave up printing to work on River boats on the Mississippi
• Name Mark Twain influenced by river boat & leadmen's signal--"By the Mark, twain"
• That was the water was deep enough for passage
• Raft scenes come from years on the river boats
• When Civil War broke out he joined the confederate side, but was not hard confederate
• After leaving the war headed west and became a silver minor in Nevada
• Eventually landing his true calling of journalism
• 1863 started penning his name as Mark Twain
• 1860 & 1870's, Twain's articles, stories, memoirs, and novels, characterized by an irrepressible wit and a deft ear for language and dialect garnered him immerse celebrity
• Huckleberry Finn is a sequel to Tom Sawyer, in an effort to capitalize on the popularity of the earlier novel
• More serious novel character and focused on the institution of slavery in the south
• Dwindling wealth and family hardships made future work take on a depressed tone but he was continued to enjoy immerse esteem and fame and continued to be in demand as a public speaker until his death in 1910.
• Novel didn't die with author. In the 20c. it has gained popularity as a subject of intense controversy
• The novel occasionally has been banned in the southern states because of its steadfastly critical take on the south and the hypocrisies of slavery
• Seen as vulgar/racist but loses the deeper meanings of antislavery
• Characterized by local color regionalisms

________________________________________________________

• Set in St. Petersburg, MO (fictional town) (based on the town of Hannibal, MO) ~1834-1844
• Starts in the ending of Tom Sawyer and how Tom and Huck came into money because they found the robbers gold
• Tom was a mischievous middle class boy while Huck was a poor boy with drunken father
• Widow Douglas adopted Huck (sister to Mrs. Watson)
• The bank held Huck's money in a trust fund for him.
• Huck is not thrilled with his new life of cleanliness, manners, church, and school but learns to accept it.
• All is well until Huck's drunken father, Pap, reappears into town demanding Huck's money
• Judge Thatcher & the widow try to gain local custody of Huck; the new judge in town not knowing Huck's background refuses to take him from his father
• Pap kidnaps Huck from the widow & holds him hostage across the river in Illinois
• Pap keeps Huck locked in the cabin when he leaves
• Tired of his confinement Huck fakes his own death by killing a pig & spreading the blood all around
• Hides on Jackson's Island in the middle of the Mississippi
• Watches as the town folk search the river for his body
• After a few days he encounters Jim. One of Miss Watson's slaves
• Jim runs away after hearing of Miss Watson selling him down river to a "Southern" plantation where he'd be treated horribly and separated from his wife and children.
• Huck & Jim team up although unsure of his helping a slave run away
• While on the island a storm flood's the Mississippi
• A house & boat float by. They latch on to the boat to use to loot the house
• Inside the house they find a deadman; Jim refuses to let Huck see the face of the dead man
• They are forced to leave the island when a woman tells her husband she sees smoke coming from the island and believes Jim is hiding on there.
• Huck also learns there is a reward out for catching Jim.
• Huck & Jim start down river on a raft with plans to ditch it at the month of the Ohio where they'll get on a steamboat headed for free states
• Passing St. Louis they encounter robbers and manage to steal their loot
• Thick fog makes them miss the Ohio River
• Then they encounter men looking for runaway slaves
• Huck lies and tells the men his father is on board with smallpox & Jim is their slave
• Terrified of the disease the men give Huck money & leave quickly
• The next night their raft is slammed by a steamboat and they are separated
• (Kentucky) Huck winds up at the home of Grangerfords, Southern Aristocrat family locked in a bitter feud with a neighboring clan, the Shepherdson's.
• The elopement of the Grangerford's daughter with the Shepherdson's son leads to a gun fight and many of the family members killed
• Huck gets caught in the battle but Jim shows up with the repaired raft. Huck goes to Jim's hiding spot and they take off down the river.
• (Missouri Arkansas Tennessee border) A few days later they save a pair of men being chased by armed bandits
• The men claim to be a displaced English Duke and long-lost heir to the French thrown (the duke & the dauphin). They are clearly con-artists (llost Dauphin - rumors Louis-Charles spirited away)
• Unable to tell two white adult men to leave, the venture on with them.
• The duke and the dauphin pull several scams along the way in small river towns
• The con artists get wind of a dead man, Peter Wilks who left fortune to his relatives coming in from England. The next scam starts.
• They pretend to be Wilks brothers
• The 3 nieces greet with open arms and quickly begin liquidating the estate
• A few townspeople become skeptical & Huck grows fond of the Wilks's sisters so he's ready to thwart the scam
• Huck steals the gold and is forced to stash it in Wilks's coffin
• Huck reveals to the eldest Wilks sister, Mary Jane
• Just as Huck's plan to reveal the con artists is about to happen, the real Wilks brothers show up from England
• The duke and the dauphin just barely escape before the the ensuing confusion
• The gold is found by the sisters.
• The duke & the dauphin make it to the fart before Huck and Jim can escape them.
• They perform a few more small scams before their biggest one; they sell out Jim to a local farmer, telling him Jim is a runaway with a huge reward being offered
• Huck finds out where Jim is being held & resolves to free him
• At the house Jim is prisoner in, a woman excitedly greets Huck, calling him "Tom"
• The people holding Jim were Toms aunt and uncle, Sally & Silas Phelps
• The Phelp's mistake Huck for Tom who is due to visit; Huck goes with it
• Huck intercepts Tom between the Phelp's home and the docks; Tom pretends to be his young brother Sid
• Tom prepares a wild plan to free Jim with unnecessary obstacles; Jim is only lightly secured
• Huck is sure Tom's plan will get them killed but goes with it anyway
• After pointless preparation where the boy's ransacked the house and annoy Aunt Sally they put the plan to actions
• Jim is freed but Tom gets shot in the leg
• Huck is forced to get a doctor
• Jim risks his freedom to nurse Tom
• All are returned back to the Phelp's house; Jim is put back in chains
• When Tom wakes the next morning, he reveals Jim is a free man all along; Miss Watson made a provision in her will to free Jim, died 2 months earlier
• Tom planned the entire escape as a game & intended  to repay Jim for all his troubles
• Tom's aunt Polly shows up, identifying Huck & Tom.
• Jim tells Huck, who fears his father will come back that the dead man they found in the house was Pap.
• Aunt Sally offers to adopt Huck
• Huck said he had enough "sivilizing' and plans to move out west.

________________________________________________________

• Characterized by local color regionalisms
• Told in 1st person by Huck
• Colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River
• Often scathing Satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism
• Huck & Jim - Racism, Father and son relationship, rebirth
• Racism - moral confusion --> good people behaving badly to slaves 
• explores father/son relationships
• Intellectual -->moral education
• Huck questions the morals he was taught by a society that rejects him
• He relies on streetsmarts (which works for him ) over book learning (which is mocked through Tom Sawyer)
• Superstition is huge
• lies/cons --> every mini story

________________________________________________________

Major Themes

• explores notions of race and identity
• obvious complexity concerning Jim's character
• Jim is seen by some as a good-hearted, moral, and not unintelligent
• Other site the novel as racist & emphasizing stereotypically "comic" treatment of Jim's superstition & ignorance
• 19th C. social climate & the role it forces on him regarding Jim
• Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of society
• makes his own valuation on moral choice due to friendship with Jim & human worth
• Twain highlights the hypocrisy required to condone slavery
• Huck imprissoned/punished by his father, then fleeing
• Meets Jim doing the same thing
• Huck seen as in the right, Jim seen as in the wrong.
• Racism & slavery
• Huck Finn written 2 decades after the Emancipation Proclamation
• Jim Crow Laws
• Allegorical representation of the condition of Blacks in the U.S.
• Intellectual & Moral Education
• Huck is an uneducated, Poor, orphan
• Distrusts morals & percepts of the society that treats him as an outcast
• Apprehension of society & growing relationship with Jim has Huck question his teachings regarding race & slavery
• Hypocrisy of "Civilized" society

________________________________________________________

• Huckleberry Finn - a boy of about 13-14 years old; brought up by drunk father; hard time fitting in
• Widow Douglass - Kind hearted lady who took Huck in
• Miss Watson - Widow's sister; hard on Huck
• Jim - Miss Watson's slave
• Tom Sawyer - Huck's mischievous friend
• Pap - Huck's father
• Judith Loftus - local town woman where Huck gets info
• The Grangerfords & The Sheperdsons
• The Duke & the King
• Doc Robinson
• Mary Jane, Joanna, & Susan Wilks
• Aunt Sally & Uncle Silas Phelps

Realism: 1865-1914

• 1860's-1910... I've also seen 1914....
• A reaction against the idealist vision of humanity associated with Romanticism and Transcendentalism
• Attempted to portray the facts of real lives in commonplace situations and settings
• Often involves social criticsm
• "Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events which are apparently the most oridinary and uninteresting, in order to extract from these full value and true meaning." -- George Parsons Lathrop, 1874
• "Let fiction cease to lie about life; let it portray men and women as they are... let it not put on fine literary airs; let it speak the dialect, the language, that most Americans know" -- William Dean Howells 1889
• Common vernacular, dialects
• Concrete references (money, food, shelter, decor) vs abstract references found in Romanticism
• Limited social relations
• Shared guilt/responsibility among characters
• set in growing cities
• Motivations: survival of the fittest; greed; lust; confusion

Realism can be divided into four categories:

• Realism (as a general concept
• Contains the attributes listed above
• Often focuses on life in the city, usually the lives of middle class characters
• Authors include William Dean Howells, Ambrose Bierce, Rebecca Harding Davis, and authors listed in other categories below
• Psychological realism
• Tries to realistically recreate the processes of the human mind
• Writers were interested in the minutiae of human life (such as the instant decision that affects one forever or the emotional significance of a raised eyebrow).
• Authors include Henry James, Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (in some works) and others.
• Regionalism
• Attempts to portray daily life in one particular region of the country
• Was sometimes dismissed as quaint "local color" or "slice of life" writing; women writers in particular were considered insignificant for focusing on the local rather than on universal theme.
• Regional writers are now taken more seriously, including women who explored gender boundaries
• Authors include Kate Chopin, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, Mark Twain.
• Naturalism:
• An extreme realism that focuses on the ugliness of people's lives, especially the lives of lower class or under-class people
• Influenced by theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, who applied (or arguably misapplied) Darwinian ideas to human society and coined the term "survival of the fittest."
• The concept of determinism is important. 
• Determinism refers to the idea that people are controlled by forces outside themselves, such as economics, social class, gender, race, intelligence level, and the subconscious. We don't really have free will and our choices don't matter because these outside forces determine who we are and what we do.
• Pessimistic view of human life
• Authors include Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Frank Norris, and (in some works) Edith Wharton and Henry James
• Precursor to modernism
• Nature doesn't care
• Universe doesn't care
• Vs. Gods providence
• We believe we're in control, but we're not-- futility
• Ironic tone
• No answer--intelligence and education are useless
• Bitterness-- horrors of the world presented
• Nature isn't beautiful or uplifting

Romantic: Walt Whitman

1819-1892 A humanist Part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism Transcendentalism <-- sub of Romanticism

• developing by late 1820's & 30's
• Protest against the general state of intellectualism & spirituality
• Doctrine of Unitarian church taught by Harvard Divinity School was particular concern
• Christian theological movement named for the affirmation that God is one entity
• Trinitarianism - God as 3 persons in one being

Literary Realism: 1865-1914

• Part of the realist art movement beginning with mid 19th century French literature and Russian Literature
• Extending into the late 19th & early 20th C.
• Contrast to idealism
• Attempts to represent familiar things as they are

Naturalism

• Precurser to Neonatalism
• Respons to Emerson's call for poetry

• Father of "free verse"
• Controversial especially "Leaves of Grass" because of sexuality
• Pro equality among blacks and whites
• Common 19th century prejudices against black people
• Homosexual or Bi-sexual but no agreement of which

"The Wound-Dresser"

1. Pain and aftermath of War

• Shows that he's attached on an emotional level with the soldiers
• Realism*
• Modernist~
• Does not Romanticize War
• Realities of War
• Good Connection with People {Transcendentalism}

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

• Movement, Nature & Consciousness --> Boy to Poet, Birth of the poet

• Connection of man & nature
• Cosmic poet - individually goes out the window
• Repetitive word of Love
• Clergy
• Reminiscense
• Sea
• Love song reference
• Birth-death-rebirth
• word death - not negative - accepted as part of life
• -->closer to God
• Mother - bringing life --> bringing death

• dactylic/trachaic meter help drive home the meaning
• The sun & moon, land & sea, stars & sea waves - atmospheric & symbolic scenery

• Avs poetica - a poem about poetry
• The poet discovering he's a poet
• The boy translates what the bird is singing

"Song of Myself"

• "representing the core of Whitman's poetic vision"
• Represents Whitman's fictional autobiography of the cosmic poet that he aspired to be
• It begins "I celebrate myself and sing myself... and every atom as good to me belongs to you"
• Two characters at beginning: Me and you
• Here I am Walt Whitman and I'm talking to you
• Intention was to escape the bounds of mortality and become immortal through his poetry and "Song of Myself" is how he does that
• Human spirit is that which about the human which is immortal; being a human spirit, and it is the job of the cosmic poet to instruct other humans that everyone can be as immortal as him.
• A lot of good about Whitman (optimism, generosity), but wrong about human nature (not moving in a direct line toward perfection)
• Believed society moving toward perfection and he was helping that along with his poetry; Marx believed in this idea of us moving toward perfection, as well. Marx and Whitman = Utopian thinkers
• most acclaimed & influential poem written by Whitman
• Social conservatives denounce the poem due to blatant depictions of human sexuality
• About losing yourself & who you are at the moment as a creature of part of the earth
• Free verse poem
• separating what is him & what is not him
• love, sex, identity, nature, pain, rebirth, birth
• fictional autobiography of the poet he aspired to be
• 2 characters at beginning are me and you
• wanted you to know him intimately (leaves of grass)
• believes in Transcendentalism (Transcendance)
• trans of human ego into cosmic poet who fuses with cosmos (sect 52)
• intention was to become immortal thru poetry
• represents totality of leaves of grass
• by absorbing everything, he can expand himself outward
• Catalogues are all the things he absorbs into the self: "I contain multitudes"
• Cosmic can't be egotistical, he has to absorb everything
• Every atom of me belong to - radical equality - it's all chance (which atoms make up each of us)
• places lines discussing a prostitute and president right next to each other
• one of the first feminists (limited)
• believed human nature & society were moving in a direct line to human perfection
• Utopian thinker
• first American poet to radically experiment with poetic form
• in this way, he is very modern
• 1st 6/7 sections lay out his scheme
• catalogue follows
• couple having sex
• Collage of images in his expansion
• Sect 16 or so: "I am Whitman, the cosmos" shows his expansion to cosmos 
• Then it's pretty cynical
• Looks at all religions and says 'you were okay for your time but now your time is over'
• Last few sections: join me as I tramp my journey; carry it on into the future, this image of human perfection.
• First part (eight sections or so) is linear, but then becomes cyclical and cycles back on itself. Reflects the larger cycle of Leaves of Grass, which also leaves you at the end looking toward the future.
• Historic surprise that Whitman got was Civil War. Instead of moving forward in linear progression there were going to be rough patches.
• "When Lilacs lasted the _________" = tribute to Abraham Lincoln
• "On blue Ontario Shore" = beginning of progress of that expansion
• More aware than ever that development of country was going in direction he didn't like. Best I can say is had my say about it in my own way, but I'll have to leave it to the future.

Epistemological Cataloguing attitude toward people read 1st 20, last couple

Realistic: Frederick Douglass

• Realist
• 1st chapter - known first scene with whipping
• Mr. Colby section
• Twain does racism, Douglass does slavery
• Slave Narrative

Slave Narrative

1. Direct address
2. Depictions of violence/cruelty
3. Depictions of the reality of sexual abuse
4. Descriptions of the writer's desire for freedom
5. Accounts of distinctions between whites good/bad

• Douglass says benevolence & Christianity have nothing to do with slavery - owners claim its the reason learns to read and write
• Identity issue - am I human? Am I American?
• Hypocrisy of slavery - in a country where all men are equal

Essay themes:

• Freedom
• Identity
• Religion
• Economy
• History
• Writers as product of their time
• Femininity
• ism piece

irony=American lit - we don't live up to their ideals

• Born February 1818 - Died February 20, 1895
• African-American social reform, abolitionist, orator (public speaker), writer, and statesman
• Escaped from slavery
• Leader of the abolitionist movement
• gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings
• He stood as a living counter - example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave - 1845
• Spoke to the nations egalitarian - 
• of, relating to, or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities
• Much like Benjamin Franklin
• Douglass actively supported women's suffrage
• Held several political offices
• First African American nominated for Vice President with his running mate Victoria Woodhull
• "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong" ~Frederick Douglass
• In Baltimore, experience more freedoms than his more southern counterparts
• Escaped to New York around the age of 20
• Settled further North in Massachusetts
• Changed last name from Bailey to Douglass
• One of the few black men employed by mostly, white society
• Merely relate "facts" of his experience
• Leave out philosophy, rhetoric, & persuasive arguments
• Using real names/places gave credibility
• But had to flee the US for 2 years
• Attention to women's Rights movement
• Civil War
• Abolish Slavery
• Black men fight in the Union side of the war
• Successful on both fronts
• Blacks only paid half of white men in Union army
• Union won April 9, 1865

Themes - fundamental and often universal ideas

• Ignorance as a Tool of slavery
• Keeping slaves ignorant
• people believed slavery was a natural state of being
• literacy would bring slaves to question the right of whites to keep slaves
• maintain control in South of what the rest of the country knows about slavery
• Knowledge as a Path to Freedom
• Slaves must pursue knowledge and education to be free 
• Slavery's damaging effects on Slaveholders
• The corrupt and irresponsible power that slave owners enjoyed over their slaves
• Slaveholding as a Perversion of Christianity

Motifs - Reoccuring structures, contrasts, or literary devices

• The victimized female slaves
• The treatment of slaves as property
• Freedom in the city

Symbols - objects, characters, figures, or colors

• White - sailed ships
• Sandy's post - traditional African approach to religion & belief
• The Columbian Orator - a collection of political essays, poems, & dialogues. Symbol not only of human rights, but also the power of eloquence and articulation

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

• Published 1845
• describes the events of his life
• One of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the U.S.
• Abolitionist movement - movement of the African Civil War to end Slavery.

Chapters 1-4

• explains that he doesn't know the date of his birth
• mother died when he was 7 years old
• few memories of his mother, especially because children were often separated from their mothers. Only rare night visits.
• thinks his father is a white man, possibly his owner
• Early age sees his Aunt Hester being whipped
• Cruel interaction between slave and slave holders
• that fear keeps them where they are
• when they tell the truth they are punished by their owners

Chapters 5-7

• Douglass moves to Baltimore, MD
• Believes if he had not moved he would have remained a slave his whole life
• New mistress, Mrs. Sophia Auld
• Begins a kind woman but eventually turns cruel
• Learns the alphabet & small words from her
• Mr. Auld believes slaves are unfit to learn language
• Makes them unfit to be slaves
• Unmanageable and sad
• Realizes the importance of learning to read and write
• At times his newfound skill torments him
• Gains the understanding of the word Abolition
• Runs away to the North
• Learns how to read and write well

Chapters 8-9

• At the age of 10 or 11 - Master dies and his property is left to be divided between his son and his daughter
• Slaves value along side livestock
• Sent back to Baltimore to live with the family of Master Hugh
• Moved through a few more situations before being sent to St. Michael's
• Regrets not trying to run away but notes he's moving in a NE fashion and makes mental note
• Lives with Master Thomas Auld who is cruel, even after attending a Methodist Camp
• Lent to Mr. Covey for a year, happy because he would be fed.
• Mr. Covey is known as a "negro-breaker," who breaks the will of all slaves

Chapter 10-11

• Under the control of Mr. Covey, F.D. bites his hand and has a hard time at the tasks required of him
• Harshly beat almost weekly basis
• sometimes due to his awkwardness
• Worked and beaten to exhaustion which causes him to collapse in the fields one day
• Brutally beaten by Covey
• Covey tries to tie up Douglass but he fights back
• 2 hour battle, Douglass conquers
• Never beaten again
• Another plantation
• befriends slaves
• teaches them to read and write
• Plans to escape
• caught and jailed, 2 years
• Sent to Baltimore but learn a trade
• apprentice to the shipyard
• abused by several whites; 4 nearly gouge out his left eye
• Master Hugh won't allow him to go back to shipyard.
• tries to find a lawyer but all say can only help white man
• Sophia Auld, who turned cruel, took pity on Douglass
• tended to his eye until it healed
• Employed by a caulker and receives wages
• forced to give every cent to Master Auld
• Finds his own job
• plans date for escape to the North
• Succeeds but doesn't give details so he doesn't incriminate those who helped him.
• also ensures possibilities for other slaves to escape
• Unites with fiancé
• Begins working as own master

________________________________________________________

• Published May 1, 1845
• 4 month, 5,000 copies sold
• By 1860 - 30,000 copies sold
• After publication sailed to England and Ireland for fear of being recaptured
• Britain and Ireland - Gained supporters who paid $710.96 for his freedom
• Offset the demeaning way white people view him
• Opened several doors for Anti-slavery movement

________________________________________________________

Main Characters

• Frederick Douglass
• Narrator & protagonist. 
• uneducated, oppressed slave to worldly and articulate political commentator. dramatizes between his younger and older self
• Sophia Auld
• transforms from kind caring woman who owns no slaves to an excessively cruel slave owner.
• Appears more realistic & humane than other characters because we see her character in progress.
• Eventually less than a character and more of an illustration against slavery
• Edward Covey
• Douglass's Nemasis.
• Typically villain figure
• Not a victim to the slavery mentality but a naturally evil man who finds an outlet for his cruelty through slavery
• "negro-breaker"
• Captain Anthony - Douglass's first master & probably his father
• Colonel Edward Lloyd - Capt'n Anthony's boss and Douglass's 1st owner
• Lucretia Auld - Capt'n Anthony's daughter & Thomas Auld's wife
• Captain Thomas Auld - gained slaves through marriage to Lucretia. Hugh Auld's brother
• Hugh Auld - Douglass's occasional master
• Sophia Auld - Hugh Auld's wife
• Betsy Bailey - Douglass's grandmother
• Aunt Hester - Aunt
• Harriet Bailey - Douglass's mother
• Sandy Jenkins - slave acquaintance
• William Freelend - keeper for 2 years following Mr. Covey
• William Hamilton - father-in-law of Thomas Auld
• William Gardner - Baltimore shipbuilder
• Anna Murray - Douglass's wife
• Nathan Johnson - MA worker & Abolitionist
• William Lloyd Garrison - founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society
• Wendell Phillips - President of the American Anti-Slavery Society

________________________________________________________

Romantic: Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Young Goodman Brown"

3 dark events from Puritan History

• Salem Witch Trials
• Puritan intolerance of Quakers
• King Phillips War

Gothic Character - Nature in Woods

"For his dying hour was gloom"
He sees his wife now as a human being instead of a perfect ideal
Red and white = pink
passion and purity
girlishness
set apart from the browns and gray of Puritans
"My Faith is gone"

Themes

• Nature of "community"
• Appearance vs reality 
• Loss of trust and innocence

Not a man of action, an on looker
Woods - scary, outside of his comfort zone outside the safety of the village (community)
Faith as a symbol of what he's leaving
Young Goodman Brown - gothic?

• supernatural
• Creepy setting
• sense of history
• horror/terror

• White - purity, red - passion, pink
• Wilderness as experience
• Faith
• Religion, faith in humanity 
• Human being

Romantic: Henry David Thoreau: Walden

read economy closely, "suck the marrow," section; skim chapters after; loon section; anthill (sandhill) chapter

• Master plots; wikipedia
• Literature resource center
• subject guide

Resistence - section in jail

• taken by Ghandi & MLK

Economy

• He wants each person to find his own way, not follow what he does
• He doesn't feel that philanthropy is a positive act -- rather he wants people to be self-sustaining
• Don't give them what you want to give them, give them what they need
• Poor people will be accustomed to receiving donations, and will not choose to work for it
• If they don't want help, let them be
• People may be able to be anonymous in their philanthropy
• When anonymous, you still know you're doing it
• Don't have debt so your not tied to it
• People are slave drivers to themselves
• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
• Live simply and go back to the roots and live in accordance with the Earth
• Not talking to the valiant, being well employed, talking to the lost
• Clothing should not be chosen for fashion
• Anti-capitalist (factories)
• Trapped under inheritance
• Live simply & wisely

Where I live and what I live for?

• Discusses the beauty of nature and the necessity to enjoy it
• Thoreau wants to immerse himself in it
• We need to simplify our minds

Sounds

• Discusses the sound of a train
• After the train passes, he notices how alone he is, however he's happy to not be on it
• Mentions the bull frogs, whip or wills

Solitude

• How are we alone/only when we're in the Milky way? we're part of a huge solar system
• He's not alone if he's talking to us while he experiences it

Higher laws

• Takes care of his body - a man's body is his temple
• Disgusted by people that eat meat
• He's contradictory - he also eats meat
• Switches between pro/anti-hunting
• Pro vegetarian
• Sounds like a man can do no right while having an appetite - the only good is while working
• Romantics always go overboard while contradicting themselves
• By citing multiple religions, he gets very extreme with cleanliness

Romantic: Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter

• 1850 American Renaissance Romance
• Set in the 17th C. Puritan Boston, MA, during years 1642-1649

Plot

• In June 1642 in Puritan Boston, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Pryne
• A young woman found guilty of adultery
• Required to wear a scarlet "A" ("A" standing for adulterer) on her dress to shame her
• Hester must stand on the scaffolding for 3 hours, to be exposed to public humiliation
• As Hester approaches the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd are angered by her beauty and quiet dignity
• When demanded and cajoled to name the father of her child, Hester refuses.
• As Hester looks out over the crowd, she notices a small, misshapen man and recognizes him as her long-lost husband - new name Roger Chillingsworth - who has been presumed lost at sea.
• When Roger (the husband) sees Hester's shame, he asks a man in the crowd about her and is told the story of his wife's adultery.
• He (Roger) angrily exclaims that the child's father, the partner in the adulterous act, should also be punished and vows to find the man.
• He chooses a new name - Roger Chillingsworth - to aid him in his plan
• Reverend John Wilson and the minister of Hester's church, Arthur Dimmesdale, question the woman, but she refuses to name her lover
• After she returns to her prison cell, the jailer brings in Roger Chillingsworth, a physician, to calm Hester and her child with his roots and herbals.
• He and Hester have an open conversation regarding their marriage and the fact that they were both in the wrong. Her lover, however, is another matter and he demands to know who it is; Hester refuses to divulge such information.
• He accepts this, stating that he will find out anyway and forces her to hide that he is her husband. If she ever reveals him, he warns her, he will destroy the child's father.
• Hester agrees to Chillingsworth's terms although she suspects she will regret it.
• Following her release from prison, Hester settles in a cottage at the edge of town and earns a meager living with her needlework
• She lives a quiet, somber life with her daughter, Pearl.
• She is troubled by her daughter's unusual fascination with Hester's scarlet "A"
• As she grows older, Pear becomes capricious and unruly. Her conduct starts rumors, and not surprisingly, the church members suggest Pearl be taken away from Hester.
• Hester, hearing rumors that she may lose Pearl, goes to speak to Governor Billingham. With him are reverends Wilson and Dimmesdale
• Hester appeals to Reverend Dimmesdale in desperation and the minister persuades the governor to let Pearl remain in Hester's care.
• Because Dimmesdale's health has begun to fail, the towns people are happy to have Chillingsworth, a newly arrived physician, take up lodging with their beloved minister
• Being in such close contact with Dimmesdale, Chillingsworth begins to suspect that Ministers illness is the result of some unconfessed guilt.
• He applies psychological pressure to the minister because he suspects Dimmesdale to be Pearl's father.
• One evening pulling the sleeping Dimmesdale's vestment aside, Chillingsworth sees a symbol that represents his shame on the ministers pale chest.
• Tormented by his guilty conscious, Dimmesdale goes to the square where Hester was punished years earlier. Climbing the scaffolding, he admits his guilt to them but cannot find the courage to do so publicly
• Hester, shocked by Dimmesdale's determination decides to obtain a release from her vow of silence to her husband.
• Several days later, Hester meets Dimmesdale in the forest and tells him of her husband and his desires for revenge. She convinces Dimmesdale to leave Boston in secret on a ship to Europe where they can start life anew.
• Renewed by this plan, the minister seems to gain new energy
• On Election Day, Dimmesdale gives what is declared to be one of his most inspired sermons. But as the procession leaves the church, Dimmesdale climbs upon the scaffold and confesses his sin, dying in Hester's arms
• Later, most witnesses swear that they saw a stigma in the form of a scarlet "A" upon his chest, although some deny this statement
• Chillingsworth, losing his will for revenge dies shortly thereafter and leaves Pearl a substantial inheritance.
• After several years, Hester returns to her cottage resumes wearing the scarlet "A"
• When she dies, she is buried near the grave of Dimmesdale, and they share a simple slate tombstone engraved with an escutcheon described as "On a field, sable. The letter A, gubs."

What characteristics make Hawthorn a romantic writer:

• Use of supernatural
• Big themes across multiple works of same author
• What themes do they focus on?
• Hawthorne - History, supernatural, violation of human heart (Scarlet Letter & "The Birthmark")
• Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whitman - stray from enlightenment
• Thoreau might belive in perfection but only through reflection; not science
• Hawthorne says Romance in actual & imaginary meet (custom houses)
• see this in mirrors & other things
• Walden: Read economy closely, "Suck the marrow" section, skim chapters after.
• "Resistance" section in jail
• taken by Ghandi & MLK
• (Realist) Frederick Douglass
• 1st Chapter - know first scene with whipping
• Mr. Coly section
• Twain does racism, Douglass does slavery
• Slave narrative

• Hawthorn criticizes the intolerance of Puritanism & suggests that an ideal Christian community should emphasize charity rather than judgment
• The Scarlet Letter juxtaposes legality and ethics; Hester may have violated her mariatal vows, but we know that her marriage was loveless and her husband driven by evil
• The fact that Hester & Dimmesdale are sympathetic figures in spite of their sins emphasizes forgiveness rather than condemnation and judgement
• Hester & Dimmesdale's struggle to final acceptance and forgiveness from their community illustrates the theme of the individual versus society
• Hawthorne explores the theme of identity by contrasting the identities imposed on characters by others (such as Dimmesdale's false image of a pious minister) and the identities that they create for themselves (such as Hester's embrace of the letter "A" as a symbol of her transformation)

Characters

• Hester Prynne: has mysterious lover and baby. Won't reveal the father. serves penance for transgression by helping the sick and the poor
• Mysterious lover (Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale): has strange red mark on chest sickly with guilt (making his soul-->body sick). He eventually confesses and dies
• Hester's husband (Roger Chillingsworth)
• Pearl: The child of Hester, mysterious father. Devilish child with a wild soul

Setting

• Massachusetts Bay Colony
• Society governed by Puritans (left Church of England, wanted freedom to practice religion

Analysis

• Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
• Pearl
• The price of sin and possibility of redemption
• Cost a great price, but greatest treasure
• A
• Adultery, sin, hard work, charity, skill, righteousness, sacredness, grace
• Nature/Wilderness
• Kindness, love, danger, the part of human nature that can't be squashed and beaten into submission; depth and emotion in contrast with society
• Romanticism/Gothic/Transcendentalism
• Mystery
• Villain
• Supernatural events (meteors and mysterious body marks)

• How is the middle scaffold scene representative of the work?
• How is the labyrinth of her mind feminist?
• Labyrinth - map of sorts
• Why does Hawthorne think of writing Puritan piece in 1700's?
• Ambiguity of narrator?
• What characteristics make Hawthorne a romantic writer?
• Use of Supernatural
• Big themes across multiple works of same author
• What themes do they focus on?
• Hawthorne - history, supernatural, violation of human heart (Scarlet Letter & "The Birth Mark")
• Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whitman - stray from enlightenment
• Thoreau might believe in perfection, but only through reflection; not science
• Hawthorne says romance in actual & imaginary meet (custom house)
• Sees this in mirrors and other things

• Hester and Dimmsdale expelled from Paradise like Adam and Eve
• Hester is actually given freedom by the Scarlett letter to explore and think about her society
• True evil arises from the close nature between love and hate
• Dark landscapes, inner thoughts
• Doesn't leave the colony because she refuses to admit that the "A" is a badge of shame. She remakes it to mean what she wants it to mean
• Wilderness - village - Hester's cottage
• (Freedom)  - (repression) - (neither)
• Night and day
• Inner vs outer appearance
• Symbols such as the meteor mean whatever the watcher wants them to mean

 

•  Themes
• Revenge
• Sin - different types such as sin of passion versus sin of revenge
• Hypocrisy
• Guilt and Blame
• Isolation
• Women must change before they can assume an equal position
• Other women
• Mistress Hibbens
• Wife who felt sorry for Hester
• Total Depravity
• Unconditional election
• Limited atonment
• Irresistable grace
• Perseverance of the Saints

Romanticism: 1820-1865

Roughly speaking, American Romanticism overlaps with the American Renaissance. The concept of Romanticism is associated with English writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, but the movement arrived in the U.S. slightly later. Major American Romantic authors include Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Romanticism includes these traits:

• Rejection of reason & logic as the most valuable modes of thought
• emphasis on emotion and intuition
• sensory experience over rational intellect
• Interest in the powers of the imagination
• Love of nature and natural beauty, plus a sense that there is correspondence between nature and the human mind and/or human emotions
• Interest in the human psyche and exploration of the hidden depths of the mind
• Darker version of humanity than the transcendentalists, including an interest in madness, fear, suicide, and psych turmoil
• Sometimes wrote about their own culture through the lens of space or distance in time
• Hawthorne - Puritan era
• Melville - Men from all over one ship
• These writings challenged the role of God and religious life, seeking to replace them with reason
• Rational thought and science were the new themes

Themes of American Romantic:

• Rejection of reason and logic as the most valuable modes of thought
• Emphasis on emotional intensity and intuition
• Escapism
• Common man as hero
• Emphasis on sensory experience over rational intellect
• Interest in the powers of the imagination
• Love of nature and natural beauty, plus a sense that there is a correspondence between nature and the human mind and/or human emotions. Nature as refuge, source of knowledge/spirituality. Nature is wild, untamable, and it is being lost as fast as we can appreciate it.
• Interest in human psyche
• Exploration of hidden depths of the mind
• Despite sharing some traits with transcendentalists, romantics generally had a darker vision of humanity including an interest in madness, fear, suicide, and psychological turmoil
• Wrote about own culture through distance of time and space (Hawthorne writing about Puritan Era and Melville writing about men all over the world working on whaling ship). Characters/setting were set apart from society
• Universe is mysterious, irrational, incomprehensible
• Transcendentalism
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman
• Set of Philosophical, literary, religious, and cultural ideas developed in New England in 1830's and 1850's and beyond
• Power of the individual
• Attempted to embrace science
• Individualism
• Organized political parties and religion corrupted the purity of the individual
•  Self-reliance, independent
• Based heavily on Indian religion
• Sub-genres
• Slave narrative: protest, struggle for author's self-realization/identity
• Domestic (sentimental): social visits, women secondary to men
• Female gothic: devilish childhood, family doom, mysterious foundling, tyrannical father
• women's fiction: anti-sentimental
• Heroine begins poor and helpless
• She succeeds on her own character
• Husband's less important than father
• Initiation novel, growth from child to adult

Characteristics of Romanticism

• Interest in the common man and childhood
• Romantics believed in the natural goodness of humans, which is hindered by the urban life of civilization. They believed that the savage is noble, childhood is good, and the emotions inspired by both beliefs causes the heart to soar
• Strong senses, emotions, and feelings
• Romantics believed that knowledge is gained through intuition rather than deduction. This is best summed up by Wordsworth who stated that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."
• Aw of nature
• Romantics stressed the aw of nature in art and language and the experience of sublimity through a connection with nature. Romantics rejected the rationalization of nature by the previous thinkers of the Enlightenment period.
• Celebration of the Individual
• Romantics often elevated the achievements of the misunderstood, heroic individual outcast.
• Importance of imagination
• Romantics legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority.

Transcendentalism Transcendentalism refers to a set of philosophical, religious, literary, and cultural ideas developed in New England (especially the town of Concord, Massachusetts) in the 1830's-1850's and beyond.

• Major authors include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, William Ellery Channing, and Jones Very. Somewhat later, Walt Whitman shared many of the traits of the transcendentalists.
• The term comes from a belief that people are capable of inner, spiritual, intuitive metal experiences that transcend physical experience
• Transcendentalists believed that nature exerts a spiritual force on people or represents spiritual truths; they downplayed traditional scriptures in favor of a belief that everyday life is full of revelations and miracles (if we pay enough attention to notice)
• Saw poetry as the new scripture; poets (or "poetic" writers and thinkers) help to reveal the spiritual dimensions of nature and of daily human life
• Rejection of many orthodox Christian beliefs in favor of a belief that there is a divine presence (what Emerson called the Over-soul) in all things, including nature and people; emphasized the unity of all things
• Influenced by European philosophers (such as Swedenborg) and by Asian (especially Hindu) religion and philosophy
• Basically a positive view of humanity: people have potential to improve and perfect themselves with the aid of education and other forms of nurturing
• Several transcendentalists were involved in progressive social causes: women's rights, the abolition [of slavery] movement, utopian communities, etc.
• A set of philosophical, religious, literary, and cultural ideas developed in New England (esp, Concord, MA) in the 1830's-1850's and beyond
• Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement that was developing by the late 1820's and '30's in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality
•  The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was a particular concern
• Core beliefs
• Was the inherent goodness of both people
• and nature
• They believe that society and its institutions–particularly organized religion and political parties–ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual
• Tehy have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent
• "Self-reliant" differs from the traditional usage of the word
• Refers mainly to a fierce intellectual independence that believed itself capable of generating completely original insights with as little deference paid to past masters as possible.

The American Renaissance

• 1840's-1850's, especially the period from 1844-1855
• Period in which a number of major authors and works appeared, with literature in the U.S. finally taking on uniquely "American" qualities
• Partially overlapped with the Lyceum Movement, a program for adult education that involved public lectures, debates, and other events intended to encourage intellectual growth; the movement began in the 1820's and included lectures by Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and many other figures
• Some major works of the period:
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet" (1844): expressed hope for the emergence of an American style of poetry that would correspond to the vastness of the American Landscape
• Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845): First major feminist text in the U.S.; Fuller also edited the transcendental magazine The Dial in the early 1840's
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (845): America's best known slave narrative and the most famous 19th century book by an African-American author
• Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1849, published in 1852) and Resistance to Civil Government (1849): The first chronicles Thoreau's experiment in self-reliant living; the second introduction to the world the concept of "civil disobedience" to governments and laws.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851): Two novels widely considered to be masterpieces of American literature
• Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1850): a hybrid novel containing a variety of styles and tones; some scholars consider it to be the greatest American novel ever written
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851): Top-selling novel of the 19th century; an anti-slavery novel that fueled the abolitionist movement and that supposedly led Abraham Lincoln to identify Stowe as "the little lady who started the big war" (i.e. the Civil War)
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855): First edition of the book Whitman would revise and expand into the 1890's; fulfilled Emerson's call for a new, American form of poetry.
• Nature - beautiful and dangerous
• Transcendentalist - nature is beautiful
• Freedom, not escapism - finding the self
• Lighting makes you see things differently - ambiguity, mystery
• between reality and imaginary
• violation of the human heart
• Romantics believe in evil

American Renaissance

• 1840's-1850's
• Period in which a number of authors opened with literature in the US finding taking on "uniquely American" qualities
• Major works: (some)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson "The poet" (1844)
• Frederick Douglass "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1845)
• Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlett Letter (1850)
• Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass (1855)

Colonial: Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Part 1

• First self-made man in American literature
• Opposite of Puritan ideals that you are who you are from birth
• Proponent of the enlightenment
• Autobiography was addressed to his son on the nature of their relationship
• Not sure you can trust the account of his life... he wrote it... is he embellishing it?
• Fault of pride is harder to subdue than others. That's a fault that he had.
• He downplays his abilities like Bradstreet. He does it because he has false humility
• Franklin is concerned with his image. juxtaposition to people he's with
• Bradstreet Portrait of a humble mom and a writer... being a very humble mom writer
• Generous to his own detriment
• Erada - errors of his life
• Religious beliefs - creator/higher being but not all Christian aspects. Often times the divinity of Christ is questioned
• God as a cosmic watchmaker. Deist belief - made it and let it be free.
• His brother's paper was the New England Currant
• Not likely for it to succeed
• People who are writing - the silence do-good letters come from. He was still a boy and figured his brother wouldn't print anything, so he made himself anonymous
• Left Boston and went to Philadelphia
• Reasonable creature - reason for everything that one has a mind to do.
• Is this one of his 13 virtues?
• Speckled axe, likes best
• think about images rather than biographical information
• puff bread carried when 1st entering Philadelphia.
• Through hard work, study, you can make yourself a better person
• Didn't accept that he had no say in his life from birth
• 2 major reoccurring themes: self-betterment & religion 
• Idea that one can improve one's life through education, human urgency, hard work, and determination (life not predetermined)
• Franklin is a deist: God as watchmaker (non-intervening God) with no ascribed religious denomination - big belief in human urgency rather than fate or providence.
• Book written about his own self-betterment so as to be a model for others to better their own lives.
• Franklin as prototypical American & 1st real example of the classic American dream in action.
• Autobiography can be thought of as a series of revenge tales. Franklin showing how he became a better and more wealthy man than his earlier superiors (lasting in vegetarianism while Keimer can't be a successful printer in Phili after his brother thought himself superior to Franklin. Revenge on friend John Collins by immortalizing him as a drunk.
• Images to cling to: Franklin eating his bread upon reaching Philadelphia, being generous enough to give the other two to a woman and child - a very religious virtue
• Throwing his friend Collins overboard for not doing his part in rowing.
• So humble he was proud of his humbleness
• tried to speak with indifference so he would seem humble
• Often has an arrogant, condescending tone
•