1. Literature and culture in the USA
In the USA literature never played an important role. It is hardly ever taught in American schools. They read some modern stories (they don’t memorize classical poems – “The Raven” is the only poem memorized and read aloud – at Halloween parties).
Average Americans are very far from classic literature. Even educated people are not fond of American literature.
Reasons:
1) Puritans – said that no one but God could create people => literature (imagination) was prohibited (literature = fiend)
- but somehow imagination entered the religiosity, puritans allowed people to write commentaries to the Bible, religious poems (they initiated psalms), journals, chronicles, and the greatest authority for them was the Bible, where there is a lot of imagination; but still they were against metaphorical literature. Also, literature in America started as imitation of European models or religious and political literature. Great American writers appeared only at the beginning at the XIX century. Anyway, American culture is mostly political, text-based culture, which is very pragmatic, analytical, rational constructive, moralizing.
What makes American literature different from European literature?
- the combination of facts and symbols, turning real facts into symbols
/e.g. Ken Kesey’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ – Kesey turned everything into symbols to the point when you don’t know who’s sane and who’s insane – sanity and insanity become an authority/.
2) Now poetry clubs and groups are quite popular and this is a good sign. Their projects include going as volunteers to different schools to read poetry to children
2. Literary criticism and cultural studies
1) As an academic discipline, cultural studies appeared in the USA in the 1970s. It covered pub culture, fashion, cuisines, everyday culture and never Shakespeare&Co., because they belong to high culture. As a matter of fact, music, literature and art as a whole are never included in what is called “Cultural Studies”, because they’re studied by their own disciplines.
2) Literary criticism was born when literature was born, because, naturally, people started to discuss what they had read. One of the first more or less professional critics was E.A.Poe with his “Philosophy of Composition” as well as in some ways R.W.Emerson with his theory concerning transcendentalism. Many famous American writers were critics at the same time. E.A. Poe, Alice Walker, James Russell Lowell, etc. They all belong to different centuries, which proves that criticism is an important part of Amrican literature. Even great English writers liked to comment on American literature, for example, Oscar Wilde said: “It’s high time for Americans to grow up”. (probably he said it because American literature, as many people thought, was written for boys by boys and about boys)
Literary criticism becomes even more popular towards the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century. Now it is almost as popular as literature itself, and, who knows, maybe even more popular.
4. Puritan Paradox. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”: Predestination and Imagination. Puritan poetry: Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor.
1. Puritans – radical protestants, 16th cent. They believed that no one but God could create people, so they hated and that’s why they prohibited imagination; but at the same time they developed their own literature that reflected a very symbolic view on life – and they were very famous mostly for it, and not for the new community they started. They believed that America would be the scene where the historical play would be played, and the other countries would be just spectators, so they thought they’d started life anew, and for them America was the New World in the biblical sense (e.g. Cotton Mather used metaphors to speak about God; the house = the body; the windows = the eyes; + a snake and a mouse fighting – the mouse won – snake = church of England, mouse = the Puritan community), so they took ordinary events and made them into symbols, and that is the Puritan Paradox.
2. Jonathan Edwards was molded by his extreme sense of duty and by the Puritan environment, which conspired to make him defend, strict and gloomy Calvinism from the forces of liberation springing up around him. He is best known for his frightening, powerful sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741) that told about divine punishment for the sinners and fixed fate (destiny didn’t have anything to do with the man, it was all God’s work).
Edward’s sermons had enormous impact. In the long run, though, their grotesque harshness alienated people from the Calvinism that Edwards defended. Edwards’s dogmatic, medieval sermons no longer fit the experiences of relatively peaceful, prosperous 18th century colonists. After Edward, fresh, liberal currents gathered force.
3. Anne Bradstreet: the first published books of poems by an American was also the first American book to be published by a woman. A.B. preferred long religious poems on conventional subjects such as the seasons, but contemporary readers mostly enjoy the witty poems on subjects from daily life and her warm and loving poems to her husband and children. She was inspired by the English metaphysical poetry (E. Spenser, P. Sidney etc.) She often used elaborate conceits or extended metaphors. “To My Dear and Loving Husband” uses the oriental imagery, love theme, and the idea of comparison, popular in Europe at the time, but gives these a pious meaning at the poem’s conclusion.
4. Edward Taylor: modest, pious and hard-working, he never published his poetry, it was discovered only in the 1930s. He would undoubtedly have seen his works’ discovery as divine providence; his poems are considered to be the finest examples of the 17th century poetry in North America.
Edward Taylor wrote a variety of verses:
funeral elegies;
lyrics;
a medieval “debate”
a 500-page “Metrical history of Christianity” (mainly a history of martyrs).
His best works , according to modern critics, are the series of short Preparatory Meditations.
5. “The City on a Hill”: the idea of mission in early colonies. Main types of Puritan Literature.
1. When John Winthrop addressed the immigrants to the Bay Colony aboard the flagship Arbella in 1630, he told them that the eyes of the world were on them and that they would be an example for all, a “city upon a hill”.
Cotton Mather said that John Winthrop was the Puritan Moses, whose education had prepared him to fulfill the “noble design of carrying a colony of chosen people into an American wilderness”. Later, the words “New England” would symbolize the effort to realize the city of God on earth.
Puritans held the writing of history (so-called chronicles) in high regard. They saw all of human time as a progression towards the fulfillment of God’s design on earth. They learned this lesson from medieval biblical scholars, who interpreted figures in the Old Testament as foreshadowing at Christ. This method of comparison, called typology, was an ingrained habit of Puritan thinking, and it made them compare themselves, as a chosen people, to the Israelites of old, who had been given the promise of a new land.
Puritans also allowed commentaries to the Bible, and religious poetry exist, too (Bradstreet/Taylor). They were very good preachers and wrote great sermons (Edwards).
As one can see, puritan’s greatest authority was the Bible, and they were very much concerned about morality, so they wrote journals trying to analyze, understand and improve themselves (self-analysis). It is interesting that they wrote their journals as novels (the influence of the Bible).
6. Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanach”: autobiographies and private journals in America
Benjamin Franklin was a man of the American Enlightenment. He was respected almost all over the world and was later named “The Great Teacher of the Nation”. He saw himself as somebody who should improve the nation. Benjamin Franklin had a protestant background and wrote a private journal.
Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanach” made him prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies. In this annual book of useful encouragement, advice and factual information, amusing characters, such as old Father Abraham and Poor Richard exhort the reader in pithy, memorable sayings.
Poor Richard is a psychologist (“Industry pays debts, while Despair increases them”), and he always counsels hard work (“Diligence is the mother of good work”) and advices not to be lazy. Franklin was also a genius at compressing a moral point: “Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them”.
Franklin’s “Autobiography” is, in part, another self-help book. The most famous section describes his scientific scheme of self-improvement. He lists 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, and humility. He elaborates on each with a maxim (e.g. the temperance maxim is “Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation”) To establish good habits, Franklin invented a reusable record book in the form of something like a table in which he worked on one virtue each week, recording each lapse with a black spot to see his faults (his aim was to have a blank table). The project of self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny.
9. “Rip Van Winkle”: biographical, mythological, political interpretations.
Irving’s story “Rip Van Winkle” can be interpreted in several ways:
1) mythological;
The epigraph is very symbolic, It opens the door to understanding the story with a mythological key. Woden is generally associated with magic sleeping for a better life. According to the legend, when a man is in need, Woden’s army will come and help him – like ancestors come to help their offsprings, when they are in need.
Sleeping during the night is a symbol of dying; when we wake up after falling asleep, we’re in a new place, new life – we’re reborn, and our life is better, because life after death is better.
The same goes for Rip Van Winkle, so, maybe, the guys he met and fell asleep after that, were messengers from heaven.
2) biographical;
Some researchers believe that the 20-year sleep of RVW is actually the 20-year journey of Irving when he was traveling in Europe, and then he “woke up” in a new America.
3) political;
American ideologists believe that Irving wanted to show the difference between the USA before the Revolution and after it. The new life Americans enjoyed was obviously better, happier and easier to adapt to.
10. “The Legend of the Arabian Astrologer” by Irving & Golden Cockerel by Pushkin.
Irving’s LotAA and Pushkin’s GC have a lot in common, but at the same time they’re quite different. This is not surprising, because Pushkin was fond of the American literature (mainly of Cooper and Irving).
First of all, the beginnings are quite alike. Then, both kings enjoyed war when they were young, but as they grew older, they became weaker and couldn’t go on fighting. However, their aggressive nature didn’t change, so they just pretended to be peaceful since they were weaker now.
But in Irving’s story the astrologer and the king are pretty much the same (old, peaceful), and because of this they are rivals. So, the one who can fool everybody wins. The most easily noticeable difference is the form of the two stories: Irving’s story is a prose one, and Pushkin’s – a poem.
In Pushkin’s story the astrologer is wise and stingy. He wants to help the king and he obeys him. He wants to bring him a salvation and protect him from revenge. But in the end, when the astrologer comes to save him, Dodon takes him as a rival…
Another thing is that Pushkin uses the same ideas from the New Testament: the golden cockerel (also a Russian folklore symbol that fights the evil), some phrases (the astrologer tells the king: “Волю первую твою я исполню, как мою”). Also, while in Pushkin’s story the king is asleep, and the golden cockerel is fighting evil showing where the danger comes from – to evade danger, you have to know about it (still, Dodon sends his sons to the battlefield where they die => the symbol of the fall of the Russian empire). In Irving’s story there’s a bronze horseman that points at the enemy (smth like the golden cockerel in Pushkin’s story). Then the king can choose to either face them in a bloody battle or to use the chess board to kill them. Thus, his cruelty awakes and he kills all of them using the chess board.
And then, last but not least, in Pushkin’s story a gothic princess is replaced by an eastern princess (like showing the importance of Russia that saved Europe from the mongol aggression).
All in all, Pushkin’s GC is a more profound work, with complicated thoughts and ideas.
12. E.A.Poe as a romantic writer
E.A.Poe was the very first representative of the American Romanticism.
In his work “The Philosophy of Composition” he writes about the creation of a poetic world – a magic world that allows the reader to go beyond the real world – to transcend and enter an astonishing new world. This is a pure romantic motive – the desire to escape from reality.
Beauty (nature) and death become poetically expressive as a way to get out of this world and transcend into your ideal one.
Poe, as other romanticists, is in a constant search of something that one cannot have, not in this world (because of this uncomfortable feeling and painful realization, romanticists want to escape from reality).
According to Poe, the level of the meaning belongs to the real world, and the sound helps us to transcend => the meaning becomes heavily dependent on the sound, because it’s not enough to feel and even touch something.
Poe, as a romanticist, claims hat music governs (in poetry) – it’s a symbolic way to point at a different reality, where the limits of the human beings do not exist. Only in a world obtained by deep emotions and music can people find what they seek.
In “The Raven” Poe wrote about the death of a beautiful woman and the feeling of her lover. Nostalgia, predetermination, melancholy, infinity – these are all attributes of the romantic literature.
And, last but not least, Poe’s short story is full of beauty, terror and death. This provocative terror is supposed to thrill the reader to make him/her thrilled to the point of transcending into a new realm.
16. Poe and modern types of popular literature
Edgar Allen Poe is known as the Father of American literature and this has a certain reason. He has made a great contribution to his contemporary literature and to the literature of future generations. He developed the so-called theory of a “single effect” (when a story should be able to be read during one sitting – short story). Poe wrote the first and the best detective and mystery stories in American literature because of his constant inclination towards every thing mysterious; his stories gave birth to such genres as science fiction in the USA, horror stories and thrillers. We must not forget that humor stories were also influenced by him. In the course of his editorial work, Poe functioned largely as a book reviewer and produced a significant body of criticism; his essays were famous for their sarcasm, wit, and exposure of literary pretension. His evaluations have withstood the test of time and have earned for him a high place among American literary critics. Poe's theories on the nature of fiction and, in particular, his writings on the short story have had a lasting influence on American and European writers. So we can see that Edgar Allen Poe did a lot to make American literature become more unique and develop its peculiarities.
17. Poethical method of E.A.Poe
In his theoretical essay “The Philosophy of Composition” E.A.Poe tries to persuade you that there is a method of writing a poem. Analyzing his poem “The Raven”, he writes that he wanted to write a narrative beautiful poem, not very long, treating a beautiful subject, sad and truly emotional.
But he also left a certain formula, a mathematic structure, explaining how a poem should be written:
SOUND (voices of nature: some sounds should be heard, some sounds borrowed from nature, poetry starts with melody); => crowing
b) WORD (refrain – the sound should be repeated over and over again as a word-refrain) => nevermore
c) SYMBOL (it should become a symbol) => raven
d) MOOD (intonation, the best one - melancholy) => melancholy;
e) CONTEXTS (the symbol should be put into different situations);
f) THEME (the most poetical theme – the death of a beautiful woman);
g) LENGTH (the best length = 100 lines; developed the theme and created single effect – people read it at one breath).
The same structure can be seen in “The Bells”:
Bell = sound (alliteration ‘l’) + a word
Contexts: 4 stages of human life
berth (silver bells of christmas);
wedding (golden bells);
suffering (bronze bells of the wind);
deat (iron bells of requiem).
19. Whitman as New Adam
WW called himself a New Adam – he wanted to create smth new, he had the American innovation spirit.
WW saw himself as the new voice of America. As God brought animals to Adam to be named, W thought he had to make a new language. Some critics say that he did create a language of his own, a language that was neither American, nor English.He also changed the poetic language, he wanted to make it as natural as possible, as close to everyday life as possible => went to extreme in simplifying the language. WW created a spontaneous, natural style of poetry making the language of a country man the language of poetry => WW was the first poet of the American avangard, the firstreformer of the poetical language.
WW used a lot of religious terminology, because he saw himself as a preacher:
“Divine am I
Inside and out
And I make holy
Whatever I touch…”
WW addressed the whole world in his poetry; he saw America as a prototype of a new world, where people are equal and form one entity, they’re one not only in space but in time as well – this was his idea of the new perfect world, where the perfect nation lived.
WW introduces a new type of man as well – a hero, compassionate for everything in the world, a man who loves everything and wants to embrace the whole world (he himself was the prototype of this man – he saw himself not only as a symbol of the American unity in diversity, but as a new man who wrote about everything he saw, feeling himself as one with the world).
His “Song of Myself” (“Leaves of Grass”) was called the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American; WW also called for a new kind of literature to revive the American population. He was enormously innovative, creating his own new language, new man and new world.
20. Young Goodman Brown and The Birthmark as allegorical parables
First of all, Nathaniel Hawthorne made the puritans appear as a legend and used a lot of different allegories that were based on the Bible and church traditions. The story of “Young Goodman Brown” is a story about a young pastor that leaves his young wife - Faith. He leaves here when the sun sets. She tries to hold him and prevent him from going into the woods where he wants to find puritans that worship Satan. He meets a man in gray apparel sitting at the foot of a tree; they start walking and strike up a conversation. He meets some puritans along the way and they are talking about a new member of the sect. Then Goodman Brown sees that the new admittance is his wife - Faith. From that day on he never smiled again. Now the plot is not difficult to understand and is rather simple but the symbolism of practically every detail is evident. First of all, the title is symbolic. The last name of this young man is not a coincidence. God is considered to be white, Satan – black and man is brown. His wife’s name is Faith but she is also a symbol of his own faith in God and when he decides to leave her, he actually loses his faith. As Brown was walking through the woods everything around him began to get darker and darker – the darker everything gets, the closer the Devil is and the man at the foot of the tree is the Devil himself. Another story that is an allegorical parable is “The Birthmark”.
In Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”, the heroine Georgiana has a small birthmark that she bears on her cheek that is in the shape of a hand but the “hand” refers to much more than just a certain physical description. Here husband Aylmer is a scientist and he tries to get rid of this awful flaw that his wife has. Although she appears to be perfect she must carry this mark – the burden of the Original Sin. Aylmer blames Nature for this "fatal flaw of humanity" and attempts to rid Georgiana of this imperfection through scientific methods. Hawthorne tried to show in this particular story that man has no power to improve God’s creations and when the birthmark is gone – Georgiana dies because she had defied mortality by becoming perfect and no mortal can be perfect and so she dies. She states, "Do not repent that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
40. Philosophical poems of Emily Dickinson
ED is, in a sense, a link between her [era] and the literary sensitivities of the turn of the century. A radical individualist, she was born and spent her life in a small city. She never married, and she led an unconventional life that was outwardly uneventful but was full of inner intensity. She loved nature and found deep inspiration in the birds, animals, plants and changing seasons.
ED’s terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitman’s. Her best poems have no [fat]; many mock current sentimentality, and some are even heretical. She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Like Poe, she explores the dark and hidden part of the mind, dramatizing death and the grave. Yet she also celebrated simple objects – a flower, a bee. Her poetry exhibits great intelligence and often evokes the agonizing paradox of the limits of the human consciousness trapped in time. She had an excellent sense of humor, and her range of subjects and treatment is amazingly wide.
ED was a unique hermit in American Literature – she was shouting to the whole world and at the same time she made the silence of the world visible. She was completely alone, singing in solitude, expressing smth that could not be said in words.
ED was a philosopher and a religious poet. She used a lot of allegories and symbols.
But isolation and loneliness were felt in all her poems.
She adored nature like it was already stated before. But she wrote love poems, too. The deepr feeling, however, is often an illusion, a dream that disappears in the end.
Life and death is another theme ED touches upon. For her, there are only 2 things worth dying for: beauty and truth. However, life continues in tombs. And, on the contrary, there is so much death in life. She feels that the world is dead itself. It doesn’t reply to her even if she sends a letter to the world that never spoke to her – that is the essence of her loneliness and isolation. Though there is another meaning to them as well – they keep her in her poetic world – this is how she saved her own world without the noise and worries of the city.
ED feels like she’s nobody but in one of her poems she shows how lovely this is not to function like some doll and be free – free in life and death, free in solitude, free in love – just like a bird in nature. This is ED’s philosophy – the philosophy of the person who proves that being nobody actually means to be everybody, to be the whole world.