14.11.12
Classics of American Literature
Lecture 32-36
Topics for Further Consideration:
Summarize the role of consciousness in Dickinson's poetry.
The consciousness through which we attribute meaning to the physical world is different from an ordinary consciousness. While the image of the sky enters into the brain and the brain identifies it as being the sky 'with ease-/, 'You' is put aside. The ordinary everyday identity 'you' is detached from this state of consciousness. The 'you' is excluded; therefore it is a different consciousness that is 'involved' in this process. In this state of mind, there is no subject-object split. The world becomes entirely subjective.
The idea of the mind in Emily Dickinson's poems is usually divided into two states of consciousness: one is the state of being aware of the external existence, that is the existence which is out of the self, and the other is the state of being focused on the inner self as being apart from the outer world. This dualism is a common theme in Emily Dickinson's poems. Emily Dickinson not only expresses the dualism between the spiritual and the physical world (or between meaning and form) but also she emphasizes the indivisible relationship between the opposites. Emily Dickinson's poems, such as poem "939" and poem "547", deal with the state of being closed to the external world. The setting in these poems is the poet's inner world and the words she expresses are the outcomes of an insight. But the central ideas in the poems "632" and "1047" take the concept of dualism one step further and explain how the opposites are identified with each other and how the conscious stands for the ideal 'God' or 'oneness' by containing, and therefore by uniting the opposites in itself.
The brain contains the outer world as represented by the sea and the sky. This means that the brain has the ability to create an image of the outer world in itself. Finally, God, as the supreme representator of the universal order is connected to the human mind. This state of connection is both for Emerson, as he calls it the 'over-soul', and for Emily Dickinson a higher cosmic consciousness which provides the ability to unite meaning and form and to emerge to a poetic creative state where the sound becomes a syllable and the brain becomes the God.
Explain how you would go about reconciling the view of Dickinson as demure and wren-like with the imagery of violence and sadomasochism that we find in so many of her poems.
Emily Dickinson is the 19th century's greatest surprise. Looking like Walt Whitman's opposite number in virtually every conceivable respect, the reclusive virginal figure dressed in white, who never leaves her father's house in Amherst, has captured the imagination in ways that few other poets can claimreligious poet in the Puritan tradition, poet of the Romantic school, proto-feminist poet, first poet of modernism, precursor of postmodernismthe list goes on. Like Whitman, she is more various than we have thought, and like Whitman, the more we read her work, the more sibylline she often appears. Some of her finest lyrics have a Romantic purity that matches Wordsworth, as if she were an inhabitant of nature on the same level as the woods and the birds and squirrels. Yet other, more complex poems signal her estrangement from the natural scene, her (already modern) sense of living in and through consciousness, ever at a distance from reality. Still other pieces speak to us about death in ways that are unheard-of, from vantage points that seem impossible. And there are the splendid outbreaks of rage and passion about being a woman in a man's world.
The first entails poems of breathtaking immediacy, in which she delivers the natural world fresh and quivering for our inspection and delight, and we easily see this "at-home-ness" as a form of Eden. Her second style is characterized by her famous adage, "tell it slant." These pieces are inferential to the point of madness, in that we see Dickinson establishing a complex, highly original set of correspondence between natural events and human lives. In these haunting lyrics, we witness a new and rich notation of experience, and our own deciphering powers are tested as we move from physical scene (which is shown) to intellectual significance.
American Passages Unit 6
Comprehension Questions
How did America’s Puritan heritage influence Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”? Describe Rappaccini’s scientific experiment with his daughter. In what sense is the Pequod a microcosm of American society?
"Young Goodman Brown" (1835) is a short story by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story takes place in 17th century Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works, and addresses the Calvinist/Puritan belief that humanity exists in a state of depravity, exempting those who are born in a state of grace. Hawthorne frequently attempts to expose the hypocrisy of Puritan culture in his literature. In a symbolic fashion, the story follows Young Goodman Brown's journey into self-scrutiny which results in his loss of faith.
In his writings Hawthorne questioned established thought—most specifically New England Puritanism and contemporary Transcendentalism. In "Young Goodman Brown", as with much of his other writing, he exposes ambiguity.[3] The plot and textual references in "Young Goodman Brown" reveal the Puritans as being like "a city upon a hill" as John Winthrop, a founder of Puritanism, said, and wanting to be seen that way as good, holy men. However, their doctrine teaches that all men are inherently evil and they strive to cause each person to come to terms with this and realize their sinful nature. Hawthorne presents this paradox of the teachings of the Puritans as hypocritical. They taught that man was inherently evil in nature much in accordance to Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
Puritan doctrine taught that all men are totally depraved and require constant self-examination to see that they are sinners and unworthy of God's Grace. Because man had broken the Covenant of Works when Adam had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, God offered a new covenant to Abraham's people which held that election to Heaven was merely a possibility. In the Puritan religion, believers dutifully recognized the negative aspects of their humanity rather than the gifts they possessed. This shadow of distrust would have a direct influence on early American New England and on many of its historians and writers, one of which was Nathaniel Hawthorne.
How is gothic literature different from other kinds of writing that are contemporaneous with it? What were some nineteenthcentury social conditions that contributed to the critical outlook of gothic literature? Why is the dash important in Dickinson’s poems?
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance.
While in the preceding Romantic period poetry had been the dominant genre, it was the novel that was most important in the Victorian period. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) dominated the first part of Victoria's reign: his first novel, Pickwick Papers, was published in 1836, and his last Our Mutual Friend between 1864-5.
Centuries passed before the word "gothic" meant anything else again. During the Renaissance, Europeans rediscovered Greco-Roman culture and began to regard a particular type of architecture, mainly those built during the Middle Ages, as "gothic" -- not because of any connection to the Goths, but because the 'Uomo Universale' considered these buildings barbaric and definitely not in that Classical style they so admired. Centuries more passed before "gothic" came to describe a certain type of novels, so named because all these novels seem to take place in Gothic-styled architecture -- mainly castles, mansions, and, of course, abbeys ("Gothic...").
Charles Dickens is the most famous Victorian novelist. Extraordinarily popular in his day with his characters taking on a life of their own beyond the page, Dickens is still one of the most popular and read authors of that time. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836), written when he was twenty-five, was an overnight success, and all his subsequent works sold extremely well. The comedy of his first novel has a satirical edge and this pervades his writing. Dickens worked diligently and prolifically to produce the entertaining writing that the public wanted, but also to offer commentary on social problems and the plight of the poor and oppressed. His most important works include Oliver Twist (1837-8), Dombey and Son (1846-8), Bleak House (1852-3), Great Expectations (1860–61), Little Dorrit (1855-7), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5). There is a gradual trend in his fiction towards darker themes which mirrors a tendency in much of the writing of the 19th century.
What happens to Young Goodman Brown in the forest? Describe Ahab’s quest: what is he looking for, and why? What themes or topics does Dickinson tend to write about?
The story begins at sunset in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts, with young Goodman Brown leaving his home and Faith, his wife of three months, to meet with a mysterious figure deep in the forest. He soon meets an older stranger, whose appearance, conduct, and attitudes resemble those of the devil.As he and this mysterious figure meet and proceed further into the dark forest, it is broadly hinted that Goodman Brown's traveling companion is, in fact, the Devil, and that the purpose of their journey is to join in an unspecified but obviously unholy ritual. Goodman Brown is wavering and expresses reluctance, yet they continue on. As their journey continues Brown discovers others also proceeding to the meeting, many of them his townsfolk whom he had considered exemplary Christians, including his minister and deacon and the woman who taught him his catechism. He is astonished and disheartened and determines, once again, to turn back. But then he hears his wife's voice and realizes that she is one of the ones who is to be initiated at the meeting. Recognizing that he has lost his Faith (in both senses), he now resolves to carry out his original intention and enthusiastically joins the procession.
At the ceremony, and carried out at a flame-lit, crude rocky altar in a clearing deep in the forest, the new converts are called to come forth. He and Faith approach the altar and, as they are about to be anointed in blood to seal their alliance with wickedness, he cries out to Faith to look to heaven and resist. In the next instant he finds himself standing alone in the forest, next to the cold, wet rock.
Context Questions
How did the Civil War and the tensions that precipitated it influence these three writers?
Some time after he had decided to become the Leaves of Grass poet, Whitman reminded himself, “I want something to offset the overlarge element of muscle in my poems—it must be counterpoised by something to show I can make perfect poems of the graceful, the sweet, the gentle, the tender—I must show perfect blood, the great heroic gentleman” .Whitman's aspirations to gentility were admittedly cleverly disguised by his iconoclastic textual persona as “one of the roughs” in 1855, and still further screened by his bland, post–Civil War incarnation as the “good gray poet.” But his early desire to be and to be considered a gentleman—expressed in his fiction, in his journalism, and in his dandyish 1840s man-about-town persona, the latter captured in a memorably awkward photograph—never entirely disappeared. During the “long foreground” that so fascinated Emerson, Whitman worked to fuse his contradictory self-imaginings into a broadly inclusive social role.
"Chiefly About War Matters", originally credited "by a Peaceable Man", is an 1862 essay by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It opposed the American Civil War and was quite controversial. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Hawthorne wanted to view the effects of battle firsthand or, as he wrote, "to look a little more closely at matters with my own eyes.He was distracted by the national crisis and had difficulty writing.
2. In what sense are these texts “pessimistic” compared to others of the nineteenth century?
Almost 15 percent of the population was legally considered property (there were about 900,000 slaves in 1800 and about 3,200,000 by 1850). Only white, male property owners could vote. Women were largely confined to the home and certainly not expected to rise to positions of social authority. Native Americans were losing most of the power— and virtually all of the land—that they once held.
It is this spirit of anxiety, fear, and even despair that writers in the gothic mode tap into. The three writers treated in the video, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, as well as the others represented in this unit, explore the “dark side” of nineteenth-century America.
“Gothic Undercurrents” explores the “dark sides” of nineteenth-century American culture and identity. In a time of hope characterized by a widespread belief in America’s Manifest Destiny, the rise of industry, increasing political freedom, and social reform movements, writers in the gothic mode speculate on the costs and dangers of the country’s unbridled optimism. Sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, they draw upon and explore the social anxieties of their time: the evils and threats of slavery, the cultural dominance of white men, the immigration of diverse and often mistrusted people, the possibility that Americans are fundamentally incapable of manifesting, in
Abraham Lincoln’s words, “the better angels of our nature”—indeed, the possibility that such angels are our own wishful delusions.
3. Many of the gothic’s concerns apply as well to the twenty-first century as to the nineteenth. What do these writers have to say about human nature and the human mind?
“Gothic Undercurrents” explores the “dark sides” of nineteenth-century American culture and identity. In a time of hope characterized by a widespread belief in America’s Manifest Destiny, the rise of industry, increasing political freedom, and social reform movements, writers in the gothic mode speculate on the costs and dangers of the country’s unbridled optimism. Sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, they draw upon and explore the social anxieties of their time: the evils and threats of slavery, the cultural dominance of white men, the immigration of diverse and often mistrusted people, the possibility that Americans are fundamentally incapable of manifesting, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “the better angels of our nature”—indeed, the possibility that such angels are
our own wishful delusions. for example, Gilman portrays a woman so oppressed by the patriarchal assumptions of her husband that she is driven insane; and Hawthorne rejects the promise that science will ameliorate the human condition when he tells the story of one researcher’s obsessive and destructive botanical experiment on his daughter. But at least as often, these writers unveil their dark prophecies only by indirect glimpses—in the words of Dickinson,they “tell it slant.” Sometimes by couching their insights in allegories, sometimes by focusing on the uncertainties and contradictions of the psyche, and often by combining allegory with psychological investigation, gothic writers often challenge America’s optimism only by implication, forcing the reader to come to his or her own ethical conclusions. Thus, Melville’s Pequod becomes not only a whaling vessel but also the American ship of state as a fractious and multicultural crew is led to a terrifying fate by a dangerous and potentially insane demagogue.
Exploration Questions
What do you think constitutes “an American”? Do these writers support or challenge your views about America?
Americans saw many reasons to be optimistic in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Philosophically, much of the nation had abandoned the bleak, deterministic theology of Calvin and had embraced either the Enlightenment faith in the power of human reason or a more gentle Protestant faith in a generous and forgiving God, or both. The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 proved that a self-made man could rise from humble origins to the presidency. Requirements that voters own land were being relaxed or eliminated, so that democracy became a more achievable ideal. Spurred by a widespread belief in “Manifest Destiny,” the young nation was expanding rapidly, growing well into the Midwest and eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean by the 1840s, gathering momentum and resources along the way. Industry became a powerful economic force, and cities began to bulge with immigrants eager for work. Reform and improvement (of daily life and labor by technology, and of social conditions by progressive activists) were spreading. And in the world of letters, writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were arguing that Americans were in a perfect situation to cast off the fetters of European prejudice and habit and create a culture full of self-determined, empowered, and enlightened beings.
But if this picture represents one truth about nineteenth-century America, there are others as well. Almost 15 percent of the population was legally considered property (there were about 900,000 slaves in 1800 and about 3,200,000 by 1850). Only white, male property owners could vote. Women were largely confined to the home and certainly not expected to rise to positions of social authority. Native Americans were losing most of the power— and virtually all of the land—that they once held.
All three of these writers are now considered “canonical,” or essential for a complete understanding of American literary history, and many would call Moby-Dick the most important American novel ever. Melville’s book was widely condemned during his lifetime, however, and only found broad appreciation by readers in the twentieth century. Why do you imagine so many people rejected it in the nineteenth century? How can a literary work be considered worthless at one time and great at another? Do you think Moby-Dick is a great novel? Why or why not?
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick.
His poetry is not as highly critically esteemed as his fiction, although some critics place him as the first modernist poet in the United States; others assert that his work more strongly suggests what today would be a postmodern view. A leading cham pion of Melville's claims as a great American poet was the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren. He issued a selection of Melville's poetry prefaced by an admiring and acute critical essay. According to the Melville scholar Elizabeth Renker in 2000, "a sea change in the reception of the poems is incipient." In reference to the poem Clarel, the poetry critic Helen Vendler remarked in 1995: "What it cost Melville to write this poem makes us pause, reading it. Alone, it is enough to win him, as a poet, what he called 'the belated funeral flower of fame'".
As for me Moby-Dick is great novel. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by Herman Melville . It is considered to be one of the Great American Novels and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg, which now drives Ahab to take revenge.
Why wallow in the swampy regions of human nature? Are these works merely depressing, or do they have any positive or useful effects?
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, along with other writers of the American Renaissance, counter what they fear is America’s smug, self-confident certainty not with conflicting certainties, but with potentially unanswerable questions. What is human nature? How much does selfish or uncontrollable desire, as opposed to altruistic or reasonable objectivity, motivate us? To what extent can America break from its European heritage of social caste and superstitious belief? What can Americans do about the massive contradictions involved in a country that was founded in the name of freedom and equality but sanctions the owning of black Americans, the dislocation of Native Americans, and the disenfranchisement of all but white male Americans?
In stories of obsessive or tormented characters who find their most basic assumptions about the world turned upside-down, these writers challenge their readers to question their own values and beliefs through exploring the ever-evolving character of American identity.
Most important American novels have positive and useful effect. Melville’s book was widely condemned during his lifetime, however, and only found broad appreciation by readers in the twentieth century. Literature showed its unique ability to stir the emotions, to freeze the moment, to sweep the scene with a panoramic lens and suddenly swoop in for a close-up of suffering or courage. The novels display Puritanism’s great impact on people's life and thought.