Fachbereich Anglistik
Sommersemester 2010
History of American Literature
Prof. Dr. Ralph J. Poole
Tutor: Yvonne Kaisinger
YvonneKatharina.Kaisinger@sbg.ac.at
History of American Literature
• Survey of basic developments and tendencies
of American literature from the Colonial Era to
the Present
• Various forms, themes, genres of literature
• Historical, cultural, social contexts
 ALWAYS interaction between literary
conventions and changing socio-cultural
conditions
History of American Literature
• Amerian Literature as dynamic, open ended
process
Example:
Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s novel The Scarlet Letter
(1850) and 17th century Puritan history
History of American Literature
• Lecture as inspiration for further study
• Comparison English and American literature
(time frame, genres, epochs, concepts, issues)
• Continuous reading important and necessary
(READING LIST!!!)
History of American Literature
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Introduction, Colonizing Texts
Vision and Mission: The Puritans
Revolution and the Word: Early Republic
Transcendentalisms and Romanticism
Mock Exam
Imagining Disaster: Dark Romanticism
A House Divided: Slavery and African American Literature
Common Vision – Local Experience: Realism, Naturalism,
Regionalism
Make It New: Experience, Experiment, and Modernism
The New Negro: Harlem Renaissance & After
After Modernism, After 1945: Postmodernism, Neorealism
Final Exam
History of American Literature
• Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina
Baym. 7th ed. 2007.
• Richard J. Gray. A History of American Literature. 2003.
• Recommended Reading:
Richard Ruland, Malcolm Bradbury. From Puritanism to
Postmodernism: A History of American Literature.
1993.
Peter B. High. An Outline of American Literature. 1986.
History of American Literature
• Is there a History of American Literature?
• Is there an autonomous American Literature
(apart from English Literature)?
• What is American?
(Latin America, Caribbean, Canada, Pacific)
• When does the History of American Literature
begin?
Inventing, Discovering, Conquering
America
• „[She] took his card and read his name:
‚Christopher Newman.‘ Then she read it aloud
and laughed at her bad accent. „Your English
names are so droll!“ „Droll?“ said Mr.
Newman, laughing too. „Did you ever hear of
Christopher Columbus?“ „Bien sur! He
invented America; a very great man.“
(from Henry James, The American, 1877)
Landing of Christopher Columbus,
1492, and Discovering “Indians”
Amerigo Vespucci
Inventing America
• America as imaginary vision of the New
World, Terra Nova, Atlantis, Lost Paradise,
Garden of Eden, El Dorado, New Canaan,
Promised Land …
• Legitimizing European expansion of 16/17th
centuries (Portugal, Spain, France,
Netherlands, England) after the fact
Seafarer as Author
• Indescribable newness vs expectations of
superiors
• Assessing the new land as property
• “for this purpose I thought of writing on this
whole voyage, very diligently, all that I would
do and see and experience.” (Columbus)
• Text as cultural mediation
America as newness and potential
• “[the land] is exceedingly fertile […]; it is
surrounded with many bays, spacious, very
secure, and surpassing any that I have ever seen
… [there are] seven or eight kinds of palm trees,
which, like all other trees, herbs and fruits,
considerably surpass ours in height and beauty
[…]. The convenience and excellence of the
harbours in this island, and the abundance of
rivers, so indispensable for the health of man,
surpass anything that would be believed by one
who had not seen it.” (Columbus)
Richard Hakluyt
• 1589-1600
• Never was a voyager
• Textual appropriation of
America
• America as “Western
Atlantis” as English property
America as Literature
• America AS Literature before Literature FROM
America
• 15th century, Age of Discovery:
– promise, providence, regeneration
– Expansion of power, material profit
• Literature as Medium and instrument
John Smith’s The General Historie of
Virginia, 1624
• American Dream
• Mythologized as America’s
first self-made man
• Walt Disney hero
Captain John Smith
• Merchant, trader, soldier,
pirate, prisoner, slave
• Sailed to America in 1606
• Founding of Jamestown
1606
• President of the Virginia Bay
Company
Captain John Smith
“I am no compiler by hearsay,
but have been a real actor.”
• Jamestown a failure
• Lack of survival skills
• English gentry unwilling to
relinquish their goal of fast
profit
• Smith’s formula: “he who
does not work shall not eat”
John Smith & Pocahontas
• "at the minute of my
execution, she hazarded the
beating out of her own
brains to save mine; and not
only that, but so prevailed
with her father, that I was
safely conducted to
Jamestown"
Two Versions…
John Smith's 1616 Letter to Queen Anne of Great Britain:
Most admired Queen,
The love I bear my God, my King and country, hath so oft emboldened me in the worst of
extreme dangers, that now honesty doth constrain me to presume thus far beyond myself, to
present your Majesty this short discourse: if ingratitude be a deadly poison to all honest
virtues, I must be guilty of that crime if I should omit any means to be thankful.
So it is, that some ten years ago being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the power of Powhatan
their chief King, I received from this great Salvage exceeding great courtesy, especially from
his son Nantaquaus, the most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit, I ever saw in a Salvage, and
his sister Pocahontas, the Kings most dear and well-beloved daughter, being but a child of
twelve or thirteen years of age, whose compassionate pitiful heart, of my desperate estate,
gave me much cause to respect her: I being the first Christian this proud King and his grim
attendants ever saw: and thus enthralled in their barbarous power, I cannot say I felt the
least occasion of want that was in the power of those my mortal foes to prevent,
notwithstanding all their threats. After some six weeks fatting amongst those Salvage
courtiers, at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to
save mine; and not only that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to
Jamestown: where I found about eight and thirty miserable poor and sick creatures, to keep
possession of all those large territories of Virginia; such was the weakness of this poor
commonwealth, as had the salvages not fed us, we directly had starved. And this relief, most
gracious Queen, was commonly brought us by this Lady Pocahontas.
Two Versions…
Allegory and Romance
• Topos of self-sacrificing victim
• Allusion to forbidden love story
• Myth: Pocahontas as incarnation of colonists’
desire
• Allegory: P. as representations of native
people succumb to higher culture
• Gender: P. as female continent sacrificing
herself to male conqueror
History or Advertisement?
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Smith: first-hand experience
Written in Third-hand narrative
Objectivication and Authentification
Defense of Colonization
History as Propaganda
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayHFxXzPEvQ&feature=related
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lbnnlT6jmM&feature=related
• Video: American Passages:
1. Native Voices (Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon
Ortiz, Luci Tapahonso)