American Lit Test 4 Hawthorne to Thoreau Study Guide: Week 13: Nathaniel Hawthorne: - 1804-1864. First great American novelist. Came from a famous Puritan family. His ancestor was a judge at the Salem witch trials. Writings famous for their ambiguity (doesn’t give “moral” to stories). Struggled to make money writing. Famous for The Scarlet Letter. Wrote many short stories. Anti-Union in the Civil War. Different Strands of Romanticism - Bryant and Cooper: focuses on the past and the outdoors, romanticism history and its lost peoples. Hawthrone: focuses on the problem and evil using the past. Young Goodman Brown - “Goodman” Brown and faith. Double meaning with “faith”. Meets Satan, walking stick resembling a snake, Brown sees reflection in Satan. Satan helped Brown’s ancestors do bad things. Older man focuses on respectability to gain trust. Perhaps was a dream. Rejecting the people/skeptical. The Conflicts of the Mid-Nineteenth Century - Population doubled. Influx of new immigrants. First transition from agricultural economy to industrial. Spirit of questioning lead to early women’s rights. Huge unresolved issue of slavery. Slavery - Founding fathers thought slavery would resolve itself (dying institution). Cotton economy. U.S. expanded conflicts over slavery increased. Series of compromises that did not resolve the issues. Beyond majority rule. Similar to the abortion debate today. Propaganda War Around Slavery - Most literary artists were for the anti-slavery position. - Lot’s of anti-slavery art. o Poems. o Novels. o Slave narratives. Longfellow - 1807-1882. Very popular poet of his time. Not so popular today because he was not much of an innovator. Poems meant to understand by the common people. Poems meant to be recited. Master of the technical and metrical side of poetry. Evangeline: A Tale of Arcadie - One of Longfellow’s most popular poems. Arcadie equals Arcady in Novia Scotia. French inhabitants of Novia Scotia were forcibly removed for refusing to accept British rule and renounce their Catholicism. Unusual Dactylre Hexameter. This is an epic, last people poem; Ubi Sunt. The Jewish Cemetery at Newport - Going for feeling. Making Jewish people “last people” that the romantics were fond of. Exodus references. My Lost Youth - Nostalgic poem. Irregular meter. Use of a retrain. Remembering things from the deep past better than the present. Hawthrone - Eulogy poem. Iambic pentameter/hexameter. Contrast between Longfellow’s sadness and the death of Hawthorne. Mourns Hawthorne and his incomplete work. Week 14: John Greenleaf Whittier - 1807-1892. Quaker. Heavily influenced by William Lloyd Garrison. Abolitionist Poet. Eventually, financially successful. Snow-Bound (slice of life) - Idyl – poem describing rural or pastoral life. Poem is just a story. Starts with before the snowfall. Things you need to do before the snowfall. Description of form during the snowfall. Snow shoveling the farm. Everyone gathers around the fire. Games and food, cider, woodnuts. Describes how most of the family is now dead. Mothers Indian stories. Uncles hunting and fishing stories. Harriet Livermore is described. Goes to bed. Snow is plowed. Slow opening up to the rest of the world. Gothic Art - Has more to do with romantic movement, created at height of Enlightenment. Goths, Gothic art, Gothic movement. Style of friction that is grotesque, mysterious, desolate. Edgar Allen Poe - Born the son of actors, adopted by wealthy Allan family. Educated at West Point and University of Virginia. Plagued by alcoholism, ill-health, money problems. Invested many genres like horror, detective novel. Tried to live by writing but failed. Does not seem like an “American” author. Taken more seriously in France/Germany rather than the U.S. Extremely influential as a literary critic. Sonnet – To Science - Pentameter, AB. Thou = Science, he = his heart. Uses classical mythology. Alone - Tetrameter, ABABCC. Typical Romantic poem. Talking about himself and his feelings. He feels alienated. Discussion of awe-inspiring things/the sublime. Sees demon in the clouds. The Raven - Chrocaic Octameter, internal rhyme, alliteration. “Forgotten Lore” is a romantic theme in contrast to Enlightenment. Raven sits on museum statue. Man gets scared asking it questions. Dies at the end, bird looks at dead man. Annabel Lee - Anapastic Tetrameter. Strange rhyme scheme makes it smooth. Lots of binary oppositions. Romantic sympathy for the devil. Tuberculosis epidemic. Biographic explanation off poetry. Poe’s Poetry - Constructed backwards for the “effect”. Highly musical, almost song-like. Focused on gothic/romantic plots. Detached from American Themes. Claustrophobic. Masque of Red Death - Not set in the U.S., in Europe. Red Death means Black Plague. Different colored rooms. Ebony clock represents death. Attempts to forget about death an pretend it doesn’t exist. The Black Cat - Narrator is telling the story, he is going to die. o Murdered his wife. Alcoholism is the root of all his problems. Originally treats the cat lovingly. Stabs his cat in the eye. Hangs the cat, actions as a result of the “spirit of perverseness”. o Doing something wrong just because you know it is wrong. After the house burns down, finds the cat on the wall. Gets a new cat, treats it well. Discovers a picture of gallows on cats fur. Kills his wife because she protests the cat. Does not feel bad. Puts the body in the wall. Police discover the body, narrator points it out. Idea of cause and effect. Poe Departs from American Romantics. - Not interested in America. - Uninterested in nature, expanse. Not that optimistic. Relationship with reason/emotions are vexed. Interested in old things. Week 15: Abraham Lincoln - Often deeply depressed and widely despised during first term. His prose is clean, clear, and eloquent. Writing is so concise, its poetic. Biblical allusion and structure. Gettysburg Address - Four score/seven years ago – 87 years. (Biblical). Rhythm and Repetition. Constructed as an argument. Has a big culminating conclusion. Second Inaugural Address - Inaugural means to begin something. Short speeches. Does not mention that the north is close to winning. Emphasis on shared responsibility and unity. Harriet Beecher Stowe - 1811-1896. Grew up Puritan, turned Episcopalian. Did not know much about slavery. Almost perfect propaganda. Melodrama: Exaggerated plots with simplistic characters. Wanted to convince pro-slavery people. Uncle Ton’s Cabin - Mr. Haley and Mr. Shelby – Slave trader/owners. Talks about selling Shelby’s slaves. Discuss religion. Ton goes to Cincinati and comes back with master’s money. Colorism in the 19th century. Jim and Eliza as quadroons and mulattos. Casual minstrel-show type racism of Stowe. Wants to buy Eliza/Jim because they’re attractive. Mr. Shelby needs money, wants to sell slaves. Lot of subtle, dark humor in this passage. Introduces Mrs. Shelby and the role religion plays in their lives. She is Christian for the both of them. How slavery can corrupt “good” people. - Next chapter, George and Eliza meet, they’re “married”. Stowe is signaling to her middle class audience. Thinks George has the Devil in him. Stowe leveraging class vs. race. George plans to go to Canada and buy his wife. Big Picture - Uses tropes to make abolitionist argument. “Black” characters with “White” ancestry. Stowe uses class to trump race. Appeals to sentiment through effect of family. Use of Christianity. “Uncle Tom” means black person who sucks up to white people rather than helping black people. Harriet Jacobs - 1813-1897. Born to privileged slave family. Father was a skilled carpenter. Good childhood after her parents died. Came into the family of Dr. Norcom (flint). Hid in her grandmothers attic for seven years. Escaped to the north. Her freedom was bought. Semi-autobiographical. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Had a normal “free” life. Mulatto – the mixed race of a slave society. Grandmother was an entrepreneur (bakery business). The first kindly mistress. Becomes sarcastic, mistress asked to borrow money from her. Falls in love with a free black man. Can’t get married because it is not legal in her state. Dr. Flint is angry because he is jealous of this person. Trying to find a way not to be molested. Finds Mr. Sands, gets out of it by having an affair with him. 19th century premarital sex is seen as immoral. Grandmother rejects her because of adultery. Eventually forgives her. Slave Narrative Conventions - Focus on religion and Christianity. Targets an audience: In this case, women. Being able to identify with the slave: mulatto, motherhood. Sarcasm/irony. - The moral damage the institution does to white people. Problem with slave narrative: he or she will never be typical. John Swanson Jacobs – Her brother autobiography. Week 17: Henry Thoreau - 1817-1862. Lied in Concord, Massachusetts. Writer, handyman, naturalist. Transcendentalist. Put Emerson’s ideas in action. Hugely influential: “Civil Disobedience” influenced nonviolent Gandhi/MLK. Half-baked ideas – spouts off, egotistical, naïve. Resistance to civil government - Governments that govern the least is the best. Standing army and standing government. Pro-anarchist (no government). Against Mexica-war and how it started. Mixed feelings about democracy, majority is not always right. The law versus what is right. Abolitionist, very anti-slavery. Compares revolutionary war patriots with abolitionists. (says abolitionists are not doing enough). Expedience vs. Justice. Says Massachusetts is a slut going along with the rest of the U.S. Agreement vs. doing. Voting is not good enough. Against poll tax. Jailed for a day, someone else paid his tax, got him out. If you pay the tax, you’re supporting the war. Don’t wait for the majority to agree with you. Make yourself “friction” for the government “machine”. Under governments which imprisons unjustly, you need to fight. Clogging the machine. Precedent with the “church tax”. Describes the prison he was in. Talks about Daniel Webster, anti-slavery person, lawyer. “Lawyers truth is not truth”. Looking for the Fountainhead. Beyond government, beyond liberty.
