American literature
1. Major trends and groups in American literature: yea-sayer vs. nay-sayer, paleface vs. redskin,
mainstream vs. Marginality, etc.
When the American continent was discovered, people actually had suspected that there must be another
continent that is still unknown. There were different myths about the Lost Continent or the Unknown Continent.
Much of these legends were fused when America was discovered. It was not like a virgin territory because in
people’s minds there had already been some ideas about a lost land or a continent. When it was discovered, all
these ideas were transferred to America itself.
Creating literature was a painful process, ethnicity and culture was not already founded. There was no real
religious tolerance - Puritanism was only solution. Europe was the land of the past, while America is the land of
future, plenty, prosperity, freedom, fresh start, young and energetic, everything that Europe wasn’t. It was
difficult to search for cultural identity and to create sg in this new land. The people, who settled down, were not
interested in art, so writers had a difficult position. It was nearly impossible to write in America, because there
was no reading public. Puritanism was the consequence. Only a few people were interested in literature. Only
2books were present and acceptable: the Bible and Shakespeare’s works.
Early American literature was characterised by fiction. Most of the literary products were written by British
people like Captain John Smith, John Winthrop. They were not Americans but immigrants from Europe.
Culture and history go together because many Scottish, English and Irish people came to Am.
Many people thought that was a providential blessing:
Many people thought that Am was a boundlessness
a new start for mankind
aborigines were unspoilt, noble savage living in harmony
new nation due to geographical environment was settled in quite a short time
White settlers experienced the rebirth into innocence, brotherhood and simplicity. These human ideals gained
expression in the American continent, which were lost in Europe. This is illustrated by Hector St John de
Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer 1782.
The 18th century was characterised by the awareness of nationhood and exploration of remote past – are the
people in American European or American? But: The most ancient roots are European, they said that the British
forgot about the true spirit of Anglo-Saxon England; and there’s the Indian as a symbol of the new nation. But
the Indian was the enemy and you cannot raise the enemy to be the nation symbol.
People started to think themselves as Americans and trying to forget about dependence from England but the
negative and positive feelings about American culture and literature still go on.
European literature: traditional topics of love, war, chivalry. It’s an imaginative literature. People were the
subjects of the queen, king and their condition were subjected to them.
American literature: They had to create sg to write about. They acted as free man and their conditions were
free too. There was American setting but European story. National literature was needed to create national
character and to prove that new nation was civilised.
Difficulties of writers:
 dependence upon the old world;
 There is a serious problem with copyright agreements. Belief: democracy, freedom → there should be a
free trade in ideas, too. 1891: International copyright agreement.
 easier to become popular in Europe than in Am.;
 no publisher had nationwide market;
 Didn’t earn enough so they couldn’t survive as writers.
There were 2 different directions: literature OF America vs. literature IN America.
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 Literature of America: specifically American, theirs, national character, original →
‘nationalists’
 Literature in America: lit should be measured in the world arena, it should not be sg special of
America. As valuable as European but not sg special. → ‘universalists’
In the 19th century improvement started. There’s the emergence of native talent: “American Renaissance”
developed with Emerson; Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman… Short stories became popular because a lot of
institutions of literary magazines were settled.
PALEFACE vs. REDSKIN writers: a division b/w writer in terms of originality and imitation.
Paleface: imitated European models, copied ideas, elegance, experience, sophistication Longfellow
Redskin: roughness (↔ elegance), innocence (↔ experience), spontaneity - Walt Whitman
South
The Virginia dynasty of writers was influential: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and
Monroe…
The South was an agricultural region. The government wanted to defend slavery so did the literature.
In 1830 there was a decline – no richness to reach cultural life, obsession by peculiar institutions… so there
wasn’t enough time for literature.
Up to the 1860s, there was a Southern political influence of Washington.
Life was more harmonious in the South than in the North. People felt that they had to do sg against the push of
North. The outcome was an atmosphere of loss, literature of daydream, nostalgia and grievance.
With the Civil War, a sentimental literature developed. A special kind of literature developed in the South:
literature of grievance, daydream and nostalgia (for a perfect world).
West
It was the frontier land, an uncivilized, brutal “cattle-kingdom”.
Frederic Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History 1893 - It started with the
announcement that there was no longer a West → the continuous unsettled territory was gone.
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In late 18th c and early 19th c the pioneer Westerner was regarded as a person who was a brutal cruel
misfit, uneducated, culturally deprived.
After the frontier ceased to exist and people forgot about what it was really like, the West became the
symbol of openness and freedom, adventure → symbolic spectacle of US.
This idea of the West was encouraged by the Romantic literature e.g Cooper: Leather stocking Tales.
Vernacular humour, tall tale (túlzó történet). The vernacular humour developed in the East but it became
associated with the West. Frontier humour.
[Yea-sayer: 1. One who is confidently affirmative in attitude. 2. One who uncritically agrees.
Nay-sayer: someone with an aggressively negative attitude]
2. Early Americans: the beginnings of a new literature (Crevecoeur, Smith, Bradford, Winthrop)
American literature began:
 when the idea of am began to engage the Eng lit imagination;
 when the 1st explorers of Am wrote 1st-hand accounts of their visits;
 When the residents of am began to reflect the cultural consequences of the new land in their writings.
The Puritans and Pilgrims came to am because of land, religious freedom and of the suppression of the mother
country.
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In 1583, 1st temporal settlement was established - Sir Walter Raleigh went to Virginia. He established
a colony but the colonists couldn’t sustain themselves through winter, because of epidemics, wars with
Indians… so all people died. The settlement disappeared.
In 1607: London Company established the 1st permanent English settlement: Jamestown in Virginia.
In 1620: Mayflower Pilgrims left England for religious freedom. They went to Holland, but they didn’t
like the Calvinist pilgrims so they left. They went to America, landed in Massetchussets and founded
Plymouth there. Real colonisation began. The puritan pilgrims started to colonise New England.
Puritanism:
 Puritans are non-conformists (dissented from the High Anglican Church, didn’t believe in the same
ideas) and non-separating (didn’t want to separate from the Anglican Church, separation would be
heretical).
 They wanted to reform the Church within. They found a model of church and state to be followed.
 They followed the words of God.
 Fall of mankind is the primary fact of Puritan thinking.
 They had been selected by God for salvation through grace.
 They attached themselves to a mythical history of pure Christianity
 Society was very important, better than solitariness – being alone was a sin.
 They were afraid of nature because there they are alone and the thought that Satan live sin nature and he
could corrupt them outdoors.
 New rules, laws and government was established
 Usefulness; hard work; practicality without idleness are the most important virtues
Literature in New England:
It was an unpoetic age. There were religious genres: sermons, polemics, and ecclesiastical, civil and political
treaties. There wasn’t any novel until the creation of the Republic. Journals, diaries, letters, histories recorded
the history of the period. Authors imitated English literature. 1st literary piece was a kind of propaganda to
Church.
Early representatives of literature:
Captain John Smith
He was an Elizabethan adventurer and mercenary, wrote some travel books. He wrote a chronicle of his
adventures in the colonies.
The general history of Virginia (1624); Description of New England (1616) were the best available accounts
of history and topography of those regions he wrote many details about what happened when the settlement was
founded in Jamestown. Vision: abundance, fulfilment through work, happiness. He concentrates on the
geographical characters. There’s no reference to the mission in Am, to battle b/w good and bad. It is practical;
about the myth of success.
There were continuous diseases and the number of the people became less and less, also lack of food, when
they arrived it was too late for planting crops, they had to eat up all the food. It was Smith who planned how to
survive. He was allowed to explore the region and negotiate with the natives for some food → captured by
Indians and condemned to death, but saved.
In 1608, there was an epidemic of malaria, out of the remaining 95 people 45 died. It became clear that Smith
was the person who understood best how to survive → elected him governor of the community. He bargained
successfully with the Indians for food. Then injured in an explosion and had to go back to England for medical
care, never returned to Jamestown. In England he tried to persuade people to go to the colonies.
Governor William Bradford
History of Plymouth Plantation (1620-47
Left England in 1620 on board of the Mayflower. Elected governor, chief judge and jury. Superintended
agriculture and trade, made allotment of land to the people so he had extreme power. Life was seen as a model
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of Christian community. He believed that in the first landing of the Puritans in Am the divine providence was
made visible. Plain style → understandable for people. Typical of Puritan works. The idea is not to narrate the
social events but rather to examine the soul of man for signs of grace from God and to find the simple truth in
all the objects that surrounded them. He believed that arriving in the new world meant a new point in the
history of mankind. Biblical history of mankind: creation → last judgement, this was as important as the
creation or the fall.
They had to realize that in a way the mission failed → people did not become saints, they stayed people in spite
of their belief.
The 2nd generation of the Puritans became indifferent to the parents’ mission. People started to pile up stocks,
animals, wealth. As soon as you have money, you have to take care of them → acquiring more and more → ties
became looser because their interests separated them.
Governor John Winthrop
History of New England (1630-49)
He wanted to reform the church from within: especially the hierarchy of the clergy.
In 1620 England was in a severe economic depression, which necessitated immigration to the colonies +
another influential reason: the succession of Charles I. to the throne → intolerant ruler.
Winthrop said that sg terrible would happen to England as a consequence of Charles I. As a result of this in
1629 a group of enterprising merchants (Puritans) got a charter for landing in N, they called themselves the
Company of Massachusetts Bay in NE → founded Massachusetts
Winthrop was the governor of this new colony, for 20 years. On the ship he preached a sermon: A Model for
Christian Charity. In this he set out the ideals of a harmonious Christian community + Am will be an example
to the whole world. Important to cooperate → important to agree. Sacrifices will be inevitable but God will
amply reward all the people. The only was of succeeding: cohesion among the members.
In Old Testament terminology, biblical terminology → Puritans as God’s chosen people, going to New Canaan.
Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
Letters from an American Farmer
It was an instant success when it was 1st published in 1782. It is told in the form of an epistolary fiction with an
imaginary author and addressee, but actual places and populations.
Cultural context: political rhetoric of revolution.
It describes how social principles laid out by the new Am society operating in the life of an individual
American.
Themes:
- Nature of Am character;
- Anti-intellectualism;
- The farmer as prototype of the am character;
- Treatment of the slaves; view of new immigrants;
- Literary resonances.
It was one of the 1st works describing the character of an average American.
“What is an Am?” asks James. He pictures the am as one who undergoes a total transformation. In Europe
“men were so many useless plants”; in Am: “Men are become men”.
James thinks of himself as a British subject rather tan an American citizen. When the revolution breaks out he is
equally concerned by British severity as by the violence of Whig revolutionaries. His decision is to head west
and take up a residence among the Indians, this decision makes thematic sense.
The early chapters paint an idyllic picture of agrarian life in the colonies. James becomes aware of the potential
for evil.
Letter IX: James journeys to Charleston, South Carolina. He witnessed the brutalities of slavery. Charleston is
depicted as an over civilized culture, a centre of urban decadence, and symbolic of how European values pres
westward. This is why James heads for the frontier. He hopes to recuperate the idyll of simplicity and closeness
of nature, from which freedom and goodness springs.
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3. Early poetry: Taylor, Bradstreet
Edward Taylor (c. 1644-1729)
He was a Puritan poet, influenced by poetry. He was a minister and a churchman. He was born in England but
he left it for religious exile. He studied at Harvard College as a teacher. He was educated, grave and severe. He
organised missions to settlers.
His poetry was discovered in the 1930s. His poetry is as aids to meditation & as preparation for giving
communion to his congregation. He used metaphysical language. His best work was “Preparatory
meditations”. Literary influences: Metaphysicals : Donne, Herbert and Milton. He wrote a variety of verse:
funeral elegies, lyrics, a medieval debate and a history of martyrs: ‘Metrical History of Christianity’.
Major themes:
the concept of poetry as an act/offering of ritual praise;
distinctions between the godly & the ungodly;
God’s power as Creator & Lawgiver;
The righteous man as God’s servant;
Christ as a Rock & Redeemer;
God’s voice which speaks truly & which man’s voice only echoes;
Spiritual union with Christ as the eternal Bridegroom.
Types of imagery in his work:
writing, music/musical instruments;
warfare;
metallurgy – purification;
gardens & vegetation;
feasting & communion
Common tropes used by Taylor:
 Synechdoche;
 Metonymy;
 Amplification, diminishing;
 Paradox;
 Metaphysical conceit.
Ann Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672)
She was the 1st American writer to be published and the 1st American woman to publish poems. She was born
in England. She emigrated at the age of 18. The members of her family were important people. Her husband
and father were governors at the community. She was a well-educated feminist poet. She had 8 children. Her
identity was linked to the identity of her husband and her father. She was insignificant because she was a
woman. Women had to be domestic, nothing about politics and religion. So she can’t be independent. Her
friend, Anne Hutchinson was banished from the community as a result of setting up prayer meetings for
women. She committed a sin: the Holy Spirit is inside everybody and don’t need to follow the dogmas of the
church. So she was said to be heretical. Anne Bradstreet was afraid of the same because of her poetry, so she
wrote poems primarily for herself, her family, and her friends. She describes women’s situation in an ironic
way.
Influences:
 Puritanism: the „plain style (didactic intent, artful simplicity, accessibility, absence of rhetorical
ornamentation);
 Classicism: poetry as imitation, tragedy & epic, unity of action, place & time.
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Poems:
 long, didactic poems;
 long, religious poems on conventional subjects (e.g. seasons);
 subjects from daily life;
 loving poems to her husband & children;
 metre: iambic pentameter; sustained parallels; metaphysical conceits;
 attachment to nature & the body: bodily reflections;
 language & imagery often direct, relatively simple
 she was interested in nature: metaphors
 humour and irony in terms of women’s situation
 proud of experiencing life
Her later poetry is much more personal. They are not published in her lifetime.
‘The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America’ (1650) – published volume of poetry: it shows the influence
of Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney and other English poets as well.
→ ‘To My Dear And Loving Husband’: uses the original imagery, love theme, the idea of comparison popular
in Europe at the time, but gives these pious meaning at the poem’s conclusion.
→ ‘A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment’
4. Awakening and hell-fire: Jonathan Edwards
What historians call "the first Great Awakening" can best be described as a revitalization of religious piety that
swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. In the Protestant cultures during the
middle decades of the eighteenth century, a new Age of Faith rose to counter the currents of the Age of
Enlightenment, to reaffirm the view that being truly religious meant trusting the heart rather than the head,
prizing feeling more than thinking, and relying on biblical revelation rather than human reason.
This period was the continuation of the Puritan period and thinking. In New England it was started (1734) by
the rousing preaching of Jonathan Edwards.
Jonathan Edwards
He was one of the poet thinkers of the Puritan literature. In 1734, a new period of awakening began in New
England. He was highly educated. He was devoted to he law and authority. He is best known for his
frightening, powerful sermon: ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’. In this sermon he used the image of a
spider dangling by a web over a hot fire to describe the human predicament.
He placed the relationship b/w God and man on an emotional basis. Your belief was materialized in your
emotions towards God. Feelings, religious affection alone can be a reliable guide to the state of the soul. The
awakening of one of the chief defenders of Calvinism.
People realized that they had departed from the right way. There is 2 spiritual of your state of mind: the
physical feeling of sin and the need for God’s mercy were the only ways towards salvation. Nothing else can
save you but the awakening of your soul to sin and God’s mercy. This is put down in Personal Narrative.
‘Hellfire sermons’:
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a biblical, theological, or
religious topic, usually expounding on a type of belief or law (preaching).
He discussed many sufferings of mankind. Man is sinful and has to go through tests. People were so much
afraid of Hell. There’s the act of good providence to have another chance. This period was a very hysterical
one. The church was absolutely feared. Language was very sensational. Edwards stared naving (?) people who
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didn’t follow the right way. That’s why he was assigned by the council. But he continued his activities in the
wilderness. The only way to god was to be religious. The feelings are the only way to your soul. The feelings
have to be awakened. We need God’s mercy, because it’s the only way to salvation. Man is basically motivated
by self-love: own-depravity. Edwards wrote sermons, religious books, psychological treaties to preach.
Works:
Treatise Concerning Religious Affection 1746
Divine and Supernatural Light 1734
Freedom of Will 1754
Nature of True Virtue 1765
5. The Enlightenment: Benjamin Franklin
The period of enlightenment:
There was an emphasis on rationalism. Scientific examination was typical instead of religious dogmas.
Everything has a reason. Political life was characterised by a representative government instead of absolute
monarchy.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
He embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality. He was called America’s 1st great man of letters.
The most important things for an American are justice-liberty-equality. He was the son of a candle-maker. He
worked in his brother’s printing shop. At the age of 15 he printed newspapers. At the age of 17, he ran away
from Boston to Philadelphia. He became a publisher at a printer. Wealthy, public man, politician, writer,
businessman. He was a scientist as well. He sat up a hospital, a library and a university. 1st true representative
of American thinking. He sat on the continental congress. He believed that man has to improve himself; has to
work hard to be useful, has to know his own soul and the society is important. His literary activity is not really
literal. All his writings were led by practicality and moral aims were important.
He was the 1st great self-made man in America. In many ways his life illustrates the impact of the
Enlightenment on a gifted individual. He tried to help ordinary people become successful by sharing his
insights and initiating a characteristically American genre, the self-help book.
‘Poor Richards almanac’ is a calendar for simple people. It was to preach and teach. It contains the
philosophy of capitalism, lots of sayings and proverbs. Basic ideas are pretty much the same as the puritan
ideas. It’s a post-puritan code. Sins are virtues.
In this almanac there is ‘The way to Wealth’ with Father Abraham’s speech.
‘Autobiography’ is a self-help book. It was written to advise his son. The most famous section describes his
scientific scheme of self-improvement. Franklin lists 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution,
frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity and humility. He elaborates
on each with a maxim.
His autobiography is free from religious argumentations, it’s not puritan.
To establish the good habits, Franklin invented a calendrical record book. His theory prefigures psychological
behaviourism. The project of self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the
Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny.
He said: ‘Write with the learned. Pronounce with the vulgar.’
He was an important figure in the 1787 convention at which the US Constitution was drafted. Later, he was
president of the antislavery association.
6. “The land was ours before we were the land's”: Irving and Cooper
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Period: America itself was not established. Main question is still: who reads an Am book? Answer: at the
beginning of the period nobody does. There’s a change by the time of Cooper’s death → his books were
available in different languages. This was an important period in the formation of American literature and in the
formation of the typically American genres: short story (emerged from the tale), novel. Most literature was
published in journals. The short story was the suitable form of literary output. Novel was published in a
serialized form.
The period of the Romantic prose was influenced by Washington Irving and James Fennimore Cooper.
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
He was born in New Amsterdam (New York) in the old Dutch days.
He was a transitional figure, a connecting link between 18th and 19th century, Europe and America. He is the
1st writer of independent America after the war. He managed to win an international fame. He is important in
political life: he was the cultural and political ambassador of America in Europe. He worked in law and
business.
He imitated English literature, he applied European legends. He is a romantic dreamer, sentimentalist, he
wanted to find a poetic, dreamy past. He was much more influenced by Sir Walter Scott. His labels were the
“American Goldsmith”, “a latter-day Addison or Steele”.
Works:
 A Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
 History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
 Tour on the Prairie
 Life of George Washington
These were not genuine American myths, they were borrowed from German and Spanish.
His attempt was to build a new nation. His subjects were the most dramatic aspects of American history
(discovery of the New World, the first president, westward expansion).
He used humour and irony.
Rip Van Winkle
It is one of the best known short stories in American literature. It was 1st published in 1819 in a collection called
‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’. It is based on German folk tales. It was accepted as a genius
American legend but it was rather European. In a humorous context, it deals with issues of politics; shows how
the revolution changed one small village, and gender issues. He shows the comical relationship b/w a lazy
husband and a bad-tempered wife. The story is full of irony. The validity of work is questioned. In the story we
notice numerous changes in setting throughout. Changes include everything from nature, to the town, and to the
people. These changes force Rip Van Winkle to realize he was asleep for much longer than he originally
thought when he 1st woke up. Irving used excellent description techniques and made sure that the reader was
aware of the setting both before and after Rip had slept. This made for a quite entertaining plot and a welldeveloped story.
The marriage of Rip and Dame is the union b/w American colonies and Great Britain. The characters possess
certain attributes which symbolize the perceived characteristics of the 2 entities.
There’s a contrast b/w 2 different ways of life: Dutch and American life.
Themes:
 1st American dream: it runs through American literature. It’s a confused state of mind, the mirror
confusion in American mind.
 Identity: deep confusion over: ‘what is an American?’ and ‘Who am I?’
 Uncertainty: new America’s sense of identity weakens; new America gains confidence; Rip gains selfconfidence and authority, he becomes a true storyteller.
About the story
The story starts out by painting a picture of nature and the surroundings of the village. We get a picture of
beauty and grace with explanations such as of the one used to describe the Kaatskill Mountains. the story
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progresses, we are allowed glimpses into the sight of the village. We are shown that the village is somewhat
worn down and old looking. Most of the houses built were built from the original settlers. They were
constructed from ìyellow bricks from Holland having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with
weathercocks. we learn of the surroundings of Rip, which give us an understanding of how it all changes after
he wakes up. Throughout the story, we know that Rip knows most of the people in the village. We know this
because when he comes back after sleeping for the twenty years, he immediately notices all of the different
people in the town and can quickly identify that the people that are in his village are not the ones he knew
before he left. He goes back to the village meeting many people but none of whom he knew.
After he awoke, he walks into town and starts questioning anyone he comes into contact with about where a
certain person was, or what happened to someone else he had known. This shows that he had some personal
relationship with most of the other people in the town, for if he hadnít, how then could he have known that they
were gone in the first place. As Rip Van Winkle awoke, he began noticing many changes just in the
surroundings of where he fell asleep.
Irving used excellent description techniques and made sure the reader was aware of the setting both before
and after Rip Van Winkle had slept. This made for a quite entertaining plot and a well-developed story.
Symbolism and characters
In the interpretation of the symbolism in "Rip Van Winkle", the marriage between Rip Van Winkle and Dame
Van Winkle represents the union between the American colonies and Great Britain. The characters themselves
possess certain attributes which symbolize the perceived characteristics of the two entities. Dame Van Winkle
is usually unhappy with Rip. She becomes frustrated, and at times unbearably irate, when Rip fails to meet up
to her expectations. Her verbal lashings are of such an intolerable nature as to drive Rip out of the house,
wanting only to escape. Dame Van Winkle can be compared to Great Britain in that Great Britain also had
certain expectations of the colonies during this time. For the colonists
to deny their obligations to the Crown was not only highly frustrating but also insulting. The anger of Great
Britain, however, eventually manifested itself in something more than just a verbal lashing.
Rip is lazy and undisciplined, constantly avoiding his duties to his wife and family. Rip's part in the story as a
symbol of the colonies' role in the British-American relationship definitely fits the English perception. The
central part of the story, Rip's famous sleep, can serve to represent the colonists' actual degree of involvement
in the American Revolution. Rip Van Winkle is very much affected by the changes that take place during his
twenty-year slumber, though he has played no part in the orchestration of these changes. He must accept both
the advantages and the disadvantages resulting from the actions of others. Old Rip is quite out of place in his
new surroundings, and at once experiences an identity crisis. He is in an unrecognizable world, and it takes
some time for Rip to understand how he will fit in. The conclusion of Rip's story parallels the American story,
and it also gives some interesting insight into the changes that take place after the revolution. Rip's need for an
identity points to the American need to establish itself as a nation. After gaining its independence, America had
to find an identity apart from Great Britain, and work to gain respect from other nations.
The legend of a sleepy hollow:
It takes place in Sleepy Hollow, NY, a snug rural valley near Tarry town, in the Catskill mountains. It is
constructed from German tales but it is set in America. There’s the myth of the Hessian Headless Horseman in
the background. It is a classic tale of the conflict b/w city and country, and b/w brains and brawn.
This is the story of a schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, is a teacher, useless, has no practical value. He courts
Katrina van Tassel, but he is frightened away by his rival, Brom Bones. Bones mistrusts the intellect and he is
practical and useful. He is masquerading as a headless horseman. The story demonstrates the 2 qualities for
which Irving is best known: his humour and his ability to create vivid descriptive imagery.
James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1881)
He was son of a landowner, a judge. His father wanted him to become a judge so he was sent to Yale but he
was expelled because he set one of his fellow students’ room on fire. Then he became a seaman., served in US
Navy, he was an officer. He got married and settled down in his own land. Then he lived the life of the Am
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gentry. He became a writer relatively late. He read out stories every evening with his wife and once he said he
could write a better one. But he never became a professional writer. He wrote early romantic literature. He
helped to shape American literature and the nation’s sense of itself. He wrote about American myths of the wild
west. He was influenced by Shakespeare; Byron; Austen; Edgeworth; Fielding…
He is said to be the ‘American Scott’. His works are the reactions to what Scott wrote.
There’s a liberal and a republican mentality in his works. He could see the negative aspects of American life, he
didn’t like the democracy taken to the extreme and the business life of Yankees. He created a legend of the
nation. Ha managed to shape the American identity.
Works
 Precaution
 Leatherstocking Tales: The deerslayer; The last of the Mohicans; The pathfinder; The pioneers; The
prairie
 political novels: The Bravo, The heidemanner; The headsman; The monikins
 sea-novels: The red raver; The pirate
 Historical novels
 Indian novels: The Leatherstocking Tales : are high spirited, often sentimental adventure stories,
frontier romances. The woodsman, Natty Bumppo = Hawkaye, is the protagonist of these stories. He is
an American pioneer, a young white hunter, an idealized individualist. He is not a typical white and not
an Indian, a cultural hybrid: he links the two cultures. He is said to be a magnificent hermaphrodite.
Savage and civilisation is linked. Nature and soc are together. Cooper presented both good and bad
Indians
The last of the Mohicans (1826)
The story takes place in 1757, during the French and Indian War, when France and England battled for control
of the American and Canadian colonies. It is a novel about race and difficulty of overcoming racial divides
Cooper’s work remains important for its portrait of frontier life and its exploration of the traumatic encounters
b/w races and cultures poised on opposite sides of a shrinking frontier. It’s about a period of confusion. Much
emphasis was given to the relationship b/w whites and Indians. A cyclical sense of history is presented here.
The reader gets a close look at the life of Indians: religion, system of life, hospitality, social relations, laws,
treatment of the enemy.
Characters
 Hawkeye: The novel’s frontier hero, he is a woodsman, hunter, and scout. Hawkeye is the hero’s adopted name; his real name
is Natty Bumppo. His frontier nickname is La Longue Carabine, or The Long Rifle. His closest bonds are with Indians,
particularly Chingachgook and Uncas, but he frequently asserts that he has no Indian blood. As a cultural hybrid—a character
who mixes elements of different cultures—Hawkeye provides a link between Indians and whites.
 Magua : the novel’s villain, he is a cunning Huron nicknamed Le Renard Subtil, or the Subtle Fox.
 Major Duncan Heyward: A young American colonist from the South who has risen to the rank of major in the English army.
 Uncas: Chingachgook’s son, he is the youngest and last member of the Indian tribe known as the Mohicans. A noble, proud,
self-possessed young man, Uncas falls in love with Cora Munro and suffers tragic consequences for desiring a forbidden
interracial coupling.
 Chingachgook: Le Gros Serpent—The Great Snake. Uncas’s father, he is one of the two surviving members of the Mohican
tribe.
 David Gamut: A young Calvinist attempting to carry Christianity to the frontier through the power of his song.
 Cora Munroe: Colonel Munro’s eldest daughter, a solemn girl with a noble bearing.
 Alice Munro: Colonel Munro’s younger daughter by his Scottish second wife, and Cora’s half-sister.
 Colonel Munro: The commander of the British forces at Fort William Henry and father of Cora and Alice.
 General Malcolm: Marquis Louis Joseph de Saint-Veran, known as Montcalm, is the commander of the French forces fighting
against England during the French and Indian War. He enlists the aid and knowledge of Indian tribes to help his French forces
navigate the unfamiliar forest combat setting.
 Tamenund: An ancient, wise, and revered Delaware Indian sage who has outlived three generations of warriors.
 General Webb: The commander of the British forces at Fort Edward.
Themes:
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Literal and Metaphorical Nature : Nature functions both literally and metaphorically in The Last of the
Mohicans. In its literal form, nature is the physical frontier that surrounds the characters and
complicates their battles and their chances for survival. Metaphorically, the land serves as a blank
canvas on which the characters paint themselves. Cooper defines characters by their relationships to
nature.
The Role of Religion in the Wilderness : The character David Gamut allows Cooper to explore the
relevance of religion in the wilderness. In theory at least, the American frontier is untouched by human
culture. It is a fresh start, a piece of land not ruled by the conventions of European high culture, a place
without a firm government or social code. Gamut’s aggressive Calvinism symbolizes the entrance of
religion, a European model that enters the blank slate of the New World. Gamut’s fatalism contrasts
with Hawkeye’s pragmatism. Cooper believes humans do have the ability to determine their own fates.
By the end of the novel the Calvinist Gamut learns to move beyond the rigidity of his religion and
become a helpful and committed ally. He succeeds when he finds the ability to leave behind his
fatalistic passivity and adapt to the demands of the forest.
The Changing Idea of Family : Cooper uses the frontier setting to explore the changing status of the
family unit. Cooper posits that the wilderness demands new definitions of family. Uncas and Hawkeye,
for example, form a makeshift family structure. When Uncas’s real father, Chingachgook, disappears
without explanation in the middle portion of the novel, Hawkeye becomes a symbolic father for Uncas.
Motifs
 Hybridity: The concept of hybridity is central to the novel’s thematic explorations of race and family.
Hybridity is the mixing of separate elements into one whole, and in the novel it usually occurs when
nature and culture intersect, or when two races intersect. Cora is a hybrid because her mother was black
and her father white. Hawkeye is a hybrid because he is white by blood and Indian by habit.
 Disguise: Cooper uses the motif of disguise to resolve plot difficulties and to provide comic relief. The
fantastical nature of the disguises also detracts from the believability of Cooper’s story. The Last of the
Mohicans wants to be simultaneously a historically specific narrative, an adventure novel, and a
romance. Cooper plays with the comic possibilities of romance, especially by exaggerating human
appearances. Disguise therefore proves not only a practical solution to plot dilemmas but an indication
that Cooper intends to make his novel partly an amusing romance.
 Inheritance :Inheritance informs the novel’s thematic portrayals of family redefinition. The idea of
inheritance frequently recurs in the father-son relationship of Hawkeye and Uncas.
Symbols
 Hawkeye: Hawkeye is both a character and a symbol. Cooper uses Hawkeye to symbolize colonial
hybridity, the mixing of European and Indian cultures. Hawkeye also symbolizes the myth of the hero
woodsman. He demonstrates perfect marksmanship in the shooting contest held by the Delawares.
 “The Last of the Mohicans” :The recurring description of Uncas as “the last of the Mohicans”
symbolizes the death of Indian culture at the hands of the encroaching European civilization. The title
anticipates the ultimate tragedy of the novel’s plot.
Plot:
It is the late 1750s:French and Indian War. The French army is attacking Fort William Henry, a British outpost commanded by
Colonel Munro. Munro’s daughters Alice and Cora set out from Fort Edward to visit their father, escorted through the dangerous
forest by Major Duncan Heyward and guided by an Indian named Magua. Soon they are joined by David Gamut, a singing master and
religious follower of Calvinism. Travelling cautiously, the group encounters the white scout Natty Bumppo, who goes by the name
Hawkeye, and his two Indian companions, Chingachgook and Uncas, Chingachgook’s son, the only surviving members of the once
great Mohican tribe. Hawkeye says that Magua, a Huron, has betrayed the group by leading them in the wrong direction. The
Mohicans attempt to capture the traitorous Huron, but he escapes.
Hawkeye and the Mohicans lead the group to safety in a cave near a waterfall, but Huron allies of Magua attack early the next
morning. Hawkeye and the Mohicans escape down the river, but Hurons capture Alice, Cora, Heyward, and Gamut. When Heyward
tries to convert Magua to the English side, the Huron reveals that he seeks revenge on Munro for past humiliation and proposes to free
Alice if Cora will marry him. Cora has romantic feelings for Uncas, however, and angrily refuses Magua. Suddenly Hawkeye and the
Mohicans burst onto the scene, rescuing the captives and killing every Huron but Magua, who escapes. After a harrowing journey
impeded by Indian attacks, the group reaches Fort William Henry, the English stronghold. They sneak through the French army
besieging the fort, and, once inside, Cora and Alice reunite with their father.
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A few days later, the English forces call for a truce. Munro learns that he will receive no reinforcements for the fort and will have to
surrender. He reveals to Heyward that Cora’s mother was part “Negro,” which explains her dark complexion and raven hair. Munro
accuses Heyward of racism because he prefers to marry blonde Alice over dark Cora, but Heyward denies the charge. During the
withdrawal of the English troops from Fort William Henry, the Indian allies of the French indulge their bloodlust and prey upon the
vulnerable retreating soldiers. In the chaos of slaughter, Magua manages to recapture Cora, Alice, and Gamut and to escape with them
into the forest.
Three days later, Heyward, Hawkeye, Munro, and the Mohicans discover Magua’s trail and begin to pursue the villain. Gamut
reappears and explains that Magua has separated his captives, confining Alice to a Huron camp and sending Cora to a Delaware camp.
Using deception and a variety of disguises, the group manages to rescue Alice from the Hurons, at which point Heyward confesses his
romantic interest in her. At the Delaware village, Magua convinces the tribe that Hawkeye and his companions are their racist
enemies. Uncas reveals his exalted heritage to the Delaware sage Tamenund and then demands the release of all his friends but Cora,
who he admits belongs to Magua. Magua departs with Cora. A chase and a battle ensue. Magua and his Hurons suffer painful defeat,
but a rogue Huron kills Cora. Uncas begins to attack the Huron who killed Cora, but Magua stabs Uncas in the back. Magua tries to
leap across a great divide, but he falls short and must cling to a shrub to avoid tumbling off and dying. Hawkeye shoots him, and
Magua at last plummets to his death.
Cora and Uncas receive proper burials the next morning amid ritual chants performed by the Delawares. Chingachgook mourns the
loss of his son, while Tamenund sorrowfully declares that he has lived to see the last warrior of the noble race of the Mohicans.
7. Early African-American literature: Wheatley, slave narratives
Poetry
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784)
She was born in Africa, then brought to Boston as a slave at the age of 7. She was treated as a member of his
masters family. They started to teach her – she learned theology, English, Latin, Greek, ancient history and
mythology. She was the 1st Afro-American poet, the 1st black woman to publish a volume of poems: ‘Poems on
Various Subjects’ (1767). There’s an introduction to this volume: an attestation of 17 men of Boston.
She had a wide variety of topics: poems on morality & piety, patriotic American pieces, Christian elegies,
poems about nature, imagination & memory. Her style is neoclassical. She usually described the theme of
freedom.
She wrote letters and poems to politicians to abolish slavery. She was the first to confront white racism, and to
assert spiritual equality. She wrote the poem, ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’.
‘To S.M., a young African Painter, on Seeing His Works’ is a poem of praise and encouragement for another
talented black. It also shows Wheatley’s strong religious sensitivity filtered through her experience of Christian
conversation.
Slave narrative
~ are narratives written by fugitive slaves before the Civil War & by former slaves in the post-bellum era. They
influenced classic texts of American literature: Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and
contemporary novels Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Tony Morrison’s Beloved
The aims are to enlighten white readers about the realities of slavery and the humanity of black people as
individuals deserving of full human rights.
Characteristics of the slave narrative:
The narrator is abruptly brought from the state of protected innocence to confrontation with the evil of slavery
& captivity. He suffers from forced existence in an alien society. The narrator is unable to submit or effectively
to resist. He balances yearning for freedom against the perils of escape, sees his condition as a symbol of the
suffering condition of all the oppressed; grows in moral or spiritual strength as a result of suffering.
Frequent pattern contains 4 stages:
1. the loss of innocence;
2. the realisation of alternatives to bondage & decision to become free;
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3. escape;
4. freedom obtained
Recurring elements:
 exposes physical & emotional abuses of slavery
 exposes white owners’ hypocrisy & inconstancy
 repeated raising of narrator’s expectations – unfulfilled
 describes quest for literacy
 describes quest for freedom
 loss of significant family members
 Biblical allusion & imagery, the rhetoric of abolitionism, the tradition of the captivity narratives
 “frame” or preface attesting to their authenticity
Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa c. 1745-c.1797)
He was an African man sold at the age of 10 as a slave. He was a slave on a ship so he travelled a lot. He was
able to read and write. He went to school in London. He collected money by trading and he bought his freedom.
He led an abolishment movement, the Sons of Africa. He involved in a controversial project: black people
should be sent back to Africa.
‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)’
It is an autobiography. It is a prototype for the numerous slave accounts.
There were 9 British editions through Equiano’s lifetime. It is an early example of the slave narrative genre. It
gives an account of his native land, Africa, then an account of the horrors of captivity. He also described the
crucial behaviour of Christians.
He followed different traditions:
 the spiritual autobiographical tradition : St. Augustine & John Bunyan -- three phases of a life of sin,
conversion & rebirth
 descriptive travel literature: Defoe & Swift
 secular autobiographies established by Benjamin Franklin: display a hard-working youth’s rise from
rags to riches in the commercial world
Common threads in slave narratives to be found in Equiano’s work:
 appeal to the audience’s emotions in the form of a direct address:
 “O, ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you – Learned you this from your God, who
says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you? Is it not enough that we are
torn from our country and friends to toil for your luxury and lust of grain?”
 relies on his Christianity to give him strength to survive this ordeal.
 vivid description of the violence of slavery.
 reality of sexual abuse.
 separation of family & disregard for slave marriages.
 contrasts between white characters.
 slave’s desire for freedom & education
It has strong similarities with captivity narratives: it moves from an idyllic state to one of captivity; it must be
learnt to survive in an alien culture; desire for freedom versus great fear of dangers of escape; spiritual and/or
moral strength gained through suffering
Frederick Douglass (1808-1895)
He was a son of a black slave woman and a white man. He escaped from slavery and changed his name. he
became the father of Civil Rights Movement. He was an abolitionist, a human rights and women’s rights
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activist, orator, journalist, publisher, social reformer, served as advisor to presidents. He believed in ideal
society.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881)
8. Edgar Allen Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
He was very un-American. A few spiritual links connecting him with his native country. He was a master of his
craft, gifted with the talent of introducing each reader to his or her fears. He’s the 1st writer of initiate horror,
death and mystery. However morbid or dark it may be, Poe’s writings continues to have an impact on the world
of prose. Poe’s main focuses in writing are horror, fantasy and murder, with the theme of death. His many
writings reflect a imagination that most of his readers will only experience when dreaming at night. Dream
leads to imagination. The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetic topic in his poesy – necrophilia. He’s
only a serious literary critic of his generation among Hawthorne, Dickens, Lowell, Longfellow and Emerson.
He is increasingly characterised by morbid sensitivity, extreme individualism, contempt of the broad masses,
devotion to an exalted conception of art and thought, hostility to bourgeois reality, boundless pessimism
verging on absolute nihilism.
He was more popular in Europe, especially France, then in America. He regarded himself as a Southerner. His
art is influenced by American literary journalism.
Works:
 1827 first collection of verse: Tamerlane and Other Poems
 Southern Literary Messenger
 1840: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
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The Poetic Principle, The Philosophy of Composition,
The Rationale of Verse
 The Philosophy of Composition
 He gained nationwide celebrity in 1845 with the publication of The Raven.
 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
 The Raven and Other Poems
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cult of beauty -- artist’s duty is to
he stressed the formal side of art (length, emotional effect, one sitting)
to achieve maximum influence: every incident, every word should directly or indirectly express the
basic idea
ethically indifferent → principle of l’art pour l‘art
structure: determined by a philosophy of literary unity:
1. a unity of structure in which each part relates to the whole,
2. arrange each element in his work in order to emphasise one prevailing idea → “unity of effect”
on the reader
Poetry
 restriction of subject-matter
 increasing sensitivity & concentration
 subject-matter: loneliness, yearning for happiness in a dreamland far away from hostile reality,
disappointment in love, desire for recognition
 his poetic output was small
 technical goal is to achieve a firm metric structure in each poem, enlivened by repetition & variation, a
simple language, rhyme & musicality were of great importance.
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full rhymes, the free use of internal rhymes → occasionally jingling effect (“the jingling man”)
“rhythmical creation of Beauty”
The raven
Poe takes his readers through the heart of misery with an overcastting shadow of terror. The narrator is a man,
home alone at night lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. As he reads and nods in an out of sleep, a rapping at
his door wakes him. This is the raven, who is sent from heaven or hell. Death motif: death of a beautiful
woman.
Annabel Lee
It depicts a deep love for a woman. She dies. The speaker visits her tomb and sleeps by the side of the beautiful
girl. It is about a dreamland in a kingdom by the sea. The narrator is the lover, Poe is only the writer. Males kill
the lady to write a poem and to achieve poetic maturity. The female object is only a desire who is unattainable.
Male romantic writers construct women as subjects for their writings. Element of degeneration: fall of the girl.
Short stories
o unusual, grotesque, wonderful elements are of central importance -- put against the background of the
real, everyday world
o the event, the experience & its influence on man in the centre
o his figures: symbols of psychological experience in general
o combined analytical logic with a soaring fantasy → real & the unreal = unified & convincing whole
o extraordinary variety of form, content & atmosphere
o best-known stories: precursors & prototypes of the modern detective story: The Gold Bug, The
Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget
o fantastical plot, tone of moral neutrality, rigorous logical development, style of brilliant intellectual
clarity
o protagonists in the tales of terror – similar, their personalities never change or develop, obsessive,
isolated & joyless
o live in a world where rational cause & effect have ceased to operate
o power: atmospheric effect
o tension created by the dichotomy between the rational tone which the narrator adopts & the perverse,
irrational nature of his unconscious mind: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, William Wilson, The
Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher
o the dark side of human existence
o females: fragile, ethereal shadows
Fall of the house of Usher:
It’s a gothic horror about the collapse of a family. Poe is more philosophical about human experience. The story
turns to be a literal tale of an actual house that collapses, but it is a larger cycle of rebirth. The house is the
metaphor of the family and for degeneration. Usher and his sister, Lady Madeline dies and the whole family
dies out with them.
The Philosophy of Composition
It was written to explain how he composed ‘The Raven’. It counters the romantic assumption that the poet
works in a ‘fine frenzy of aesthetic intuition’. Poe offers a pain striking and procedural account of poetic
creation. The essay is more worthy for the centrality of the theory of unified effect, the conscious choice of a
constant emotional atmosphere that takes primary over incident, character and versification.
Rhyme and everything is created in order to achieve the desired effect. Literature is a serious hard work. The
most important thing in literature is creating beauty and this is the function of literature. A great poem should
not be long. The form can also express beauty and should have emotional effect on the reader. Style and the
unity of work are the most important thing in the poem.
Gothic tales, detective stories:
Poe created detective fiction stories without emotional colouring.
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The Purloined Letter
there’s an opposition b/w police and private eye. Private eye combines rational logic with imagination and has
an eccentric behaviour. Police is very rational, lack of imagination. The narrator is the reader’s representative.
He explains the story to the reader. In the short stories there’s a horrible, psychotic fear of the main character,
romanticism of dreadful, experience of death, atmospheric effect.
The rational tone of the narrator is present but it shows the pervert, emotional nature of mind.
E.g. The Cask of Amontillado
9. New England Transcendentalism: Emerson, Thoreau
Transcendentalism
It popped up during romanticism in Europe. The movement started in 1835. the major work was published:
Emerson’s Nature. It’s the introspection of the soul and of self-awareness. Nature is the most important contact
b/w God and yourself.
The name transcendentalism was ironic at the beginning. It was a supernatural world that can be understood
intuitively. The name was given to a group of intellectuals who in the 1840s were led by Ralph Waldo
Emerson. - Transcendentalist Club : 15-20 members: H.D, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley,
Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Elizabeth Peabody, and for some time, Hawthorne. Their meetings
were published in a magazine: ‘The Dial’.
The movement is very close to capitalism. It is a reaction against progress, cruelty, change in agriculture. It is a
response to the new world in European Romantic literature – major figures: Coleridge, Wordsworth &
Carlyle in Britain, Goethe & Schiller in Germany.
Transcendentalists had questions about the world around them. It started over the state of religion and Lock’s
philosophy, empirism. They said: “God is one will, man is his creation, it is miraculous in itself, senses are not
the only way to experience things.”
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It turn towards introspection, an investigation of the inner world.
The Transcendentalists seemed madmen or fools, perpetrators of a radicalism that threatened the
foundations of society. Society is a failure of men. There is a conflict b/w the individual and the society.
It is a moral protest against those injustices & cruelties which the Industrial Revolution brought in its
wake.
They compared what is natural in Man & Society with what is artificial.
Meaning:
1) the existence of a supernatural world that can be approached & understood intuitively
2) the spiritual aspects of the human personality, the inalienable values of the soul are of great importance
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Reason = intuition, immediate knowledge independent from the senses.
The divinity of man – one of the fundamental affirmations of Transcendentalism -- social, religious &
political criticism
Emerson's Divinity School Address -- Christian message & the nature of Man in perfect
correspondence
Education needs another education. Originality is important. Students should create their own opinions.
Utopian communities: Brook Farm is created by George Ripley. It is to prove that it is possible to create an
ideal community. Man can get in touch with God and can live in harmony with nature. It is a reaction against
capitalism.
The reasons for Brook Farm: 1. Utopianism, 2. revulsion against capitalism & technology, 3. American
pastoral ideal. Farm is compared to city. Farm: innocence, naturalness, harmony. City: corruption, artificiality.
Agriculture is the best suited to man, the most direct and simple relation to nature. Work is an integrative part
of your soul, which needs physical and intellectual works too.
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Transcendentalism lasted till 1844-45.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
He was a priest. He went to Europe and read romantic writers. He was an essay writer because of high,
intellectual thoughts. He was interested in freeing man’s mind. He didn’t believe in direct actions, the only the
state of mind is important. He was the centre of the Transcendentalist circle. He didn’t like Brook Farm: he
believed that they created an other institution where somebody leads it and the others follow the leader. It is not
original.
Works:
 His 1st work was Nature which marked the beginning of Transcendentalism.
 Essays (1841, 1847)
 The American Scholar → regarded by the authorities as semi-atheist propaganda; protest against the
prevalent ideas of society in their days, the adoration of profit & business
 Divinity School Address -- expects to hear evidence of real experience
 Self-Reliance -- theoretical justification
Nature
It was published anonymously. It was difficult to be followed. The harmony with nature and the love of truth is
necessary to understand words.
Emerson never thought the same things, he thought that a great mind can only develop and can only be
inconsequent in your thinking. If you want to find truth, you should contradict yourself all the time. This way
you work for your truth. Emerson becomes a transparent eye-ball, he can live in harmony with nature.
Self-Reliance
It is the Bible of bourgeois people.
 Emerson supported capitalism although transcendentalism was against it.
 You are responsible for your soul, family but not other people.
 Traditions and history are important.
 Present, past and future are important.
 The ideas of individual are dogmatised and followed, institution is not important.
 Property limits you. It makes you work.
 You shouldn’t imitate foreign style
 You should know your self.
 Improvement of society is important.
“Society is a wave. The wave moves around, but the water of which is composed, doesn’t. the same particle not
rise from the valley to the bridge.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
He was an outsider, he lived in Concord. He was more individualistic than Emerson. He loved solitude, built a
cottage and lived there. He wanted to show how little you need to make up a living. – back to nature.
His principal aim was to achieve perfect freedom. Property - individual possession - is a hindrance to freedom.
The only way back to Nature is the refusal of capitalist civilisation. He was an active sympathiser of the
abolitionist movement. He didn’t follow romanticism of Europe. He followed the pastoral idea. He abandoned
one of the Transcendental affirmations about the nature of man: the divinity of man.
His journals kept throughout his life. These were materials for some of his books.
1849 : A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers
1854 his masterpiece: Walden, or Life in the Woods- a description of his life during 2,5 years in solitude in the
forest in a hut.
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Civil disobedience:
Thoreau opens his essay with the motto "That government is best which governs least." His distrust of
government stems from the tendency of the latter to be "perverted and abused" before the people can actually
express their will through it.
Thoreau views government as a fundamental hindrance to the creative enterprise of the people it purports to
represent. He cites as a prime example the regulation of trade and commerce, and its negative effect on the
forces of the free market.
Thoreau turns to the issue of effecting change through democratic means. The position of the majority, however
legitimate in the context of a democracy, is not tantamount to a moral position. Thoreau calls on his fellow
citizens to withdraw their support from the government of Massachusetts and risk being thrown in prison for
their resistance. Money is a generally corrupting force. After refusing to pay the poll tax for six years, Thoreau
is thrown into jail for one night. While in prison, Thoreau realizes that the only advantage of the State is
"superior physical strength."
Thoreau claims to have great respect and admiration for the ideals of American government and its institutions.
The purest sources of truth are, in Thoreau's view, the Constitution and the Bible.
The individual conscience takes precedence over all external sources of moral decision: “The only obligation
which I have a right to assume is only to do at any time what I think right.”
10. The development of the American short story
Short story: The short story is a form of narrative prose writing. Determining the actual length of a short story
is problematic. A classic definition of a short story's length is that it must be able to be read in one sitting.
During the second part of the 18th century, America itself was not established. Main question is still: who reads
an Am book? Answer: at the beginning of the period nobody does. There’s a change by the time of Cooper’s
death → his books were available in different languages. This was an important period in the formation of
American literature and in the formation of the typically American genres: short story (emerged from the tale),
novel. Most literature was published in journals. The short story was the suitable form of literary output. Novel
was published in a serialized form.
The period of the Romantic prose was influenced by Washington Irving and James Fennimore Cooper.
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
He was born in New Amsterdam (New York) in the old Dutch days.
He was a transitional figure, a connecting link between 18th and 19th century, Europe and America. He is the
1st writer of independent America after the war. He managed to win an international fame. He is important in
political life: he was the cultural and political ambassador of America in Europe. He worked in law and
business.
He imitated English literature, he applied European legends. He is a romantic dreamer, sentimentalist, he
wanted to find a poetic, dreamy past. He was much more influenced by Sir Walter Scott. His labels were the
“American Goldsmith”, “a latter-day Addison or Steele”.
Works:
 A Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
 History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
 Tour on the Prairie
 Life of George Washington
These were not genuine American myths, they were borrowed from German and Spanish.
His attempt was to build a new nation. His subjects were the most dramatic aspects of American history
(discovery of the New World, the first president, westward expansion).
He used humour and irony.
Rip Van Winkle
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It is one of the best known short stories in American literature. It was 1st published in 1819 in a collection called
‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’. It is based on German folk tales. It was accepted as a genius
American legend but it was rather European. In a humorous context, it deals with issues of politics; shows how
the revolution changed one small village, and gender issues. He shows the comical relationship b/w a lazy
husband and a bad-tempered wife. The story is full of irony. The validity of work is questioned. In the story we
notice numerous changes in setting throughout. Changes include everything from nature, to the town, and to the
people. These changes force Rip Van Winkle to realize he was asleep for much longer than he originally
thought when he 1st woke up. Irving used excellent description techniques and made sure that the reader was
aware of the setting both before and after Rip had slept. This made for a quite entertaining plot and a welldeveloped story.
The marriage of Rip and Dame is the union b/w American colonies and Great Britain. The characters possess
certain attributes which symbolize the perceived characteristics of the 2 entities.
There’s a contrast b/w 2 different ways of life: Dutch and American life.
Themes:
 1st American dream: it runs through American literature. It’s a confused state of mind, the mirror
confusion in American mind.
 Identity: deep confusion over: ‘what is an American?’ and ‘Who am I?’
 Uncertainty: new America’s sense of identity weakens; new America gains confidence; Rip gains selfconfidence and authority, he becomes a true storyteller.
About the story
The story starts out by painting a picture of nature and the surroundings of the village. We get a picture of
beauty and grace with explanations such as of the one used to describe the Kaatskill Mountains. the story
progresses, we are allowed glimpses into the sight of the village. We are shown that the village is somewhat
worn down and old looking. Most of the houses built were built from the original settlers. They were
constructed from ìyellow bricks from Holland having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with
weathercocks. we learn of the surroundings of Rip, which give us an understanding of how it all changes after
he wakes up. Throughout the story, we know that Rip knows most of the people in the village. We know this
because when he comes back after sleeping for the twenty years, he immediately notices all of the different
people in the town and can quickly identify that the people that are in his village are not the ones he knew
before he left. He goes back to the village meeting many people but none of whom he knew.
After he awoke, he walks into town and starts questioning anyone he comes into contact with about where a
certain person was, or what happened to someone else he had known. This shows that he had some personal
relationship with most of the other people in the town, for if he hadnít, how then could he have known that they
were gone in the first place. As Rip Van Winkle awoke, he began noticing many changes just in the
surroundings of where he fell asleep.
Irving used excellent description techniques and made sure the reader was aware of the setting both before and
after Rip Van Winkle had slept. This made for a quite entertaining plot and a well-developed story.
The legend of a sleepy hollow:
It takes place in Sleepy Hollow, NY, a snug rural valley near Tarry town, in the Catskill mountains. It is
constructed from German tales but it is set in America. There’s the myth of the Hessian Headless Horseman in
the background. It is a classic tale of the conflict b/w city and country, and b/w brains and brawn.
This is the story of a schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, is a teacher, useless, has no practical value. He courts
Katrina van Tassel, but he is frightened away by his rival, Brom Bones. Bones mistrusts the intellect and he is
practical and useful. He is masquerading as a headless horseman. The story demonstrates the 2 qualities for
which Irving is best known: his humour and his ability to create vivid descriptive imagery.
Slave narrative
~ are narratives written by fugitive slaves before the Civil War & by former slaves in the post-bellum era. They
influenced classic texts of American literature: Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and
contemporary novels Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Tony Morrison’s Beloved
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The aims are to enlighten white readers about the realities of slavery and the humanity of black people as
individuals deserving of full human rights.
Characteristics of the slave narrative:
The narrator is abruptly brought from the state of protected innocence to confrontation with the evil of slavery
& captivity. He suffers from forced existence in an alien society. The narrator is unable to submit or effectively
to resist. He balances yearning for freedom against the perils of escape, sees his condition as a symbol of the
suffering condition of all the oppressed; grows in moral or spiritual strength as a result of suffering.
Frequent pattern contains 4 stages:
5. the loss of innocence;
6. the realisation of alternatives to bondage & decision to become free;
7. escape;
8. freedom obtained
Recurring elements:
 exposes physical & emotional abuses of slavery
 exposes white owners’ hypocrisy & inconstancy
 repeated raising of narrator’s expectations – unfulfilled
 describes quest for literacy
 describes quest for freedom
 loss of significant family members
 Biblical allusion & imagery, the rhetoric of abolitionism, the tradition of the captivity narratives
 “frame” or preface attesting to their authenticity
Representatives: Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass …
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
He was very un-American. A few spiritual links connecting him with his native country. He was a master of his
craft, gifted with the talent of introducing each reader to his or her fears. He’s the 1st writer of initiate horror,
death and mystery. However morbid or dark it may be, Poe’s writings continues to have an impact on the world
of prose. Poe’s main focuses in writing are horror, fantasy and murder, with the theme of death. His many
writings reflect a imagination that most of his readers will only experience when dreaming at night. Dream
leads to imagination. The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetic topic in his poesy – necrophilia. He’s
only a serious literary critic of his generation among Hawthorne, Dickens, Lowell, Longfellow and Emerson.
He is increasingly characterised by morbid sensitivity, extreme individualism, contempt of the broad masses,
devotion to an exalted conception of art and thought, hostility to bourgeois reality, boundless pessimism
verging on absolute nihilism.
He was more popular in Europe, especially France, then in America. He regarded himself as a Southerner. His
art is influenced by American literary journalism.
Short stories
o unusual, grotesque, wonderful elements are of central importance -- put against the background of the
real, everyday world
o the event, the experience & its influence on man in the centre
o his figures: symbols of psychological experience in general
o combined analytical logic with a soaring fantasy → real & the unreal = unified & convincing whole
o extraordinary variety of form, content & atmosphere
o best-known stories: precursors & prototypes of the modern detective story: The Gold Bug, The
Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget
o fantastical plot, tone of moral neutrality, rigorous logical development, style of brilliant intellectual
clarity
o protagonists in the tales of terror – similar, their personalities never change or develop, obsessive,
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o
o
o
o
o
isolated & joyless
live in a world where rational cause & effect have ceased to operate
power: atmospheric effect
tension created by the dichotomy between the rational tone which the narrator adopts & the perverse,
irrational nature of his unconscious mind: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, William Wilson, The
Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher
the dark side of human existence
females: fragile, ethereal shadows
Fall of the house of Usher:
It’s a gothic horror about the collapse of a family. Poe is more philosophical about human experience. The story
turns to be a literal tale of an actual house that collapses, but it is a larger cycle of rebirth. The house is the
metaphor of the family and for degeneration. Usher and his sister, Lady Madeline dies and the whole family
dies out with them.
The Philosophy of Composition
It was written to explain how he composed ‘The Raven’. It counters the romantic assumption that the poet
works in a ‘fine frenzy of aesthetic intuition’. Poe offers a pain striking and procedural account of poetic
creation. The essay is more worthy for the centrality of the theory of unified effect, the conscious choice of a
constant emotional atmosphere that takes primary over incident, character and versification.
Rhyme and everything is created in order to achieve the desired effect. Literature is a serious hard work. The
most important thing in literature is creating beauty and this is the function of literature. A great poem should
not be long. The form can also express beauty and should have emotional effect on the reader. Style and the
unity of work are the most important thing in the poem.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
He’s from prominent Puritan family of judges, mariners & merchants. 1st he was an editor, he wants to find an
office and write. He was not a sociable person, he lived 20 years alone, in isolation. This fact has important
influences on his works. He doesn’t know mankind, people around him. He thought that living alone is a
punishment for sins. He spent half a year on Brook Farm, which was a form of members of a movement. They
were against some religious phenomenon and social difficulties of the period. They thought that man should
work physically during the day, and intellectual work comes at night. Only by uniting the intellect and the body
can achieve harmony. Hawthorne wrote a boo about Brook farm experiment: ‘The Blithdale Romance’.
Works: ‘Young Goodman Brown’, ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’, ‘Rappaccini's daughter’, ‘Doctor
Heidegger's Experiment’, ‘The Blithdale Romance’, ‘The House of the Seven Gables’, ‘The Scarlet Letter’
2 collections: Twice-Told Tales (1837) & Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
Rappaccini's Daughter
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "Rappaccini's Daughter" in 1844 for his collection of short stories Mosses from an
Old Manse (1846, 1854). Some readers consider "Rappaccini's Daughter" to be an allegorical tale, but offer
different interpretations as to the meaning of the allegory. Part fairy tale, part Gothic horror story, it is an
inspired fiction of creation and control, with many biblical and Miltonic echoes.
Summary
Beatrice Rappaccini, daughter of the infamous scientist Signor Giacomo Rappaccini in 16th Century Padua, Italy, is a beautiful, kind,
and innocent young woman. She has been isolated from all society and friendship by her father's diabolical knowledge of botanical
poisons and his experiment upon her. Signor Rappaccini raised rare poisonous plants in pursuit of medical knowledge and infected his
daughter with their poisons so that her very touch or breath can be fatal to another. Beatrice has an interlude of happiness when she
falls passionately but chastely in love with a science student, Giovanni Guasconti, who is renting rooms next door to Rappaccini's
marvelous but deadly garden. Although aware that Beatrice's touch or breath is deadly to flowers raised elsewhere, insects, and
lizards, Giovanni becomes enamored of Beatrice's sweetness, gaiety, and extraordinary beauty. Soon he realizes that he, too, has
become infected with the poisons. If he stays with Beatrice in the garden, he, too, will be deadly to all other humans, animals, insects,
or plant life. Cruelly, Giovanni accuses Beatrice of infecting him. His heartlessness, plus her father's evil plan to make his daughter
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deadly to all other living creatures, destroy Beatrice. She dies after taking a supposed antidote developed by Rappaccini's rival, Signor
Pietro Baglioni, who has attempted to use Giovanni to get the upper hand in the rivalry with Rappaccini.
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
He was a nay-sayer, pessimist, gloomy, dark & mysterious writer. He wrote about alienation, feeling of guilt.
His father had a failure in business and he died early. Melville had extensive voyages, all kinds of adventures in
the Pacific, in the Polynesian Islands. He was very timid. He didn't influence his age, he was unnoticed.
Politically he was the most radical of American Romanticists: oppression of every form was abominable for
him, dreamt of equality & social justice -- in the distant lands of the savages, in a utopia. Melville became a
sailor but he didn’t like the ship. He tried to describe different subjects of life. He wasn’t a transcendentalist and
nor a capitalist.
Bartleby the Scrivener
It wasn't successful; it is “more than blasphemous”.
 opposition between predestination & free will
 satirical indictment against Wall Street life (monotony, routine)
 allegory of Melville's own position as a writer (the 19th century American writer & his audience)
 individualism opposed to conformity & the fate of the nonconformist
 the Puritan, the Protestant work ethic disagreed with
 passive resistance
Bartleby tries to escape from reality of society, finally he dies. He is a casualty of modern life. He works in the
dead letters’ office. Nicknames are speaking names, not round characters. The narrator is an elderly lawyer.
Bartleby became his scrivener. Bartleby is asked to help proofread one of the documents he copied, but he
answers: “I would prefer not to.”
Once, the narrator discovers that he is living at the office. Bartleby continues to refuse his duty and he doesn’t
work. He gets into prison. He refused the narrator’s friendliness and he refuses to eat. That’s why he dies.
Realism and naturalism
Stephen Crane (1873-1900)
He was born in New Jersey. He had roots going back to Revolutionary war soldiers, clergymen, sheriffs judges
and farmers. Primarily he was a journalist, then writer of fiction, poetry, essays and plays. He was the first
conscious naturalist writer. The author of 'a new thing, in a new school' (H.G. Wells). Edward Garnett: 'the chief
impressionist of his day'.
 Impressionism, prose pointillism
 existentialism: ultimate questions about man's status who is left alone in the universe.
 determinism --- often biological
 no climax or anti-climax, monotonous quality of everyday life
 man's insignificance ↔ indifference of the universe
 style: often objective
 strong photographic surface, montage technique → Impressionism (use of colours)
 symbolism
 strongly influenced writers like Joseph Conrad & Hemingway
 'the clever school in literature', seeking a new literary credo of 'naturalism' & 'truth'
 England -- Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford, Wells, James, Edward Garnett
 obsessed with art & its relation to reality
‘The Open Boat’: short story.
 It most clearly exemplifies Naturalism – characters subject to the overwhelming forces of nature (sun, wind,
waves, sharks, surf, even a dying bird).
 It maximises the time while the men are on the edge of existence.
 unusual harmony – survival
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

expectation of some higher power (Fate) to care about their plight
differences between the men's wishes for a meaningful agency and the narrator's Naturalistic perspective.
11. Hawthorne and Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
He’s from prominent Puritan family of judges, mariners & merchants. 1st he was an editor, he wants to find an
office and write. He was not a sociable person, he lived 20 years alone, in isolation. This fact has important
influences on his works. He doesn’t know mankind, people around him. He thought that living alone is a
punishment for sins. He spent half a year on Brook Farm, which was a form of members of a movement. They
were against some religious phenomenon and social difficulties of the period. They thought that man should
work physically during the day, and intellectual work comes at night. Only by uniting the intellect and the body
can achieve harmony. Hawthorne wrote a boo about Brook farm experiment: ‘The Blithdale Romance’.
Works: ‘Young Goodman Brown’, ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’, ‘Rappaccini's daughter’, ‘Doctor
Heidegger's Experiment’, ‘The Blithdale Romance’, ‘The House of the Seven Gables’, ‘The Scarlet Letter’
2 collections: Twice-Told Tales (1837) & Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
Characteristics:
American authors turned with increased interest to native themes, but Hawthorne wrote about the early Puritan
times in New England. His themes are the moral conflicts in colonial NE, themes of guilt and secrecy,
intellectual and moral pride. (Irving's Knickerbockers stories, Cooper's Indian novels). He poses weighty
ethical problems. (Young Goodman Brown, The Maypole of Merry Mount, Rappaccini's daughter, Doctor
Heidegger's Experiment)
He stresses the symbolical, allegorical elements.
His characters are often the embodiments of psychological traits or moral concept. They are not flesh and
blood creatures. The characters are consciences in the face of sin not complete figures & have no previous
lives. For Hawthorne human life is a moral story. The characters commit a sin. They are rather consciences
in the face of sins. The study of human loneliness, loneliness means a guilt, sin or punishment. There’s a
connection b/w the inside and the outside of the character – the fullness of life is to be in harmony.
His works are obsessed by the problems of evil, sin and death.
External reality, nature, objects, tangible forms are merely symbols of a deeper, more ultimately spiritual
reality.
The origins of his viewpoint lead to Puritanism, although he wasn’t a Puritan. The Puritan concept of life is
condemned and the negation of life is seen in it. e.g. The House of the Seven Gables, introduction to The
Scarlet Letter.
He explores the boundary b/w outside and the subjected interpretation of the objective world.
Reality becomes a dream and dream becomes a reality.
Many authors said that Hawthorne was the 1st historical novelist but history is just the background for his works
as a portrait of moral elements.
Sin is important in Hawthorne’s works. Puritans don’t need to see sins, although it is attractive. Sinners have to
live alone in solitude. The major aim is to find social harmony. The most important sin is to lose harmony and
balance. If you went to modify natural balance you will be a sinner. He wrote 4 novels about the problems of
Puritan conduct: ‘The Scarlet letter’, ‘The House of the Seven Gables’, ‘The Blithdale Romance’,
‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’.
The Scarlet Letter (1851)
It is a tragic story of a woman’s shape and the cruel treatment she suffers at the hands of the Puritan society.
Hester Prynn has waited 2 years for her old husband to arrive, but he didn’t come. As he arrives, he finds Hester
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in the pillory, with a baby in her arms. She must wear a scarlet letter on her breast because of adultery. A:
adultery, atonement, art, America. The real subject of the novel is Hester’s punishment and repentance and
the psychological drama of her lover, Arthur Dimmsdale who punishes himself. Hester wins the respect of the
society. Her own strength and the moral cowardice of the man who allows her to face guilt and shame alone are
brought into sharp contrast in a dramatic and harrowing conclusion. She has to live in isolation near the seaside.
The story begins with the facts taken place earlier, it is about the confession of Hester’s life.
The novel is a psychological study of the results of punishment following a crime, of the corroding power of a
sin concealed & lived with for many years.
A symbol can be found in most of the works of Hawthorne which means ambiguous, omnipresent things. The
symbol is placed in every possible light, examined from every angle.
It was considered as a dangerous sex novel which can be poisonous for the young ladies.
The novel has so many paradoxes: choice to be free; civilization vs. wilderness.
The title refers to a custom of early Puritan times in New England – people found or considered to be sinners
were pilloried & had to wear publicly, on their clothes, the initial letter of their supposed crime.
The background is the Puritan society with strict rules. People found or considered to be sinners will pilloried
and had to wear publicly the initial letter of their supported crime. Puritans were a group of religious reformers
who arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s under the leadership of John Winthrop. In The Scarlet Letter,
Hawthorne uses the repressive, authoritarian Puritan society as an analogue for humankind in general.
Characters:








Hester Prynne - Hester is the book’s protagonist and the wearer of the scarlet letter. As a young woman, Hester married an
elderly scholar, Chillingworth, who sent her ahead to America to live but never followed her. While waiting for him, she had
an affair with a Puritan minister named Dimmesdale, after which she gave birth to Pearl. Her alienation puts her in the
position to make acute observations about her community, particularly about its treatment of women.
Pearl - Hester’s illegitimate daughter. She is a young girl with a moody, mischievous spirit and an ability to perceive things
that others do not.
Roger Chillingworth - He is actually Hester’s husband in disguise.
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale - Dimmesdale is a young man who achieved fame in England as a theologian and then
emigrated to America. In a moment of weakness, he and Hester became lovers.
Governor Bellingham – he is a wealthy, elderly gentleman who spends much of his time consulting with the other town
fathers.
Mistress Hibbins - a widow who lives with her brother, Governor Bellingham, in a luxurious mansion. She is commonly
known to be a witch who ventures into the forest at night to ride with the “Black Man.”
Reverend Mr. John Wilson - Boston’s elder clergyman, Reverend Wilson is scholarly yet grandfatherly. He is a
stereotypical Puritan father.
Narrator - The unnamed narrator works as the surveyor of the Salem Custom House some two hundred years after the
novel’s events take place. He discovers an old manuscript in the building’s attic that tells the story of Hester Prynne.
Summary
The Scarlet Letter opens with a long preamble about how the book came to be written. The nameless narrator was the surveyor of the
customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman,
Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. Hester
is being punished for adultery which he made with the priest Arthur Dimmsdale. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress,
and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. After
7 years Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that Chillingworth has probably guessed that
she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family.
Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving
the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his
lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses
him. Hester and Pearl leave Boston. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage
and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a
family of her own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet “A.”
Rappaccini's Daughter
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Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "Rappaccini's Daughter" in 1844 for his collection of short stories Mosses from an
Old Manse (1846, 1854). Some readers consider "Rappaccini's Daughter" to be an allegorical tale, but offer
different interpretations as to the meaning of the allegory. Part fairy tale, part Gothic horror story, it is an
inspired fiction of creation and control, with many biblical and Miltonic echoes.
Summary
Beatrice Rappaccini, daughter of the infamous scientist Signor Giacomo Rappaccini in 16th Century Padua, Italy, is a beautiful, kind,
and innocent young woman. She has been isolated from all society and friendship by her father's diabolical knowledge of botanical
poisons and his experiment upon her. Signor Rappaccini raised rare poisonous plants in pursuit of medical knowledge and infected his
daughter with their poisons so that her very touch or breath can be fatal to another. Beatrice has an interlude of happiness when she
falls passionately but chastely in love with a science student, Giovanni Guasconti, who is renting rooms next door to Rappaccini's
marvelous but deadly garden. Although aware that Beatrice's touch or breath is deadly to flowers raised elsewhere, insects, and
lizards, Giovanni becomes enamored of Beatrice's sweetness, gaiety, and extraordinary beauty. Soon he realizes that he, too, has
become infected with the poisons. If he stays with Beatrice in the garden, he, too, will be deadly to all other humans, animals, insects,
or plant life. Cruelly, Giovanni accuses Beatrice of infecting him. His heartlessness, plus her father's evil plan to make his daughter
deadly to all other living creatures, destroy Beatrice. She dies after taking a supposed antidote developed by Rappaccini's rival, Signor
Pietro Baglioni, who has attempted to use Giovanni to get the upper hand in the rivalry with Rappaccini.
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
He was a nay-sayer, pessimist, gloomy, dark & mysterious writer. He wrote about alienation, feeling of guilt.
His father had a failure in business and he died early. Melville had extensive voyages, all kinds of adventures in
the Pacific, in the Polynesian Islands. He was very timid. He didn't influence his age, he was unnoticed.
Politically he was the most radical of American Romanticists: oppression of every form was abominable for
him, dreamt of equality & social justice -- in the distant lands of the savages, in a utopia. Melville became a
sailor but he didn’t like the ship. He tried to describe different subjects of life. He wasn’t a transcendentalist and
nor a capitalist.
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life During a Four Months Residence in the Valley of the Marquesas
it is a travel book. He idealised the savages living in Typee. He described their world as an earthly paradise in
which honesty, affection and goodness reign. The cannibalism is not evil. The only victims are the foreigners,
the enemies of the tribe. The inhabitants of Typee are more humane & happier than white people, the civilised
inhabitants of the cities of Europe & American.
Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas
it is about the life of the aborigines of Tahiti. It is a higher level of civilisation, more frequent contact with
Europeans – corrupted life, rise in civilisation has led to a degeneration of primeval morals, of the loss of
savage virtues. There’s the dissatisfaction with contemporary European & American civilisation.
o Redburn
o White Jacket, or Life in a Man-of-War – Cooper's influence
o Mardi and the Voyage Thither, 1848 – semi-utopian novel, romantic allegory. Each island stands for a
different country in the world – good opportunity to pass detailed & highly critical comments on the
social conditions of these countries. The island of Serenia is his utopia.
Moby Dick, or the White Whale, 1851
It is the peak of Melville's creative art. It is an allegorical, symbolic problem novel. It was a failure when they
published it because people found it difficult to understand. He dedicated it to Hawthorne.
The external frame of the story is the story of an adventurous voyage.
Moby Dick, the white whale is treated at first as a real being. It grows into a symbol of God's anger, of the
wickedness of the world, of injustice tormenting human life – stronger than man.
Captain Ahab revolts against the tyranny of evil -- subordinates the voyage of his whaling ship & every man on
board to his desperate hunt. Ahab obsessed with the whale and finally everybody dies. They cannot do anything
against rotten society. The ultimate conviction: Man cannot conquer evil (precursors: Milton's Satan, Byron's
Manfred & Cain).
The figure of the cannibal is Queequeg -- idealisation of the savage; he is purer and better than the Western
characters.
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themes: the ambiguities & paradoxes in human experience, the intolerable burdens that uncertainty places upon
the individual.
Summary
Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He has made several voyages as a sailor but none as a
whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he stays in a whalers’ inn. Since the inn is rather full, he has to share a bed
with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg. They take a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling
industry. The ship, named Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day. Soon the ship is in warmer waters, and Captain Ahab
makes his first appearance on deck, balancing on his false leg. He announces his desire to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the legendary
great white whale who took his leg, because he sees this whale as the embodiment of evil. As the Pequod sails toward the southern tip
of Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted. During the hunt, a group of men emerges from the hold. The men’s leader is
an Fedallah. These men constitute Ahab’s private harpoon crew, smuggled aboard in defiance of Bildad and Peleg. Ahab hopes that
their skills and Fedallah’s prophetic abilities will help him in his hunt for Moby Dick. The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian
Ocean. A few whales are successfully caught and processed for their oil.
During another whale hunt, Pip, the Pequod’s black cabin boy, jumps from a whaleboat and is left behind in the middle of the ocean.
He goes insane as the result of the experience and becomes a crazy but prophetic jester for the ship. Soon after, the Pequod meets the
Samuel Enderby, a whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick. The Pequod kills
several more whales.
A typhoon hits the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire. Ahab takes this occurrence as a sign of imminent confrontation and
success, but Starbuck, the ship’s first mate, takes it as a bad omen and considers killing Ahab to end the mad quest.
Ahab’s fervent desire to find and destroy Moby Dick continues to intensify, and the mad Pip is now his constant companion. The
Pequod approaches the equator, where Ahab expects to find the great whale. The ship encounters two more whaling ships, the Rachel
and the Delight, both of which have recently had fatal encounters with the whale.
Ahab finally sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are launched, and Moby Dick attacks Ahab’s harpoon boat, destroying it. The next
day, Moby Dick is sighted again, and the boats are lowered once more. The whale is harpooned, but Moby Dick again attacks Ahab’s
boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his death.
On the third day, the boats are once again sent after Moby Dick, who once again attacks them. Ahab is caught in a harpoon line and
hurled out of his harpoon boat to his death. All of the remaining whaleboats and men are caught in the vortex created by the sinking
Pequod and pulled under to their deaths. Ishmael, who was thrown from a boat at the beginning of the chase, was far enough away to
escape the whirlpool, and he alone survives. He floats atop Queequeg’s coffin, which popped back up from the wreck, until he is
picked up by the Rachel, which is still searching for the crewmen lost in her earlier encounter with Moby Dick.
Later, Melville wrote short-stories: Benito Cereno; Bartleby the Scrivener; Billy Budd, Sailor
Bartleby the Scrivener
It wasn't successful; it is “more than blasphemous”.
 opposition between predestination & free will
 satirical indictment against Wall Street life (monotony, routine)
 allegory of Melville's own position as a writer (the 19th century American writer & his audience)
 individualism opposed to conformity & the fate of the nonconformist
 the Puritan, the Protestant work ethic disagreed with
 passive resistance
Bartleby tries to escape from reality of society, finally he dies. He is a casualty of modern life. He works in the
dead letters’ office. Nicknames are speaking names, not round characters. The narrator is an elderly lawyer.
Bartleby became his scrivener. Bartleby is asked to help proofread one of the documents he copied, but he
answers: “I would prefer not to.”
Once, the narrator discovers that he is living at the office. Bartleby continues to refuse his duty and he doesn’t
work. He gets into prison. He refused the narrator’s friendliness and he refuses to eat. That’s why he dies.
12. 19th century American poetry
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
He was a controversial character of his age.. his talkative but monotonous works are difficult to
understand. His main aim was simplicity. There weren’t any decoration, nor allusive thoughts. He couldn’t find
traditional rhyme schemes, rhythms, topic or acceptable technique in the poems, nor traditional figures.
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He was the most American poet, a redskin, yea-sayer (belief in the improvement of the world) writer.
He believed in USA being the best in the world.
He has considered to be a myth: Whitman the prophet, the laureate of democracy, the good grey
messenger of revolution, the American, Lincoln's elegist, champion of freedom, etc.
The poet is a Messiah, a prophet, a legend.
He was a creator of new forms and subject-matters for poetry. He was the 1st of the poets who could
write about sexual aspects of life.
He was the glory of democracy, the good grey messenger of revolution. In his opinion, poetry is a part
of your life. He linked America with private life. He was the representative of the naive, optimistic self-assured
America.
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“I and mine do not convince by argument, similes, rhymes, we convince by our presence.”
“The United States themselves are essentially the great poem.”
“amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, curious, rough, sensual – and with his hat on”
“The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it”
“Bearded, sub-burnt, grey-necked, forbidding, I have arrived.”
Major themes:
o sacredness of the individual self and of everything
o the over soul = omnipresent
o equality of all things and beings→ never subordinates & categorises, creates & names things & then
enlists them → kaleidoscopic, catalogue-style
o love, companionship
o transcendental resurrection, revolution of death
o nationalism
Works:
 1846: editor of the ‘Daily Eagle’ in Brooklyn
 1855 first volume of poems: ‘Leaves of Grass’ – contained 12 poems, printed by himself. He wrote an
explanatory preface to it. It was his great manifesto, announcing the arrival of a new kind of poetry.
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He rebels against sentimentalism, the bourgeois attitude to poetry.
He wrote open air poems (open to the world).
He was against prudishness in literature: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.”
He was a champion of free verse. His sources: The Bible, the Gilgamesh, the Book of the Dead.
influence of the Italian opera
rhyme is not primary, often neglected.
The uniformity of stanza pattern is abandoned.
parallelism, emphatic repetition of words & sounds, alliteration
rhetorical forms, exclamations, long enumerations
style: ranges from Biblical solemnity to slang, from standard English words to linguistic rarities,
arbitrarily mixed words, authentic coinages, words borrowed from Italian, Spanish, French
Leaves of Grass
He printed it alone. It was welcomed by transcendentalists. He wrote a Preface to it which explains the poet's
view of poetry & its purpose. He dated Leaves of Grass “the year 80 of the United States”.
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The poet's theme: “my own diversity”.
“I am large, I contain multitudes”
He was self identified with 'the soul' & that of God: “To be this incredible God I am!”
“Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from”
poet is God, poetry is everything.
The poetic message: “the greatness of Love and Democracy”
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the conventional distinction between good & evil → dissolved on the ground that anything that exists &
is felt is good:
“I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also,
I am myself just as much evil as good and my nation is – and I say there is in fact no evil,
Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or to me, as anything else”
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He discarded the traditional metrical & stanza patterns & created a verse-form of his own: unrhymed
free verse
loose rhythm in the long lines of his poems, resembling the roll of the waves on the seashore
tendency to iambic & trochaic lines
in perfect harmony with the subject-matters & style of his poetry
neglected rhyme, meter, stanza – relied heavily on other methods: alliteration, assonance, reiteration ,
parallelism
envelope-structure
The poem was considered as formless, amorphous.
the ego moves from observation to participation then identification
Themes & topics in Leaves of Grass:
o trying to define the world
o shaman, creator → assumes the role of creator, naming things = creating them, trying to recreate the
world as his own
o everything around him is part of him
o all-inclusive poetry, absorbs all the geographic diversity of the country → methods (lists, etc.)
o sexual frankness pervades his lines, hedonism, fertility of nature celebrated
o loveliness of the human body, male & female
o personal tone (I), sometimes even names himself: “I, Walt Whitman am the cosmos”
Many poems are written in memory of President Lincoln:
‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed’, ‘O Captain! My Captain!’
Song of Myself
It is the major poem in the ‘Leaves of Grass’. The poetic message is the greatness of democracy and equality.
The metrical use is in harmony with the theme. It is about the pantheistic realism: past and future is unified.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
She was a private person, who didn’t want to publicize herself. She was very shy , didn’t want to go out. She
lived in loneliness. She as very educated, kept up with the developments of the world. She lived a simple life
without excitement.
She wrote nearly 900 poems. She was only influenced by the Bible and by Shakespeare. But she read also
current literature: the Brontes, Dickens, Mr & Mrs Browning, George Eliot.
She was only interested in pure poetry. Her major themes are death, marriage and love. All of them are
connected together. There is a kind of puritanical introspection & self-analysis in her poems. Her central
experiences are unfulfilled love, the emptiness of existence. The simple fact of living gave her happiness. But
on the other hand, there’s the experience of Nothingness. She preferred to express her feelings & thoughts
indirectly.
There are no periods in her poetry, there’s no development.
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She wrote very short poems, mostly 4 to 8 lines.
laconic -- freedom in handling syntax & language
sacrificed musicality & formal perfection to content – content in more important
There’s no syntax and grammar; the ideas are not explained, structures are not finished, so it is hard to
understand.
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cryptic, riddle-like, economic, highly condensed, elliptic, telegram-like
verbal ambiguities, puns
lack of punctuation marks – telegram-like poems
Almost every word is emphasized.
Simple forms but only on the surface
untraditional rhymes: alliteration, eye-rhymes, female rhymes, consonance, assonance
13. The beginnings of realism: Twain, James, Bierce
Mark Twain = Samuel Clemens
He was a bard in the West of the Mississippi. He finished school at the age of 12. He was a river boat pilot in
Nevada. His nationality was Scottish. He invented a copy machine but he went bankrupt. He tried to save as
much money as possible. A lot of terrible things happened to him.
He describes the negative picture of the world:
 no civilisation
 paradise lost
 heaven and hell at the same level
 found and lost pleasure pictured in Tom Sawyer and Huck.
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He wrote correspondent humorous stories. His comedies join criticism, make people laugh.
He pictured the West-end men: barbarous white men who are not sophisticated.
He has several different faces in his works.
He wrote about civilized American capitalism as it is the way to rotten, corrupt world. He hated any
kind of tyranny.
He used everyday English. He has long episodes without conclusion.
The beautiful girl appears in all his works.
Main elements:
 direction changes
 social satire of the town in Mississippi
 Huck’s character
 fall of a black man
 moral prisoner- outsider who is not corrupted by church, infected by society, education
 black people are human beings as well.
Works:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Stories (1878)
A Tramp Abroad (1880)
The Stolen White Elephant (1882)
Life on the Mississippi (1883)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
Merry Tales (1892)
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)
How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897)
A Dog's Tale (1904)
Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
It is often considered to be Twain's masterpiece. Huckleberry Finn is the main character, and it is through his
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eyes that the South is revealed and judged. His companion, a runaway slave named Jim, provides Huck with
friendship and protection during their journey along the Mississippi. The novel begins with Huck himself
writing the story. He briefly describes what has happened to him since The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Summary
Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, both of whom took pains to raise him properly. Dissatisfied with his new
life, Huck runs away. Huck returns to the town dressed as a girl in order to gather some news. The woman then tells Huck that she
thinks Jim is hiding out on Jackson's Island. When Huck hears that, he immediately returns to Jim and together they leave the island.
They float downstream during the nights and hide during the days. Jim and Huck became close friends in the process. Their goal is to
reach Cairo, where they can take a steamship up the Ohio and into the free states.
A few nights after passing Cairo, a steamboat runs over the raft and forces Huck and Jim to jump overboard. Huck swims to shore
where his is immediately surrounded by dogs. He ends up being invited to live with a family called the Grangerfords. Huck is treated
well and soon discovers that Jim is hiding in a nearby swamp. Everything is peaceful until an old feud between the Grangerfords and
the Shepherdsons is rekindled. Within a day all of the males in the family are killed, including Huck's best friend Buck. Huck uses the
chaos to run back to Jim, and together they start downstream again.
Soon thereafter two humbugs named the Duke and the King are rescued by Huck. They immediately take over the raft and start to
travel downstream, making money by cheating people in the various towns along the river. Further downriver the two con men learn
about a large inheritance. They pretend to be British uncles of three recently orphaned girls in order to receive the money.
Huck sneaks into the King's room and steals the large bag of gold that came with the inheritance. Huck encounters Mary Jane Wilkes,
the eldest of the girls, and sees her crying. He decides to tell her the entire story about the two cons. She is infuriated by the story but
agrees to leave the house for a few days so that Huck can escape.
Farther down the river the King and Duke sell Jim into slavery by claiming he is a runaway slave from New Orleans. Huck decides to
rescue Jim, and daringly walks up to the house where Jim is being kept. Luckily, the house is owned by none other than Tom
Sawyer's Aunt Sally. Huck immediately pretends to be Tom. When Tom arrives, he pretends to be his younger brother Sid Sawyer.
Together he and Huck contrive how to help Jim escape from his "prison," namely an outdoor shed.
They get Jim and start to run away. The local farmers follow them, shooting as they run after them. Huck, Jim, and Tom manage to
escape, but unfortunately Tom gets shot in the leg. Huck returns to the town to get a doctor, whom he sends over to where Tom is
hiding with Jim. The doctor returns with Tom on a stretcher and Jim in chains.
Aunt Polly appears, having travelled all the way down the river. She realized there was something wrong when her sister wrote her
that both Tom and Sid had arrived. Aunt Polly tells them that Jim is indeed a free man, because the Widow passed away and freed
him in her will. Huck and Tom give Jim forty dollars for being such a good prisoner and letting them free him. Aunt Sally offers to
adopt Huck, but he refuses on the grounds that he had tried that sort of lifestyle once before. Huck then concludes the novel by stating
that he would never have undertaken the book had he known it would take so long to write it.
Henry James (1843-1916)
He was the son of an Irish immigrant. He was a cosmopolitan novelist. „literary art makes life, makes interest,
makes importance.” His fiction and criticism is the most highly conscious, sophisticated and difficult to its era.
He created a high country but couldn’t make culture. A great deal of history is missing. He felt he was an
outsider. For him the civil war was an awaken of the nation. He wrote articles in diff lit magazines. He decided
to go to England. Being American is to have the possibility to learn much valuable than Europeans.
For him, there were 3groups of people: American, European, group of Americans in Europe.
In his works consciousness is in the centre. The shift to modernism is what count. He is not very tragic.
During Henry James's youth, James came into contact with many of the literary greats of the time due to his
family's prominence. When he was a young boy, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited often and he once was
introduced to William Thackeray. As he grew older, he became acquainted with Henry Adams, Henry Cabot
Lodge, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John La Farge, and Thomas Sergeant Perry. James was first published in 1864
at twenty-one when his first story, "A Tragedy of Error," was printed in Continental Monthly.
Works:
 ‘Transatlantic Sketches’
 ‘The American’
 ‘Daisy Miller’
 ‘The Portrait of a Lady’
 ‘The princess Casamassima’
 ‘The Bostonians’
 ‘The wings of dove’
 ’The Ambassadors’
 ‘The golden bowl’
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New subject matters:
 feminism and social reform: ‘The princess Casamassima’
 political intrigue: ‘The Bostonians’
 He returned to international topics: ‘The wings of dove’; ’The Ambassadors’; ‘The golden bowl’
Daisy Miller:
It was the first work James published which brought about a greater recognition of his witty writing style and
narrator obstructed character development. Its genre is novella.
Summary
In the little town of Vevey, Switzerland, Winterbourne, a young American gentleman, vacationed at the Trois Couronnes hotel. He
retired to the garden for coffee. A small boy came upon him with a long alpenstock. He was called Randolph. His sister, Anne P.
Miller = Daisy was a beautiful girl. She is a young lady from Schenectady, New York where her father is a wealthy businessman. She
has traveled to Europe with her mother and brother.
Winterbourne fall in love with her. But Daisy was a lower class girl and she has relations with Italians. She was the girlfriend of
Giovanelli. She became ill with fever. Shortly after, she died. Giovanelli told Winterbourne that Daisy was the most innocent, and that
Daisy never would have married Giovanelli.
Characters:
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Winterbourne: The character of "central observing consciousness" through whom we learn most of the events of the story.
He is a young American man who had lived and schooled in Geneva most of his life.
Daisy Miller: The title character of the novella. She is a young lady from Schenectady, New York where her father is a
wealthy businessman. She has travelled to Europe with her mother and brother. She is a symbol of America's natural
innocence and looser modes of custom. She is a type, representing the American flirt.
Mrs. Miller: Daisy's mother, she is a model of America's loosely controlling mother figure.
Randolph Miller: Daisy's brother, Randolph is a young boy who introduces Daisy to Winterbourne.
Mrs. Costello: Winterbourne's aunt, Mrs. Costello is the typical older European woman of prestige.
Mrs. Walker: An American woman Winterbourne was acquainted with in Geneva.
Eugenio: The Miller's courier, he is a European servant employed to aid and lead the family through Europe.
Mr. Giovanelli: With a name meaning young man in Italian, Giovanelli fulfils this type in order to establish an expressive
contrast with the innocent and natural Daisy.
Winterbourne's friend: The friend tells Winterbourne how he saw Daisy in the Dorio Palace Gallery.
Ambrose Bierce
He was a new realistic critic; the chronicler of the Civil war; one of the new kind of writers be realism and
romanticism; painter; Humanist. He stole money and he has to leave. He became soldier and writer. He
experienced everything on his body in the war. He hated all kinds of institution. His son committed suicide, his
wife divorced, he disappeared mysteriously.
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He copied old tradition of many writers, but he hated it.
He wrote different genres: articles, essays..
His literary models were Twain and Voltaire.
He was famous about his wit and satire.
93 short stories: supernatural short stories ( twist, sudden change, hypnoses, dislocation); civil war story
( very short, every word is imp).
He was compared with Poe’s gothic stories.
Very detailed description of the body.
Illusion (childhood, innocence) + reality (civil war- rottening)-> there is a contrast b/w these worlds.
The result perception in different readers are of everything: all readers perceive it differently.
His most famous work is ‘Chickamauga’, which describes a little boy’s experience of the war. It is a short
story.
Setting: A homestead during the Civil war at Chickamauga along the blue trail.
Characters:
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Child- A six-year-old deaf-mute.
Mother- Mother of the child.
Father- Father of the child, teaches him a little about war.
Soldiers- Dying soldiers that cross the path of the innocent child.
Rabbit- An innocent bunny that scares the child
Summary
The tale of a young six-year old that transcends from a naive child playing innocently to a person with knowledge of the world’s
cruelties. The child’s only perceptions of the outside world, especially war, comes from the picture books that his father shows him.
Armed with the images from these books the child travels into the forest to experience the world for himself. In the forest, he comes
into contact with a bunny, but does not realize that the bunny cannot hurt him and runs out of fear. The child eventually tires and finds
a place to sleep. During the child’s nap, a battle begins around him. The boy awakens to find dying soldiers clawing their way
forward, to the river to die. The child, unaware of what has happened, tries to play with the dying soldiers. However, they do not
cooperate, so the child decides to lead them. As the child approaches his home, even though the sun has already set, the sky becomes
the colour of orange. The child does not note the brightness of the sky until he sees his home ablaze. On closer inspection the child
sees his mother, lying dead with a hole in her head. The child lets out a cry, a cry like the sound of the devil. At this point Bierce
informs the reader that the child is a deaf-mute.
14. Realism and Naturalism
Realism in American Literature
After the Civil War many changes came into society. Frontier started to disappear. America’s pragmatism is the
new character. The population is fast-growing as a result of immigration. The transcontinental railroad was
built. Urbanisation increased, economic and business growth appeared – development of the middle class.
Working class became organised. There were great strikes and acute class works b/w working class and middle
class. An era of the millionaire manufacturer & the speculator developed. Darwinian evolution & the “survival
of the fittest” seemed to sanction the unethical methods of the successful business tycoon.
Realism = international movement, roots in post-1848 Paris, from the 1850s the signs are evident (Melville &
Hawthorne)
Realism emerged in the 80s & 90s. A 2nd generation of writers was influenced by European Naturalism,
Impressionism & decadence. Realism gives the illusion that it reflects life & the social world as it seems to the
common reader, broadly speaking: "faithful representation of reality", "verisimilitude". It is a reaction against
Romanticism.
 There’s an interest in scientific method: "Where Romantics transcend the immediate to find the ideal,
and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions,
realists centre their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the
specific action, and the verifiable consequence." (A Handbook to Literature)
 Reality is in comprehensive details
 Characters are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class
 class is important
 events are plausible, avoids the sensational elements of romances.
 Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic.
 There’s objectivity in presentation.
representatives: Rebecca Harding Davis; Henry James; Mark Twain; William Dean Howells
Naturalism is a special selection of subject method but also special philosophy.
French Naturalism is well-defined & coherent theory: rejected free will, documentary & scientific exposition of
human behaviour. The influence of Zola is influential.
In America, it is reaction against the realist fiction of the 1870s & 1880s: middle-class or local colour topics,
taboos on sexuality & violence. It concentrates on the industrialised American city.
 social Darwinism: application of evolutionary theories to human societies - Crane, London & Dreiser
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literary expression of determinism
 documentary detail -- Dreiser & Crane newspapermen
 bleak, realistic depictions of lower-class life, denies religion as a motivating force in the world & perceives the
universe as a machine -- society = blind machine, godless & out of control
 man = higher order animal, character & fortunes determined by 2 forces: heredity & environment
literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity & detachment to human beings
character can be studied through their relationship to their surroundings
objective study of human beings: laws behind the forces that govern their lives might be studied & understood
character: frequently ill-educated or lower-class characters. They had to interested in science.
Free will and individualism are illusions.
Nature is very important, it is the physical representation of God.
Setting is frequently urban.
Life is a survival, a basic flight.
Man is against nature and against himself as well.
Representatives: Theodore Dreiser, Franck Norris, Jack London, Stephen Crane…
Stephen Crane (1873-1900)
He was born in New Jersey. He had roots going back to Revolutionary war soldiers, clergymen, sheriffs judges
and farmers. Primarily he was a journalist, then writer of fiction, poetry, essays and plays. He was the first
conscious naturalist writer. The author of 'a new thing, in a new school' (H.G. Wells). Edward Garnett: 'the chief
impressionist of his day'.
 Impressionism, prose pointillism
 existentialism: ultimate questions about man's status who is left alone in the universe.
 determinism --- often biological
 no climax or anti-climax, monotonous quality of everyday life
 man's insignificance ↔ indifference of the universe
 style: often objective
 strong photographic surface, montage technique → Impressionism (use of colours)
 symbolism
 strongly influenced writers like Joseph Conrad & Hemingway
 'the clever school in literature', seeking a new literary credo of 'naturalism' & 'truth'
 England -- Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford, Wells, James, Edward Garnett
 obsessed with art & its relation to reality
Works:
 first novel: ‘Maggie: A Girl of the Streets’ – it is a story of a poor, sensitive young girl, whose uneducated,
alcoholic parents utterly fail her. It is a naturalist novel: earthly subject-matter, objective, scientific style, devoid
of moralising.
 ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ – civil war novel.
 fragmentariness, conflicting rumours & dramatically changing rhythms
 no glorification of the battle
 horror & suffering shown -- reflected in the psychological reactions of an average soldier
 about the pursuit of experience: Henry Fleming seeks a heroic initiation into 'life'
 the soldiers are described as the parts of the body of a huge creature but not like individuals.
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‘The Open Boat’: short story.
It most clearly exemplifies Naturalism – characters subject to the overwhelming forces of nature (sun, wind,
waves, sharks, surf, even a dying bird).
It maximises the time while the men are on the edge of existence.
unusual harmony – survival
expectation of some higher power (Fate) to care about their plight
differences between the men's wishes for a meaningful agency and the narrator's Naturalistic perspective.
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‘The Red Badge of Courage’
one young soldier, Henry Fleming, doesn’t engage in the debate. He wanted to be a hero. He doesn’t care who he
fights with, just that he will not ran away. He talks with two soldiers, Jim Conklin and Wilson. The regiment
marches through other union armies, dressed in blue. Henry’s thoughts are mixed. He wants to be at home but he
feels overwhelming need to see the battle. Soon they are facing an actual conflict. Men fall around Henry. Soon,
the enemy retreats.
There’s another rebel attack. Henry drops his weapon and runs out from the battle. He goes through the forest. He
runs into Jim, who is wounded, soon he dies. A man hits Henry with his riffle so he becomes injured. Wilson
bandages his wound. In the next battle, Henry fights as he is crazy. The regiment in blue fights against the
regiment in grey, and they win. Henry first feels pride.
Summary
As The Red Badge of Courage opens, members of a newly recruited regiment are debating a fresh rumor‹they are finally going to
move out on the next day and engage the enemy. One young soldier, named Henry Fleming, does not engage in the debate and instead
reflects on what will become of him when he get to battle. Will he run or will he stand and fight bravely. He enlisted because he
wanted to be a hero, thinking of Greek epics. His own mother, however, was not interested in such ideas, and discouraged him from
enlisting. When he finally did, she did not have an impassioned speech for him. She merely says that if he is ever in a situation where
he will be killed or do something wrong, he should go with his feelings. With these words, Henry left his home and entered his army
duty.
He had not seen his foes yet, save a conversation with one across a riverbank late one night. The veterans tell them of gray, mad,
rampaging hordes; but he does not trust their tales very much. However, he does not care who he fights, just that he will not run away.
He is panicked at the proposition. He talks with other soldiers‹the tall one (named Jim Conklin) and the loud one (named Wilson).
Both believe in themselves enough to say that they will fight as hard as they can, but neither goes as far to say that they definitely will
not run.
The regiment does not move out on the rumored day, but soon thereafter. They march through other Union armies, dressed in blue.
Their youth shows, as their uniforms still seem so new they gleam. Soon after, though, the tall soldier kicks Henry awake. The
regiment is gathered and the men run down wood roads. During this time, Henry's thoughts are mixed and various. He feels that he
should have never enlisted and misses his home. The next moment, he feels the overwhelming need to see a battle taking place. After
he does so, upon cresting a hill and looking at a skirmish down below, he watches in quiet fascination, but does not desire to
participate. Then, after the men march more and he sees his first dead body, he begins to suspect that they are being led to their
slaughter, to be sacrificed to a red war god. He wants to tell his mates, but is afraid of their jibes and scoffing in return.
Soon, the regiment is facing an actual conflict. Wilson, the loud soldier, is so certain he will die that he gives Henry a packet of letters
to send to his family. As they line up to fight, rumors fly again about the state of their army. Smoke and noise from guns rise around
them. Bullets and shells whistle towards them. A regiment in front, already engaging the enemy, is beaten and flees the battleground.
The youth imagines that they were beaten by a monster. He resolves to get a view of this monster, even if he very well may flee
himself. The regiment is soon engaged. They work feverishly, firing and reloading. The smoke chokes them and makes their eyes red.
Henry feels full of rage. Men fall occasionally around him. Soon, the enemy retreats. The men relax. Henry feels satisfied that he has
overcome the trials of war.
However, the men have not rested for long when the Rebels attack again. They fight fiercely once more. Henry feels different this
time. He feels that the monster of war, a red and green dragon, will come through the gray smoke and swallow him. After a few men
around him flee, the youth's own fear gets the better of him. He drops his weapon and runs from the battle. As he goes through the
forest and past cannons, he is sure that the dragon is pursuing him and that these others fighting against it are fools, going like
lemmings to their death. However, as he finally stops by an officer, he finds that his regiment won the battle. He is thunderstruck. He
realizes that he has done something very wrong, though he tries to justify it to himself that it was through superior powers of
observation. He imagines the insults he will have to bear when returning to camp and attempts to get as far away from them and the
monster of war as possible. He walks into a forest. The noises of the conflict gradually become fainter. He feels more at peace, that
his actions are more in congress with nature. However, as he goes, he encounters a corpse, with a faded uniform. The glassy-eyed
stare grabs him for a moment in fear. Then the youth slowly turns away, creeping from the body; then he turns and runs away as fast
as he can.
He goes through the forest and into the open. He finds a road and walking upon it a procession of wounded soldiers. They are
suffering and moaning as they limp down the road. A tattered soldier, wounded twice, tries to talk to Henry about the battle and where
the youth has been shot. These questions bring his embarrassment and guilt out. He tries to run away in the crowd. He eventually runs
into Jim Conklin, the tall soldier, wounded and near death. Henry tries to help him, but his friend is too close to death. The tattered
man comes up to assist as well, but Jim runs off into the fields, where he staggers and falls over dead. The tattered man tries to talk
more with Henry, telling him stories of men he knows in the army and how he became wounded. Again, the man asks Henry where
his wounds are located. The youth tells him to not bother him, and slips away from the man, leaving him blubbering and wondering
about in the field.
As he continues on, Henry eventually encounters a retreating band of carts and horses. This makes him feel temporarily good; if the
whole army is retreating, his flight will not be so suspicious. However, soon a column of troops comes up the road. Henry looks at
these men as brave, and he soon gets the will to fight. However, more thoughts come into his head. He considers that he is low and
guilty. His comrades will see him as a worm. These thoughts make him thirst and ache. He tries to justify his flight in his head, but his
emotions betray him. He wishes he were dead.
Soon, the column comes running out of the grove into which they marched. All is chaos and pandemonium. Henry is shocked to see
that these heroic figures have been so quickly turned into scampering animals. He tries to stop one to ask him what happened, but only
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blubbers his words. The man hits him on the head with his rifle. Henry is dazed and injured. He wonders in the dark until a kind man
helps him find his regiment.
There, no harsh words await him. Wilson and another soldier bandage his wound, which Henry claims is from a bullet. The others do
not seem to care that much, just that he gets attention and rest, which he does. When he awakes, he finds that his friend, Wilson, is not
so much the loud soldier he once was. He takes special care of Henry, is reflective, and breaks up fights around him. The youth
notices this change from irritation to tranquility. However, he feels that he has a weapon against his friend‹the packet of letters he
gave in haste at the beginning of the battle the day before. Fearful of being discovered as a coward, he imagines that with this packet
he can ward off any shame that questioning from Wilson would give him. However, Wilson sheepishly asks for the packet before
Henry can do anything. While he maintains a haughty air, the youth can say no barbs against his friend as he hands the envelope back
to him.
The regiment today moves from one embankment to another, always taking cover and seeing some of battle, but not actually
participating in it. The youth is now talkative, perhaps overly so. He tries to show his pride, and is silenced for it; for he knows that he
in fact fled battle yesterday and was not shot. A sarcastic soldier cuts him down and later his lieutenant tells him to stop talking and
start fighting. The regiment does this soon enough. They are attacked by the Rebels and repel them. This battle, Henry fights as if he
were crazed, shooting at them long after the battle is finished. This makes some of the men look at him with curiosity. Henry regards
himself as a barbarian.
Soon, Wilson and Henry take an opportunity to get water for the regiment. After they search for a stream unsuccessfully, they
encounter a general and his staff in a road. In the midst of the conversation, they hear that their regiment of "mule drivers" is going to
charge the enemy, with perhaps many casualties. They return to their fellow soldiers with this news, but do not tell them that the
general doubted that they will survive.
The charge begins soon. It takes the regiment a minute, but they are soon running with haste at the enemy. Many are shot in the
process. Henry now feels that he sees things clearly. He and the other men go into a frenzy. But eventually, they stop. The lieutenant
yells, screams, and curses at them to continue. Wilson breaks the spell by firing his rifle. Others soon follow his lead. Soon, Henry
sees the flag of his army, which revives him. As his color sergeant is soon shot, he leaps for the flag, along with Wilson, to hold it for
himself. The battle rages on, with Henry holding the flag aloft. The men dig in slightly, as their numbers diminish. Henry is full of
rage. He is thinking little, only feeling his anger. The lieutenant and Henry are both trying to get the men to continue. Soon, the officer
sees that the men in gray are trying to advance onto their position. Automatically, the regiment fires into them, causing the enemy to
retreat. Satisfied, they go back to their lines.
When they return, they are greeted with jeers from the veterans and reprimands from the higher officers. They stopped short of an
impressive charge, they learn. The men, who had been so proud of themselves, find that their efforts are not seen as sufficient, let
alone brave. Soon, though, Wilson and Henry here a story through one of their fellow soldiers that a colonel and lieutenant were
discussing their particular prowess in battle. This fills their hearts with pride.
Soon, the battle is on again. The men in blue charge the men in gray once more. Again, the regiment finds itself in open territory,
peppered by bullets. Henry is intent on standing upright, keeping the flag strong, though the men around him are still falling. Then the
order comes to charge. The men to not shirk; they fix bayonets and wildly charge toward the gray smoke of the enemy's guns. On the
other side, the youth knows, are the men who made this. He must see them. As they approach the enemy lines, the opposing flag
comes into view. Wilson leaps at it and grabs it from the hands of the just-shot color sergeant. There are four prisoners of war, all
looking very young and very human in their own faces. The men in blue are victorious.
Henry, upon walking away with the regiment, first feels pride in his accomplishments of battle. Then he remembers his flight and his
treatment of the tattered man, and guilt riles up in him again. He is concerned his mate will see it. However, he eventually lets this go.
He now sees his previous thoughts on war and battle as silly and is happy to find himself doing so. He has made it through the trials of
battle, from the red and the black, and is changed into a man. The gold (instead of the yellow) of the sun streams through the clouds as
he marches with his regiment.
Jack London (1876-1916)
He was a poor, self-taught worker from California. He became famous by his 1st collection of stories: ‘The son
of the Wolf’. He was interested in political theory, especially socialism. He wrote about the great questions of
life & death, the struggle to survive with dignity & integrity. His stories of adventure based on his own firsthand
experiences at sea, in Alaska, in the fields & factories of California. He always sympathised with the underdog,
was against injustice or oppression of any kind.
He was a fiery public speaker, lecturer on socialism & other economic & political topics.
 His politics were shaped in the 1890s by the depression, labour disputes & the Socialist Labour Party.
 He escaped from the city way of life (“man-trap”).
 anti-capitalism, atavism, Darwinism, determinism, social Darwinism are influential
 He wrote naturalistic tales where the individual is tested through his escape.
 He developed the code of the North: to survive, one must be as tough as external conditions, deeds are more
significant than words, one must avoid pride & arrogance, must be unselfish & tolerant.
Works:
o autobiographical novel Martin Eden – depicts the inner stresses of the American dream.
o The Law of Life illustrates his version of Naturalism
o The Son of the Wolf
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o The Call of the Wild
o The Sea-Wolf
o White Fang
15. Regionalism and women's writing
Regionalism
The characters, dialect, customs, topography and other features particular to a specific region is characteristic to the works
of regionalism. It was the period after the Civil War - end of the 19th century.
 setting: emphasis frequently on nature and the limitations it imposes; frequently remote and inaccessible;
integral to the story
 character is concerned with the character of a district or region rather than with the individual character types
sometimes stereotypical
 adhere to the old ways: dialect, personality traits central to the region
 plot: nothing happens; revolves around the community and its rituals
 themes: antipathy to change; nostalgia for a lost golden age; celebration of community; conflict b/w. urban
ways and old-fashioned rural values
 representatives: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin (1850-1904)
= Katherine O'Flaherty was of Irish & French descent. Her father was an Irish immigrant, one of the founders of
the Pacific Railroad. Her mother was a member of the prominent French-Creole community.
She had many female mentors throughout her childhood.
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Her forbidden subjects: rocky marriages, rebellious women, act of adultery (in The Storm). She confronted the
taboos about sex & marriage.
suffocating narrowness that dominated the American literary scenes in her view.
She was “a pioneer in her own time, in her portrayal of women's desires of independence and control of their
own sexuality”
She showed no affinity for the noble morality & complacent optimism represented by many writers of her age
(James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier)
She wrote historical romances which were popular
Her readers were shocked about the defence of adultery, morbid & disgusting, 'poison' → St. Louis libraries
banned it from circulation.
Works:
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first novel (published by herself, unsuccessful): At Fault
The Storm
Desiree's Baby: in1893, she published one of her most famous short stories in Vogue magazine
The Story of an Hour: most famous short story
her masterpiece: The Awakening
The Awakening:
Kate Chopin's contemporaries were shocked by her depiction of a woman with active sexual desires, who dares to leave
her husband and have an affair. Instead of condemning her protagonist, Chopin maintains a neutral, non-judgmental tone
throughout and appears to even condone her character's unconventional actions. Kate Chopin was socially ostracized after
the publication of her novel, which was almost forgotten until the second half of the twentieth century.
The Awakening is often considered in association with one of three distinct movements: the local-color movement,
naturalism, and modern-day feminism.
Summary
The protagonist Edna Pontellier learns to think of herself as an autonomous human being and rebels against social norms by leaving
her husband Leónce and having an affair. The first half of the novel takes place in Grand Isle, an island off the coast of Louisiana.
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Over the summer it is inhabited by upper-class Creole families from New Orleans who go there to escape from the heat and to relax
by the ocean. During the week, the women and children stay on the island, while the men return to the city to work.
During the summer, Edna Pontellier meets a young gallant named Robert Lebrun. The two spend almost all their time together. Due
to Robert's constant presence, Edna starts to experience a change within herself: she begins to develop a sense of herself as a whole
person, with unique wants, interests, and desires. She realizes that she is not content to be simply a wife and a mother, and she begins
to assert herself to her husband. Edna's moments of self-discovery are closely tied to the ocean. At her great moment of awakening,
she suddenly learns how to swim.
When Robert realizes that he and Edna are becoming too close, he suddenly departs the island and goes to Vera Cruz for business
prospects.
The Pontelliers return to the city, where Leónce busies himself with making money and purchasing extravagant possessions for their
home on Esplanade Street. At first Edna settles into her usual routine, receiving callers on Tuesday afternoons and accompanying her
husband to plays and musical events on other nights. Edna is simply deciding to do what she wants, regardless of what her husband or
society may think. She continues to think about Robert, and on some days she is happy and on some days she is sad. Edna discovers
that Robert has been writing letters to Mademoiselle Reisz about her, and she starts to visit her frequently to read the letters and to
listen to her friend play the piano. Leónce has extended business in New York, and the children go to stay with their grandmother in
the country. Edna enjoys her new-found freedom. She eats solitary, peaceful dinners, visits her friends, and does quite a bit of
painting. She also goes to the racetracks to bet on horses and begins spending a lot of time with Alcée Arobin, a charming young man
who has the reputation of being a philanderer.
She wants to be independent and doesn't want her husband to have any sort of claim on her. That same day she hears that Robert is
returning to New Orleans, and she admits for the first time that she is in love with him. She continues her affair with Arobin, yet she
does so without forming any real attachment to him. One day she runs into Robert at Mademoiselle Reisz' apartment, and their
meeting is somewhat strained and awkward. Robert keeps himself at a distance. They profess their love to each other, and Robert
expresses his desire to marry her. But sadly, however, she finds Robert gone forever.
The novel closes with Edna returning to Grand Isle. Having already decided on her course of action, she walks down to the beach and
stands naked in the sun. Without really thinking, she begins to swim out into the ocean. She thinks triumphantly about how she has
escaped her children and their claim on her and continues to swim until she is exhausted. Memories of her childhood flash before her
eyes as she slowly drowns.
Characters
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Edna Pontellier: The protagonist of the novel
Leónce Pontellier: Edna's husband
Raoul and Etienne Pontellier: Edna and Leónce's toddler children.
The Colonel: Edna's father.
Robert Lebrun: A young flirt, Robert attaches himself to Edna Pontellier during the summer.
Madame Lebrun: Robert's mother.
Victor Lebrun: Robert's younger brother.
Alcée Arobin: a fashionable young man. He attaches himself to Edna, and they have an affair.
Madame Ratignolle: the epitome of motherhood and femininity. She is sympathetic to Edna and frequently gives her unsolicited advice.
Mademoiselle Reisz: A pianist.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
She was born as Edith Jones. She grew up partly in Europe. She was a descended from a wealthy, established family.
She saw the decline of this cultivated group & in her view the rise of the boorish noveau-riche business families.
It becomes the background of many of her novels.
 She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer prize for her novel The Age of Innocence (picture of women's
suffocating conditions)
 During WWI she reports for American newspapers, active in fund-raising activities – e.g. Children Of
Flanders Rescuer Committee.
 She contrasts Americans & Europeans in his works.
 pessimism about achieving success or happiness
 her central subjects: the conflict between social & individual fulfilment, repressed sexuality, the manners of
old families & the nouveau riche, who made their fortunes in more recent years; women in turn-of-the-century
America, their loveless marriages, social responsibilities, expensive tastes & longing for freedom.
Works
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The House of Mirth
The Age of Innocence
The Custom of the Country
Summer
Ethan Frome
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
She was a prominent social activist, leading theorist of the women's movement. She examined the role of women
in society: Women and Economics and other non-fiction books.
 There are feminist ideas in her novels & short stories.
 independent & reform-minded great aunts – such as Harriet Beecher Stowe (writer of Uncle Tom's Cabin)
 severe depression → rest cure of complete bed rest & limited intellectual activity: The Yellow Wallpaper
 She edited feminist publications, assisted in the planning of the California Women's Congresses of 1894-95,
helped found the Women's Peace Party. She toured the US & England lecturing on women's rights & on
labour reform.
 She anticipates literary experiments with style introduced in the Modernist movement:
 stream-of-consciousness writings & experiments with unreliable narrators (William Faulkner,
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf)
 richly symbolic imagery: anticipates the structured symbolism of the imagist poets & high
modernists (Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot)
 journal format & its ambiguous ending.
 So she uses a self-conscious literary style & a rejection of didacticism – Modernism.
 domestic realism, didacticism, political & social lectures by the characters & the narrator
 rejected by the editor of The Atlantic Monthly
 propriety a central motif: “There comes John's sister. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes
for no better profession.”
 criticism of the institution of marriage: a means of oppression -- Women and Economics
 the theme of woman as prisoner
Women and Economics: women's secondary status in society. It is not the result of biological inferiority but
rather of culturally enforced behaviour.
The Man-Made World
It is an essay. It portrayed women struggling to achieve self-sufficiency or adapting to newfound independence.
The
story provides models showing women how to change their lives or redesign society.
The Yellow Wallpaper
In 1887, two years after giving birth to her daughter, Charlotte Perkins Gilman started suffering from neurasthenia, an
emotional disorder characterized by fatigue and depression. Gilman found she was growing slowly insane and eventually
abandoned the doctor's advice. Fortunately, it worked, and soon after she wrote an exaggerated version of her experience
(she never had hallucinations) as "The Yellow Wallpaper."
Characters
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Narrator: The narrator, whose name we learn at the end is Jane, is married to John and dominated by him. As she recuperates with neurasthenia
in a room in a rented mansion, he does not allow her to do anything but rest, and especially forbids her from the creative work of writing. She
finds solace in her journal and, as her stay wears on, the yellow wallpaper in her room.
John: John, a practical physician, is married to the narrator, but he treats her more like an infant.
Woman in the wallpaper: Although the narrator eventually believes she sees many women in the yellow wallpaper, she centres on one. The
woman appears trapped within the bar-like pattern of the wallpaper, and she shakes the pattern as she tries to break out.
Jennie: John's sister, Jennie is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper who wants nothing else out of life.
Mary: The nanny, Mary takes care of the narrator and John's baby.
Summary
The story described too systematically domesticated female oppression in late 19th-century America.
The narrator and her physician husband, John, have rented a mansion for the summer so she can recuperate from neurasthenia. The room
has yellow wallpaper, which the narrator hates. Her irritation with the wallpaper grows. She becomes more and more anxious and
depressed. The wallpaper provides her only stimulation as she studies its confusing patterns. The image of a woman stooping down and "creeping"
(crawling) around clarifies each day. She becomes paranoid that her husband, John and John’s sister, Jenny are interested in the wallpaper
too. The narrator's health improves as her interest in the wallpaper deepens. She thinks the "yellow smell" of the wallpaper has spread over the house.
The narrator believes she has seen the woman creeping about outside surreptitiously in the sunlight. The narrator intends to peel off the wallpaper
before she leaves the house in two days. At night, the narrator helps the shaking woman in the wallpaper by peeling off the wallpaper halfway around
the room. The next day, Jennie is mildly shocked, but understands the desire to peel off the ugly wallpaper. The next night, the narrator locks her room
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and continues stripping the wallpaper. She hears shrieks within the wallpaper as she tears it off. She contemplates jumping out of a window, but the
bars prevent that; besides, many women creep about outside. The narrator creeps around the room. John eventually gets into the room. The narrator
tells him she has peeled off most of the wallpaper, and now no one can put her back inside. John faints, and the narrator continues creeping around the
room over him.
16. Muckrakers and critical realism
Muckrakers
There are changes in the organisation of the working class, great strikes, acute class war.
Still, there is genteel tradition of the censorship which deleted everything.
Many writers felt the duty of the American intellectual: opposition to the inhuman aspects of contemporary
society.
typical American figures: railroad magnate, sharecropper, millionaire, miner, proletarian, immigrant, etc.
The best-known & most influential movement of reformism in literature was the muckrakers. In 1906
President Roosevelt applied this term.
It is not restricted to journalism & sociological writing.
major experiment was one of subject-matter rather than form (Dreiser's treatment of sexuality, Sinclair's of the
brutalities of the Chicago stockyards & the meat-packing industry)
muckraking novels: Frank Norris’ ‘The Octopus’, Upton Sinclair's ‘The Jungle’, Jack London's ‘The
Iron Heel’
Upton Sinclair
He was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, and short story writer. His family came from the ruined
Southern aristocracy. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed Sinclair's childhood. When
Sinclair was ten, the family moved to New York. He started to write dime novels at the age of 15 and produced
ethnic jokes and hack fiction for pulp magazines to finance his studies at New York City College.
He wrote stories for magazines & newspapers. He was an active socialist, an outstanding socialist novelist. He
was influenced by investigative journalism.
 His principal subjects: corruption fostered by the big capitalist interests, disregard of the common citizen in
America.
 He collected his data very carefully & presented his psychologically well-built, convincing stories in a
straightforward style.
 He pictured the life of the working-class from the inside.
His most famous novel is ‘The Jungle’
Before writing The Jungle he studied for 2 months the meat-packing industry in Chicago.
According to Jack London the novel is “the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery”.
It has a preface which explains the title of the book: the victims of the capitalist system exist miserably in moral
& psychological degradation, live in a jungle “barely above the level of animals”.
It is an ironic story. What shocked the readers was not the misery of workers but the methods of processing
meat but the passage of new meat-inspection laws.
The novel appeared in serial form in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason in 1905. Sinclair was hired to
write an exposé about labour conditions in the Chicago stockyards. It was an immediate success, published in
17 languages.
President Roosevelt: “radical action must be taken to do away with the efforts of arrogant and selfish greed on
the part of the capitalist.”
Pure Food & Drugs Act & the Meat Inspection Act inspired a tremendous growth in investigative journalism.
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It has elements of naturalism (character, setting & theme) but lacking in objectivity, muckraking techniques
(non-fiction: particularly facts, figures and laws).
Characters (Lithuanian immigrants):
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Jurgis Rudkus - A Lithuanian immigrant who comes to America with his wife, Ona. Jurgis is a strong, determined
individual with a faith in the American Dream of self-betterment, but his health, family, and hopes are slowly destroyed by
the miserable working and living conditions in Packingtown.
Ona Lukoszaite - Teta Elzbieta’s stepdaughter and Jurgis’s wife. A kind, lovely, and optimistic girl, Ona is ruined by the
forces of capitalism that work against the family, particularly after she is raped by her boss, Phil Connor.
Teta Elzbieta Lukoszaite - Ona’s stepmother and the mother of six others.
Marija Berczynskas - Ona’s cousin
Phil Connor - Ona’s boss, who sexually harasses her at the factory where she works.
Dede Antanas Rudku - Jurgis’s father
Antanas Rudkus - Ona and Jurgis’s son
Juozapas Lukoszaite ; Kotrina Lukoszaite ; Stanislovas Lukoszaite - Teta Elzbieta’s children
Jonas - Teta Elzbieta’s brother
Jack Duane - A polished, charismatic criminal whom Jurgis meets during his first prison term
Miss Henderson - The forelady in Ona’s factory
Nicholas Schliemann - A spokesperson for socialism
Mike Scully - A corrupt, wealthy democrat in Chicago
Jokubas Szedvilas - The failing proprietor of a delicatessen in Packingtown
Summary
Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, a young man and woman who have recently immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania, hold their
wedding feast at a bar in an area of Chicago known as Packingtown. The couple and several relatives have come to Chicago in search
of a better life, but Packingtown, the centre of Lithuanian immigration and of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, is a hard, dangerous,
and filthy place where it is difficult to find a job. Jurgis, who has great faith in the American Dream, vows that he will simply work
harder to make more money.
Jurgis, who is young and energetic, quickly finds work, as do Marija Berczynskas, Ona’s cousin, and Jonas, the brother of Ona’s
stepmother, Teta Elzbieta. The family signs an agreement to buy a house, but it turns out to be a swindle; the agreement is full of
hidden costs, and the house is shoddy and poorly maintained. As the family’s living expenses increase, even Ona and young
Stanislovas, one of Teta Elzbieta’s children, are forced to look for jobs. Jurgis’s father, Dede Antanas, finds a job only after agreeing
to pay another man a third of his wages for helping him obtain the job. But the job is too difficult for the old man, and it quickly kills
him.
Winter is the most dangerous season in Packingtown and even Jurgis, forced to work in an unheated slaughterhouse in which it is
difficult to see, risks his life every day by simply going to work. Marija is courted by Tamoszius, a likable violinist, but the couple is
never able to marry because they never have enough money to hold a wedding. Marija’s factory closes down and she loses her job.
Marija regains her job, but she is fired when she complains about being cheated out of some of her pay. Ona is now pregnant, and her
job has become increasingly difficult for her. Her supervisor, Miss Henderson, oversees a prostitution ring, and most of the other girls
at the factory are made to be prostitutes. Ona is pregnant again. One night, she doesn’t return home from work, and Jurgis discovers
that Phil Connor, her boss, kept her after work and forced her to sleep with him. Jurgis attacks Connor and is arrested. After an unfair
trial, Jurgis is sentenced to a month in prison. Jurgis befriends a criminal named Jack Duane. When he is released, Jurgis discovers
that his family has been evicted from its home and is living at the run-down boarding-house in which they first stayed when they
arrived in Chicago. When he enters the boarding-house, he finds Ona screaming; she the effort of giving birth kills her and the child.
At last, Teta Elzbieta convinces Jurgis to think of his son, and he again begins searching for a job. In despair, Jurgis abandons his
surviving family members and wanders the countryside as a tramp.
In the winter, Jurgis returns to Chicago, where he finds a job digging freight tunnels. After injuring himself at work, he is forced to
spend some time in the hospital. When he is released, he has no money and cannot find work, so he becomes a beggar. One night, a
wealthy young man named Freddie Jones gives him a one-hundred-dollar bill, but when Jurgis asks a bartender to change it for him,
the man cheats him, giving him ninety-five cents back. Jurgis attacks the man and is again sent to jail. In prison, he meets Jack Duane
again. When the two men are released, Jurgis becomes Duane’s partner, and the two commit burglaries and muggings. One day,
Jurgis sees Phil Connor again and attacks him. He is again sent to prison. After being released, he is forced to live on charity. By this
time, Jurgis has completely lost touch with his family. He learns that Marija has become a prostitute to help support Teta Elzbieta and
the children. She is also addicted to morphine. Jurgis wants to see Teta Elzbieta again but not before he finds a good job.
Jurgis joins the socialist party and embraces its ideal that the workers—not a few wealthy capitalists—should own factories and
plants. Jurgis finds a job as a porter at a socialist-run hotel and is reunited with Teta Elzbieta. He attends a socialist rally in which the
speaker sums up Jurgis’s new beliefs: if more people convert to socialism, the speaker declares, then “CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”
Critical realism
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
He grows up in great poverty in a family of wandering evangelists from Germany. He was educated in life,
rather than in schools. He worked in a laundry, rent collector, newspaperman, managing editor.
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He wrote his works to reveal the truth about capitalist America. He was boycotted by publishers, attacked by
critics, condemned by various societies & persecuted by law. He stimulated the work of many novelists of the
post-war period (Sinclair Lewis).
 The subject-matter is more important than the expression, indifferent to style.
 He usually discussed in terms of content.
 1927 – guest of the Soviet Government→ Dreiser Looks at Russia
He believed that the only way out of the social contradictions of bourgeois society is in abolishing capitalism &
building socialism.
Works:
 An American Tragedy (1925) explores the dangers of the American dream.
 “barbaric naturalism”
 “elaborate documentations of a preconceived thesis”
 reverts to the naturalists of the 1880s (characters determined by instinct, heredity & environment)
Sister Carrie
It was discovered by Frank Norris, he recommended it for publication.
Carrie Meeber comes up from a small place to growing Chicago, seeking love & security. She has liaisons with
men of superior financial & social position. She struggles for the full realisation of her personality & for social
success.
 drifting of individuals
 character is negligible, moral competence irrelevant
 in the central there is the spiralling social ascents & descents of human existence (ascent is Carrie Meeber's,
descent: Hurstwood's).
 the self-made woman or man, men & women are no longer in search of family life, but linked to others only
in the push of competition & the pull of sexual romance.
 society is temporary & provisional in all things (hotels rather than homes, affairs rather than marriages, roles
& not identity).
 characters are indifferent to personal integrity characters are identified as types, living between worlds
 discarded the traditional plot of the social novel in favour of rise & falling
 favourite term of Dreiser's world is the word drifting (→Carrie)
summary
Caroline Meeber, known as Carrie, leaves her home at age eighteen and takes the train to Chicago. She meets a man, Drouet. Carrie
soon becomes interested in him due to his fine clothing and manners. Upon arriving in Chicago she says goodbye to him, but not
before she has given him her address. Carrie meets her sister Minnie Hanson and moves into one of the rooms in Minnie's apartment.
Mr. Hanson arrives home that night but does not pay too much attention to her. Carrie soon realizes that the Hansons expect her to
find a job and pay them rent. Being naturally timid, Carrie is frightened of entering the factories and shops and asking for a job, the
result being that she is not hired that day. After several days of searching she finds employment in a shoe factory.
Carrie works hard at her job, but discovers that the salary is too low for her to pay rent and purchase clothes for the winter. She soon
falls ill from the cold and takes several days to recover. She lost her job.
Carrie accidentally meets Drouet on the street. He kindly offers her a meal and takes her to a fine restaurant. After much insisting he
convinces her to meet him again the next day and presses twenty dollars into her hand. Drouet rents an apartement for Carrie. Drouet
then introduces Carrie to his friend Hurstwood, the manager of one of the top bars in the city. Hurstwood is far more refined and
elegant than Drouet, and soon he comes over to play cards with Carrie and Drouet. He falls madly in love with her and starts to think
of getting her to run away with him.
Hurstwood tells her that Drouet has had an accident and that they need to go to the hospital. With that lie he gets her onto a train
heading to Detroit and from there to Montreal. Carrie is upset and furious with him, but passively does nothing to resist. From
Montreal they head to New York City where Hurstwood rents an apartment for them.
He and Carrie are soon forced to move into a smaller apartment. Failing to find work, Hurstwood slowly degenerates into idleness. He
takes up some gambling and loses over a hundred dollars in one night. Carrie loses interest in him as a person and starts considering
her other alternatives. Things get progressively worse until Hurstwood does not even leave the apartment anymore, preferring to sit
around in his old clothes. When Hurstwood is almost out of money, Carrie decides that she will have to get a job to support them.
After a few days she is given a spot in the chorus line of a Broadway show. Her salary is barely enough for them to live on, but
Hurstwood scrapes by. She is soon promoted to lead the chorus line and later to an even better paying dancing position. Carrie refuses
to tell Hurstwood about her success because she need the extra money to purchase clothes for herself. Carrie luckily is given a
speaking part one day and at that point decides to leave Hurstwood in order to live with an actress friend of hers. She moves out while
he is taking a walk.
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The rest of the novel traces Carrie's rise and Hurstwood's fall. He soon loses the apartment and is forced to become a homeless beggar
who stays in cheap hotels in the Bowery part of town. Carrie meanwhile is given a silent role, but plays it so well that she becomes an
overnight star and signs a contract paying her a hundred and fifty dollars a week, an exorbitant sum for her.
Drouet moves to New York and tries to reestablish his relationship with Carrie, but she brushes him off. Hurstwood, in despair,
commits suicide by gassing himself with methane in his hotel room one night.
Carrie meanwhile has become unhappy with her state in the world, wishing that she could perform drama rather than comedy.
17. Harlem Renaissance
Between 1920 – 1930 there was an unprecedented outburst of creative activity in all fields of art. The New
Negro Movement and Harlem Renaissance developed. Poetry was central to this literary movement.
Theatre: 1920s vaudeville shows, dramas & Broadway plays. There is the need for an authentic black theatre. In
the 30s their plays included topics such as lynching & the underground railroad.
Factors leading to the Harlem Renaissance:
New York was one of the main destinations for the blacks leaving the south.
The national interest in African-American culture grew → Harlem became the 'Negro capital of the world'.
basic supposition was the creation of a body of literature, painting, sculpture & music would lead to the
achievement of civil rights. Cultural and political organisations developed.
The major characters of Afro-American writers are Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.
L. Hughes and Zora N.Hurston represented Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement, a
group of black writers from the 1920s to the mid 30s. They are talented writers with influential works.
Common themes:
 Alienated from society
 Idea of selfhood
 Being always on the edge of society, being marginal
 Using the folk material, back to the black rural side
 Use of blues and jazz tradition
 Ambiguity in the mind: they don’t know what audience do they write for: black or white
 Increase in knowledge without in the increase of power in the case of blacks.
 A difficult problem about the treatment of the blacks in the society
Z.N.Hurston wants to see herself as black, L.Hughes wants to make something distinctive, Negro; R.Wright has
the experience of being black, poor and marginalised.
After the WW2, millions of blacks moved to NY, Chicago and Detroit to live there. Ghettos developed: Harlem
in NY.
The urban blacks were marginalised and segregated but they made great influence on economy and society by
the jazz. Jazz was a simple and complex music full of vitality. There was a new breath of writing and music.
Blacks were hostile to equality in the white classes. They want to be equal.
Some black writers wrote as Negros and not only for Negros. The new Negro could only see the division b/w
the ideal, perfect world and the reality. It was important to explore one’s identity. There was a confusion b/w
communal and individuality. Creating own values, own images and own myths was important for Negro
writers.
James Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
He was known as the poet laureate of the Negro race, respected & immensely popular, the 'bard of Harlem'. He
embraced Afro-Am jazz rhythms and he was one of the 1st black writers to attempt to make a profitable career
out of his writings. He incorporated blues, spirituals, colloquial speech, and folkways in his poetry. He
published black anthologies and began black theatre groups. He wrote effective journalism. He was the first
black man in America to make a strictly literary career.
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
He wrote about the poorer class of blacks. He expressed the hopes, fears, frustrations, dreams, the
survivalist
attitude of African-Americans.
 He captured the essences of blues & jazz in his poetry
 His influences: Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Walt Whitman & Carl Sandburg → experiments with free
verse
 wanted to capture the dominant oral & improvisatory traditions of black culture in written form
 2 groups of poems: lyrics about black life using rhythms & refrains from jazz & blues + poems of racial
protest
THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
The poem embraces his African and universal heritage in a grand epic catalogue. The poem suggests that
African culture will endure and deepen like the great rivers.
‘I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human
veins…’
The river was the main form of transport, a source of life. In Africa: Congo, Nile, Euphrates – this is his native
country, the source of the Afro-Americans. There is reference to the ancient civilisations, like Egypt. Reference
to Abraham Lincoln – civil war, slavery, emancipation of slaves... he’s looking at his own origin. He echoes
Walt Whitman’s poetry: he spoke for America. He uses the American tradition, not only Afro-American.
THE WEARY BLUES
It echoes slavery because originally slaves sang blues. Roaring 20s: drinking, enjoying life, music, jazz age,
making money + profits, welfare until 1929: the great depression. Within a literary framework he takes on
board other forms of culture like music, jazz, blues. He tells something about afro-am lives: ‘That poor piano.’;
‘Sad, raggy tunes.’ Symbolism: life <-> death, creation, the artist takes poor material and produces a piece of
art of it. It’s very specific about a Negro, Lenox Avenue.
I, TOO
Walt Whitman is echoed ‘I, too, sing America!’. He wants to get over with anger. ‘I am the darker brother’ of
all American, of Walt Whitman. It is a poem about segregation.
DREAM BOOGIE
It is about a dream deferred -> freedom. Bitterness is present in the poem. ‘Daddy’ is just a name suiting to
anybody. The whole life is ironic according to the poem. Anger. Reflection.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
She was born in Florida. She is a storyteller, an impressive novelist. She was interested in Florida’s native
folklore. Colloquial English in her works puts her into the tradition of Mark Twain. She wrote comic and tragic
stories from the Afro-American oral tradition. Her art is rooted in the cultural traditions of rural black
southernism. She was an essayist, novelist, short story writer, cultural anthropologist.
Works
 Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937): classic in the canon of modern American fiction, the volume of
folklore
 Of Mules and Men (1935): a key text in American literary & cultural studies
 essay How it Feels to be Coloured Me
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (1937)
The story is a moving, fresh depiction of a beautiful mulatto woman, Janie’s maturation and renewed happiness
as she moves through 3 marriages. Janie was brought up by her grandmother, Nanny Crawford, because her
mother ran away after giving birth to Janie.
The novel vividly evokes the lives of the Afro-Americans working on the lands in the rural South. Hurston
wanted to create her own modernist myth of origin. She tells the story of Janie who finds herself, defines her
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own voice and finds meaning in her existence. She explores her grandmother’s life 1st before she can start
telling her own life. The novel is not a quest for finding a partner but rather that of her quest for a secure sense
of independence. Janie struggles to assert a place for herself. She tells her story to her best friend, Phoebe. She
begins with her revelation under the blossoming pear tree. She had 3 husbands: Logan Killicks, Jody Starks and
Tea Cake. Logan was her 1st husband who misused Janie. Jody Starks was a businessman and politician who
treats Janie as an object. Tea Cake was the real love.
Racism is not a central theme but it is present in the story.
HOW IT FEELS TO BE COLOURED ME
The story explores Zora N. Hurston’s life, it is a self-introduction.
“I am coloured but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the
only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”
She realises that she’s black: ‘I remember the very day that I became coloured.’
She changes when she goes to school. She was Zora, and then she became a ‘little coloured girl’.
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