Chapter Three
American Romanticism
Emersion
Hawthorne
Whiteman
Thoreau
Melville
Dickinson
Edgar Allen Poe
教案纸
Lecture I: American Romanticism·Irving·Cooper
(From the end of 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War)
教 学 1) Grasping the historical background
目 的 2) Understanding American Romanticism and the main representatives
与要
求
introduced in the textbook
3) A general idea of the cultural value of the works of the writers in this
period
教 学 1) Characteristics of American Romanticism itself
重 点 2) Literary features in this period
与 难 3) The main representatives as Irving and Cooper and the artistic features of
点
their works.
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 One period
分配
教
学
Step one: Leading in
Step two: American Romanticism
I. Historical background
过
程
Now the rising America was undergoing great changes.
1. It had become a political, economic, and cultural independent.
2. There were parties to quarrel for power, and a new system was in the
making
3. The spread of industrialism, the sudden influx of immigrants.
4. The West had risen as a sectional power to challenge the dominance of the
East and the South.
5. New York became America’s largest city, supplanting Boston and
Philadelphia as the economic and cultural capital of the nation.
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6. By the 1850s the level of education and literacy risen greatly .More
Americans began to read books, magazines, and newspapers. In the printing
press and the expansion of the postal service made possible the rapid
production and wide distribution of periodicals.
So, it seemed that a nation bursting into new life cried for literary expressions.
II. Foreign literary influence
English and European masters of poetry and prose all made a stimulating
impact on the different departments of the country’s literature.
1. Sir Walter Scott’s border tales and his Waverley romances inspired many
American authors such as James Fenimore, Cooper with irresistible creative
impulses. Nis Waverley novels were models for American historical
romances .He was, in a way, responsible for the romantic description of
landscape in American literature.
2. Robert Burns and Byron both inspired and spurred the American
imagination for lyric of love and passion and despair.
3. The impact of Wordsworth and Coleridge added, to some extent, the
nation’s singing strength.
Thus American Romanticism was in a way derivative: American romanticism
was some of them modeled on English and European works.
III. Characteristics of American Romanticism itself
1. American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new
experience” and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that
“the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien.
American authors were quite responsive to the stimulus which American life
offered. Many of them created an indigenous American literature, as
Emersion, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville.
2. There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to have influence
over American Romanticism.
3. What else in connection with American Romanticism was the
“newness” of the Americans as a nation. Their ideals of individualism and
political equality, and their dream that America was to be a New garden of
Eden for man were distinctly American.
IV. Literary features in this period
As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American
Romanticism was both imitative and independent.
1. Imitative writers: Writers like Irving and the group of New England
poets as William Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, etc. tried to model
their works upon English and European masters. They cast a nostalgia glance
3
across the Atlantic, and took their cue often from the English authors and
poets like John Dryden, Alexander Pope.
So in technique they loved traditional meters and stanza forms; in language
their English was naturally British. Their metaphors were sometimes
stereotyped and their symbolism tended to be explicit and superficial.
2. American independent writers: Writers like Emerson and Whitman
thought and wrote differently, calling for the creation of a native American
culture and literature. They represent “the deeper forces of a Romanticism at
once indigenous and universal,” and “the urge to create a literature distinct
from and better than importations.”
V. Washington Irving (1783-1859)
1. His literary career: His literary career can be roughly divided into two
important phase, the first of which span from his first book up to 1832, the
other stretching over the remaining years of his life.
1.1 The first period was predominantly “English”, in which he was
attracted by the ruins and relics of Europe and writing, most of the time, about
subjects either English or European.
1.2 The second period when he was back in America: He found a whole
new spirit of nationalism in American feeling and art and letters. He awoke to
the fact that there was beauty in America, too. In the last of his life he wrote a
few books about American West. But these American books are of only
secondary importance in the Irving canon, and constitute the “minor phase” of
his career.
2. His contributions to American literature:
2.1 He was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain
international fame.
2.2 The first great prose stylist of American Romanticism
2.3 The first belletrist to write always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure
2.4 His The Sketch Book marked the beginning of American Romanticism. He
is thought as the uncle of American authors.(The father of American
literature).
3. His literary features: (lucid style) His writings can be said to be mainly
imitative and beautiful.
3.1 He avoids moralizing as much as possible.
3.2 He is good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere, the richness of
which is often more than compensation for the slimness of the plot.
3.3 His characters are vivid and true.
3.4 He builds the humor itself into the very texture of his writing.
4
3.5 His finished and musical language and the patent workmanship have been
among the points of critical attention.
4. His main writings and thoughts reflected in them:
He is best known as the author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow, on which his reputation seems to rest permanently. The former story
might be taken as an illustration of Irving’s argument that change – and
revolution – upset the natural order of things, and of the fact that he never
seemed to accept a modern democratic America.
VI. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
1. Cooper’s position in American literature:
1.1 He was one of the first writers to write about the American Westward
movement. He hit upon the native subject of frontier and wilderness.
1.2 He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation.
1.3 He launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure
tale, and the frontier saga.
2. His writings and thoughts reflected in them:
2.1 He wrote thirty-odd novels, including eleven of the sea, and a voluminous
amount of other writings. His enduring fame rests on his frontier stories,
especially the Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels about the frontier
life of American settlers. Its historical importance lies in the fact that it was
probable the first true romance of the frontier in American literature.
In this writing, lies Cooper’s conflict of allegiance: he was devoted to the
principles of social order and responsive the idea of nature and freedom in the
wilderness. It is evident that two forces are at work on the west frontier. On
the one hand, Natty Bumppo represents the ideal American, living a
virtuous and free life where there is freedom not tainted and fettered by
any forms of human institutions. The hero embodies human virtues like
innocence, simplicity, honesty, and generosity, born with an immaculate sense
of good and evil and right and wrong, symbolizing nature and freedom. What
Cooper rejects is that the adventure into the new world has not produced an
ideal social order. On the other hand, there is Judge Temple, another main
character. He represents “the practically inevitable” aspect of frontier
life. He symbolizes law and civilization. In his enactment of the law, he may
have come into conflict with people, and in his effort to transplant
“civilization” on a virgin land, he may have ruthlessly dispossessed the
American Indians, but he does not appear mean and petty.
3. His literary features:
3.1 Cooper is good at inventing plots, which are sometimes quite incredible,
but his stories are immensely intriguing.
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3.2 His landscape descriptions are majestic and suggestive of Sir Walter Scott.
3.3 The five huge books are an eloquent proof of the richness of his great
imagination (he had never been to the frontier and among the Indians).
3.4 His style is dreadful, his characterization wooden and lacking probability,
and his language, his use of dialect, are not authentic.
Cooper turned whatever American history can offer – the West and the frontier
as a usable past – to good account and helped to introduce the “Western”
tradition into American literature.
Step three: Assignment:
1) What are the characteristics of American Romanticism itself?
2) What are the literary features in this period?
3) What are Washington Irving’s contributions to American literature?
4) Tell Washington Irving’s literary features.
5) State James Fenimore Cooper’s position in American literature. And what
is his masterwork?
6) In James Fenimore Cooper’s masterwork, the Leatherstocking Tales, What
does Bumppo represent and symbolize, and what does Judge Temple do?
7) Depict the literary features of James Fenimore Cooper.
6
教案纸
Lecture II: New England
Transcendentalism·Emerson·Thoreau
教 学 1) Grasping the definition of Transcendentalism and its features
目 的 2) Having a general idea of its representatives
与 要 3) Experiencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-reliance and Thoreau’s Walden
求
教 学 1) Transcendentalism and its major features
重 点 2) Ralph Waldo Emerson and his literary features
与 难 3) Analysis and appreciation of Emerson’s Self-reliance(Excerpt)
点
4) Appreciation of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 Three periods
分配
教
学
Step one: Leading in
Step two: New England Transcendentalism
I. Brief introduction
过
程
In 1836 a little book came out which made a tremendous impact on the
intellectual life of America. It was entitled Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New
England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism.
1. What is Transcendentalism (A literary term)? As a moral philosophy, it
exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law
and custom. It appealed to those who disdained the harsh God of their
Puritan ancestors, and it appealed to those who scorned the pale deity of
New England Unitarianism. Transcendentalists took their ideas from the
romantic literatures of European, from neo-Platonism, from German
idealistic philosophy and from the revelation of Oriental mysticism. They
spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American
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society.
2. Major features of Transcendentalism:
2.1 The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the
most important thing in the universe. This represented a new way of looking
at the world. (a reaction to the 18th century Newtonian concept of the
universe; a reaction against people neglecting spiritual welfare)
2.2 The transcendentalists stressed the importance of individual (depending
on oneself for spiritual perfection). This new notion of the individual and his
importance represented a new way of looking at man. (a reaction against
Calvinist concept; a reaction against the process of dehumanization in the
development of capitalism)
2.3 Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the
Spirit or God. The natural implication was that things in nature tended to
become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual
Thus, New England Transcendentalism was a product of a combination of
foreign influences and the American Puritan Influence. It was Romanticism
on the Puritan soul.
II. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
1. Ralph Waldo Emerson was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to
New England, and he was recognized throughout his life as the leader of the
movement.
2. His ideas: Transcendentalist doctrine is just his ideas. He believed above
all in individualism, independence of mind and self-reliance.
3. His influence on American literature and culture:
3.1 He called for an independent culture in both Nature and The American
Scholar.
3.2 The American Scholar has been regarded as “American Declaration of
Intellectual Independence.”
3.3 He advocated that American writers should write about America itself
instead of imitating and importing from other lands. I
Emerson’s importance in the intellectual history lies in the fact that he
embodies a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its
formative period.
4. His literary features:
4.1 His poetry is uneven in quality, but always highly individual. In his days,
his poems were criticized for their lack of form and polish. His rhythms are
harsh and his images are striking, which appeal to many modern readers as
artful techniques.
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4.2 His prose style is also highly individual, but often disorganized.
4.3 His skill in polishing each sentence into a striking thought makes his
writing memorable.
5. Simple analysis and appreciation of Self-reliance
5.1 Background
Self-Reliance, published in 1841, is an essay that urges readers to trust in
their own intuition and common sense–rather than automatically following
popular opinion and conforming to the will of the majority–when making a
decision.
5.2 Theme
Be yourself. Trust your own inner voice. Emerson repeats that theme
throughout the essay in different ways. For example, he urges his readers to
retain the outspokenness of a small child who freely speaks his
mind–because he has not yet been corrupted by adults who tell him to do
otherwise. He also urges readers to avoid envying or imitating others viewed
as models of perfection; instead, he says, readers should take pride in their
own unique individuality and never be afraid to express their own original
ideas. In addition, he says, they should refuse to conform to the ways of the
popular culture and its shallow ideals; rather they should live up to their own
ideals–even if doing so reaps them criticism and denunciation.
5.3 Point of View
Emerson uses first-, second-, and third-person point of view. In the opening
paragraph of the essay, he first writes in the first person, telling the readers
about an experience of his. Then, after only three sentences, he switches to
second person, as if he is advising a listener sitting across the table from
him. Later, in the paragraph, he switches to third person as he presents an
exhortation about humankind in general. In the following excerpt,
Emerson uses all three points of view–first person, second person, and third
person. (Read Selected Reading P20)
5.4 Style
Among the most notable characteristics of Emerson’s writing style are these:
5.4.1 Thorough development of his thesis through examples, repetition, and
reinforcement;
5.4.2 Coinage of memorable statements of principle, or aphorisms;
5.4.3 Frequent references (allusions) to historical and literary figures, such
as Socrates, Galileo, Copernicus, Napoleon, Shakespeare, Franklin, Dante,
and Scipio (Roman general who defeated Hannibal), who embody qualities
Emerson discusses;
5.4.4 Frequent use of figurative language to make a point, such as “An
institution is the lengthened shadow of one man” (metaphor) and “They who
made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by
sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth” (simile).
6. Emerson's Moral Philosophy as an Expression of Transcendentalism
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6.1 Emerson believed every human being has inborn knowledge that
enables him to recognize and understand moral truth without benefit of
knowledge obtained through the physical senses. Using this inborn
knowledge, a gift of God, an individual can make a moral decision without
relying on information gained through everyday living, education, and
experimentation. One may liken this inborn knowledge to conscience or
intuition.
6.2 Emerson and others who believed that this inborn knowledge served as
a moral guiding force were known as transcendentalists–that is, they
believed that this inner knowledge was a higher, transcendent form of
knowledge than that which came through the senses. Because Emerson
and his fellow transcendentalists trusted their own inner light as a moral
guiding force, they were possessed of a fierce spirit of self-reliance. They
were individualists; they liked to make decisions for themselves. If the
government adopted a policy or a law that offended their consciences, they
generally reacted strongly. Transcendentalism, as Emerson’s moral
philosophy was called, did not originate with him or his fellow
transcendentalists in New England but with the German philosopher
Emanuel Kant. He used the German word for transcendental to refer to
intuitive or innate knowledge–knowledge which is a priori rather than a
posteriori.
7. The Summary
A man should believe in himself. When he has an original thought, he
should embrace it and make it known to others rather than reject it simply
because it is his own and therefore unworthy.
It is better to exercise the power within yourself than to envy and imitate
others. When you are young, you are bold and independent; you assert
yourself. You listen to the voice within and express yourself without bias and
fear. But as you grow older, you surrender your liberty to society. You want
to be like others, act like others. And so you suppress yourself.
III. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
1. He was a close follower of Emerson .He was the man who put into
practice many of Emerson’s theories.
2. Appreciation of his work Walden (Excerpt: Chapter 2)
2.1 Synopsis of Chapter 2
In the second chapter, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," talks about
how he once considered buying the Hollowell farm for himself but the
purchase fell through. Instead, he created a new existence for himself at
Walden, where he found joy and fulfillment in nature, truly awakening in his
mornings there, while most of society remains perpetually asleep, living
10
mean lives when the possibility of a much better life is possible. The key to
achieving such a life, he says, is simplicity.
2.2 Analysis of this chapter:
Thoreau reaches deep into the Transcendentalist philosophy in this
chapter. In making such bold pronouncements, he is wise to shy from being
deadly serious. He emphasizes he is not writing "an ode to dejection" but
instead crowing like a rooster to wake his neighbors up. In doing so, and in
criticizing their accepted and unquestioned ways of living, he employees a
dry humor, characterized by understatement, as when he says, "nothing new
ever does happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted."
The juxtaposition presented in the title of the chapter, "Where I Lived, and
What I Lived For," provides an excellent clue as to Thoreau's philosophy.
For him, the physical circumstances of life an intrinsically and
inescapably tied to a person's spiritual life. The appearance of his cabin,
its size and furniture, even its placement on the shore of the pond all
contribute to his spiritual awakening. Because of this connection between
one's physical and spiritual life, Thoreau's retreat to the shore of Walden
Pond is necessary; and it is because of this that he urges his townsmen to
likewise reconsider their physical circumstances.
2.3 Themes of this chapter:
2.3.1 Thoreau's emphasis on the dawn in this chapter continues the theme of
rebirth established in the first chapter. In that chapter, he described a snake,
left "torpid" by the cold of the winter and only gradually awakening as the
weather thawed. That snake was a symbol for the "sleeping" men who are
likewise unaware of their surroundings and immobile in combating the
chains of routine and tradition. It is noteworthy that Thoreau begins building
his house, the physical counterpart to his spiritual awakening, in the winter,
and does not move into until summer, when nature and his spiritual self is in
full life. Both here and in the first chapter, Thoreau appeals to Aurora,
goddess of the dawn. The dawning of the day comes to be a metaphor
for the dawning of spiritual enlightenment and self-knowledge.
2.3.2 Sight is also another theme in this chapter. Thoreau compares the
views from the lakeside hill and from the front of his cabin. From the
hill, he can see all the way to the mountains in the northwest. From his
cabin, his only physical vista is a pasture but with his imagination, he can
see to the furthest reaches of history and the universe. Thus, it is
important to emphasize that Thoreau's "reality" is not a historical or factual
concept. The illusions of which he speaks are not creations of his
imagination. Rather, he considers things like religion and philosophy to be
illusory because they limit and distort a person's immediate experience of
himself in the world.
2.3.3 The theme of sleep plays an important role here. Thoreau elevates
the word sleeper to a symbol, comparing men who labor without thinking to
11
the pieces of iron that gird a railroad. This use of sleep and awakeness as a
spiritual metaphor has a long history, especially in the writings of New
England. The Great Awakening, of course, was the name given to the
Puritan religious resurgence of the late seventeenth century. Thoreau here
attempts to rewrite and undo that awakening, to free New Englanders from
the shackles of thought forged by traditional religion and to awaken them to
a more spiritually fulfilling reality.
Step three: Assignment:
1. Define the term: Transcendentalism
2. Tell the major features of Transcendentalism.
3. Who is the leader of transcendentalism? State his ideas about it.
4. What is the theme of Self-reliance? Why is the point of view in it
special?
5. Describe the major characteristics of Emerson’s writing style.
6. In the second chapter of Walden by Henry David Thoreau, There are
several themes reflected. What are they?
7. Thoreau appeals to Aurora in both the first and second chapters in
Walden. This is just a figure of speech, what is it? Who is Aurora?
What does this figure of speech mean?
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教案纸
Lecture III.
Hawthorne and his The Scarlet Letter
教学 1) Getting a general idea of Nathaniel Hawthorne
目的 2) Experiencing Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (excerpt)
与要
求
教学 1) Appreciation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (excerpt)
重点 2) A simple analysis of The Scarlet Letter
与难
点
教学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法 2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教学 1) Traditional teaching
手段 2) Multi-media equipment
学时 Four periods
分配
教
学
过
程
Step one: Leading in
Step two: Nathaniel Hawthorne and his The Scarlet Letter (excerpt)
I. Nathanial Hawthorne (1804-1864)
1. His family origin: Hawthorne was born on the fourth of July, 1804 in
Salem, Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were men of predominance in
the Puritan theocracy of 17th century New England. One of his ancestors was
Judge Hathorne, who presided the notorious Salem witch trials and was put
under a curse by the husband of one of the convicted witches. The selling of
the family name remained Hathorne until young Nathanial inserted the “w”.
His father, a sea captain, had died of yellow fever in Dutch Guiana when he
was 4 years old. Then his mother withdrew herself into her upstairs bedroom,
coming out only rarely during the remaining 40 years of her life. The boy and
his two sisters lived in almost complete isolation from her and each other. And
then he entered Bowdoin College, in Main After that he returned to Salem
again, where he gathered his material by observing and listening to others.
2. His famous writings: His masterpiece is his famous novel, The Scarlet
Letter. There are also other famous novel as The House of the Seven Gables,
13
and The Marble Faun.
2. His thoughts and ideas and writing techniques reflected in his writings:
2.1 All his life, he seems to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil. Most of
his works deal with evil one way or another. The blackness of vision which
comes as a natural corollary has become his trade mark. It illustrates to some
extent the influence that the Calvinist doctrine of “original sin” and total
depravity had upon his mind. It also explains Hawthorne’s aloofness from
Emersonian Transcendentalist optimism and his skepticism about it. To him
sin will get punished, one way or other.
2.2 One source of evil in Hawthorne is overweening intellect. The tension
between the head (intellect) and the heart (warmth and feeling) constitutes one
of the elements which make his writings enchanting.( Read the last paragraph
of P72).
2.3 Hawthorne’s aesthetics is clearly enunciated in the prefaces to his larger
fictions, particularly those to The Scarlet letter, The House of the Seven
Gables, and The Marble Faun. He repeatedly complained about “the poverty
of material” in a land where “there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no
picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in
broad and simple daylight”(Preface to The Marble Faun),and so on. Thus
Hawthorne took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these
furnish the soil on which his mind grows to fruition. History and antiquity
enable him to “dream strange things and make them look like truth”.
2.4 Hawthorne was convinced that romance was the predestined form of
American narrative. It is not only “the poverty of materials” in America
that led him to write romances rather than novels; there is also his Puritan
prudence to consider – romance allowing him to treat physical passions
obliquely and to avoid violating the human heart. He did not want to offend
Puritan taste out of his Puritan scruples. He just wanted to tell the truth and
satirize and yet not to offend.
II, His masterwork, The Scarlet Letter
1. Plot Overview
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. In the customhouse's attic, he discovered a number of
documents, among them a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet,
gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an “A.” The manuscript
finally became The Scarlet Letter. 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, being punished for adultery. Hester's husband, a
scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived
in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her
14
husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child.
She will not reveal her lover's identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along
with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this
day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers,
she again refuses to identify her child's father. An elderly onlooker is Hester's
missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger
Chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true
identity to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years
pass. 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. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away
from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent
minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale,
however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart
trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches
himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can
provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that
there may be a connection between the minister's torments and Hester's secret,
and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon,
while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark on the man's breast
(the details of which are kept from the reader), which convinces him that his
suspicions are correct.
Dimmesdale's psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for
himself. In the meantime, Hester's charitable deeds and quiet humility have
earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl
is about seven years old, she and her mother are returning home from a visit to
a deathbed when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to
punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands.
Dimmesdale refuses Pearl's request that he acknowledge her publicly the next
day, and a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky. Hester can see that the
minister's condition is worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to
Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdale's self-torment.
Chillingworth refuses.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. They will take a ship
sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester
removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does
not recognize her mother without the letter. The day before the ship is to sail,
the townspeople gather for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most
eloquent sermon ever. 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
15
daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared into the flesh
of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.Frustrated in his revenge,
Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one
knows what has happened to them. 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.”
2．Chapter 2: The Market-Place
2.1 Synopsis:
The Puritan women waiting outside the prison self-righteously and viciously
discuss Hester Prynne and her sin. Hester, proud and beautiful, emerges from
the prison. She wears an elaborately embroidered scarlet letter A — standing
for “adultery” — on her breast, and she carries a three-month-old infant in her
arms.
Hester is led through the unsympathetic crowd to the scaffold of the pillory.
Standing alone on the scaffold as punishment for her adulterous behavior, she
remembers her past life in England and on the European continent. Suddenly
becoming aware of the stern faces looking up at her, Hester painfully realizes
her present position of shame and punishment
2.2 Analysis
2.2.1 Although the reader actually meets only Hester and her infant daughter,
Pearl, in this chapter, Hawthorne begins his characterization of all four of the
novel’s major characters.
2.2.1.1 He describes Hester physically, and he tells about her background,
illustrating her pride and shame.
2.2.1.2 Then we see Pearl and hear her cry out when her mother fiercely
clutches her at the end of the chapter. Although Pearl is one of the physical
symbols of Hester's sin (the other is the scarlet A), she is much more than
that. She is the product of an act of love — socially forbidden love as it may
have been — but love still. This is why Pearl, as we later learn, is not
amenable to social rules. She was conceived in an act that was intolerable in
the Puritan code and society.
2.2.1.3 In addition to Hester and Pearl’s appearance, we get our first glimpse
of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth, the novel’s
other two main characters. Although the irony of Dimmesdale's relationship to
Hester is not yet apparent, his grief over his parishioner Hester is commented
on by one of the women assembled near the prison who notes that
Dimmesdale “takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have
come upon his congregation.” And, although Roger Chillingworth is not yet
named, we are given a rather full characterization of the man through Hester's
recollections of him. He is the “misshapen scholar” who is Hester's legal
husband
16
2.2.2 Chapter 2 also contains a description of the Puritan society and
reveals Hawthorne's critical attitude toward it. The smugly pious attitude
of the women assembled in front of the prison who condemn Hester is
frightening — especially when we hear them suggest that Hester should be
scalded with a hot iron applied to her forehead to mark her as a “hussy,” an
immoral woman. Although this scene vividly dramatizes what Hawthorne
found objectionable about early American Puritanism, he avoids
over-generalizing here by including the comments of a good-hearted young
wife to show that not all Puritan women were as bitter and pugnaciously pious
as these “gossips.” The young woman’s soft remarks of sympathy for Hester's
suffering contrast sharply with the comments of the majority of the women. It
is important to note, however, that even this young mother has brought her
child to witness the punishment, passing these morals and behaviors to the
next generation.
2.2.3 Stylistically, the chapter employs a somewhat heavy historical
narrative, occasionally interrupted by Hawthorne's comments. It also
uses such symbols as the beadle, the scarlet letter A, and Pearl. In fact,
many of the novel’s themes become apparent by investigating the images and
symbols represented in the characters, physical objects, and larger social
issues. For example, the beadle, or town crier, who carries a sword and walks
with a staff symbolic of religious — and therefore social — authority, is
described as “grim and grisly.” This description also characterizes both the
atmosphere in Chapter 2 and, more important, the society of which the beadle
is a part. As the novel progresses, Pearl, the offspring of Hester’s adulterous
affair, becomes more strongly linked to the scarlet letter A that Hester wears
on her clothing; likewise, both Pearl’s and the A’s symbolism are also more
fully developed.
The Puritan community sees Hester as a fallen woman, Dimmesdale as a saint,
and would have seen the disguised Chillingworth as a victim — a husband
betrayed. Instead, Hawthorne ultimately presents Hester as a woman who
represents a sensitive human being with a heart and emotions; Dimmesdale as
a minister who is not very saint-like in private but, instead, morally weak and
unable to confess his hidden sin; and Chillingworth as a husband who is the
worst possible offender of humanity and single-mindedly pursuing an evil
goal.
3. Analysis of Major Characters
3.1 Hester Prynne
We know very little about Hester prior to her affair with Dimmesdale and her
resultant public shaming. We read that she married Chillingworth although she
did not love him, but we never fully understand why. The early chapters of the
book suggest that,
3.1.1 Prior to her marriage, Hester was a strong-willed and impetuous
young woman—she remembers her parents as loving guides who frequently
had to restrain her incautious behavior.
17
3.1.2 The fact that she has an affair also suggests that she once had a
passionate nature.
3.1.3 Shamed and alienated from the rest of the community, Hester
becomes contemplative. She speculates on human nature, social organization,
and larger moral questions.
3.1.4 Hester's tribulations also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker.
Although the narrator pretends to disapprove of Hester's independent
philosophizing, his tone indicates that he secretly admires her independence
and her ideas.
3.1.5 Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a
result of her experiences. Hester moderates her tendency to be rash, for she
knows that such behavior could cause her to lose her daughter, Pearl.
3.1.6 Hester is also maternal with respect to society: she cares for the poor
and brings them food and clothing. By the novel's end, Hester has become a
proto-feminist mother figure to the women of the community. The shame
attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Women recognize that her
punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers' sexism, and they come to
Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they themselves
suffer. Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent,
capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman. It is the extraordinary
circumstances shaping her that make her such an important figure.
3.2 Roger Chillingworth
3.2.1 As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in
human warmth. His twisted, stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his
distorted soul.
3.2.2 From what the reader is told of his early years with Hester, he was a
difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the time, yet expected her
to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend to spend time with
her. 3.2.3 He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the
deliberate destruction of others rather than a redress of wrongs. His desire
to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdale's sin, which had
love, not hate, as its intent. Any harm that may have come from the young
lovers' deed was unanticipated and inadvertent, whereas Chillingworth reaps
deliberate harm.
3.2.4 Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is associated with
secular and sometimes illicit forms of knowledge, as his chemical experiments
and medical practices occasionally verge on witchcraft and murder.
Chillingworth's decision to assume the identity of a “leech,” or doctor, is
fitting. Unable to engage in equitable relationships with those around him, he
feeds on the vitality of others as a way of energizing his own projects.
Chillingworth's death is a result of the nature of his character. After
Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim. Similarly,
Dimmesdale's revelation that he is Pearl's father removes Hester from the old
man's clutches. Having lost the objects of his revenge, the leech has no choice
18
but to die.
3.3 Arthur Dimmesdale
The reader is told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown at Oxford
University.
3.3.1 His past suggests that he is probably somewhat aloof, the kind of
man who would not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men and
women.
3.2 However, Dimmesdale has an unusually active conscience. The fact that
Hester takes all of the blame for their shared sin goads his conscience, and his
resultant mental anguish and physical weakness open up his mind and allow
him to empathize with others.
3.3.3 Consequently, he becomes an eloquent and emotionally powerful
speaker and a compassionate leader, and his congregation is able to
receive meaningful spiritual guidance from him. Ironically, the townspeople
do not believe Dimmesdale's protestations of sinfulness. Given his background
and his penchant for rhetorical speech, Dimmesdale's congregation generally
interprets his sermons allegorically rather than as expressions of any personal
guilt. This drives Dimmesdale to further internalize his guilt and
self-punishment and leads to still more deterioration in his physical and
spiritual condition. The town's idolization of him reaches new heights after
his Election Day sermon, which is his last. In his death, Dimmesdale becomes
even more of an icon than he was in life. Many believe his confession was a
symbolic act, while others believe Dimmesdale's fate was an example of
divine judgment.
3.4 Pearl
3.4.1 Hester's daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a symbol. She is
quite young during most of the events of this novel—when Dimmesdale dies
she is only seven years old—and her real importance lies in her ability to
provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them pointed questions and
draws their attention, and the reader's, to the denied or overlooked truths of the
adult world. In general, children in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more
perceptive and more honest than adults, and Pearl is the most perceptive
of them all.
3.4.2 Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mother's scarlet letter and of
the society that produced it. From an early age, she fixates on the emblem.
Pearl's innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the letter raise crucial
questions about its meaning. Similarly, she inquires about the relationships
between those around her—most important, the relationship between Hester
and Dimmesdale—and offers perceptive critiques of them.
3.4.3 Pearl provides the text's harshest, and most penetrating, judgment
of Dimmesdale's failure to admit to his adultery. Once her father's identity
is revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity; at
Dimmesdale's death she becomes fully “human,” leaving behind her
otherworldliness and her preternatural vision
19
4. Themes, Motifs & Symbols
4.1 Themes
4.1.1 Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition
Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible
begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of
Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a result of
their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their humanness, that
which separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled
from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to procreate—two
“labors” that seem to define the human condition. The experience of Hester
and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin
results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in
knowledge—specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For
Hester, the scarlet letter functions as “her passport into regions where other
women dared not tread,” leading her to “speculate” about her society and
herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale,
the “burden” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful
brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.” His
eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy. Hester and
Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to
reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand,
insist on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to
heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be
punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hester's sin is to ostracize her. Yet,
Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdale's experience shows
that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy, and
understanding of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are shown to be
incompatible with a state of purity.
4.1.2 The Nature of Evil
The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man,”
the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the “Black Man” is
associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins, and
little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil's child. The characters also
try to root out the causes of evil: did Chillingworth's selfishness in marrying
Hester force her to the “evil” she committed in Dimmesdale's arms? Is Hester
and Dimmesdale's deed responsible for Chillingworth's transformation into a
malevolent being? This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals
the problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true
evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the
narrator points out in the novel's concluding chapter, both emotions depend
upon “a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one
individual dependent . . . upon another.” Evil is not found in Hester and
Dimmesdale's lovemaking, nor even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan
fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted
20
and precisely aimed revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been
perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is
the “Black Man,” because her father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale,
who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel
denial of love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.
4.1.3 Identity and Society
After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a
badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling.
She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony
would allow her to remove the scarlet letter and resume a normal life.
Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when Chillingworth tells her that the
town fathers are considering letting her remove the letter. Hester's behavior is
premised on *her desire to determine her own identity rather than to allow
others to determine it for her. To her, running away or removing the letter
would be an acknowledgment of society's power over her: she would be
admitting that the letter is a mark of shame and something from which
she desires to escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a
symbol of her own experiences and character. Her past sin is a part of who she
is; to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of herself.
Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life.
*Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the
community's minister, he is more symbol than human being. Except for
Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully ignore his obvious anguish,
misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately, Dimmesdale never fully
recognizes the truth of what Hester has learned: that individuality and strength
are gained by quiet self-assertion and by a reconfiguration, not a rejection, of
one's assigned identity.
4.2 Motifs
4.2.1 Civilization versus the Wilderness
In The Scarlet Letter, the town and the surrounding forest represent opposing
behavioral systems. The town represents civilization, a rule-bound space
where everything one does is on display and where transgressions are quickly
punished. The forest, on the other hand, is a space of natural rather than human
authority. In the forest, society's rules do not apply, and alternate identities can
be assumed. While this allows for misbehavior— Mistress Hibbins's midnight
rides, for example—it also permits greater honesty and an escape from the
repression of Boston. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, for a
few moments, they become happy young lovers once again. Hester's cottage,
which, significantly, is located on the outskirts of town and at the edge of the
forest, embodies both orders. It is her place of exile, which ties it to the
authoritarian town, but because it lies apart from the settlement, it is a place
where she can create for herself a life of relative peace.
4.2.2 Night versus DayBy
Emphasizing the alternation between sunlight and darkness, the novel
21
organizes the plot's events into two categories: those which are socially
acceptable, and those which must take place covertly. Daylight exposes an
individual's activities and makes him or her vulnerable to punishment. Night,
on the other hand, conceals and enables activities that would not be possible or
tolerated during the day—for instance, Dimmesdale's encounter with Hester
and Pearl on the scaffold. These notions of visibility versus concealment are
linked to two of the book's larger themes—the themes of inner versus socially
assigned identity and of outer appearances versus internal states. Night is the
time when inner natures can manifest themselves. During the day, interiority is
once again hidden from public view, and secrets remain secrets.
4.2.3 Evocative Names
The names in this novel often seem to beg to be interpreted allegorically.
Chillingworth is cold and inhuman and thus brings a “chill” to Hester's and
Dimmesdale's lives. “Prynne” rhymes with “sin,” while “Dimmesdale”
suggests “dimness”—weakness, indeterminacy, lack of insight, and lack of
will, all of which characterize the young minister. The name “Pearl” evokes a
biblical allegorical device—the “pearl of great price” that is salvation. This
system of naming lends a profundity to the story, linking it to other allegorical
works of literature such as Pilgrim's Progress and to portions of the Bible. It
also aligns the novel with popular forms of narrative such as fairy tales.
4.3 Symbols
4.3.1 The Scarlet Letter: The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of
shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The
letter's meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as
an adulterer, the “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.” Finally, it
becomes indeterminate: the Native Americans who come to watch the
Election Day pageant think it marks her as a person of importance and
status. Like Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of Hester's
affair with Dimmesdale. But, compared with a human child, the letter seems
insignificant, and thus helps to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of the
community's system of judgment and punishment. The child has been sent
from God, or at least from nature, but the letter is merely a human contrivance.
Additionally, the instability of the letter's apparent meaning calls into question
society's ability to use symbols for ideological reinforcement. More often than
not, a symbol becomes a focal point for critical analysis and debate.
4.3.2 The Meteor
As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in Chapter XII, a
meteor traces out an “A” in the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the meteor
implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester does. The
meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which thinks
that it stands for “Angel” and marks Governor Winthrop's entry into heaven.
But “Angel” is an awkward reading of the symbol. The Puritans commonly
looked to symbols to confirm divine sentiments. In this narrative, however,
symbols are taken to mean what the beholder wants them to mean. The
22
incident with the meteor obviously highlights and exemplifies two different
uses of symbols: Puritan and literary
4.3.3.Pearl
Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel
is as a symbol.
4.3.3.1 Pearl is a sort of living version of her mother's scarlet letter. She is
the physical consequence of sexual sin and the indicator of a transgression.
Yet, even as a reminder of Hester's “sin,” Pearl is more than a mere
punishment to her mother: 4.3.3.2 she is also a blessing. She represents not
only “sin” but also the vital spirit and passion that engendered that sin. Thus,
Pearl's existence gives her mother reason to live, bolstering her spirits
when she is tempted to give up. It is only after Dimmesdale is revealed to be
Pearl's father that Pearl can become fully “human.” Until then, she functions in
a symbolic capacity as the reminder of an unsolved mystery.
4.3.4 The Rosebush Next to the Prison Door
The narrator chooses to begin his story with the image of the rosebush beside
the prison door. The rosebush symbolizes the ability of nature to endure
and outlast man's activities. Yet, paradoxically, it also symbolizes the futility
of symbolic interpretation: the narrator mentions various significances that the
rosebush might have, never affirming or denying them, never privileging one
over the others
5. His writing techniques:
5.1 He was an expert at employing symbolism, which touches the deepest
roots of man’s moral nature.
5.1.1 The symbolic meaning of the scarlet letter A: at first it a token of shame,
“Adultery”; then “Able” and last, “Angel” (p76-77)
5.1.2
The symbolic meaning of the names of the main characters (p78)
5.2 One salient feature of his is his ambiguity.
5.3 The use of the supernatural can be seen as a hallmark of his art.
Step Four: Assignment.
1. Tell Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ideas reflected in his writings.
2. Give a simple analysis of Hester Prynne’s character.
3. To analyze the character of Arthur Dimsdale.
4. List the themes of The Scarlet Letter.
5. What are the motifs in The Scarlet Letter?
6. How to understand the symbol of the scarlet letter “A”?
7. What are the symbolic meanings of Pearl.
8. Tell the major writing techniques of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
23
教案纸
Lecture IV: Melville
教 学 1) Having a general idea of Melville
目 的 2) Experiencing Melville’s Moby Dick
与 要
求
教 学 1) Appreciation of Melville’s Moby Dick
重 点 2) Brief analysis of Melville’s Moby Dick
与 难
点
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 Four periods
分配
教
Step one: leading-in
学
Step two: Herman Melville (1819-1891) and his Moby Dick:
过
the themes of his works are chiefly alienation, and rejection and quest.
程
I. Analysis and appreciation of Moby Dick
1. Plot Overview
Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel.
He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he stays in a whalers' inn,
sharing a bed with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg.
Ishmael comes to appreciate the man's generosity and kind spirit, and the two
decide to seek work on a whaling vessel together. They take a ferry to
Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There they secure
berths on the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth
of sperm whales.
The Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day with a crew made up
of men from many different countries and races. Soon the ship is in warmer
waters, and Ahab makes his first appearance on deck. He announces his
24
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. Ahab
nails a gold doubloon to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the
first man to sight the whale. As the Pequod sails toward the southern tip of
Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted.
The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian Ocean. A few whales are
successfully caught and processed for their oil. From time to time, the ship
encounters other whaling vessels. Ahab always demands information about
Moby Dick from their captains. One of the ships, the Jeroboam, carries
Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom for anyone who threatens Moby
Dick.
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 two captains discuss the whale; Boomer, happy simply to have survived
his encounter, cannot understand Ahab's lust for vengeance.
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.
On the third day, the boats are once again sent after Moby Dick, who once again attacks
them. Moby Dick rams the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is then 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.
2. Synopsis and understanding of Chapter41
Ishmael compares the legend of Moby Dick to his experience of the whale.
He notes that sperm whale attacks have increased recently and that
superstitious sailors have come to regard these attacks as having an
intelligent, even supernatural origin. In particular, wild rumors about Moby
Dick circulate among whale men, suggesting that he can be in more than one
place at the same time and that he is immortal. Ishmael remarks that even the
wildest of rumors usually contains some truth. Whales, for instance, have
been known to travel with remarkable speed from the Atlantic to the Pacific;
thus, it is possible for a whale to be caught in the Pacific with the harpoons of
25
a Greenland ship in it. Moby Dick, who has defied capture numerous times,
exhibits an “intelligent malignity” in his attacks on men.
Ishmael explains that Ahab lost his leg when he tried to attack Moby Dick
with a knife after the whale destroyed his boats. Far from land, Ahab did not
have access to much in the way of medical care and thus underwent
unimaginable physical and mental suffering on the ship's return to Nantucket.
Ishmael deduces that Ahab's madness and his single-minded drive to destroy
the whale must have originated during his bedridden agony.
"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all
truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the
subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly
personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the
whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole
race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst
his hot heart's shell upon it."
This quote, from Chapter 41, is the existential heart of the book;
appropriately, the chapter from which it comes shares its title with the White
Whale and the novel itself. While many sailors aboard the Pequod use
legends about particularly large and malevolent whales as a way to manage
the fear and danger inherent in whaling, they do not take these legends
literally. Ahab, on the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is evil incarnate,
and pits himself and humanity in an epic, timeless struggle against the White
Whale. His belief that killing Moby Dick will eradicate evil evidences his
inability to understand things symbolically: he is too literal a reader of the
world around him. Instead of interpreting the loss of his leg as a common
consequence of his occupation and perhaps as a punishment for taking
excessive risks, he sees it as evidence of evil cosmic forces persecuting him.
Moby Dick is supernatural and Man is limited.
3. Analysis of Major Characters
3.1 Ishmael
Despite his centrality to the story, Ishmael doesn't reveal much about himself
to the reader. We know that he has gone to sea out of some deep spiritual
malaise and that shipping aboard a whaler is his version of committing
suicide—he believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost to the world. It
is apparent from Ishmael's frequent digressions on a wide range of
subjects—from art, geology, and anatomy to legal codes and
literature—*that he is intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that a
whaling ship has been “[his] Yale College and [his] Harvard.” He *seems to
be a self-taught Renaissance man, good at everything but committed to
nothing.
Additionally, *Ishmael represents the fundamental contradiction between
the story of Moby-Dick and its setting. Melville has created a profound and
philosophically complicated tale and set it in a world of largely uneducated
working-class men; Ishmael, thus, seems less a real character than an
26
instrument of the author. No one else aboard the Pequod possesses the
proper combination of intellect and experience to tell this story. Indeed, at
times even Ishmael fails Melville's purposes, and he disappears from the
story for long stretches, replaced by dramatic dialogues and soliloquies from
Ahab and other characters.
3.2 Ahab
Ahab, the Pequod's obsessed captain, *represents both an ancient and a
quintessentially modern type of hero. Like the heroes of Greek or
Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he shares
with such legendary characters as Oedipus and Faust. *His tremendous
overconfidence, or hubris, leads him to defy common sense and believe
that, like a god, he can enact his will and remain immune to the forces of
nature. He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he
pursues the White Whale monomaniacally because he believes it his
inescapable fate to destroy this evil. According to the critic M. H. Abrams,
such a tragic hero “moves us to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his
misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because
we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible
selves.”
Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however, *Ahab suffers from a
fatal flaw that is not necessarily inborn but instead stems from damage, in
his case, both
psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a harsh
world. *He is as much a victim as he is an aggressor, and the symbolic
opposition that he constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels him
toward what he considers a destined end.
3.3 Moby Dick
In a sense, Moby Dick is not a character, as the reader has no access to the
White Whale's thoughts, feelings, or intentions. Instead, *Moby Dick is an
impersonal force, one that many critics have interpreted as an allegorical
representation of God, an inscrutable and all-powerful being that
humankind can neither understand nor defy. *Moby Dick thwarts free will
and cannot be defeated, only accommodated or avoided. Ishmael tries a
plethora of approaches to describe whales in general, but none proves
adequate. Indeed, as Ishmael points out, the majority of a whale is hidden
from view at all times. In this way, a whale mirrors its environment. Like the
whale, only the surface of the ocean is available for human observation and
interpretation, while its depths conceal unknown and unknowable truths.
Furthermore, even when Ishmael does get his hands on a “whole” whale, he
is unable to determine which part—the skeleton, the head, the skin—offers
the best understanding of the whole living, breathing creature; he cannot
localize the essence of the whale. This conundrum can be read as a metaphor
for the human relationship with the Christian God (or any other god, for that
matter): God is unknowable and cannot be pinned down.
4. Themes, Motifs & Symbols
27
4.1 Themes
4.1.1 The Limits of Knowledge
As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple
collection of literary excerpts mentioning whales, he discovers that,
throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible multiplicity of
meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every
discipline known to man in his attempts to understand the essential nature of
the whale. Each of these systems of knowledge, however, including art,
taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an adequate account. The
multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with his compulsive
need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the
limits of observation (men cannot see the depths of the ocean, for example),
suggest that *human knowledge is always limited and insufficient. When
it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical
significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are
unknowable to man, and thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab does, is
inevitably futile and often fatal.
4.1.2 The Deceptiveness of Fate
In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events,
Ishmael's narrative contains many references to fate, creating the
impression that the Pequod's doom is inevitable. Many of the sailors
believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future. A
number of things suggest, however, that characters are actually deluding
themselves when they think that they see the work of fate and that fate
either doesn't exist or is one of the many forces about which human
beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for example, clearly exploits
the sailors' belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for
Moby Dick is their common destiny. Moreover, the prophesies of Fedallah
and others seem to be undercut in Chapter 99, when various individuals
interpret the doubloon in different ways, demonstrating that humans project
what they want to see when they try to interpret signs and portents.
4.1.3 The Exploitative Nature of Whaling
*At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and
fellowship in the midst of a racist, hierarchically structured world. The
ship's crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all races who
seem to get along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon meeting
Queequeg, but he quickly realizes that it is better to have a “sober cannibal
than a drunken Christian” for a shipmate. *Additionally, the conditions of
work aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of egalitarianism, since
men are promoted and paid according to their skill. However, the work of
whaling parallels the other exploitative activities—buffalo hunting, gold
mining, unfair trade with indigenous peoples—that characterize American
and European territorial expansion. *Each of the Pequod's mates, who are
white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites
28
perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask
actually stands on Daggoo, his African harpooner, in order to beat the other
mates to a prize whale. Ahab is depicted as walking over the black youth Pip,
who listens to Ahab's pacing from below deck, and is thus reminded that his
value as a slave is less than the value of a whale.
4.2 Motifs
4.2.1 Whiteness
Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural
and threatening: albinos, creatures that live in extreme and inhospitable
environments, waves breaking against rocks. These examples reverse the
traditional association of whiteness with purity. Whiteness conveys both a
lack of meaning and an unreadable excess of meaning that confounds
individuals. Moby Dick is the pinnacle of whiteness and Melville's
characters cannot objectively understand the White Whale. Ahab, for
instance, believes that Moby Dick represents evil, while Ishmael fails in his
attempts to determine scientifically the whale's fundamental nature.
4.2.2 Surfaces and Depths
Ishmael frequently bemoans the impossibility of examining anything in its
entirety, noting that only the surfaces of objects and environments are
available to the human observer. On a live whale, for example, only the outer
layer presents itself; on a dead whale, it is impossible to determine what
constitutes the whale's skin, or which part—skeleton, blubber, head—offers
the best understanding of the entire animal. Moreover, as the whale swims, it
hides much of its body underwater, away from the human gaze, and no one
knows where it goes or what it does. The sea itself is the greatest
frustration in this regard: its depths are mysterious and inaccessible to
Ishmael. This motif represents the larger problem of the limitations of
human knowledge. Humankind is not all-seeing; we can only observe, and
thus only acquire knowledge about, that fraction of entities—both individuals
and environments—to which we have access: surfaces.
4.3 Symbols
4.3.1 The Pequod
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long
survive the arrival of white men and thus memorializing extinction, the
Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a gloomy black and covered in
whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of violent death.
It is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin, the Pequod
becomes one.
4.3.2 Moby Dick
Moby Dick, on an objective level, symbolizes humankind's inability to
understand the world;
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals.
*To the Pequod's crew, the legendary White Whale is a concept onto
which they can displace their anxieties about their dangerous and often very
29
frightening jobs. Because they have no delusions about Moby Dick acting
malevolently toward men or literally embodying evil, tales about the whale
allow them to confront their fear, manage it, and continue to function.
*Ahab, on the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is a manifestation of
all that is wrong with the world, and he feels that it is his destiny to
eradicate this symbolic evil.
Moby Dick also bears out interpretations not tied down to specific characters.
*In its inscrutable silence and mysterious habits, for example, the White
Whale can be read as an allegorical representation of an unknowable
God. As a profitable commodity, it fits into the scheme of white economic
expansion and exploitation in the nineteenth century. *As a part of the
natural world, it represents the destruction of the environment by such
hubristic expansion.
4.3.3 Queequeg's Coffin
Queequeg's coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has it
built when he is seriously ill, but when he recovers, it becomes a chest to
hold his belongings and an emblem of his will to live. He perpetuates the
knowledge tattooed on his body by carving it onto the coffin's lid. The coffin
further comes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces the
Pequod's life buoy. When the Pequod sinks, the coffin becomes Ishmael's
buoy, saving not only his life but the life of the narrative that he will pass on.
Key Facts
Full title · Moby-Dick; or The Whale
Genre · Epic, adventure story, quest tale, allegory, tragedy
Narrator · Ishmael, a junior member of the Pequod's crew, casts himself as
the author, recounting the events of the voyage after he has acquired more
experience and studied the whale extensively.
Point of view · Ishmael narrates in a combination of first and third person,
describing events as he saw them and providing his own thoughts. He
presents the thoughts and feelings of the other characters only as an outside
observer might infer them.
Tone · Ironic, celebratory, philosophical, dramatic, hyperbolic
Setting (time) · 1830s or 1840s
Setting (place) · Aboard the whaling ship the Pequod, in the Pacific,
Atlantic, and Indian Oceans
Major conflict · Ahab dedicates his ship and crew to destroying Moby Dick,
a white sperm whale, because he sees this whale as the living embodiment of
all that is evil and malignant in the universe. By ignoring the physical
dangers that this quest entails, setting himself against other men, and
presuming to understand and fight evil on a cosmic scale, Ahab arrogantly
defies the limitations imposed upon human beings.
Rising action · Ahab announces his quest to the other sailors and nails the
doubloon to the mast; the Pequod encounters various ships with news and
stories about Moby Dick
30
Climax · In Chapter 132, “The Symphony,” Ahab interrogates himself and
his quest in front of Starbuck, and realizes that he does not have the will to
turn aside from his purpose.
Falling action · The death of Ahab and the destruction of the Pequod by
Moby Dick; Ishmael, the only survivor of the Pequod's sinking, floats on a
coffin and is rescued by another whaling ship, the Rachel.
Themes · The limits of knowledge; the deceptiveness of fate; the exploitative
nature of whaling
Motifs · Whiteness; surfaces and depths
Symbols · The Pequod symbolizes doom; Moby Dick, on an objective level,
symbolizes humankind's inability to understand the world; Queequeg's coffin
symbolizes both life and death
Foreshadowing · Foreshadowing in Moby-Dick is extensive and
inescapable: everything from the Pequod's ornamentation to the behavior of
schools of fish to the appearance of a giant squid is read as an omen of the
eventual catastrophic encounter with Moby Dick.
Step three: Assignment
1.
2.
3.
4.
What are the themes in Moby Dick?
What are the motifs in Moby Dick?
To Ishmael, Why is the motif--- whiteness is horrible?
What does Moby Dick symbolize on an objective level? And then
what to the Pequod’s crew, and to Ahab? As a part of the natural
world, what does it represent?
31
教案纸
Lecture V:
Whitman·Dickinson
教 学 1) Grasp the features of Whitman and Dickinson
2) Grasp their literary ideas and thoughts
目 的 3) Experience some of their great poems
与要
求
教 学 1) Literary features of
Whitman and Dickinson
重 点 2) Differences between Whitman and Dickinson
与 难 3) understanding and appreciation of Whitman’s One’s Self I Sing and
点
Dickinson’s
Success is counted sweetest
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 Four periods
分配
教
学
过
程
Step one: Leading in
Step two: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were American poets in theme and
technique. Thematically, both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent
American, its expansion, its individualism, and its Americanness, their poetry
being part of “American Renaissance”. In technical terms, both added to the
literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of
the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they
were pioneers in American poetry pointing to Ezra Pound and the Imagists.
I. Life experience (p88)
II. Thoughts and ideas influencing him:(last paragraph on p89)
III. His ideas about poet and poetry:
1. About poet: He states that the greatest poet breathes into the world the
grandeur and life of universe. “He is a seer,” he says, “he is individual… he is
complete in himself.” He sees the poet as taking over what had used to be the
job of a minister, a clergyman, the Church.
2. About the poetry: Along with Emerson, he agrees that art should be based
32
organically on nature; poetry grows out of nature. “The rhyme and uniformity
of perfect poems shoe the free growth of metrical laws, and bud from them as
unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact
as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and melons and pears, and shed the
perfume impalpable to form.”
IV. Features of his literary ideas and thoughts in his poetry(p91)
1. The Transcendental ideas pervade all Whitman’s poems. general
mysticism and anti-rationalism, pantheism, and the theory of “the Great Chain
of Being” are among the most important.
2. Whitman embraces idealism. He relies on insight and intuition.
3. Unity, unreality of time and space, evil as only an appearance emerging
into good, …
4. He extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the
dignity, the self-reliance spirit, and the joy of the common man.
5. He praises the expansion of America. However, in later years, he sees the
failure of democracy and the social and moral corruption in America. He still
think these curable by self-reform of the individual.
V. His poetic features: His Leaves of Grass contains over four hundred
poems, in which lines gave free rein to his imagination in his life-long attempt
to celebrate life in the new world. He broke the poetic conventions:
1. One of the principles of his technique is parallelism or a rhythm of thought
in which the line is the rhythmical unit.
2. Another principle of his versification is phonetic recurrence, that is, the
systematic repetition of words and phrases at the beginning of the line, in the
middle or at the end.
The above two principles coordinate with and reinforce each other.
3. He broke free the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote “free verse”.
4. His poetry is also sexual. The language is exotic and vulgar.
VI. Appreciation of“One’s-Self I Sing”
1. Understanding the poem
1.1 Although the poet sings of the self as “a simple separate person,” he also
sees it as part of “the word Democratic,” which represents the mass of people.
He sings of “the Form complete,” the female as well as the male, of “Life
immense in passion, pulse, and power,” and the “Modern Man.”
1.2 This small (nine-line) poem is really a preface to all the others in Leaves
of Grass. Whitman says he will sing of all physiology (the branch of biology
dealing with the functions and processes of living organisms), for neither the
physiognomy (outward appearance) nor the brain is worthy of being
celebrated independently. He lists the subjects and themes he will deal with:
“One’s-self” (the unit of self or individuality), “physiology ... the Form
complete” (the kinship of the body and the spirit which he will emphasize
throughout Leaves), and “Life”—in short, the “Modern Man,” who, according
to Whitman, is conscious of “self” but at the same time is aware of being part
of the large mass of democracy.
33
2. Critical Analysis of Themes
( Whitman’s major concerns in this poem)
First, Whitman’s major concern was to explore, discuss, and celebrate his
own self, his individuality and his personality. Second, he wanted to eulogize
democracy and the American nation with its achievements and potential.
Third, he wanted to give poetical expression to his thoughts on life’s great,
enduring mysteries—birth, death, rebirth or resurrection, and
reincarnation.
2.1 The Self
To Whitman, the complete self is both physical and spiritual. The self is
man’s individual identity, his distinct quality and being, which is different
from the selves of other men, although it can identify with them. The self
is a portion of the one Divine Soul. Whitman’s critics have sometimes
confused the concept of self with egotism, but this is not valid. Whitman is
constantly talking about “I,” but the “I” is universal, a part of the Divine, and
therefore not egotistic.
2.2 The Body and the Soul
Whitman is a poet of these elements, the body and the soul in man. He thought
that we could comprehend the soul only through the medium of the body. To
Whitman, all matter is as divine as the soul; since the body is as sacred and as
spiritual as the soul, when he sings of the body or its performances, he is
singing a spiritual chant.
2.3 Cosmic Consciousness
Whitman believed that the cosmos, or the universe, does not consist merely of
lifeless matter; it has awareness. It is full of life and filled with the spirit of
God. The cosmos is God and God is the cosmos; death and decay are unreal.
This cosmic consciousness is, indeed, one aspect of Whitman’s mysticism.
2.4 Personalism
Whitman used the term “personalism” to indicate the fusion of the individual
with the community in an ideal democracy. He believed that every man at the
time of his birth receives an identity, and this identity is his “soul.” The soul,
finding its abode in man, is individualized, and man begins to develop his
personality. The main idea of personalism is that the person is the be-all of all
things; it is the source of consciousness and the senses. One is because God is;
therefore, man and God are one—one personality. Man’s personality craves
immortality because it desires to follow the personality of God. This idea is in
accord with Whitman’s notion of the self. Man should first become himself,
which is also the way of coming closer to God. Man should comprehend the
divine soul within him and realize his identity and the true relationship
between himself and God. This is the doctrine of personalism.
2.5 Democracy
Whitman had a deep faith in democracy because this political form of
government respects the individual. He thought that the genius of the United
States is best expressed in the common people, not in its executive branch or
34
legislature, or in its churches or law courts. He believed that it is the common
folk who have a deathless attachment to freedom. His attitudes can be traced
to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century because he thought that the
source of evil lay in oppressive social institutions rather than in human nature.
The function of literature is to break away from the feudal past of man and
artistically to urge the democratic present. Princes and nobles hold no charm
for Whitman; he sings of the average, common man. He follows Emerson in
applauding the doctrine of the “divine average” and of the greatness of the
commonplace. A leaf of grass, to Whitman, is as important as the heavenly
motion of the stars. Whitman loves America, its panoramic scenery and its
processional view of diverse, democratically inclined people. He loved, and
reveled in, the United States as a physical entity, but he also visualized it as a
New World of the spirit. Whitman is a singer of the self as well as a trumpeter
of democracy because he believes that only in a free society can individuals
attain self-hood.
Whitman emphasized individual virtue, which he believed would give rise to
civic virtue. He aimed at improving the masses by first improving the
individual, thus becoming a true spiritual democrat. His idea of social and
political democracy—that all men are equal before the law and have equal
rights—is harmonized with his concept of spiritual democracy—that people
have immense possibilities and a measureless wealth of latent power for
spiritual attainment. In fact, he bore with the failings of political democracy
primarily because he had faith in spiritual democracy, in creating and
cultivating individuals who, through comradeship, would contribute to the
ideal society. This view of man and society is part of Whitman’s poetic
program.
Step Three: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
1. Differences between Whitman and Dickinson in their outlook and their
literary forms:
1. In outlook: Whitman seems to keep his eyes on society at large; Dickinson
explores inner life of the individual. Whereas Whitman is “national” in his
outlook, Dickinson is “regional”.
2. In Literary terms: Whitman’s poems are full of endless, all-inclusive
catalogs, while Dickinson’s full of concise, direct, and simple diction and
syntax.
II. Life experience: (p96-97)
III. Thoughts and ideas reflected in her works:
1. Dickinson’s poetry is a clear illustration of her religious-ethical and
political-social ideas.
1.1 Calvinism with its doctrine of predestination and its pessimism pressed her
during her childhood and adolescence and colored her work.
1.2 On the ethical level, Dickinson emphasizes free will and human
responsibility.
35
1.3 Realizing that poetic interpretation of life conflicted with religious dogma,
she affirms personality.
2. Nature is portrayed as both gaily benevolent and cruel in her poetry.
The power and majesty of nature and the cold indifference of nature are
both revealed.
3. She holds that beauty, truth, and goodness are ultimately one.
IV. Her literary features:
1. Her choice of words, her verbal constructions and even her spellings break
the conventions.
2. Her poetry abounds in telling images that are erotic and self-evident.
3. Her poetic idioms are noted for her laconic brevity, directness, and plainest
words.
4. Her expressions are severely economic.
5. The tone is sometimes tragic.
6. Her poetry concerns mainly the themes of death and immortality.
V. Understanding and appreciation of Success is counted sweetest...
1. Synopsis
The speaker says that "those who ne'er succeed" place the highest value on
success. (They "count" it "sweetest".) To understand the value of a nectar, the
speaker says, one must feel "sorest need." She says that the members of the
victorious army ("the purple Host / Who took the flag today") are not able to
define victory as well as the defeated, dying man who hears from a distance
the music of the victors.
2. Metrical pattern
The three stanzas of this poem take the form of iambic trimeter--with the
exception of the first two lines of the second stanza, which add a fourth
stress at the end of the line. (Virtually all of Dickinson's poems are written in
an iambic meter that fluctuates fluidly between three and four stresses.) As in
most of Dickinson's poems, the stanzas here rhyme according to an ABCB
scheme, so that the second and fourth lines in each stanza constitute the
stanza's only rhyme.
3. Appreciation ( analysis of the form of homilies employed in it)
Many of Emily Dickinson's most famous lyrics *take the form of homilies,
or short moral sayings, which appear quite simple but that actually describe
complicated moral and psychological truths. "Success is counted sweetest"
is such a poem; its first two lines express its homiletic point, that "Success is
counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed" (or, more generally, that
people tend to desire things more acutely when they do not have them). The
subsequent lines then develop that axiomatic truth by offering a pair of
images that exemplify it: the nectar--a symbol of triumph, luxury,
"success"--can best be comprehended by someone who "needs" it; the
defeated, dying man understands victory more clearly than the victorious army
does. The poem* exhibits Dickinson's keen awareness of the complicated
truths of human desire (in a later poem on a similar theme, she wrote that
36
"Hunger--was a way / Of Persons outside Windows-- / The Entering--takes
away--"), and it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted style, whereby
complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases (e.g., "On
whose forbidden ear").
4. Simple Analysis of the theme
Victory/Success& Defeat
In a sense, Dickinson's poem must be about the realization of true victory in
the midst of defeat.
For how can one truly understand happiness without the accompaniment of
sadness? Or love without hate?
In the beginning of her poem, she talks about how success cannot be realized
without at first knowing the desperation that comes along with losing. This
supports the rest of the argument in her poem.
And as most people should know, the color purple has always been
affiliated with royalty. Isn't it possible that this poem is about a soldier
fighting for his kingdom/country? In this case, it is a soldier realizing
success (think: line one) by the agonizing price of losing his life. Perhaps this
poem does have a bitter tone to it, but it has more of a sadness and a truth
being brought into the picture, as well. And that is the beauty of this poem.
Step four: Assignment:
1. Review the textbook
2. Tell the differences between Whitman and Dickinson in their outlook
and their literary forms.
3. Tell the poetic features of Walt Whitman and those of Emily
Dickinson.
4. In Walt Whitman’s One’s Self I Sing, What is “Self” meant? What is
the difference between “physiology” and “physiognomy”? What does
“Form Complete” mean, and what “the Modern Man” do?
5. List the themes in Walt Whitman’s One’s Self I Sing.
6. Tell the metrical pattern of Emily Dickinson’s Success is counted
sweetest”
7. To analyze briefly the form of homily used in Success is counted
sweetest by Emily Dickinson.
8. In Success is counted sweetest by Emily Dickinson, what is the color
“purple” associated with? Then what does “purple host” indicate?
9. Who is “he” in the last stanza of Success is counted sweetest.
37
教案纸
Lecture VI
Edgar Allen Poe
教 学 1) Grasping the main literary ideas of Edgar Allen Poe
目 的 2) Experiencing Poe’s To Helen and The Cask of Amontillado
与要
求
教 学 1) Poe’s literary features
重 点 2) Appreciation of his To Helen
与 难 3) Understanding and simple analysis of Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado
点
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 Four periods
分配
教
学
过
程
Step one: Leading in
Step two: Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) He was the first author in American
literature to make the neurotic the historic figure, the protagonist, in his stories.
I. Life Experience (p104-p105)
II. Evaluations about Poe from other famous writers
1. From American writers (p105)
2. From European writers(p106)
III. His literary ideas
1.About poetry (106-107) (also his poetic features)
2. About short stories (p110-p111, and p114) (also his prose features)
IV. His world literary position (p114)
V. Understanding and appreciation of To Helen
1. Background
Edgar Allan Poe wrote “To Helen” as a reflection on the beauty of Mrs. Jane Stith
Stanard, of Richmond, Va., who died in 1824. She was the mother of one of Poe’s
school classmates, Robert Stanard. When Robert invited Edgar, then 14, to his home
(at 19th and East Grace Streets in Richmond) in 1823, Poe was greatly taken with the
27-year-old woman, who is said to have urged him to write poetry. He was later to
38
write that she was his first real love.
2.Understanding the poem
Stanza I
Helen: An allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. Helen, the wife of King
Menelaus of Greece, was the most beautiful woman in the world. After a Trojan
prince named Paris abducted her, the Greeks declared war on the Trojans, fighting a
10-year battle that ended in victory and the restoration of Greek honor. Helen returned
to Greece with Menelaus.
Nicean: Of or from Nicea (also spelled Nicaea), a city in ancient Bithynia (now part
of present-day Turkey) near the site of the Trojan War.
barks: small sailing vessels.
End rhyme: A, B, A, B, B.
Stanza 2
wont: accustomed to (usually followed by an infinitive, such as to roam in the first
line of this stanza).
Naiad: Naiads were minor nature goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology. They
inhabited and presided over rivers, lakes, streams, and fountains.
Naiad airs: Peaceful, gentle breezes or qualities
the glory that . . .Rome: These last two lines, beginning with the glory that was, are
among the most frequently quoted lines in world literature. Writers and speakers quote
these lines to evoke the splendor of classical antiquity. The alliteration of glory,
Greece, and grandeur helps to make the lines memorable.
End rhyme: A, B, A, B, A.
Half rhyme: Face and Greece are similar only in that they have one syllable and the
same ending–"ce." The vowels "a" and "ee" do not rhyme. Thus, face and Greece
make up what is called half rhyme, also known as near rhyme, oblique rhyme, and
slant rhyme.
Stanza 3
agate: a variety of chalcedony (kal SED uh ne), a semiprecious translucent stone with
colored stripes or bands. The marbles that children shoot with a flick of the thumb are
usually made of agate (although some imitations are made of glass).
agate lamp: burning lamp made of agate.
Psyche: In Greek and Roman mythology, Psyche was a beautiful princess dear to the
god of love, Eros (Cupid), who would visit her in a darkened room in a palace. One
night she used an agate lamp to discover his identity. Later, at the urging of Eros, Zeus
gave her the gift of immortality. Eros then married her.
End rhyme: A, B, B, A, B.
from the regions which are Holy Land: from ancient Greece and Rome; from the memory Poe
had of Mrs. Stanard (Background).
3. Theme
The theme of this short poem is the beauty of a woman with whom Poe became
acquainted when he was 14. Apparently she treated him kindly and may have urged
him–or perhaps inspired him–to write poetry. Beauty, as Poe uses the word in the
poem, appears to refer to the woman's soul as well as her body. ( Two aspects of
39
beauty possessed by Helen) On the one hand, he represents her as Helen of Troy–the
quintessence of physical beauty–at the beginning of the poem. On the other, he
represents her as Psyche–the quintessence of soulful beauty–at the end of the poem.
In Greek, psyche means soul.
4. Imagery and Summary of the Poem
Poe opens the poem with a simile–“Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicéan
barks of yore”–that compares the beauty of Helen (Mrs. Stanard, Background) with
*small sailing boats (barks) that carried home travelers in ancient times. He extends
this boat imagery into the second stanza, when he says Helen brought him home to the
shores of the greatest civilizations of antiquity, classical Greece and Rome. It may
well have been that Mrs. Stanard’s beauty and other admirable qualities, as well as her
taking notice of Poe’s writing ability, helped inspire him to write poetry that mimicked
in some ways the classical tradition of Greece and Rome. Certainly the poem’s
allusions to mythology and the classical age suggest that he had grounding in, and a
fondness for, ancient history and literature. In the final stanza of the poem, Poe
imagines that Mrs. Stanard (Helen) is standing before him in a recess or alcove in
front of a window. She is holding an agate lamp, as the beautiful Psyche did when she
discovered the identity of Eros (Cupid).
VI. Appreciation and analysis of The Cask of Amontillado
1. Introduction
“The Cask of Amontillado” was first published in the November 1846 issue of
Godey’s Lady’s Book, a monthly magazine from Philadelphia that published poems
and stories by some of the best American writers of the nineteenth century, including
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Although “The Cask of Amontillado” was not singled out for critical attention when it
appeared, it did nothing to change the opinions of Poe’s contemporary admirers and
detractors. Like Poe’s other stories, it has remained in print continuously since 1850.
2. Synopsis
The narrator, Montresor, opens the story by stating that he has been irreparably
insulted by his acquaintance, Fortunato, and that he seeks revenge. He wants to exact
this revenge, however, in a measured way, without placing himself at risk. He decides
to use Fortunato's fondness for wine against him. During the carnival season,
Montresor, wearing a mask of black silk, approaches Fortunato. He tells Fortunato
that he has acquired something that could pass for Amontillado, a light Spanish sherry.
Fortunato (Italian for “fortunate”) wears the multicolored costume of the jester,
including a cone cap with bells. Montresor tells Fortunato that if he is too busy, he
will ask a man named Luchesi to taste it. Fortunato apparently considers Luchesi a
competitor and claims that this man could not tell Amontillado from other types of
sherry. Fortunato is anxious to taste the wine and to determine for Montresor whether
or not it is truly Amontillado. Fortunato insists that they go to Montresor's vaults.
Montresor has strategically planned for this meeting by sending his servants away to
the carnival. The two men descend into the damp vaults, which are covered with niter,
or saltpeter, a whitish mineral. Apparently aggravated by the niter, Fortunato begins to
cough. The narrator keeps offering to bring Fortunato back home, but Fortunato
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refuses. The men continue to explore the deep vaults, which are full of the dead bodies
of the Montresor family.
The men walk into a crypt, where human bones decorate three of the four walls. The
bones from the fourth wall have been thrown down on the ground. On the exposed
wall is a small recess, where Montresor tells Fortunato that the Amontillado is being
stored. Fortunato, now heavily intoxicated, goes to the back of the recess. Montresor
then suddenly chains the slow-footed Fortunato to a stone.
Taunting Fortunato with an offer to leave, Montresor begins to wall up the entrance to
this small crypt, thereby trapping Fortunato inside. Fortunato screams confusedly as
Montresor builds the first layer of the wall, terrified and helpless. As the layers
continue to rise, though, Fortunato falls silent. Just as Montresor is about to finish,
Fortunato laughs as if Montresor is playing a joke on him, but Montresor is not joking.
At last, after a final plea, “For the love of God, Montresor!” Fortunato stops
answering Montresor, who then twice calls out his enemy's name. After no response,
He fits the last stone into place and plasters the wall closed, his actions accompanied
only by the jingling of Fortunato's bells. He finally repositions the bones on the fourth
wall. For fifty years, he writes, no one has disturbed them. He concludes with a Latin
phrase meaning “May he rest in peace.”
3. Analysis
3.1 Themes
3.1.1 Revenge
The force that drives Montresor to commit the horrible murder of Fortunato is his
powerful desire for revenge. His first words in the story speak of it: “The thousand
injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I
vowed revenge.” The idea of revenge is repeated several times in the opening
paragraph. Montresor will not rush to act, he says, but “at length I would be avenged”;
he is determined to “not only punish, but punish with impunity.” The terms of the
revenge are quite clear in Montresor’s mind. He will not feel fully revenged unless
Fortunato realizes that his punishment comes at Montresor’s hand; a wrong is not
redressed “when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done
the wrong.” In seeking revenge, Montresor is acting out the motto of his people, as it
appears on the family coat of arms, Nemo me impune lacessit (“No one wounds me
with impunity”).
As countless critics have pointed out, the nature of the injuries and offenses is never
revealed. The focus, therefore, is not on the reason for revenge, but on the revenge
itself, not on why Montresor behaves as he does but only on what he does.
Poe does not reveal Montresor’s motive for the crime, or identifies it as a crime of
revenge. He does not explore the events leading up to the crime, nor the results of the
crime, but focuses the story narrowly on the act of revenge itself.
3.1.2 Atonement and Forgiveness
Although the action of the story revolves almost entirely around the deception and
killing of Fortunato, the questions in readers’ minds have revolved around Fortunato’s
thoughts and deeds before the crime, and Montresor’s thoughts and deeds afterward.
While the time between their chance meeting and the laying of the last stone would
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have taken only five or six hours, the fifty years following are perhaps more
intriguing. Is Montresor deceiving himself or his audience when he attributes his
momentary sickness to “the dampness of the catacombs”? What has happened to
Montresor over the intervening years, and why is he telling the story now? Is he
hoping for forgiveness?
For forgiveness to occur there must first be guilt and then atonement or remorse. Of
course, there is no question of Montresor asking forgiveness of Fortunato, or
reconciling with him, and no mention is given of Montresor’s paying any reparations
to Lady Fortunato. Atonement, if there is to be any, must be with God alone. At the
time of the murder, however, Montresor hears and rejects Fortunato’s appeal that he
stop “For the love of God, Montresor!” The murderer replies, “Yes, for the love of
God!” but he does not stop building his wall. Surely he does not mean that he is acting
for the love of God; instead, he is blatantly and defiantly rejecting it.
In other ways Poe keeps the idea of the Christian God in the foreground. Fortunato is
chained to the wall in a standing position that some critics have compared to the
posture of the crucified Jesus. His narrow space behind the wall echoes Jesus’s
placement in a tomb. The story’s last words, In pace requiescat (Rest in peace), are
taken from the Roman Catholic funeral ritual spoken in Latin. Critic John Gruesser
believes that Montresor tells the story of his crime “as he presumably lays on his
deathbed, confessing his crime to an old friend, the ‘You’ of the story’s first paragraph
who is perhaps his priest.” Clearly Montresor’s guilt is established as not just an
earthly legal guilt, but guilt in the eyes of a God that both victim and murderer
recognize. The question remains: Was Montresor ever sorry for what he did? Poe does
not appear interested in answering the question, although he surely knew that he was
raising it, and knew that he had placed the answer tantalizingly out of reach.
3.2 Motifs
The Masquerade
At masquerades Poe's characters abandon social conventions and leave themselves
vulnerable to crime. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” for -example, Montresor uses the
carnival's masquerade to fool Fortunato into his own demise. The masquerade carries
the traditional meanings of joy and social liberation. Reality is suspended, and people
can temporarily assume another identity. Montresor exploits these sentiments to do
Fortunato real harm.
3.3 Symbols
“Fortunato”
In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe uses Fortunato's name symbolically, as an ironic
device. Though his name means “the fortunate one” in Italian, Fortunato meets an
unfortunate fate as the victim of Montresor's revenge. Fortunato adds to the irony of
his name by wearing the costume of a court jester. While Fortunato plays in jest,
Montresor sets out to fool him, with murderous results.
3.4 Terror of the story
The terror of “The Cask of Amontillado,” as in many of Poe's tales, resides in the
lack of evidence that accompanies Montresor's claims to Fortunato's “thousand
injuries” and “insult.” And the enduring horror of the story is the fact of punishment
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without proof.
3.5 The essence of Montresor’s behavior
The story features revenge and secret murder as a way to avoid using legal
channels for retribution. Law is nowhere on Montresor's radar screen. Montresor
uses his subjective experience of Fortunato's insult to name himself judge, jury, and
executioner in this tale. Montresor confesses this story fifty years after its occurrence;
such a significant passage of time between the events and the narration of the events
makes the narrative all the more unreliable. Montresor's unreliability overrides the
rational consideration of evidence, such as particular occurrences of insult. “The Cask
of Amontillado” takes subjective interpretation to its horrific endpoint.
3.6 The ways Poe uses imagery to foreshadow Montresor's motives
3.6,1 His face covered in a black silk mask, Montresor represents not blind
justice but rather its Gothic opposite: biased revenge. In contrast, Fortunato dons
the motley-colored costume of the court fool, who gets literally and tragically fooled
by Montresor's masked motives. The color schemes here represent the irony of
Fortunato's death sentence. Fortunato, Italian for “the fortunate one,” faces the
realization that even the carnival season can be murderously serious.
3.6.2 Montresor chooses the setting of the carnival for its abandonment of social
order. While the carnival usually indicates joyful social interaction, Montresor
distorts its merry abandon, turning the carnival on its head.
3.6.3 The repeated allusions to the bones of Montresor's family that line the
vaults foreshadow the story's descent into the underworld. The two men's
underground travels are a metaphor for their trip to hell. Because the carnival, in the
land of the living, does not occur as Montresor wants it to, he takes the carnival below
ground, to the realm of the dead and the satanic.
3.7 Characters
Fortunato
Fortunato is an Italian friend of Montresor’s, and his sworn enemy, whom Montresor
has planned to “punish with impunity. “Although Montresor’s explains that Fortunato
has committed a “thousand injuries” and a final “insult,” no details of these offenses
are given. Fortunato displays no uneasiness in Montresor’s company, and is unaware
that his friend is plotting against him. Fortunato, a respected and feared man, is a
proud connoisseur of fine wine, and, at least on the night of the story, he clouds his
senses and judgment by drinking too much of it. He allows himself to be led further
and further into the catacombs by Montresor, stepping past piles of bones with no
suspicion. He is urged on by the chance of sampling some rare Amontillado, and by
his unwillingness to let a rival, Luchesi, have the pleasure of sampling it first. His
singlemindedness, combined with his drunkenness, leads him to a horrible death.
Luchesi
Luchesi is an acquaintance of Montresor’s and Fortunato’s, and another wine expert.
He never appears in the story, but Montresor keeps Fortunato on the trail of the
Amontillado by threatening to allow Luchesi to sample it first if Fortunato is not
interested.
Montresor
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Montresor is the “I” who narrates the story, telling an unseen listener or reader about
his killing of Fortunato fifty years before. Montresor is a wealthy man from an
established family, who lives in a large “palazzo” with a staff of servants. He speaks
eloquently and easily drops Latin and French phrases into his speech. He has been
nursing a grudge against his friend Fortunato, who has committed several unnamed
offenses against him, and has been coldly planning his revenge. Meeting Fortunato in
the street one evening, Montresor takes this opportunity to lure his friend into the
deepest catacombs beneath his palazzo, and there he chains Fortunato to the wall of a
small alcove, seals him in behind a new brick wall which he builds even as Fortunato
begs for mercy, and leaves him to die. Montresor’s coldness sets him apart from many
murderous characters and many Poe protagonists. Even as he tells the story fifty years
later, he reveals no regret for his actions, and no real pleasure in them. This lack of
feeling made Poe’s early readers uncomfortable, and led some to accuse Poe of
immorality in creating such a character.
3.8 Point of View and Narrator
“The Cask of Amontillado” is told in the first person by Montresor, who reveals in
the first sentence that he intends to have revenge from Fortunato He tells the story to
an unidentified “you, who so well know the nature of my soul,” but this “you” does
not appear to respond in any way as Montresor delivers a long monologue. By
presenting the story in the first person, Poe avoids hinting at any interpretation of the
action. Montresor is in control, deciding what to tell and what to leave out.
3.9 Setting
The setting of “The Cask of Amontillado”, both the location and the time of the story
are only vaguely hinted at. To bring touches of the exotic to his murky atmosphere,
Poe freely combines elements of different nations and cultures. Fortunato and Luchesi
are Italians, knowledgeable about Italian wines. Montresor, as argued convincingly by
Richard Benton and others, is a Frenchman. Amontillado is a Spanish wine.
Montresor’s family motto, Nemo me impune lacessit, is the motto of the royal arms of
Scotland.
The time of the story may be guessed at. Montresor’s short cape and rapier, the
slightly formal vocabulary, and the torches used to light the men’s way seem to
indicate that the story takes place in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.
3.10 Gothicism ( A literary term)
3.10.1 Gothic stories are typically set in medieval castles and feature mystery, horror,
violence, ghosts, clanking chains, long underground passages, and dark chambers. The
term “Gothic” originally referred to the Goths, an ancient and medieval Germanic
tribe, but over time the word came to apply to anything medieval. The first Gothic
novel, Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764), was set in a medieval castle, and
later works that attempted to capture the same setting or atmosphere were labeled
“Gothic.”
3.10.2 Poe is often considered a master of the Gothic tale, and “The Cask of
Amontillado” contains many of the standard elements of Gothicism. Poe was
fascinated with the materials and devices of the Gothic novel, although he preferred to
work in the short story form. He was a great admirer of Walpole, and of the American
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Gothic writer Charles Brockden Brown.
Elements of Gothic tradition taken by Poe in it:
“The Cask of Amontillado” takes many details from the Gothic tradition: the palazzo
of the Montresors with its many rooms, the archway that leads to the “long and
winding staircase” down to the catacombs, the damp and dark passageway hanging
with moss and dripping moisture, the piles of bones, the flaming torches that flicker
and fade, and the “clanking” and “furious vibrations of the chain” that Montresor uses
to bind Fortunato to the wall. The overall atmosphere of brooding and horror also
come from this tradition.
Gothic elements rejected by Poe:
Some elements of the Gothic, however, Poe intentionally avoided: there is no hint in
“The Cask of Amontillado”, or in most of his horror stories, of the supernatural. Poe
was quite clear on this point, explaining that the plot of a short story “may be
involved, but it must not transcend probability. The agencies introduced must belong
to real life.” Montresor’s crime is terrible, but it is believable, and it is committed
without magic or superhuman power. Although there may be a hint of the supernatural
in his remark that “for the half of a century no mortal has disturbed” the pile of bones
outside Fortunato’s tomb, those beings that might not be mortal are not described, and
indeed Fortunato does not reappear as a ghost or a vampire or a zombie. Poe uses
Gothic conventions to create an atmosphere of terror, but then subverts the convention
by using only human agents for terrible deeds. For Poe, it is not supernatural beings
that people should fear; the real horror lies in what human beings themselves are
capable of.
Step four: Assignment.
1. Define the term: Gothicism
2. What are Poe’s ideas about poetry and about short stories?
3. What is the theme of his To Helen?
4. What is the imagery in To Helen? What does the second stanza imply?
5. Helen and Psyche are not only names of two women, but also symbols.
Who are they? What do they symbolize?
6. What are the themes of The Cask of Amontillado?
7. What is the symbol in The Cask of Amontillado? What does the symbol
mean?
8. What is the nature of Montresor’s behavior of revenge?
9. How does Poe use imagery to foreshadow Montresor’s motives?
10. What kinds of Gothic elements are taken by Poe in The Cask Of
Amontillado, and what kinds rejected? Why does he reject to take it in it?
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