Fachbereich Anglistik
Sommersemester 2009
History of American Literature
Prof. Dr. Ralph J. Poole
Transcendentalism and Romanticism
• Essay:
Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Nature"; "The American Scholar"
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods
Margaret Fuller. Woman in the Nineteenth Century
• Poetry:
Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass: "Song of Myself“
Emily Dickinson. (poems)
• Short Story and Novel:
Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Young Goodman Brown", The Scarlet Letter
Edgar Allan Poe. "The Fall of the House of Usher"
Herman Melville. Moby-Dick, "Bartleby the Scrivener"
Imagining Disaster:
Dark Romanticism
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Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson
Reaction to Transcendentalism
Pessimistic outlook on mankind, nature, God
Individual prone to sin and self-destruction
Anthropomorphized evil: devil, ghost, vampire
Nature reveals evil, decay, dark mystery
Anti-social tendency: man as failure
Relation to Gothic fiction (terror, supernatural,
melodrama)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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First associated with, then distanced from Transcendentalism
Troubled heritage of Puritanism
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) (historical romance, set
in 19th century New England mansion haunted by 17th cent.
Puritan witchcraft accusations)
• The Blithedale Romance (1852) (based on Hawthorne's
recollections of Brook Farm, romance ending in tragedy)
• The Marble Faun (1860) (unusual romance, written shortly
before Civil War, novel is set in a fantastical Italy, mixture of
pastoral, gothic, and travel guide)
Hawthorne: Narrative Method
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Detached point of view
Elevated diction, polished perfection, restrained rhetoric
Limited number of themes and character types (Puritan past)
Limited number of situations: moral problems with
ambiguous resolutions (sin/guilt as part of life, concealment
or confession: death or redemption; manipulating another
person’s soul unforgivable)
• Allegory and symbol  psychological depth, universally
human, not didactic or religious
• Customs and morals (history) shape collective unconscious
Novel vs. Romance
"WHEN a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he
wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material,
which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed
to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at
a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and
ordinary course of man's experience. The former-while, as a work of art, it
must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as
it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart-has fairly a right to
present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's
own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his
atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen
and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a
very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle
the Marvelous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as
any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He
can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he
disregard this caution."
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface to 'The House of Seven Gables'
Romance as Allegory
The author’s moral to
show the truth “that
the wrong-doing of one
generation lives into
the successive ones,
and, divesting itself of
every temporary
advantage, becomes a
pure and uncontrollable
mischief” (Preface)
The Scarlet Letter, 1850
“If the truth were
everywhere to be
shown, a scarlet letter
would blaze forth from
many another bosom.”
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter, 1893.
No. 1 in the "Arm Chair Library" series, which
published cheap "Dime novels" weekly, then
monthly, one novel per issue.
The Scarlet Letter, 1850
“A”
Literal:
Adultery
Allegorical: America
Apocalypse
Angel
Art
•
The Scarlet Letter, T. H. Matteson, 1860
Edgar Allan Poe
• European influences
• “l’art pour l’art”
• Short form as ideal:
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Gothic tales
Detective stories
Poetry
Essays
Criticism
• Only complete novel: The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym of Nantucket 1838
Creative Method: “wow”-effect and
beautiful dead women
“The Philosophy of Composition” 1846
• “If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be
content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from
unity of impression- for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the
world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed. […]
• I asked myself- "Of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal
understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?" Death, was the
obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most
poetical?" From what I have already explained at some length the answer
here also is obvious- "When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the
death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical
topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best
suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."
“The Fall of the House of Usher”, 1839
• Tales of the Grotesques and
Arabesques
– Grotesque: deformation,
irrationality, fantastic
– Arabesque: decors, exoticism,
aesthetics
• Sublime: aesthetic experience
between spiritual elevation
(rational) and fatal destruction
(irrational), garden vs.
wilderness, order vs. chaos
• See Edmund Burke, A
Philosophical Enquiry into the
Origins of our Ideas of the
Sublime and the Beautiful, 1757
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugipBxA8zcg
Aubrey Beardsley, 1894
“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been
passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country;
and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within
view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with
the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded
my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that
half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually
receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I
looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple
landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant
eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks
of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare
to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
reveler upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous
dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the
heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the
imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.” (“Usher”)
“As if in the superhuman energy of
his utterance there had been found
the potency of a spell--the huge
antique panels to which the speaker
pointed, threw slowly back, upon the
instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing
gust--but then without those doors
there DID stand the lofty and
enshrouded figure of the lady
Madeline of Usher. There was blood
upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle
upon every portion of her emaciated
frame. For a moment she remained
trembling and reeling to and fro
upon the threshold,-- then, with a
low moaning cry, fell heavily inward
upon the person of her brother, and
in her violent and now final deathagonies, bore him to the floor a
corpse, and a victim to the terrors he
had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that
mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still
abroad in all its wrath as I found myself
crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there
shot along the path a wild light, and I
turned to see whence a gleam so unusual
could have issued; for the vast house and
its shadows were alone behind me. The
radiance was that of the full, setting, and
blood-red moon which now shone vividly
through that once barely-discernible
fissure of which I have before spoken as
extending from the roof of the building, in
a zigzag direction, to the base. While I
gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there
came a fierce breath of the whirlwind-the entire orb of the satellite burst at
once upon my sight--my brain reeled as I
saw the mighty walls rushing asunder-there was a long tumultuous shouting
sound like the voice of a thousand waters-and the deep and dank tarn at my feet
closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the "House of Usher".”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRImdHb3woo&feature=related
Herman Melville
• initial success with
Typee (1846)
• Moby Dick (1851): no
success
• neglected during
lifetime
• revival 1924 publication
of Billy Budd
Melville: Writing
Themes
• preeminence of democracy
• nobility of labor and common
man
• ubiquity of evil
• danger of merging the
personality in the cosmic ‘all’
• need to balance transcendental
insight with empirical ‘truth’
• hubris of seeking in nature
ultimate answers to metaphysical
questions
• impossibility of man’s returning
to his original innocence
• life as pathetic and greedy
Narrative methods:
• elevated, formal style
• rhetorical flourishes, highly
literary
• allusions to literature, history,
theology, philosophy, science
• mostly symbolic, often parabolic
and allegorical
• complex, ambiguous symbols
• aesthetic, intellectual appeal
Melville: Works
• Typee: A Peep at Polynesian
Life (1846)
– fictionalized biography (“the
man who lived amongst
cannibals”)
– benevolent captivity by a
tribe of pleasure-loving
Marquesan “cannibals”
– young Tommo’s (Melville’s
alter ego’s) discovery:
civilized man cannot return to
paradise
– critique on American (and
French) colonialism /
imperialism
– ethnography and literature
Excerpts from Typee
Critique of Colonialism:
Fear of Cannibalism:
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•
Our ship was now wholly given up to every
species of riot and
debauchery. Not the feeblest barrier was
interposed between
the unholy passions of the crew and their
unlimited gratification. The grossest
licentiousness and the most shameful
inebriety prevailed, with occasional and but
short-lived interruptions, through the whole
period of her stay. Alas for the poor savages
when exposed to the influence of these
polluting examples! Unsophisticated and
confiding, they are easily led into every vice,
and humanity weeps over the ruin thus
remorselessly inflicted upon them by their
European civilizers. Thrice happy are they
who, inhabiting some yet undiscovered
island in the midst of the ocean, have never
been brought into contaminating contact
with the white man. – Chapter II
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•
‘Hurra, my lads! It’s a settled thing; next week we shape our
course to the Marquesas!’ The Marquesas! What strange
visions of outlandish things does the very name spirit up!
Naked houris—cannibal banquets—groves of cocoanut—
coral reefs—tattooed chiefs—and bamboo temples; sunny
valleys planted with bread- fruit-trees—carved canoes
dancing on the flashing blue waters—savage woodlands
guarded by horrible idols—heathenish rites and human
sacrifices. – Chapter I
Typee or Happar? I asked within myself. I started, for at the
same moment this identical question was asked by the
strange being before me. I turned to Toby; the flickering light
of a native taper showed me his countenance pale with
trepidation at this fatal question. I paused for a second, and I
know not by what impulse it was that I answered "Typee."
The piece of dusky statuary nodded in approval, and then
murmured "Motarkee?" "Motarkee," said I, without further
hesitation -- "Typee mortarkee." --Chapter X
As the vessel had been placed in its present position since my
last visit, I at once concluded that it must have some
connection with the recent festival; and, prompted by a
curiosity I could not repress, in passing it I raised one end of
the cover; at the same moment the chiefs, perceiving my
design, loudly ejaculated, "Taboo! taboo!" But the slight
glimpse sufficed; my eyes fell upon the disordered members
of a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and
with particles of flesh clinging to them here and there! -Chapter XXXII
Moby Dick, or, the Whale (1851)
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common sailor “Ishmael” tells with
realistic detail story of his symbolic
voyage on board a whaler
Pequod: polyglot crew (red, black,
yellow, brown) under command of
Captain Ahab = Ship of the World,
manly utopia
Ahab’s goal: to discover in white
whale the ultimate force governing
the cosmos; hubris
Ahab’s demise: mad presumption of
quest ends in catastrophe (all but
Ishmael drown, Pequod sinks)
Moby Dick (nature as creative,
destructive and inextinguishable)
remains victorious
romance  quest (hybrid form,
literary experiment, allegory)
Beginning of Moby Dick
• Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the
world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the
circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find
myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up
the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get
such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to
prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically
knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as
soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical
flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.
There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in
their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings
towards the ocean with me.
“Bartleby the Scrivener
A Story of Wall-Street” (1853)
• Piazza Tales (1856)
• humor and pathos
• despair: iron necessities of
pathetic life (copyist (“dead
letters”, not “belles lettres”) =
anti-artist)
• Bartleby: isolation, autism
• provoking passivity and
maddening non-compliance (“I
would prefer not to”)  death
• teaching complacent employer
to embrace commandment to
love fellow man
• unreliable narrator (employer)
Excerpts from “Bartleby”
•
I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my
avocations for the last thirty years has brought me
into more than ordinary contact with what would
seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of
men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has
ever been written:--I mean the law-copyists or
scriveners. I have known very many of them,
professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could
relate divers histories, at which good-natured
gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls
might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other
scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby,
who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or
heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write
the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort
can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a
full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an
irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of
those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable,
except from the original sources, and in his case
those are very small. What my own astonished eyes
saw of Bartleby, _that_ is all I know of him, except,
indeed, one vague report which will appear in the
sequel.
•
In this very attitude did I sit when I called to
him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him
to do--namely, to examine a small paper
with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my
consternation, when without moving from
his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm
voice, replied, "I would prefer not to." I sat
awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned
faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that
my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had
entirely misunderstood my meaning. I
repeated my request in the clearest tone I
could assume. But in quite as clear a one
came the previous reply, "I would prefer not
to." "Prefer not to," echoed I, rising in high
excitement, and crossing the room with a
stride. "What do you mean? Are you moonstruck? I want you to help me compare this
sheet here--take it," and I thrust it towards
him. "I would prefer not to," said he.
Billy Budd, Sailor (1924)
• conflict between Billy
Budd’s Christ-like innocence
and John Claggart’s evilness
• resolution with godlike
reason by Captain Vere
• crucifixion imagery: Billy’s
execution on the cross of
the mainmast
• best-known adaptation:
opera by Benjamin Britten
with libretto by E. M.
Forster and Eric Crozier
(1951)
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt6nWzcgj4k&feature=related
Excerpt from Billy Budd
It was noted at the time and remarked upon
afterwards, that in this final scene the good man
evinced little or nothing of the perfunctory.
Brief speech indeed he had with the
condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was
less on his tongue than in his aspect and
manner towards him. The final preparations
personal to the latter being speedily brought to
an end by two boatswain's mates, the
consummation impended. Billy stood facing aft.
At the penultimate moment, his words, his
only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the
utterance were these--"God bless Captain
Vere!" Syllables so unanticipated coming from
one with the ignominious hemp about his neck-a conventional felon's benediction directed aft
towards the quarters of honor; syllables too
delivered in the clear melody of a singing-bird
on the point of launching from the twig, had a
phenomenal effect, not unenhanced by the
rare personal beauty of the young sailor
spiritualized now thro' late experiences so
poignantly profound.
Without volition as it were, as if indeed the
ship's populace were but the vehicles of some
vocal current electric, with one voice from alow
and aloft came a resonant sympathetic echo-"God bless Captain Vere!" And yet at that
instant Billy alone must have been in their
hearts, even as he was in their eyes.
At the pronounced words and the spontaneous
echo that voluminously rebounded them,
Captain Vere, either thro' stoic self-control or a
sort of momentary paralysis induced by
emotional shock, stood erectly rigid as a
musket in the ship-armorer's rack.
The hull deliberately recovering from the
periodic roll to leeward was just regaining an
even keel, when the last signal, a preconcerted
dumb one, was given. At the same moment it
chanced that the vapory fleece hanging low in
the East, was shot thro' with a soft glory as of
the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical
vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched
by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy
ascended; and, ascending, took the full rose of
the dawn.