Lori Arnold

May 5, 2010

Literary Analysis of Non-Traditional Texts in

Early American Literature

          I have always been interested in American history, particularly early American history; thus, I was excited about reading early American literature. I was also familiar with some of the historical documents such as Of Plymouth Plantation, The Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution. I also feel very comfortable analyzing literary texts from a variety of perspectives. However, most of the texts that I have worked with in the past have been very creative works of fiction. Most of the texts in this class were rather dry and sometimes difficult to read; however, studying them from a literary perspective did present a different challenge than I was prepared for. This relates to objective three from class, which is examining the emergence of “Literature” as we know it today from earlier genres like letters, pamphlets, and public documents. While I entered LITR 4231 Early American literature familiar with many of the texts from a historical perspective, I learned to analyze texts that are not often examined as literature from a literary perspective.

          Before entering this class, I was familiar with Jonathon Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I had not actually read the sermon, but I was very familiar Edwards’ beliefs and importance in American religious history. I also understood that the sermon had a huge impact when it was first given, but I did not expect my fellow students to be so fascinated with this intense sermon. However, I had not considered the text from a literary perspective before. Edwards uses sublime language to describe the wrath of God towards sinful people. It is clear from the striking imagery that Edwards was a master of language. In an age long before television, Edwards uses sublime language to paint a vivid portrait of the punishment God will give to all sinners who are not rescued from his wrath by salvation. Edwards shows his audience that they are born deserving of this great punishment: “So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell” (para. 19). The pit is a very typical sublime image. I can just imagine that Edwards would have held his audience spellbound with this description of the fiery pit of hell and the explanation that all humans automatically deserve of this punishment. “Sinners in the Hands of Angry God” contains many literary elements of the sublime and pre-dates Romanticism. Edwards also leads the way for later revivalist preachers and sensationalist literature.

          Crevecoeur’s “Letters from an American Farmer” is an interesting collection of observations about life in the early United States. I found these letters interesting because I am familiar with anthropology and Crevecoeur acts as an anthropologist studying early U.S. culture. The “Melting Pot” is an important concept that Crevecoeur introduces in his letters. As an informal anthropologist he describes the blending of cultures in the early United States: “The next wish of this traveller will be to know whence came all these people? They are mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen. (Ch. 3, para. 4). Crevecoeur reveals the origins of Americans. They are mixed from many different cultures, but blend together in this new country to become Americans. I found it interesting that Crevecoeur expresses respect for this new country and its people. While Crevecoeur admires the mixing of various ethnicities to create Americans, he leaves the original Native Americans out of this list. However, he does express an early Romantic view of Native Americans as closer to nature than immigrants to America: “They most certainly are much more closely connected with nature than we are; they are her immediate children, the inhabitants of the woods are her undefiled offspring” (Crevecoeur, ch. 12, para. 8). Connectedness to nature is an important element of Romanticism. American Romanticism particularly concerns itself with romanticizing Native Americans because they were viewed as living an existence that is closer to nature. Crevecoeur foreshadows later Romantic authors and later anthropologists as well.

          Finally, Charlotte Temple is an interesting example of an early American novel. When Susanna Rowson wrote Charlotte Temple the novel was still developing as a genre of literature. While the novel was very popular at the time, it still lacks the polish that novels developed later in American literature. Although I found the novel somewhat difficult to enjoy because of the didactic tone, I found it fascinating to observe the elements of the novel mid-development. One way that Charlotte Temple succeeds as a novel is the exciting plot. The plot hinges on the title character falling in with bad company, which causes her to follow the man she loves from England to America. Once in America his abandonment of her becomes even more depressing when Charlotte learns that she is pregnant. The plot may be very exciting; however, the constant moralizing does diminish the effectiveness of the novel. Later novels would allow audiences to gain the lesson from simply observing the effects of evil on the characters. I was surprised to learn that the novel was very popular when published. However, it makes sense because the novel is definitely appealing to adolescent girls, who would have had the most free time in the late eighteenth century.

          By reading early American literature from a variety of genres in this course I have learned about the development of American literature. The literary analysis of these formative texts clearly shows how American literature developed gothic, Romanticism, and novels. While early American literature is not my favorite period of literature to study, I have found this course very useful for helping me understand how to study non-traditional texts from a literary perspective.

Overall Reading Experience in Early American Literature

          The use of online texts in the literature classroom is still a new and fragile concept. It was exciting to have this experience with online texts because I understand that this is a hot topic in literature and composition classes currently. As a hopeful future professor, I will almost surely be required to incorporate the internet in my classroom in some way. Although the overall experience was positive, there were some minor hiccups and difficulties along the way that made my experience somewhat challenging.

          I think all of the students agree that taking this class without purchasing an expensive anthology is a positive aspect of the class. As all professors are aware, students do not usually have disposable income to spend on textbooks that they may not wish to keep or be able to sell. Another advantage of online texts is their accessibility. Most students today have laptops, which makes online texts even more accessible. I was able to work on my assignments while out of town during spring break. Finally, the annotations were very helpful in reading the texts for this class. Sometimes students may have difficulty understanding what they are supposed to focus on when reading a text. This is especially difficult with older texts that may be challenging for students to even comprehend. The annotations in the texts definitely helped me understand the important points of the texts.

          On the other hand, I encountered some difficulties reading the online texts that did make it more difficult to accomplish the reading. I found that reading printed off versions of the online texts was not difficult if the reading was short. However, for the lengthier texts I struggled to finish the reading most of the time.  I discussed this problem with my mother because I found myself very frustrated by this problem. She told me that the hardest thing to read is black ink printed on white paper. That makes sense to me because I realized that most books are printed on a slightly off white paper with ink that is not truly black. One way that the reading difficulty could be remedied in future classes is by changing the background of the website to a color other than white or by suggesting that the students print the readings off on a different color of paper. Sorry for the long diatribe on reading difficulties, but I have a lot of experience because my father is a printer. Although I recognize that I will be the minority in this class, I would have preferred to purchase some of the texts such as Charlotte Temple and Edgar Huntley.

Misgivings about Early American History reflected in Early American Literature

          American history has always been a subject of conflict in classrooms. Like many nations, America was founded by oppressing and enslaving certain people groups. This has led to conflict in how to teach American history. In some periods of history, the oppression and enslavement of Native Americans and African Americans was ignored and the Founders of the United States were praised. Today, there is a movement to teach a multicultural view of history in the classroom. The fourth objective of our class addresses which version of America to teach. Reading texts that address the difficult issue of multicultural America challenged my perceptions of the history of America. The texts that we read from a multicultural perspective challenged my perceptions of early American history and helped me to realize that it is alright to be conflicted about the early history of my native country.

          Although Mary Rowlandson herself is not from a different culture, her captivity narrative deals strikingly with the problems concerning Native Americans and the settling of America. Rowlandson’s narrative deals with the events of King Philip’s War, which became the focus of my first research post. Through my research I discovered that the issues surrounding the war were very complicated. Rowlandson expresses great dislike for the Native Americans who killed many of her relatives and captured her. While Rowlandson speaks disparagingly about the Native Americans, she unknowingly reveals some positive characteristics of the Native Americans. Rowlandson’s reaction when given a Bible by her captors is typical of this:

I cannot but take notice of the wonderful mercy of God to me in those afflictions, in sending me a Bible. One of the Indians that came from Medfield fight, had brought some     plunder, came to me, and asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got one in his basket. I was glad of it, and asked him, whether he thought the Indians would let me read? He answered, yes (3.2).

It is very interesting that Rowlandson overlooks the fact that the Native Americans have given her a Bible and allow her to read it and instead thanks God for the Bible. While Rowlandson writes a dramatic narrative that foreshadows the fiction of the future, her unintentional revelations about the Colonists’ relationship with Native Americans is also very powerful.

          The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African also extended my view of slave life in North America. Equiano clearly narrates his experience as a slave captured in Africa and carried from place to place until he ultimately gains his freedom. I was very excited to read this narrative because I had heard of it before through the film Amazing Grace. The narrative definitely illustrates very gruesome details of slavery from the initial capture, the transport by ship, to the work required of them on the plantations, a slave generally suffered many atrocities. However, Equiano does not speak negatively of all of his slave experiences. In fact, he became very close friends with one of his owners and was able to learn many new skills including shipping and business. This narrative proves very clearly that Africans are as intelligent and articulate as Europeans and Americans. In the introduction of his narrative Equiano states his purpose for writing the narrative: “[w]hich is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the Slave-Trade has entailed on my unfortunate countrymen” (para. 1).  Equiano clearly is not in favor of the slave trade and used his narrative in England to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Although he is strongly against the slave trade, Equiano does appreciate one positive result from his enslavement: “I ought to regard as infinitely more than compensated by the introduction I have thence obtained to the knowledge of the Christian religion” (para. 1). Just as in the captivity narrative, Equiano’s narrative portrays the founding of America as a complicated relationship between cultures.

          Finally, the novel Edgar Huntly portrays the relationship Americans had with Native Americans in the early years of the United States. Edgar Huntly is a very odd novel that incorporates many gothic and sublime elements. The Native American characters are not portrayed Romantically as they are by Crevecoeur and Benjamin Franklin. Rather, these Native Americans are Gothic in the way that they easily blend into their surroundings when Edgar encounters them in the woods. Edgar also describes his terror of the Native Americans: “You will not be surprised that the fate of my parents, and the sight of the body of one of this savage band, who, in the pursuit that was made after them, was overtaken and killed, should produce lasting and terrific images in my fancy. I never looked upon or called up the image of a savage without shuddering” (Ch. 17). The relationship that Edgar has with the Native Americans is one based on terror. However, he does not usually come into direct contact with them because he lives in a civilized village. It is only because he has been “sleep walking” that he encounters Native Americans. This is contrasted with Colonial times when most settlements were very close to Native American villages and encounters between Colonists and Native Americans occurred frequently. The portrayal of Native Americans in Edgar Huntly shows the fear of savagery that was prevalent in the early United States.

          These three texts reflect the multicultural perspective of early American literature. Conflict between the different cultures present in America is evident in the early literature. As a child I blindly accepted the very positive view of American history that was presented in the history curriculum that I studied and the literature I read. However, as I entered college and began to be exposed to different views of American history, I struggled to reconcile these often opposing perspectives. Through reading the literature of the early history of the United States, I have realized that there were conflicting views of the culture at the time as well. Now I am able to leave this class still conflicted, but with a better understanding of the multicultural heritage of the United States.