Jeff Derrickson 

Giving Voice to the Stage of History

            The most vital learning experience one can take away from a historical literature class is the ability to connect the works provided to assemble a bigger picture.  The period of our country’s origin is often overlooked, or at least generalized by the discovery and subsequent revolution of America.  It was nice to see how the country’s literature came to be, as it grew from letters and first-hand accounts into legal documents, and finally, fiction.  Hands from several individual bodies provided the insight necessary to provide a communicable voice to America’s past.

            An important part of the course was its division into four sections.  The Renaissance or Age of Exploration was a vital start, as we became privy to the letters of Columbus, which automatically provided an individual voice to America’s discoverer, and introduced the concept of the American wilderness as a potentially scary and violent place, which would later be used extensively in the gothic style of writing.  The creation stories of Christianity and Native Americans also provided a good framework for America’s own creation story, which will be stooped with religion.  The clash between America’s settlers and its natives will define daily life well into the next three major periods of our country’s literary history.

            The period of 17^th century religious reformation follows, as settlers attempt to create an American utopia by uniting its people through religion.  Such efforts do not go without resistance, as seen in Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative.  The Native American people want nothing more than for their way of life to be respected, so certain white folk are integrated into their society for the purpose of achieving coexistence.  The Natives, however, are not without their vices and fatal flaws, and though Rowlandson’s portrayal of them may have characterized them as more human, it may have served to do their culture more harm than good during that time.  The ironclad religion of the Puritans shows cracks of its own, as paranoia and hysteria bring along the dark spot of history known as the Salem Witch Trials.  Let it be known, however, that America can and will learn from its mistakes.

            That learning is characterized well by the title of Enlightenment, the next period of history.  America is becoming more receptive of the outside world’s ways, but Christian religion still has a stout presence, as evidenced by “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon that uses the literary elements of the gothic and the sublime in order to get its message across.  Though tensions mount with Mother England that would eventually lead to revolution, some English notions gain a foothold.  Deism, for instance, crosses into our shores, which influenced the founders to effectively separate church and state upon the foundation of the United States.

            With the conclusion of the war, our country was established, and the people seem ready to enter into the Romantic period of literary history.  Taking elements from the previous three, Romanticism builds the image of the Native Americans as a noble and spiritual people who are gloriously simple and connected to the earth.  Unfortunately, negative Native stereotypes pervade our history to this day, but The Indian Burying Ground, by Philip Freneau, is an excellent starting point for this endeavor, following Benjamin Franklin’s Remarks on the Savages of America.

            American Romanticism leads to storytelling as we know it today, the novel.  Represented here by Charlotte Temple, which provides a perfect example of how a fictional work can draw upon everything that preceded it.  America’s pervasive religious sensibilities are well represented, as the author, Susanna Rowson, has no problem interjecting overt cautionary or even sermon-like messages regarding the behavior of young girls.  Such a stylistic choice is also reminiscent of the writing of letters, which we saw at several points amongst the previous periods, and also the official style of writing, seen from the founders, that command legitimacy and respect.  The popularity of Charlotte Temple must be acknowledged, as its many themes corresponded to American conditions of the time.  The mystique of the handsome soldier going off to war, the horror of a parent who watches their child make devastating mistakes, and the emotional pain of a smitten child who must separate from their family in order to follow their own will are all well represented by the drama of the novel, and those themes resonated with both the novel’s intended audience and those who found it easily relatable. 

Edgar Huntly and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow then draw upon several aspects of America’s past to help form an American identity, which is either the goal or inadvertent achievement of period authors.  Both works utilize the gothic elements of the American wilderness, first introduced by Columbus, and an intermingling of the sublime.  Charles Brockden Brown uses the idea of the unknown immigrant in his tale, capitalizing on the historical notion that one could come to America to start a new life.  Brown also plays upon the idea of the cave as a representation of the mind, as Edgar and Clithero seek to understand their true natures as human beings.  Brown thrusts his titular character into several situations that force him into the moral dilemma of rational civilization versus unrestrained vengeance, which revisit the sermon-like elements in Charlotte Temple. 

Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow was an effective end to the semester, as it reflected the overt change and modernization that is overtaking America.  It is interesting, however, that the small community of Sleepy Hollow exists in such a world, swelled to bursting with its regional folklore.  Irving nails the fact that America is changing, but also retains those trace elements of tradition that people hold onto so tightly.  America certainly is on a pathway to the bigger and brighter, and has been since its discovery.  But as they say, the more things change, the more they will stay the same.  There will always be religion in our country, there will always be the mixture of cultures ranging from the African to the Hispanic to the Native, and there will always be storytelling.  The “good old days” that people yearn for have not really gone away.  They have just provided a foundation for our culture, our literature, and our future.

A Superb Class Requires Effort

The use of online texts was a fantastic idea for several reasons.  Of course it’s nice to not have to buy books, but the in-text instruction and notes that you provided was invaluable, and provided a reading experience unlike any I’ve ever had.  Reading at home was almost like being in class, and honestly, some of the texts might have been rendered unreadable without them, due to the jargon of the times.

Thinking of the tiny negative aspect of locating certain passages, especially in larger texts, I liked the idea of providing line numbers, though that may require a lot of extra work from you.  I suggest converting the documents to PDF files that have page numbers automatically.  Once you’ve added the footnotes, photos, and maps (which were also very helpful, and a nice break in the longer texts), just copy and paste everything into a Word document, convert it to a PDF, and put the link on the course homepage.  That being said, I personally can’t offer any advice on how to do that beyond the copying and pasting (ha-ha), but I’m sure a kind member of UHCL’s computer staff could help.

I think quizzes should be a mandatory class staple.  I know that I require a little structure to help me along required readings.  For some reason, once a text is deemed required, my resistance triples towards it even though it is enjoyable.  Don’t feel bad if people bomb them because they didn’t read, because the class as a whole suffers discussion-wise if only two or three people actually read.  I was able to learn a lot from this class because I actually participated, and I found texts that I never in forever would have read had they not been assigned.  So like the title says, any class that’s worth anything will require a measure of effort.  You should never feel bad about that, Dr. White, because as I’ve come to discover, classes in which you actually learn a great deal are quite rare these days.

Creating a Link to the Past

I must admit that other than Native American folklore, I had very little knowledge of America’s literary past before Poe and Hawthorne.  History had not been my best subject primarily because I found it difficult to relate to those individuals who are featured so prominently in the past, but upon reading these texts I found the missing piece that I needed: a tether from myself to them.  This tether that can be used to link the increasingly distant past with the present is the art of creativity.  Every storyteller relies on creativity to explain their tales, whether it be told orally, or written and distributed.  I have learned this semester that creativity is not limited to fiction.

            Take for instance the Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.  That it is written in the style of a journal or diary is one thing, but the artfulness of her words is another.  Rowlandson is a true wordsmith, and her descriptive language takes us to the exact moment that she lived.  The reader has no choice but to walk hand-in-hand with the author as she loses her home, her daughter, and her standard way of life.  An example of her creative talent comes from the Sixth Remove: “I went along that day mourning and lamenting, leaving farther my own country, and traveling into a vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of Lot's wife's temptation, when she looked back.”  Rowlandson draws inspiration from the Bible as her source of creative power, and through that power we are able to connect with her.  The notion of the wilderness as a dark and mysterious place will also become a distinctly American gothic element to later writers.

Rowlandson could have written about anything she pleased.  She could have painted a portrait of Native Americans so intensely grotesque that they would be vilified even more so than they were at that time.  But she had a degree of creative integrity that compelled her to document everything as it happened.  She is not afraid to refer to the American Indians in a positive light, such as in the eighth remove.  “There one of them asked me why I wept.  I could hardly tell what to say: Yet I answered, they would kill me.  ‘No,’ said he, ‘none will hurt you.’ Then came one of them and gave me two spoonfuls of meal to comfort me.”  Rowlandson provides a wealth of knowledge into the everyday lives of both settlers and American Indians, all because of her creative drive to tell her story.

The next few examples of creative genius came from the unexpected source of personal letters written between John and Abigail Adams.  These letters were a delight to read, as I could now picture two figures from American history as plainly as any television celebrity.  These were real people after all, and like Mary Rowlandson, they had a flair for creative writing.  In Abigail’s November 5, 1775 letter to John, she looses a paragraph so well-phrased and eloquent that it could be part of any well-written novel.  “Let revenge or ambition, pride, lust, or profit, tempt these men to a base and vile action; you may as well hope to bind up a hungry tiger with a cobweb, as to hold such debauched patriots in the visionary chains of decency, or to charm them with the intellectual beauty of truth and reason.”  The use of metaphor in the passage is fabulous, not to mention the proper use of the semi-colon. 

Through their letters, we are given a glimpse into the personalities of both John and Abigail Adams, and through their communication we learn more about Benjamin Franklin as well.  In my opinion, these letters are much more effective at providing biographical information than a mediocre biography.  These people were obviously lovers of language, and their communication through April and May of 1776 fashions a tale that most likely would have been heard through the windows of not just the Adams’s house.  When John informs Abigail that the masculine systems of family would not be repealed lest men fall under the “despotism of the petticoat,” she replies with a reminder that all women have the power to “throw both [men’s] natural and legal authority at [women’s] feet.”  The brilliant exchange shows a superb familial dynamic between the two, with jocularity and a touch of friendly rivalry all encircled by unshakeable love.

Mary Rowlandson’s tale and the Adams family [apologies, I couldn’t resist] letters are two great examples of how creative literature was developed in America.  The thought that stories come from evocative language borne from a spark of creativity can be applied to any text we read this semester.  The letters of Columbus definitely required creativity, as they were purposed to repot his progress.  “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” may be a sermon, but Jonathan Edwards utilizes creative and ornate language to take Christian faith to an entirely more intense level.  Superstitions also come from creativity, and although those superstitious beliefs can lead to tragedy, such as the case of the Salem Witch Trials, they can also lead to the telling of legends such as that of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.  This tether of the creative spirit can be followed through modern times, and it can unite the myriad voices whispering over the centuries in order to paint a portrait of America from its origins.