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LITR 4328 American
Renaissance lecture notes |
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final exam discussion
schedule for research
use websites for more information than you can remember or make up
10.6 confuses all principles of morality
9.2 Methodist
camp meeting, 2nd
Great Awakening
9.4 learn to read New Testament, broke up
9.7 Covey a professor of religion
purposes of civil disobedience
Article 6, 3
Bill of Rights, first amendment
Unitarianism > Transcendentalism
Are essays literature? > rhetoric, figurative speech,
narrative, anecdote
Thoreau, Resistance
1 present Mexican war
2 government = machinery
4 not no govt, but a better govt
5 majority as power, not right
> conscience? (Romantic individualism)
6 corporation no conscience, but what if conscientious men?
[context of separation of church and state]
7 men as machines [cf. Mr. Gore]
7 conscience = resistance
8 slave’s govt does not equal my govt
9 slavery + Mexican war + 10
10 War on Mexico + 11
11 not politicians but merchants and farmers
11 comparison to Washington and Franklin
12 vote = feeble wish
13 don’t have to fight, but can’t support wrong
13 by their money, furnished a substitute
15
if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the
agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law
17 if God on one’s side, no need for majority
18 refusal to pay taxes > abolish slavery
19 Under a
government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a
prison
19 minority powerful when it clogs
20 voluntary
simplicity x property as compromise
20 rich man sold to institution that makes him rich
21 live within yourself, not have many affairs [voluntary
simplicity]
21 riches and honors as subjects of shame
22 "Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do
not wish to be regarded as a member of any society which I have not joined."
23
As they could not
reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come
at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. [state as
organization of violence]
24 I am not responsible
for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the
engineer.
24 higher law
24 If a plant cannot
live according to nature, it dies; and so a man.
28 like traveling in a far country
28 romance images
30 cf RVW
30 alienation from society
31 huckleberry party [define]
31 freedom in nature x prison state
33
quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion
38 lower, higher, highest point of view
42 higher; romance journey
44 individual as a higher and independent authority
Emerson,
Thoreau
Add that both
lived in
Voluntary simplicity, counter-Dream
Counter-evolutionary imperatives
Review Woolman
2 iconoclast definition
3
I would not do again what I have done once (invented
pencil) [x-industrial model of replication, mass production, high profit]
4
making every day some new acquaintance with Nature,
though as yet never speaking of zoology or botany . . . incurious of technical
and textual science [cf.
Whitman and astronomer]
5 refuse all the accustomed paths and
keep his solitary freedom at the cost of disappointing the natural expectations
of his family and friends
5 probity definition
6
a much more
comprehensive calling, the art of living well.
6 never idle or self-indulgent; few wants
7 drift into the profession of land-surveyor
9 practice define as way of living
9
He interrogated every
custom, and wished to settle all his practice on an ideal foundation
9 [negative catalog]
9
no temptations to
fight against,—no appetites, no passions, no taste for elegant trifles.
10
as if he did not feel
himself except in opposition
11 company of young
people, huckleberry party [cf. Resistance] huckleberry = berry plant kin to
blueberry
11 cf. classic and
popular literature
12 refs to Walden and
Resistance
13
of no consequence if
every one present held the opposite opinion.
14 No truer American
14
The men were all
imitating each other, and on a small mould. Why can they not live as far apart
as possible, and each be a man by himself?
15
abolition of slavery,
abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of government [negative catalog]
16 wonderful fitness of
body and mind
17
The Betrothed 1825
17
He had always a new resource.
18 only man of leisure
18 anecdote
21
extolling his own town
and neighborhood as the most favored center for natural observation
22
the best place for each is where he stands
23 paths of his own
25 homage solely to the truth itself
26 every circumstance touching the Indian
27 likeness of law throughout Nature [
29 paltering = insincere talk
29 dangerous frankness
30 instead
of
engineering for all
30 Emerson’s exasperation
31 cities = refinements and artifices
33-41 aphorisms
43 a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world
Whitefield
1.1-2 family values under siege
1.4 early, primitive Christians
1.6 paranoia, conspiracy? cf. Salem Witch Trials
1.10 the great importance of Family Religion
1.11 you are fallen creatures--contrast Romanticism
1.11 deep sense of God's free grace
2.1 a fallen world
2.2 egalitarian?
2.4 worldliness
2.9 new-birth cf. Emerson
2.10 feeling, sweet
2.10 natural state as hell
2.10 millennium, judgment day
3.3 Apostolic generation
3.5 partaker of the Divine Nature cf. Emerson
3.5 had he continued holy
3.5 partaker of the devil's nature
3.13 cf. Puritan covenant
3.18 x-worldliness, worldy status
3.21 life hidden; cf. Romantic inside
Seguin
Classic, popular, and representative literature
open floor
1 military companies, adventurers
caught in middle, dark intrigues, jealousy [mestizo, Hispanic / Latino]
3 Texan war for independence,
many noble hearts
also many bad men
[frontier as stateless society, no protections, only strong and week, with hopes that strong are good]
4 first city of Texas . . . also the receptacle of the scum of society
my countrymen ran to me for protection against the assaults or exactions [demands for payment] of those adventurers
Were not the victims my own countrymen, friends and associates?
foreigners x countrymen
5 smuggling [border]
6 elected mayor
6 Republic re-allocates city property
13 Seguin is with us. [cf. Seguin]
16 reports about my pretended treason
16 some Americans were murdering Curbier
17 hiding from rancho to rancho
20 before leaving my country, perhaps forever, family council
21 ungrateful Americans
21I resolved to seek a refuge amongst my enemies
22 my services paid by persecutions
4. More explicitly, a generation or two ago Texas school curricula for a majority-white student population would not likely have included Seguin but instead would have elevated Anglo-Texians like Stephen F. Austin or Sam Houston. How has the narrative or characterization of Texas changed with its population? How prepared are teachers to tell a story that includes Anglos, Mexicans, Indians, and African Americans? What about the moral trade-offs involved in such stories?
dangers of defensiveness, retrenchment
lower grade-levels: teach critical thinking or "it's all great?"
border studies
LITR 4338 American Minority Literature
4a. What challenges to teaching representative literature? (e.g. defensiveness, keep head down, fear of being called racist or sexist)
problem of teaching history, then reading literature within it
Students can take one step with you, but not usually two (per class)
