LITR 4232 American Renaissance
Frederick Douglass, introduction + (Narrative of the Life . . . + opening of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
| assignments, midterm web highlight: Lisa Wilson questions for Douglass reader: Adrian Holden |
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Tuesday, 14 October: Frederick Douglass 2060-2143, introduction + (Narrative of the Life . . . + opening of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Text-Objective Discussion: Adrian Holden
Web highlight (midterms): Lisa Wilson
Questions from Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
In course on literary Romanticism, how does it fit?
What problems connecting Romanticism to a real-life story?
Representative, popular, or classic?
assignments
Thursday, 16 October: Henry David Thoreau 1853-1872, introduction + “Resistance to Civil Government” + Backgrounds to Civil Disobedience
Text-Objective Discussion: Nicole Bippen
"Resistance to Civil Government" a. k. a. "Civil Disobedience"
2
Thoreaus
Walden
= individual alone in nature and responding to it
“Civil
Disobedience” or “Resistance to Civil Govt”—abolitionist, theorist of
passive resistance, influence on King, Gandhi
could do either Thoreau, but not time to do both, so how fit in with course?
This part of the course is marching up to the Civil War, 1861-65.
upsides of Civil War: slavery ends, so war was worth fighting
downsides: enormous loss of life: 600,000 killed in population of 30 million, whole communities devastated; plus, after Lincoln's assassination, no coordinated plan for recovery
Literature suffered enormously--it takes about a generation for outstanding literature to start reappearing; many potential writers killed or economically undercut
Couldn't slavery have ended without war?
Thoreau:
Freedom of speech, press, political choices provides model
for political dissent in advanced, pluralistic societies
"Democratic societies don't go to war with each other."
Good! But plenty of problems remain to be resolved without fighting.
problem:
amoral society: capitalism, freedom of / from religion
how
to morally influence or challenge an amoral political system?
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today?
Mexican War
Intellectual
heritage of civil disobedience or
passive resistance
What's "Transcendental" about Thoreau's vision of justice?
+ What's romantic about Thoreau's vision of the individual, nature, and society? (objectives 2 & 3)
Tuesday, 21 October: Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1698-1751, 1780-1792: introduction + selections from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Text-Objective Discussion: Shanna Farmer
Thoreau influential world-wide for a century and a half
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) widely considered the most politically influential novel ever written
President Lincoln on meeting Stowe: "So you're the little woman who started this big war?"
Thursday, 23 October: midterm exam
Alliances of difference
from
The Declaration of Independence 1776
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all
men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness . . . .
Douglass,
"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"
1881
This, to you
1886
What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?
1897 Fellow-citizens!
Margaret
Fuller, "The
Great Lawsuit," 1843
. . . Though the national independence be blurred by the
servility of individuals, though freedom
and equality have been proclaimed only to leave room for a monstrous display
of slave dealing and slave keeping;
though the free American so often feels himself free, like the Roman, only to
pamper his appetites and his indolence through the misery of his fellow beings,
still it is not in vain that the verbal
statement has been made, "All men are born free and equal."
There it stands, a golden certainty, wherewith to encourage the good, to
shame the bad. . .
Margaret Fuller, "The Great Lawsuit," 1843
Of all its banners, none has been more steadily upheld, and under none has more valor and willingness for real sacrifices been shown, than that of the champions of the enslaved African. And this band it is, which, partly in consequence of a natural following out of principles, partly because many women have been prominent in that cause, makes, just now, the warmest appeal in behalf of women . . .
Stanton, 2042: journals mock; anti-slavery papers stand by + Frederick Douglass
Midterm and Models
Midterm parts:
1. Choose and analyze a passage (or related passages) (20-25 minutes)
2. Answer either formal or historical question with essay referring to at least 3 course texts / authors (55-60 minutes)
Additions / changes to midterm assignment from 2004
You must discuss Last of the Mohicans somewhere in your midterm. It can be your passage selection for #1 or one of your three texts for #2
Don't forget required references:
previous student midterm
student presentation
Warnings based on past experience:
Don't spend too much time on #1!
Quality of style and completeness of expression matter, but an exam is not an exercise in perfection. Rather, it's a bold exercise that favors the adventurous spirit. Don't fear being wrong. Take a chance on being right!
The topics are really quite open. Think about what you've learned or welcomed about the course's materials. What makes you want to read and learn more? What have you begun to learn or comprehend as a result of reading a group of texts?
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"The Lincoln of African America" the "great" slave narrative representative + classic literature How like a romance? What difference? Significance of literacy in the American RenaissanceDeclaration, 4th of July debate (1881-82) alliances of difference
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Topics for Douglass
Literacy
Classic or representative literature?
What's Romantic? Where does reality intrude on the romance?
Alliances of difference
One people?
Literacy
American Renaissance (antebellum) period as one of rising literacy rates, literacy as path to personal power, prestige
Compare American Renaissance to now:
Expansion of democratic capitalism (which evidently must always expand):
antebellum period: "Manifest Destiny," Indian and Mexican lands > USA
now: global capitalism, Americanization of everything; people work longer hours, get more choices and things
Individual paths to power:
antebellum period: growing literacy rates, rise of industrial printing, "What's the news?"
now: computer literacy as path to personal power or competence
literacy & democracy
1814 relationship of reading and writing to a liberated consciousness
1831 the slave must answer never a word
1832 the penalty of telling the truth
1839 I now understood . . . the white man's power to enslave the black man.
1841 Columbian Orator
1842 literacy curse or blessing?
Classic or representative literature?
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(category of comparison) |
Classic Literature or “Old Canon” |
Representative Literature or “New Canon” |
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Other codes or identifying terms |
“Great Authors”; “DWEMs”; “Great White Fathers” “Excellence” |
“women
and people of color”; “under-represented” or “marginalized” |
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Spoken / literate cultural traditions |
Long traditions of literacy (often through old Protestant denominations) |
Oral or spoken traditions from non-literate, traditional cultures; sometimes (as with women writers) alternative written traditions or genres |
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Education |
“highly educated,” “best schools,” learning as gentlemanly leisure, taste, class |
Self-educated (Douglass), privately educated (upper-class women), or “mission schools” (esp. Indians but also blacks); irregular education (Lincoln) |
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genres |
“belles lettres”: fiction, poetry, drama |
“Activist” texts: autobiography, memoir, “people’s history”; non-fiction |
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religion |
“cool” religion: symbolic, private, allusive; remembered, not vital; highly literate |
“hot” religion: immediate, vivid, personal; vehicle for assertion of status, equality; often more oral than literate but also often an introduction to literacy |
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“voice” |
“official voice”: rational, controlled, depths of power |
Unofficial, sometimes more emotional or seeking way to express previously unexpressed attitudes |
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style |
Refined, self-conscious, knowledgeable of literary tradition |
Eccentric; comes in and out of focus; conflicting demands on voice |
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Control over text |
“great author” as “creator” of text, master of control (often well connected to publishers) |
Problems of authenticity; text is often “layered” by other writers’ hands, editors’ and readers’ expectations |
Douglass's career as a writer:
journalist, editor of The North Star and Frederick Douglass' Paper
three versions of autobiography:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)
one short work of fiction: "The Heroic Slave"
topical poems in journalism, etc.
Douglass's career in literary studies:
As far as I know, I never heard or read his name when I was an undergraduate in the 1970s.
But . . . that doesn't mean he wasn't being read!
Some knowledge of him in American history classes
But especially he was still known and read at historically black colleges and universities like Texas Southern or Prairie View
attitude toward religion
1858 the religion of the south
1860 held my Sabbath school
1876 The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence . . . .
What's Romantic about Douglass? Where does reality intrude on the romance?
Douglass, p.
cf. Emerson stars, presence of the sublime
cf.
Fuller every arbitrary barrier thrown down
x-Romance:
slavery not a metaphor
Dream:
a better day coming
How
is slave narrative like a romance?
1856 It was a glorious resurrection from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom
1861 the flickering light of the north star . . . beckoning to us
1871
I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State.
romance
not just a literary phenomenon, but a literary response or reflection of a
human, cultural phenomenon
how
unlike?
Escape
not reported 1868
1871
freedom with a catch
1875
employment, reward, but white calkers refused to work with me
the Dream: variation on American Dream, American Dream with a catch
cf.
Jacobs
1984
sold at last, Christian religion
1984
bill of sale
1985
freedom x marriage
1985 dream . . . home of my own + children
One people?
1825 The whisper that my master was my father
1825 mulatto children
1826 a very different-looking class of people
1863 yellow devil, mulatto devil
(From LITR 4332 American Minority Literature)
4b. To distinguish the ideology of American racialism—which sees races as pure, separate, and permanent identities—from American practice, which always involves hybridity (or mixing) and change.
Tabular
summary of 4b
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American
racial ideology (what dominant culture thinks or says) |
American
racial practice (what American culture
actually does) |
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Races or genders are pure and separate. |
Races always mix. What we call "pure" is only the latest change we're used to. |
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Races and genders are permanent categories, perhaps allotted by God or Nature as a result of Creation, climate, natural selection, etc., |
Racial divisions & definitions constantly change or adapt; e. g., the Old South's quadroons, octaroons, "a single drop"; recent revisions of racial origins of Native America; Hispanic as "non-racial" classification; "bi-racial" |
from Jacobs
1962
nearly white, Anglo-Saxon ancestors
1967
secrets of slavery, father of eleven slaves
1968
children of every shade of complexion
Question: does America have a story that expresses this data?
Melting pot?
> LITR 4333 American Immigrant Literature
