LITR 4232 American Renaissance: Emerson

Fuller and Emerson are grouped together because they were friends and worked together as founders and editors of The Dial, the leading journal of "Transcendentalist" literature and criticism in the antebellum period.

Thursday, 2 October: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1106-1113: introduction + opening 5 pages of Nature; 1163-68: opening 5 pages of “Self-Reliance”

Text-Objective Discussion: Martin Bidegaray

Course Objectives:

1. To use "close reading" and "Historicism" as ways of studying classic, popular, and representative literature and cultural history of the "American Renaissance" (the generation before the Civil War).

2. To study the movement of "Romanticism," the narrative genre of "romance," and the related styles of the "gothic" and "the sublime." (The American Renaissance is the major period of American Romantic Literature.)

3. To use literature as a basis for discussing representative problems and subjects of American culture (Historicism), such as equality (race, gender, class); modernization and tradition; the individual, family; and community; nature; the role of writers in an anti-intellectual society.

Transcendentalism

review representative  literature & obj. 1

1. To use "close reading" and "Historicism" as ways of studying classic, popular, and representative literature and cultural history of the "American Renaissance" (the generation before the Civil War).

purpose: distinguish racial ideology and practice

(ideology = what people think automatically, habitually; practice = what they actually do or how they behave

standard example of conflict: family values + divorce)

recall racial issue at end of Last of the Mohicans

If Cora & Uncas become a couple, child would mix African, European, Indian bloods

Denied!

But check out Apess 1051

Representative literature raises issues that classical literature ignores, that conflict with ideology (in this case, of racial purity)

What else about representative literature?

assignments

Tuesday, 7 October: "First-Wave Feminism." Margaret Fuller 1637-1659, introduction + from "The Great Lawsuit"; 1675-76: "Fourth of July"; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments.

Fuller as leading feminist intellectual of pre-Civil War America

Stanton as important writer, activist for women's rights w/ Susan B. Anthony

Fuller:

How representative? How classic?

How Transcendental? (esp., How can this style or way of thinking be turned to gender issues?)

Stanton:

1848 Women's Rights meeting at Seneca Falls, New York

Compare audience reaction to Sojourner Truth--compare "hate radio"

Compare Declaration of Sentiments to Declaration of Independence

Then back to representative literature

Thursday, 9 October: Harriet Jacobs 1808-29, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

introducing Emerson

"founding father of American literature"--about 15 years younger than Cooper and Irving, another 15 years older than Whitman, Melville, Douglass

somewhat popular author and public figure during lifetime--even people who didn't read him attended his lectures, knew his name

profoundly influential on contemporary and later writers--inspiring, liberating, but deeply rooted thinker

connected American literature to European Romantic thought--visited Europe as a young man, met Coleridge, Carlyle, others

personally, a conscientious, perceptive man who kept his friends and encouraged creativity

former Unitarian minister

long-term influences:

Creates or crystallizes ways of thinking identified with American life or culture:

self-reliance, individualism

correspondence with nature

perpetual revolution and change as creativity, but not reflexive or automatic

creates a way of thinking that sounds or seems religious but is not limited to any single religion

(Most of the intellectual structures are familiar, though, either from High Protestant Christianity or from classical thought such as Neo-Platonic mysticism.)

Somewhat satisfies desire for religious loftiness while not being exactly limited to any particular religion

Literature as "form"

Last class, question of how to make different kinds of literature meet in the same course.

Recent trends threaten too much difference: historicism and multiculturalism--tendency to move from one thing to another, covering as much as possible but not sure why you're reading one author or group and not another--

standard pattern of resistance: tradition . . . I want my kids to read what I read. (works for teachers as well as parents.)

Question: how to cover a range of expected material while maintaining coherence / cohesion and teaching critical thinking skills?

Many answers with many variations, but they often return to

language: terms, meaning > forms

Example from last class: We were struggling with how to coordinate different materials and responses to classic and representative literature

Recognized difficulty, how much to be learned, but came together briefly at end with example of "sublime" in Sojourner Truth (Stowe article, 2604)

Can different languages, cultures, traditions meet in form?

For instance, does "the sublime" describe something that may appear under different terms or names but we can recognize as related to our own categories of experience or knowledge?

Not a silver bullet, but increases possibility of convergence rather than divergence.

How accomplished?

Establish terms . . .

Gothic, sublime, Transcendentalism, correspondence . . . and "forms"

"Form" as meeting or action of spirit and matter.

E. g., "the sublime"

Instructor: "something that exceeds normal language or categories of thought"

Edmund Burke on the Sublime

"pleasure and pain mixed"

Don't cop out by saying "Literature lets everybody be right, doesn't matter if you're wrong."

> unity of terms permits diversity and range of thought; diverse world meets on terms and forms

later today:

"sublime" in Emerson

"Transcendentalism" > "to transcend"

"correspondence"

aphorism, wise saying, epigram, proverb, motto, maxim

Emerson as classic writer?

Aphorism

link to research page

synonyms for aphorisms:

wise sayings

proverbs

motto

maxim

American wise man—cf. Franklin, Twain, Will Rogers

Trust thyself

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist

a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

Question: What if any connection between "wise sayings" and Emerson's continuing popularity?

Correspondence

Webster's definition:

1. Act or state of corresponding; relation or agreement of things to each other or of one thing to another.

2. Intercourse between persons by letters

3. The letters which pass between correspondents.

to correspond

1. To answer (to something else) in fitness, character, function, amount, etc.; to suit, agree, fit, or match.

2. To have communication esp. by letters

Concept important to Romanticism:

correspondence between moods of nature and moods of human

1518 every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind

Other ways of thinking about correspondence:

inside-outside reflect and inform each other

Most standard formulation: outside world influences inside:

"Who can be gloomy on a nice day like this?"

i. e., psychology corresponds to environment

But can be turned around

e. g., you're having love troubles, you go outside and hear the birds singing . . . 

"The very birds mock me!"

From Legend of Sleepy Hollow

2097 every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination

2107 sank deep in the mind of Ichabod

2108 all the stories of ghosts and goblins . . . came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker

Poe often uses this outward-flowing correspondence

poisoned mind affects perceptions of outside world

Also see in Wordsworth, British Romantics

Back to Emerson

1518 nature always wears the colors of the spirit

Usefulness of understanding idea of correspondence, besides Romantic literature

People think like this whether they know the word or not.

But if you *know* that you and other people think like this, you start to get control of it, can analyze and master your thoughts instead of just being carried away and going natural

Critical thinking

an intellectual figure

cf. parallelism that we did in Cooper by superimposing 

gothic color scheme of dark, light, and red

on American racial categories of black, white, red

Identifying Transcendentalism

as a movement in American Renaissance Literature

 The Web of American Transcendentalism (Virginia Commonwealth University)

Project in American Literature on Transcendentalism

“Transcendentalism” is a big, baggy word that can mean many different things. In the simplest historical terms, it’s a name for a loosely associated group of intellectuals, writers, and religious or social leaders in New England in the 1830s-1850s who shared similar backgrounds, styles, and interests.

Most important figures: Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau

Next in importance: Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott), Theodore Parker, Charles Ripley, Henry James Senior, Jones Very.

Sometimes other American Renaissance writers are included because of stylistic or thematic resemblances in their literature, plus some of this group were personally acquainted with the Transcendentalists.*

What these Transcendentalists had in common:

Pastors, members, or children of members of the Unitarian Church, in which Transcendentalism may be seen as a movement.

Emerson is at the center of the movement: most Transcendentalists were his friends or professional acquaintances.

History of the Unitarian Church:

17^th century: Puritanism (Congregational Church) >

late 18^th century, early 19^th century: Congregationalism (Trinitarian) + Unitarian

1830s-1850s: Unitarianism > Transcendentalism

How do we get from Puritanism to Transcendentalism?

“Puritanism” is generally a bad word in modern discourse, and “hip” literary people usually shun Puritanism reflexively. But students of American literature and culture have to build a respectful relationship with the Puritans for the following reasons:

1. Puritans were highly literate people. If you’re a student of early American literature and culture, New England has far more records and texts to study than any other part of the USA. New England has continued to produce the most important writers to American literature. (Beyond the American Renaissance, think Robert Frost, e e cummings, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Pynchon.)

2. If most literary people are less than gung-ho about America’s possible image as an aggressively capitalist, imperialist nation, New England is among the only parts of the country founded for reasons other than economic opportunity a consistent home for movements involving Abolition of slavery, Women’s Rights, Pacifism, religious tolerance, and environmentalism.

How did the Puritans turn into “Yankee Liberals?”

Puritanism in New England. A “hot” church or religious movement “cools off.”

17^th century: Puritanism as part of Protestant Reformation. Boston as the “City on a Hill,” the “City of God” > Salem Witch Trials

18^th century: Enlightenment, Age of Reason. As education spreads, the western world opens to increasing knowledge of other religions besides Christianity and regret over excesses of religious behavior (e. g., Salem Witch Trials). “Unitarianism” appears as an attempt to recognize the “unity” of God throughout nature and the world and to “rationalize” religious behavior (e. g., to improve ethics and social justice rather than prepare for the hereafter).

Historical Note: Unitarianism is never a large, mass movement; its influence derives from social prestige and intellectual depth. At the same time that Unitarianism is emerging as a “cool” religion, “hot” religions such as Methodism, Southern Baptistry, Mormonism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-Day Adventists are starting to bubble up all over the country. (“Hot” religions tend to emphasize individual salvation and the wellbeing of their religious community; “cool” religions tend to emphasize social justice on a larger scale.)

Peak period of Unitarianism: late 1700s, early 1800s.

Emergence of Transcendentalism: 1830s-50s.

Is Transcendentalism a religion? Obviously some religious themes, but never organized enough institutionally to become a religion of its own. You could call it a religious movement, but not a religion.

Why can public schools study Transcendentalism and not Baptistry or Mormonism?

*literary prestige

*”universality” of religious themes and images—its range of reference isn’t restricted to one religion

*no conversion motive: rather than draw a person to a particular way of thinking, Transcendentalism seeks for each individual to come to terms with whatever’s at work inside.

*Why religious conservatives can still gripe: Transcendentalism can sound like “New Age” thinking in its imagery of self-liberation and its diverse religious traditions—though New Age writing tends to be much lazier. Also, Unitarianism and Transcendentalism can be said to resemble “secular humanism” in terms of de-emphasizing a supreme divine authority beyond the human realm.

Genres: mostly non-fiction and poetry. Non-fiction may extend from Emerson’s essays to Thoreau’s intellectual memoirs to Fuller’s blend of essay and autobiography to sermons by Transcendentalist pastors.

Sometimes other American Renaissance writers are included because of stylistic or thematic resemblances in their literature, plus some of this group were personally acquainted with the Transcendentalists.*

*Whitman is the most frequent inclusion. His reading of Emerson was essential to his intellectual growth (“I was simmering, simmering, simmering . . . . Emerson brought me to a boil.”). When Whitman mailed Emerson a first edition of Leaves of Grass, Emerson wrote him back: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” Emerson’s essay “The Poet” appears to anticipate the changes Whitman makes in American poetry.

*Hawthorne and Melville are sometimes categorized as “Dark Transcendentalists” (compared to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman as “Light Transcendentalists”). Hawthorne knew Emerson and lived in Concord (home of Emerson and Thoreau), and some of Hawthorne’s and Melville’s symbols and themes may resemble those of Transcendentalism. But he and Melville were more critical than supportive of Transcendentalism, and they primarily wrote fiction rather than the genres associated with Transcendentalism.

*Occasionally, listings will include American Renaissance writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson and Frederick Douglass among the Transcendentalists. Doubtless these authors read Emerson and other Transcendentalists, and some resemblances can be found between their patterns of thought and imagery and those of the Transcendentalists. But in such applications “Transcendentalism” becomes so broad that the term loses any historical specificity and begins to blur differences for the sake of emphasizing unity—which sounds like what the Transcendentalists were often about!

Some markers of Transcendentalist style and thought:

transcendence as spirit above material world: 

1517 stars, presence of the sublime

1518 a higher thought or a better emotion

mystical union

1555 [Unitarianism] Moses, Plato, Milton

1518 I am part and particle of God

In many respects, Transcendentalism simply overlaps Romanticism—but it’s Romanticism that develops out of Puritanism.

1516 Nature and the Soul

1517 child

Correspondence

1518 every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind

1518 nature always wears the colors of the spirit

Sublime

1518 glad to the brink of fear

cf. Truth 2533 met God, burning [sublime?]

1518 transparent eye-ball

1518 man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature

 Individualism

"Self-Reliance," non-conformity

ultimately connect: Edwards

"Sinners" 643

Personal Narrative 633

Emerson as post-Revolutionary "religion"

religion for a secular society?

Introduce Emerson

"father" of Am lit

Only 1 class! But if you keep studying American literature, you'll keep encountering Emerson

Influence on other writers

Tradition of learning

Classical learning esp. Plato & Judeochristianity

Never underestimate, keep returning

Like Cooper, always been in print, always in libraries, schools

International in influences

Classic writer, plus among first to define and explore central American issues such as individualism, nature, living religion--

Why should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe?

still a somewhat radical thinker, the more you read the more you see

If you want to think well, you need to know what's been thought before; but to think really well, you need to be ready to think fresh

("You have to know the rules to break them right.")

Also popular within his genres

Essays as lectures / sermons

Atheneum, lecture circuit

Inspirational writing

"essential man" for Transcendentalist movement--many writers were inspired by Emerson and circulated around him

Edmund Burke on the Sublime

Sublime

glad to the brink of fear

cf. Truth 2604 met God, burning [sublime?]

transparent eye-ball

Assignments

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902

Nature

1517 stars, presence of the sublime

1517 child

1518 every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind

1518 glad to the brink of fear

cf. Truth 2533 met God, burning [sublime?]

1518 transparent eye-ball

1518 man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature

1518 nature always wears the colors of the spirit

[mystical experience]

[correspondence]

"Self-Reliance"

1555 [Unitarianism] Moses, Plato, Milton

divine idea which each of us represents

Trust thyself

creation/creator riff

nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner

youth and man

healthy attitude of human nature

society as conspiracy, joint-stock company

Make the traditions talk to each other 

1517 stars, presence of the sublime

1518 glad to the brink of fear

2533 met God, burning [sublime?]

ultimately connect: Edwards

"Sinners" 643

Personal Narrative 633

Emerson as post-Revolutionary "religion"

Deism > Unitarianism [>Transcendentalism]

+ growth of western religions: Baptist, Methodist

Fuller as differing from Emerson's "universal truth"

spirit

Nature 

original relation to the universe

insight and not tradition

perfection of the creation

speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous

Nature and the Soul

solitude

stars

sublime

[mystical experience]

[correspondence]

child

every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind

woods = perpetual youth

transparent eyeball [unity]

part and particle of man

occult relation

“Self-Reliance”

Unitarianism] Moses, Plato, Milton

inmost becomes outmost

divine idea which each of us represents

Trust thyself

creation/creator riff

nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner

youth and man

healthy attitude of human nature

society as conspiracy, joint-stock company

man = nonconformist

epigram

large societies and dead institutions

college of fools, meeting-houses

great man, crowd, independence of solitude

screens x man

cultivated classes > feminine rage [feminization of American culture]

harlot

aged ladies

consistency as hobgoblin

Unitarianism--Socrates, Jesus, Newton

To be great is to be misunderstood

contradictions

[family romance]

soul + divine spirit x-helps

lives with nature

resolution of all into the ever blessed ONE

God is here within

relations > self

a man is the word made flesh

the divinity of man 

[noble savage]

“Hymn sung . . .”

rebels--Spirit

nature's sublimity

shaft!--sires, sons

assignments

review classic and representative

self-improvement, finer things x voice for group, basic rights

2048 few women in those days who dared to “speak in meeting”

cf. Cora

Fuller—read 1714-1724 

Fuller & Stanton; power of "other voices" to change story, perspective, inclusiveness

Fuller as Transcendentalist, but how change "Romantic individualism?"

1580 edited Dial

Stanton as suffragist campaigner, how change Declaration of Independence?

cultural history:

compare Emerson & Fuller—different paths to intellectual leadership?

Competing or cooperating minorities?  (women, Indians, Af Ams)

references to Declaration, equality for all

style:

How romantic?

Natural imagery, emergence of individual

Life as romance?

Read Fuller's intro, very powerful presence, compare Truth

review classic & representative literature > introduce Emerson

One of big concerns in Literature courses these days is, Who do you read?

Answer has lots of implications about kind of education you’re getting, the kind of school you’re going to and its positioning in the so-called culture wars.

What kind of balance between nation's founding by wealthy European men and evolving future as multicultural nation?

how shaking out in education system?

Old canon of "classic literature" still dominates, especially in college prep courses.

Why? 

Practical answers:

Teachers teach what they they were taught

College-educated parents typically expect their children to read what they read (insofar as they're conscious of this at all).

Academic answers:

"Excellence" argument: classic writers generally rise from deep traditions of writing. Social advantages can raise performance levels.

Emphasis on "single tradition" enables attention to specific literary forms (e. g., gothic, sublime, romance)

But . . . some contrary pressures:

"Old Canon" primarily associated with eastern, European(-American) or "Anglo" tradition

Student population is increasingly non-Anglo, especially in the West and Southwest

Effort to get students to "read anything, not just the classics"

> authors with whose experiences and appearances the new student population can identify: "people of color," "street vs. academy," "outsiders, not insiders"

Discussion with School of Education faculty regarding ExCET tests for teacher certification: test-takers need to know Shakespeare and  Sandra Cisneros and Gary Soto

our resolution?

Old canon still dominates, but adding in new voices, > dialogue

problem: reading spread thin, “coverage” problem--spending 1 day on Emerson would make my professors frown!

Problem: often the most classic writers are the most intellectually challenging, least popular with students

representative writers often tell a simpler, more dramatic story (Jacobs and Douglass slave narratives will stir more powerful emotions than Emerson and Fuller)

Problem with setting up a course like American Renaissance:

Do you learn how to read carefully and in depth, 

or do you cover a lot of ground & become familiar with a lot of writers?  

provisional solution: Read authors in pairs, keep all the texts open, make the texts talk to each other.

Spending only one day on Emerson, but relate Fuller & Whitman back to him, keep him ready for reference.