LITR 4232 American Renaissance

Margaret Fuller & Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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.

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

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

Thursday, 16 October: Henry David Thoreau 1853-1872, introduction + “Resistance to Civil Government” + Backgrounds to Civil Disobedience

Text-Objective Discussion: Nicole Bippen

Tuesday, 21 October: Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1698-1751, 1780-1792: introduction + selections from Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Text-Objective Discussion: Shanna Farmer

Thursday, 23 October: midterm exam

Progress to midterm

midterm exemplifies standard division in literary research and teaching:

formal / stylistic

historical / cultural

teaching:

lecture: linear, goes farther and deeper, but most students can't keep up for very long, or don't want to

discussion: engages more students socially, but usually doesn't go as far, more circular and reinforcing

Questions for Fuller, Stanton

How much should Literature concern social or cultural criticism, compared to discussions of genres, forms, symbolism, etc.?

Compared to Emerson, what issues come up in teaching?

Compare Emerson and Fuller as "Transcendentalists." What's continuous or similar, and what changes or resembles?

Representative or classic literature?

Is Literature automatically or predominantly liberal or progressive? What response for conservative students, or reaction by traditional schools?

How is Fuller Romantic or Transcendentalist?

What differences between terms?

Does Stanton qualify as a Romantic writer? How?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments.

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

Declaration of Independence

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.

How can you coordinate the formal/stylistic aspects of Objectives 1&2 with the cultural/historical aspects of Obj. 3?

Assignments

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

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

What’s inherently “Romantic” about the slave narrative? (cf. Fuller)

 What's not Romantic? What's so realistic that it contradicts Romanticism or the romance?

 Significance of literacy

 progression of outsiders in literature

 Cora—woman-of-color character in male-authored novel—one voice among many, beginnings of emergence of "new American"

 Sojourner Truth—real person, speaks for herself but illiterate (2046)

 Harriet Jacobs—real person, writes own autobiography, but edited? Supplemented? How much truth / fiction? (1838)

Problem of discussing slavery, especially in a Confederate state like Texas (i. e., 150 years ago, some of us would be slaveholders or slaves)

Avoid good guys / bad guys approach; Fuller shows one way how

But always a difficult problem, so solutions are sometimes hard to imagine, and "good guys-bad guys" makes for an easier story.

Problem with slave narratives, though: some of us would have been the bad guys!

In addition to Fuller's solution, here's another:

Not just differences, but alliances of differences

Today:

leftist coalitions: pro-choice, civil rights, gay rights, peace

conservative movement: pro-life, pro-gun, anti-tax, defense

Fuller and Stanton: anti-slavery forces pitch in for women

Jacobs: combines both stories: she's a slave, and a woman slave . . . 

Sojourner Truth's status as African + woman

compare Jacobs as "double minority" or "double outsider"

i. e., both women and people of color excluded from power

Jacobs comments about special burdens of woman slave

But "double minority" can be "alliance"

That is, the same dynamic that oppresses women and blacks

may lead abolition and women's rights to work together

Open discussion of Fuller, Stanton

Any issues or questions to air or settle before instructor runs with it?

How would you characterize Fuller or Stanton as "Romantic" or "Transcendentalist?"

How classify Fuller (or Stanton) as a stylist? Classic or representative?

How would you characterize Fuller or Stanton as "Romantic" or "Transcendentalist?"

Fuller 1705: "every arbitrary barrier thrown down"

Formal Exercise and Question

How does a women's literary tradition begin within a male-dominant tradition?

One possibility later this semester: Women's storytelling traditions > women's romances, sentimental fiction

Harriet Beecher Stowe, other best-selling novelists of her and our time

But how about literature as public voice, political argument, moral guidance not just to private world but to public sphere (which is traditionally masculine)?

But avoid strict political edge. It's a Literature course. We inevitably open to such questions or issues, which will circulate, but they're not our main purpose--potentially liberating, potentially limiting.

> formal patterns, critical thinking

Instructor models:

error sometimes leads to insight, re-sensitizes

last class I tried to preview how Fuller's father taught Fuller and why, something about two older brothers dying . . .

p. 1692

cf. Stanton 2109

in both cases, a transfer not from mother to daughter or father to son but

father to daughter

interesting social pattern

Can it be extended into the texts?

Hypothesis: Both women writers revise or reform texts or styles originally written by men

Most obvious example: Stanton revises Declaration of Independence

Does Fuller revise Transcendentalism?

Fuller, introduction (1692-95) + from Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1697-1719)

Emerson, introduction (1578-1581) + opening 5 pages of Nature) (1582-1589), opening 5 pages of “Self-Reliance” (1621-1626); 

Revising the Declaration

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 . . . .  

“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: 

stars, presence of the sublime

a higher thought or a better emotion

unity of all religious and literary traditions

[Unitarianism] Moses, Plato, Milton

mystical union

I am part and particle of God

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

Revising the Declaration

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 . . . .  

When the Declaration said "all men are created equal," who did it mean?

As far as the Founding Fathers could imagine, the phrase applied to people like themselves: white men of the upper class

Possible reactions?

Declaration as a sham? Many Founding Fathers were slaveholders who couldn't imagine women or people of color having the same rights or privileges as themselves. And most of the ones who thought differently would have been branded as "Massachusetts liberals."

Alternative to cynicism:

The Declaration establishes a goal and a process for American history.

The goal might be that "equality" will someday be available to all.

The process might be the extension of rights to previously excluded groups.

Question: Can this process or story-line of American history be interpreted as a romance?

Question: Can the Declaration of Independence be studied with texts like The Last of the Mohicans as literature?

With representative literature, 

extension of rights to previously excluded groups

=

extension of voice to previously excluded groups

Entering of more and different people into political and economic equality may correspond to their "gaining a voice" in media or literature.

on part of nation

1632 principle of liberty better understood, broader protest in behalf of women

1633 Red Man, Black Man

1633 this country is as surely destined to elucidate a great moral law (cf. Europe mental culture)

1633 not in vain, “All men are born free and equal.”

1633-4 inevitable . . . for every member

1635 African + woman

Stanton

Declaration of Sentiments

2042 all men and women created equal; p. 971

2042 man replaces king; cf. 971

2042 continued battle taken for granted

Fuller as Romantic, Transcendental

Fuller's life as Romanticism, romance?

1626 translation, Goethe

1632 fulfill law of being

1632 growth of individual

1636 limits of women’s sphere

1639 every arbitrary barrier thrown down + ravishing harmony of spheres; cf. Apess 1403

Not to diminish her accomplishment, but Fuller has sometimes been regarded as more of a great "literary personality" than as a great writer. What about her life resembles a romance or has romantic overtones?

romance as "quest," emergence

on part of individual (i. e., Fuller):

1626 disappointed at girl, but education, class; four languages

1626 cf. Literary clubs, self-development of women

1627 reporter: visited women’s prisons, halfway house, immigrant slums, city hospitals; specific social issues of the day

1627 first American “foreign correspondents,” male or female

1627 social activists and literary figures (cf. Cooper, Irving, Hawthorne, James, Eliot); sexual liberation

1627 republican cause, military hospital, son, scandalized

1627 ship caught in storm [only good die young]

correspondence:

1635 national union / family union

Transcendentalism

compare Emerson's sphere, Transcendentalism's use of Platonic forms

correspondence 1525

transparent eyeball 1518

globe 1520

1632 man and woman: two halves of one thought, twin exponents of a divine thought

Emerson 1518 a higher thought or a better emotion

1633 this country is as surely destined to elucidate a great moral law (cf. Europe mental culture)  

-----------------------------

1626 disappointed at girl, but education, class; four languages

1626 instant impression

1626 translation, Goethe

1626 “Conversations” (contrast lectures)

1626 potential within themselves

1626 cf. Literary clubs, self-development of women

1691 Boston-centered literary renaissance of mid-19c America

1627 reporter: visited women’s prisons, halfway house, immigrant slums, city hospitals; specific social issues of the day

1627 first American “foreign correspondents,” male or female

1627 social activists and literary figures (cf. Cooper, Irving, Hawthorne, James, Eliot); sexual liberation

1627 republican cause, military hospital, son, scandalized

1627 ship caught in storm [only good die young]

1627 Thoreau

1628 conversation and writing

1628 intrigued and threatened

1628 emergence of renewed women’s movement in 1960s helped revive interest in Fuller’s work

from Woman in the Nineteenth Century

1632 fulfill law of being

1632 growth of individual

1632 man and woman: two halves of one thought, twin exponents of a divine thought

1632 principle of liberty better understood, broader protest in behalf of women

1633 Red Man, Black Man

1633 growth of individual minds

1633 this country is as surely destined to elucidate a great moral law (cf. Europe mental culture)

1633 not in vain, “All men are born free and equal.”

1633-4 inevitable . . . for every member

1635 African + woman

1635 national union / family union

1635 dialogue, re “sphere”

1636 limits of women’s sphere

1637 privately influenced

1638 Quaker preachers of modern times (women’s rights and abolition)

1639 every arbitrary barrier thrown down + ravishing harmony of spheres; cf. Apess

1639 friend of Negro, friend of woman

1639 Miranda—fictionalizes autobiography

1640 self reliance

1641 furthering an especial work of our time

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

2039 gender stereotyping (contrast Fuller)

2039 not personal but structural

2039 anti-slavery activists; Quakers (anti-slavery + women’s rights)

2039  but refusal to seat women delegates at World Anti-Slavery convention

2039 Seneca Falls convention

2039 three other reform movements

2040 greatest revolution world has known

from Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences

2040 mental hunger

2041 isolated household; Fourier’s phalansterie

2041 Mott, Friends,

2041 Emerson, discontent healthy

2041 religious earnestness

2042 journals mock; anti-slavery papers stand by + Frederick Douglass

2042 Mrs. J S Mill

Declaration of Sentiments

2042 all men and women created equal; p. 971

2042 man replaces king; cf. 971

2042 continued battle taken for granted

Thursday, 9 February: Ralph Waldo Emerson, introduction + opening 5 pages of Nature), opening 5 pages of “Self-Reliance,”  “Concord Hymn.”

Reader: Kate Barrack

Tuesday, 14 February: Sarah Margaret Fuller, introduction + from Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Thursday, 16 February: Harriet Ann Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

Reader: Neelam Damani

Tuesday, 21 February: Frederick Douglass, introduction + (Narrative of the Life . . . + opening of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Reader: Kyle Phillips

Thursday, 23 February: Henry David Thoreau, introduction + “Resistance to Civil Government”

Reader: Joe Myers