LITR 4232 American Renaissance

Harriet Ann Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

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

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.

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

concept of American Renaissance

upshot:

literary maturity, development, or progress

cultural maturity, etc.

Declaration of Independence & American Renaissance social movements

Declaration of Sentiments

Fuller 1641

+ alliance of women's rights and Abolition movements 1642

Douglass

Assignments: Douglass

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

compare Fuller 1675-76

Questions for Jacobs

Broadest question(s):

Open discussion--what questions or interests / comments do you have in the piece?

What's attractive or odd?

More specific questions relating Jacobs to course:

In course on literary Romanticism, how does it fit?

What problems connecting Romanticism to a real-life story?

Representative, popular, or classic?

Leftover notes from previous classes

Assignments: Douglass   

Tuesday, 21 February: Frederick Douglass, introduction + Narrative of the Life . . . + opening of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (1879-1945; 1946-7) (In Narrative, Douglass's writing actually begins on p. 1889)

Reader: Kyle Phillips

"Alliances of difference"

from last class on Fuller and Stanton, previewing Douglass

In discussing slavery . . . 

Avoid good guys / bad guys approach as much as possible; Fuller shows one way how (e. g., "equality" as an ideal and a goal rather than an accomplished fact)

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

In other words, the temptation is to look at groups or identities in isolation, but in fact no one is just one identity

standard division of identities: race, class, gender

but it's race, class, and gender

not race, class, or gender

Each of us will emphasize one or the other in different contexts

Another example--"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 . . . 

2097 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

Topics for discussion of Jacobs

American racial ideology and practice

Human rights vs. property rights

alliances or divisions of difference

Romanticism or realism?

How to read Jacobs?

Representative, minority? (In other words, do you shift out of "American Renaissance" or "American Romanticism" to discuss issues unique to African America?)

Answer could depend on context--type of course, student population.

Or Romantic form?

recall form: structure or motion where intellectual and physical meet

other terms: figure, symbol, metaphor

potential upside: as features of language, forms can reach across cultures, identities, groups

Everyone uses metaphor or figures of speech

Romance narrative definition from Tragedy course (offered this summer)

Discussion of "romance narrative" in Last of the Mohicans

American racial ideology and practice

(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

1962 nearly white, Anglo-Saxon ancestors

1967 secrets of slavery, father of eleven slaves  

1968 children of every shade of complexion

Human rights vs. property rights

1962 I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise

1962 cracker business

1963 being property, can hold no property

1980 "A man ought to have what belongs to him." 

alliances or divisions of difference

1960 Rochester, anti-slavery feminists

1961 sexual exploitation of female slaves

1966 not a very refined woman [class]

1966 feel as other women do [gender]

1969 make a lady of me.  Hitherto, I had escaped my dreaded fate, by being in the midst of people.

1969 But O ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection

1970 man of my choice

1970 condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality  

Romanticism or realism?

1961 moved her book beyond limits of genteel nineteenth-century discourse

1961 contrast seduction novel

1963 cf. Fuller unusually fortunate circumstances of my early childhood  

1965 keep within sight of people

1966 save appearances

1977 meat allotments

1978 [gothic?] but 1979 insects

Jacobs

1960 Rochester, anti-slavery feminists

1960 Stowe

1961 sexual exploitation of female slaves

creating an alter ego

moved her book beyond limits of genteel nineteenth-century discourse

1961 contrast seduction novel

----

1962 I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise

1962 maternal grandmother

1962 nearly white, Anglo-Saxon ancestors

1962 cracker business

1963 being property, can hold no property

1963 cf. Fuller unusually fortunate circumstances of my early childhood

1964 began to ask myself what they would do with me

1964 she taught me to read and spell

1964 The Jealous Mistress

1965 obliged to stand and listen to such language

1965 I had far more pity for her than he had

1965 keep within sight of people

1966 save appearances

1966 not a very refined woman [class]

1966 feel as other women do [gender]

1967 secrets of slavery, father of eleven slaves

1968 northerners compromised

1968 children of every shade of complexion

1968 deadens the moral sense

1969 make a lady of me.  Hitherto, I had escaped my dreaded fate, by being in the midst of people.

1969 But O ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection

1970 man of my choice

1970 condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality

1970 unprotected by law or custom

cf. Fuller 1719

1971 mother of slaves

1971 self & stars; cf. Emerson

1975 Nat Turner's time

1975 grinding corn

1976 "Stand by your own children"

1977 meat allotments

1978 [gothic?] but 1979 insects

1980 "A man ought to have what belongs to him." [human rights x property rights]

1981 doctor died in embarrassed circumstances

1982 Mr Dodge a Yankee pedler, merchant, slaveholder

1983 chased half my life

1984 sold at last, Christian religion

1984 bill of sale

1985 freedom x marriage

1985 dream . . . home of my own + children

Thursday, 16 February: Harriet Ann Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. (2029-2056)

Reader: Neelam Damani

Tuesday, 21 February: Frederick Douglass, introduction + Narrative of the Life . . . + opening of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (1879-1945; 1946-7) (In Narrative, Douglass's writing actually begins on p. 1889)

Reader: Kyle Phillips

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

Reader: Joe Myers

Tuesday, 28 February: Harriet Beecher Stowe. Read introduction + selections from Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Chapter I: In Which the Reader is Introduced to a Man of Humanity; Ch. VII: The Mother’s Struggle; Ch. XL: The Martyr)

Web-highlighter: Amanda Matt (any LITR 4232 midterms)

Thursday, 2 March: midterm exam