LITR 4232 American
Renaissance
Herman Melville, begin Billy Budd (through section 17)
| Whitman assignments
classic literature: challenges & responses to Melville Assign conclusion of Billy Budd |
|
Whitman assignments
Thursday, 30 March: Melville, Billy Budd (complete)
Web-highlighter: Tallia Ortiz (final exams on Billy Budd)
Tuesday, 4 April: Walt Whitman, introduction + “There Was a Child Went Forth” (handout) + selections from Song of Myself : sections 1-5, 19, 21, 24, 32-34, 46-52.
Thursday, 6 April: Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”
Reader: Susan Hooks
Tuesday, 11 April: Hawthorne, from Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” + “Second Inaugural Address.” Research Project due.
Reader: Susanne Brooks
Thursday, 13 April: Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
overview of classic literature
Melville: "classic literature" at its most extreme
Author of Moby-Dick--the great American novel that most people can't imagine reading . . . .
Billy Budd is considerably shorter--either a long story or a short novel.
But classic Melville style
Questions for next class:
How do Melville and Billy Budd exemplify "classic literature?"
What are the costs and benefits of teaching / reading classic literature of the most demanding style?
Align Billy Budd and classic literature with Horace's "two purposes of literature: to entertain and educate"--? What kind of balance in popular and classic literature?
Assignment for today: Everyone be prepared to identify two passages in the assignment for Billy Budd:
one passage that worked for you (and why)
one passage that didn't work or puzzles (and why)
We'll try to coordinate with questions about classic literature above
Objective 1. To use critical techniques of "close reading" and "New Historicism" as ways of studying classic, popular, and representative literature and cultural history of the "American Renaissance" (the generation before the Civil War).
final exam question on "classic, popular, and representative literature"
Melville as classic author
Billy Budd as classic text
Melville's career as popular > classic writer
legend
of Melville: the writer who's too good for us; titanic or great intellectual in
an unappreciative culture of equals (lowest common denominator)
known
as author of Moby-Dick--great American novel that only a few people can
read--
Objective 3. To use literature as a basis for discussing representative problems and subjects of American culture (New Historicism), such as equality; race, gender, class; modernization and tradition; the family; the individual and the community; nature; the writer's conflicted presence in an anti-intellectual society.
Melville often exemplifies this issue in American culture
born into wealthy, cultured family with good connections
When Melville was a young teenager, father lost wealth, died
Melville went to sea for self-support
Amazing combination: cultured background but down-to-earth adventure and experience
Compare Joseph Conrad, other great sea writer: his father was a poet and translator of Shakespeare, but also a political prisoner, so Conrad had to make his own way, became a sailor
Compare James Fenimore Cooper: born into wealthy family, joined Navy as a young officer, resigned commission to marry into old Tory family in New York--wrote first sea novel, The Pilot 1823
Outcome with all three: education, literacy, learning + raw experience
Sea novels very popular in 19th century--comparable to science fiction today
Melville based many of his books on his sailing adventures
p. 2622
letter by Melville to Hawthorne regarding frustration over whether to write "classic" or "popular" literature
The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose,—that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. My dear Sir, a presentiment is on me,—I shall at last be worn out and perish, like an old nutmeg-grater, grated to pieces by the constant attrition of the wood, that is, the nutmeg. What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,—it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
Herman Melville (1819–1891), U.S. author. letter, June 1?, 1851, to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Correspondence, vol. 14, The Writings of Herman Melville, ed. Lynn Horth (1993).
Melville's career after Moby-Dick is hit-or-miss
Melville, like Hawthorne, works in the customs department to support his family, writes when he can
Toward end of his life, he inherits some money and devotes himself to writing Billy Budd
Unpublished at death, widow arranges publication
Style and accomplishment of Billy Budd comparable to Moby-Dick:
complexity, grandeur, significance, beauty
classic writer often needs leisure, reflection, different kinds of pressure than market
reader of classic literature needs leisure to reflect, desire to read again and discuss
literature not as consumer item to be processed and used, but more like work of art to be revisited, learned from
problem
between democracy/capitalism and intellectual life:
mass market x timeless "art"
mass
market
action
laughs
clearly drawn characters, heroes and villains
style matches subject: simple and clearly drawn
reader's advantage: escape, kill time, confirm worldview/prejudices
art
significance
wit
ambiguous characters, mixed
style matches subject: complex and multilayered
reader's advantage: rigorous intellectual/moral exercise, challenge simplifications/reductions
Billy Budd as classic text
challenges & responses
challenges
The text assumes that if you're reading classic literature, you've also read other classic literature, and know some history, and maybe some other languages . . .
Or if you don't know these things now, the text gives you some hint of what brainy people might be expected to know or find out.
name-dropping; "I know this and you should too"
footnotes!
To understand Billy Budd, first you have to read this, and that (rest of Melville's works)
classic literature as network of texts
multiple themes, different texts develop same theme or style
vocabulary, terminology--have to read with a dictionary
significance
wit
ambiguous characters, mixed
style matches subject: complex and multilayered
classical literature as open-ended, productive of meanings
multiple levels of meaning--rigorous intellectual exercise
multiple levels of meaning, none exclusive
Not "here's the answer" but "here's a chance to keep learning"
contrast constant human weakness of "easy certainty"
--intelligence not as knowing the single, right answer, but rather as ability to hold several ideas together at once
F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Crack-Up
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
literal -- a young sailor is drafted to a warship during a period of great tension concerning survival of England, discipline and mutiny
coming of age story -- a boy enters a complicated, dangerous world
figurative -- gothic, light and dark, up and down
historical -- national crisis, suspension of human rights
military -- discipline vs. mutiny, mission vs. "rights of man"
moral -- transience of beauty, good, but transforming impact
mythic,
religious -- corruption of golden age,
sacrifice of the lamb
-- questionable apple of knowledge
much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent
wriggled himself into his company . . . doctrine of man's Fall . . . the envious
marplot of Eden
but careful! These allusions or references are suggestive, not allegorical or prescriptive--They evoke biblical or other religious stories rather than retell them
sexual--Is Claggart gay for Billy?
racial--Is Claggart of mixed race? Is Billy of noble birth?
literary history -- great writer who can't meet the public on its own terms; struggle and farewell
reader's
history: progress from "primitive" (simple) abstract consciousness to
"modern" (complex) abstract consciousness
Assign conclusion of Billy Budd
"Something decisive must come of it."
continuation of "mythic" reading: Eden > crucifixion?
tragic depth, profundity
concluding poem
Review "classic, popular, and representative literature"
Objective 1. To use critical techniques of "close reading" and "New Historicism" as ways of studying classic, popular, and representative literature and cultural history of the "American Renaissance" (the generation before the Civil War).
classic
elitist
"excellence"
timeless
don't always enjoy > bad-tasting medicine "It's good for you!"
Twain: "A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read."
start reading because assigned in class, one text can lead to another
Indie
popular
blockbuster
bestseller
here today, gone tomorrow; timely, current, contemporary
study popular literature as key to historical culture
escape literature
entertainment
"I just like a good story"
"I identify with the characters"
"trash," "junk"
cf. "Star," "Enquirer"
literature as consumer item
implicit comparison: classic literature is "timeless"
brain candy
representative
diverse, under-represented, marginal, new canon
makes you face forgotten or marginal elements of history; glimpse into other culture or reality
motivation: to learn about another culture
ideal: combine representative and classic
questions of quality
political agenda, social pressure in terms of conscience
teaching: increasingly diverse student population
"Classic, popular, and representative literature" a likely topic for final exam
Melville as classic author
old family--some leisure, books, art
but in America "old families" tend to decline--leisure vs. productivity
married well--father-in-law chief justice of NY Supreme Court
legend
of Melville: the writer who's too good for us; titanic or great intellectual in
an unappreciative culture of equals (lowest common denominator)
known
as author of Moby-Dick--great American novel that only a few people can
read--
Final exam question on classic texts and moral issues
Is classic literature about ideas or about characters?
"interpretation" in Billy Budd
2661 as little did he notice
2662 he was illiterate
2662 Of self-consciousness he seemed to have little or none, or about as much as we may reasonably impute to a dog . . . .
2675 that's because he's down on you, Baby Budd
2686 innocence was his blinder . . . never did it occur
Innocence is good . . . and wrong?
compare "qualifiers" in Hawthorne
characters in Billy Budd
2668-9 Captain Vere
2670 Claggart, description 2671
mixed characterization
2663 Billy
2685 Claggart
Melville's career as popular > classic writer
legend
of Melville: the writer who's too good for us; titanic or great intellectual in
an unappreciative culture of equals (lowest common denominator)
known
as author of Moby-Dick--great American novel that only a few people can
read--
class
will divide as rarely--not everyone can read Melville successfully, so should we
get rid of him? if so, dumb down curriculum, deprive sharpest students of one of
the greatest minds in American history
meet
on the problem around reading Melville, both now and in his own career
problem
between democracy/capitalism and intellectual life:
mass market x timeless "art"
mass
market
action
laughs
clearly drawn characters, heroes and villains
style matches subject: simple and clearly drawn
reader's advantage: escape, kill time, confirm worldview/prejudices
art
significance
wit
ambiguous characters, mixed
style matches subject: complex and multilayered
reader's advantage: rigorous intellectual/moral exercise, challenge simplifications/reductions
Melville's style
2665 digression
portentousness
range of allusion
mixed characterization
2677 indirection
2679 theological depth: "mystery of iniquity"
complete Billy Budd
tragic depth, profundity
concluding poem
tensions or dialectics in human/American thought:
Whitman on individuality and equality
Melville:
free will and fate; good and evil; innocence and experience
human
urge to interpret--what happened, "what did he mean by that?"
what
kind of justice? imperfect, but understandable