http://www.inprinthouston.org/inprint.cfm?a=cms,c,86,2,5

Pre-Romantic & Early Romantic Writings

Thursday 11 September: Jonathan Edwards, N 168-170 (introduction), 194-205 (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, esp. beginning and end), 170-180 (Personal Narrative); Susanna Rowson, selections from Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth (web post); Washington Irving, N 453-466 ("Rip Van Winkle"), "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (web post).

text-objective discussion leader: Larry Finn

poetry: James Wright, "A Blessing," N 2613

poetry reader / discussion leader: Donny Wankan

web highlight (midterms): Dawlat Yassin

Course Objectives

Objective 1: Literary Categories of Romanticism

  Objective 1a. Romantic Spirit or Ideology

• To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.
   

• Romance narrative: A desire for anything besides “the here and now” or “reality," the Romantic impulse, quest, or journey involves crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream.
   

• A Romantic hero or heroine may appear empty or innocent of anything but readiness to change or yearning to re-invent the self or world--esp. the golden boy and fair lady; their darker counterparts are the dark lady and the Byronic hero

Objective 1b. The Romantic Period

• To observe Romanticism’s co-emergence in the late 18^th through the 19^th centuries with the middle class, cities, industrial capitalism, consumer culture, & nationalism.
   

• To observe predictive elements in “pre-Romantic” writings from earlier periods such as “The Seventeenth Century” and the "Age of Reason."
   

• To speculate on residual elements in “post-Romantic” writings from later periods incl. “Realism and Local Color,” "Modernism," and “Postmodernism.”

Objective 1c: Romantic Genres

To describe & evaluate leading literary genres of Romanticism:

• the romance narrative or novel (journey from repression to transcendence)

• the gothic novel or style (haunted physical and mental spaces, the shadow of death or decay; dark and light in physical and moral terms; film noir)

• the lyric poem (a momentary but comprehensive cognition or transcendent feeling—more prominent in European than American Romanticism?)

• the essay (esp. for Transcendentalists—descended from the Puritan sermon?)

Objective 2: Cultural Issues:

America as Romanticism, and vice versa

2a. To identify the Romantic era in the United States of America as the “American Renaissance”—roughly the generation before the Civil War (c. 1820-1860, one generation after the Romantic era in Europe).

2b. To acknowledge the co-emergence and convergence of "America" and "Romanticism." European Romanticism begins near the time of the American Revolution, and Romanticism and the American nation develop ideas of individualism, sentimental nature, rebellion, and equality in parallel.

2c. Racially divided but historically related "Old and New Canons" of Romantic literature:

• European-American: from Emerson’s Transcendentalism and Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age

• African American: from the Slave Narratives of Douglass and Jacobs to the Harlem Renaissance of Hughes, Hurston, and Cullen

• American Indian: conflicted Romantic icon in Cooper and Zitkala-Sa.

• (Mexican American Literature is not yet incorporated into this course—seminar will discuss.)

2d.  Economically liberal but culturally conservative, the USA creates "Old and New Canons" also in terms of gender

• masculine traditions: freedom and the frontier (with variations)

• feminine traditions: relations and domesticity (with variations

• Also consider “Classical” and “Popular” literature as gendered divisions.

2e. American Romanticism exposes competing or complementary dimensions of the American identity: is America a culture of sensory and material gratification or moral, spiritual, idealistic mission?

2f. If "America" and "Romanticism" converge, to what degree does popular American culture and ideology—from Hollywood to human rights—represent a derivative form of classic Romanticism?

Webpage & syllabus

changes in syllabus

Mohicans removed

research project optional--not on syllabus, but confer individually

midterm delayed till weekend following 9 October

(midterm will be revised to cut Cooper and include Poe & Hawthorne, but hasn't happened yet)

extended class meetings

presentations rearranged or cut

presentations rearranged

Larry Finn's text discussion from next week to tonight

presentations cut:

Cory Owen's poetry presentation

Kate Hebert's text-objective discussion

Laurie Forshage's web highlight

Tanya Stanley's web highlight

assignments & terms: Irving, Edwards > Poe

Romanticism: Southern Gothic

Thursday 2 October: Edgar Allan Poe, N 671-75, 679-702 (“Ligeia” & “Fall of the House of Usher”); William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" N 2218-24.

text-objective discussion leader ("A Rose for Emily"): Ron Burton

text-objective discussion leader (Poe stories): Laurie Forshage

poetry: Poe, "Anabelle Lee," N 678

poetry reader / discussion leader: Rachel Zock

Romanticism: New England Gothic

Thursday 9 October: Nathaniel Hawthorne, N 589-592, 605-622 (“Young Goodman Brown,” “May-Pole of Merry Mount,” & “Minister’s Black Veil”)

text-objective discussion leader ("Young Goodman Brown"): Christine Ford

text-objective discussion leader ("May-Pole" and/or "Black Veil"): Amy Sidle

poetry: Sylvia Plath, "Blackberrying," N 2658

poetry reader / discussion leader: Bundy Fowler

Poe a "catalog of Romanticism" but especially traditional Euro-Gothic via Southern USA

Faulkner a Modernist but also Southern Gothic

see also Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty

To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.
 

Thomas Cole’s paintings from Last of the Mohicans

http://www.abcgallery.com/C/cole/cole12.html

http://www.abcgallery.com/C/cole/cole2.html

"Hudson River School" of Romantic American painters during American Renaissance (1830s-50s)

cf. Rip Van Winkle 456, 459

The sublime

Rip Van Winkle 460

earlier examples of gothic

John Smith p. 51

Mary Rowlandson 120-21

Irving, Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

extreme, absolute language 194-95, 199, 200, 203, 204

Romanticism 196-7

Poe 683

atmosphere 690

Poe attempts to push language beyond the everyday, into expression of sublime --how?

darkest darkness grew yet darker

Romanticism: Southern Gothic

Thursday 2 October: Edgar Allan Poe, N 671-75, 679-702 (“Ligeia” & “Fall of the House of Usher”); William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" N 2218-24.

text-objective discussion leader ("A Rose for Emily"): Ron Burton

text-objective discussion leader (Poe stories): Laurie Forsage

poetry: Poe, "Anabelle Lee," N 678

poetry reader / discussion leader: Rachel Zock

Romanticism: New England Gothic

Thursday 9 October: Nathaniel Hawthorne, N 589-592, 605-622 (“Young Goodman Brown,” “May-Pole of Merry Mount,” & “Minister’s Black Veil”)

text-objective discussion leader ("Young Goodman Brown"): Christine Ford

text-objective discussion leader ("May-Pole" and/or "Black Veil"): Amy Sidle

poetry: Sylvia Plath, "Blackberrying," N 2658

poetry reader / discussion leader: Bundy Fowler

Take-home midterm exam due by end of weekend following Thursday 9 October.

Notes from previous class meetings

Problem of seminar falling behind on reading 

a constant in college courses, magnified in grad school

[Contrast middle and high school—not as much reading, lots of class time]

most class meetings, won't go back--

students' temptation: slack off, read selectively . . . .

attitude adjustment:

reading habits highly personalized--

grad students increasingly set their own agenda—it's encouraged!—not just a better undergrad who follows teacher's instructions ever more perfectly, but learn to start thinking for yourself, planning your own research and emphases

therefore, you may read some parts more than others, or with more interest and development

On the other hand . . . .

Best students nearly always do more reading than lesser students--they're curious about everything and don't close off possible meaning

You need to at least look at everything, become familiar, because chances are good you'll re-encounter most of these texts and authors at some point in your career.

Shift to Charlotte Temple

What kind of early profile for "women's romance?"

In what ways does women's romance (Charlotte Temple, Mary Rowlandson) resemble or differ from romance generally (as in a knight's quest)

In what ways is Charlotte Temple not Romantic? (or at least tries not to be . . . )

Reappearance of motifs and narratives from Creation Stories?

2 enduring aspects of Romantic literature

1. gothic

2. romance narrative, romantic hero or heroine

gothic as unknown, darkness, horror

Indians cast as "black creatures from hell," etc.

Gothic as "other"

Mary Rowlandson: captivity narrative as loss, desire for reunion

Mary deals with desire and loss as she loses all she is familiar with, including her friends and family. 

-Perhaps her desire, or wish for affliction, led to her loss.

·        Her constant references to the Bible give the image that she is trying to reinvent herself, redeem herself before God’s eyes by showing others just how spiritual she is.  Potentially an exaggerated spirituality from the way she was before her captivity.

·        Mary before captivity= sensory and material gratification

Mary after captivity= moral and spiritual transformation

"creation stories" (i. e., last week's readings in Genesis, Columbus, & Declaration of Independence)

Andrew O. Wiget, "Native American Oral Narrative" in The Heath Anthology of American Literature 3^rd edn., v. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 24-27.

Origin and Emergence stories are complex symbolic tales that typically dramatize the tribal explanation of the origin of the earth and its people; establish the central relationships among people, the cosmos or universe, and the other creatures (flora and fauna) of the earth; distinguish gender roles and social organization for the tribe . . . . 

            Several different types of origin tales are prominent in the Native American canon.  The two most common are the Emergence story, found throughout the Southwestern United States, and the Earth-Diver story, which predominates throughout Canada and the eastern region. The Earth-Diver story tells of a great flood that covered the earth and of beings who are borne upon the water until, after several failed attempts, an animal brings up enough mud from beneath the water to begin the magical creation of the earth. . . .

            The Biblical stories of Genesis, which most Europeans believed, functioned in a similar manner for the [American] colonists. Yet a comparison of Native American origin tales and Biblical stories illuminates profound cultural differences.  Generally speaking, Native Americans traditionally did not believe in a single supreme, autonomous, and eternal being who established the conditions under which all beings must exist.  Nor did they consider humans as having a radically different nature from the rest of earth's inhabitants, which they conceived of as intelligent, self-willed, and communicative. . . .

            Perhaps most importantly, no Native American origin myth identifies anything at all analogous to the Christian belief in a sin or a fall from the grace of a god.  That is, there is no evil pre-condition, no lost harmony and balance, in the Native American interpretation of origin.

today: gothic & sublime

sublime

aesthetic concept

aesthetics?

Hear the word mostly these days in design, whether of rooms, webpages, or commercial products like cars, electric shavers

Synonym for “appeal”?

the branch of philosophy called “aesthetics” concerns itself with the nature of beauty (or ugliness) and pleasure (or pain)

sublime as aesthetic category of beauty larger and more threatening than beauty or prettiness

beauty on such a grand or threatening scale that it becomes painful

combination of beauty and terror, pleasure and pain

“awesome," "wow," "larger than life"

"Bodacious"; "impressive"; "over the top"

Other suggestions or descriptions?

Theological background? > Edwards on God

Edmund Burke on the Sublime

453 down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged; the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs

453 something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity

Defining the sublime

Aesthetics is the philosophical study of beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain

Why do some works of art please us with their beauty, while others disgust us with their ugliness?

In aesthetics, "the sublime" is a category of beauty, a special type of beauty . . . .

The idea's still around, but not that many people can use the word "sublime" any more.

Recent expressions:

gothic

Literary Gothic webpage

another big, baggy term like "Romanticism"--lots of different conventions or formulas