Tuesday September 14, 2004: William Apess, 1397-1403; Elia Boudinot, 1409-1418; Seattle, 1418-1855; Sojourner Truth, 2023-2029 and 2530-2538.

Reader: Bryan Peterson

Objective 1: To use critical techniques of "close reading" and "new historicism" as ways of studying classical, popular, and representative literature and cultural history of the "American Renaissance."

In the introduction to “An Address to the Whites” it was mentioned that even Boudinot himself was afraid of the Cherokee tribe (his own people) because the stories he was told about them by the write people. In “An Address to the Whites,” Boudinot does not try to go around this fear that people have of Indians. Instead, using graphic imagery he addresses the image of the Indian that scares white people the most (the warrior and his war-cry).

Example:

“Some there are, perhaps even in this enlightened assembly, who at the bare sight of an Indian, or at the mention of the name, would throw back their imaginations to ancient times, to the ravages of savage warfare, to the yells pronounced over the mangled bodies of women and children…” (1411)

Boudinot suggests this fear is unfounded because it is based on the old ways of the Indians, the Indians of “ancient times”. Latter in his speech he further defuses the scariness of this imagery, by almost romanticizing the Indian warrior and his “whoop”.

“The shrill sound of the Savage yell shall die away as the roaring of far distant thunder; and Heaven wrought music will gladden the aggregated wilderness… Already do we see the morning star, forerunner of approaching dawn, risen over the tops of those deep forests in which for ages have echoed the warriors whoop. But has not God said it, and will he not do it? (1415)

Questions:

#1: Is this an effective rhetorical strategy, to use such gruesome imagery as “mangled bodies;” or should he have steered clear of such fear inducing vocabulary?

#2: Concerning the romanticizing of the Indian warrior, was there any similar techniques used in any of the other readings?

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.

Religion seems to be an underlining theme throughout all of the readings, and is utilized for a variety of different purposes from emotional appeal to intellectual arguments.

Examples:

#1: “What is an Indian? Is he not formed of the same materials with yourself? For ‘of one blood God created all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth” (Boudinot, 1411).

#2: “When I preaches, I has just one text to preach from, an’ I always preaches from this one. My text is, ‘When I found Jesus” (Truth, 2532).

#3: “The first thing we are to look at, are his precepts, of which we will mention a few. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength’ (Apess, 1400).

#4: “Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend with friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny” (Seattle, 1421).

Questions:

1: Why is religion the preferred source for promoting their causes?

2: Since one of the benefits of reading representative literature is gaining historical insight, what historical knowledge did you take away from these readings? One might want to mention how these writings remind you (or do not remind you) of the civil rights moment of the 1960’s.

Conclusion: “Past people struggled with and partly resolved chronic human problems such as equality, difference, spirit & matter, etc., and future people will too… But we don't have to reinvent the wheel: our own struggles and resolutions can benefit from knowing previous struggles.”                               -Craig White