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LITR 5431 Seminar in American Literature:
Romanticism lecture notes |
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Romantic and classical music
Two ways of learning Romanticism
Historical: compare / contrast Enlightenment (1700s) to Romantic era (early-mid 1800s)
Formal (with social background):
individual and masses
intimate / spectacular
personal feelings / growing knowledge of vast earth, cosmos
truth or value in two realms: (> Transcendentalism)
interior realm of soul, love, self
exterior realm of nature, God
What loses value: society, which interposes b/w individual and nature
Discussion lead for Poe
Usher 24 The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. [correspondence?]
WW [9] But the house!—how quaint an old building was this!—to me how veritably a place of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings—to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable—inconceivable—and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity.
26
it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive
superstitions.
twinning
WW 54 A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me in my confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait.
correspondence in Hawthorne
28 catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. His frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spilt the untasted wine upon the carpet, and rushed forth into the darkness. For the Earth, too, had on her Black Veil. [<correspondence]
43 a new feeling took the place of sorrow: her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around her.
Question for Teaching Poe: How reconcile popular image and currency of Poe with critical thinking and classic literature?
Upsides: many students already have some idea of Poe; positive associations with horror, gothic, current obsession with body-perfection and violation; "musicality" of poetry and prose makes reading pleasurable even if not entirely comprehended.
Downsides: Students' image of Poe inconsistent with actual reality: "He was an insane drug addict" vs. "hard-working alcoholic with bad family luck"; students imagine Poe as character in his stories (wealthy, luxurious, profligate);
Instructor's resolution? We'd never have heard of Poe as a person if he wasn't a great writer, but intoxication with his image distracts students' attention from his actual strengths and weaknesses as a writer. > You'll welcome students' excitement and interest as a starting point, but keep returning to texts to analyze sources of his power as a compelling and influential writer.
7. How are Hawthorne & Poe both Romantic? How do they vary, complicate, or transcend the term? How are both American? Or more?
use of gothic: paraphernalia, symbolic codes, secrets, spiritual or sexual terror
Byronic hero personae
individualism: characters stand outside society
long ago and far away (but some psychological realism?)
Hawthorne
Poe
Minister's Black Veil
6 a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things
14 secret sin
15 correspondence
16 A sad smile gleamed faintly from beneath the black veil, and flickered about his mouth, glimmering as he disappeared.
[22] A person who watched the interview between the dead and living, scrupled not to affirm, that, at the instant when the clergyman's features were disclosed, the corpse had slightly shuddered,
27 her deathlike paleness caused a whisper that the maiden who had been buried a few hours before was come from her grave to be married.
28 catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. His frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spilt the untasted wine upon the carpet, and rushed forth into the darkness. For the Earth, too, had on her Black Veil. [<correspondence]
[29]
The next day, the whole
31 that piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them.
[32] But there was one person in the village unappalled [unshaken] by the awe with which the black veil had impressed all beside herself.
37 this veil is a type and a symbol,
43 a new feeling took the place of sorrow: her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around her.
[54] Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable effect, of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. [<irony] By the aid of his mysterious emblem—for there was no other apparent cause—he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin. His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he brought them to celestial light, they had been with him behind the black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections.
[56] Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight, in the death chamber
56 All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons, his own heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity.
[65] "Dark old man!'' exclaimed the affrighted minister, "with what horrible crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?''
68 veiled corpse, with a faint smile lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial stone is moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the Black Veil!
Young Goodman Brown
4, 6 pink ribbons
[8] With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind.
[9] ”There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,'' . . . the devil himself
[13] It was now deep dusk in the forest
13 his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
[17] “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept''—
[18] ” I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans;
[20] The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; . . . state secrets.'' [gothic secrets combine with conspiracy theory]
34 a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night
47 confused and doubtful sound of voices
51 the heart of the dark wilderness
53 all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together.
54 phantasmagoria
58 The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure.
60 a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart
63 behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin
[67] A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame?
Fall of House of Usher
1 correspondence; unredeemed; x-sublime
2
a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and
inverted images of the gray sedge,
and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and
eye-like windows.
[mirroring correspondence
b/w mind and house > psychology of
gothic; Poe’s
twinning is cubed by tarn’s inverted reflection]
3 mansion of gloom
5 atmosphere, vapor, fancy
6 fissure
7, 8 gothic arches, windows
9 a feeling half of pity, half of awe [sublime?].
10 ghastly pallor of skin
12 a constitutional and a family evil; a morbid acuteness of the senses
14 superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling
15
he severe and
long-continued illness—indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution—of a
tenderly beloved sister . . .
many
passionate tears.
18 An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous luster over all. [reverse correspondence]
18 an intensity of intolerable awe
20 The Haunted Palace
21 sentience of all vegetable things
22 catalog of book titles
23 one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its final interment), in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building.
24 The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. [correspondence?]
24 door of massive iron
25 A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them.
26 secret
26
it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive
superstitions.
27 bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room
30 a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. [sublime]
31 electrical phenomena > romances
31-38 parallel storytelling
42 We have put her living in the tomb!
William Wilson
3 self-willed, guidance of my own will
[4] My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. . . . the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, . . . the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep.
6 house old and irregular, prison-like
[7] At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. (cf. Scarlet Letter)
[9] But the house!—how quaint an old building was this!—to me how veritably a place of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings—to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable—inconceivable—and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity.
10 crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity
13 a scholar [student], who, although no relation, bore the same Christian [first name] and surname [last name] as myself;—a circumstance, in fact, little remarkable; for, notwithstanding a noble descent [a standard claim by Poe's protagonists], mine was one of those every-day appellations [names] which seem, by prescriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common property of the mob [rabble; common people]. In this narrative I have therefore designated myself as William Wilson,—a fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real.
14 unwelcome affectionateness of manner
15 ssuredly if we had been brothers we must have been twins; for, after leaving Dr Bransby's, I casually learned that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of January, 1813—and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely that of my own nativity.
16 many points of strong congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake in me a sentiment which our position alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into friendship. It is difficult, indeed, to define, or even to describe, my real feelings towards him.
[19] The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance, moral or physical, between my rival and myself. I had not then discovered the remarkable fact that we were of the same age; but I saw that we were of the same height, and I perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and outline of feature.
20 his singular whisper, it grew the very echo of my own.
21 the imitation, apparently, was noticed by myself alone
24 with difficulty shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago—some point of the past even infinitely remote.
[25] The huge old house, with its countless subdivisions, had several large chambers communicating with each other, where slept the greater number of the students. There were, however (as must necessarily happen in a building so awkwardly planned), many little nooks or recesses, the odds and ends of the structure
26 a wilderness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival.
27-28 recognition scene?
29 vortex of thoughtless folly
31 no light at all was admitted, save that of the exceedingly feeble dawn
31 morning frock, cut in the novel fashion of the one I myself wore at the moment. This the faint light enabled me to perceive; but the features of his face I could not distinguish. Upon my entering he strode hurriedly up to me, and, seizing me by the arm with a gesture of petulant impatience, whispered the words 'William Wilson!' in my ear.
33 the character, the tone, the key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet whispered syllables, which came with a thousand thronging memories of by-gone days, and struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic [electric] battery. Ere I could recover the use of my senses he was gone.
34 a sudden accident in his family had caused his removal from Dr Bransby's academy on the afternoon of the day in which I myself had eloped
38 In a very short period he had become my debtor to a large amount, when, having taken a long draught of port, he did precisely what I had been coolly anticipating—he proposed to double our already extravagant stakes.
39 sudden and extraordinary interruption which ensued. The wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. Their light, in dying, enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered, about my own height, and closely muffled in a cloak. The darkness, however, was now total; and we could only feel that he was standing in our midst. Before any one of us could recover from the extreme astonishment into which this rudeness had thrown all, we heard the voice of the intruder.
45 My evil destiny pursued me
47 that in this, my arch-enemy and evil genius, I could fail to recognize the William Wilson of my school-boy days,—the namesake, the companion, the rival,—the hated and dreaded rival at Dr Bransby's? Impossible! But let me hasten to the last eventful scene of the drama.
48 given myself up entirely to wine; and its maddening influence
49 was hurrying to make my way into her presence.—At this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper within my ear.
54 A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me in my confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait.
55 Not a thread in all his raiment [clothing]—not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments [features] of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!
56 I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said:
