LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL lecture notes

Monday 11 September: Jonathan Edwards, N 182-194, 207-219; Susanna Rowson, Charlotte: A Tale of Truth (handout); Washington Irving, N 446-460 ("Rip Van Winkle"), "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (handout).

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

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.

How do Columbus's letters trace a romance narrative? How are Romanticism and America combined from the first European explorers? How does "Reality" intrude?

How does Columbus recreate the Genesis story? (both in text and in popular-historical attitudes toward "discovery of America")

What is Romantic about the Declaration of Independence?
(all 3 aspects of obj. 1: period, style, narrative)

What is romantic (or potentially romantic) about their narratives or characters?

What are implications of crossing Romanticism with scriptural and historical texts?

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 . . . )

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

· 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.

"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.

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

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

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

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.

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

several "conventions" of the Gothic, all of which may or may not be present in a given example

haunted building or spatial construct (e. g., dark castle, tower, forest, spaceship)

European / psychological gothic—haunted castles or ancient houses as reflections of haunted mind

examples: Poe, Anne Rice, some Stephen King (Americans, but locate gothic in older parts of country)

Wilderness gothic—Irving, Cooper, To Kill a Mockingbird, Blair Witch Project

Puritan / moral gothic—Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter and stories (also include some wilderness gothic)

Urban gothic—film noir (dark detective films like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, Body Heat, LA Confidential)

"romance" as woman's novel, sentimental tearjerker, loss and reconstruction of family (cf. Rowlandson)

Monday 18 September: James Fenimore Cooper, N 460-469. Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, through ch. 11 (through p. 110 Penguin edition); Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), N 1432-1440 (“Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences”); handout: D. H. Lawrence on Cooper's Leatherstocking novels.

Remember that Twain is a "Realist"--so his attack on Cooper is an attack on Romanticism.

Compare the "wilderness gothic" in Last of the Mohicans to Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Blair Witch Project

Monday 25 September: “The Iroquois Creation Story,” N 17-21; “The Cherokee Memorials,” N 571-581; William Apess, N 476-482. Complete The Last of the Mohicans.

selection reader / discussion leader: Gordon Lewis (“Iroquois Creation Story”)

Monday 2 October: Take-home midterm exam due within 72 hours of class meeting. Edgar Allan Poe, N 694-696, 704-727 (“Ligeia” & “Fall of the House of Usher”); William Faulkner, “N 2160-66.

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

Comparing today's texts, what kind of change is the western world going through, and how does Romanticism respond to it?

Romanticism may be a way of coping (intellectually and emotionally) with the rapid change of modernization

. . . we will choose not the writers most highly esteemed by the critics, but the less pretentious authors of novels, romances and short stories, who nevertheless have the widest and most eager circle of readers of both sexes. One feature above all . . . : each of them has a hero who is the center of interest, for whom the writer tries to win our sympathy by every possible means and whom he seems to place under the protection of a special providence. . . . The feeling of security with which I follow the hero though his perilous adventures is the same as the feeling with which a hero in real life throws himself into the water to save a drowning man or exposes himself to the enemy's fire in order to storm a battery. It is the true heroic feeling, which one of our best writers has expressed in an inimitable phrase: "Nothing can happen to me!" It seems to me, however, that through this revealing characteristic of invulnerability we can immediately recognize His Majesty the Ego, the hero alike of every daydream and of every story. . . . .

[continuing romanticization, myth-making; change of Smith's age in movie, cf. Change of Hawkeye's age in movies of Mohicans]

web-highlight(s) from previous semesters’ midterms: Joni Thrasher (2005 seminar)

MIDTERMS 2003:

Mindi Swenson: "Romantic Spirit of the Journey"

In Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration” there are numerous aspects of the romantic spirit seen throughout her journey. As we see in her battle within her mind to adjust to her captivity we see her anguish with the indians. “I should choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial my mind changed: their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit, that I chose rather to go along with those ravenous beasts, than that moment to end my days;” When Ann was starting her journey she was undergoing a drastic mental change. The aspects of romanticism that Ann clearly brings out in her quest for freedom are the great loss she feels for her children and the personal emotion shown in her devout focus on God.

Mary is deeply connected to her children. In most European romantic novels the women are usually not shown to be emotionally connected to their children. In other words they are distant and have nannies to raise their children. In American romantic novels the parents are one of the only stable elements the children have in any sort of upbringing. When Ann is taken captive with her wounded child you can feel her sense of loss, “I cannot but take notice how at another time I could not bear to be in the room where any dead person was, but now the case is changed: I must and could lie down by my dead babe, side by side all the night after.” Anyone who is a mother can identify with that emotion. I have read numerous European novels and do not usually sense this deep emotion that is felt towards the children. During her journey with the Indians Ann’s children fuel her and bring a sense of solace that calms her.

-------

Kina Siriphant-Lara: "The Recurrent Element of Desire and Loss for Women in American Romanticism"

Although she realizes that her child’s death is forthcoming and inevitable, Rowlandson displays her immense love for her injured young daughter and desire for the child’s well-being by making sacrifices in order to keep her alive for as long as possible. According to Rowlandson, “At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms till my strength failed, and I fell down with it” (139). However, after struggling for nine days to comfort her dying child, Rowlandson must eventually face this great loss as she asserts, “my sweet babe like a lamb departed this life on Feb. 18, 1675” (140). She must now undertake the task of regaining her freedom and recovering the remainder of her family alone.

Interestingly, it is her steadfast faith in God and her intense love for her family that allows Rowlandson to persevere through the most adverse conditions. Immediately after the death of her daughter, she desires to seek out her other two children in order to ensure that they are still alive and unharmed. She also praises God even in the midst of her terrible loss as she states, “I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life” (140). Her overwhelming desire to see the remainder of her family safely reunited impels her to continue living and attempt to reclaim her freedom, even though she is mourning the recent loss of her daughter.