american lit quotations from presentations

PURITAN COLONIES
S: Virginia the first permanent settlement - life joyful; music and plays , that’s the SOUTH. rich
planters. no idea of widespread education. the upper class followed the ways of the English
land-lords, sent their children to Oxford, not interested in popularizing education at home
JOHN SMITH (perfect name eh) was the Admiral of New England

N: The north was conservative puritans - New England:

King James I of England took that land - London Company and the Plymouth Company
the ruling class composed of rich merchants interested in developing culture and education at
home, 1636-Harvard College established, they even wrote pamphlets about people from
Virginia
- 1620 (early af) - the Pilgrim Fathers led by William Bradford. they were the first permanent
colony in New England.
- sola fides (only faith) and sola scritpura (only the Bible)
- By 1630 three groups of AMERICAN Puritans:
The largest- recognized the established commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell
The Separatists; they were the extremes.The Congregationalists (seeking the middle way)
- Puritan writer writes to convey religious messages not to please.

WILLIAM BRADFORD was the first settler American writer

wrote „Of Plymouth Plantation” in 1657

1. ANNE BRADSTREET
she wrote „once upon a time (..) burning of our house”
Celebrated the love of God and the beauty of landscape;

Michael Wigglesworth - new name

wrote „THE DAY OF DOOM” DOOOOOOOOM
no mercy- Christ: the Old Testament God of Wrath consigning men to hell-fire;the poem
caring home the religious message. CHRIST IS GOING TO KILL YOU ALL IN HELL
(„Still was the night, Serene & Bright”)

2. EDWARD TAYLOR
That’s the guy who wrote about … some kind of catastrophe:
„UPON A SWEEPING FLOOD”
he was „the most gifted poet” of puritan literature

NOW

THE JEREMIAD
what was it?
New England genre which is LAMENTATION, mournful complaint, used to express
Puritan messianistic nationalism,
ALSO:
THE CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES
the victim reflecting upon the previous life and justifying the present predicament
Captivity narratives are usually stories of people captured by enemies whom they
consider uncivilized, or whose beliefs and customs they oppose.
….. like someone caught by the native americans and they’re threatened
LIKE Mary White Rowlandson - A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson
_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

THE GREAT AWAKENING

leads up to the enlightenment
a series of religious revivals from Mass. to Georgia which established
evangelicism as the prevailing religion of American people;
AN IMPORTANT TEXT:

Sinners in the hands of an Angry God
by 1. Jonathan Edwards. i guess? AWAKENING hasła
YES. - zerwanie z zinstytucjonalizowanym kościołem i
it’s the sermon on the dangers of the - tradycyjnymi ruchami
indywidualna duchowość nie tak kolektyw
unconverted men - słuchaj boga w sobie
god is the owner of men - metodyzmn
alliteration - repetition of the same sound - people need to be involved not passive
at the beginning of stressed syllables - speaker - audience
what’s the change?
The change is puritanism (hardcore
christianity) to evangelicism… people need to listen to themselves… more
individual approach to religion and not as intitutionalized and strict stuff as in
puritanism and they WERE QUITE SERIOUS ABOUT THIS
Jonathan Edwards also wrote „Personal Narrative”
_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

NOW !
THE „ENLIGHTENMENT” ERA
1. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was the guy
he wrote autobiography ofc
quicky storie about his leif
DEISM - acknowledging the existence
of god, wanting to prove it. the
universe is a perfectly working
machine XD
also Poor Richard’s Almanack
wants to be a minister in school
moves to philly and helps his father/brother
leaves for england and does some journalism and printing
then gets back to america and does The Pensilv Gazette
Then works for the government
then moves to philly is the postmaster
THEN HE GETS EXCITED
because he makes lightning experiments
also is the POSTMASTER GENERAL
his projects are Fire Brigades, Police, Penn. Uni, Street
Sweeping
he signs the Declaration Of Independence
pamphlet (alma to gazeta)
1789 here we are
now something about the native americans - early native lit
phillis wheatley
tells the story of being brought from Africa to America
TWAS mercy brought me from my Pagan land
but she writes it so that it’s accepted
i guess she was raised by white parents … ?

_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

now the late 1700s

—REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD—
the Revolutionary War
war between GREAT BRITAIN and THIRTEEN COLONIES which declared independence
it’s because the americans didnt’ want to pay the brits and they got in conflict…

so…

they declared independence in (1776), B. Franklin signs it

… the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New
York …

… George Washington fought back with a surprise attack …

… American forces had managed to force Cornwallis (british forces commander) and his
men to withdraw…

… Cornwallis was forced to surrender…

Americans win!

_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

now the late early 1800s (XIX)
(!) THE ROMANTIC ERA
1800-1850
big big time
AMERICAN REINASSANCE is ROMANTISM AND TRANSCENDENTALISM)

American authors have to consider popular expectations

The rise of the genre of the novel
There’s the Gothic romantic novel - exotic settings, abnormal psychology; the
supernatural, ghosts
American Romanticism did not just imitate Europe
the frontier - WILD WEST - (the zone between civilization and the wilderness)
American nature
the colonial complex - corresponds with the belief that the cultural values of the colonizer
are inherently superior to one's own

Washington Irving
first American to be known in England
American short story writer
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
also wrote a biography of Washington
he just wrote short stories fuck this guy
and in „The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” there was RIP VAN WINKLE


James Fernimore Cooper

was more original than Irving
The Spy/ The Pioneer / The pilot
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS 1825 - that’s known widely
Leather Stocking is in his prime, a scout in the frontier warfare ; adventures, the battle;
idealization of Native Americans in a romantic manner: „natural men”

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet letter which we didn’t read
„My Kinsman, Major Molineux”
His writing dissects the mind of New England

2. Herman Melville
wrote „Bartleby The Scrivener” (nippers, turkey, dead-letter office)
Openly identified with the antisocial and abnormal

3. Edgar Allan Poe

„the raven”
- Developed his own tone in poetry: romantic and sentimental yet with a careful attention to
the details of composition. Clear, transparent style. Open symbols.
- made literature the object of a serious and systematic study; the foundations for
the future literary criticism
- in “The Philosophy of Composition”; he discusses the composition of “The Raven”
”The Poetic Principle” - essay
he pretty strongly opposed transcendentalism

Harriet Beecher Stowe

- „Uncle Tom’s Cabin” effects of slavery are just as tragic for the slave as they are for the
slave-holder
 British NOVEL vs. The American ROMANCE

UK
- solved conflicts USA
- renders reality, governed by principle of - moved by disorder and contradictions
probability - does not render reality, the plot is colored, there’s only
- the plot is important symbolic plausibility, events aren’t real
- the action is free, it’s more static

+ unitarian church
basically they’re saying that god is three in one
and that Jesus was a man and not divine
and that men are responsible for their acts
progressively spiritual nature of belief after the great awakening
William Ellery Channing
religious leader after 1819
Men desire excitement, and religion must be communicated in a more
exciting form
sounds like the great awakening

+Slave narratives
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845)
The moral purpose and Christian values
_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

TRANSCENDENTALISM
this is an interesting lil group
1830-1860
inflences
1> neo-platonism meaning that the soul is capable of grasping the truth, i won’t remember
2> german philosophy
3> eastern mystical writing
this was an opposition to… romanticism.
so romanticism lasted from the 1800 to 1850s
and this was a period of 1930-60, not 20-40

now, transcendentalism vs romanticism

the main work is 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance
he advocated for extreme individualism and libreralism

basically they’re saying „do what you want”

vs „do what people expect of you” in romanticism

god is an internal force in transcendentalism

(there’s inner light in men)
romanticism has less to do with god, they believe in darkness in the soul
(everything might not be ok)

transcendentalists they don’t have a coherent style

they all liked contrasts in order to create a dreamy and mystical world

they all don’t like reason tho and stress the power of the intuition

some other transcentalist authors:

sarah margaret fuller who wrote „the great lawsuit - men against women”
henry david thoreau // However mean your life is, meet and live it
that’s the guy who practiced incredible freedom in his life which included living in
the woods
Resistance to Civil Government
Walden (1854): an account of his life in the woods

2. Walter Whitman is extremely important

with his meditative poetry
„Song of Myself”
„Leaves of Grass” The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem
he likes his contemporary, Emerson, is intuitive, prophetic; transcendental truth
the prophet of american democracy
”When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

3. Emily Dickinson
nature poems, observation of the natural life; a sense of awe and wonder
writes about death, the apodcalypse, the slout of light in her poem
„Because I Could Not Stop For Death”
_______________________ _______________________ _______________________
now there’s time for the second half of the XIX century

REALISM
1820-1920
but a narrower time frame would be
1850-1900
but especially
1880-1900

there’s the civil war first of all - wojna secesyjna

that changes quite a bit
similar situation to the situation after the … declaration of independence… revolutionary
war.
the war was between the north and the south which exit the Union
620 k people die
„The war of independence of the south”
the war was caused by slavery too, the north wanted to abolish it but the south refused
and was an advocate for slavery

now.. after the civil war there’s an ideological shift - there’s only pessimism from now on

-the mood of enthusiasm replaced by the mood of skepticism

-the development of mass culture and science

and we’ve got a different time for literature

American Realism
- against the sentimental fiction of romanticism, resentment towards polite idealizing
- rise of the consumer culture in the 19th-century
- social problems description
- realistic
- plain-speaking > educated speech
search for new forms: interest in symbolism, naturalism, expressionism,
surrealism.

William Dean Howells

Is it clear, simple, unaffected? Is it true to the human experience generally?
Our novelists. . . concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the
more American
Howells Reviews Sawyer’s Adventures // realistic in the highest degree //

We’ve got
1. Mark Twain
With Sawyer
But also „Autobiography”
„Adv. of Huckelberry Finn”
Town of Hannibal
Twain - Popular abroad
Liked to describe the local culture / color of the Southwest

there was
Kate Chopin
and not much is said about her

but this guy is crucial

2. Henry James
wrote Daisy Miller the story in Rome and in Vevey
story of Winterbourne interacting with a rich white gurl
she messes with some fortune hunters and they meet in the Colloseum where he
warns her about the flu but she doesn’t listen and dies a few days after
- Master of the art of fiction and of the metropolitan setting
- traveled a lot and it’s reflected in Daisy
- writes about the individual isolated from the society and looking
for his place in it
”The Art of Fiction” (1884) // reality has a myriad forms. . . . It is the
very atmosphere of the mind

+JOURNALISM IN late XIX

The term muckraker was used in the Progressive Era to
characterize reform-minded American journalists who attacked
established institutions and leaders as corrupt.

_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

NATURALISM
-an amoral attitude toward material
-a philosophy of determinism(a weak individual overwhelmed by the forces of
nature) - so opposition to transcendentalism (for sure like Emerson) but also to
realism - it’s more like romanticism but way more advanced
apply scientific theories to literature. Therefore, they often took a detached and
clinical tone
REALISM VS NATURALISM

R: Real life
N: Scientific theories influence
R: Everyday life, ordinary people
N: Environment and social conditions have an impact

R: Middle class
N: Lower class

R: Social class
N: Violence, poverty, corruption. It was more rough in naturalism, whereas realism
was a bit more withdrawn

1. Stephen Crane
„Maggie, A Girl of the Streets” (1893) a shocking treatment of
slum life. this is a naturalistic story.

„The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky” - this is a realistic

story

*
Benjamin Frank Norris
Theodore Dreiser
Jack London
+

_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

 MODERNISM
pt 1: poetry

what are the characteristics?

+ NIETZSCHE, FREUD, JUNG
+ Picasso
+ changing concept of time (bergson’s cone of memory almost like bergman)

not many characteristics other than lang. experimentation:

a sense of crisis,
alienation,
primitive,
exotic
rebellion - either by looking at the past …
or becoming fascinated with ideology (fas, soc)
NOT GENTEEL

there was popular stuff

but the anti popular stuff was good

4 names.

like EZRA POUND

revolt against humanism
imagist poem:
„In A Station of the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; 
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Na stacji metra
Objawienie w tłumie tych twarzy;
płatki kwiatów na mokrym, czarnym konarze.

Imagizm opary jest na trzech podstawowych zasadach:

1. Bezpośredniego ujęcia
2. Zwięzłości,
3. Kształtowania rytmu poezji w oparciu o frazę muzyczną

+ Imagism
free verse (wiersz bialy) - not blank verse
no word that did not contribute to the representation
 Ezra Pound ”A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste”

and T.S. ELIOT

rebellion against the Romantic style: ironic self-detachment and conversational style
“When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table-“
Eliot argued against the presence of the author in the text; impersonal poetry; poetry is
to lead to the emotion which has its life in a poem, not in the poet.
(…)this process of depersonalization(…)

and

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

counter to Eliot, criticized him for puting the poetry back to the classroom
liked imagists and whitman
was objective …
wrote „Paterson”
and „This Is Just To Say”
and „Portrait of a lady” - your thights are appletrees

+there was also

ROBERT FROST
distanced from modernist poetry; a humanist
reflective poetry of actual life, coloquial speech
„Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

+ wallace stevens
 pt 2. prose
Nathanael West
wrote „The Day Of The Locust”
apocalyptic novel on Hollywood
used black humour and grotesque characters and violence (edgy)
says that americans are more used to violence so you don’t have to analyze everything so
much before you introduce murder, you can’t shock americans that easily, its familiar
events

John Dos Passos

experimental
talked about social misfits, for example like… henry james
„three soldiers”
„USA” - talked about the mood of the first quarter of the XX century

Steinbeck
Hughes
Hurston

harlem reinassance
1920s

there’s the great depression in 1929

stock market crash
Huge unemployment (in 1933- 25%)

———————————
F.S. Fitzgerald
THE GREAT GATSBY
- disintegration of american society especially the degeneration of upper class // but it
looks pretty fine in the book / tragedy at the end / loss of spiritual values
- inadequacy of the Franklin myth of the self made man or the american dream
- the eyes of Eckleburg represent God and how he sees everything and how he is always
watching
- CARS
His style:
- he’s direct and simple, rather not very common for modernism,
- he’s symbolic tho - the green light
- wants to capture flow of everyday heard english
- uses synesthesia - auditory and visual imagery

_____________________
Gertrude Stein
wrote „The Making Of Americans”
a contemplative book; meandering of the author’s mind
jewish
„Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” - „I think that in that line the rose
is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years."

a flapper is the new woman

the new woman is born: disdains conventions, bobs her hair and wears shorter dresses to
emphasize her freedom
_____________________

Ernest Hemingway
writes „For Whom The Bell Tolls”
and „Old Man and the Sea”
you should know the latter at least.

responds to Gatsby in „The Sun Also Rises”

writes about americans in paris
tone of pessimism
like Vonnegut kind-of, he talks about the „impotence” of the generation

likes linguistic minimalism

William Faulkner
bunch of titles
his themes:
1. myth of pre-civil war (racist) south. Legacy of slavery.
2. people of the south are obsessed with the past
3. long meandering sentences aka stream of consciousness
____________________ ____________________ ___________________________

LATE MODERNISM
pt. 1 prose
there’s the war novel
like Slaughterhouse Five

there’s
NORMAN MAILER
Anti-establishment writer, active in politics, Marx, an open letter to Castro
Likes Romatic heroism and cult of courage
writes about the White Negro; Superficial Reflections on the Hipster - who is a member of
the elite who adapted elements of the Black culture
Jewish

there’s new journalism

KEN KESEY
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

he was into prankster / hippie culture

Saul Bellow
not a Jewish writer but a writer who happens to be a
Jew
prefers meditation over pure experience, like Whitman
does not like pessimism at all, against the Eliot-esque
tone of „Wasteland”

+ Jewish literature
Bernald Malamud
Philip Roth
Surrealism, absurd and neurotic fantasies
Isaac Bashevis Singer
John Updike
+ Writers of the South

there’s a sense of defeat and fall because the south lost the civil war
they still feelin it

Eudora Welty
Carson McCullers

Flannery O’Connor
a catholic writer, biblical and christian imagery
misfits, criminals, devil and temptation,

Walker Percy
Slow-paced, meditative prose, man’s despair, existentialism, lonely

William Styron
Writes about life in Auschwitz
 pt. 2 late M. (post war) poetry

influence of bepop music and jazz

Abstract Impressionism is huge

rothko, pollock, anti aesthetic, stress on the process of creation

Charles Olson and Black Mountain Poets


knew john cage
„projective verse”
juxtaposes the closed poem with an open
form poem: „a projectivist verse.”

Robert Creeley
„I know a Man” experiment poem

+ the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s

this was a group of Kenneth Rexroth

Rejection of the dogma of New Criticism
Democratic principles in poetry

+ the Beat poets

revolt against the commercialized society
rejection of any constraints on art
preference for oral poetry

Allen Ginsberg
knew Dylan‚
wrote „Howl”
Identified with a homosexual drug cult
The form influenced by Walt Whitman
mantra-like chant to enhance the reading of poetry

Dylan got the nobel prize in literature in 2016 for

„just like a woman”
There were also Confessional Poets