LITERARY DEVELOPMENTS

Periods of Roman Literature:

silver age (poets improved, tech. skills flourished)

golden age (Latin lit. reached its fullest splendor in literature)

middle age (reign of Emp. Macus Aurelius who wrote meditations and stoic philosophy)

renaissance (birth of humanism & Revival)

Spanish Literature

Medieval period (2 major poetic forms: minstrel’s mode used in epic, and cleric’s mode used in rhymed
quatrains)

renaissance (the rebirth of vernacular literature)

Golden age - (the birth of the 4 literary giants: Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y
Mendoza, and Pedro Calderon dela Barca.

England

Anglo-Saxon Period - oral lit. about customs, pagan beliefs, and rituals.

Medieval period - king Arthur’s time

Elizabethan - the most splendid in literature history; vitality & richness & the flowering of poetry.

17th Century or Puritan - Civil War, the Black Plague, & the great fire in London.

Romantic Period - golden age of lyric poetry

Victorian Period - energetic expansion, imperial ambition, and profound optimism about the future of
England.

20th Century - the age of novels & the improved craft of masters in literature.
History and Anthology: American Literature

American literature is the literature produced in American English by American citizens.

Basic qualities of American Writers:

Independent, individualistic, critical, innovative, humorous

How to define American Literature

Analytical approach, Thematic approach, Historical approach

Part I. The Literature of Colonial America

The native American and their culture– Indians

The historical background of the colonial Time

Christopher Columbus discovered the American continent in 1491.

Captain Christopher Newport reached Virginia in 1607.

Puritans came the New England area, by Mayflower in 1619.

The first settlement was established in Plymouth in 1620.

Part II. The Literature of Reason and revolution

Industrial Revolution: spurred the economy in American colonies.

Independence War: the industrial growth led to intense strain with Britain. The British government tried
to suppress their growth economically, and ruled them from abroad politically and levied heavy tax on
them. These aroused bitter resentment in colonies.

Spiritual life of the colonies—Enlightenment.

Philosophical and intellectual movement.

Advocated reason or rationality, the scientific method, equality and human beings’ ability to perfect
themselves and their society.
Agreed on faith in human rationality and existence of discoverable and universally valid principles
governing human beings, nature and society.

Opposed intolerance, restraint, spiritual authority and revealed religion

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Philip Freneau

Part III. The Literature of Romanticism

Romanticism

Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

OTHER FAMOUS LITERARY PERSONALITIES

Geoffrey Chaucer- Canterbury Tales

Dante Alighieri- The Divine Comedy

Victor Hugo- Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables

Herman Hesse-Siddhatra

Charles Dickens- Tale of Two Cities

Emily Bronte- Wuthering Heights

Virginia Wolf- Mrs. Dallaway

D H Lawrence- Sons and Lovers

Isabel Allende- House of the Spirit

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- One Hundred Years of Solitude

Benjamin Franklin

The only good writer of the colonial period.

Printer, enlightener, inventor, scientist, statesman, diplomat

Aid Jefferson in writing The Declaration of Independence.

Seeking help from France in American Independent War.

Why is Franklin admired and read widely?

He is a typical American, model of the self-made man, a cultural hero whose life exemplified the
American dream of the poor boy who made good.

He stressed the importance of working hard to make money, happiness depending in the first place on
economic success and optimistically believed that every American could do so.

He was convinced that no man could be virtuous or happy unless he did his best to improve the life of
his society and his own life.

Why say Franklin is the representative of American Enlightenment

He believed in reason or rationality, the scientific method, equality and human beings’ ability to perfect
themselves and their society.

He opposed intolerance, restraint, spiritual authority and revealed religion.

He favoured the education. Self-education, educating and disseminating knowledge among people by
his newspaper and Autobiography, establishing learning club, college and library.

He favoured freedom of thoughts. He set up the ideas of democracy in the USA.

Thomas Paine

Propagandist, pamphleteer, a master of persuasion who understands the power of language to move a
man to action.

Main works:

The American Crisis

Common Sense

The rights of man

The Age of Reason

Study of the Selected Part

In what sense does Paine use the verb “try” in the first sentence of the essay?

Paine used the word in the sense of “test to the limit”, “subject to great hardships”.

To what 3 types of criminal does Paine indirectly compare George III? What is Paine’s attitude toward
the British troops?

What does the writer think of the Tories?

What does Paine mean by an offensive war? What reasons does he give for not supporting such a war?

What kind of war does he believe the American revolution to be?

How do you understand the title of the essay?

Thomas Jefferson

Enlightener, planter, aristocrat, lawyer, a symbol of American democracy.

Man of many talents: scientist, inventor, musician, linguist, architect, diplomat and writer.

Political Career: He served his country as Minister to France(1784-1789), Secretary of State(1789-1793),

Vice President(1791-1801) and third President(1801-1809).

Thoughts: Jeffersonian Democracy, which includes faith in the individual and common man, dislike an
overly strong government, and emphasis on the importance of education and on agrarianism and land
ownership as they brought responsibility and true judgment. Politically, he is considered the father of
the democratic spirit in his country. The society he thought of as ideal was one where landowning
farmers could live under as little government as possible.

Style: dignity, flexibility, clarity, command of generalization

Philip Freneau

Father of American Poetry

Teacher, political journalist, seaman, humanitarian, polemist, propagandist, satirist, loyal follower of
Jefferson

Main Works:

The Rising Glory of America (1772)

The British Prison Ship (1781)

The Wild Honey Suckle (1786)

The Indian Burying Ground (1788)

The Wild Honey Suckle

It is a deistic celebration of nature, romantic use of simple nature imagery, inspired by themes of death
and transience. Much of the beauty of the poem lies in the sounds of the words and the effects created
through changes in rhythm.

Flower vs Human Being, Duration vs Life

Show us how to live a useful life.

In a revolution, one should not do nothing for his country for fear of being hurt, harmed and destroyed.

Part III. The Literature of Romanticism

Historical Introduction

Washington Irving

James Fenimore Cooper

William Cullen Bryant

Edgar Allan Poe

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Herman Melville

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Stability, Prosperity, Freedom

Geographically, America expanded its frontier. Economically, it began the industrialization and
urbanization. Politically, people enjoyed more freedom. Culturally, cultural business prospered.

Literary Ideas: Romanticism and Transcendentalism

Romanticism

Two stages; pre-romanticism (1770s-1830)

post-romanticism (1830-60,65-75)

Rise of Romanticism: appeared in England in the 18th century. Reaction against the prevailing
neoclassical spirit and rationalism during the Age of Reason.

Moral enthusiasm: passion, emotion, fancy and imagination.

Faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception: display personalities, express feelings and
ideas, stress men’s rights for freedom and happiness. Human nature is of good will. Man can know the
world through his own ability/conscience/intuition.

Nature was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.

The literary works of romanticism mostly reflected the fantastic and thrilling stories taking place long
ago and far away, rich in mystic color. The romantic had a persistent interest in the primitive literature,
in which he found inspiration of various kind.

The romantic showed a profound admiration and love for nature. The beauty and perfection of nature
could produce in him unspeakable joy and exaltation.

Transcendentalism

Appeared in 1830, marked the maturity of American romanticism and the first renaissance in the
American literary history.
The term was derived from the Latin verb transcendere: to rise above , to pass beyond the limits.

Rise of Transcendentalism: the product of combination of foreign influence (German idealistic

philosopher, neo-Platonism, Oriental mysticism, Confucius and Mencius) and American native Puritan
tradition.

Washington Irving

Father of American Short Stories

First American author to make a living by his pen, first great prose stylist of American romanticism,.

author of the first American short stories and familiar essays.

the first American author of imaginative literature to achieve international distinction

Style: simplicity, lucidity, poise and ease flow, discursive and leisurely, slow, graceful presentation,
careful phrases and cadences.

Significance: his literary innovations

author of first modern American short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. It was him
who introduced the familiar essay from Europe to America.

He ranked among the first of the modern men of letters to write history and biography as literary
entertainment.

He was the leaders of the world-wide Romantic Movement.

His humor, which gave an impetus to the growth and popularity of American indigenous humor. His
humor was always well-meaning, mild and prone to be accepted.

Irving’s genial writing also improved the feeling of American toward the British.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: tells a miraculous story about the unsuccessful love affair of Ichabod
Crane, a country teacher, which is combined with the legend of a headless horseman. The two stories
share legendary elements, which the critics either interpret as an expression of the author’s
conservative attitude toward the American Revolution and his nostalgia for the life before the
Revolution, or doubt for their credibility.

Edgar Allan Poe

Poet, editor, critic, first writer of the detective story, writer of fiction, a pioneer in poetic and fictional
techniques
Life story: disastrous

Artistic principles

His Artistic Theories

Poe argued for the creation of beauty and intensity of emotion, against the didactic motive for
literature.

Poe felt that literature should have no social function or responsibility but should be an expression of
the isolated artist.

Poe thought that the artist should be concerned solely with beauty, of imagination. The real world is
cruel, ugly and fast into decaying. The artist’s life is lonely, painful and hopeless. The only happiness
arose out of the creation and contemplation of beauty.

A good fiction should only tells one event, which can be finished once.

Fiction should stimulate readers and impress them deeply. It should have a consistent effect throughout
the whole text.

He showed in his fiction the impulse to self-destruction, the fascination with horrible catastrophe,
whimsical and abnormal psychology.

He depicted the inner world or psychology of his characters.

To Helen

Although the poem is about a real person , Poe addressed it to Helen, why might he have done this?

In the final stanza, Helen is addressed as Psyche the Greek word for “ breath” or “soul”. How do you
reconcile this with the earlier references to Helen of Troy, whose legendary beauty led to the Trojan
War?

Beauty---to truth---to soul

Note that all three stanzas end with a reference to a place---native shore, Greece and Rome, and Holy
land. How are these related to each other? To the meaning of the poem as a whole?

Beauty is truth and leads to spiritual oneness and artistic integrity

Lines written in passionate boyhood to the first purely and ideal woman in my soul.
Poe’s The Raven

it symbolizes disaster and misfortune.

it may symbolize the soul of the radiant maiden, the “lost Lenore.”

it may symbolize the sub-consciousness of the poet.

it is the symbol of modern reality.

Annabel Lee

Poe’ s Theories on Poetry

His poetry expresses the same deep hopelessness and rejection of the world as his prose, but in a
different way.

He avoids the intrusion of ugliness and tries to create a vision of beauty and a melodious sound. The
basic tone is melancholy.

The function f poetry is not to summarize and interpret earthly experience, but to create a mood in
which the soul soars toward supernal beauty.

The creation of work of art requires the utmost concentration and unity, as well as the most scrupulous
use of words.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Romantic novelist, short-story writer.

Advanced the art of short story and gave to the form qualities that are uniquely American.

First great American writer of fiction to work in the moralistic tradition. Combined the American
romanticism with puritan moralism

Romances: an imaginative fictional projection of moral life

Contents: sensational material, poisoning, murder, adultery, crime.

Methods: the New England Past, theocratic society, puritan, witchcraft, the Indian life, symbolic and
allegorical form.
Themes: explore the human soul/ nature of man, deal with moral or ethical problems, study the effects
of sin on man.

Purpose: to show the inner world of man is the source of evil in society, to criticize the present age.

Reasons for Hawthorn’s creation

His exploration of the soul resulted from his skeptical attitude toward the social reality and from his
ambition to probe into the nature of man.

His selection of themes and skillful use of the historical materials resulted from his personal life and
family history. reclusion, judge ancestor.

His concentration on the human mind and character on conscious and unconscious desires, is an
outgrowth of the Puritan emphasis on the individual conscience. He scolded the harshness of Puritans,
yet took the Puritanism as his living criteria. Freedom of will, a conscious choice between good and evil.

Hawthorne’s Style

Rich imagination, well-woven structure, psychological analysis, various symbols, delicate imageries,
ambiguity, mystery.

Wide and well-controlled vocabulary, formal words with pleasant sound, long and complex sentences,
fresh and effective metaphors and similes, summarized historical narrative, but links scenes
dramatically.

The Scarlet Letter (1850)

The Scarlet Letter is a complex story of guilt/sin, its moral, emotional and psychological effects on
various persons, and how deliverance is obtained for some of them.

In the fiction, Hawthorne approached the question of evil more profoundly. He considered the effect on
an individual’s character of enforced penance, of hypocrisy, and of hatred.

What’s in, how to deal with, Hawthorne’s attitudes

Hester: disloyalty, betrayal, deception, sexual desire, adultery. Face, correct, redeem, purify. Praise,
content, conform.
Dimmesdale: adultery, cowardice, hypocrisy, dishonesty, selfishness, too coward to confess, tortured by
his conscience. Sympathetic, disfavor his hesitation, indecisiveness and cowardice.

Chillingworth: revenge. Tortured by the desire of revenge, twisted and reduced to nothing. disgusted,
think he committed greater crime.

Puritanism in the Scarlet Letter

Puritan background: setting, events, characters, thoughts, behaviors.

Puritan doctrines: original sin, total depravity, predestination, limited atonement.

The novel expresses Hawthorne’s attitudes toward Puritanism. Like puritans who concerned themselves
with the original sin and developed it into their beliefs, Hawthorne concerns the novel with the same
theme, and tries to establish his doctrines around it.

Through challenging Puritanism, Hawthorne establishes his own “Puritanism”:

Their religious doctrines. Conclusion: he believes in men’s ability to redeem themselves or advocates
individuality.

Their rigid, inhuman attitude toward life and enjoyment: suppress men’s all desires, live a hard,
disciplined and ascetic life, discriminate men’s rights for happiness. Conclusion: stress men’s rights and
desires for pleasure.

Their hypocrisy: clergymen commit crimes against their preaching and beliefs.

Through challenging Puritanism, Hawthorne aims to:

Explore the source of evils: unreasonable and inhuman social system; men’s inner world, defects in
men’s nature: strong desire, dishonesty, cowardice, revenge.

Explore the influences on different characters:

To brave men: gain moral rebirth, redeem their sin, win respect/ love again.

To coward men: torment of conscience, suffer in hell fire.

To vicious and vengeful men: reduce them to demons, make them deteriorated, malicious, mean.
Explore ways of redeeming sin: brave to confess and face it, correct it through love, devotion, generosity
and forgiveness.

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

His life: born in Portland, Maine, studied at Bowdoin College, published his poems at the age of 13,
went to Europe to study language, after 4 years and returned to be a professor in Bowein College. In his
poems, the themes like love of nature, love for the past, his poems is famous for spiritual aspiration,
simple piety, homely affection, love of beauty, refined of thought and manners. He always took active
attitude towards life. He adopted European ideas in American subject, and always in European styles. In
his lyrics he drew on the techniques of European poetry as well as on his own native creativity, and
acquired a mastery of rhyme and rhythm. The ideas he expressed are generally simple ones and his
techniques display them to advantage. He expressed his ideas musically and powerfully. His works are
highly spiritual. He emphasized the mysteries of birth, death, and love. Most of his works are simple and
easily read so that even children can understand them.

A psalm of Life

It was first published in Voices of the Night

In the September edition of New York Monthly in 1839. It is very influential in China, because it is said to
be the first English poem translated into chinese.

The poem was written in 1838 when Longfellow was struck with great dismay : his wife died in 1835,
and his courtship of a young woman was unrequited. However, despite all the frustrations, Longfellow
tried to encourage himself by writing a piece of optimistic word

The relationship of life and death is a constant theme for poets. He expresses his pertinent
interpretation to that by warning us that though life is hard and everybody must die, time flies and life is
short, yet, human beings ought to be hold “to act,” to face the reality straightly so as to make otherwise
meaningless life significant.

The poem consists of 9 stanzas in trochaic tetrameters. It is rhymed “abab.”

PHILIPPINE LITERATURE

Background
Philippine literature in English was a consequence of American colonial rule. The Treaty of Paris signed
in 1898 between the US and Spain led to the establishment of a public school system which enforced
English as the medium of instruction.

Early Literary Productions

SHORT STORIES

“Dead Stars” by Paz Marquez Benitez. It appeared in the Philippine Herald on September 20, 1925 and
was quickly recognized as one of the best short stories yet written by a Filipino.

Box of Ashes and other Stories (1925) by Zoilo M. Galang. It was the first collection of short stories in
book form.

Filipino Love Stories (1927) edited by Paz Marquez Benitez. The first anthology of short stories.

The Stealer of Hearts and Other Stories (1927) edited by Jose Villa Panganiban

Philippine Short Stories: The best 25 Stories of 1928 (1928) was compiled by Jose Garcia Villa.

Footnote to Youth and Other Tales (1933) Jose Garcia Villa’s collection published by Scribner’s.

NOVELS

A Child of Sorrow (1921) is the first novel in English written by Zoilo M. Galang. It is an extremely
sentimental romance in which the lover, consumed by gnawing sadness, soon followed his beloved to
the grave.

The Filipino Rebel (1929) by Maximo Kalaw. It is about an ailing revolutionary Juanito who reneges on
his promise to marry the barrio lass Josefa by marrying instead a rich man’s daughter Leonor for his
political ambition.

Without Seeing the Dawn (1947) by Stevan Javellan. The first novel written by a Filipino after World
War II. It is divided into two books, namely “Day” and “Night”, symbolizing a saga of love and hate; of
faith and despair; a story of a woman torn between the love of her husband and obedience to deeply
engrained native customs and social conventions.

The United (1951) is written by Carlos P. Romulo who had won the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism. The
novel tells the story of Major MacKenna, a WWII veteran, who rejects reconciliation with his millionaire
father and refuses to marry his fiancée Julia, a daughter of the New York Chronicle Publisher.
The Woman Who Had Two Navels (1960) Nick Joaquin’s first novel, which is an expansion of a
successful story with the same title. This novel portrays a woman named Connie Escobar as having two
cultural antecedents.