COLONIAL LITERATURE

- Pilgrim Fathers

● English Dissenters, Intended to establish a theocratic state, importance of the

Bible(Sola Scriptura), WORLD OUTLOOK: predestination, human sinfulness,
dependence on God,

● They believed they discovered the New Kanaan or a city upon the hill,

- Theocratic sate in American colonies

● Sola Scriptura and its impact on Puritan aesthetics,

● Scepticism towards fiction and arts,

● The Puritan Preaching tradition,

● The emphasis on the natural man’s depravity and didactic aims behind the
literature,

- Calvinism in American colonies (e.g., predestination)

- The idea of a city upon a hill

● "A City upon a Hill" is a phrase from the parable of Salt and

Light in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:14, he tells his listeners,
"You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden." It
has become popular with United States politicians.

- Four generations of colonists before the American Revolution

● First Generation (1630-1660) Pious Pilgrim Fathers,

● Second Generation (1660-1700) Struggling Sustainers of Theocracy,

● Third Generation (1700-1735) Anglicized People of the Enlightenment,

● Fourth Generation (1735-1770) The Generation of Revival and Revolution,

- Ann Bradstreet's poetic style (Upon the Burning of Our House)

● First significant American poet, very well educated at home, highly personal
and intimate poetry, both religious and domestic,

● She was a reflexive, free- thinking observer of the reality, tender language
sensitivity and numerous references to classics,

- Jonathan Edwards' sermonic style (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry

God)
● Preacher, philosopher, theologian, participant of the Great Awakening,
scientist, believer, emphasis on Christian virtuous life, defender of orthodox
Calvinism,

● Artistic fire, brimstone imagery, moaning and crying before the Sermon,

LITERATURE OF REVOLUTION

- Enlightenment ideas in the Revolutionary Generation

● The shift from main regard for God, t the human creation itself, seeking
knowledge, make sense of the world around,

● Success of science(confidence in human skills and ability), God less present

in life,

● Deism: God not present in the world, does not interact with the world creation,
God as watchmaker and observer,

● Human nature: no longer hopeless and helpless, human nature is teachable

and perfectible, optimistic, active and liberal outlook on the world,

- American Founding Fathers

● John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas

Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington,

- Benjamin Franklin as a self-made man

● the Father of the Yankees

● Open-mindedness, practicality, curiosity, benevolence,

● In what sense was Franklin "self-made?" Well, he wasn't born into a wealthy
or connected family. He was the 10th of 17 sons born to a soapmaker. By the
time he was 12 years old, Ben was already working as a printer and selling
papers and pamphlets in the streets of Boston. By the time he was 15, he had
become a popular and witty advice columnist writing under the female
pseudonym Silence Dogood,

- Didactic aim behind Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

● Franklin eventually found work in Philadelphia as a printer. Much of

the Autobiography narrates the story of his rise to owner of the printing press,
writer, inventor, and public servant. Throughout the book, Franklin is always
careful to remind us of how self-reliant and industrious he is, he also
emphasizes the importance of self education,

- Thomas Paine's role in American Revolution and his secularist ideas

 ● Paine published Common Sense, a hugely influential pamphlet that convinced
many American colonists that the time had finally come to break away from
British rule. 
● No other figure played a greater role in moving the American people from a
spirit of rebellion to one of revolution.

In Common Sense, Paine made a persuasive and passionate argument to the

colonists that the cause of independence was just urgent. The first prominent
pamphleteer to advocate a complete break with England, Paine successfully
convinced a great many Americans who'd previously thought of themselves as
loyal, if disgruntled, subjects of the king. 
● In his pamphlet, Paine associated the corrupt monarchy with the despised
taxation policy, persuading many readers to become proponents of the world's
first republican government. Importantly, Paine was a master of transforming
the complicated philosophical and scientific principles of the Enlightenment—
individuality, reason, and liberty—into plain words that the masses could
comprehend and rally around. 

- Rhetoric of The Declaration of Independence

● The founding document of America, simple, clear and persuasive, based on

John Locke’s ideas( the Government is there to serve the citizens and when it
fails to do so, the people have the right to overthrow it),

- Phillip Freneau as a poet of nature

● “The Wild Honey Suckle” ….

● distinctly american in theme and style

● his poetry reflects the issues of the day

● Three stages of his poetic career

o poetry of revolution

o poetry of democracy

o poetry of nature

Washington Irving:

- the inception of truly American literature with American setting

- the first professional American writer

- wrote satires, letters, short stories, history books

AMERICAN ROMANTICISM

- Edgar Allan Poe's style of writing (e.g., Gothicism, surrealistic and

oniric imagery etc.)

● Forerunner of Romanticism, founder of American fantasy, detective and

horror fiction,

● Psychological insight (The Uncanny), Anxiety vs. fear,

● Descriptions oniric and surrealistic, gothic imagery,

● Philosophy of Composition: disliked didacticism, literary works brief

and focalized on one single effect, every writer should try to achieve
this effect by carefully calculating every element of the work,

- Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

- Symbols in Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher

● The House of Usher refers to both the house and the family. 
The ghastly images inside the house symbolize the madness of the
house's inhabitants. The Gothic literature and story's of strange goings-
on represent the inhabitants' thoughts. 
The fungi and physical deterioration of the house symbolizes the
physical deterioration of Roderick and Madeline. 
The upside down reflection of the house in the tarn symbolizes the
upside down thinking of the Ushers. The bridge over the tarn
symbolizes the narrator who serves as the only bridge to the outside
world. 
The collapsing of the house straight down into the tarn symbolizes the
linear fashion of the Usher's family tree and its ultimate collapse. 
The rank atmosphere in "The Fall of the House of Usher" symbolizes
the negative effect of being in the Usher's presence. 

The main example of symbolism is the physical house itself. The

structural "house of Usher" symbolizes the family line or "House of
Usher, because family lines of the nobility in England are referred to as
"Houses." The family line of the several kings and nobility of England
were referred to as the "House of York" or the "House of Lancaster",
etc. 

Roderick Usher is the last of the descendants of the Usher family. He

has no children, therefore no heirs to carry on the family name or
bloodline. The structural "house of Usher" is old, decrepit and in
disrepair. Roderick Usher is aged, infirm and about to die. He knows
that when he dies, his family line dies with him. 

The symbolism becomes apparent as the story progresses. At first the

reader thinks the story is about the structure as Poe describes its
 condition. However, as the story continues still further, it becomes
apparent that it is about Roderick Usher and his lament of the end of his
family line. It will end upon his death which is all too obviously
imminent. 

At the story's end, Roderick dies and the "House of Usher" dies with
him. As the narrator of the story rides away from the house, then the
structure itself falls. Thus the fall of the "house of Usher" symbolizes the
fall of the "House of Usher." 

- Nathaniel Hawthorne's style of writing (also Dark Romanticism)

● Judge at Salem witch trials,

● Style; symbolism, Dark Romanticism(sin, redemption, evil), historical

romance with psychological themes bordering on surrealism,

- Symbolism of the letter L in The Scarlet Letter

● “A”- the Scarlett Letter, adultery, sin, hard work, charity, righteousness,

● “L” Dimmesdale’s sign- Hester isn't the only one with bodily
consequences for sin. She had the baby; he gets the tattoo. Although
he refuses to confess and be punished, his sin ultimately marks his
body even more permanently than either Hester's scarlet letter or her
child: the child grows up, the scarlet letter can be taken off, but
Dimmesdale's mark is with him until he dies.

- The contrast between metaphorical "spaces" in The Scarlet

Letter (forest vs. village)

● FOREST( self-reliance, moral freedom, sexual freedom, individuality,

shamelessness, dangers, mystery)

● VILLAGE( common responsibility, moral restrictions, reliance on others,

common agreement, social conventions, inhibitions, shamefulness,
security, the known, civilization)

- Symbolism of the white whale and religious references in

Herman Melville's Moby Dick

● White whale- God, nature, vengeance, ambiguous, inscrutable, different

for each character,…..

TRANSCENDENTALISM

- American Transcendentalism
● American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy
and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the
nineteenth century.

● Reaction against New England Calvinism

● Reaction against eighteenth-century rationalism

● God as Deistic "divine watchmaker"

● skepticism
● Reaction against Lockean empiricism
●  Emerging ideal of American democracy

● Transcendentalism, like other romantic movements, proposes that the

essential nature of human beings is good and that, left in a state of nature,
human beings would seek the good. Perfectionism and optimism.

- Emerson's views on self-reliance and the role of nature (Nature)

● the manifestation of the universal spirit in nature. Emerson argued that

man needed no church to connect to the divine - he had only to go out
into nature, 

●  In The Over-Soul, Emerson expanded the ideas he began in Nature.

He outlined the transcendental belief in a common spirit uniting all
beings, one adapted from Eastern religious readings popular among
the Concord set.

● In Self-Reliance, Emerson exhorted readers to trust their instincts as

their best and truest guide to what is right. In our modern world where
"following your heart" has become a cliché, it's important to remember
how revolutionary Emerson's words were at the time.

- Thoreau's socio-political thought in Civil Disobedience

● He speaks favorably about a government that does

not intrude in citizens' lives. The government is
chosen by people to achieve certain ends. It exists
to ensure an individual's freedom. However, it is
prone to be misused. Thoreau gives examples of
slavery practice and the Mexican-American war to
establish his point further. He asserts that the
government itself becomes an obstacle between
achieving its purpose, the purpose for which it was
created.

● However, Thoreau makes it clear that he is against

abolishing the government, but wished for a better
one. He did not believe that there should be no
 government at all. He believed that if the
government fails to improve, people should not
support it. According to Thoreau, a person cannot
accept the government's authority unquestioningly.

● Thoreau introduces common people's right to

revolution against an unjust government. To
establish this thought, he compares the
government with a machine. As a machine, the
government may not do a good job in producing
justice. He encourages people be a counter friction
or a resistance to stop such a machine. He
encourages rebellion. He believes that mere
expression of objection is not enough; it requires
action. Thoreau asserts that an individual must not
support the government structure. An individual
must act with principle and break the law if
necessary.

● To establish this thought further, he gives his own

example. He recalls the time when he was
imprisoned for non-payment of taxes on his part.
With his own example, he establishes that non-
payment of taxes is a means to withdraw support
from the government. It constitutes "peaceable
revolution." Thoreau also advocates a simple and
self-reliant lifestyle to achieve individual freedom.
He urges people to be free from the corrupting
powers of money and property.

● Thoreau maintains that he does not want to quarrel.

He says that he wants to honor the laws of the
land. However, he states that the current laws are
not honorable. He believes that the government is
in transition from absolute monarchy to democracy.
However, he also notes that democracy may not be
the final stage of the process. In the end, he again
lays emphasis on respecting an individual. A state
cannot be absolutely free and enlightened until the
government recognizes the importance of an
individual.

● Thoreau's essay revolves around three main

themes: (i) civil government vs. higher law, (ii)
government vs. an individual, and (iii) materialism
 vs. simple life.
 

POETRY OF THE 19th CENTURY

- Emily Dickinson's poetic style

● A keen observer, she used images from nature, religion,

law, music, commerce, medicine, fashion, and domestic
activities to probe universal themes: the wonders of
nature, the identity of the self, death and immortality, and
love. 

● poem has no title,

● One of Dickinson’s special gifts as a poet is her ability to

describe abstract concepts with concrete images. In many
Dickinson poems, abstract ideas and material things are
used to explain each other, but the relation between them
remains complex and unpredictable.

● The shifting tone 

- Walt Whitman's poetic style

● a strong emphasis on the individual self, especially

the self of Whitman in particular
● a strong tendency to use free verse in his poetry
● an epic tendency that tries to encompass almost
every possible subject matter
● an emphasis on the real details of the everyday
world
● democracy as a way of interpersonal interaction
and as a way for individuals to integrate their
beliefs into their everyday lives.

● including slang, colloquialisms, and regional

dialects, rather than employing the stiff, erudite
language so often found in nineteenth-century
verse

● Whitman’s poetry reflects the vitality and growth of

the early United States-> THE CYCLE OF LIFE
AND DEATH

● THE BEAUTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL