Camelia Elias

American Studies

movements

Modernism really began in America but went to Paris to happen.

Gertrude Stein

3 major periods/traditions:genteelmodernistpostmodernist

Writing strategies

anxieties of influence appropriations of influences borrowing assimilating intertextualizing

background

1517 Protestant ReformationProtestors who wished to reform the Catholic Church

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses 1532 Henry VIII, King of England creates the

Anglican Church (Church of England) Protestantism - in name only King same as Pope with appointed cardinals Anglican Church was Catholicism in practice &

rituals “Catholic church in disguise”

Puritanism & England

Local Englishmen protest against the Anglican Church

Want to “purify” England Against Henry’s mild English theocracy

Belief in Predestination Priesthood of the individual

Puritanism & the English colonies

Puritans CHOSE to leave England not because of persecution needed a place to go where they could find government

support The New World became a Puritan Commonwealth

charter to go to the New World “city on a hill” a beacon light for others

Return to England The idea was to purify America and then return to England to

save her

central issues

The Puritans established their own religious and moral principles known as American Puritanism.

American Puritanism stressed:predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited

atonement (or the salvation of a selected few) from God's grace.

puritans left Europe for America in order to establish a theocracy in the New World.

they built a way of life that stressed:hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.

features

individual election and damnation the pursuit of God’s work predestination:

God decided everything before things occurred original sin: “in Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”

limited atonement: only the “elect” can be saved.

personal life was emphasized as a theater for inner drama (journals, diaries)

seek patterns for salvation self-scrutiny

Puritan writings and literature

NOT an imaginative literature, but: history annals travel record scientific observation diary sermon meditation elegy

Cotton Mather 1633-1728

Advocate of the “plaine style” but his book exhibits:elaborate imageryprose rhythmcomplex metaphorscriptural analogy --- only apparently

naïve and devoid of eloquence

Magnalia Christi Americana On March 15, 1697, the salvages made a

descent upon the skirts of Haverhill, murdering and captivating about thirty-nine persons, and burning about half a dozen houses. In this broil, one Hannah Dustan, having lain in about a week, attended with her nurse, Mary Neff, a body of terrible Indians drew near unto the house where she lay, with designs to carry on their bloody devastations. Her husband hastened from his employments abroad unto the relief of his distressed family; and first bidding seven of his eight children (which were from two to seventeen years of age) to get away as fast as they could unto some garrison in the town, he went in to inform his wife of the horrible distress come upon them. Ere she could get up, the fierce Indians were got so near, that, utterly desparing to do her any service, he ran out after his children; resolving that on the horse which he had with him, he would ride away with that which he should in this extremity find his affections to pitch most upon, and leave the rest unto the care of the Divine Providence.

Platonism and Puritanism

Platonismthe word is a reflection of pure idea

Puritanismword and world reflect divine things, coherent

systems, and transcendental meaning

Puritan influences

a group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature

it led to the everlasting mythAll literature is based on a myth – Garden of

Eden

symbolism: distinctly American

poetry

doggerel verse anagrams acrostics riddles epitaphs and elegies

Ann Bradstreet“I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

Who says my hand a needle better fits,

A Poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong;

For such despite they cast on Female wits:

If what I doe prove well, it won’t advance,

They’ll say it’s stolne, or else it was by chance”

(1650)

Narratives

adventure stories but still with a focus on transcendental meaning

the captivity narrative: sermon, moral lesson, revelatory history, the precursor of later sensationalist fiction and gothic talethe Indians were the devils

Cpt. John Smith & Pocahontas

John Smith

“What so truly suits with honor and honesty as the discovering things unknown: erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue; and again to our native country a kingdom to attend her”

( A description of New England, 1616)

The Puritan quest

NOT to know the land but to redeem it the negative legacy of puritan writing and ideology of

redemption consisted of belatedness: they were late in acquiring what the Indians already

possessed: the ability to: “bathe in, to explore always more deeply, to see, to

feel, to touch… the wild beauty of the New World” (William Carlos Williams, in his anti-puritan In the American Grain, 1925)

the Indian qualities regarding American landscape and nature were appropriated by later writers beginning with transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman

criticisms

failure to open out to experience or the ambiguity of the symbol

lack of inclusiveness dull response to the world of nature rigorous moralism Anglo-Saxonism

awakening

Puritanism traditionunquestioning religious

dogmamonarchy

Enlightenment

New Thought rationalityscientific inquiry representative

government

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

puritan preacher and idealist

introduced typology in his studies of nature and influenced a number of writers in the Romantic and transcendentalist period

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

political man and materialist

a secularized puritan introduced the idea

that the American is a new man

Henri de Crèvcoeur (1735-1813)

“What then is the American, this new man?...He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds… the American is a new man, who acts on new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions”

Franklin: the New Man inventions: bifocals, the stove, the lightning rod, discovery

of electricity, understanding of earthquakes and ocean currents

editor: Poor Richard’s Almanack (a farmer’s how to manual) negotiates the peace treaty with Britain, drafting the

declaration of independence and constitution 1st postmaster general ambassador to France moves with ease from resolution to humility as his

aphorisms show: on resolution: “resolve to perform what you ought; perform without

fail what you resolve” on frugality: “waste nothing” on industry: “lose no time; be always employed in something useful” on humility: “imitate Jesus and Socrates”

Legacy of Puritanism

Passed values to future generations1. Prudence - clear thinking

not making emotional decisionsBiblical direction

2. Thrift a penny saved is a penny earnedBen Franklin's "waste not - want not"

3. Discipline - self discipline moderation

4. Hard work is rewarded “ idle hands are the devil's workshop”

The Enlightenment

neo-classical era took place from 1700-1820 was a reaction to the excesses of Puritanism believed in the power of the mind to overcome

life’s difficulties rather than grace moved away formal communal based society to

one that emphasized individualism

Thinkers of the Enlightenment

believed that the individuals should be balanced in their life

believed that through reason the whole universe could be understood

science can help answer the questions about the universe (this is the era of Newton)

believed that human beings relate to each other because of shared experiences, not faith

forms of expression

newspapers satires pamphlets political poems drama the rise of the novel

things to look for

inference parallelism personification aphorisms (of Franklin)

Philip Freneau 1752-1832

America was on the doorstep of epic change

revolution signaled the coming of the muses

the dawn of a golden age of liberty

enlightenment artistic deliverance

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the roman church, by the Greek church, by the protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church”

American History Timeline

animated atlas colonial era and revolutionary war American memory timeline

The Female American

Unca Eliza Winkfield:The Female American

Appeared in 1767 Published in London Published in America in 1790 and 1814

reviews

The Monthly Review; or Literary Journal, vol. 36 (1767) 238

“A sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wonders; and well calculated to make one sort of readers stare”

reviews

The Critical Review; or Annals of Literature vol. 23 (1767) 217

Mrs. Unca Eliza Winkfield is a most strange adventurer, and her memoirs seem to be calculated only for the wild Indians to whom she is so closely allied. We could therefore have wished, as well for her sake as our own, that this lady had published her adventures at the Fall of Niagara, or upon the Banks of Lake Superior, as she would then, probably, have received the most judicious and sincere applause from her enlightened countrymen and princely relations, and have saved us six hours very disagreeable employment.

title page

the narrative chronicles the adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield

compiled by herself anonymous author

no evidence regarding the gender of the author: to what extent has this novel been written by a man or a woman?

tremaine mcdowell

The first novel to introduce “the South American Indian into the North American novel”

The first “American Robinson Crusoe” The “first close imitation of any English

novelist done by an American hand”(American Literature, 1929)

similarities with Crusoe

novel of wanderlust (extraordinary adventures) shipwreck and adventure both protagonists are castaways on an island both endure physical and psychological trials both survive and prosper both become ill but overcome illness (also by

praying) both survey the island from atop both experience hurricanes and an earthquake both use the goats both ascribe their experience to providence

differences: Eliza

biracial multilingual boasts a transnational heritage takes on several identities evolves obedient to her father interprets the shipwreck as sign of undeserved

fate avoids engaging in tasks that require masculine

knowledge

differences: Crusoe

disobeys the father sees the shipwreck as sign of punishment spends years fortifying his place on the

island offers elaborate descriptions of everything

that he does and invents kills other men

time frame

1630s anticipates the criticism against imitation relies on the reader’s familiarity with the

missionary program devised by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG)

an exploration of authorship and authority

setting

shifts between representations of paradise (home) the unfamiliar island (place of confinement) familiar island (home)

the house of her father the island the Indian mainland England place of estrangement Exchanges:

daughterwomanprophetgodessmissionarywife

themes Survival Dedication/Education Power

related to voice: the idol is a symbol and a literal representation of the narrator’s anonymity and power

masking and controlling establishes the dominant speaking subject the discourse is essentialist (there is only one God, one Truth,

one Reality) Renunciation Texts

manuscripts Defoe’s book The Bible intertexts (allusions to reports, the Pocahontas myth)

context

Colonialism: in the colonial discourse identities are

invented and imagined

Christianity (SPG)romantic primitivism

narrative structure/style/tone

1st person narrative 3 parts dialogue within dialogue (final pages)

incoherence a reflection of Unca’s self-sustained authoritybreakups

uses the idol to create a dramatic scene the tone is melodramatic silence

The Female American follows in the footsteps of Robinson Crusoe,

yet makes its own imprints