The Native Voice of America – when explorers came to America, they learned stories from

the Natives – oral literature – language was sacred for natives, words were believed to be
powerful → speaking – dealing with forces – brings risks and responsibilities

Expression more important than communication, therefore chants

· Songs, prayers, chants, spells, charms, omens, riddles, creation stories – differed from
culture to culture (people who live close to the sea – believe that they came from the sea,
etc.)

· Trickster tales (Coyote, Rabbit, Hare, Spider, Raven) – names of tricksters

o Tricksters come from times, where the world was not yet finished – can be
both a man and an animal – he helps to bring the world to the present
shape – brings the death to the world, but without it, they wouldn’t
understand the beauty of life

Periodization

o Pre-colonial literature

o Colonial literature (Puritan writers) (puritanism – not longer than 100 years)

o Enlightenment and the Great Awakening (they coexist) – Great Awakening – religious
revivalism of 1730s/40s

o Literature of the Revolution and of the New Republic

o Romanticism (1812-1865)

o Realism (1865-1914)

o Modernism (1914-1930s/40s)

o Literature of the Thirties/Forties/Fifties…

o Postmodernism

o Contemporary literature

Literature of discovery and exploration – before permanent establishment of British

settlements

Those who came to America left their writings, written in order to advertise America,
so that they keep on getting fundings for the trips – magical realism was born in the first
descriptions of the New World. What was described was actually better than it really was.
Cristopher Columbus read Marco Polo’s journals and was expecting something completely
different

Magic found in every description – monsters, mermaids, witches, etc.

Imagination in early description helped to create the sense of wonder, which helped to create
the myth of the New World – America as the Garden of Eden, where the possibilities were
limitless.

Thomas Harriot , A brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, published
1588 (probably written in 1587, fruit of the second Roanoke expedition) – propaganda piece,
designed to encourage settlement, covered up unpleasant facts like diseases, hostility of
natives and the wiped out colony,

Captain John Smith, - councilor of Virginia colony, A True Relation of Virginia (1608),
described being captured by Indians, etc. – (guy from Pocahontas) Generall Historie of
Virginia (1624) - prototypical American hero - adventurer, practical man, self-made man

Introduction to Puritan literature

1620 - Plymouth - start of the history of Puritan presence

Puritans - more radical religious people who believed that church should be purified
from the roman catholic influences - they threatened to disrupt the unity of the church, started
to be persecuted in England -> Group of most radical Puritans left England to Holland, but
believed that New World would give them better opportunities - arrived in 1620, wanted to
join the colony in Jamestown, but settled in Port Cod, and founded Plymouth

The Puritan doctrine - consistent with Calvinism “They were pessimists” - believed
that mankind is evil, and have tendency to be such; God’s grace necessary for salvation;

3 main points - total depravity of humankind, predestined election, irresistible grace

Puritans in America - wanted to build God’s own city on the Earth - since beginning,
thought that were God’s soldiers, they saw devil everywhere; 2nd shipment of Puritans - 1630
- Massachusetts - Theocracy:only those who believed in God were welcome

Role of literacy - valued role of reading and writing - studying the bible, reading the
word of God

Genres:

● History and chronicle

● Life-writing
● sermons and theological writings
 ● Captivity narratives, slave narratives,
● Poetry

PURITAN LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD

History and Chronicle

Puritans believed that history was the unfolding of God’s plan,

and that historical events would help them understand God.

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

Purpose of history writing

Biblical parallels and God’s providences

Construction of the Other

(consists of 2 books - I part - planting of the colony and initial years 10 years after
community’s arrival to Plymouth - How Puritans perceived America - important scene of
crossing Atlantic ocean and arriving to the New World - God guided Puritans across the
Ocean, just like God guided Israelites through the desert - America was their Promised Land;
when they arrived, they found themselves very far from Jamestown - there were not prepared
to survive in harsh conditions, but they prayed to God and survived (xd Pojeby totalne)

2nd book - when the colony started to lose its identity

Absolute trust and faith, because they were predestined

Bradford calls America - the wilderness - both physical and moral - natives had their own
gods, and were in need of conversion

William Bradford - Governor of Plymouth, arrived on Mayflower

Cotton Mather - Magnalia Christi Americana

(The Great American Works of Christ) (1702) -
encyclopedic work, which is a chronicle of New
England

Attempt to deal with everything that happened in

New England since the planting of the colony;
biographies of ministers, saints, etc. (saints -
those, whose lives were an example to follow,
since there had to be some godly influence, for
example - William Bradford), records miracles
and providences - his history isn’t what we
understood as history today; glorifies New
England’s achievements - those who are able to
maintain the puritan behavior

Compares leaders of New England, colonies,

church leaders, to characters from New Testament
like Moses, draws analogies to Book of Exodus
like Bradford

Essays to do Good - instructs others in

humanitarian acts, some ideas being far ahead of
his time: the schoolmaster to reward instead of
punish his students, the physician to study the
state of mind of his patient as a probable cause of illness.

Cotton Mather - Clergyman, writer, educated in Harvard College; biologist - did research on
cross-breeding of different plants. Connects two worlds - traditional piety and Enlightenment;
Involved as a judge in Salem trials - convinced, that Satan was actually at work, and wrote a
piece about it

There is not much of Southern literature of this period → focused on money (also stupid
people of South)

Puritans would compulsively write autobiographies

(Auto)biography

Early personal narratives and journals written in the confessional mode - didactic and
ideological - for Puritans - life is a journey from earthly city, to the eternal city

Introspective literature

Most of the journals recorded moments of conversion → turning from God and then
returning; they provide glimpses into their psyches

Most prominent diarists

Michael Wigglesworth - poet

Edward Taylor - poet

Anne Bradstreet - poet

Cotton Mather - historian

John Woolman - quaker

Samuel Seawall - judge in the Salem trial (he recognised, that he was wrong
unlike Cotton Mather)
Sermons as a chief means of grace - chief means through which God communicates his grace
through his believers - God’s grace is irresistible; without his grace, you can’t get salvation

● Plain style of preaching (like their clothes, and style of living)

● Clarity of argumentation
● Inventiveness (metaphors, analogies, similes, dialogues, etc.)
● Organization of sermon
○ Explanation - explaining the doctrine
○ Application - how does the passage from Bible applies to life?
■ Famous Sermons
● John Winthrop A Model of Christian Charity (AKA City upon a
Hill) (1630) - preached, when Puritans arrived at Massachusetts
- they are gonna build a city upon a hill for God - eyes of all
people are upon them → model city, model community for the
whole world to follow
● Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
(1741)

Captivity narratives and travel literature

Captivity narrative - many Puritans were captured by Natives, those who escaped captivity
wanted to record their experiences - as a genre - single individual, usually a woman, awaits a
rescue by the grace of God

Mary Rowlandson The Sovereignty and Goodness of God

John Williams The Redeemed Captive, Returning Unto Zion

Travel literature
 Sarah Kemble Knight The Journal of Madam Kemble Knight - deviation from
traditional, masculine canon - woman traveling alone through american wilderness, focuses
on landscapes, people she encounters, in opposition to the inward nature of other writers

Puritan Poetry
Needs to be more metaphorical and more ornamental than prose; mostly functional; a lot of
elegies, satires, occasional verses, influenced by classic poetry and british poetry. Goal: to
describe the world created by perfect being → World has to be studied like the Bible; plain
style, alliteration, hums, comparisons, metaphors, allegories
Most popular poem:

Impossibly long and not very good - terrifying account of a Judgement Day - bestseller in
England, everyone learnt it by heart

Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672)

Came to America as a married woman, bore 8 children, wife

and daughter of public officials
Wrote poetry in addition to her other duties
New style - focused on her domestic duties, struggles as
mother and wife.
(considered to be a proto-feminist)
First published English-speaking poet of America
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (published in 1650 in London)

Edward Taylor (1642 - 1729)

The most skillful poet of colonial

America; born in England, came to
America as a mature person; he was a
minister, who refused to sign the act
of uniformity during Reformation, so
he was forbidden from teaching → he
sailed to New England

Wrote metaphysical poetry which was

at odds with Puritan poetry

Metaphysical poetry - full of drama,

tension, so alien to puritan heart

He writes for himself, not for the

public, since they wouldn’t
understand

Upon a Spider Catching a Fly

- A fly and a Wasp are caught
into the spider’s net; fly -
defenseless human being,
devoid of God’s grace - an
 easy prey for Hell’s spider; Wasp is able to escape the web, since it has a sting - sting
is a Puritan weapon given by God, in order to escape the Devil

Preparatory Meditations
poems of uneven merit, few of them written in metaphysical, baroque style, make use of
conceits, fond of repetition

Series of questions, which imply an absolute wonder of a person struck with awe at God’s
greatness
Memory, understanding, and emotions of readers

God’s Determinations Touching His Elect

Miscellaneous poems

Transformation of Puritanism
1620 The Mayflower Compact

1692 The Salem witch trials

1700 Secularization
Samuel Seawall’s Diary
(1672-1729) → proof of
secularization. Illustrates the
transformation of Puritans into
businessmen. Regards public
service as something he’s most
fit for. But retains the puritan
way of seeing signs. Accepts
death as something that comes,
as a cycle of life and death →
when his wife dies, he starts
planning another marriage.

Another Salem Witch judge -

apologized for the verdict

1729 - Edward Taylor dies → Puritan baroque - something that shouldn’t exist, but did, due
to his exposure to the british art

Metaphysical poetry’s popularity in England was eclipsed by Enlightenment

In America - new ideas from Europe, came with a time lack

1703 - Jonathan Edwards is born

Theologian, who had a sensitivity of poet
Wrote prose full of wonder and exuberance
(baroque),but Puritan.

The Great Awakening (Swan’s song of colonial

America) - revivalist movement in religion -
1730s to 1740s - many traveling preachers
would move from place to place, organizing
meetings, where they preached powerful
sermons, addressing people’s emotions.
Emphasizes emotional and personal aspects of
faith. - contradictory to the Puritan idea of
balance and harmony. Preachers of Great
Awakening wanted to stress experiential aspect
of faith - stressed importance of inviting God to
hearts - reaction for overintellectual religion
Experience of God >>> Theory
Edwards was one of the representatives
As a child he wrote an essay On the flying spider
knowledge emerges gradually like rays of light;
Was a minister - pastor.
Believed that God’s grace alters human’s depravity
He addressed imagination in his sermons, so much that people cried, fainted, etc. He
wouldn’t use many theatrics, spoke very calmly, so it was the intellectual nature, that was so
touching
Sermon - That foot will slide in due time - we don’t know when. He uses terrifying images of
hell that awaits sinners; a terrifying metaphor of a devil being a spider, weaving a web in
order to entrap humans. Conversion is needed in this moment, because we might not wake up
in the morning; removed from his church, because had many powerful enemies among
politics - wanted to convert them
Founder of New England School of Theology
infused new life into oratorical tradition
Chief figure of the Great Awakening

The American “Schizophrenia” - (not an official name) - colonial America straddling these
two worlds -
Cotton Mather drawn to both
Jonathan Edwards - representative of Great Awakening
Edward Taylor

1734-1748 - The Great Awakening

The Swan’s song of Puritanism

Baroque emotionalism in religion

vs.

The Enlightenment

The “Maturity of mankind” - Immanuel Kant - mankind like children - superstitious, etc.
Now they are mature - power of human mind, rather than relying on religion, human beings
are capable of explaining the world in rational terms

Rationality, science, knowability of universe, belief in progress,

Deism - benevolent, distant God, who created the world, and that’s it.
History was put forward by human beings

Representatives of the Enlightenment

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Influenced by Mather
Left Boston (stronghold of Puritanism) to Philadelphia (capital of Pennsylvania - secular,
dedicated to Enlightenment) - becomes a self-made man
Represents new generation, which embrace the philosophy of
human perfection - of Enlightenment
Talks about supreme goodness in God
Rather than go to church, he would experiment, study, work on
self-improvement - believed in human perfection; rather than rely
on God - relied on himself
Puritans believed that no good works could earn salvation
Franklin did.
13 virtues - listed virtues in his autobiography, and would try to
improve them
Begun the day with the question - what good
will I do this day?
Ended with - What good have I done today?
Worked on self-improvement this way
Useful citizen, leading author, printer, political
theorist, politician, scientist, inventor,
salesman, diplomat, one of the founding
fathers, invented Lightning Rod, bifocals, and
Franklin Stove; exemplified emerging
american nation, founded first american
library, pennsylvania hospital, university of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Society for the
Abolition of slavery
Published Poor Richard’s Almanac since 1733 to 1758 (consisted of pieces of advice and
famous sayings)

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

Author of Declaration of Independence - principles of American democracy
Notes on the state of Virginia

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Born in England, influenced by ideas of Enlightenment, especially that
power doesn’t come from God, but people themselves. People can
form themselves into body politic and vest that power in elected
government - embraced John Locke’s idea of social contract
Published Common Sense in 1776 - subtitle - written by Englishmen;
urges the cause of American independence
Published The Rights of Man - plea against monarchy; returned to
England after American revolution begun, then became spokesperson
for French revolution; protested against execution
Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1737-1813)

Born in France, emigrated to New France, then to New York, bought

land, and became a farmer; wrote notes, which he later published as
Letters from American Farmer (1782 in England - 1st American
success in Europe - After 1776 people were hungry of news about
America) - presented american society as characterized by principles
of equal opportunity and self-determination; helped to create
american identity in the minds of Europeans, by describing whole
country, rather than european colony; celebrated american ingenuity,
acceptance of diversity, uncomplicated lifestyle, religious tolerance,
society created by many cultural backgrounds - poses a question - what is then the American -
the new man? - he is the American who leaving behind all the ancient prejudices and
manners, embraces the new ones, emanating from the New Land → To be American, one had
to cut off from European tradition and embrace new land, new culture. First, spoke of
America s the melting pot

Literature written by slaves and servants

Enlightenment brought the idea, that certain things had to be corrected (slavery, feminism)

Slave narratives: Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789) - born in Africa, captured
to be a slave, landed in Virginia, writes about life in slavery, and consequences of being sold
as a slave; finally purchased his freedom; as a free man left for London, and there he
published his narrative. Incorporated ideas of Enlightenment and spoke for the exploited
black slaves

Narrative of an indentured servant: Elizabeth Ashbridge, Some Account of the Fore-Part

of Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge (1774) - born in England, determined to go to America, didn’t
have money, befriended by a woman, who was to help her, but she sold her into servitude;
she was abused, whipped, made to work hard for a master; after 3 years, had enough money
to buy freedom - spiritual autobiography of a woman from lower spheres of society;
quakerism (tolerant religious, nonviolent group, who believed in gender equality) as an
escape from patriarchal oppression - example of early feministic literature

The first published African-American female poet: Phillis

Wheatley - enslaved in the age of 7, transported to America,
received thorough education in the house of her owners, started to
write, and publish in London as a very young woman - didactic
poetry, combines christian motives with classical allusions,
addresses classical and contemporary american heroes (George
Washington)
 Embraced christianity and white
culture, feels grateful to her
masters, for introducing her to
the superior culture; she has been
colonized, appeals to white
christians not to scorn Africans,
because the blackness of the skin
aligns them with Cain - first
sinner; capable of writing in
sonnet style, her poetry was
pretty elaborate.

Towards National Literature

The Young Republic and Beginnings of American Romanticism

Letters of American Farmer - written in a plain language

Great Themes of American literature
1. History - American Revolution
2. The Frontier - area between settled and unsettled territory - constantly moving
westward, fights with Natives, etc.
3. Nature

The Young Republic

The First Ones
American Drama - firstly suspicions towards theaters, due to the heritage of Puritans →
hostile towards entertainment (theater diverts people from main purpose of life - God)
Royall Tyler, The Contrast (1787) - 1st american drama; satirizes Americans, who
follow british passion, who imitate british lifestyle, and indulge in British vices - contrast
between plainness of American life - colonel Manley (embodies virtue of masculinity) and
his opposite - Mr. Dimple - embodiment of polished hypocrisy and fashionable british
lifestyle; they are rivals for the hand of the girl - Manley (true American) wins, due to the
scheming of his servant - a yankee figure - Jonathan

American Novel:
At first imitations of british novels
The sentimental novel - formula of virtue rewarded, vice punished; teaching women
on how to avoid scandal errors, how to be moral, and how to avoid dangers of seduction;
usually shows tragic consequences of seduction, and reflects the helplessness of 18th century
women; reinforces traditional values
William Hill Brown, The Power of Sympathy (1789) - 1st American novel -
written in epistolary form
Susana Rowson, Charlotte Temple (1794) - first published in Britain (3 years
earlier), became the most popular bestseller until Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Temple is a
school girl seduced by a british officer, travels from Britain to America, he abandons
her, she was pregnant, becomes ill and dies. → girls must guard their virtue at all cost;
reason must control passion
The picaresque novel - character traveling, having number of adventures, episodic
structure, gradually developed into major literary trend in 18th century
The Gothic novel - combines elements of horror and romance, theme of mystery and
scary elements of plot
Charles Brockden Brown - 1st practitioner (in England - Horace Walpole) -
uses sentimental plot for exploring obsessions, and dark realms of human psyche,
influential in England (Mary Shelley read him while working on Frankenstein) -
quaker background → gender equality - published several gothic novels - sensational
violence, dramatic intensity and emotional complexity - intended to educate readers
on virtuous behavior and historical causes of actions -
Wieland - psychological tale of terror (title - main character - Wieland jr. -
product of enlightenment, believes that everything can be described in a rational
manner) he hears voices in his head, that tell him to do gruesome things (killing wife,
etc.) - he obeys - madness can dwell under rational surface - gothic novel questions
belief in reason, because life cannot be reduced to reason alone
Edgar Huntly (1799) - utilizes captivity narrative tradition(captivity - test of
faith) - evildoers are Indians, his quakerism disappears, plays into stereotype of Indian
as an animal, diabolical character; wilderness - home of murderous men and beasts
Poetry (pre-romanticism) end of XVIII century - pre romantic poets
Philip Freneau - transitional poet, points to pre romantic spirit (esp. nature poetry),
wrote about american revolution
The Wild Honeysuckle - presents a speaker who upon seeing honeysuckle talks to it,
addresses its beauty, and then meditates about the nature, and how the flowers’ life mirrors
humans - descriptive and meditative part
The Indian Burying Ground - difference of burying by settlers (laying position) and
Indians (sitting position) - not dead, but alive in a different world (superiority of Indian
customs)
William Cullen Bryant - nature as a metaphor for truth, most famous poem -
Thanatopsis (a view of death) - British were amazed, that an American was able to write a
poem so skillful and successful; To a Waterfowl - nature a metaphor for an eternal truth -
viewer sees that God guides the bird, just like God guides the poet, the human being
Washington Irving
Poet - born in tolerant and cosmopolitan New York, faced
his country with detachment (result of stay in Britain);
among the first to confront the difficulty of finding
literary identity in the country, supposedly lacking their
own cultural heritage (no medieval ruins for romanticism)
Themes: awareness of impermanence of things, contrast
between reality and imagination, impossibility of drawing
the line between these two; no didacticism
Beginning of career - publication of A History of
New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of
the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809) -
satire, parody of a serious historical piece, Before
publications, he placed ads looking for the disappeared
Knickerbocker, also - if he won’t return - hotel should
publish the book. History was a mixture of significant and
trivial events, intermingled without any selection. Begins with a cosmogony, then history of
New Netherlands (New York), includes American Legends, voyage of Henry Hudson,
founding of New Amsterdam, ends with the fall of New Netherlands to the British in 1664.
Knickerbocker wore baggy trousers (knickerbockers), and couple of decades later, a group of
NY intellectuals, started to call themselves - Knickerbocker Club
Later published - The Sketch Book (1819-1820) - collection of short stories (Knickerbocker’s)
- for example -
Legend of Sleepy Hollow -
Ichabod Crane - yankee character, school teacher, who starts to teach
school in a town, where legends of Dutch settlers are still alive. They tell stories of a
Headless Horseman. He is gullible, has books on witchcraft - paradoxical character -
believes in superstitious characters, but is a learned man. One day arrives on a lady’s
party. There is also his rival for the lady’s heart. After the feast, in the woods,
Ichabod’s rival pursues him, pretending to be a headless horseman, he throws a round
object at Ichabod, he believes that it’s headless horseman’s head, so he escapes, but
this was actually a pumpkin.
Rip Van Winkle - Character far from protestant’s work ethic - antihero - child
at heart, refuses to grow up, and embrace responsibilities, Dame Van Winkle becomes
terrifying through his eyes - one day, he wanders to the mountains, meets dwarves
(companions of Roderick Hudson - legendary founder of the place), they gave him a
drink, wakes up after 20 years, doesn’t recognise anything - America in which he
woke up is a new America, no longer colonial - he feels alienated

James Fenimore Cooper

Author of historical romances (admired the best such writer - Walter Scott); lived in state of
New York in Cooperstown (utilized it in historical novels) - pre-romantic author

The Spy (1821) and The Pilot (1824) - both about American Revolution
The Leatherstocking Tales - most famous for that - made him famous internationally; focused
on adventures of Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye) - child of white parents (grew up with Indians -
skilled warrior, respected by the noble Mohicans, because he respected their culture; hunted
only what he needed to survive, unlike the white settlers; (his Mohican brother -
Chingachgook)
Last of the Mohicans (1826) - second book of the cycle, set during 7 Year war -
focusses on transport of two women in company of soldiers - Mohicans travel with them, one
of them - Magua becomes a villain - treacherous, diabolic character; seeks revenge on girls’
father; Hawkeye becomes the prototype of an American Adam - pristine, innocent character,
who embraces indian code of honor, and respects their culture - outcast in between of white
settlers and native americans

American Romanticism (1812 - 2nd war of Independence /20-1865 - end of Civil War)
Three cultural Centers:
New England - (Transcendentalists, N. Hawthorne, E. Dickinson, Brahmins - gentile
poets)
New York - (The Knickerbocker Club, H. Melville, W. Whitman)
The South - (Edgar Allan Poe)

19th century introduced attempts to create a perfect society - art of American myth; women
suffrage; movement to abolish - production and consumption of alcohol - Temperance
movement → lead to prohibition; anti-slavery movement in the North; utopian societies are
started (short experiments)

Literature of the South

Colonists of south wanted to build a garden, not the city upon a hill, developed a pseudo
medieval culture, build upon feudal culture; southern culture was hierarchical - plantation
owners at top;
typical literature - nature lyrics, historical romance, plantation eden (slavery and feudalism
crucial);

Edgar Allan Poe, played down regional elements - he

wanted to be a universal writer, concerned with the aesthetic
value of art, not historical, social, etc.; art for art’s sake;
timeless art.
Born in Boston, his mother was an actress and a dancer, she
died young, his father was absent, was brought up, by a
wealthy Allen family of South in Virginia; Traveled in
Europe, attended European schools, when he came back,
studied on university of Virginia, but was thrown out, due to
alcoholism; lived in poverty, fell in love with his 13 year old
cousin Virginia, married her in secret, she died pretty young,
and her death haunts his literature; many beautiful women
who die young. He dies in mysterious circumstances, found delirious in the gutter
Opponent of rationalism, but the father of tales of detection (use of reason)
Obsessed with death, violence, madness.
Poetry should deal with beauty → Prose should deal with the Truth.
Poetry should reach towards the state of heavenly beauty by manipulation of sound, rhythm,
incantatory repetition - The Raven
Promise of the poem - beauty, best tone - melancholy, best topic - death of beautiful woman
Gothic tales; Tales of ratiocination - The Gold Bug; The detective story (detective Auguste
Dupin) - The Murders of the Rue Morgue; Poetry; Literary criticism; Journalism
Poetry should be indefinite, should use indirection, suggestion
Musical quality of language
Bells - divided on 4 times, every one - different period of life; silver bells - childhood, golden
bells - maturity, harmony, wedding bells; brazen bells - alarm bells, shriek with terror; iron
tolling bells - menace, etc.
Poe rejected didactic tendency of american poetry; wasn’t well-recognised; his renaissance in
20th century, when discovered by french symbolists delighted by musicality of his poems
Theory of a short story - in the past american short stories were tales, contained material of
secondary importance, lacked structure, were not organized. Province of short stories is truth
- not historical, but the truth of the heart. not visible to the eye. Showed improbable but not
impossible events. Always a rational explanation. Every word counts. Experimented with
forms.
Published tales of grotesque and arabesque (form of romance)
The gothic of the mind - subgenre of gothic - Poe distances himself from germanism
The Terror I write is not of Germany but of the soul
his tales set in haunted castles, secluded places haunted by past, stories, beautiful
ladies die young, explores dark recesses of human minds, madness = awareness; madness
visible in supreme people
Detective stories - use reason, rational explanation

American Romanticism

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Dark Romantic - dwells on dark urges
descendant of england puritans, lived in Boston, one of his ancestors -
judge at Salem trial, explores burden of the past in his novels; member
of Brook Farm, his experience served in Blithdale Romance for 3 years
worked as a surveyor in the custom house in port of Salem (Scarlet
Letter’s introduction)
Twice-Told Tales - first collection of short stories
The Scarlet Letter (1850) - first of 3 novels which he calls romances -
symbolic novel full of symbols and allegories - takes place in Puritan America. Hester Prynne
imprisoned for Adultery - her daughter Pearl; she refuses to give the name of the father -
strong woman, protects the lover. When out of prison, she presents embroidered letter A on
her bosom; letter A changes meaning throughout the novel → Adulteress, Artist, Angel,
Ambiguity (sinner and saint); Chillingowrth - obsessed with revenge, satanic figure; forest -
place of honesty
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) (2nd romance)
The Blithdale Romance (1852) (3rd romance)
The Marble Faun (1860)

Continued pressure on the past

Hawthorne dwells on dark romantic themes:
alienation
solitude,
nature
unconscious fantasy, dream

Novel v. romance
The Novel aims at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and
ordinary course of man’s experience. - more concerned with superficial reality; romance -
truth of the heart
While, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably
as far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart - has fairy a right to present
truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing
When a writer calls his work a Romance he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its
fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he
professed to be writing a Novel.

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

from New York, his father died - major theme - searching for the father;
family bankruptcy - pessimistic worldview; his mother - calvinist; he
was a sailor, sailed to the pacific - cosmic alienation, absence from god.
Befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne; tried to face the terrifying
nothingness of reality. Under influence of this friendship, started
writing his masterpiece - Moby Dick

Themes:
Corruption of nature
Origin of sin
nature of human depravity
Does god exist?
Limits of human knowledge
Innebrance of creation
Dark impulses,
Evil in action
Unless people oppose evil with love, they will generate greater evil
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846) - adventure ethnography and social criticism;
attitude to natives - ambivalent → seen as free arcadians; on the other hand - cannibalistic
side to the utopia
Omo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847) - continues critique of 19th century
consciousness; highlights destructive effects of progress on premodern societies; loss of
innocence in our world due to colonists and missionaries
Mardi (1849) - myth of the fall, which will recur in Moby Dick and Billy Budd
Moby Dick (1851) - encyclopedic fragmented work. lack of chronology, digressions,
anticipates modernist writing. Call me Ishmael - undermining importance of words; (in Bible
- name of an outcast) - frustrated with life, embarks on a whaling ship, sets up on expedition
with captain Ahab. Everybody talks about captain Ahab, he’s supposed to be a terrifying
figure/ Is determined to kill one white whale - Moby Dick; whiteness - something evil,
terrifying - Ahab swore revenge, due to his loss of the leg; he believes that moby dick is the
symbol of evil, but in reality he is many other things; symbolic novel - many symbols
depending on who is looking at the whale - neither good nor bad, men-made concept, life
itself; Captain Ahab is pursuing the ungraspable phantom of life; Ahab in his blind range
attempts to kill life itself. At the end - Ahab destroyed by Moby Dick. Everyone drowns
except for Ishmael, who survives to tell the tale. The whiteness of the whale (name of the
chapter) - Ishamel challenges readers assumptions; defamiliarizes color; whiteness - beauty,
royalty, power, goodness - dehumanizing black people; (year after fugitive slave act -
criminal offence to help runaway slave) - whiteness can be terrifying at its core; white -
absence of color → chasing Moby Dick - fighting against meaninglessness of the world;
Ahab chases him for his life to have the value - novel - existantial voyage to see if life has a
meaning; ship is America itself
Pierre (1852)
Billy Budd - left unfinished (1894 - 1st publication) - theme of the fall, Edenic Adam - called
Handsome Sailor, who accidentally kills a satanic character - ship master of arms Cluggard
during the mutiny. Captain is a father figure and has to be objective during the judgment;
Law doesn’t look at the heart, but the facts; motifs are invisible when we look at the world
that way → whole thing gets twisted - Billy was innocent, but as facts were concerned -
Cluggard was innocent - scene of Billy’s hanging - apotheosis - ascends against sun -
christlike character who redeems the violence and his death restores peace to the ship; law is
inhumane
Short stories - many set at sea; motif of the fall - central character embodies innocence -
biblical Adam initiated into world of evil, by a satanic figure
Bartleby, the Scrivener - set on Wall Street; romantic protest against conformist lifestyle

A damned mob of scribbling women

Mass audience eager to read literature about women → other women and children
novels written from a perspective of white anglo saxon woman

The Woman Author

Lydia Maria Child
Sentimental novels, strong women characters, focused on friendship among women;
member of abolitionist movement; abolitionism with calls for social reform
Hobomok - interracial marriage between white puritan woman and a native american

Margaret Fuller
Editor of transcendentalist magazine first woman
allowed to use library at harvard college; published
first major feminist work at US; inspiration for
character of Hester Prynne
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) - urges
young women to seek independence from home
and family, to seek education (key to
independence); advocating reform of women
property laws;

Fanny Fern
First woman to have a newspaper column; her husband died - she supported her family; left
her second husband (revolutionary thing to do)
Ruth Hall - semi-autobiography - focuses on a woman who gradually learns to earn financial
independence; when character’s husband dies, she becomes a
writer and supports her family

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Imitated Child’s themes;

Lincoln said: - That little lady that made the Great War; when
fugitive slave act was passed, she started to write an anti-slavery
novel, that should inspire emancipation of slaves - Uncle Tom’s
Cabin - purpose - educational and abolitionist; centers on the
characer of Uncle Tom - slave on plantation - christian
nonviolent, forgiving character dies tortured by his owners -
forgives everyone even at his deathbed - demonstrated humanity
of slaves; presented black characters in a melodramatic way
(criticised for that)

Slave narratives
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) - ex-slave, who
escaped from slavery at Maryland at 22, became one of the most active spokespeople for
abolitionists and women suffrage; foundational text for black studies

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,

(1861) - first autobiography written by the black
woman; published under pseudonym, born into slavery, partly white, but even if the child was
¾ white, child was still considered black; she focuses on the evils of slavery concerning
women (revolutionary); frequently makes appeals to white women readers, explaining her
ability to live up to the idea of pure womanhood cherished in 1840s and 50s; suffered sexual
harassment; was rebelious; virtue rewarded, vice punished in the book → escape to freedom

American Transcendentalism
(New England Renaissance)
Transcendentalists - prophets of change; hard to define; 1830s - 1840s/50s; started as
religious, most prominent in literature; highly educated; members of unitarian
(non-trinetarian) church; saw human nature as essentially good; world could be a better place;
reforms could lead to greater equality and better world; reacted against Lockian philosophy;
experience comes from Platonic recollection (all knowledge is already
within us, we have to recollect it)
Ralph Waldo Emerson - prophet of the movement
1836 - gave lecture entitled Nature - beginning of transcendentalist
movement:

Triangle of ideas: God (oversoul - connected soul), Man, Nature; human

being is situated at intersection of two realities - spiritual (god, Soul, our
own soul), and Nature (our bodies, creation of God); Nature - shadow of
God, coded message; Nature - a book written by God, our goal is to
study the Nature - the book of God

His other lectures/essays:

Self-Reliance (we all must rely on ourselves, rather than passively accept the words of others,
don’t imitate - trust yourself; we distrust ourselves, because we are afraid of being ridiculed;
to be great is to be misunderstood - don't be afraid to be misunderstood, to be inconsistent,
don’t be afraid to change your opinion)
Experience
The American Scholar (the Intellectual declaration of independence) - calls for independent
from European tradition; it’s high time for Americans to gain intellectual independence from
Europe; no more imitations, their own traditions (We will walk on our own feet, work with our
own hands, speak our own minds); essay starts with the reference to old platonic fable - man
divided into many men just as body into many organs -> wanting to reassemble men into one
organic society in which every human being has a function, and as equally important as other
organs; present state of society is degenerate; american scholar - intellect that has to guide
others; purpose of the essay - to show the way back of american intellectuals to the state of
men thinking (3 influences: Nature (opposite of the soul, able to transcendent what is
apparent, venture into the spiritual reality, reach the world of eternal ideas), Past (if well used
- active and passive way of reading - active good, passive - imitating - bad), Experience (any
kind, the more, the better, man should be open to many spectra of experience)
The Poet
Henry David Thoreau (1818-1862)
spend most of his life in Concord, Massachusetts, one
of the prophets of transcendentalism, life-long
abolitionist, philosopher of nature, embarked on a 2
year expedition, where he lived in a hut in the forest.
Walden - maniphesto against consumerism, came up
with a list of fundamental essentials - roof for your
head, basic furnishings, fuel, food, clothes - you can
live your life cheaply, you don't have to enslave
yourself; discovered essentials of life, and shared it
with others; chapters - organized by contrasts; 2 years
compressed into 1
Civil Disobedience (resistance to civil government) -
didn’t want to pay taxes to support the mexican war -
violation of the law, so he was taken to prison - he
claims to felt most free, because his conscience was free (released next day by bail) - starts
the essay with Jefferson’s quote - That government’s best, which governs the least; afraid of
the tyranny of central government; Thoreau says - That Government’s best, which governs not
at all (government is always oppressive; most important - listening to one’s conscience, since
laws are typically unjust - if your conscience tells you that a law is unjust - your duty is to
disobey it; wanted non-violent revolution

Transcendentalist’s experiments at communal living:

Fruitlands and Brook Farm - ideas of Emerson put into practice by

intellectuals
Fruitlands - brain child of Amos Bronson Alcott - educator, reformer
of educational systems pioneered new ways of interacting with
students focusing on conversations; avoided traditional punishments;
hoped to perfect human spirits, vegetarian and vegan; Fruitlands -
vegan diet, use of land without american labor, no tea, no coffee,
used only vegetables that grew upward, not downward (they kill
vegetables); prohibited leather, cotton, etc. Very short lived experiment ended with
bankruptcy. Alcott was a father of

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women

Brook Farm - established in 1841 by George Ripley and his wife

Sophia; provided education for all participants, shut down in 1847,
played great role in american philosophy and religion; homed most
important american writers of that period:
Charles Dana
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Margaret Fuller

American Romanticism recapitulation:

Washington Irving
[Link] and the gothic tradition
The historical romance: J.F. Cooper, N. Hawthorne, H. Melville
TRanscendentalism - one of the varieties; Emmerson and Thoreau meditated on nature as the
symbol of unchanging spiritual reality
Emmerson - prophet of change (poet prophet - Walt Whitman’s influence - crucial for 20th
century)
Universal transcendental self - walking outdoors, meditating amidst nature on the ideal world
Comes to an end with the breakout of a War

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Essay - Emerson to Whitman,

Concord, Massachusetts, 21 July 1855

Dear sir –
I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves Of Grass”. I find it the most
extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed [...] I greet you at
the beginning of a great career.
Emmerson’s essays were the beginning of Whitman’s poetry
Whitman claims in his preface, that the poet is an arbiter of the universe, he is no arguer, he is
judgment; he is seer; poet - lover of the universe; Whitman praises simplicity as the highest
form of art; embraces science (romantics disgusted, but he praised it)
Leaves of Grass (1855) - collection of poems - 12 poems
In Song of Myself, he identifies himself as Walt Whitman,
one of the roughs, a kosmos - spokesman, bard of the
universe, representative man, one of common people; he
embraces whole America, beyond divisions, celebrates
unified country, rejoices human diversity (as Emerson
says - the bard embraces America as a whole);
his poetry is processual, expansive (final version - 1881,
but in every version - song of myself is a central poem)
SoM - epic, lyrical, prophetic, mystical poem, drama of
identity, grass poem (symbolism of grass -
death/resurrection pattern) poem’s speaker - universe
itself, transcendental self, who celebrates life eternal,
good as well as evil (for transcendentalists - evil -
incomplete good; dark romantics - act of principle)
In Song of Myself - his self keeps growing, develops from
Walt Whitman to the representative man of an entire
kosmos, who sees the eternal - grow happens by
confrontation with binary oppositions; many paradoxes,
polarities; expansion of youthful Adamic, ignorant self
who assimilates oppositions, and finally speaks of death,
which is not the end, but doorway to resurrection. beginning of transformation of something
else, claims that living consists of many lives, every day our past self dies; death - a stage in
our and nature’s endless cycles of transformation
Oppositions:
body and soul - not opposites - names - body - the other “I am”, it cannot be abased to the
soul; the body - as divine as spirit; he violates taboo - talks about bodily functions, sexuality,
embraces the body as much as soul - sexuality and sensuality as important; his poetry
considered obscene; he did not hide his homosexuality, fascination with young male body;
it’s as good to be a mother as it is to be a father; he even says that he contradicts himself, but
he contains multitudes - we cannot go through life without changing views, opinions; free
verse - illustrative of his extreme self-reliance; melody rather than rhymes - incantatory
repetitions of phrases, lines, introdcution of paralell constructions; lists - catallogues - long
inventories of items, enumerations - compared them to camerashots of whole nation, or to
canvas of Jackson Pollock;
first modern American poet - established native tradition of american poetry, opposed to
gentile tradition of academic poets writing at same time; introduced common language -
language of the roughs; he wasn’t appreciated and understood during his lifetime (except for
Emmerson) - renaissance in 1950s, when interest in open form was in the center of attention

Passage to India

- dedicated to
Abraham Lincoln

Whitman called at the

end The Good Gray Poet

Ezra Pound - A Pact - poem dedicated to Walt Whitman (1916)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Wrote mostly for herself and her family, looked inward in her experience;
short poems, densely condensated, packed with meanings, private,
independent, self-reliant; abandoned ambition to publish, when realized
that publishers needed her poetry to be smoothed out, corrected, suited to
the taste of modern audience; owed much to Emmerson; her vision
darkens with time; born in Massachusetts in the family of a politician;
lived in seclusion; later on wore white and didn’t leave her room; wrote
mostly for her drawer; poems discovered unpublished; simplified her life
like Thoreau said - remained single, embarked on voyage for
self-discovery; found freedom in solitude, nature
1890 - first collection of her poems; critics argue that dickinson's home
offered alternative for competitive world of modern place; relied on the use of oxymorons
(heavenly hurt) - through this explored interconnections, relationships; reverses expectations
in her poetry; claims that people considered insane may be wiser than most of the society;
unnames reality, revises it beyond easy recognition and gives reality new names; questions
existence of God similarly to Nietsche; no sympathy for nature in her poetry - death of nature
is the natural thing; no sympathy for victim; topics come from observations; poems like
riddles - you have to experience them, not interpret; idiosyncratic and original; based on
rhythmic patterns, unpredictable syntax, a lot of dashes to indicate pauses

Realism - beginnings

Realism starts in 1865

America is becoming the Melting Pot at the end of 19th century - Mark Twain called it The
Gilded Age (only the surface was shining); industrialism; european realists insisted on precise
description, authentic action and dialogue; fascination with city as a background for action;
people getting richer - rockefellers
William Dean Howells - Criticism and Fiction (1891) - first american realist; in the essay -
theory of writing true to life, life - optimistic; realism authors should present smiling aspects
of life; decency is true to life; they should not offend and scandalize reading women
Regional Realism (local color fiction) - literature of memory, included elements of nostalgia
for a way of life that was disappearing; landscapes, ways of life disappearing, due to the
industrialization, manners of life disappearing from view
The South - dominated by nostalgia for a lost cause - south as it was before civil war;
many writers celebrated southern society as it was during plantations and slavery
The Creole Culture of New Orleans (part of South)- Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
(1899) - feminist novel, taking place near creoles of New Orleans, young mother’s (Edna)
search for liberation, freedom in post civil war american South - she doesn’t know what’s
wrong with her, her friend (Adelle) is an embodiment of angel in house figure,
findsfulfillment in her maternity, Edna realises that she doesn’t fit the ideals of white
femininity represented by victorianism - is her husband’s prized item; she needs to take
possesion of her life, her body - being a mother makes her a servant for her husband and
children; commits suicide which is presented as a triumph - drowns in the sea, finds liberation
from roles imposed on her by society - feminist statement
The West (Bret Harte - western stories, strong manhood, Sui Sin Far - significant
chinese american author)
The Midwest (Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street - set in a typical midwestern town)

Classical realism - deals mostly with middle class, individual struggles to become successful,
fulfill american dream

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

refused to be contained within the formats of gentile formats
unapologetically proud of being American; american vernacular; key representative of
American literature

Born in American South - came from culture where slavery was legal; worked on a boat - his
nickname; represents generation much more attracted to wealth than moral values
The Gilded Age - beauty on the outside, corruption on the inside
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry
Finn - Ernest Hemingway
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) - a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876) Huck - written in language in which people spoke, vernacular, narrated from point of
view of an orphan; narrator speaks to reader in language of a teenager who lacks proper
education, speaks incorrect english, commits mistakes; Huck is an observer of reality,
distrusts hypocrisy of society, archetypal American character - child who resists becoming
part of society, which he considers hipocrytical, full of violence and hostility; at the end he
chooses being free from societal conventions, go West, chooses not to mature as a productive
member of society (goes back to Rip Van Winkle); relationship with runaway slave Jim -
humanity of slaves; book set in pre-civil war society, where slaves are not considered people
and need white masters); discovers that slaves are the same - Jim is white inside; Huck
chooses with his free will to help Jim and face consequences - test of realism passed by
Huck; romantication of childhood, many symbols, american variety of realism, mixed with
romanticism, symbolism; at beginning huck finn introduces mark twain - playful, plays with
conventions, destabilizes them, anticipates post-modernism

Life on the Mississippi

The Innocents Abroad
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Henry James (1845-1916)

fascinated with europe and european realism

represents Psychological realism - how we perceive reality, how consciousness works; key
bridge between realism and modernism; many features of his novels anticipate modernism
His works present interplay between americans traveling in Europe and Europeans traveling
to America; clash of cultures

The Art of Fiction - discussion of novel - novel as an artform has become a mature genre;
realism should be true to experience; sensitive person, writer is open to impressions that
world makes on them; writing from experience
Wrote dramas - theater taught him to condense, focus on showing rather than telling - mark of
superior realism, mature narrative technique

The American
Daisy Miller - novella - his greatest success, helped popularize certain type of a girl - all
american girl, innocent woman ignorant to conventions, which leads to her downfall;
attractive innocent american girl traveling through europe with mother and brother; watched
by an american - Wintleborn fascinated by her, who can’t decide whether she is innocent or a
dangerous flirt who hesitates to return her love; his perceptions of Daisy becomes most
important → perceptions change
Portrait of a Lady
The Ambassadors
The Wings of the Dove
The Bostonians
in his novels - narrator is as omniscient as the character who is a central person in the novel,
we see the workings of their minds; ambiguities that the reader is faced with; makes ample
use of suggestions and hints;
his novels should be read as a homosexual writer
In realism → characters are responsible for their actions
Naturalism → embraces lack of free will and determinism - everything is determined by
heredity, environment and instincts and drives - biology, hunger, sex, fear; characters matter
less than conditions in which they live in; embracing amoral view of reality - world is neither
moral nor immoral - amoral
test of realism - freedom of will

Naturalism
Upton Sinclair, - journalist who represents expose journalism -
exposing corruption in government and businesses; worked in
meatpacking plant in Chicago for several weeks undercover → The
Jungle (1906) - book that alerted society on the gross irregularities in
business; created a panic - Sinclair showed how business violated all
sanitary regulations, and workers (mostly immigrants) were
exploited; rats and fingers in sausages - meat inspection act was
passed because of this book

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

One of most important naturalist american writers; bleakly nihilistic;
fundamentally indifferent universe - nature is also indifferent
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets - novella (1893) - Maggie is born into
poverty, narrator has sympathy for her (unorthodox for naturalism);
because she was born in slums, she becomes a prostitute and dies
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) - major novel, portrayal of a Civil
War - pov of a soldier Henry Fleming (named used once - later called
The Youth) - who enters civil war with baggage of romantic illusion,
and is clashed with a reality; thinks that war is a test of manhood, but
during first battle runs away from the battlefield such as the squirrel,
who also escaped - fear is a natural instinct, all living forces are
motivated by danger ; all characters are archetypes → in order to return
to the regiment he needs the red badge of courage (a wound) - he receives it not in combat,
but accidentally and pretends that he was wounded in combat; war experience not as a
glorious affair, but something sorted ,brutal, irrational
Short stories (The Open Boat, The Blue Hotel) - set in dramatic circumstances, shipwreck,
blizzard - we are all set in settings that dictate our behaviors

Jack London (1876-1916)

at age of 21 went to Alaska to seek gold - set two of his novels
there.
The Call of the Wild (1903) - central animal character - a dog,
removed from civilized life goes peril
White Fang (1906) - young wolf dog gradually becomes a house
pet in California - translating laws of nature on laws of human -
hierarchy, conflicts
The Sea-Wolf (1904)
Martin Eden (1909)
Short stories (To Build a Fire)

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

In his novels everyone acts in response to their impulses, no one
makes free choices, settings predetermine human choices - urban
cities express characters’ desires that cannot be satisfied
Sister Carrie (1900) - became scandalous - Carrie achieves
success, because she is helped by two lovers; virtue not rewarded,
vice not punished. Carrie is seduced by wealth, merchandise,
customer culture; Carrie advances in the world, Hurstwood goes
down in the world, ends up on the street and dies. They cannot be
fully accountable for their choices - determinism.
An American Tragedy (1925) - young talented man dreams of
success, works hard, wooes women who lie beyond his reach. Is
involved in two accidents, where girls lose their lives -
circumstances drew him relentlessly to get rid of the women
Trilogy of Desire - success story that focus on an industrialist -
only the fittest survive, social darwinism
The Financier (1912)
The Titan (1914)
The Stoic (1947)

Modernism (1914 - 1930)

Chicago Literary Renaissance - lead to the modernism - little town motif exhibit modernist
features
Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (1915) - collective picture of a little, fictional
town, situated on the midwest, each poem is an autobiographical epitaph narrated by a dead
citizen - told from perspective of a graveyard in their own vernacular voice (like in Mark
Twain)
Vachel Lindsay, Rhymes to Be Traded for Bread (1912)
The Congo (1914)
Carl Sandburg - Chicago (1914)- poem that focuses on Chicago as a symbolic city - time
when America becomes largely urbanized - urban setting - determines identity of
the nation

Sherwood Anderson (1876 - 1941)

Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life (1919) - collection
of tales characterized by many features such as in Masters’ anthology -
collection of portraits of characters living in Winesburg in their own language -
small town life characterized by alienation, frustration, inarticulate - they
gravitate to aspiring writer, since his mastery of language can help them
articulate their stories and figure out what they want in life - grotesque
characters (not in negative sense - finding beauty in misfits in life) - beauty,
irresistible fascination, metaphor of twisted apples (unpicked, left for winter →
made sweet, and now you never want another) → beauty and sweetness hidden from the
world

Modernism - starts with first world war → impact on the whole generation of writers; they all
fought or served as non-combatants; they returned from battlefield changed, questioning old
conventions, truths → writers of the Lost Generation; lost many values, lost spirituality -
many questions - Where was God? 1929 - american crash on the market - they had to think
about survival
Anglo american literary movement created by anglo americans and american expatriates who
decided to stay in europe after the war (mostly in Paris); modernism was pessimistic, bleak,
nostalgic
Can be subdivided into High modernism and modernism in the American grain; radical break
with tradition, with past - Motto - make it new;
Symbolic beginning - the Armory show in 1913 - americans for first time could see
impressionists and cubists - it was a shock - for example Marcel Duchamp’s Nude descending
a staircase → very nature of perception has changed, old way of depicting reality realistically
wouldn’t do → artists became aware that what we see is illusion, reality is in movement;
Characteristics of modernism - impression, no smoothly-flowing stories; writing technique
that would work with discontinuity of life; dissonance; construction out of fragments;
omitting explanations; impressionism embraced by modernists; often a collage; collection of
fragments; often several narrators telling the same contradictory story - different versions of
reality; irony, understatements, symbols, images, archetypes; challenging for the reader,
searching for missing coherence; no one can have access to final ultimate reality -
subjectivity stressed by modernists
Style - stress on discipline, working hard, revising, artist is a craftsman - abandoning of
romantic explosions of feelings, art is rigorous;
Gertrude Stein
Moved to Paris before WWI - open house visited by many
artists; revolutionary writing techniques - relied on
repetition of words; arrangement of words was important;
literary cubism; collage of sounds, reader becomes a
viewer; no descriptions - she simply names things; a rose
is a rose is a rose is a rose;
Tender Buttons (1914)
The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s
Progress (1924)
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
Profound influence on number of modernist writers, for
example Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway
Part of Lost Generation. saw the war → was an ambulance driver;
master of modernist craft; simple, declarative sentences; main
characters - solitary individual who comes to terms with existence
full of meaningless violence with moral courage and honesty
The Sun Also Rises (1926) - portrait of Lost Generation, wounded
american expatriates, who stayed in Paris and tried to make sense of
their lives. Novel follows them as they follow from bar to bar; spare
characterisation; almost no description; action carried on by
dialogues - showing, not telling; fast-paced action. Bull-fight - ritual
transformations of fighting into art
Farewell to Arms (1929) - experience of war
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) - fruit of being a war correspondent
The Old Man and the Sea (1951) - long short story, got him a nobel prize; fisherman who
struggles with a big fish - loses; it’s not that important that he lost, important is the style of
failure - moral win
Green Hills of Africa (1935) - showing his growing disenchantment with modern reality

1920s not only about Lost generation and war; it was also Harlem Renaissance - Harlem
became fashionable, afroamericans living there were discovered producing exciting art; jazz
music, paintings, literature, poetry, novels
Cotton Club
New Negro - more self aware, intellectual, expressed pride of being who he was

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Black author - Rhythms of jazz and blues in his poetry, trying to blend his poems with jazz
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
chronicler of jazz age; (first two) depicting middle classes,
fashionably rich, who enjoy prosperity of first world war; flappers -
women wearing short skirts, having bob hair

This Side of Paradise (1920)

Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
The Great Gatsby (1925) - novel that captures the spirits of 1920s;
main characters - images of author and his wife; easy read, but an
essence of modernist craft; disciplines his style; essential details;
story of tragic consequences of american naive optimism; Gatsby -
outsider in the world of the rich; makes his fortune by smuggling
alcohol; comment on american dream - it has become corrupted,
diminished, betrayed by the present; belongs to the past; perhaps can
be regained in future; but Lost Generation has lost it.; narrator -
observer - through his consciousness we have access to the story; no
authorial influence;
Tender is the Night (1934)
The Last Tycoon (1941)

William faulkner (1897-1962)

Modernism in American grain; drew inspiration from America; was a
Southerner, so he wrote about the South
American South - had separate history, agricultural, rejected middle class
and progress; more violent than other cultural regions of America; sense of
loss ,defeat and alienation put the writers of american south with alienation
of modernism; society different than in other regions - aristocracy became
impoverished; plantation owners lost their slaves; slaves were freed, were
not offered opportunities to earn → had to work again for their owners;
plantation owners became empoverished - very poor white people (white
trash) were gaining careers; Faulkners novels contrast Old South (before civil war) with New
South

Sartoris (1929) - his first novel; felt liberated as a writer

The Sound and the Fury (1929) - one of most revolutionary novels of experimentation;
revolutionary in style and content; two kinds of characters - old impoverished aristocracy;
Snopes - poor white who rise on the social ladder - belong to the future; same event presented
by 4 different characters - breaking with omniscient narrator; we have only access to the
subjective truth; narrators are unreliable; declining of southern aristocratic family - decline
and disappearance of sister of 3 narrators; title taken from Macbeth; dramatization - no telling
- showing; throwing reader in the middle of events; radically discontinuous narration;
difficulty with getting the story’s point; Narration of Benjy - retarded, stuck in present -
cubic-like, everything co-exist in the present; Narration of Quentin - before suicide; Narration
of Jason - most wicked of brothers, money-minded; Last narration - allows for tying loose
ends by a third-person narrator - Dilsey - black maid; nihilistic point of view; life full of
sound and fury, but finally signifying nothing; for Faulkner - hope belonged only to the
afroamericans
Nobel in 1950
As I Lay Dying (1930) - told as a stream of consciousness; lower-class laboring family; man
of uncertain racial markings - cursed character - Joe Christmas - Christ-like character, who
defies categorization of race (could be mixed lineage, he is never sure who he is) = means of
understanding racial inequality
Yoknapatawpha county - many of the characters created in one book return in others
Light in August (1932)
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) - title - King David’s lament - person from nowhere becomes a
plantation owner - question of race -
dilemma - how to confront the past to free oneself from its curse - problematic legacy,
without cutting oneself off from shared meanings, culture and legacy?
Faulkner’s characters speak of gothic

Southern Gothic - subgenre unique to America - relies on the supernatural, unusual events to
guide the plot - it uses these tools to comment on cultural characteristics and difference of the
south, explores social issues of the region; characters are often exaggerated grotesques;
foregrounding of desperation; speaks of love and loss; examines human condition and human
beings’ potential for evil

Other representatives of southern gothic:

Carson McCullers (1917-1967)
Major themes: huge importance and newly insullible problems of human
love; spiritual isolation of outcasts and misfits of the South; grotesqueness
of the South
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
The Member of the Wedding (1946)
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951)

Flannery O’Connor (1925 - 1964)

Speaks about strangeness and isolation; spend most of her life being sick
and taking care of her peacocks

Wise Blood (1952)

The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
Truman Capote

In Cold Blood - non-ficiton, journalistic novel; concentrates on true-murder story of a family

in their home; spent whole years on research in preparation of writing the novel, came in
contact with one of the murderers

The Great Depression and the literature of the Thirties

Problems of lower classes; writers interested in socialistic ideas; proletarian literature; decade
dominated by

John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)

not a modernist in the same sense as previous ones; implying realism and
naturalism with elements of symbolism and social protests; his characters driven
by instincts, drives and social forces beyond their control, victims of capitalistic
society; even when commit crimes, they are not responsible - the society is;
Steinbeck preserves faith in humanity - not very orthodox naturalism;
empathizes with all of his characters; in 1948 he toured soviet union, attracted
by communism; was a reporter in Vietnam; got Nobel from literature;
left-leaning literature of thirties, sympathizing with workers
Tortilla Flat (1935) - name of district in california, where pyzanos - mexican
americans live - on the outskirts of the city; reject ethos of white anglo saxon
society, not concerned with material possession; welcome antidote to the gloom of depression
of the thirties
Of Mice and Men (1937) - about pair of migrant farm workers who move from place to place,
farming for other people in the following seasons, have a dream of one day buying a farm of
their own - one of the pair is mentally retarded - very limited understanding of reality -
accidently kills a girl by cuddling her
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) - oklahoma farmers who have to leave their farm after series of
droughts and join other Okies who go west in pursuit of dreams of success in california;
however half of america move there - thousands jobless migrants in california working for
the lowest wage - negative portrayal of effects of capitalism; sympathy for victims of system;
daily heroism of ordinary people against capitalist exploitation;
East of Eden (1952) - saga of a family - focus on nature of good and evil; title from book of
genesis;
Literature of the south - simple people trying to survive

WWII revived the tradition of naturalism

humanity is irrational, not able to progress, myth of progress fell to pieces; US emerged
untouched after the war, booming economically, they wanted to enjoy prosperity
1950s - time of tranquility; the tranquilized 50s, interest in consumerism

Post-World War II Literature

The Tranquilized Fifties or the Silent generation
heightening of human alienation from the crowd,
J.D. Salinger

Manifesto of tranquilized fifties - Catcher in the Rye (1951) - Holden

Caulfield, like Huck Finn - neither a child nor an adult; wants to remain a
child - thinks that world of adults is phony - inauthentic, artificial, fake
innocence of childhood is what Holden wants to preserve; rebels against
the world of adults; rebel without a cause, rejects the world; wants to be
deaf and mute - he wouldn’t have to talk to stupid phony people and listen
to their conversations; rejection of phoniness - decade’s fascination with
existentialism - influence of Sartre, philosophy - authentic living, critic of
alienation

The Beat Generation and the beginning of postmodernism

(The Beatniks)
2nd half of the fifties, worn black sweaters, turtlenecks, beards, glasses,
traveled route 66 in search of freedom, existence; first group of writers
who adopt the idea of postmodernism
literature of social revolt, protests of values of their parents, lived
spontaneously, rejected graduation, education, getting married, having
children - enslaving; drunk, always on the road, experimented with drugs,
sex,
Allen Ginsberg - Howl (1956) - started the beat generation
Jacques Kerouac On the Road (1957) - group of travelling friends, who
experiment with love, sex, talk about philosophic ideas, antiburgoise,
highly autobiographical, depicts character who is kerouac’s alternative; they travel
from new york to california; style of a novel - postmodern - authenticity to the
moment, no revision, writing to be spontaneous, confessional
William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch (1959) - full of psychedelic colorful visions
created under influence of drugs - consciousness of a drug user as not in control as
the writer

Existentialism; Jewish american Writers

For Jews living in diaspora, alienation - daily experience, existentialism embraced by jewish
writers
jewish literature - roots in immigrant novel;
lack of adjustment, rejection, crisis of values, sense of responsibility for the world and others
Introspective - containing self-irony, intellectual speculation;
Saul Bellow
Writes picaresque and philosophical novels; responsibilities of characters of
witnessing history, voices of consciousness
Henderson the Rain King (1959) - picaresque novel - jewish-american character
facing a midlife crisis, he grows more and more violent, nothing gives him
pleasure, can’t find a meaning in life - he travels to Africa - cradle of humanity, is confronted
with basic situations, values of life, questions of life and death, has to shed his civilized ego
and reconstruct himself from scratch; Henderson learns that he wants to live, love makes life
worth living, and becomes capable of giving love; returns to america to give his knowledge to
others
Herzog (1964) - philosophical novel, jewish intellectual, profesor suffering from a writer's
block, he must rediscover himself, he is blocked by the problems that the world is facing;
writes letters that he never sends
Bellow explores mental instability and relations of it with genius
Bernard Malamud
Philip Roth,
Goodbye Columbus (1959) - gained him notoriety - regarded obscene, presented sexual taboo
subjects with openness - shocking for contemporary reading audience
Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) - kept in the same fame

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902 - 1991)

born in eastern part of poland, migrated to America; writes about jewish community in
Poland and America; magical realism, wrote only in yiddish; novels full of supernatural,
demons, ghosts, vegetarian; criticism of meat-eating culture
The Magician of Lublin - jewish community in Lublin

Jerzy Kosiński (1933-1991)

born in Poland, migrated to America
The Painted Bird - personal experience of a boy of unknown origin, wandering during World
War II in unidentified areas of Europe - Poland, where Kosiński was hiding during the war;
sometimes protected by villagers, sometimes threatened, full fo traumatic experiences of the
boy; title - boy is a bird taken out of the group of birds and then painted, when returned won’t
be recognised and will probably be pecked to death since he is a stranger - that’s a fate of the
boy; realistic and cruel depictions
Being There - kind of Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy in America; gardener mistakenly taken for a
philosopher - makes a career for speaking about garden - people think that it is philosophical

Existentialism
Afroamerican writers
They always felt like outsiders, so existentialism helped them to find themselves

Richard Wright
By birthdate belongs to Lost Generation, american expatriate in France - friend of Sartre and
Camus; laid foundations for afro american writers to search for their own racial
consciousness pride and self-realization; enabled other voices - e.g. Ralph Elisson
● Native Son (1940) - based on authentic criminal case of a black man who murdered
white woman; violent, shocking, brutal scenes of murder and rape; black man’s search
for authenticity and self-realization in a racist society
 ● Outsider (1953) - based on his own experience of being a member of communist party
in america in 1940s
Ralph Ellison
● The Invisible Man (1952) - about a paradox of being black in white society - different
color of skin makes one highly visible, however it does not translate into being
recognised, seen, since in a racist society black man is neglected, ignored, disposable
- invisible.; form of notes of a black man who sits in a cave - underground cellar
commenting on social issues facing black people in America
James Baldwin
Writes about white supremacy. What is black’s role in America? son of a black baptist
preacher; he was supposed to be one also, and writes about it In one of his books he writes
about the role of baptist society in black christianity; since god promised not to flood the
world again, maybe the world will end up in fire - social unrest. Left America, lived in Italy
● Notes of a Native Son (1955) - continuity with Wright
● Another Country (1962) - experimental
● My Giovanni (1956) - experimental
● They both deal with black and white characters; their relationships, hetero, homo and
bi characters

Postmodernism
The mainstream post world war II avant garde - phenomenon - that it entered mainstream
(avant garde is usually niche) - continued literary experiments; response to irrationality of
wwII
The question - How to write after such ‘postmodern’ events as Auchswitz? → they had to
find another way of describing reality
Enlightenment believed in human rationality (Kant said - that with it, humanity reached
maturity and from now on, they will use reason to explain reality - well, it isn’t - with WWII
this world crumbled)
Postmodern novel of late 1960s uses parody and irony
Post - break with, and continuation of modernist trend - both late modernism and
anti-modernism
mainly white manly genre - somewhat misogynistic, dealt with aggressive male sexual
behaviour; lots of experimentations; undertook social and cultural critique
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
He was a soldier, stationed in Germany, he experienced the bombing of Dresden - not a
military target - thriving city of culture - irrational thing - if good guys attack civilians,
something is wrong - information about bombing was classified - why was it top secret?-
boundary between reality and illusion - fiction; did it happen? History is just a story we tell; it
is written by those who have power - those who won the war and want to present black and
white version of events. He didn’t really know how to write about this bombing, he relied
only on his memory
Slaughterhouse-Five
Anti-war, unconventional novel - two parts; I - about Kurt Vonnegut struggling to write the
novel, visiting his colleagues, thinking about how to write it; II - Billy Pilgrim - veteran of
WWII, witnessed Dresden, abducted by aliens, taken to Tralfamador, learning that time is the
4th dimension.
Bringing two narratives together - unconventional, showing that history can be stranger than
fiction; it used to be that fiction resembled reality, but now reality imitates fiction
Wife of a war buddy was upset, while talking about war - why was she so upset? She said
that he will write a war novel that will encourage young people to go to war. To go through a
test of manhood. They weren’t men during the war, they were children. And the war was a
children's crusade. → soldiers - inexperienced, imagined that they were heroes - they were
just children, playing at war; the only difference - soldiers had real guns.
When Billy Pilgrim is captured by Tralfamadorians he asks the question “why?” - They look
at him and say - “this is such a human thing to say” - in the whole universe, only people ask
this question; there is no why, we are all trapped in the moment as bugs in ember; no free
will, we are manipulated by forces beyond our control. there is no “Why”, things simply are.
→ return of the naturalistic idea - impossibility of making choices → human beings - passive
victims of unnameable, unguessable forces, or worldwide conspiracies. IN 1960s many
Americans believed so → many puzzling assassinations, etc.
Billy Pilgrim - postmodern pilgrim - pilgrims used to be on pilgrimages to the sacred places;
but Billy has no destination - “Billy Pilgrim came unstuck in time” - he revisits many
moments of his life, he cannot change them, since they already happened; Billy Pilgrim -
ultimate embodiment of postmodern character - listless, passive, controlled by unnameable
others
Characteristics of postmodern literature:
● Disrupts representational realist literary conventions; conventions of representation
were linked to ideology - history is just a story we tell - to some extent always
subjective; stories we tell about the past change due to new data
● What is natural? Even gender is a social construct. Language speaks us; we are all
driven by subconscious forces we do not understand.
● Language is not transparent medium; it constructs reality - it is experienced as already
interpreted by social constructions of what the world is and how it works
● World experienced as a text; reality as a system of codes, constructed by shadowy
others for unguessable purposes - experience of literary characters trying to interpret
their world resembles the interpretations of the reader - metaphysical loop; we as
readers reiterate what the characters are doing )reading the world)
● Modernism about writing - Postmodernism about reading
● Writing - re-reading the fiction of predecessors
● Literature of Exhaustion - all the literary conventions have been used up, and what is
left is a parody - a replication of what one has already left; connections between
events are arbitrary; cause-effect relationship is gone; humans crave for meaning, so
they find it, but the history and reality are meaningless, incoherent, open ended and
fragmentary; search for the absent coherence is the only meaning we can get
● Introduction of a character, who is a persona of the author - frame breaking - Kurt
Vonnegut, writing about Kurt Vonnegut - real and fictional world fuse together; the
‘real story’ is unavailable, there is no one real truth
 ● Parallel realities- counter stories - Billy Pilgrim might’ve just hallucinated - in the
book reality there was Kilgore Trout - a writer who wrote about Tralfamadorians, so
he may’ve been just influenced by it; or maybe he really was kidnapped - nobody
believes him, just like nobody believed Vonnegut that the Dresden was bombed
● Violation of conventions of a genre - blending and mixing of genres, rules of decorum
are blurred; reader may be addressed by the author
● Intertextuality - use of allusions to cultural and literary phenomena
● Plot over character - characters are flat, naturalistic, whereas the plot can be
labyrinthian, difficult to follow - like in Thomas Pynchon’s novels; characters can be
drawn from pre-existing texts (fairy tales), they can be cultural icons (Uncle Sam),
from myths, history, allegories, fragmented, multiple characters, syntax is distorted to
the point of no communication, narrative voices are permeated by media cliches and
class-coded slang
● They frequently include non-literary material - visuals, etc.
Generally two genres:
Black Humor novels
● Joseph Heller, Catch 22 (1961) - impossible situation; WWII in Italy - main character
- Jewish American pilot - Iosarian - there is a specific number of flight missions one
has to fly before discharging; every time when he is almost at the limit, the number is
raised, so he can’t let go of it. Absurdity of the situation.
● Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) - irrationality of history cannot be talked
without laughter through tears; tragic presented through the lens of black humor
Metafiction/self-reflexive fiction
Reflects and comments on itself - alludes to techniques and conventions it uses or
transgresses
● John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice (1968) -
postmodern collection of stories; stylistic experimentations, writing concurrent with
speaking - The Night Sea Journey - first person story of not quite human narrator -
philosophical allegorical story, very existentialist, why do we live? Why is life so
violent? Why do people die young? Narrator refers to his non-quite human
appearance - he has a tale, and is swimming in a night sea (he does not know the
answers) - at the end - narrator is a spermatozoon on the way to fertilize an egg - the
moment of reaching - he dies to acquire a new identity and the narrative voice stops
● Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955), - master of english language, unreliable narrator,
and controversial subject. Humbert Humbert obsessed with a 12 year old american
girl Dolores (he calls her Lolita) - preface written by fictitious editor of psychology
books - it claims that the novel is a memoir of a man who died of heart attack, while
awaiting trail in jail - Humbert Humbert talks about his former life, when he was
younger he fell in love with Annabel Lee who died prematurely (nod to [Link] -
intertextual reference, although spelled differently) and it caused such a trauma, that
he became obsessed with nymphettes. He is an English professor who stayed in
mental institutions. Lolita is a daughter of a woman he is going to marry, so that she
becomes his step-daughter and he is close to her. Ironical presentation of the cultural
type of an innocent American girl. For Humbert, she represents type of an american
 girl who is beautiful and innocent (kind of Henry James’s Daisy). Ironical take, since
she is already corrupt, and sexually aware. She is the seducer; Pale Fire (1962) -
presented as a 1999 line poem written by John Shade, who recently died, and his
poem is published with a commentary of a person who is Nabokov’s alter Ego -
Charles Kinbote; majority of the novel is a commentary and the index; First hypertext
- references to other texts
● Donald Barthelme, Snow White (1967) - focuses on a Snow white, but inverts the
fairy tale; discussion of different expectations and compromises the fairy tale
characters make to survive in our world. Perspectives shift multiple times - Snow
White, Seven Dwarves and wicked Step-mother - unreliable and subjective narrators

Thomas Pynchon
● V (1963) - distant allusion for a Virgin and a Dynamo
● The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) - concentrates on possible conspiracy theory that directs
the course of world events; narrator on the trial for this conspiracy; she seems to be
sinking on the paranoia whether she is on a trial of worldwide historical plot, or if it is
an elaborate joke arranged by her friend.
● Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) - Set at the end of WWII, deals with development of V2
Rocket - according to Pynchon western civilization was obsessed with the dream of
annihilation, development of weapons, etc. He evokes mathematical, physical
concepts and theories. Here, third law of thermodynamics, principle of entropy -
annihilation of a closed system.
Robert Coover
● The Public Burning (1977)

1970s - ethnic literatures - result of civil rights movement → ethnic and racial minorities
started demanding equal rights and treatments; native americans were reclaiming their
history, asian americans likewise - explosive of non-white literature

Native american renaissance

Late 1960s and 70s, a generation of native americans educated in English language
institutions were coming of age. They initiated a period of historical revisionism - public
interest in native american communities;
Characteristics:
● devotion to sacred landscape in Homing in plot - alienated character ultimately
reclaims his heritage and comes back home (usually to a reservation);
● rediscovery of cultural roots
● haunting dilemma - who am I? - characters caught between two worlds
● Trickster figure makes a comeback - neither good nor evil - found more in a bar, than
in office, lovable, but rarely respectable
Authors:
Paula Gunn Alenn; Louise Erdrich; Joy Harjo; Scott Momaday - first one who initiated the
movement
XX Century poetry
I. Modernism
A. Prosaic, anti-poetic language, imagery and topics - speech rhythms are spoken
american language
Imagist Movement
Beginning of high modernism - most poets went through that phase (started 1912/1913)
New Poetry started to appear in magazines - had no connections with establishments so found
alternate venue - magazine called Poetry: Published - Imagist manifesto - written by Ezra
Pound - 3 requirements for a poem:
● Direct treatment of the thing - (whether subjective or objective - in modernist novel
the same emphasis - direct presentation rather than description)
● No word that does not contribute to the presentation - (economy of means)
● To compose in sequence of the musical phrase - (he wanted to abandon predictable
repetitive rhythm - blooping and arranging of words that would follow musical rules
of intonation)
Purpose of imagist poem - recreate instant when a thing - outward and objective - transforms
itself into inward and subjective - when impression becomes internalized as experience
An image - that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time -
not simply an image, but also a complex that involves emotions and intellect
Precision - Go in fear of obstructions
Prophets of the Imagist movement: Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot → they were anglo-american
Ezra Pound
expatriate american in london - fascinated with chinese written character - embodiment of
idea of imagist poetry - word in chinese - succession of images - sun and moon = brightness
→ idea of precision
He later moved from imagism to vorticism (believed it became too passive)
essence of vorticism - dynamism, energy
Image - radiant form - not mimetic esthetic; a Vortex - from which, into which and through
which, ideas are constantly rushing → dynamic, energetic complex, emotional → initiating
the dance of intellect
Number of literary allusions - (ancient poets, medieval poets) - they were to initiate dance of
intellect
Major work in London - translations → Result - collection of poetry - Cathay (1915)
;continuity of poetic tradition from provansal poets onwards - Dante was a mind of Europe;
he was concerned with the search for a usable past → He wanted to establish a connection
with past; reconstruct it through poetic masks - his volume of poetry called Personae (greek
from mask) - collection of poems where characters from the past are given voice. Pound uses
emotional distance - masks as distancing devices; he puts his words into the mouth of
historical personages; characters of the past. His ambition was to write a long epic poem that
would capture the contemporary western mind. To do for the 20th century, what Dante did for
medieval europe. → Result - Cantos (songs) - his most famous volume of poetry. He started
publishing it in 1915 and continued writing it til his death in 1970s - 116 cantos. He looked
there for causes of the first world war. HE turned to the economy. He discovered the cause in
the jewish practice of money lending → from this time on he becomes anti-semitic,
fascinated with the model of totalitarian society, embedded by Mussolini’s Italy. When the
war ended, Pound was imprisoned.
Before WWI he befriended T.S. Eliot - he was fascinated with Love song of J. Alfred
Prufrock - poem kept in a prosaic, unpoetic, everyday way. He helped [Link] with his long
work -
The Waste Land (1922). He dedicated it to Ezra Pound (better craftsman).
● uses the city as a setting. Poem explores city and lives of its inhabitants by
juxtaposing images, seeds, fragments of conversations, he uses collage - resembles
cinematic montage; dwells on ugliness, alienation, boredom, loneliness, aimlessness -
anti-poetic images. Juxtaposition of contrasting scenes - naturalistic and visionary
scenes; no narrative, no characterisation, no meditation to understand; everything
brought together without connectedness - reader has to work hard to understand how
the elements are linked together
● Poem organized on the principle of repetition and gradual interweaving of leitmotifs -
they return in new context, bringing associations from former contexts → condensed
notes of connotation and feeling.
● The title refers to a myth - Grail Legend - kingdom devoid of precipitation, it awaits
rain, regeneration - framework where he puts contemporary culture - it is devoid of
life, waiting for regenerations
● Poem starts with spring (April is the cruelest month - unlike in romanticism - since
winter snow keeps us warm); sense of exhaustion, sterility, western culture facing
profound crisis; in need of regeneration; contact with myth - reconnection with
sources of emotional vitality; mythical references included in wasteland hardly break
the emotional sterility of modern man; number of exotic languages, references to
works of literature not widely known to contemporary readers - impenetrability of
poem; uses sanskrit (classical language of india) for example; protagonists - isolated
from one another, no authentic communication, when people talk, they don’t listen to
one another → established model of modernist poem - dense, intellectually
demanding
Later he became convert to the anglican church; late poetry dominated by anglican
catholicism; mystical poetry, reflexive - Four Quartets - chief achievement of that period

Modern poets reject fixed poetic pattern, fixed meters; every emotional state - unique and
particular - needs particular rhythm to convey it - rely on free verse
Briefly:
● city as landscape
● Sexuality rather than romantic love
● political corruption rather than patriotism
● Use of irony to keep emotion at distant (modernist poetry about impersonality - T.s.
Eliot - Poetry - escape from emotion)
● Discontinuous composition
● Juxtaposition of separate units of meaning
● Use of ellipsis
 ● spacial form analogous to modern painting and sculpture - everything coexists at the
same moment
Other poets:
William Carlos Williams - practicing doctor, modernist in american brain - relies on american
landscape and speech; his manifesto - no ideas but in things (like Ezra Pound’s insistence that
poem should treat things directly) - example of poem The Red Wheelbarrow - very prosaic
and short - ordinary in focus, very condensed presentation, no unnecessary word, poem
looking out the window, while it’s raining and sees a wheelbarrow - and that’s it → seeing
this wheelbarrow next to a white chicken was like an epiphany of everyday - modernist
epiphany - revelation of the moment - comes and goes, quickly forgotten - arranged in a
specific way - variable foot - 3 beats - not strictly regular like life itself - his poetry inspired
by pictures and paintings - cycle of poems - Pictures from Breughel - painting paired with a
poem - ends the way it started - dancing in circles - form of a poem - tries to capture round
movement in the way he arranges the poem

Wallace Stevens - lawyer writing in spare time, worked in insurance firm - stands out for his
dazzling wit, use of color and abstract poetry - not afraid of talking about abstract concepts
and using subjectivity - drawing attention to speaking subject - believed that poetry is a
supreme fiction - something that must suffice - when all things crumble, poetic meditations
must survive, must be enough, allusions to music and painting in his poems

E.E. Cummings - little bit untypical; style reflects imagist movement, but he is a romantic at
heart; valued spontaneity; imagination, praised children, lovers, country people (like
romantics did) - way of organizing words on page - modernistic - distorted syntax, distorted
typography and logic → sense of poem conveyed through arrangement of words on the page
- like a picture which tells a story - supposed to be experienced, not read - Grasshopper -
about jumping grasshopper constantly rearranging by moving from place to place - energy -
essence of the poem; word - leap arranged in a slight wise manner - change of levels -
essence of leaping; use of parentheses - to overcome lenien nature of perception; to capture
reality as it happens - all at once; performative style; manipulates syllables, poem as a visual
form

(different → anti-modern modernists)

Robert Frost - evokes romantic tradition in order to critique it - subverts romantic tradition
(nature for example - number of poems, but it’s not benevolent and full of life, it’s pessimistic
and naturalistic); he was a farmer, and the life of a farmer found its way in his poetry -
included speech of his rural neighbors - 1st volume of poetry published in England, later in
America - North of Boston - long narrative poems which were atypical for modernist period -
avoids modern topics and city life, writes about rural landscapes of village; sense of being at
home with universe (not like modernists who suffered morally); claimed that writing poetry
without rhymes is like playing tennis without a tennis net - rhymes were essential (unusual
for modernism)
Robinson Jeffers - pessimistic philosophy, fascinated by Nietsche and decline of West; lived
alternative lifestyle of a hermit - prophet for later environmental movements; profoundly
disillusioned about humans; in his poems - figure of an inhumanist - humanism - unhealthy
introversion → they should look outside into the world, we destroy the world because we are
egoists. Man must fall in love outward, not with himself, but the world. Inhumanism -
landscape without human beings is better, god in nature - rocks, ocean, elements, transhuman
beauty of god, we have made god on our image - by praying to god we pray to ourselves;
example of poetry - Hurt Hawks - he’d sooner kill a man than a hawk - disillusioned with
humanity, appreciates wildness, dignity of transhuman beauty of wild untamed nature; dwells
on contrasts between majesty of natural landscapes and human destructiveness of men; uses
freudian and jungian psychology, references to myths, violence, suffering intrinsic to human
nature; in many of his poems he breaks taboos connected with sexuality

Poetry after WWII

Postmodernism
(same characteristics as in novels)
begins in 1950s - 1st poet to use the term - Charles Olson - used it to define post world war ii
consciousness
Characteristics:
● spontaneous utterance - art as a process - not a final product
● Emotional, direct - not an escape from emotion
● Socially and politically engaged
● Repudiation of the persona - confessional poetry, poet speaks with his own voice -
subject matter intimate and harrowing - they interpret family life from freudian
perspective as a nexus of rivalry and emotional ambivalence
● Naturalism (creatural realism) - human being is creaturly being - emphasis on
mortality, vulnerable suffering body, death, getting ill - human being drawn by forces
beyond their control
● Weakening of humanism and religion (Jeffers’s inhumanism, Olson’s antihumanism)
Postmodern poets struggling to write in a new way, to create an open form - Charles Olson
said - Form is nothing more, than extension of content - there should be correspondence
between content and form → since content is unique to every experience, the form should
also be unique
Premises of open form found in:
● Pound’s Cantos and Williams’ Paterson
● Writing and living are one
● Influence of jazz
● Colleridge’s organic form
● Composition by field - by arranging words on a page in specific manner
● Attentiveness as an ideal of life - responsiveness to each moment - Frank O’Hara
wrote - things need me I must pay attention to the things; The slightest loss of
attention leads to death
Frank O’Hara - famous for poems composed during lunch hours - called them - Lunch poems

Major poetic groups and Movements

1. California Poets -
 2. New York Poets
3. Black Mountain Poets

all of them experimenting with open form, publishing in magazines

4. Confessional Poetry
5. Black Art Movement - starts in late 1950s, flourishes in 1960s when racial situation
becomes explosive and unsteady; number of afro american writers more aggressive in
a way they write poetry; highly ideological - they need poems that kill
6. Solitary figures

Beat Poetry
Allen Ginsberg made Beatniks popular - in 1955 he read Howl for the first time -
revolutionary poem, physiological rhythms of a body, he used breath - violent protest poem,
that had to be shouted out, protest against consumerist, intolerant, establishment America that
destroys young people, whom Ginsberg called best minds of the generation - hysteria,
madness, nakedness, drug abuse, this is the consequence of intolerance of the establishment -
young people destroyed by moloch - biblical monster which is America - establishment; he
chooses anti-establishment lifestyle
Standard elements of Beat culture:
● rejection of standard narrative values
● exploration of american and eastern religions
● rejection of economic materialism
● explicit portrayals of human condition
● experimentations with psychedelic drugs
● sexual liberation
Ginsberg read his poem for the first time in San Francisco at poetry reading in famous Galery
6 run by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
California Poets and Beats
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - chief of san francisco poetic renaissance, he wrote experimental
poetry to be recited to jazz music, father figure to: Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Brother
Antonius, Gregory Corso, Philip Lamanthia
Characteristic of California poetic school - city had a powerful nonwhite population
component - exposed to riches of nonwestern traditions and cultures; hugely inspired by Walt
Whitman

Black Mountain Poets

Black Mountain college - experimental academic community in North Carolina; scholarly
community dedicated to exploration of interconnections of new developments in dance,
music, painting and literature - poetic manifesto - Charles Olson’s Projective Verse (1950)
● poet is governed by accident and sudden impulses
● one perception must lead to further perception
● constant succession of perceptions, impressions, constant flow of experience
He wanted to free words from syntactic dependencies; privilege sound over sense; poet was
to project words from mind to page, without drawing attention to his ego, he believed that
poet is an object among other objects - objectivism - human being is an object among other
objects, a voice; when poet is speaking, he should not draw attention to his ego.
Include: Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Denise Levertov

New York Poets

East coast; influenced by non representational arts - cubism, dadaism, abstract expressionism,
celebrated fleeting moment, the random, the contingent, praised energy, vitality and open
ended process of life
Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery - one of most important and difficult poets of America - his goal
to produce a poem so difficult that critics couldn’t talk about; Self-portrait in a Convex
Mirror, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, Ted Berrigan

Confessional Poetry
Centers on figure of Robert Lowell - collection of poetry - Life Studies; associated with
academic poetry or modernist poetry, until he made major breakthrough and initiated
postmodernist state; dissection of most painful moments of his life, including his arrest for
conscientious objector, talks about it in very naturalistic way; radical change to confessional
poetry, writes about being a member of anti-establishment, the poet is the lyrical subject

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton - dwelled on fragile health, physical and mental, harrowing
experiences from their lives, Sexton wrote about abortion, they bothe wrote about suicidal
attempts and they both comitted suicide in the end.

Solitary minds - do not fit to any pre-established categories

Elizabeth Bishop - writes about traveling, she changed places many times in Art of losing she
writes that losing is an art, she does it very often, she lost home, lover, etc. - elements of
confession, but it’s illusionary, poetry of close observations of world around her, of prosaic
objects
R. A. Ammons
James Merril