American Literature Book Unit3

Unit 3
ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 1865

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thought and like of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores. Margaret Fuller
American Romanticism coincides chronologically with European Romanticism. The longing for harmonious personality (Cooper, Chateaubriand), the search for Truth in Beauty (Poe, Keats), the perception of the world in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour (Melville, Blake) paralleled each other. But the Europeans had many century old traditions, while the American Romantic writers had to replace the printer with the writer, and persuade their countrymen that literature was as honorable an occupation as corn harvesting. On the other hand there were all the basic requirements for an independent national literature in America: enthusiastic writers, attractive subjects, an increasing number of printing presses, book stores, schools and libraries. z Define Romanticism as a literary movement. Which representatives of Romanticism in English and other literature do you known? z What were the leading genres for the Romanticists?
Kindered Spirits, 1849
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UNIT
The American pioneer Daniel Boone guiding the new settlers from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky
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At the beginning of the 19th century American cultural and intellectual life was framed by the ever-expanding southern and western frontiers, culminating in 1853, when the continental boundaries of the US were completed. Geographical expansion came to be part of broadening the nations literary horizon. Aspiring literary minds turned to personal accounts of life west of the Allegheny Mountains. Widely publicized literary works by W. Irving and J. F. Cooper attracted still greater attention to the frontier, especially in coastal cities of the Atlantic. But the settlers literary interests centered on practical books such as various guides to farming, medicine, agriculture, horsemanship and everyday problems. A controversial aspect of American life was the displacement of a large number of Indians as white settlers conquered the wilderness. Even though the white newcomers used the Indians knowledge of agriculture and medicine for their own benefit, they wrote books about Native Americans like The American Savage: How He May Be Tamed by the Weapons of Civilization. Most readers were still fascinated with captivity narratives, a literary genre exemplified in the 17th century by A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682). Eventually, they gave way to the heroic deeds of the legendary frontier figures like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. Their popularity paved the way for the even more celebrated tradition of the tall tale and local color fiction later in the 19th century.
Davy Crocketts Legendary Shooting Match with Mike Fink

Mike was a boatman on the Mississip, but he had a little cabbin on the head of the Cumberland, and a horrid handsome wife, that loved him the wickedest that ever you see. Mike only worked enough to find his wife in rags, and himself in powder, and lead, and whiskey, and the rest of the time he spent in nocking over bar and turkeys, and bouncing deer, and sometimes drawing a lead on an injun. So one night I fell in with him in the woods, where him and his wife shook down a blanket for me in his wigwam. In the morning sez Mike to me, Ive got the handsomest wife, and the fastest horse, and the sharpest shooting iron in all Kentuck, and if any man dare doubt it, Ill be in his hair quicker Davy than hell could scorch a feather. This put my dander up, and Crockett sez I, Ive nothing to say agin your wife, Mike, for it cant be denied shes a shocking handesome woman, and Mrs. Crocketts
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in Tennessee, and Ive got no horses. Mike, I dont exactly like to tell you you lie about what you say about your rifle, but Im dd 1 if you speak the truth, and Ill prove it. Do you see that cat sitting on the top rail of your potato patch, about a hundred and fifty yards off? If she ever hears agin, Ill be shot if it shant be without ears.
1833 (11) Still, the quest for truly national literature remained a topical issue. The North American Review (founded in 1815), the first journal that printed exclusively American material, called for American writers to put an end to imitating British and continental stereotypes, and by the end of the 1820s, Americans could celebrate the publication of Washington Irvings Sketch Book (1819), William Cullen Bryants Poems (1821), some of James Fenimore Coopers Leather-Stocking Tales, Edgar Allan Poes Tamerlane and other Poems (1827), and Noah Websters American Dictionary (1828). The fame of the Knickerbocker School (J. K. Paulding, J. H. Payne, W. Irving, and briefly W. C. Bryant and J. F. Cooper), added brilliance to the American literary scene and made New York the national literary capital. It was also the time when many literary clubs were founded. In 1824, Cooper, together with William Bryant, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Thomas Cole, the English born painter, organized the Bread and Cheese Club. Among the members of the Saturday Club were Emerson, J. R. Lowell, H. W. Longfellow, O. W. Homes and the historians John L. Motley and William H. Prescott. The Authors Club united dominant magazine editors of the early 19th century. The literature of the United States is a subject of the highest interest to the civilized world, wrote Cooper, for when it does begin to be felt, it will be felt with a force, a directness, and a common sense in its application, that has never yet been known.... I think the time for the experiment is getting near. As if according to this prophesy, Irving adapted European literary heritage to American settings, Cooper turned Natty Bumppo into the American archetype of individual freedom and self-reliance, which served the fictional predecessor of countless mountain men and wilderness cowboys. Though they were writing in Europe, these two writers paved the way for the great flowering of American literature. In 1823, knowing that the British Navy would be involved in defending Latin America from the Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria, President Monroe pronounced his refusal to tolerate any further extension of European domination in the Americas: The American continents... are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any Euroupean powers... The Monroe Doctrine expressed solidarity with the newly independent republics of Latin America. It was the time, when democracy, with its good and bad, did flourish, when customs and people themselves were changing. Hair wigs and waistcoats were being replaced by loose overalls. The sewing machine, telegraph, and the assembly line were invented. It was the time of the Second Great Awakening and liberating of the church, when the Baptists, Methodists, Protestants, Mormons and the Seventh Day Adventists appeared. America was becoming a very diverse nation, and the times, when only one path to God was officially recognized, seemed far back in the past. It was also the time when the first large estates, accompanied by trickery and corruption, came onto the scene. The Americans may have somewhat forgotten the testament of the first settlers, but the providence idea was still glowing and it acquired a new form pioneer-frontiersman grew into the American Prometheus, and the wilderness path to the Appalachians turned into the road. The American Renaissance (1836-1865) was marked by two turmoils, the Panic of 1837 and the Civil War, as well as by two presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. The former, from the backwoods of Tennessee, seemed a prosaic leader, falling off from
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damned, darned adj., interj. both swearing or taboo words, are used as an exclamation, or a sound expressing an emotional reaction rather than any particular meaning
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the daring age of the founding Fathers. The latter ruled with unprecedented authority during a long and brutal Civil War. An idiomatic Western genius, as Whitman called him, Lincoln left behind a legacy of his spoken and written prose, colloquial, expressive, modest and always to the point. For 30-year-old Mark Twain, Lincolns style proved that simplicity was one of the secrets of eloquence.
Address at Gettysburg, pennsylvania

Four score and seven-years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
(19)
UNIT
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Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) commemorates the victims of the battle at Gettysberg.
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Transcendentalists . George Ripley in his Letter to the Church in Purchase Street (1840) wrote: There is a class of persons who desire a reform in the prevailing philosophy of the day. These are called Transcendentalists, because they believe in an order of truths which transcends the sphere of the external sense. Their leading idea is the supremacy of mind over matter. Hence they maintain that the truth of religion does not depend on tradition, nor historical facts, but has a faithful witness in the soul. Having absorbed the philosophical essence of Kant, Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle and other European thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller declared in the 1830s that God could be known through Nature and mans own soul, not only in church. As if in support of this idea H. D. Thoreau spent more than two years in a cabin at Walden Pond in isolation in the midst of natural beauty. This movement had a very loose structure. Founded as an informal club in 1836, it generated The Dial , a quarterly journal (1840-1844). Though it was often ridiculed for what was considered excessive fantasies, it inspired two experiments of cooperative living and high thinking: Brook Farm (1841-1847) and Fruitlands (1843), both near Boston. The Transcendentalists opposed materialism, rationalism, conformity, the stereotypes of religion and society, and tried to erect the temple of the Living God in Mans soul. Abolitionism. It was also the time when antislave tensions were running high. To the Southerners, slavery was as natural a condition as their English speech. The North opposed slavery and its extension into the Western regions. To add to the plight of the slaves, after the 1830s, slave owners began to employ professional overseers, whose status depended on their ability to extract a maximum amount of work from slaves. An earlier antislavery movement had its important victory in 1808 when Congress abolished the slave trade with Africa. The early 1830s saw the uncompromising actions of William Lloyd Garrison who wrote in the first issue of The Liberator : I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population... On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation... I am in earnest I will not equivocate I will not excuse I will not retreat a single inch, AND I WILL BE HEARD. He was joined by the powerful William Lloyd Garrison voice of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and the eloquent editor of the abolitionist weekly, Northern Star , and author of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), and later by Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin (1851). The cluster of events around 1849 contributed to the morality of trade and wild luck. The discovery of California gold in the Sacramento Valley in 1848 profoundly changed the population spread, railroad connections, and exposed much mercantilism, greed, desire for quick enrichment. It stamped the nation with something more than Yankee luck, and was seen as an event of Providence, a confirmation of national favor and mission.
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Expanding Your Knowledge

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. PERSONAL RESPONSE What kind of literature was in high demand at the frontier? What literary schools were set up in the first quarter of the 19th century? Briefly characterize the speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln. How did the Transcendentalists influence the public mind? Name the leaders of the abolitionist movement. What was the national impact of the Gold Rush in 1849? Complete the sentences: a) Books about Native Americans b) By the end of the 1820s America could celebrate c) The contemporary inventions were d) Lincoln was called by Whitman. e) The Transcendentalists did not accept f) The Civil War was fought between ... g) The morality of trade and wild luck was boosted by
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PERSONAL WRITING z Make an additional redearch on one of the authors mentioned in this unit and write about him/her. z Find an original work by an American Romanticist, and analyze it in an essay . CROSSWORD With the help of the dictionary and one letter provided, fill in the crossword. Try to revive the original context of the words. 1. The theory, practice, and style of romantic art, music, and literature of the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries, usually opposed to classicism. 2. Partially cleared, sparsely populated forests. 3. A mental attitude or point of view. 4. 16 th president of the U.S. His fame rests on his success in saving the Union in the Civil War (1861-1865). 1 5. A person who revises books, 2 periodicals, films etc. 6. Make a prisoner of, overcome 3 7. To force one to leave home 4 or country. 8. A standardized image or idea 5 shared by all members of a social group. 6 9. The edge of the settled area 7 of a country; borderline. 10. Anything that has been 8 transmitted from the past or 9 handed down by tradition. 11. Member of a primitive tribe 10 living by hunting or fishing; 11 wild man. 12. To increase in size or area; 12 add to or enlarge.
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WASHINGTON IRVING
I scarcely look with full satisfaction on any [of my works]. I often wish I could have twenty years more, to take them down from the shelf one by one, and write them over. Washington Irving
z Have you ever traveled to wondrous places that strongly impressed your imagination? How did it enrich your outlook? z What feature of character does the quotation reveal?
Both home and abroad Washington Irving is considered the first truly American man of letters, whose stories entered school and university curricula during his lifetime. His best known and first American short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle are still among the favorite classics. Washington Irving The youngest of 11 children of a cordial mother and a more domineering father, Washington Irving (April 3, 1783, New York City Nov. 28, 1859, Tarrytown, New York) was brought up in an easy-going and carefree atmosphere. A story has it that George Washington himself met Irving and blessed him. It could have been the reason for writing the monumental biography The Life of George Washington later in his life. Irving avoided a college education, but studied law himself, mostly in the office of Josiah Hoffman, with whose daughter he soon fell in love. In 1802, Irving produced a number of satirical essays under the signature of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent., made several trips up the Hudson river, another into Canada for his health. He also took an extended tour of Europe in 1804-1806. Later, together with other enthusiasts, he published satirical pamphlets on the faults of New York society in a periodical entitled Salmagundi, which still remains a guide to the social environment of the 1810s. Irvings History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809) is a satire of the Dutch regime in New York, and one of the earliest humorous histories. The name was adopted for the first American school of writers, the Knickerbocker Group, with Irving as the leader. In 1815, after his mothers death, Irving went to Liverpool to attend to the interests of his brothers hardware firm. On the way there he met Sir Walter Scott in London, who encouraged him in his creative efforts. The result was The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (18191820), a collection of stories and essays that mix satire and eccentricity with fact and fiction. Most of its 27 pieces relate Irvings impressions of England, but six stories deal with American subjects. Though under the heavy influence of German folktales, they are already concerned with American life in a Dutch settlement after the War of Independence. The overwhelming success of The Sketch Book reassured Irving that he could live by his pen, and in 1822 he produced Bracebridge Hall, a sequel to The Sketch Book. In 1826, he accepted an invitation to join the American diplomatic mission in Spain, where he wrote Columbus (1828). Meanwhile, Irving had become absorbed in the legends of the Moorish past and wrote A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and The Alhambra (1832), a Spanish counterpart of The Sketch Book. After a 17-year stay in Europe Irving was warmly welcomed to New York in 1832 as the first American author of international acclaim. Irving spent the remainder of his life at his home, Sunnyside, in Tarrytown, on the Hudson River, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits.
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Rip Van Winkle

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke 2 curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village, of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists; in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks. In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, 3 was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Rips sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much hen-pecked as his 4 master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his masters going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods but what courage can withstand the everduring and all-besetting terrors of a womans tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail dropped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle, he would run to the door with yelping precipitation. Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; 5 a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third.
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Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from 6 the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. Poor Wolf, he would say, thy mistress leads thee a dogs life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee! Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his masters face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart. In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled 7 to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and reechoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, Rip Van 8 Winkle! Rip Van Winkle! He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air; Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle! at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his masters side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back.
(The stranger was dressed after the antique Dutch fashion and was carrying a large barrel of liquor. With Rips help and without speaking they got to a hollow where they saw a company of similar looking men. Though they were playing ninepins, they kept grave silence. Rip having approached nearer, they eyed him fixedly and suspiciously. Obeying his companions signs, Rip helped serve the drink, took a few draughts, and fell into a deep sleep. Waking on a bright sunny morning, he found no men or liquor, or dog, either; and his gun, he thought, had been replaced by an old rusty one. Hungry, with a heavy heart, anticipating an outburst of fierce rage from his wife, he trudged homeward.)
As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long! He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in 10 neat order. It. was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial feats he called loudly for his wife and children the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence. He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn but it too was gone. 11 A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle. Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch
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inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON. There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The 12 very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens elections members of congress liberty Bunkers Hill heroes of seventy-six and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a 13 peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. Hush, Rip, cried she, hush, you little fool; the old man wont hurt you. The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. What is your name, my good woman? asked he. Judith Gardenier. And your fathers name? Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but its twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl. Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: Wheres your mother? Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler. There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. Im your father! cried he Young Rip Van Winkle once old Rip Van Winkle now! Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?... He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittles hotel. He was 14 observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine pins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkles flagon
1819 (21)
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PERSONAL RESPONSE IRVINGS LIFE 1. What is Irvings significance for American literature? 2. Search for the hidden meaning of the name Tarrytown. How does it fit into Irvings literary portrait? 3. Replace these subtitles by subdividing Irvings biography into the coherent parts: In the Family Circle, Toward a Mature Writer, Welcome Back Home. RIP VAN WINKLE 1. What epithets are chosen to describe the Kaatskill mountains? What details tie the story to a certain historical period? 2. What traces of military language can you find in the story? What could be the reason for their inclusion? 3. What else could we have expected from Rip Van Winkle besides the mysterious twentyyear sleep? Do you sympathize with, criticize or feel otherwise toward him? 4. Why is the expression sole domestic adherent used to refer to a dog in paragraph 4? What other more natural synonyms can you think of? What else does the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle stand for? What is ironic in Rips address to Wolf in par. 8? 5. What was his first surprise on approaching the village? How important is the portrait of King George III? What did Rip think had happened? How did Rip Van Winkles family change over the years? 6. What is the narrators point of view? How does he treat his characters ? 7. Compare W. Bradford and W. Irving according to their style of writing. How would you define the authors purpose for both of them? 8. Single out all the plot phases. Which one is most informative? Amusing? Descriptive? 9. How do you imagine the speaker? To what degree is his presence felt in the narrative? 10. Order the Events from the story: a) Rip Van Winkles daughter recognizes him. b) In despair Rip goes squirrel hunting in the mountains. c) Rip sees a strange looking man with a barrel. d) Rip helps to wait on the party of ninepins players. e) He tastes the liquor in the flagon. f) On the way back to the village Rip became aware of his foot-long beard. g) Rip Van Winkle is reunited with his children and community. h) He falls asleep. i) With difficulty Rip finds his house. WRITING WORKSHOP z Make use of available resources to write a short essay on what social life was like in the American Colonies in the 18th century. z Write a personal letter, as if you were Rip, telling about this unusual experience.
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character than the native warrior of North America. In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and selfdevoted; in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and commonly chaste. James Fenimore Cooper
z Recall your impressions of reading Cooper before. What strength does he possess as a writer?
UNIT
An American novelist, historian, and social critic, Cooper is most famous for the Leather-Stocking Tales, of which the best known is The Last of the Mohicans . Modern readers are fascinated with his dramatizations of the long-lasting American conflicts between nature and law, order and change, wilderness and civilization; all of these are best revealed at the American frontier. James Fenimore Cooper (Sept. 15, 1789, Burlington, New Jersey Sept. 14, 1851, Cooperstown, New York), the son of James Fenimore Cooper Quakers Judge William Cooper and Elizabeth Fenimore Cooper, was about a year old when the Coopers moved to the frontier village of Cooperstown, founded by Judge Cooper. James delighted in the freedom of wealth and wilderness, and so marked was this effect that later he was expelled from Yale University for frivolity and pranks. As a common seaman he was then sent to Europe to prepare for a naval career. On his return in 1808, Cooper entered into the Navy. Three years later he married Susan Augusta De Lancey from a powerful New York Tory family, and shortly thereafter, due to a large inheritance from his father, he quit the naval career. His first novel Precaution (1820), examining English high society, appeared because of a bet with his wife that he could write a better book, than those in circulation. Though the work was a failure, Cooper had found his vocation, and his next novel, The Spy (1821), in which he created Harvey Birch, a humble spy for the American revolutionaries, was highly rated. Coopers next work, The Pioneers (1823), promoted his reputation, both at home and abroad, and started his LeatherStocking series, which have become classics of American literature. They tell of the adventures of the American forester-frontiersman Natty Bumppo (also called Leather-Stocking & Hawkeye) and his Indian companion Chingachgook. The story starts with the last-published work in the series The Deerslayer (1841), which shows young Bumppo in the Lake Otsego region. The Last of the Mohicans follows Nattys heroic deeds against the Huron Indians in the Lake Champlain region. The Native Americans and white merchants exchange the most precious commodity, beaver furs. Pathfinder (1840) tells of Bumppos
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adventures in the French and Indian War, and his love; The Pioneers portrays Natty and Chingachgook as old men; and The Prairie (1827) pictures Bumppos last days, as a trapper on the Great Plains, where he was driven by the destruction of the forests in the East. Cooper has yet another literary asset he created the first sea novel, The Pilot (1824), filled, like the forest tales, with rapid action and strongly contrasted characters. Critics have often been too sharp toward Coopers literary faults, especially his careless and pompous language, though nowadays they are beginning to discover the complex internal designs that made Coopers work admired by such writers as Goethe, Balzac and Conrad for his inventiveness and pioneering use of American materials.
The Pioneers
from Chapter XXII For a week, the dark covering of the Otsego was left to the undisturbed possession of two eagles, who alighted on the centre of its field, and sat proudly eyeing the extent of their undisputed territory. During the presence of these monarchs of the air, the flocks of migrating birds avoided crossing the plain of ice, by turning into the hills, and apparently seeking the protection of the forests, while the white and bald heads of the tenants of the lake were turned upward, with a look of majestic contempt, as if penetrating to the very heavens with the acuteness of their vision. [] At each step the power of the winds and the waves increased, until, after a struggle of a few hours, the turbulent little billows succeeded in setting the whole field in an undulating motion, when it was driven beyond the reach of the eye, with a rapidity, that was as magical as the change produced in the scene by this expulsion of the lingering remnant of winter. Just as the last sheet of agitated ice was disappearing in the distance, the eagles rose over the border of crystals, and soared with a wide sweep far above the clouds, while the waves tossed their little caps of snow into the air, as if rioting in their release from a thraldom of five months duration. The following morning Elizabeth 1 was awakened by the exhilarating sounds of the martins, who were quarrelling and chattering around the little boxes which were suspended above her windows, and the cries of Richard,2 who was calling, in tones as animating as the signs of the season itself. Awake! awake! my lady fair! the gulls are hovering over the lake already, and the heavens are alive with the pigeons. You may look an hour before you can find a hole, through which, to get a peep at the sun. Awake! awake! lazy ones! Benjamin 3 is overhauling the ammunition, and we only wait for our breakfasts, and away for the mountains and pigeon-shooting. There was no resisting this animated appeal, and in a few minutes Miss Temple and her friend descended to the parlour. The doors of the hall were thrown open, and the mild, balmy air of a clear spring morning was ventilating the apartment, where the vigilance of the ex-steward had been so long maintaining an artificial heat, with such unremitted diligence. All of the gentlemen, we do not include Monsieur Le Quoi,4 were impatiently waiting their mornings repast, each being equipt in the garb of a sportsman. Mr. Jones made many visits to the southern door, and would cry.
Elizabeth Temple, daughter of Judge Marmaduke Temple, the founder of Templeton and its chief landowner; at the outset of the story she returns from four years at school. 2 Richard (Dickon) Jones, the sheriff, a cousin of Judge Temple; he superintends all the minor concerns of Temples business. 3 Benjamin Penguillan (called Ben Pump), former sailor, major-domo or steward under Jones. One of his charges at the Templeton house is to keep the stove in the parlor hot in winter. 4 Once a West Indian planter, now a refugee because of the French Revolution.
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short for Marmaduke, the judge Xerxes the Great (519-465 b.c.) was king of Persia (486-465 b.c.). 3 Oliver Edwards, a mysterious young stranger. 4 In the Leather-stocking novels set in New York, the Mingos (Iroquois) are made out to be the bad Indians while the Delawares are the good Indians. 5 a wood-chopper 6 In an earlier chapter Natty Bumppo had beaten Kirby in a turkey-shooting contest.
1 2
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Frontiersmen See, cousin Bess! see, duke!1 the pigeon-roosts of the south have wore loosebroken up! They are growing more thick every instant. Here is a flock fitting, thighlenght hunting that the eye cannot see the end of. There is food enough in it to keep shirts made the army of Xerxes 2 for a month, and feathers enough to make beds from deerskin for the whole county. Xerxes, Mr. Edwards, 3 was a Grecian king, who or homemade cloth without no, he was a Turk, or a Persian, who wanted to conquer Greece, buttons and just the same as these rascals will overrun our wheat-fields, when belted or tied they come back in the fall. Away! away! Bess; I long to pepper at the waist. They also wore them from the mountain. [XX] deerskin Amongst the sportsmen was to be seen the tall, gaunt form of trousers. Leather-stocking, who was walking over the field, with his rifle hanging on his arm, his dogs following close at his heels, now scenting the dead or wounded birds, that were beginning to tumble from the flocks, and then crouching under the legs of their master, as if they participated in his feelings, at this wasteful and unsportsmanlike execution. Leather-stocking was a silent, but uneasy spectator of all these proceedings, but was able to keep his sentiments to himself until he saw the introduction of the swivel into the sports. This comes of settling a country, he said here have I known the pigeons to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to scare or to hurt them. I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body; hurting nothing; being, as it was, as harmless as a garter-snake. But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through Most pioneer women wore the air, for I know its only a motion to bring out all the brats in the smock-like village at them. Well! the Lord wont see the waste of his creators dresses and for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, petticoats over their skirts. by-and-by. Theres Mr. Oliver, as bad as the rest of them, firing Woolen or 4 into the flocks as if he was shooting down nothing but the Mingo cotton bonnets warriors. protected their faces. Among the sportsmen was Billy Kirby, 5 who, armed with an old musket, was loading, and, without even looking into the air, was firing, and shouting as his victims fell even on his own person. He heard the speech of Natty, and took upon himself to reply. Whats that, old Leather-stocking! he cried; grumbling at the loss of a few pigeons! If you had to sow your wheat twice, and three times, as I have done, you wouldnt be so massyfully feelingd toards the divils. Hurrah, boys! scatter the feathers. This is better than shooting at a turkeys head and neck, old fellow. 6
UNIT
Its better for you, maybe, Billy Kirby, returned the indignant old hunter, and all them as dont know how to put a ball down a rifle-barrel, or how to bring it up agin with a true aim; but its wicked to be shooting into flocks in this wastey manner; and none do it, who know how to knock over a single bird. If a body has a craving for pigeons flesh, why! its made the same as all other creaters, for mans eating, but not to kill twenty and eat one. When I want such a thing, I go into the woods till I find one to my liking, and then I shoot him off the branches without touching a feather of another, though there might be a hundred on the same tree. But you couldnt do such a thing, Billy Kirby you couldnt do it if you tried. Whats that you say, you old, dried cornstalk! you sapless stub! cried the wood-chopper. Youve grown mighty boasting, since you killed the turkey; but if youre for a single shot, here goes at that bird which comes on by himself. The fire from the distant part of the field had driven a single pigeon below the flock to which it had belonged, and, frightened with the constant reports of the muskets, it was approaching the spot where the disputants stood, darting first from one side, and then to the other, cutting the air with the swiftness of lightning, and making a noise with its wings, not unlike the rushing of a bullet. Unfortunately for the wood-chopper, notwithstanding his vaunt, he did not see his bird until it was too late for him to fire as it approached, and he pulled his trigger at the unlucky moment when it was darting immediately over his head. The bird continued its course with incredible velocity.
1823 (22)

1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. PERSONAL RESPONSE COOPERS LIFE What are Coopers literary distinctions? Why are his heroes so popular? What was the reason for his public estrangement? What are his literary innovations? THE PIONEERS Cooper provides us with a rich description of the setting. What were the time and place of the event? Why is Mr. Jones so urging the company? What does the choice of weapons tell of the villagers? How different is Natty Bumppo from the rest of the shooters? How different is Nattys speech from that of the wood-choppers? By what means does Cooper achieve this contrast? What can be conclued about Natty Bumpoos attitude toward Nature? How would you characterize Coopers diction? Choose the right word for each of the eight gaps out of the given nine: noised, commenced, flocks, ringing, woods, pointed, mounted, extinct, shot. a) Large ... of wild geese were seen passing over the country. b) In a few moments the attack ... . c) The miniature cannon had been released from the rest, and ... on little wheels. d) On the morning of the Fourth of July, it would be heard, with its echoes ... among the hills, and telling forth its sounds, for thirteen times. e) The gun was ... on high.
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f) The wonderful exploit of Leather-Stocking was ... through the field with great rapidity. g) Wasnt the ... made for the beasts and birds to harbour in? h) The passenger pigeons are ..., the last known specimen dying in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden. WRITING WORKSHOP z Think of an ending to this episode. Go through the whole extract again, paying attention to figures of speech, sentence structure, punctuation, etc., and write it down as if it were done by Cooper. Then compare it with the original of The Pioneers. z Invent a scene from Coopers childhood and shape it in a story, adding more characters, description, dialogue, and, of course, some pranks on James behalf.
UNIT
It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinion; it is easy in solitude after ones own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Ralph Waldo Emerson
z Recall the authors who found inspiration in Nature. What are their works like?
Emerson is often quoted as a defender of the inner divine powers of an individual. This dominant thought penetrates his every major work such as Self-Reliance, where he called upon his countrymen to trust themselves, to accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. He also maintained that Ralph Waldo mans mind and spirit are like Gods; and by seeing through the workings Emerson of Nature, of which everyone is a part, we can discover our own selves. A poet, essayist, lecturer, and public speaker, Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803, Boston April 27, 1882, Concord, Massachusetts) graduated from Harvard College as an ordinary student, but at an early age he delighted in putting down his thoughts and famous quotations in his diary, which grew to the saving bank for his later writing. He taught at school, tried his pen in fiction and verse, read up on theology and entered Harvard Divinity School. Emerson often traveled to the South for his health and, as junior pastor, preached in the Boston area. He married a young woman, Ellen Tucker, just after receiving his appointment as pastor of the Second Church of Boston, but their happiness was cut short by her death in 1831. The next year Emerson left the pulpit and traveled extensively in Europe. Back in America, he launched a career of a public speaker, and after a second marriage he moved to the rustic Emersons journal Concord. The couples own house
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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
became a welcoming place for writers and conversationalists such as William Channings, Louisa Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Thoreau and others. This prominent group made Concord a kind of the Athens of America. In 1836, Emersons first book Nature saw print, setting forth the major guidelines for Transcendentalism. In 1841, Emerson produced some of his best writings, The Over-Soul, Compensation and Self-Reliance, which contain the finest aphorisms to be found in American literature, e.g. To be great is to be misunderstood, Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world, Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience, Theres no road that has not a star above it. These three masterpieces, published collectively as Essays, firmly established his literary reputation. His elaborate style and masterly sentences are referred to as a treasure trove of a perfect union of language and thought.
Nature
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. [] To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I
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feel that nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. 1836 (x)
UNIT
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to Aprils breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, or leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
1836 (26)
On July 4, 1837, a monument was unveiled in Concord, Massachusetts. There, in 1775, the American Minutemen had fought against the British in one of the first battles of the Revolutionary War.
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1. 2. 1. 2. PERSONAL RESPONSE EMERSONS LIFE How was education important in the Emersons tradition? Have you ever kept your own saving bank? What thoughts could be trusted to it? What thoughts could Emerson have put in his diary? NATURE Why do people usually look at the stars they wish to be alone? How would people respond if the stars appeared only once in a while? What does this suggest about human nature? In Emersons view, how do grown-ups and children differ according to how they view nature? What explanation does Emerson suggest for this difference?
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Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836
3. What, do you think, is the difference between the meanings a writer and a scientist find in nature? 4. Try to define the style of this essay. HYMN 1. What events are referred to in the Hymn? What purpose will the monument serve? 2. What does the poet ask in the last lines? Who is praised in this poem? 3. Emerson uses a figure of speech called metonymy such as shot (line 4). Identify other examples where one word represents a related notion, and state their role in the poem. 4. What tone does the repetition of r sound create in the first line? Identify more examples of consonance . WRITING WORKSHOP z If Emerson were to travel through your own countryside, what could he write of Nature there? Write an informal essay. z If Emerson should have delivered a speech instead of Hymn, what might it have been like? Write a short speech for this or any other memorable occasion.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
z What American mythical heroes created by Longfellow do you know? z Do you think being a poet was a reputable occupation in the mid-19 th century? z While reading, fit the subtitles back into the biography Years at Home, The First Profession, From Bowdoin to Harvard, Within a Family, Later Years.
Few writers have understood people better than Longfellow did or have given them so much pleasure they could take to their hearts. Poem after poem strengthen his popularity both in the United States and in Europe. Henry Longfellow had an exceptional ability the power of mythmaking, of creating Wadsworth figures that would forever become a part of American fiction. Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807, Portland March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts) grew up in a cultivated atmosphere, where books added scholarliness to the picturesque countryside of Maine. While in the country, he thirstily listened to live accounts of Grandfather Wadsworth about the Indian warfare chieftains and their. As a student, Longfellow led a quiet life, and by his senior year had published numerous essays and poems in the American Monthly Magazine and the United States Literary Gazette. On graduating from Bowdoin in 1825, Longfellow wrote his father, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature. ... Surely there never was a better opportunity offered for the exertion of literary talent in our own country than is now offered. A literary life, his father objected, to one who has the means of support, must be very pleasant. But there is not enough wealth in this country to afford sufficient encouragement and patronage
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to merely literary men. The elder Longfellow wanted his son to study law, but when an offer of a professorship of modern languages came from Bowdoin, provided Henry would study for a time abroad, his father agreed. Longfellow spent the years 1826-1829 traveling in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, which laid the foundation for his mastery not only of the languages and literatures of those countries, but also of Swedish, Finnish, Dutch and Portuguese, as well as the classical languages, Old English and Provenal. Longfellow held his professorship at Bowdoin from 1829 till 1835; in 1831, he married the beautiful and frail Mary Potter of Portland. Thoughtful efforts to secure a better academic position, linked with his success as a teacher at Bowdoin, finally culminated in his appointment as professor of modern languages at Harvard in 1835, and again he left for a period of further study abroad, concentrating on German and the Scandinavian languages. His trip, however, was heavily saddened by Marys sudden death. He stayed on in Europe, and the winter in Heidelberg brought him into contact with the sentimentality of romantic German literature, whose mood appealed both to his nature and to his loss. In 1836, Longfellow began teaching at Harvard. He was a popular figure on campus, and dressing stylishly, with a sense of humor, was well liked by his students. His own writings and his perfect knowledge of foreign literatures earned him the friendship of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner the U.S. statesman, Oliver Wendell Holmes the U.S. poet, novelist, essayist, and physician, and James Russell Lowell the U.S. poet, essayist, and diplomat, who made Cambridge and Boston so remarkable. The practice of translation polished Longfellows verse technique beyond that of any American contemporary. His editing of The Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845), an anthology that included many of his own translations, was an important milestone in American literature, acquainting Americans with foreign verse forms. Longfellow resigned from Harvard to devote himself solely to writing and published several works in the next few years, notably The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems (1858) and The Song of Hiawatha (1855). The latter is especially distinguished for its trochaic meter, which Longfellow adapted from the Finnish epic Kalevala. Longfellows six children were born in Craigie House, and he shared with his readers his love for them in the charming domestic idyll of Childrens Hour (1860). But he wasnt safe from another tragedy. One day, Fanny, his second wife, was sitting at her writing desk, cutting off pieces of their daughters hair to be sent to their aunts. Setting each curl into an envelope, she sealed it with a drop of wax from a lighted candle. It was a hot summer day, and Mrs. Longfellow was wearing a light dress. Suddenly the candle flame caught a corner of her sleeve, and the flames fanned out toward her face. Henry Longfellow heard her screaming and rushed to her. In panic, covered with flames, Fanny dashed toward him. He seized a rug and wrapped it around her as she fainted. By the next morning she died. Henry Longfellow mourned her deeply; and the burns on his own face were so bad that he had to grow a beard, being unable to shave. At the time of his wifes death, Longfellow was at work on Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), a collection of stories in verse, and he managed to finish it after the tragedy. The first poem, Paul Reveres Ride, became a national favorite. Written in anapestic tetrameter meant to suggest the galloping of a horse, this ballad portrays a hero of the American Revolution and his famous midnight ride to warn the Americans about the British attack on Concord.
UNIT
3
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PAUL REVERES RIDE from Tales of a Wayside Inn

Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere [...] He said to his friend, If the British march By land or sea from the town tonight, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm. Then he said, Good night! and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war, A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch [...] Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. And lo! as he looks, on the belfrys height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns! A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
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And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet: That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light The fate of a nation was riding that night, And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight Kindled the land into flame with its heat [] You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British regulars fired and fled; How the farmers gave them ball for ball From behind each fence and farmyard wall, Chasing the redcoats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere, And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm A cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night wind of the past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoofbeats of that steed And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
1863 (27)
UNIT
3

PERSONAL RESPONSE LONGFELLOWS LIFE 1. Why did Longfellow travel to Europe? What was he particularly talented in? 2. Who did he come in touch with while teaching at Harvard? 3. Draw a chronological chart and retell Longfellows biography according to it. PAUL REVERES RIDE 1. Which way were the British soldiers coming as Paul Reveres urgent message warned people? What place names help us see that the events were at the heart of the American Revolution? 2. Find examples of alliteration. Read them out loud, carefully pronouncing the first sounds of the words. How instrumental is it in the general design of the poem? How does the author create a turbulent atmosphere? 3. Find examples of hyperbole. How important is it? 4. Longfellow masterfully imitates the gallop of the horse by auditory means. Starting from the line And lo! as he looks on the belfrys height find examples of onomatopoeia . What role does it fulfil here?
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5. Paul Reveres Ride is an example of narrative poetry. What features is this genre characterized by? WRITING WORKSHOP z Longfellow is a master of creating a well-organized rhythm . There are many natural rhythms in the world around, e. g. the sunrise and sunset, the changing of the seasons, etc. Choose some rhythm and try to express it through a short poem. z By removing stylistic ornamentation, reduce Paul Reveres Ride to a prose story. Which words from the original would you keep? Can poetry roughly be defined by what was left out?
EDGAR ALLAN POE

The pure Imagination chooses, from either Beauty or Deformity, only the most combinable things hitherto uncombined. Edgar Allan Poe
z What works by Poe are you familiar with? z Bring to memory any dark episodes from either his life or works.
The forerunner of psychological writing, detective stories and science fiction, Poes heritage appears astonishingly modern to the contemporary reader. Misunderstood by popular American writers of his time, Poe was a major influence in Europe, particularly among the French Symbolist poets, including Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarm . He also added to the dark tradition in Edgar American literature maintained by Hawthorne, Bierce, and Faulkner. Allan Poe When his actor-parents died, Edgar Allan Poe (Jan. 19, 1809, Boston Oct. 7, 1849, Baltimore, Maryland) was taken without formal adoption into the household of John Allan, a prosperous but childless tobacco merchant. As he grew older, Poe must have felt his uncertain position in a wealthy aristocratic family. Allan quarreled with Poe after the latter was dismissed from the University of Virginia, where he had done well academically, but had got into debts which Mr. Allan refused to pay. Shortly afterwards, Allan secured for him an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he was expelled in 1831. Allan now turned his back on Poe. Poe had already published Tamerlane and Other Poems in 1827 and a better volume called simply Poems in 1831. He was living in Baltimore with his fathers widowed and poverty-stricken sister, Mrs. Maria Clemm, when he won a prize of $50 for his MS Found in a Bottle in a Baltimore Saturday Visitor short-story contest. In due course, Poe spent most of his remaining years as a staff member of various magazines from which he usually either soon retired or was discharged as the result of unruly behavior. He was becoming increasingly known as the writer of sharp critical essays, now recognized as the most original that had appeared in the United States; of poems, marked by an unforgettable rhythm; and of stories, of which the best were mostly fantastic, mysterious, and morbid. Poe married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836. Her pale beauty, weak health, and childlike character seemed to embody the ideal which almost from the beginning had been celebrated in his poems and stories. Her death in 1847 of a wasting disease seems to have caused Poes total collapse. He was found ill in a Baltimore tavern in October 1849, and died in a hospital.
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Morella
Itself, by itself, solely, one everlasting, and single. Plato. Sympos With a feeling of deep yet most singular affection I regarded my friend Morella. Thrown by accident into her society many years ago, my soul from our first meeting, burned with fires it had never before known; but the fires were not of Eros, and bitter and tormenting to my spirit was the gradual conviction that I could in no manner define their unusual meaning or regulate their vague intensity. Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the altar, and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream. Morellas erudition was profound. As I hope to live, her talents were of no common order her powers of mind were gigantic. I felt this, and, in many matters, became her pupil. I soon, however, found that, perhaps on account of her Presburg education, she placed before me a number of those mystical writings which are usually considered the mere dross of the early German literature. In all this, if I err not, my reason had little to do. My convictions, or I forget myself, were in no manner acted upon by the ideal, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I read to be discovered, unless I am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts. Persuaded of this, I abandoned myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with an unflinching heart into the intricacies of her studies. And then then, when poring over forbidden pages, I felt a forbidden spirit enkindling within me would Morella place her cold hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead philosophy some low, singular words, whose strange meaning burned themselves in upon my memory. And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at length its melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a shadow upon my soul, and I grew pale, and shuddered inwardly at those too unearthly tones. []
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Poes deep understanding of human psychology was most vital in his establishing one of the popular literary genres the detective story. C. Auguste Dupin, the predecessor of a long line of literary sleuths developed by Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie, embodies the idealized version of Poe that life had never granted him. Masterful in his ingenious inductive and deductive powers, Poes protagonist is a faultless thinking machine able to resolve the most complex mysteries such as in the trilogy The Murders in Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget , and The Purloined Letter. Poes imagination knew no limits. He foreshadows Jules Verne and the space explorations of the 20th century in tales such as The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, where he describes a balloon voyage to the moon. In The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar and A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, he digs into the still undefined field of mesmerism. Poe transcends yet another barrier that of time in the humorous Some Words with a Mummy. Poe is particularly unique as the acknowledged discoverer of those dark corners of the human mind where unearthly beauty is merged with the subconscious dreadful nightmares.
UNIT
But, indeed, the time had now arrived when the mystery of my wifes manner oppressed me as a spell. I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language, nor the lustre of her melancholy eyes. And she knew all this, but did not upbraid; she seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly, and, smiling, called it fate. Yet was she woman, and pined away daily. In time the crimson spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent; and one instant my nature melted into pity, but, in next I met the glance of her meaning eyes, and then my soul sickened and became giddy with the giddiness of one who gazes downward into some dreary and unfathomable abyss. Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming desire for the moment of Morellas decease? I did; but the fragile spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days, for many weeks and irksome months, until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over my mind, and I grew furious through delay, and, with the heart of a fiend, cursed the days and the hours and the bitter moments, which seemed to lengthen and lengthen as her gentle life declined, like shadows in the dying of the day. But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven, Morella called me to her bedside. There was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich October leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen. It is a day of days, she said, as I approached; a day of all days either to live or die. It is a fair day for the sons of earth and life ah, more fair for the daughters of heaven and death! I kissed her forehead, and she continued: I am dying, yet shall I live. Morella! The days have never been when thou couldst love me but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore. Morella! I cried, Morella! how knowest thou this? But she turned away her face upon the pillow and a slight tremor coming over her limbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more. Yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had given birth, which breathed not until the mother breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and was the perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and I loved her with a love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth. [...] And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy, and mild, and eloquent face, and poured over her maturing form, day after day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother, the melancholy and the dead. And, hourly, grew darker these shadows of similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that her smile was like her mothers I could bear; but then I shuddered at its too perfect identity that her eyes were like Morellas I could endure; but then they too often looked down into the depths of my soul with Morellas own intense and bewildering meaning. Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter remained nameless upon the earth. My child, and my love, were the designations usually prompted by a
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THE BELLS
I Hear the sledges with the bellsSilver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bellsFrom the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night
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fathers affection, and the rigid seclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse. Morellas name died with her at her death. Of the mother I had never spoken to the daughter; it was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the brief period of her existence, the latter had received no impressions from the outward world, save such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits of her privacy. But at length the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition, a present deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. And at the baptismal font I hesitated for a name. What fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the night, I whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllables Morella? What more than fiend convulsed the features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded I am here! Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell those few simple sounds within my ear, and thence like molten lead rolled hissingly into my brain. Years years may pass away, but the memory of that epoch never. Nor was I indeed ignorant of the flowers and the vine but the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and day. And I kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded from heaven, and therefore the earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me like flitting shadows, and among them all I beheld only Morella. The winds of the firmament breathed but one sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermore Morella. But she died; and with my own hands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughed with a long and bitter laugh as I found no traces of the first in the channel where I laid the second Morella. 1840 (29)
UNIT
How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And an in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bellsTo the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III Hear the loud alarum bellsBrazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor, Nownow to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows: Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling,
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And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bellsOf the bellsOf the bells, bells, bells,bells, Bells, bells, bellsIn the clamor and the clangor of the bells! IV Hear the tolling of the bellsIron Bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the peopleah, the peopleThey that dwell up in the steeple, All Alone And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stoneThey are neither man nor womanThey are neither brute nor humanThey are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bellsOf the bells: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bellsOf the bells, bells, bellsTo the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time,
UNIT
3
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As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bellsOf the bells, bells, bells: To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bellsBells, bells, bellsTo the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 1849 (XX)

PERSONAL RESPONSE POES LIFE 1. What singles Poe out of the other literati? What could Virginia Clemm symbolize to him? 2. How does Poes idea of pure imagination agree with your views about art? 3. Find expressions that add to the dark image of Poe. Using a thesaurus try to substitute them with more neutral equivalents. What is the overall impact of such changes? MORELLA 1. Poe used to say that in the story texture there should be no single word but only those which add to the overall effect. Find proofs in this story. 2. Characterize Morella. Do you see any vicious intent in her doings? 3. In what state of mind could Poe have written the story? What could lead to the darkness in Poes subconsciousness? 4. Why do you think Poe gives no place or time in the story? Define the plot phases in the story. 5. What atmosphere is created here? What constitutes such mood? 6. Find antithesis in the dialogue with Morella and comment on its hidden meaning and importance for the story. THE BELLS 1. Find examples of assonance in the poem. What is their function? 2. Perform scansion of the poem and identify its meter . How does it differ from the previously covered poems? What tone does it set up? 3. Try to pick out examples of inversion in the poem. What does it help to emphasize? 4. If you were to render it in prose, all the attractiveness of the poem would be lost. What factors, then, add up to the beauty of this poem? 5. How does mood differ in each stanza. What could be the reason for metrical irregularity? 6. Find examples of alliteration. What do they help to emphasize? WRITING WORKSHOP z You apply for a job at a film studio. One of the tasks is to write a screen version. Scriptwrite Morella, or any other of Poes story into a screenplay, with more fictional dialogues and other inventions. z Make your own poetic translation of The Bells or any other of Poes verses. Try to make it sound like the original, i.e. bring in as many auditory images as you can.
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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

My soul ant yours, Masr! You havent bought it, ye cant buy it! Its been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it. Harriet Beecher Stowe
z What was womans role in the family and society in the 19th century? z How was woman educated?
OR
UNCLE TOMS CABIN; LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY
Chapter VII. The Mothers Struggle It is impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate and forlorn than Eliza, when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Toms cabin. Her husbands sufferings and dangers, the danger of her child, all blended in her mind with a confused and stunning sense of the risk she was running in leaving the only home she had ever known, and cutting loose from the protection of a friend whom she loved and revered. Then there was the parting from every familiar object, the place where she had grown up, the trees under which she had played, the groves where she had walked many an evening in happier days, by the side of her young husband, everything, as it lay in the clear frosty moonlight, seemed to speak reproachfully to her, and ask her whither could she go from a home like that? But stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of frenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger. Her boy was old enough to have walked by her side, and in an indifferent case she would only have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out of her arms made her shudder, and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp as she went rapidly forward. The frosty ground creaked beneath her feet, and she trembled at the sound; every
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Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811, Litchfield, Connecticut July 1, 1896, Hartford, Connecticut) was initially involved in teaching under her authoritarian sister. Though this occupation took up a lot of time and effort, she managed to turn her lifelong interest in writing into stories and publish them. In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a leading professor at Lane Theological Seminary, which was founded by Harriets father. After living eighteen years next to slaveholding communities across the Ohio River, the Stowes returned to New England in 1850 when Harriet Stowes husband was offered a professorship at Bowdoin College, Beecher Stowe Maine. Outraged at the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), which allowed owners to capture runaway slaves in free Northern States, she started her major work, Uncle Toms Cabin . Later in life, she claimed that she was under the spell of a Godsent image of sufferings of a beaten slave, who, nonetheless, was forgiving his tormentors. Owing to her overwhelming success, she traveled widely, met Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria, and lived among the rich and famous. Her seventieth birthday was an event of the national importance.
UNIT
quaking leaf and fluttering shadow sent the blood backward to her heart, and quickened her footsteps. She wondered within herself at the strength that seemed to be come upon her; for she felt the weight of her boy as if it had been a feather, and every flutter of fear seemed to increase the supernatural strength that bore her on, while from her pale lips burst forth, in frequent ejaculations, the prayer to a Friend above Lord, help! Lord, save me! [] After a while they came to a thick patch of woodland, through which murmured a clear brook. As the child complained of hunger and thirst, she climbed over the fence with him; and sitting down behind a large rock which concealed them from the road, she gave him a breakfast out of her little package. [...] She was many miles past any neighborhood where she was personally known. As she was also so white as not to be known as of colored lineage, without a critical survey, and her child was white also, it was much easier for her to pass on unsuspected. On this presumption, she stopped at noon at a neat farm-house to rest herself, and buy some dinner for her child and self; for as the danger decreased with the distance, the supernatural tension of the nervous system lessened, and she found herself both weary and hungry. [...] An hour before sunset she entered the village of T, by the Ohio river, weary and footsore, but still strong in heart. Her first glance was at the river, which lay, like Jordan, between her and the Canaan of liberty on the other side. It was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent; great cakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and fro in the turbid waters. Owing to the peculiar form of the shore on the Kentucky side, the land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged and formed a great undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending almost to the Kentucky shore. Eliza stood for a moment contemplating this unfavorable aspect of things, which she saw at once must prevent the usual ferry-boat from running, and then turned into a small public house on the bank, to make a few inquiries. The hostess, who was busy in various fizzing and stewing operations over the fire, preparatory to the evening meal, stopped, with a fork in her hand, as Elizas sweet and plaintive voice arrested her. What is it? she said. Is nt there any ferry or boat that takes people over to B, now? she said. No, indeed! said the woman; the boats has stopped running.
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PERSONAL RESPONSE STOWES LIFE 1. What could Stowes years under her domineering sister have been like? 2. What prompted her to write about a slavery issue? UNCLE TOMS CABIN 1. What feelings did Eliza hold towards Uncle Tom? Why did she feel like her throat would choke her? 2. What were Elizas advantages, if any, as a fugitive? How did she explain the purpose of the journey? 3. How does the author relate the urgency of the situation? Select the passages where the pace is at its highest. 4. How important is colloquial speech in the dialogues? 5. By comparing the Ohio River to Jordan, Stowe makes use of allusion. How does this figure enrich the imagery of the novel? WRITING WORKSHOP z Write an essay titled Antislavery Movement in the U. S. Resort to your local library and the Internet for fects. z Carry out additional research to describe social life in the Southern States in the middle of the 19 th century.
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Elizas look of dismay and disappointment struck the woman, and she said, inquiringly May be youre wanting to get over? anybody sick? Ye seem mighty anxious? Ive got a child thats very dangerous, said Eliza. I never heard of it till last night, and Ive walked quite a piece to-day, in hopes to get to the ferry. Well, now, thats onlucky, said the woman, whose motherly sympathies were much aroused; Im relly consarned for ye. Solomon! she called, from the window, towards a small back building. A man in leather apron and very dirty hands appeared at the door. I say, Sol, said the woman, is that ar man going to tote them barls over to-night? He said he should try, if t was any way prudent, said the man. Theres a man a piece down here, thats going over with some truck this evening, if he durs to; hell be in here to supper to-night, so youd better set down and wait. Thats a sweet little fellow, added the woman, offering him a cake. But the child, wholly exhausted, cried with weariness. Poor fellow! he is nt used to walking, and Ive hurried him on so, said Eliza. Well, take him into this room, said the woman, opening into a small bed-room, where stood a comfortable bed. Eliza laid the weary boy upon it, and held his hands in hers till he was fast asleep. For her there was no rest. As a fire in her bones, the thought of the pursuer urged her on, and she gazed with longing eyes on the sullen, surging waters that lay between her and liberty. 1851 (20)
UNIT
WALT WHITMAN
Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Walt Whitman
z What kind of poetry could Whitman write as seen from the quotation? z What did you learn about Whitman earlier in the course of Foreign Literature?
Walt Whitman, because of his different inclinations, absorbed the voices, sights and the very spirit of the newly formed United States, creating new poetry that celebrated the democratic spirit of his native land. His poems have been translated into Ukrainian, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese. Whitmans popularity justifies his bold claim that the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. Walt Whitman By the age of eleven, Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long Island, New York March 26, 1892, Camden, New Jersey) had first worked as an office boy for a prominent Brooklyn lawyer, who arranged for him a subscription to a library, where his self-education began. While most leading writers of his time received classical education, Whitman built his own rough, diversified and informal knowledge of literature, history, geography, music, theater, and archeology out of the public resources of Americas fastest growing city of New York. Ultimately, Whitman became an apprentice printer on the Long Island Patriot, where he first felt the excitement of setting words into print. Later in his life, he could still recall this delight, How it made my heart double-beat to see my piece on the pretty white paper, in nice type. Whitman resisted his fathers attempts to have him work on the new family farm. Teaching was, therefore, a way out but was also a job he was pressed to take in bad times. He employed progressive techniques getting students to think aloud rather than recite, refusing to punish by slapping, involving his students in educational games, and joining them in baseball. Whitmans next career was a short fiction writer. His first published story, Death in the School-Room , arose out of his teaching experience where he hopes that the many ingenious methods of child-torture will [soon] be gazd upon as a scorned memento of an ignorant, cruel, and exploded doctrine. In February 1848, at the Broadway Theatre, Whitman, already a journalist, met a publisher who wanted to launch a New Orleans paper, the Crescent. In a brief time they settled a deal and Whitman set out to New Orleans. The journey by train, steamboat, and stagecoach broadened Whitmans sense of his countrys diversity, and produced a few sketches of New Orleans life and a poem, Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight, in which the steamboat voyage becomes a symbol of the journey of life. By 1854, he had moved back to his parents in Brooklyn. Walt, his mother later said, had no business, but going out and coming in to eat, drink, write, and sleep. Little did she know that her son was composing one of the greatest books in American literature Leaves of Grass. In long, unmetered lines, called free verse , Whitman praised the diversity, energy, and pulsation of the nineteenth-century American life. And the consequent mystery about Whitman is his abrupt transformation from a traditional poet of the 1840s,
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Leaves of Grass
from Song of Myself 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease ... observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, formd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same. I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. 1891-1892 (6)
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resembling Bryant or Shelley, into one who abandoned conventional rhyme and meter altogether. In the 1860s, when the nation was moving toward a war between the slaveholding and free states, Whitmans deepest beliefs were shattered. Leaves of Grass had been built on a faith in union, in the ability of man and the nation to embrace diversity; now the United States was threatened to split apart. In 1862, fearing that the name on the casualty list was his brothers, Whitman immediately set off to Virginia to look for him. Though his brother had received only a wound in the face, Whitmans relief changed to horror as he saw other dreadful sights of war, which would haunt him repeatedly. In 1865, back in Washington, in the Indian Bureau, Whitmans job was to meet Native American delegations of various Indian tribes. He praised Indians in his poems, and rejoiced how they charged the water and the land with names. Whitman often debated that aboriginal names for American places were prior and superior to those imported from the Old World. It is paradoxical that Whitman was away from the capital during its saddest times: the main Confederate assault on Washington, and the death of the President. He heard the news about Lincolns assassination on a morning after April 14, 1865, when the lilac was blooming in his mothers yard. Comforting himself he inhaled the lilac scent. Thus appeared his requiem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd. In 1870, Whitman published Democratic Vistas and Passage to India that celebrates the work of engineers, especially the global linking accomplished by the transcontinental railroad, the Suez Canal, and the Atlantic cable. Whitman stayed in Camden in his last years, finding it a supportive social environment. Many people made pilgrimages there. In 1882, the most famous of them, Oscar Wilde, asserted that there is no one in this great wide world of America whom I love and honor so much.
UNIT
When I Heard the Learnd Astronomer

from By the Roadside When I heard the learnd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wanderd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, I lookd up in perfect silence at the stars. 1865 (33)

PERSONAL RESPONSE WHITMANS LIFE 1. In what respect is Whitman different from his predecessor H. W. Longfellow? 2. What were the reasons for Whitmans teaching job? Whitman enjoyed. How important was debating in his personal formation? 3. Why do you think he felt sorry for the loss of native cultures? 4. What could be the reason for his abrupt poetic transition in the late 1840s? 5. Subdivide the text into several parts to be titled Early Years, School Teaching, First Fiction, Whitman Poet, The Civil War, In Washington, Last Years respectively. SONG OF MYSELF, 1 1. What mood does the poet celebrate? What makes him so enthusiastic? 2. How does Whitman view himself in relation to nature and other people? 3. How do you understand the original energy of Nature? 4. Find examples of alliteration . Comment on their function in this and the next poems. 5. What is the narrators relation to Nature and the rest of the world? WHEN I HEARD THE LEARND ASTRONOMER 1. How do the astronomer and the poet view the sky heavenly bodies in it? What are their respective techniques and approaches? What is implied about the poets values? 2. Whitman often uses parallelism. Find it here and in the rest of his poems, and say to what end he used it. How does it agree with his idea of simplicity? WRITING WORKSHOP z Write a letter to Whitman telling of America nowadays, its political and economic stance in the world, its relations with other countries. z Choose an event from Whitmans life and imagining fictitious characters, events, conversations, try to write a narrative poem in free verse .
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EMILY DICKINSON
The Soul selects her own Society Then shuts the Door To her divine Majority Present no more Emily Dickinson
z What was the state of a woman writer in the 19th century? z What hardship could she have undergone?
Success is counted sweetest

Success is counted sweetest By those who neer succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.
A Day Dream, 1877.
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This secluded American poetess has been acknowledged as one of the greatest of the 19th century. She never left her native land, her home state once, her village several times, and after 1872 even hardly Emily her house. In her last years, she dressed in white, avoided strangers, Elizabeth communicated chiefly by mail. But her life as a hermit was well Dickinson compensated by her rich imagination. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (Dec. 10, 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts May 15, 1886, Amherst) was educated at Amherst Academy and spent a year (1847-1848) at a female seminary. Although being deeply moved by a religious revival, Dickinson found herself unable to convert that is, to experience a spiritual rebirth and testify to it before the assembled congregation. Her father, one of the wealthiest and most respected citizens of the town, passionately defended the church and its orthodoxy against the New Thought from Concord. But he was powerless to protect his daughters completely from the latest infidelity, Transcendentalism, because a student in his office presented Emersons Poems to her for Christmas in 1850. After that she had two fathers, Edward Dickinson in Amherst, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord. She also enjoyed Shakespeare, George Eliot, Charlot Bront. She took to the Bible , especially the Book of Revelation. Dickinson lived solely in her books, her garden, and a few friends. After her fathers death in 1874, she isolated herself completely, being called the nun of Amherst. All in all, Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems, several hundred of which are among the finest ever written by an American poet, but only seven were printed during her lifetime. Apart from the occasional verse and the small number of pure love poems, her single subject was the self and its complex destiny. She forged her own distinctive style, experimenting with grammar, capitalization, punctuation, rhyme and meter confusing critics of her day. No matter how common the occurrence, Dickinson was sure to find meaning in it. A ray of afternoon sunlight, a bird on a walk, a shadow on the grass everything was turned into the miraculous, the seemingly empty into the deeply meaningful.
UNIT
Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of Victory As he defeated dying On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear! c. 1859 (24)
The Brain is wider than the Sky

The Brain is wider than the Sky For put them side by side The one the other will contain With ease and You beside The Brain is deeper than the sea For hold them Blue to Blue The one the other will absorb As Sponges Buckets do
The Brain is just the weight of God For Heft them Pound for Pound And they will differ if they do As Syllable from Sound
c. 1862 (24)

PERSONAL RESPONSE DICKINSONS LIFE 1. How unique is Dickinson among other literati? 2. She had two fathers. What did each of them mean to the poetess? What is meant by New Thought from Concord? 3. How different was her poetic outlook from Emersons? SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST 1. What conclusion can we draw from this thought? Who understands success better the victor or the defeated? 2. Sometimes Dickinson uses slant rhyme. Identify more such examples. While being imperfect they bring a certain charm into the poem. Do they add to or detract the poetic from the poem? THE BRAIN IS WIDER THAN THE SKY 1. The idea of the unlimitedness of human brain is supported by Dickinsons two examples. Find proofs that Brain is wider than the Sky. 2. In the third stanza Dickinson retreats her idea before Gods omnipotence. What inner beliefs could have led the poetess? WRITING WORKSHOP z Find any worthy subject and try to see it like Dickinson herself. Render your reflections in either poetry or prose. z Dickinson and Whitman are both considered poetic giants of the 19th century. If we compare their poetic heritage what similarity and differences can be traced? Write an essay.
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SPIRITUALS
These quaint religious songs were to the men more than a source of relaxation; they were a stimulus to courage and a tie to heaven. Thomas Higginson
z Think of intellectual and cultural values of different peoples. How important is musical culture in the life of a nation?
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home, Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? Coming for to carry me home, A band of angels coming after me, Coming for to carry me home. If you get there before I do, Coming for to carry me home, Tell all my friends Im coming, too. Coming for to carry me home. Im sometimes up and sometimes down, Coming for to carry me home,
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, 1934
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Spirituals, African-American song, usually with a Christian religious context, originated in the United States by African slaves. They are otherwise termed Negro, Black, or African American spirituals. In the 19th century the term Jubilee was more common among AfricanAmericans; Europeans often called them Slave songs or African-American folk songs. As slaves were integrated into the Christian faith, they gradually blended their worshiping tradition with the new themes from the Bible. The imprint of Africa was evident in the style and cadence of liturgical delivery, in the use of blue notes, five-toned scale, improvised harmony, and syncopation in musical expression and dance styles. In comparison with the worship of whites, Africanized Christianity was often lively, loud and spontaneous. Slaves often held secret religious services because they were unable to express themselves freely in ways that were spiritually meaningful to them. During these camp meetings and bush meetings, worshippers were free to engage in African religious rituals such as spiritual possession, communal shouts and chants. Also it was there that slaves further crafted the impromptu musical expression of field songs into the so-called Negro Spirituals. Spirituals sometimes provided comfort and eased the boredom of daily burden, but above all, they were an expression of spiritual devotion and a yearning for freedom from bondage. Songs like Steal Away (to Jesus), or Swing Low, Sweet Chariot raised unexpectedly in a dusty field, or sung softly in the dark of night, signaled that the coast was clear and the time to escape had come. The River Jordan became the Ohio River, or the Mississippi, or another body of water that had to be crossed on the journey to freedom.
UNIT
But still my soul feels heavenly bound, Coming for to carry me home. The brightest day that I can say, Coming for to carry me home, When Jesus washed my sins away, Coming for to carry me home.
(25)
Deep River
Deep river, My home is over Jordan, Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground, I.ord, I want to cross over into campground, Oh, dont you want to go to that Gospel feast, That promisd land where all is peace? Ill go into heaven, and take my seat, Cast my crown at Jesus feet. Oh, when I get to heavn, Ill walk all about, Theres nobody there for to turn me out. (25)
Negro Spirituals Songbook, 1899
Jubilee Singers
Song Roll Jordan, Roll

PERSONAL RESPONSE 1. What ideas prevail in African-American folk songs? What could their literary influence have been on American authors? 2. Comment on refrains and repetitions. What is their function here? 3. Define the theme of the above spirituals. WRITING WORKSHOP z After additional research write about the role of spirituals in 20th century America.
70
Unit 3. Summary Quiz
WHICH AUTHOR
71
1. published only seven poems in his or her lifetime? 2. re-edited poetry throughout his or her entire life? 3. experimented with grammar and punctuation? 4. was alienated from friends by a prominent anthologizer? 5. signed his works Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.? 6. enlisted in the Navy? 7. published the story Death in the School-Room? 8. foreshadowed major genres of the 20 th century? 9. had two fathers? 10. instituted the guidelines for Transcendentalism? 11. met Queen Victoria? 12. struck a deal in a very short time? 13. joined the American diplomatic mission in Spain? 14. found kinship in German romantic literature? 15. was born into the actors family? 16. kept a diary of quotations? 17. welcomed Oscar Wilde as a guest? 18. left for Europe to study languages? 19. was prompted by his family to write? 20. taught under an authoritarian sister? 21. used to live at Walden Pond? 22. was unable to shave after a tragic accident? 23. started writing because of a casual bet? 24. signed up for a whaling ship? 25. preferred Indian place names to European ones? 26. wrote a monumental biography of George Washington? 27. was virtually rediscovered in the 20th century? 28. dressed in white in later years? 29. wrote in free verse? 30. created the first American sea novel?
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American Literature Book Unit3

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Unit 3

ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 1865

Kindered Spirits, 1849

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ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 1865

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Unit 3. Summary Quiz

ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 1865

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