Literature in English (UNICAN)

MAUS

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MAUS, the only comic book to get a Pulitzer Price

http://issuu.com/jagonzal/docs/maus_1
http://issuu.com/jagonzal/docs/maus_2

http://www.buckslib.org/OneBook/Resourceguide/summarychapter.htm

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/maus/MausResources.htm

http://www.gradesaver.com/maus/study-guide/about/

http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/maus/studyquestions.htm

FINAL EXAM: Jan 21st

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Remember the date for the final exam: January 21st. In the exam you will find 5 texts. You will have to choose 4, analyze them and identify the work they come from, the author who wrote them and the period where they appeared. Discuss the period or movement they come from and the significance of the passage within the work and within the general context of English Literature. Here you have

two sample texts:

1. Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.

2. Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharf–rat boys, not even to give directions; don't eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school;

LESSON PLANS

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The deadline to hand in the Lesson Plan is January 21st (the date of the final exam), although you can bring it earlier if you have it ready. You have two samples here. Remember you have the instructions here and some useful links here. Don't forget to add any materials that you would be using and to mention your sources: books, websites, etc. It's fine to use published materials, just remember to quote them appropriately. The Lesson Plan will be 20% of your final mark.

Subtotals

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S U B T O T A L S
Number of refrigerators I've lived with: 18. Number of rotten eggs I've thrown: 1. Number of finger rings I've owned: 3. Number of broken bones: 0. Number of Purple Hearts: 0. Number of times unfaithful to wife: 2. Number of holes in one, big golf: 0; miniature golf:3. Number of consecutive push-ups, maximum: 25. Number of waist size: 32. Number of gray hairs: 4. Number of children: 4. Number of suits, business: 2; swimming: 22. Number of cigarettes smoked: 83. Number of times I've kicked the dog: 6. Number of times caught in the act, any act: 64. Number of postcards sent: 831; received: 416. Number of spider plants that died while under my care: 34. Number of blind dates: 2. Number of jumping jacks: 982,316. Number of headaches: 184. Number of kisses, given: 21,602, received: 20,041. Number of belts: 21. Number of f***kups, bad: 6; not so bad: 1,500. Number of times swore under breath at parents: 838. Number of weeks at church camp: 1. Number of houses owned: 0. Number of houses rented: 12. Number of hunches played: 1,091. Number of compliments, given: 4,051; accepted: 2,249. Number of embarrassing moments: 2,258. Number of states visited: 38. Number of traffic tickets: 3. Number of girlfriends: 4. Number of times fallen off playground equipment, swings: 3; monkey bars: 2; teeter-totter: 1. Number of times flown in dreams: 28. Number of times fallen down stairs: 9. Number of dogs: 1. Number of cats: 7. Number of miracles witnessed: 0. Number of insults, given: 10,038; received: 8,963. Number of wrong telephone numbers dialed: 73. Number of times speechless: 33. Number of times stuck key into electrical socket: 1. Number of birds killed with rocks: 1. Number of times had the wind knocked out of me: 12. Number of times patted on the back: 181. Number of times wished I was dead: 2. Number of times unsure of footing: 458. Number of times fallen asleep reading a book: 513. Number of times born again: 0. Number of times seen double: 28. Number of deja vu experiences: 43. Number of emotional breakdowns: 1; Number of times choked on ones, chicken: 4; fish: 6; other: 3. Number f times didn't believe parents: 23,978. Number of lawn-mowing miles: 3,575. Number of light bulbs changed: 273. Number of childhood home telephone: 384-621-5844. Number of brothers: 3 2. Number of passes at women: 5. Number of stairs walked, up: 745-821; down: 743,609. Number of hats lost: 9. Number of magazine subscriptions: 41. Number of times seasick: 1. Number of bloody noses: 16. Number of times had sexual intercourse: 4,013. Number of fish caught: 1. Number of time heard "The Star Spangled Banner": 2,410. Number of babies held in arms: 9. Number of times I forgot what I was going say: 631.

1.- What is this text about?

2.- What can you deduce about the life of the person the ‘subtotals’ refer to? Think about:

- Sex:

- Age:

- Family background:

- Childhood:

- Young age:

- Middle age:

- Job:

- Marital status:

- Children:

- Tastes:

- Hobbies:

- Daily life:

- Physical aspect:

- Health:

- Personality:

3.- What’s the point of the text? Would you call it a story?

POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE

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Post-Colonial Literature is a term frequently used to talk about writers and writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people and countries formerly subjugated to colonial rule. These texts therefore often deal with racial as well as social and cultural issues: once independence is achieved, what is the new cultural identity of the country and its people? Who is really in power here? Which race? What is the writer’s identity and role in this context? What kind of language should they use? Frequently, post-colonial writers have mixed origins, live in different countries and have a complex Eastern-Western identity.

Given the size of the British Empire, the most important post-colonial writers write in English, although the term has also been used to talk about Latin American magical realism and literature written in other languages. The term “post-colonial literature” is then a useful term to talk about Literature in English written in places other than the United Kingdom or the United States of America (most of them belonging to the “Commonwealth”, a term also frequently used to talk about these writers),

We shouldn’t overlook the fact that there are very good examples of English writers who wrote about the colonies, often with a critical voice: Kipling (India), Orwell (Burma), Anthony Burgess (Malaysia), E. M. Forster (India), Graham Greene (The Quiet American, about Vietnam) and Joseph Conrad (Africa).

INDIA has produced some excellent writers in English, like Salman Rushdie (1947 -), whose Midnight’s Children (1981) tells the story of Indian independence with a style akin to Magical Realism. The Satanic Verses (1988) was the centre of Muslim protests. Arundhati Roy (1961-) wrote The God of Small Things (1997), a story of twins in Kerala. Michael Ondaatje (1943- ) was born in SRI LANKA and became a Canadian citizen. Author of The English Patient (1992). Hanif Kureishi (1954- ) was born in England in a family that had come from PAKISTAN, and he often deals with these origins (and is racial and social consequences) in his novels, like The Buddha of Suburbia (1990).

THE CARIBBEAN has also produced some excellent writers in English. V. S. Naipaul (1932- ) was born in Trinidad and Tobago in a family of Indian origins. He has written some excellent novels and received the Nobel Prize in 2001. Derek Walcott (1930- ) is a poet and playwright born in St. Lucia and also a Nobel Prize (1992). Jamaica Kincaid (1949- ) was born in Antigua and moved soon to the USA. She has written novels and short stories like “Girl”.

In AFRICA, we can also find three English-writing Nobel Prizes: Wole Soyinka (1934-) from Nigeria, used traditional African myths in his poems and plays; Nadine Gordimer (1923- ), is a white writer who criticized the apartheid system in South Africa in her novels and short stories; and J. M. Coetzee (1940), was born in South Africa, but lives in Australia now. Author of Disgrace (1999), among other novels.

Finally, CANADA’s literature stands somewhat apart from the rest of Post-Colonial Literature. Frequently, Canadian writers are concerned with more specific themes, like Canadian identity, the relationship with nature and the USA (what has been called the “Garrison mentality” referring to the open spaces and fear of other nations). Margaret Atwood (1939- ) is probably the most famous Canadian writer. She has written novels, poems and short stories. Alice Munro (1931- ) is one of the most prestigious contemporary short-story writers. Both Munro and Atwood have been included in a group called Southern Ontario Gothic, because of the theme and style (grotesque characters, evil in human soul). Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) wrote short stories and novels like The Stone Angel (1964).

CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE (1945-)

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Literature in the UK after WWII is also difficult to generalize. Maybe the only clear group is the “Angry Young Men”, a group of dramatists and novelists (among them Harold Pinter, John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, Allan Sillitoe and Tom Stoppard) who in the 1950s expressed their discontent with traditional English society in anti-establishment works that have also been described as “Kitchen Sink Realism” (with its audiovisual correspondence in film—the British New Wave and Free Cinema—and television—Coronation Street, Eastenders). George Orwell (1903-1950) was also a left-wing writer who criticized social injustice in his novels, like Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949). Doris Lessing (1919-), a recent Nobel Prize, has written both left-wing radical novels and science fiction. Graham Greene (1904-1991) was both a popular writer and well received by the critics. He wrote “Catholic” novels, like The Power and the Glory (1949) and espionage novels like The Third Man (1950, after the script for the film) and The Human Factor (1978).

Other more experimental novelists are Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957), who wrote Under the Volcano (1947) a modernist novel with complex symbolism; John Fowles (1926-2005), author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), which is frequently mentioned as an example of a metafictional post-modern novel; Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), who wrote novels about sexual relationships and the power of the unconscious (Under the Net, 1954); and Anthony Burgess (1917-1993), A Clockwork Orange (1962).

Some of the most acclaimed turn-of-the-century English novelists include Ian McEwan (1948-, Amsterdam, Saturday), Martin Amis (1949-) and Kazuo Ishiguro (1954-, born in Japan, The Remains of the Day). Two Scottish novelists worth mentioning are Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting, 1994) and William Boyd (Armadillo, 1998).

Two important recent poets are Philip Larkin (1922-1985) and Ted Hughes (1930-1998), Poet Laureate and Sylvia Plath’s husband, “The Jaguar”.

The field of popular literature has been extremely fruitful in England during the twentieth century:
- Agatha Christie (1890-1976): detective novels
- Ian Fleming (1908-1964): James Bond novels
- J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973): Lord of the Rings
- C.S. Lewis(1898-1963): The Chronicles of Narnia
- Sea Adventure: Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander
- Historical novels. Robert Graves (1895-1985), I, Claudius novels. Ken Follet (1949-) The Pillars of the Earth (1989)
- Confessional writing: Helen Fielding’s Bridget’s Jones’s Diary, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995), Fever Pitch (1992)
- In the field of Children’s literature, English literature has provided the world with the most famous books and characters: Enid Blyton (1897-1968), the fifth most translated author worldwide (The Famous Five series, Malory Towers; J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter); Roald Dahl (1916-1990), born in Wales to Norwegian parents. James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Revolting Rhymes. Unsentimental, dark humour. Also stories for adults, like Tales of the Unexpected.

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION: 1945-

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Narrative since WW II resists easy generalization because it is extremely various. On the one hand, it has been vitalized by international currents (French existentialism, ‘nouveau roman’, Latin-American magical realism) and by the media and popular culture, and on the other it has become more self-conscious and reflexive, that’s to say, it has developed a post-modern sensibility. In fact, the term ‘Post-Modernism’ is frequently used to talk about the whole post-war period, although here we will use it only to talk about a particular kind of novels. Another obvious problem when talking about recent literature is the lack of perspective. This means that many times all the attempts at classification are somewhat artificial (some writers should appear in more than one place, depending on which of their books we are talking about) and in most cases they become just lists of writers and books without a clear defining line.
The end of the Second World War brought about an ‘age of anxiety’ during the 40s and 50s in American society and literature: the cold war (fear of the Bomb), the McCarthy witch hunt (fear of Communism), and a general feeling of loneliness and alienation in spite of the material well-being were very widespread. The response to this anxiety was varied: first of all, there were some very interesting novels about the war, like Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948), Irvin Shaw’s The Young Lions (1948) or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961). Then, after the war some writers decided to go back to their cultural and racial roots looking for the reasons for this alienated spirit (Jewish-American novelists, African Americans, Writers from the South), others tried to portray in a realistic manner the absurdity of life (Realists), while others tried to experiment with words and write about the role of literature in this new society, questioning and playing with common assumptions about reading and literature (Post-Modern Novel).

4.5.1. JEWISH-AMERICAN FICTION

In the 40s and 50s the Jewish-American novel grew in importance. These novels looked at the spiritual and psychological problems of mid twentieth-century life in a new way. They brought to American literature a new interest in the old problems of morality and a new kind of self-critical humor, as well as a different vision of cultural conflict and linguistic identity.
ISAAC B. SINGER (1904-1991). Born in Poland, he migrated to the USA in 1935. Most of his work was written in Yiddish, the mixture of German and Hebrew which had been the common language of East European Jews for centuries. Singer’s stories brought to America the world of Jewish superstitions and folk tales, with a sad kind of humor that introduced the wisdom of the pre-war Polish-Jewish village to the non-Jewish world. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.
SAUL BELLOW (1915-2005). With a Russian-Jewish background, Bellow is highly influenced by anthropology and sociology. His early novels Dangling Man (1944) and The Victim (1947) are existentialist novels about the war and urban life respectively. Novels from the 50s like The Adventures of Augie March (1953) and Henderson the Rain King (1959) are more humorous while Herzog (1964) portrays a far more serious and intellectual hero. He is probably the Jewish American writer who has achieved most worldwide recognition. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.
BERNARD MALAMUD (1914-1986). His first novel, The Natural (1952) is the story of a great baseball player who is a moral failure. But most of his novels and stories deal humorously with the Jewish-American tradition, conveying a sense of the Jewish present and past, the real and the surreal, fact and legend. His main novels are The Assistant (1957) and The Fixer (1966).
PHILIP ROTH (1933- ) is younger than the other three and his humor shows a much more critical attitude towards the American Jewish community. Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) is a very funny book about sex and also an extremely self-critical novel. In the 1980s and 1990s he became a much more ambitious writer, and in works like American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998) or The Human Stain (2000) he has attempted a trilogy of American life of tolstoian proportions.
There are other Jewish writers who are also worth mentioning, like HENRY ROTH (1906-1995), the ‘father’ of Jewish American fiction. His novel Call it Sleep (1934) is a modernistic story of a ghetto child. Others have not made such an intensive use of the Jewish American background in their works: JOSEPH HELLER (Catch-22 ,1961), E. L DOCTOROW (Ragtime, 1975) and J. D. SALINGER (1919) whose The Catcher in the Rye (1951) became an emblematic work of the post-war period. Holden Caulfield’s narrative voice, his personal sense of humor and his teen-age anxieties have turned the book into a cult-phenomenon.

► See Book Presentation Guide 5.6 “The Catcher in the Rye”, p. 140.

4.5.2 AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE AND OTHER MINORITIES

Literature written by African-Americans has always had a distinct identity in the context of American literature. Present since slavery times, its emergence and power walks parallel to a slow and difficult process of fighting for freedom, self-awareness and cultural consciousness.
The first books written by Blacks were the slave narratives from colonial times like OLAUDAH EQUIANO (1745-1797) and his The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). In the 19th century, FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1817-1895), born a slave and escaped to the North, became a very famous antislavery leader and orator. He published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856-1915) wrote Up from Slavery (1901), an autobiographical work in which he tried to improve the lives of Blacks, although he accepted segregation. W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868-1963) wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903) in response to Washington and in it he described the special culture of American Blacks and called public attention to the ‘Negro problem’. However, it was not until the HARLEM RENAISSANCE that works of true literary value were first produced. This was a movement of African American writers connected with the Harlem jazz clubs of the 20s and 30s. Their works were a vindication of their own literary identity. LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967), JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967) and COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946) are the three most important poets of the movement.
From the Depression to the 1960s three major figures stand out: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. In Native Son (1940), RICHARD WRIGHT (1908-1960) used naturalistic techniques to describe the social and psychological pressures on his black hero. RALPH ELLISON (1914-1994) used in Invisible Man (1952) the metaphor of invisibility to talk about black people as seen by white society. JAMES BALDWIN (1924-1987) wrote moving fiction and essays about the black problem and also about homosexuality: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Another Country (1962). Wright and Ellison are examples of opposite stands in a debate that is always present when talking about African-American literature: to what extent must art be a political weapon used to improve the status of African-Americans or mere art, just considered from an aesthetic point of view. Following this dichotomy, one could distinguish two lines in African American literature: one that is more political and combative, which uses art as a political weapon (and where one could find Wright, Baraka, Morrison or movie-makers like Spike Lee), and another one which stresses aesthetics and which, although usually thematically centered on problems of race, considers art from an aesthetic point of view (Ellison, Cullen).

► See Classroom Activity # 22 “African American Literature”, p. 182.

In the 1960s IMAMU AMIRI BARAKA (Leroi Jones, 1934- ) led the Black Arts Movement with powerful poetry and drama. Black awareness, political use of art, the search for Black English (called ‘Ebonics’) and a challenge to white tradition and forms are some of the features of a movement that also includes other writers like ED BULLINS (1935- ) and ADRIENNE KENNEDY (1931- ). LORRAINE HANSBERRY (1930-1965) wrote A Raisin in the Sun (1959), the first play by a black woman produced on Broadway.
From the 1970s to the present, African-American writing has known its best moments with female writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. TONI MORRISON (1931- ) has written novels which, although with clear political meaning, are consummate works of art. She wrote The Bluest Eye in 1970, and later other longer novels like Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987), in which she employs the dreamlike techniques of magical realism. In 1993 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. ALICE WALKER (1944- ) has long been associated with feminism, presenting black existence from the female perspective. She uses a kind of lyrical realism to center on the dreams and failures of accessible, credible people. The Color Purple is her most famous work, an epistolary dialect novel which tells the story of the love between two poor black sisters. Some interesting contemporary African-American poets are RITA DOVE (1952- ), MAYA ANGELOU (1928- ), and ISHMAEL REED (1938-).

► See Book Presentation Guide 5.7 “The Bluest Eye”, p. 143,

Other minorities
The last decades have witnessed a vindication of the literatures of different minorities, who write about their own cultural difference and about the difficulties in reconciling their conflicting origins and traditions with American society:

• Native Americans:
o WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON (1939- ), travel writer, author of Blue Highways (1982), a cult road story in prairie territory.
o SIMON ORTIZ (1941- ), poet.
o LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948- ), poet and short story writer.

• Asian-Americans:
o CATHY SONG (1955- ) and LI-YOUNG-LEE (1957- ) are poets who write about the contradictions of life in the US for Asian-Americans.
o AMY TAN (1952- ): The Joy Luck Club (1989), a novel about two generations of Chinese-American women.
o DAVID HENRY HWANG (1957): M. Butterfly (1988), a play inspired by the opera which was then turned into a film.

• Latino writers are particularly interesting for Spanish-speaking readers, because of the interactions between the languages (including ‘Spanglish’ and ‘Caló’, a mixture of languages typical of Chicano culture) that we can be lucky enough to appreciate.
o JOSE ANTONIO BURCIAGA (1940- ), RODOLFO ‘CORKY’ GONZALES (1928- ) and ABELARDO ‘LALO’ DELGADO (1931-) are three examples of militant Chicano poets from the 60s and 70s.
o OSCAR HIJUELOS (1951- ), of Cuban origin. The first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989).
o SANDRA CISNEROS (1954-), short story writer (The House on Mango Street, 1983) and author of the novel Caramelo (2002).
o Other Mexican-American writers worth mentioning are RUDOLFO ANAYA (1927- ) and ROLANDO HINOJOSA-SMITH (1929- ), prose writers; and LORA DEE CERVANTES (1954- ) and ALBERTO RÍOS (1952- ), poets.

► See Classroom Activity # 23 “Chicano Poems”, p. 183.

4.5.3. WRITERS FROM THE SOUTH

The South has always had a distinct social and literary identity in American society. From the earliest history of American Literature, Southern writers have exhibited a peculiar way of portraying life in their works. Most Southern writers, like Poe, Kate Chopin, Faulkner or Tennessee Williams display some typically Southern features: an obsession with the past as the source of the moral sickness of the present, Gothic settings and atmosphere, and a poetic kind of language.
Robert Penn Warren and Katherine Ann Porter continued producing interesting works of fiction after the war and had an important influence on writers like Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers, three female writers who have also been described as ‘new naturalists’ because of the description of suffocating settings and oppressive destinies which destroy the dreams of their characters.
• EUDORA WELTY (1909- ) writes about Mississippi and shows an interest in myth, the comic and the grotesque, and in the individual rather than in sociology. Her most important novel is Delta Wedding (1946).
• FLANNERY O’CONNOR (1925-1964) shares the use of subnormal, eccentric or exceptional characters with Eudora Welty. She belongs to the so-called ‘Southern Gothic’ school of writing: her grotesque characters are violent often because of superstition, religion or racial prejudice. Sometimes the events and characters are part of a religious allegory (she is a Catholic and her writing is frequently described as such). O’Connor handles terribly violent events with a touch of black humor, and she is the author of Wise Blood (1952) and short stories like “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1955) and “The Life You Save May be your Own”.
• CARSON MCULLERS (1917-1967) also belongs to the ‘Southern Gothic’ tradition. In works like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) or the short story “The Ballad of the Sad Café” (1941) she also uses strange characters to show the horrors and sadness of modern life in Southern towns. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, for example, is the story of the (in)communication between and other lonely individuals who think (wrongly) that he is the only person who understands their problems.
TRUMAN CAPOTE (1924-1984) started writing in the ‘Southern Gothic’ tradition, with works like Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and The Grass Harp (1951), which are beautifully written, painful stories about young boys growing up in the South. Most of the scenes take place at night, in a dreamlike reality where the characters discover their true identity. But Capote changed and so did his work: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) changed locale, content and style: it is a comedy of manners set in New York. In Cold Blood (1960) is a ‘non-fiction’ novel, part of the ‘New Journalism’ movement, as well as a fascinating account of a real murder and the fate of the murderers.

► See Book Presentation Guide 5.8 “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, p. 145.
► See Classroom Activity # 17 “20th Century Short Stories”, p. 176.

Other interesting Southern writers are WILLIAM STYRON (Sophie’s Choice, 1982) and WALKER PERCY (The Moviegoer, 1961).

4.5.4. POST-MODERN NOVEL

The term ‘post-modern’ can be used in two ways: first, to designate in a general manner post-war art and the contemporary cultural condition after modernism, and secondly, to talk about a specific set of characteristics exhibited by certain writers and their works. These are some of the features of post-modernism in this second sense:
• A change in the relationship between reality and art. Post-modern works or art are not mimetic, do not try to show reality. They continue the experimentation started by modernism, but instead of searching for a hidden meaning in the world through different tools (like modernists), post-modernists imply that there is no reality, no meaning and that all our attempts to find it are just fictions. This is what some of these writers say: “Reality is a word that means nothing without quotation marks” (Nabokov) “What the hell, reality is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there, and literature never did, very long” (John Barth), “Language is arranged and rearranged in such a manner as to give pleasure to artists and readers, excluding any referent to an available exterior world” (Joyce Carol Oates). Therefore, artists talk about ‘the death of the novel’, in the sense that the word novel had in the 19th century.
• Self-consciousness. The novel looks at itself. The novelist writes in order to show the impossibility of writing, and makes comments about the processes of writing and reading, and about the artificiality of this enterprise, so that the novel becomes a fiction about fiction, frequently called metafiction. The writers don’t expose, attack or explain American reality; they just play, laugh at or destroy all the devices used till now to explain reality. This is a British example from The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles: after twelve chapters of a conventionally told love story, chapter 13 begins with these questions: “Who is Sarah? Out of what shadows does she come?” and the answers are
I do not know. The story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind.... Have I disgracefully broken the illusion? No, my characters still exist, and in a reality no less, or no more, real than the one I have just broken ... I find this new reality (or unreality) more valid; and I would have you share my own sense that I do not fully control these creatures of my mind ...

• This implies a playful attitude (also called ‘ludism’) where reading becomes a kind of game played between the writer and the reader. Some writers (Pynchon, Barth) use ‘Black Humor’ in novels which combine humor with horror and violence. Laughter is a means to make the reader realize that all the values that rule reality and fiction are completely artificial and gratuitous, that their work is as empty as the world it represents.
• Fragmentation and discontinuity: In order to show the artificiality of the fictional processes, all these processes are ‘deconstructed’ and novels become incomplete, the plot sometimes disappears and novels may have no beginnings or ends. Richard Brautigan, for example, proposes 5 different endings for A Confederate General from Big Sur, but “then, there are more endings: the sixth, the 53rd, the 131st, the 9,435th ending, endings going faster and faster until this book is having 186,000 endings per second”. Post-modern writers also draw attention to the fact that life, as well as novels, is constructed through frames, and expose these frames in their works. Nabokov’s Lolita, for instance seems to be an autobiographical story by one of the characters, but there is a foreword which implies another fictitious author. Auster’s Oracle Night is a novel about a writer who is writing a story about another writer who is, in turn, writing another story about another writer who …
• Intertextuality: the game of reading and writing involves other stories and genres, and therefore, the novels play with generic conventions, become parodies of other texts and dislocate readers’ expectations. Auster’s The New York Trilogy and Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, for instance, have been called anti-detective stories because of the way they use detective story conventions to actually achieve opposite results.
• For some writers, words and stories become the only way to make sense out of life. Douglas Coupland says “Either our lives become stories, or there’s just no way to get through them”. And Paul Auster: “Stories are the soul’s basic food … It’s through stories that we struggle to find a meaning in the world”.
Although strictly speaking postmodernism could be a movement restricted only to the experimental works of the 60s and 70s, in a broader sense of the word there are quite a lot of writers that can be called post-modern. ‘Post-modern writers’ in this sense have been considered as “probably the best and most daring generation since the Lost Generation”:
• VLADIMIR NABOKOV (1889-1997). Born in Russia, he went to the USA in 1940, and some years later started to write in English. A mediator between the Russian and American worlds, he helped to introduce expressionist European currents into the more realistic American tradition. Lolita (1958), Pale Fire (1962).
• JOHN BARTH (1930- ). His works have been called ‘Existentialist comedies’. More interested in how the story is told than in the story itself, he sees realism as the enemy. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), Lost in the Funhouse (1968).
• THOMAS PYNCHON (1937- ). A ‘cult’ writer, as mysterious as Salinger. Plots around mysteries that the characters have to solve. Difficult, complex and solid novels. Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), V (1963). A good place to start is The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), a short novel about conspiracies with lots of possible meanings.
• RICHARD BRAUTIGAN (1935-1984). A Confederate General from Big Sur (1964), Trout Fishing in America (1967). Metafictional games.
• WILLIAM H. GASS (1934- ). In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968).
• KURT VONNEGUT (1922- ). A master of ‘black humor’. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
• JOHN IRVING (1942- ). Uses humor and the act of writing as a way of making sense out of life. Mixture of tragedy and comedy, emotion and reflection. A great story-teller, very popular lately. Long, ‘undownputtable’ novels. The World According to Garp (1978), A Widow for a Year (1998). Oscar for the script of The Cider House Rules (based on his own novel Princes of Maine, Kings of New England).
• DON DE LILLO (1936- ), a visionary, one of the sharpest chroniclers of end-of-the-century American society: Americana (1971), White Noise (1985), Underworld (1997).
• PAUL AUSTER (1947- ). Auster’s New York Trilogy (1987) plays with generic expectations and the conventions of the detective genre although later novels are more traditionally narrated (Moon Palace, 1989, The Brooklyn Follies, 2005). Oracle Night (2002) goes back to the metafictional games of the New York Trilogy. Also a scriptwriter (Smoke, 1995) and film director (Blue in the Face, 1995, Lulu on the Bridge, 1999), he is a great story-teller whose narrative always offers excellent food for thought.
• DOUGLAS COUPLAND (1961- ). Canadian-born, his Generation X is not just a description of a dissatisfied generation, but also a reflection on how telling stories helps us to make sense out of life.
• TIM O’BRIEN (1946- ). Maybe the best writer to describe the Vietnam experience. The Things They Carried (1990) is a series of interconnected short stories about the Vietnam war, told in a very metafictional manner (the same stories told from different points of view, contrasts between a ‘true’ war story and a false one…)
• WILLIAM BURROUGHS (1914- ). A member of the ‘beat generation’, his works are post-modern but not in the same sense as the other writers: his novels are set in a complete dream world and filled with terrible nightmares. The Naked Lunch (1959) is a gallery of atrocities that has influenced authors like HUBERT SELBY (1928-2004) or BRET EASTON ELLIS (1964- American Psycho), in a movement that has been described as ‘New Naturalism’ and which is centered on the description of evil.

► See Classroom Activity # 24 “Subtotals”, p. 184.
► See Book Presentation Guide 5.9. “Moon Palace”, p. 148.

4.5.5. NEW REALISTS

There are a number of writers who do not share the post-modernist spirit of experimentation but instead try to tell stories which reflect the changes in contemporary world in a less experimental manner. Of course, the label ‘realists’ is just a tool which includes many writers who have completely different approaches towards literature, although all of them (including the ones we have classified under the labels ‘Writers from the South’ and ‘Jewish-Americans’) share the same belief in the power of the word to represent the world we live in.
In the 1960s there was a movement called New Journalism which tried to combine journalism and novelistic techniques to describe the contemporary world in what were called ‘non-fiction novels’. TOM WOLFE (1931- ) wrote The Electric Kool-Acid Test (1968), TRUMAN CAPOTE (1924-1984) wrote In Cold Blood (1968) and NORMAN MAILER (1923- ) The Armies of the Night (1968) and The Executioner’s Song (1978). Mailer has been a prolific writer who has been able to change his style throughout the last decades. Before his non-fiction novels, he wrote an excellent post-war novel (The Naked and the Dead, 1948), and lately he has come back to fiction with works like Ancient Evenings (1983) or Tough Guys don’t Dance (1984).
Mailer is also representative of a group of writers who seem to be following Hemingway’s lead and who try to make of themselves men of action, the heroes people need to wake them and stir their consciences. JACK KEROUAK (1922-1969) is a member of the ‘Beat Generation’ who narrated his rebellion against conventionalism in On the Road (1957). KEN KESEY (1935- ) was also a part of the counterculture, and his One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) is a funny and mordant satire on the dehumanization of western society. Also from the 60s, although not too realistic, TERRY SOUTHERN (1924-1995) is an underground writer who wrote novels like Candy (1968) or The Magic Christian (1959), together with the scripts for Easy Rider or Dr. Strangelove.
JOHN CHEEVER (1912-1982) and JOHN UPDIKE (1932- ) have frequently been called ‘novelists of manners’ in the sense that they both write stories that reflect and criticize a certain kind of society that they know well. Cheever is known for his elegant, suggestive short stories which scrutinize the New York middle-class suburban world. Updike set his novels in the East and is famous for his four ‘Rabbit’ novels in which he follows a man through four decades of American history: from Rabbit, Run (1960) to Rabbit at Rest (1990). RAYMOND CARVER (1938-1988) specialized in short stories set in the Pacific Northwest (“Cathedral”, Short Cuts) and started a trend which became very popular in the 80s. This style is sometimes called minimal fiction or ‘dirty realism’, because the stories are not strictly realistic). Other examples of ‘dirty realism’ (although they all dislike the label) are DAVID LEAVITT (1961- ), a gay writer who became pretty famous with The Lost Language of Cranes (1986), RICHARD RUSSO (1949- , Empire Falls, 2001) and RICHARD FORD (1944- , Independence Day, 1995).

Other writers, not very easy to classify but still worth mentioning, are:

• ANNE TYLER (1941- ), the author of The Accidental Tourist (1985).
• JOYCE CAROL OATES (1938- The Wheel of Love, 1970) who has become a popular success lately with Blonde (1998) or We Were the Mulvaneys (1996).
• CORMAC MC CARTHY (1933- ) who has played with the settings and conventions of the western to talk about the end of ranch life in his ‘Border Trilogy’ (All the Pretty Horses, 1992, The Crossing, 1994 and Cities of the Plain, 1998) and Blood Meridian (1985). McCarthy’s characters try to relive the myth of the Old West but find a cruel reality instead.
• GORE VIDAL (1925- ) has published satirical novels (Myra Breckingridge, 1968), historical novels (The City and the Pillar, 1948, Burr, 1973) as well as political essays, where he criticizes fiercely American expansionism and Republican administrations.

Finally, some recent writers (called the New Generation by The New Yorker):

• JONATHAN FRANZEN (1959- ). The Corrections (2001).
• DAVID FOSTER WALLACE (1962- ). Infinite Jest (1996), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)
• MICHAEL CHABON (1963- ). The Extraordinary Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
• CHUCK PALAHNIUK (1962- ). The Fight Club (1996).
• RICK MOODY (1961- ). The Ice Storm (1994).

MODERNISM (1901-1945)

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Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes a set of cultural tendencies and movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. The first half of the 20^th century is then normally referred to in literary histories as ‘Modernism’, a very general term used to talk about a series of different movements and tendencies (impressionism, expressionism, imagism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism...) that tried to break with old tradition and the realistic concept of art. Modernism challenged the assumption of reality which is at the roots of realism: that there is a common phenomenal world that can be reliably described. Psychoanalysis, Darwinism, Nietzche and Marxism questioned traditional assumptions and so did World War I and the skeptical spirit it brought about. They all helped to shatter traditional beliefs. (((Regardless of the specific year it was produced, modernism is characterized primarily by a complete and unambiguous embrace of what Andreas Huyssen calls the "Great Divide."[7] That is, it believes that there is a clear distinction between capital-A Art and mass culture, and it places itself firmly on the side of Art and in opposition to popular or mass culture. (Postmodernism, according to Huyssen, may be defined precisely by its rejection of this distinction.)))))

The artistic response to all these changes took place both in the realm of form and content. From the point of view of content, the horrors of WW I and the arrival of the ideas mentioned before brought about a general spirit of pessimism, disillusionment and skepticism (reflected in The Waste Land, for instance). There was an important group of American writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, e.e.cummings, Hart Crane) who shared this spirit of post-war alienation and lived in Paris for some time, who came to be known as the Lost Generation.

1. HIGH MODERNISM

Just as in painting artists were looking for a new form of expression, in literature writers were trying to experiment and find a new vocabulary and new techniques. Poets dislocated grammar and punctuation looking for new images and ways of expression, and novelists experimented with new points of view and a different conception of time and plot to try to reflect the hidden consciousness of the characters. The term ‘HIGH MODERNISM’ is sometimes used to describe a group of writers particularly interested in this formal revolution. With the exception of William Faulkner, this group is more European-based than American. The two masterpieces in English that best represent this movement are probably T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and James Joyce’s Ulysses, both first published in 1922. These are some of the FORMAL INNOVATIONS introduced by these writers:

In poetry, the concept of ‘image’ (Imagism): the writer’s response to a visual object or scene.
Obscurity, opacity. The reader is required to make an effort to understand the works. In Eliot’s and Pound’s poetry, for example, there are all kinds of cultural references the reader must work hard to understand.
Time is not presented in chronological order. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are used instead.
Fragmented plots, sometimes without a beginning or an end are also frequent.
Disappearance of the traditional omniscient narrator in the novel. In their search for different ways to represent reality, they replaced this narrator by partial points of view or by interior monologues or soliloquies that try to reproduce the ‘stream of consciousness’ of the characters. A few theoretical considerations will probably be welcome: bearing in mind the distinction between focalization and narration (‘who sees?’ versus ‘who speaks?’), we can establish different kinds of narrators:

First person narrator (major participant, as in Huck Finn; minor, as in The Great Gatsby; or even non-participant, as in The Scarlet Letter). In some cases, the narrator is unreliable, and therefore everything that s/he tells is suspect and must be interpreted by the reader (for example, children telling stories where adults do things they don’t really understand. Huck Finn might be a good example).
Second person narrator. Quite uncommon. An example: Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter Night a Traveller.
Third person narrator. When the narration is in the third person, the focalization becomes extremely important. We can then talk about

an omniscient point of view (typical of 19^th century realist novels. The voice that tells the story is in total control, knows everything and has authoritative value),
a dramatic or objective point of view (Hemingway’s short stories: the narrator is like the lens of a camera that simply records what s/he sees), or
a selected or limited point of view (also called ‘Jamesian’ after Henry James: a character is the ‘focus’ or ‘center of consciousness’, and the reader sees the action through the focus of that character).

Modernist fiction became extremely interested in characters’ psychology and the concept of ‘stream of consciousness’ that psychologist William James had developed. This term refers to the thoughts, memories and feelings that exist in our mind in what he called the Pre-Speech level. They are not censored, rationally controlled or logically ordered and are formed instead by a method of free association. Modernist writers tried to show the hidden aspects of a character’s personality through the representation of this level of consciousness, and the different techniques they developed were:

Description: the narrator describes with his/her own language the hidden thoughts of a character.
Interior Monologue: reproduction of these thoughts in the character’s own language.
Soliloquy: Its purpose is not only to communicate psychic identity (like the interior monologue), but also to advance the plot. It communicates ideas and emotions which are related to plot and action.

This period has sometimes been described as the ‘coming of age’ of American Literature, and it is certainly an extraordinarily productive time with an outstanding number of excellent writers in English, whether British, Irish or American.

JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941) might the best modernist writer in the English language. Born in Dublin, he left his native city never to come back, but he kept writing about it for all his life. He wrote Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1917), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegan’s Wake (1939). Ulysses is probably the most characteristic novel of this period. It was published in Paris and for a long time was censored in Ireland. It has no real plot, following instead the wanderings and thoughts (stream of consciousness in interior monologues) of Leopold Bloom in Dublin on a single day (Bloom’s day). Each chapter corresponds to an episode in Homer’s Odyssey and has a distinct style of its own (for instance, in the Maternity Hospital scene the prose imitates all the English literary styles starting with Beowulf, symbolizing the growth of the foetus in the womb in its steady movement through time). It is one of the most ambitious novels of the century as well as one of the best achievements of modernist literature.

GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1948) lived in Paris and her poetic work and her role as mentor and art collector made her essential for the development of American modernism. Her experimental poetry is a mixture of extravagance and genius. She tries to describe reality in a completely new way, sometimes almost impossible to understand. Tender Buttons (1914).

But the most important poets of the group were EZRA POUND (1885-1972) and T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965), who were both born in America but spent most of their lives in Europe. EZRA POUND (1885-1972). From 1909 through the 20s, he was involved in most of the major artistic movements. A leader of the ‘Imagist’ school of poetry, where an image is described as the writer’s response to a visual object or scene. His poetry is full of allusions to works of literature and art from many eras and cultures. Influenced by Asian literature, he edited Eliot’s The Waste Land and was an important link between the United States and Britain. His main works are Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and the Cantos (1925-1972).

T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) went to England early and stayed there, where he became a major figure. The Waste Land (1922) is probably the most important American poem of the 20^th century both formally (because of its modernist techniques) and thematically (because of the disillusionment, skepticism and decadence of the modern world shown). Like Pound, he was influenced by Eastern philosophy and literature and he made references to all kinds of works of literature and art.

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1841) was an English novelist, part of the so-called “Bloomsbury group”. Author of Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928).

Other important American poets of this movement are:

· WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955). Wrote abstract, difficult poetry, with very deep meanings: “Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully”, he said. One of his most famous poems is “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

· HILDA DOOLITTLE or H.D. for short (1886-1961) and MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972) were influenced by Pound and imagism and wrote excellent poetry.

· e. e. cummings (he never wrote capitals in his name) (1894-1962). A member of the ‘Lost Generation’. Innovative verse distinguished for its humor, celebration of love and eroticism, and the experimentation with punctuation and visual format on the page. “O sweet spontaneous”

· WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963). Influenced by Eliot and Pound, but more interested in the language and scenes of everyday life. Warmer feeling for real people and real life. Colloquial language. Easier to understand. “The Young Housewife”, “The Dead Baby”.

► See Poems in “Twentieth Century Poetry”, pp. 177 & 178, by Ezra Pound, H.D. Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens and cummings.

2. THE LOST GENERATION

There was an important group of American writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, e.e.cummings, Hart Crane) who shared this spirit of post-war alienation and lived in Paris for some time, who came to be known as the Lost Generation (term used by Gertrude Stein talking to Hemingway). They were ‘lost’ because they had lost their ideals, ‘lost’ to America because they lived abroad, and ‘lost’ because they did not accept older values but couldn’t really find the writer’s place in this new society

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) found rapid success in the 20s with his novel This Side of Paradise (1921) and his Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), with which he became the official spokesman of the ‘Jazz Age’. The Great Gatsby (1925) was also received with enthusiastic reviews, but soon afterwards his literary eclipse started. He went to Hollywood to work as a scriptwriter, but did not find success and in 1940 died poor and forgotten. The Great Gatsby is his masterpiece, an excellent novel about the American Dream and the failure associated with success. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, the narrator, we see both the glamour and the moral ugliness of the twenties. Gatsby is possibly a criminal, but also a true romantic, someone able to pursue a dream, even if it is impossible to achieve. The novel combines symbolism and psychological realism in a way that has been described as a “symbolist tragedy”. Fitzgerald also dealt with similar topics in his short stories, some of which are also worth mentioning, like “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” or some of the Pat Hobby stories about his Hollywood failure.

WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962) is probably the best representative of ‘high modernism’ in the American novel. His use of different narrative voices and focalizations, interior monologues and soliloquies, or use of ‘continuous present’ (mixture of past, present and future actions) make novels like The Sound and the Fury (1929) or As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932) or Absalom, Absalom! (1936) stand out as some of the best of 20^th century world literature. Faulkner was also the first writer to create a fictional territory (Yoknapatawpha County) in which all his stories take place. This territory was based on Oxford, Mississippi (where Faulkner had been born) and is the background for characters that appear and reappear in different novels creating a complete fictional world of mythical proportions. In his novels and short stories, Faulkner analyzes individual psychology as well as social conflicts, particularly racial problems in the South that had lost the war. He received the Nobel Prize in 1949 and is universally acclaimed as one of the best writers of the century.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961) was a very different kind of modernist. He developed a sparse, concise style which he combined with what has been called the ‘Dramatic’ or ‘Objective’ point of view, that is, the perspective of an impartial observer who describes everything from the outside, without explanations or comments. Hemingway says as little as possible, and he then lets the characters speak. Therefore, his use of dialogue becomes fundamental to understand both the action and the characters’ motives. He also described his technique of implying things rather than explaining them using the metaphor of an iceberg (“There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows”). All these techniques are typically modernistic, because they put the reader in an uncomfortable position: he/she has to make an effort to guess what exactly is going on and what the implications and possible deeper meanings are. Hemingway lived in Paris between 1921 and 1928 and this is the time when he wrote some of his best short stories (“Hills like White Elephants” and “The Killers” among them), collected in In Our Time and Men Without Women. His experience in Spain was reflected in The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) (1926). Death in the Afternoon (1932) and For Whom the Bells Toll (1940). In these and his other novels and stories (like “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, A Farewell to Arms or “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber”) we see the development of the typical Hemingway hero: a stoic man of few words who may be sensitive but never shows it, and who frequently shows a misogynistic attitude. He liked to put his heroes in situations between life and death (bullfighters, soldiers, hunters) where they would show their real self. His last novel was The Old Man and the Sea (1952), after which he received the Nobel Prize. He was probably the most popular American novelist at the time, but the misogynistic attitude of some of his works has put Hemingway in an uncomfortable position in the American canon in these days of political correctness.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876-1941) was a precursor of Modernism. Considered by Faulkner “the father of [his] generation of writers”, his best work is Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a series of interconnected short stories taking place in the same town and narrated by the same character. Thematically it is part of a movement called the ‘Revolt from the Village’ which tried to show the many ways in which people were damaged by the narrowness of life in small-town America. But the book is also modernist because of its use of time, the importance of form over content and its emphasis on the problems of perception and communication. There isn’t really a plot, and instead the writer attempts to capture special and significant moments in the lives of the citizens of Winesburg, moments that are like windows into the true nature of a character (a concept similar to Joyce’s ‘epiphanies’).

JOHN DOS PASSOS (1896-1970). A left-wing radical in the beginning, he combined a realistic use of language with modernist techniques to try to show the daily life of citizens in Manhattan Transfer (1925) or the evolution of the recent history of his country in U.S.A., a trilogy that included The 42^nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932) and The Big Money (1936). He shared with the ‘Lost Generation’ the spirit of disillusionment, with the naturalists before him a strong sense of fate and a realistic style, and with the modernists the ideas about the difficulty of perceiving reality. His solution to try to reflect the complex reality of life is to use strategies coming from the movies, like the combination of whole scene ‘shots’ with ‘close-ups’ to show the feelings of individual people. He also used ‘collage’ techniques, mixing popular songs with newspaper headlines, phrases from advertisements, short biographies of contemporary public figures and impressionistic visions of reality (that he called ‘camera eye’).

3. OTHER WRITERS

There are other excellent writers who shared the spirit of the times but were not part of any group and did not attempt a formal revolution. In the United States, these are some important poets:

· CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967) is probably the clearest heir of the Emerson-Whitman spirit, and shares with them his faith in America and natural optimism. His best well-known poem is Chicago (1914).

· ROBERT FROST (1874-1963). Very popular poet. A farmer in New England, most of his poems deal with farming and nature. He uses ‘unliterary’ direct language, but behind their apparent simplicity his poems hide deeper meanings (for him, a good poem “begins in delight and ends in wisdom”). Some famous poems by Frost are “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Mending Walls”.

· Harlem Renaissance. A movement of African American writers connected with the Harlem jazz clubs of the 20s and 30s who vindicated their own literary identity. LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967), JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967) and COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946) are the three most important poets of the movement.

And some American novelists:

SINCLAIR LEWIS (1885-1951). A socialist, his writing is more realistic than modernistic, but shows a new spirit: instead of portraying the typical realistic fight for life, his characters have everything they need from a material point of view, but they show a kind of spiritual dissatisfaction. Main Street (1920) satirized monotonous, hypocritical small-town life. Babbit (1922) is the story of a frustrated businessman. In 1930, he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968). A late heir of the Naturalist movement, his work is a response to the Depression era after the 1929 Stock Market Crash. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is probably the book that has best pictured the spirit of the times. It’s another story of a trip to the west and a sweet-and-sour portrayal of the American Dream, a mixture of realism and deep concern about other human beings. Also a Nobel Prize, other important works of Steinbeck are Of Mice and Men (1937) and East of Eden (1952). He is part of a movement called Proletarian Realism, to which JAMES AGEE (1909-1955) and MICHAEL GOLD (1896-1967) also belong.

Apart from the ‘sacred cows’ (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner) and the writers described above, there are other novelists that don’t fit exactly within any of the movements mentioned but that should at least be mentioned: THOMAS WOLFE (1900-1938), whose autobiographic ‘anti-novels’ were years ahead of his time; HENRY MILLER (1891-1980), a big rebel whose ‘obscene’ novels, like Tropic of Cancer (1934), could not be published in the USA until the 60s, when he became a kind of guru for the ‘beats’ and ‘hippies’; and NATHANIEL WEST (1902-1940), whose Days of the Locust (1939) is an inversion of the American Dream set in Hollywood.

In the American South, a movement called ‘The Fugitives’ (J, C. RANSOM, ALLEN TATE AND ROBERT PENN WARREN) criticized the business and commercial base of American society and praised the agrarian traditions of the Old South. Also from that part of the country, KATHERINE ANN PORTER (1894-1980) combined the false world of dreams and fantasies with the cruelty of real experience. In her works, tradition and the nostalgic longing for a romantic past create a suffocating atmosphere.

In ENGLAND, there are several important novelists that shared time and ideas with the modernists, but did not take part in their deep formal experimentations:

- D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930). Author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), Sons and Lovers (1913). He showed physical love and human passion in his novels, which meant that some of his novels could not be published in the UK for a long time.

- E. M. FORSTER (1879-1979) wrote ironic, well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. A Room with a View (1908), A Passage to India (1924), Howard's End (1910).

- JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924) is another important literary figure, frequently considered a precursor of Modernist literature. Born in Poland, he learned English as an adult and managed to write excellent novels like Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo (1904). Heart of Darkness (1902) is a symbolic novella of a journey into the Congo river as well as into the human psyche. It is the origin of the film Apocalypse Now.

- EVELYN WAUGH (1903-1966) wrote satires of British high society. ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894-1963) is the author of the dystopia Brave New World (1932). KATHERINE MANSFIELD (1888-1923) was born in New Zealand but developed her short literary career in England. A very good short-story writer.

Poets from the British Isles

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939), an excellent Irish poet and dramatist, he has been considered one of the twentieth century's key English language poets. Received the Noble Prize in 1923. A master of traditional forms and symbolism. DYLAN THOMAS (1914-1953) was born in Wales and wrote only in English. Images from the Bible and from Welsh folklore. W. H. AUDEN (1907-1973) was born in England but later became an American citizen (“Funeral Blues”).

ENGLISH REALISM: THE VICTORIAN ERA (1837-1901)

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Realism is a literary movement that started in France in the 1850s as a reaction against Romanticism and which tried to show "life as it was" in literature all over Europe. Although the concept is also questioned by some critics, it is a useful term to understand the general spirit of the second half of the 19^th century: a reaction to Romanticism, a stress on reason and positivism, and a faith in the power of the artist to show reality.

In England, this movement coincided approximately with the "Victorian era", a period ruled by Queen Victoria (1837-1901) which meant the height of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution. The United Kingdom expanded its borders into America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania and became the first economic and political world power. Many critics prefer to talk about the "Victorian Age", since many of the best English novelists of the period are not "realistic" in the same sense as their French or Russian counterparts. But whether more or less realistic, NOVELS are certainly the most important literary form of the period, excellent novels read by an expanding educated middle class that had developed with economic prosperity.

Walter Scott (1771-1832) started out as a writer of Romantic narrative verse and ended up as a historical novelist. He wrote several historical novels, mainly about Scottish history. Ivanhoe (1819).

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) shared the chronological time with the Romantics, but she shares some of the features of Realism. She has a unique talent and cannot really be assigned to any group. Her novels (Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1816)) remain as popular and critically acclaimed as ever. Her primary interest is people, not ideas, and her achievement lies in the meticulously exact presentation of human situations and in the delineation of characters that are really living creatures. Her novels deal with the life of rural land-owners, seen from a woman’s point of view, have little action but are full of humour and true dialogue.

The Brontë sisters wrote after Jane Austen but are the most Romantic of the Victorian novelists, particularly Emily Brontë (1818-1848), who wrote Wuthering Heights (1847), the epitome of the Romantic novel, wild passion set against the Yorkshire moors. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) wrote Jane Eyre (1847), a love story of great realism.

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) was perhaps the most popular novelist of the period. He serialized most of his novels, which may explain some of his weak plots. Dickens wrote vividly about London life and the struggles of the poor, but in a good-humoured fashion (with grotesque characters) which was acceptable to readers of all classes. His early works such as the Pickwick Papers (1836) are masterpieces of comedy. Later his works became darker, without losing his genius for caricature: Oliver Twist (1837), David Copperfield (1850), Great Expectations (1861). A Christmas Carol (1843) is the popular story of Mr. Scrooge visited by the four Christmas ghosts.

William M. Thackeray (1811-1863) wrote Vanity Fair (1847), a satire of high classes in English society. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1890) might be the most realistic of these writers: Middlemarch (1874). Anthony Trollope (1815-1888) wrote novels about life in a provincial English town. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a very pessimistic writer who wrote stories of people in the countryside (the fictional county of Wessex) whose fate was governed by forces outside themselves (which connects him to Naturalism). Jude the Obscure (1895), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891).

The expansion of the reading middle classes allowed for the development of POPULAR LITERATURE, like the Detective Stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who, following the example of Edgar Allan Poe, wrote his tales of Sherlock Holmes. G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) wrote his Father Brown detective stories as well as other non-genre novels. H.G. Wells (1866-1946) wrote very interesting science fiction, like The Time Machine (1895) or The War of the Worlds (1898) as well as non-genre novels.

Literature for children also developed in the Victorian Age as a separate genre. Some works become globally well-known, such as those of Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), author of the extremely rich fantasies Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1865). Adventure novels, such as those by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), were written for adults, and although they are now generally classified as for children and teenagers they are still powerful: Treasure Island (1883), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Helen Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) was an English author and illustrator, best known for her children’s books, which featured animal characters: The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902).

Some Victorian poets worth mentioning are Robert and Elizabeth Browning (husband and wife), Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1849), a precursor of Modernism, and the pre-Raphaelites (school of painters and poets) Christina and Gabriel Rosseti (brother and sister). Lord (Alfred) Tennyson (1809-1892) was Poet Laureate during most of Queen Victoria’s reign and sang the values of the British Empire and the Victorian Age in some of his poems, like “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854). These Imperial values were also sung by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) several years later in his poems and in novels like The Man Who Would Be King (1888) and The Jungle Book (1894)

ENGLISH ROMANTICISM (1798-1837)

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Romanticism started in Germany and was strongly influenced by the political climate of the era (like the French Revolution in 1789). In England Romanticism represented a return to the old Elizabethan passionate way of writing (and to the Germanic roots) as opposed to the neoclassical period (and its French influence). It is traditionally considered to have started in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. Some of its main features were the importance given to imagination, emotion and passion as opposed to reason, a celebration of nature (as opposed to civilization), an interest in the past and remote settings, and a spirit of idealism, individualism and political liberalism. If drama is the dominant genre of the Renaissance and prose becomes the most important form of the 18^th century, poetry is the quintessential Romantic literary form.

William Blake (1757-1827) was a precursor of Romanticism. He is one of the most original English poets as well as a pictorial artist, and he was able to combine both talents in his Songs of Innocence. Blake wrote highly personal poetry, in which he expressed his ideas that mankind can only be fulfilled through the senses and the imagination.

William Wordsworth (1770-1885) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) were part of a group known as the Lake Poets (who sang the beauty of the Lake District in England) and published the Lyrical Ballads with a Preface that acted as the Romantic Manifesto. Wordsworth’s poetry shows a spirit of pantheism and a return to imagination and the human heart. Coleridge’s contribution to the Romantic Movement lay in a return to the magical and mysterious. Coleridge wanted poetry to fly into the regions of the marvellous and choose themes that, though fantastic, should be acceptable through “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith”. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Kahn (a poem inspired by an opium-induced dream”) are famous poems by Coleridge.

The second generation of Romantic poets included Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats. Lord Byron (1788-1824) was famous not only as a writer but also as a romantic character, with a life full of excess (huge debts, love affairs, exile, died fighting for the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire). Percy B. Shelley (1792-1822) declared openly his atheism, as well as his ideals of free love and anarchism and is one of the finest lyric poets in the English language (“Ode to the West Wind”). He was married to Mary Shelley (1797-1851), author of Frankestein. John Keats (1795-1821) was an excellent poet, although his death at 26 stopped his career short too soon. The feeling in his poems comes from his awareness that beauty dies (“Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to Autumn”).

“The Sick Rose” (WILLIAM BLAKE)

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What is this poem about?
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING by John Donne

2009-12-09T01:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nap/A_Valediction_Forbidding_Mournin_John.htm (with sound) LITWEB: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb05/workshops/poetry/donne1.asp

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, "The breath goes now," and some say, "No," So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of the earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we, by a love so much refined That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do; And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

English Prose (18th century)

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BEGINNING OF LAWRENCE STERNE'S TRISTRAM SHANDY:

"I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing; -- that not only the production of a rational Being was concern'd in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind ; -- and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost : ---- Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, ---- I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me"

JONATHAN'S SWIFT'S "A MODEST PROPOSAL"

"It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms… and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the common-wealth, would deserve so well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation… I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust. …I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males… I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the publick good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing"

RESTORATION AND THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT (1660-1798)

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Historical Background:
- ENGLISH CIVIL WARS (1641-1645, 1648-1649) between the King (Charles I and Charles II, Stuart Kings who overestimated the power of the Monarchy) and the Parliament (led by Oliver Cromwell), a confrontation which also had economic and religious overtones (Puritans against the Church of England, urban traders against rural land-owners).
- After a protectorate, the Monarchy was restored with James II in 1660 (“the Restoration”). His attempt to reintroduce Roman Catholicism led to his deposition with the “Glorious Revolution” (1688), which established that the king could only rule with the Parliament’s consent. A compromise was reached between the fanatical republicanism of the Puritans and the fanatical absolutism of the two ill-fated Stuarts.
- 1707: The Acts of Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain (England and Scotland, previously only common monarchs). Queen Anne became the new Queen and the Parliament of Great Britain was created. This is the beginning of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution.
- Independence of the USA (1776). British-American wars.

The main characteristic of the literature of this period may be summed up in the phrase “From the head, not the heart”. If the literature from the past had been passionate and seen from the point of view of the imagination, the Restoration and the Enlightenment brought about a period governed by reason. The 18th century in particular is the AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT (or “Augustan Age”, “Neoclassicism” or “Age of Reason”), a period dominated by a rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues that promoted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility. Led by the philosophers who were inspired by the discoveries of the previous century (Newton) and the writings of Descartes, John Locke (1632-1704) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626), as well as the example of France, the Encyclopedia and Diderot.

The theatres were closed by the Puritans in 1642 and destroyed a tradition that could never be really recovered. DRAMAS continued to be written and played (following Classical examples, influenced by French writers) but they never reached the literary value of the past. Some important dramatists of the late 18th century were Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) and Richard Sheridan (1751-1816).

The most important POETS of this period were (in chronological order):

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674): Poet, polemicist and politician. The first great literary personality of England. Author of Paradise Lost (1667), a blank-verse epic poem about man’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. Artificial, grandiose style.

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700). Poet, satirist and critic. Precursor of the Enlightenment (emphasis on the head rather than the heart).

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744). The most important poet of the 18th century. The Rape of the Lock (1712). Mock-heroic poem.

PROSE is the most important literary form of this period. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was a “Man of letters”, a man whose personality dominates the century. Essayist, critic, lexicographer, author of the Dictionary of the English Language (1755). John Bunyan (1628-1688) wrote Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) in the Restoration period.. A Christian (Puritan). allegory The story of a character named Christian travelling to the Eternal City. John Locke (1632-1704) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) were philosophers and political theorists of great influence. Hobbes wrote. Leviathan (1651, “Man is a wolf to man”).

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Born in Ireland, probably the best satirist of the English language. Gulliver’s Travels (1726): a great satire of human condition, four books—recounting four voyages to mostly-fictional exotic lands—each with a different theme, but all attempting to deflate human pride. “A Modest Proposal”, an ironic proposal to solve the problems of Ireland by feeding Irish children to the English landlords. Probably the best prose-writer of the century.

But from a literary point of view, the most important development of the 18th century was the phenomenon called “THE RISE OF THE NOVEL”, the emergence of the novel as a literary form in English. Some of its best performers were:

Daniel Defoe (1659-1731). A journalist. Robinson Crusoe (1719), considered by some as the first novel in English. Based on real facts.

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). Sentimental novels. Pamela (1740), Clarissa (1748). Written in the epistolary form.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754). Comic novels, influenced by picaresque. Tom Jones (1749), Joseph Andrews (1742), written "in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote". Shamela (1741) was a parody of Pamela.

Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768). Irish-born. Tristram Shandy (1759). Comic, metafictional novel. The book is apparently Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to the extent that we do not even reach Tristram's own birth until Volume III. A precursor of post-modernism and contemporary sensibilities.

The Gothic novel also started at this time, with writers like Ann Radcliffe (1764-1822) and Horace Walpole (1717-1797) who wrote The Castle of Otranto (1764). They were full of mystery and emotion and they anticipated the Romantic spirit.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

2009-12-02T01:21:00.001-08:00

FAIRY

1 Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
5 Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that “Hobgoblin” call you, and “sweet Puck,”
10 You do their work, and they shall have good luck.

Are not you he?

ROBIN (PUCK)

1 Thou speak’st aright.
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
5 Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
10 The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me.
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And “Tailor!” cries, and falls into a cough,
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,

Modern English

FAIRY

1 Unless I’m mistaken,
you’re that mischievous and naughty spirit
named Robin Goodfellow. Aren’t you the one
who goes around scaring the maidens in the village,
5stealing the cream from the top of the milk, screwing up the flour mills,
and frustrating housewives by keeping their milk from turning into butter?
Aren’t you the one who keeps beer from foaming up as it should,
and causes people to get lost at night, while you laugh at them? Some people call you “Hobgoblin” and “sweet Puck,”
10 and you’re nice to them. You do their work for them and give them good luck.
That’s you, right?

ROBIN

1 What you say is true. That’s me you’re talking about,
the playful wanderer of the night.
I tell jokes to Oberon and make him smile.
I’ll trick a fat, well-fed horse into
5 thinking that I’m a young female horse.
Sometimes I hide at the bottom of an old woman’s drink disguised as an apple.
When she takes a sip, I bob up against her lips
and make her spill the drink all over her withered old neck.
10 Sometimes a wise old woman with a sad story to tell
tries to sit down on me, thinking I’m a three-legged stool.
But I slip from underneath her and she falls down,
crying, “Ow, my butt!” and starts coughing,
and then everyone laughs and has fun.

TRADUCCIÓN ESPAÑOLA

HADA

1Si yo no confundo tu forma y aspecto,
tú eres el espíritu bribón y travieso
que llaman RobIn. ¿No eres tú, quizá?
¿Tú no asustas a las mozas del lugar,
5 trasteas molinillos, la leche desnatas,

haces que no saquen manteca en las casas

o que la cerveza no levante espuma,

se pierda el viajero de noche, y te burlas?
A los que te llaman «el trasgo» y «buen duende»
10 te agrada ayudarles, y ahí tienen suerte.

¿No eres el que digo?

ROBIN

1 Muy bien me conoces:
yo soy ese alegre andarín de la noche.
Divierto a Oberón, que ríe de gozo
si burlo a un caballo potente y brioso
5 relinchando a modo de joven potrilla.
Acecho en el vaso de vieja cuentista
en forma y aspecto de manzana asada;
asomo ante el labio y, por la papada,
cuando va a beber, vierto la cerveza.
10 Al contar sus cuentos, esta pobre vieja
a veces me toma por un taburete:
le esquivo el trasero, al suelo se viene,
grita «¡Qué culada!», y tose sin fin.
Toda la compaña se echa a reír,
.

HAMLET “To be or not to be” monologue)

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1 To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,5 And by opposing, end them; to die, to sleepNo more, and by a sleep, to say we endThe heartache, and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wished: to die, to sleep;10 To sleep, perchance to dream; Aye, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,When we haue shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause; there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life.15 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office, and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,20 When he, himself, might his quietus makeWith a bare bodkin; who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscovered country, from whose bourn25 No traveler returns, puzzles the will,And makes us rather bear those ills we have,Then fly to others that we know not of.Thus, conscience does make cowards,And thus the native hue of resolution30 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pitch and moment,With this regard, their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action.

http://www.hamletregained.com/O_L_pages_folder/Original_Lang_Pages.html

Modern English Version

1 To be, or not to be, that is the question.
Is it more noble, to my mind, to sufferThe twists and turns of outrageous fortune,Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles,5 And by opposing them, end them? To die, to sleep,(No more than that,) and by a sleep, to say we endThe heartache, and the thousand natural shocksThat human flesh is heir to. It is a consummationDevoutly to be wished: to die, to sleep . . .10 To sleep - perhaps to dream! Yes, there's the rub.For in that sleep of death, the dreams that may come,When we have shuffled off this mortal shell,Must give us pause. There's the wayThat makes for the misery of a longer life.15 For who could bear the whips and scorns of time,The oppressor's wrongs, the arrogant man's contempt,The pain of rejected love, the law's delays,The insolence of office holders, and the kicksThat those who don't deserve them patiently suffer,20 When he, himself, might make his deathWith a bare dagger? Who would bear burdensTo grunt and sweat through a weary lifeExcept for the fear of something after death,The undiscovered country, from whose entry25 No traveler returns. It baffles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan rush to others that we know not.Thus conscience makes cowards . . .And the healthy natural color of resolution30 Is made sickly with the pallor of second thoughts,And enterprises of great energy and importance,Taking all this into account, their progress goes awryAnd they lose the name of action.

http://www.hamletregained.com/O_L_pages_folder/O_L_Scene_8_Text.html

TRADUCCIÓN ESPAÑOLA

1 Ser o no ser, esa es la cuestión.
¿Qué es más noble para el alma
sufrir los golpes y las flechas de la injusta fortuna
o tomar las armas contra un mar de adversidades
5 y oponiéndose a ella, encontrar el fin? Morir, dormir...
nada más; y con un sueño poder decir que acabamos con el sufrimiento del corazón y los mil choques
que por naturaleza son herencia de la carne... Es un final piadosamente deseable. Morir, dormir,
10 dormir... quizá soñar. Ahí está la dificultad.
Ya que en ese sueño de muerte, los sueños que pueden venir
cuando nos hayamos despojado de la confusión de esta vida mortal,
nos hace frenar el impulso. Ahí está el respeto
que hace de tan larga vida una calamidad.
15 Pues quien soportaría los latigazos y los insultos del tiempo,
la injusticia del opresor, el desprecio del orgulloso,
el dolor penetrante de un amor despreciado, la tardanza de la ley,
la insolencia del poder, y los insultos
que el mérito paciente recibe del indigno
20 cuando él mismo podría desquitarse de ellos
con un puñal. Quién cargaría con el castigo de
Quejarse y sudar bajo una vida cansada,
pero el temor a algo después de la muerte –
El país sin descubrir de cuya frontera
25 ningún viajero vuelve- aturde la voluntad
y nos hace soportar los males que sentimos
en vez de volar a otros que desconocemos.
La conciencia nos hace cobardes a todos.
Y así el nativo color de la resolución
30 enferma por el hechizo pálido del pensamiento
y empresas de gran importancia y peso
con lo que a esto se refiere, sus corrientes se desbordan
y pierden el nombre de acción.

EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. TEXTS.

2009-12-02T01:19:00.000-08:00

Old English. From Beowulf (8th-11th century):

I Ða wæs on burgum Beowulf Scyldinga, Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,leof leodcyning longe þrage leader beloved, and long he ruled

Middle English. From “The Summoner’s Tale”, in The Canterbury Tales (1386, Chaucer)

Original
This frere bosteth that he knoweth helle,
And God it woot, that it is litel wonder;
Freres and feendes been but lyte asonder.
For, pardee, ye han ofte tyme herd telle
How that a frere ravyshed was to helle
In spirit ones by a visioun;
And as an angel ladde hym up and doun,
To shewen hym the peynes that the were,
In al the place saugh he nat a frere;
Of oother folk he saugh ynowe in wo.
Unto this angel spak the frere tho:
Now, sire, quod he, han freres swich a grace
That noon of hem shal come to this place?
Yis, quod this aungel, many a millioun!
And unto sathanas he ladde hym doun.
--And now hath sathanas,--seith he,--a tayl
Brodder than of a carryk is the sayl.
Hold up thy tayl, thou sathanas!--quod he;
--shewe forth thyn ers, and lat the frere se
Where is the nest of freres in this place!--
And er that half a furlong wey of space,
Right so as bees out swarmen from an hyve,
Out of the develes ers ther gonne dryve
Twenty thousand freres on a route,
And thurghout helle swarmed al aboute,
And comen agayn as faste as they may gon,
And in his ers they crepten everychon.
He clapte his tayl agayn and lay ful stille.

Modern English Translation
This friar boasts that he knows hell,
And God knows that it is little wonder;
Friars and fiends are seldom far apart.
For, by God, you have ofttimes heard tell
How a friar was taken to hell
In spirit, once by a vision;
And as an angel led him up and down,
To show him the pains that were there,
In the whole place he saw not one friar;
He saw enough of other folk in woe.
To the angel spoke the friar thus:
"Now sir", said he, "Do friars have such a grace
That none of them come to this place?"
"Yes", said the angel, "many a million!"
And the angel led him down to Satan.
He said, "And Satan has a tail,
Broader than a large ship's sail.
Hold up your tail, Satan!" said he.
"Show forth your arse, and let the friar see
Where the nest of friars is in this place!"
And before half a furlong of space,
Just as bees swarm from a hive,
Out of the devil's arse there were driven
Twenty thousand friars on a rout,
And throughout hell swarmed all about,
And came again as fast as they could go,
And every one crept back into his arse.
He shut his tail again and lay very still

RENAISSANCE LITERATURE (1485-1660)

2009-12-02T01:18:00.002-08:00

THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
(Some critics have questioned the concept of “English Renaissance" and prefer to speak about “Elizabethan, Jacobean and Cromwellian literatures” or "Early Modern Literature". They highlight the achievements of previous literature and question the influence of Italian Renaissance)

Historical Background:
-1455-1485: War of the Roses (dynastic war between the houses of York and Lancaster). Lancaster won: as a result, the House of Tudor ruled for over a century (1485-1603).
- Henry VIII (1509-1547). Break with Roman Catholicism. Protestant Alliances.
- Elizabeth I (1158-1603). The Virgin Queen. Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588). Francis Drake. Peaceful and prosperous reign after centuries of turmoil (Hundred Years’ War, War of the Roses)
- After Elizabeth I died, the Scottish House of Stuart took over, uniting the kingdoms of England and Scotland with James I of England (VI of Scotland) who reigned between 1603 and 1625 in what is called the “Jacobean Era”. Beginning of colonies.

DRAMA was the most important form of literary expression of this period, and WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616), the most important figure not only of this period but of English literature as a whole. Called England’s national poet and “The Bard of Avon”, he was a playwright, an actor, a poet and part-owner of the company (“The Lord Chamberlain’s Men”, later “The King’s Men”) and the theatre (“The Globe”, round with the stage in the middle) where his plays were performed. William Shakespeare is widely considered to be the greatest writer in the English language and is generally seen as the greatest dramatist the world has known. His plays (written between 1590 and 1612) have been translated into most major languages and are studied in schools and universities around the world. What are the reasons for his popular and critical success?

- He was able to write his plays for a very diverse audience. Most of his plays were adaptations from known sources (classical plays or stories), which means that his audience could follow the plot easily; they also had plenty of action (At the end of Hamlet, for example, the following characters die: Hamlet, his father, his mother, his uncle, Laertes, Ophelia and Polonius) and humour (farce, slapstick), which meant that all types of audiences could follow them.
- Universal themes, still relevant to modern-day life (the fragility of human condition, the individual versus society, love, fate, free will...)
- Several levels of meaning: the texts are clear to follow but complex to understand in depth.
- Use of language: extremely rich and varied (puns, double meanings, references, literary figures). Creator of neologisms (“excellent, obscene, homicide, hint”. It has been said that one in ten words in English was created by Shakespeare). Great use of blank verse (regular rhythm, no rhyme, typically iambic pentameter) Unfortunately, the English language has changed a lot since Shakespeare’s time, which means that his language is difficult to follow even for native speakers.
WORKS

- Comedies: (light-hearted tone, happy ending, multiple plots, love stories, remember that female characters were played by male actors: ambiguity): The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest…
- Histories (based on real kings from the 12th-16th cent): Henry IV, Henry V…
- Tragedies (heroes who fall from grace due to a fall in their character, anti-hero): Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello...
- Sonnets: 154 sonnets addressed to either a “dark lady” (a married woman for whom the author feels strong physical attraction) or a “fair youth” (a young man the author also loves). Controversial texts (Platonic love, bisexuality, literary convention?)

Other Renaissance playwrights:

o Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). Shakespeare’s predecessor and contemporary. Wild reputation. Author of Doctor Faustus.
o Ben Jonson (1572-1637). A classicist who followed traditional rules. Characters as archetypical ‘humours’ (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic). The Alchemist.

POETRY

- Elizabethan Era: Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). Poet, author of The Faerie Queene (1590), an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Gentle poetry.

- JOHN DONNE (1572-1631) was part of a group called the Metaphysical poets who wrote passionate poetry full of daring metaphors. Influenced by continental Baroque, and taking as his subject matter both Christian mysticism and eroticism (“To his mistress going to bed” “Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy, Until I labour, I in labour lie”), Donne uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures (sometimes called “metaphysical conceits”), such as a compass, a flea biting two lovers or the exploration of his wife’s body compared to the discovery of America (“Oh, my America, my new-found land!”) to reach surprising effects. The paradox is a constant in this poetry whose fears and anxieties also speak of a world of spiritual certainties shaken by the modern discoveries of geography and science, one that is no longer the centre of the universe.

PROSE

- Thomas More (1478-1535) a humanist, opposed to the Reform, executed by Henry VIII, author of Utopia (1516).

- Francis Bacon (1561-1626): Philosopher and scientist.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

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1.- OLD ENGLISH: Anglo-Saxon Literature (ap.450-1066)

Historical Background: Early Middle Ages ("The Dark Ages")
- Decline and fall of the Roman Empire
- Anglo-Saxon invasions (from Denmark-Germany)
- Native Britons (Celts, among them the legendary King Arthur) move west
- Christianization (from Rome and from Ireland)
- 7 kingdoms
- 9th century: Viking Invasions (Danes: the Danelaw)
- Movement towards unification and fragmentation
- 1066 Norman conquest

Oral tradition: Epic poems, like Beowulf (8th-11th century), which describes the fights of the hero against monsters, warriors and dragons. Alliterative verse (consonant rhyme) as opposed to end-rhyme.

First written texts in Old English: 9th century (Previously, only in Latin): sermons, saints’ lives, biblical translations, Christian poetry. Most famous author: King Alfred (who wrote translations from Latin).

2. – MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1066-ap.1485, 1470 “Chancery Standard”, first printing press: a more unified form of English)

Historical background:

- The Middle Ages: Feudalism.
- The Battle of Hastings (1066) brought about the Norman domination of England. (Bilingualism: Norman (a dialect of French, for the higher classes) and English (Middle English, for the lower classes, great diversity of dialects, no clear standard). Deep influence on English: beef/cow, liberty/freedom). Progressive integration of Anglo-Normans.
- House of Plantagenet (1154-1485): Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, Magna Carta (1215, Powers of the Parliament). Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Crusades.
- 1337-1453: Hundred Years’ War (over the control of France, dynastic war, beginning of English and French nationalism).

Medieval literature: Society revolved around the Church, so religious values were always present, but priests, monks and nuns were also frequently criticized in medieval literature (particularly in "Goliardic" literature). The feudal system led to chivalric values (bravery, honour, "courtly love") which were shown in chivalric literature. Allegory is also a frequent feature of medieval literature (particularly religious literature). Medieval literature is sometimes very contradictory (because high ideals run together with coarse vulgarity and social criticism) but also very lively and surprising.

- Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400): diplomat and writer, the “father of English Literature”. The Canterbury Tales, (ap. 1386) a collection of 24 stories told by fictional pilgrims on the road to the cathedral at Canterbury. Realistic characters, variety of stories. 2 stories in prose, 22 in verse. Influenced by Boccaccio’s Decameron.

- Medieval Romances. Chivalric. Adventures of a heroic knight. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ap. 1390, Arthurian Romance: Gawain is a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, symbolic poem).

- Piers Plowman. Allegorical narrative poem. Part theological allegory, part social satire. A quest for true Christian life. Written by William Langland.
Morality plays. Allegorical theatre. A character meets other characters representing moral attributes. Example: Everyman. (with characters like Everyman, God, Death, Beauty, Strenght…) . There were also Miracle Plays and Mystery Plays played in ch

A Rose for Emily Questionnaire

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“A ROSE FOR EMILY” QUESTIONNAIRE

1.- Reconstruct the time-line of the story. Try to put all the events of the story in order and to provide dates for some of them.

2.- The story takes place in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, in the South, the setting for most of Faulkner’s stories and novels. What is the image of the South portrayed in this story? Think about the contrast between the North and the Old South.

3.- The story is told by “we”. Who do you imagine this narrator (or narrators) to be? Young or old? Male or female? Both? What is their attitude toward Emily? How does that attitude affect Emily?

4.- Consider the story as a detective story. Analyze the different detective story conventions and roles (detective, victim, setting). ‘Whodone’ it? More importantly, why?

5.- Think about the title of the story. What is the rose? Why is it ‘Emily’ and not ‘Miss Emily’?

As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)

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Cash

I made it on the bevel.

1. There is more surface for the nails to grip
2. There is twice the gripping-surface to each seam.
3. The water will have to seep into it on a slant. Water moves easiest up and down or straight across.
4. In a house people are upright two thirds of the time. So the seams and joints are made up-and-down. Because the stress is up and down.
5. In a bed where people lie down all the time, the joints and seams are made sideways, because the stress is sideways.
6. Except.
7. A body is not square like a crosstie.
8. Animal magnetism.
9. The animal magnetism of a dead body makes the stress come slanting, so the seams and joints of a coffin are made on the bevel.
10. You can see by an old grave that the earth sinks down on the bevel.
11. While in a natural hole it sinks by the center, the stress being up-and-down.
12. So I made it on the bevel.
13. It makes a neater job.

Vardaman

My mother is a fish.

Minority Texts

2009-11-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Compare these two texts from Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois and the following two poems from Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. What do they tell you about the situation of Blacks in America and about the response of African American writers to this? What about the form of the poems, which tradition do they belong to?

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Up from Slavery (1901) Extracts.

To those of my race (…) who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are’— cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all race by whom we are surrounded (…) No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities (…)

To those of the white race (…) you can be sure, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty in the past (…) so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours (…)

W.E.B. DUBOIS, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Extracts

Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things:

- First, political power,

- Second, insistence on civil rights,

- Third, higher education of Negro youth (…)

Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:

The right to vote.
Civic equality
The education of youth according to ability (…)

By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal (…)

LANGSTON HUGHES, “I, too” (1932)

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll sit at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

COUNTEE CULLEN, “Yet Do I Marvel” (1925)

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,

And did He stoop to quibble could tell why

The little buried mole continues blind,

Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,

Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus

Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare

If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus

To struggle up a never-ending stair.

Inscrutable His ways are, and immune

To catechism by a mind too strewn

With petty cares to slightly understand

What awful brain compels his awful hand.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:

To make a poet black and bid him sing.

CHICANO POEMS

JOSÉ ANTONIO BURCIAGA,

“Poema en tres idiomas y caló”

(1977)

Españotli titlán Englishic

Titlán náhuatl, titlán Caló

¡Qué locotl!

Mi mente spirals al mixtli,

buti suave I feel cuatro lenguas in

mi boca.

Coltic sueños temostli

y siento una xóchitl brotar

from four diferentes vidas.

I yotl distinctamentli recuerdote

cuandotl I yotl was a maya,

cuandotl I yotl was a gachupinchi,

when Cortés se cogió a mi

great tatarabuela

cuandotl andaba en Pachuacatlán.

(…)

RODOLFO “CORKY” GONZALES,

“I am Joaquín” (1967)

I am Joaquín,

Lost in a world of confusion,

Caught up in a whirl of a gringo society,

Confused by the rules,

Scorned by attitudes,

Suppressed by manipulation,

And destroyed by modern society.

My fathers

have lost the economic battle

and won

the struggle of cultural survival.

And now!

I must choose

Between the paradox of

Victory of the spirit,

Despite physical hunger

To exist in the grasp

of American social neurosis,

sterilization of the soul

and a full stomach.

(…)

ABELARDO “LALO” DELGADO, “Stupid America” 1969)

Stupid america, see that chicano

with a big knife

on his steady hand

he doesn’t want to knife you

he wants to sit on a bench

and carve christfigures

but you won’t let him.

stupid america, hear that chicano

shouting curses on the street

he is a poet

without paper and pencil

and since he cannot write

he will explode.

stupid America, remember that chicanito

flunking math and english

he is the picasso

of your western states

but he will die

with one thousand masterpieces

hanging only from his mind.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE AND OTHER MINORITIES

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Literature written by African-Americans has always had a distinct identity in the context of American literature. Present since slavery times, its emergence and power walks parallel to a slow and difficult process of fighting for freedom, self-awareness and cultural consciousness.

The first books written by Blacks were the slave narratives from colonial times like OLAUDAH EQUIANO (1745-1797) and his The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). In the 19^th century, FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1817-1895), born a slave and escaped to the North, became a very famous antislavery leader and orator. He published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856-1915) wrote Up from Slavery (1901), an autobiographical work in which he tried to improve the lives of Blacks, although he accepted segregation. W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868-1963) wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903) in response to Washington and in it he described the special culture of American Blacks and called public attention to the ‘Negro problem’. However, it was not until the HARLEM RENAISSANCE that works of true literary value were first produced. This was a movement of African American writers connected with the Harlem jazz clubs of the 20s and 30s. Their works were a vindication of their own literary identity. LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967), JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967) and COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946) are the three most important poets of the movement.

From the Depression to the 1960s three major figures stand out: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. In Native Son (1940), RICHARD WRIGHT (1908-1960) used naturalistic techniques to describe the social and psychological pressures on his black hero. RALPH ELLISON (1914-1994) used in Invisible Man (1952) the metaphor of invisibility to talk about black people as seen by white society. JAMES BALDWIN (1924-1987) wrote moving fiction and essays about the black problem and also about homosexuality: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Another Country (1962). Wright and Ellison are examples of opposite stands in a debate that is always present when talking about African-American literature: to what extent must art be a political weapon used to improve the status of African-Americans or mere art, just considered from an aesthetic point of view. Following this dichotomy, one could distinguish two lines in African American literature: one that is more political and combative, which uses art as a political weapon (and where one could find Wright, Baraka, Morrison or movie-makers like Spike Lee), and another one which stresses aesthetics and which, although usually thematically centered on problems of race, considers art from an aesthetic point of view (Ellison, Cullen).

► See Classroom Activity # 22 “African American Literature”, p. 182.

In the 1960s IMAMU AMIRI BARAKA (Leroi Jones, 1934- ) led the Black Arts Movement with powerful poetry and drama. Black awareness, political use of art, the search for Black English (called ‘Ebonics’) and a challenge to white tradition and forms are some of the features of a movement that also includes other writers like ED BULLINS (1935- ) and ADRIENNE KENNEDY (1931- ). LORRAINE HANSBERRY (1930-1965) wrote A Raisin in the Sun (1959), the first play by a black woman produced on Broadway.

From the 1970s to the present, African-American writing has known its best moments with female writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. TONI MORRISON (1931- ) has written novels which, although with clear political meaning, are consummate works of art. She wrote The Bluest Eye in 1970, and later other longer novels like Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987), in which she employs the dreamlike techniques of magical realism. In 1993 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. ALICE WALKER (1944- ) has long been associated with feminism, presenting black existence from the female perspective. She uses a kind of lyrical realism to center on the dreams and failures of accessible, credible people. The Color Purple is her most famous work, an epistolary dialect novel which tells the story of the love between two poor black sisters. Some interesting contemporary African-American poets are RITA DOVE (1952- ), MAYA ANGELOU (1928- ), and ISHMAEL REED (1938-).

► See Book Presentation Guide 5.7 “The Bluest Eye”, p. 143,

Other minorities

The last decades have witnessed a vindication of the literatures of different minorities, who write about their own cultural difference and about the difficulties in reconciling their conflicting origins and traditions with American society:

Native Americans:

WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON (1939- ), travel writer, author of Blue Highways (1982), a cult road story in prairie territory.
SIMON ORTIZ (1941- ), poet.
LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948- ), poet and short story writer.

Asian-Americans:

CATHY SONG (1955- ) and LI-YOUNG-LEE (1957- ) are poets who write about the contradictions of life in the US for Asian-Americans.
AMY TAN (1952- ): The Joy Luck Club (1989), a novel about two generations of Chinese-American women.
DAVID HENRY HWANG (1957): M. Butterfly (1988), a play inspired by the opera which was then turned into a film.

Latino writers are particularly interesting for Spanish-speaking readers, because of the interactions between the languages (including ‘Spanglish’[1] and ‘Caló’, a mixture of languages typical of Chicano culture) that we can be lucky enough to appreciate.

JOSE ANTONIO BURCIAGA (1940- ), RODOLFO ‘CORKY’ GONZALES (1928- ) and ABELARDO ‘LALO’ DELGADO (1931-) are three examples of militant Chicano poets from the 60s and 70s.
OSCAR HIJUELOS (1951- ), of Cuban origin. The first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989).
SANDRA CISNEROS (1954-), short story writer (The House on Mango Street, 1983) and author of the novel Caramelo (2002).
Other Mexican-American writers worth mentioning are RUDOLFO ANAYA (1927- ) and ROLANDO HINOJOSA-SMITH (1929- ), prose writers; and LORA DEE CERVANTES (1954- ) and ALBERTO RÍOS (1952- ), poets.

► See Classroom Activity # 23 “Chicano Poems”, p. 183.

[1] Look at this example of Spanglish and see if you recognize it: “In un placete de La Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivía, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase. A cazuela with más beef than mutón, carne choppeada para la dinner, un omelet pa’ los Sábados, lentil pa’ los Viernes, y algún pigeon como delicacy especial pa’ los Domingos, consumían tres cuarers de su income” (transladado al Spanglish por Ilan Stavans)

AMERICAN REALISM (1860-1914)

2009-11-25T22:28:00.000-08:00

The period between the Civil War (1861-1865) and the First World War (1914-1918) witnessed tremendous changes in the United States, as we have seen. From a small, young agricultural country, it was transformed into a huge, modern, industrial nation, with all sorts of problems, like immigration and social struggle. All these changes, together with the birth of realism in Europe as a reaction against Romanticism (with writers like Stendhal, Flaubert or Balzac in France) brought about this new literary period in the United States.

The champion of Realism in the USA was WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837-1920), who defended its principles as a critic, an editor and a novelist. Realism for him was an attack against a romanticized vision of life, an attempt to write about ‘real life’, and to criticize the new industrialized society with its associated poverty, inequality and the rise of materialism. Frequently a moral attitude runs together with the literary principles. Howells’s best novel is The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), the story of an ordinary businessman who becomes rich and tries to join Boston’s ‘high society’.

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916) practiced a different kind of realism. He was an observer of the mind rather than a recorder of the times. So, he was more interested in psychological realism and tried to show the process of thought that his brother William termed ‘stream of consciousness’. He also wrote about the difficulty of reflecting real life through literature (the importance of appearances and perception, the relationships between fact and fiction). In this aspect, he was a precursor of modernism. He spent most of his life in Europe and many of his novels deal with Americans trying to adapt themselves to European civilization: Daisy Miller (1879), The Ambassadors (1903) or The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Americans tend to be naive characters defeated by the stiff, traditional values of Europe. Quite interesting too are his short stories, like the ghost story “The Turn of the Screw” (1898) and “The Real Thing” (1893), about the relationship between art and reality.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937) is frequently associated with James as a ‘Cosmopolitan novelist’ because she also spent a large part of her life in Europe and made the contrast between Americans and Europeans a recurrent theme in her novels. In Ethan Frome (1911) and The Age of Innocence (1920) she shows the contrast between the natural instincts of people and a hypocritical society.

Another manifestation of realism is Regionalism (also known as ‘Local Color’), a diffuse movement of writers who mixed the qualities of realism with a strong feeling for a particular area in the USA. New England was the setting of the stories and novels of SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909, “The White Heron”, 1896) and HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896, who also wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin). The West provided the setting and character for the writings of BRET HARTE (1836-1902, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, 1868, a romantic vision of the frontier), and WILLA CATHER (1873-1947, My Antonia, 1918, about pioneers settling in Nebraska). The South as a setting plays an important role in the works of another group of writers: The stories and novels of GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE (1844-1925) and KATE CHOPIN (1851-1904, The Awakening, 1899) take place in Louisiana. ELLEN GLASGOW (1874-1945) often dealt with the history of Virginia.

Not really belonging to any of these groups, but still worth mentioning is AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914?), a journalist and short story writer best remembered by his Devil’s Dictionary (1881-1906), a collection of satirical definitions that reflect a bitter and bright mind.[1]

MARK TWAIN (1835-1910) belongs to the regionalist tradition, and the area he described was the Mississippi River at a time when steamboats where the main means of transport in the US. He wrote about them in Life on the Mississippi, and later on in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “the best book” in American Literature according to Ernest Hemingway. Its colloquial narrative voice, its superb use of humor, and the development of themes like slavery and death set it apart from children’s books and turn it into one of the indispensable books of American Literature. In fact, in Huckleberry Finn we can already find a number of features that have become a feature of American literature as a whole: the use of colloquial speech as a literary language (with origins in Whitman), books based on the real experience of the writer (like Melville’s, Hemingway’s or London’s), the search for freedom in movement (origin of ‘road novels’ and ‘road movies’, from On the Road to Thelma and Louise), the portrayal of a male group surrounded by nature and escaping from a female-dominated civilization (Cooper, Melville, westerns) and even the opposition between American innocence and European sophistication (further developed by James and Wharton). Twain also wrote very good short stories (inspired by life on the frontier) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

► See Book Presentation Guide 5.3. “Huckleberry Finn”, p. 128.

In the 1890s many realists became NATURALISTS, a movement that started in France with Zola, influenced by Darwinism, the philosophy of Nietzsche and determinism. The world is perceived as a heartless machine where the individual has no freedom. In their novels the fate of characters is written right from the start, and society is shown as a place of depravity, hypocrisy and corruption. HENRY ADAMS (1838-1918) was also an important figure in the development of Naturalism, although not as a novelist but as a historian and thinker (The Education of Henry Adams, 1907). STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900) is the first American naturalist. Maggie (1893) is the sad story of a poor girl who becomes a prostitute and in the end kills herself despite several attempts to change her life. The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is set in the Civil War and shows the war as a meaningless effort where good and bad, being a hero or a coward is just a matter of chance. Crane was also a journalist and a poet.

JACK LONDON (1876-1916) was deeply influenced by Darwin’s ideas of constant struggle in nature and ‘the survival of the fittest’. Not surprisingly, the heroes of some of his stories are animals, as in Call of the Wild (1903) or White Fang (1906), set in Alaska like the short story “To Build a Fire” (1910). The Sea-Wolf (1904) is about the captain of a ship who tries to be a master of nature but is in the end defeated by it.

► See Classroom Activity # 17 “Twentieth-Century Short Stories”, p. 176.

Also related with Naturalism is a journalistic and political movement called the ‘Muckraking movement’, which tried to expose the political corruption, ‘dirty business’ and social injustice that was taking place in the America of the beginning of the century. Some of the journalists also wrote novels, like LINCOLN STEFFENS (1866-1936) and his Shame of the Cities (1904) or UPTON SINCLAIR (1878-1968) and his The Jungle (1906).

Naturalism continued in the

USA

well into the 20^th century. THEODORE DREISER (1871-1945) wrote Sister Carrie in 1900 but it was suppressed until 1912. Its main theme is the purposelessness of life. An American Tragedy (1925) explores the dangers of the American Dream, telling the story of a man who tries to reach success but ends up executed for murder

[1] Two examples are probably enough. Peace: “a period of cheating between two periods of fighting”; Marriage: “the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two”.

Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31

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So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

HUCK FINN.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a- floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a- trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

Reading Assignment: Dec 16th, "The Dead"

2009-11-25T22:15:00.000-08:00

« The Dead » is the last story to appear in Dubliners, James Joyce’s collection of stories about Dublin. You can find the text, annotations and comments in these two websites:

http://www.enotes.com/dubliners-text/the-dead

http://www.mendele.com/WWD/WWDdead.html

After you read the text, answer the following questions:

This is a story of contrasts. Think about the contrast between the following:

- Gabriel and Michael

- Interior/Exterior (House/countryside, Thoughts/Spoken words)

- Ireland/England (at the time the story takes place Ireland was not an independent country)

- The living/The Dead (Why did Joyce choose this title?)

Think about the style in which the story is written.

- What‘s the point of view in the story? Does it change? And the narrative voice? The style Joyce uses in this story has been called “Free Indirect Speech”, you can find a definition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech Can you find examples in the text?

- Joyce is famous for his use of “epiphanies”: situations where his protagonists come to sudden recognitions that change their view of themselves or their social condition and often create a reversal or change of heart. Can you find any examples in the text?

Emily Dickinson

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If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

19th CENTURY POETRY

2009-11-19T02:10:00.001-08:00

WALT WHITMAN “Song of Myself” (Leaves of Grass)

Who does Whitman sing to? How could you define the poem from a formal point of view?

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, form’d 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 (…)

EMILY DICKINSON “These are the Days when....” (Poem 130)

What is this poem about? Think about contrasts (life and death, joy and pain, cold and heat...) and about the relationship between the cycles of nature, the cycles of life and religion (death of nature, death of Christ)

These are the Days when Birds come back
A very few—a bird or two—
To take a backward look

These are the days when skies resume
The old-old sophistries of June—
A blue and gold mistake,

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee—
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear—
And softly thro’ the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf

Oh Sacrament of summer days
Oh Last Communion in the Haze—
Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake—
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine

This is an extract from another poem by Dickinson. Which metaphors or
comparisons do you see in it?

Each that we lose takes a part of us
A crescent still abides
Which like the moon, some turbid night
Is summoned by the tides

EDGAR ALLAN POE “The Raven” (extracts)

Compare these extracts with Whitman’s from the point of view of form and content. Think of the themes, the stanzas, the rhythm and rhyme, the images …

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more,
(…)

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
(…)

AMERICAN ROMANTICISM (1820-1860)

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Romanticism had started in Germany and had a very fruitful development In England, with poets like Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats and Shelley, before it came to the States. Some of its main features were the importance given to imagination, emotion and passion as opposed to reason, a celebration of nature (as opposed to civilization), an interest in the past and remote settings, and a spirit of idealism, individualism and political liberalism.
Romanticism in the USA coincided with a period of national expansion, a solidification of national identity and the search for a distinctive American voice. The result of this coincidence was a very creative literary period which includes movements like transcendentalism and the American Romance and which has been called the American Renaissance (a term originally applied only to the years 1850-1855, but that can also be used to talk about the whole period). In fact, Cooper and Irving’s works, although from an earlier stage, could also be considered as a manifestation of the Romantic spirit, because of the importance given to nature and the past.

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism was a philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England as a reaction against rationalism. Its basic beliefs were the identification of the individual soul and of nature with God, and the consideration of feeling and intuition as the way to find the truth. Transcendentalists were also social reformers and abolitionists. They had a magazine (The Dial) and some of them lived in an experimental community (called ‘The Brook Farm Institute’).
The founder of the movement was RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882). He published several famous essays: Nature, The American Scholar or The Over-Soul, where his ideas were developed: the need for a new national vision and the notion of a cosmic over-soul (an all-pervading unitary spiritual power). In them, the influence of Eastern philosophy and religion can be felt strongly. HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) was Emerson’s disciple. He was also an essayist who wrote Civil Disobedience (1749), a work of great influence on pacifist movements. He actually went to prison for not paying his taxes to protest against the war with Mexico. His best work is Walden (1854), a long poetic essay about his life in the woods and the search for self-discovery and true wisdom. Another transcendentalist was MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850), editor of The Dial, and an early feminist and essayist.
WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892) was inspired by Transcendentalism and is probably the greatest American poet. His poems are collected in Leaves of Grass (1855-1892), a book that he rewrote and revised throughout his life. In his writings, he identifies the poet with the poem, with the universe and with the reader (‘Walt Whitman, a Cosmos’). His democratic sensibility (‘The United States is essentially the greatest poem’, he said) made him use a plain style, with ordinary vocabulary that could be understood by ordinary people. From a formal point of view, he used free verse, with no stanzas and no rhyme. He was also one of the first poets to celebrate the joy of sex: “I am the Poet of the Body and I am the Poet of the Soul”, he wrote.

► See Classroom Activity # 15 “Nineteenth Century Poetry”, p. 174.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) shared the chronological space with Whitman, but her poetry, although influenced by Emerson’s ideas, is quite different from her contemporaries, and it anticipates literary sensitivities of the turn of the century. Mainly unpublished till the 1950s, hers is a very personal, private kind of poetry. She inherited the Puritan spirit (“she seldom lost sight of the grave”, said one critic) but infused her poetry with powerful images of a very modern sensitivity: images that are often felt deeply, rather than completely understood.
The ‘Brahmin Poets’ was a group of Boston-based poets and critics who became the literary establishment of the time: a respected and prestigious group of poets and essayists who behaved like a caste (hence, ‘Brahmin’) and who wrote conservative, conventional poetry in imitation of the English style. H. W. LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) spoke to the hearts of ordinary Americans and was extremely popular; OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894) was also an essayist and a novelist. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891), finally, wrote both poetry and essays.

The American Romance (Hawthorne, Melville and Poe)

The term ‘Romance’ is frequently used to talk about a particular type of prose which has been considered as the distinctive voice of American fiction. As opposed to the realistic English novel of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Trollope, Elliot or Thackeray (or Tolstoi, or Balzac, or Galdós for all that matter) the American Romance is more emotional and symbolic, less realistic and less structured than the novel. The protagonists of the Romance are heroic, mythical figures, typically lonely individuals facing dark forces which in some mysterious ways grow out of their deep unconscious selves. Frequently the hero dies in the end. Setting is not used realistically, but as a space that recreates the psychological world of the characters. Hawthorne defined it as “a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with nature of the other”. Through Romance, a fiction is created to expose the inner truth of a real situation.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864). Born in Salem, Massachusetts, his best work is rooted in the Puritan past of 17th-century New England, but it also has a strong allegorical quality. The Scarlet Letter (1850) is the story of the consequences of an adultery (‘A’ for adultery is the letter in the title) and has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America. The book is a love story as well as a study of guilt and punishment, and of the Puritan obsession with morality and sexual repression. It also has a strong romantic (from Romance) character, since it is full of symbolism, allegory and ideology. The House of the Seven Gables (1851) is the story of a family ‘cursed’ because of a terrible crime committed in the past, and of the resolution of the curse through love. Hawthorne was also an excellent short story writer (“The Minister’s Black Veil”, “Young Goodman Brown”)

► See Book Presentation Guide 5.1. “The Scarlet Letter”, p. 120.
► See Classroom Activity # 16 “Nineteenth-century short stories”, p.175.

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891) was a sailor in his youth and used that experience to create his masterpiece: Moby Dick (1851), which has been considered as “perhaps the greatest novel of American literature”. On the surface, it is an adventure novel, as well as a (long) realistic description of the whaling business. But it has deep symbolic meaning and many possibilities of interpretation: the whale represents God, or maybe fate. And the quest for the whale is also a metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge and success. Captain Ahab is a “grand, ungodly, God-like man”, torn between his dark and his light side, a Faustian character who seems to have signed a pact with the devil. The novel is full of literary, historical, religious and philosophical references and symbols. For example, the narrator, Ishmael, is saved in the end by the coffin of his intimate friend, a heroic Polynesian harpooner called Queequeg (again a relationship between a white man and a non-white); so he is rescued from death by an object of death. It has also been called an American ‘natural epic’, because like many other American novels, it is the story of a group of men alone in wild nature, a subversion of class-oriented, female-dominated, urban civilization. The sea acts then as another kind of frontier, where an initiation theme is also developed using the character of Ishmael. It is a philosophical novel, but also a tragedy: when Ahab finds the whale, his ship is destroyed and he is killed and damned. In other works of Melville (Billy Bud, Typee) we can see the same tragic, dark view of life. In his fiction, man lives in a world divided into two warring parts: good against evil, God against Satan.
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1848) was another writer interested in psychology and the darker side of human nature. He was a Southerner, and preferred to use the past and aristocratic characters more than his Northern contemporaries. He believed in the brevity of the work of art, and, accordingly wrote mainly short stories and poems. His stories are some of the best in the history of literature, in particular his horror stories and his detective stories, with which he single-handedly created this genre. His poetry (rhythmic[1], narrative, more interested in form and aesthetics) also stands out as opposed to the more conversational type represented by Whitman.

http://tomsoni.com/media/Raven.wmv
http://vodpod.com/watch/1304748-the-raven-on-the-simpsons

He liked to glamorize his past (made up adventures in Greece and Russia), and tried to compose a romantic figure out of his own life, but he was never very successful among the American public. In fact, he died drunk and forgotten in the streets of Baltimore. He has always been more popular in Europe, particularly after Baudelaire and Verlaine vindicated his work.

[1] In English poetry the concept of rhythm is frequently more important than the concept of rhyme. The English language as a whole is based on stress rather than on syllables. In Spanish, there is not as big a difference between stressed syllables and unstressed syllables, but in English stress changes everything: the pitch (like Spanish), the length (stressed syllables last longer) and the quality (unstressed syllables have weak vowels like the ‘schwas’ in the word America).
Rhythm in English poetry is based on that distinction, and uses concepts coming from Latin to talk about the different rhythmic patterns. A line of verse is made up of ‘feet’ or groups of syllables, each containing two, three or four syllables. The commonest foot is the ‘iambus’ (unstressed-stressed). Others are the trochee (stressed-unstressed), dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed), or anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed). Depending on the number of feet, a line is a trimeter (3), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), etc.
The most popular line in English is the iambic pentameter, which was used for blank verse (verse without rhyme), the form that Shakespeare and other Elizabethan writers used in their dramas and poetry. Iambic pentameter is also used in rhymed stanzas, like the sonnet, the couplet or others. Two examples of iambic pentameter by Shakespeare are: “My mis/tress’ eyes/ are no/thing like/ the sun/” or “To be/ or not/ to be/, that is/ the question.” To the English ear, the repetition of this pattern sounds as ‘poetic’ as rhyme in Classical Spanish drama to a Spanish-speaking audience.

Reading Assignment: Girl (Nov 26th)

2009-11-12T01:03:00.000-08:00

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/Girl/story.asp

What does this text tell you about the society the "girl" is growing up in? Think about:

- Men and women/Types of women
- Family values/Mothers and daughters
- Social ethics/colonialism

What about the style and narrative voice?

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH: LESSON PLAN

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You need to prepare a lesson plan using a literary text for an English class. You can decide the (imaginary) target readers, their level of English and the type of text. You have examples in class. You can bring your lesson plan after Christmas or bring it to the exam. Make sure to include the following points:

TARGET READERS
AGE
Kindergarten-Primary-Lower Secondary- Upper Secondary)

LEVEL OF ENGLISH
A1-A2-B1-B2

TEACHING CONTEXT
English language learning class /English Literature Class
TEACHING OBJECTIVES
Literary/Linguistic/Cross-curricular (ethical values, cultural)
TYPE OF LITERARY TEXT
Poetry /Prose (fiction/non-fiction/traditional story)
Complete/Extract
Original/Adapted
Written text/Story-telling/Video/Film adaptation/Hypertext
METHODOLOGY
APPROACH
· Cultural/Language/Personal Growth model
· Inductive/Deductive approach
· Textual/Contextual approach
READING
· Extensive reading/Intensive reading
· In-class reading/outside class
TIME SPAN
class period/ Several periods/ A whole term or year
ACTIVITIES
PRE-READING
- Introduction
- Vocabulary
WHILE READING
-Comprehension
-Listening
AFTER READING
- Speaking
- Dramatization

MATERIALS
Written text/story outline/video/hypertext
DESCRIPTION

EVALUATION

How to use Literature in ESL

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HERE ARE SOME LINKS TO WEBSITES DESCRIBING THE USE OF LITERATURE IN THE ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

WHY USE LITERATURE?

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=146508

RESOURCES

http://www.michellehenry.fr/litt.htm

http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/poems.htm

MORE RESOURCES

http://www.gigglepoetry.com/poetryclass.aspx (Write Valentines “Roses are Red”)

http://www.poetryteachers.com/poetclass/lessons/poetry.html

http://www.tooter4kids.com/classroom/poetry_in_the_esl_classroom.htm

http://www.eslcafe.com/search/Poetry/index.html

http://teachertipstraining.suite101.com/article.cfm/teaching_poetry_to_esl_students

http://pdfs.voya.com/VO/YA2/VOYA200404PoetryContagious.pdf

http://www.favoritepoem.org/

http://www.realbooks.co.uk/

http://www2.scholastic.com

http://www.penguinreaders.com/

http://www.puffin.co.uk/

4.1. THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE (1600-1820)

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Colonial America (1600-1776)

The story of American literature begins long before the US began its existence. Apart from the oral literature of Native Americans, the earliest writers were explorers like Captain JOHN SMITH (1580-1631), who wrote about his experiences in books like General Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles (1624, Pocahontas’ story). The first permanent settlers, the Puritans, were very interested in education and culture, which they felt were at the root of their project to start a new theocratic society. Harvard was founded in 1636, and the first printing press was started in 1638. Therefore, the New World saw the emergence of a literature which was mainly made up of sermons, histories, autobiographies and poems, all of them written with a religious purpose in mind:

· WILLIAM BRADFORD (1590-1657). Of Plymouth Plantation (1651) is the most interesting of the Puritan histories, narrating the origins of the colonies with the characteristic ‘plain style’ of the Puritans. Literature for them was something practical and they avoided elegant language.
· COTTON MATHER (1663-1728) was the third in a family of ministers and writers and wrote sermons and histories.
· JONATHAN EDWARDS (1702-1758) wrote extremely frightening sermons, like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1733).
· MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631-1705) wrote terrifying poetry which became very popular, like The Day of Doom (1662).
· ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-1672) was the first New England poet. She wrote simple, intimate poems.
· EDWARD TAYLOR (1645-1729) wrote the best poetry of the time, more personal than the rest, but unpublished until the 1930s.
· MARY ROWLANDSON (1636-1711) wrote the first Indian-Captivity Narrative, where she described her experiences when she was captured by the Indians.
Literature in the South, meanwhile, was less original. There were fewer writers and more connected to England. WILLIAM BYRD (1674-1744), for instance, wrote mainly for a London audience, whereas OLAUDAH EQUIANO (1745-1797) was a freed slave who wrote the first black autobiography.

► See Classroom Activity # 14 “The Beginnings of American Literature”, p. 173.

Revolutionary America (1776-1800)

At the times of political turmoil that came during the American Revolution most writings were political in nature. There were pamphlets like Common Sense (1776), written by THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809), which was often read aloud and became immensely popular. THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826) was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence (1776), a political document with undeniable literary qualities.
This was also the time of the Enlightenment, and American writers took a very active role in the development of this movement. Contrary to the Puritan tradition, they saw reason as the weapon to understand the world. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) wrote his very popular Poor Richard's Almanac (1732-1757), full of proverbs and moral advice, and his Autobiography (1784), a book for self-improvement. J. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECOEUR (1735-1843) was a French Aristocrat who migrated to America and wrote Letters from an American Farmer (1782), which helped start the myth of the 'melting pot'.
The poetry written during these years imitated European Neoclassical models of epic, mock epic and satire. The Connecticut Wits were the first poetic circle. PHILIP FRENAU (1752-1832) was perhaps the best poet of his time. Finally, The Contrast (1787) written by ROYALL TYLER (1757-1826) was the first American play with American characters.

19th Century: Cultural Independence

The 18th century had brought important changes in the field of literature in England. This was the time of ‘the Rise of the Novel’, with writers like Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Samuel Richardson (Clarissa Harlowe, Pamela, sentimental novels), Henry Fielding (Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, satirical novels) or Walter Scott (historical novels, Ivanhoe). All these types were somewhat adapted in America, except for sentimental novels which were never too popular[1].
In the USA, the first professional novelist was CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN (1771-1810), who adapted the English Gothic novel to American settings. Gothic novels (like Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto) were characterized by exotic settings (ruined castles, abbeys), the use of magic and the supernatural (ghosts, mysteries, horror), and the predominance of suspense, psychological depth and emotional power. In Brown’s novels, the villain is a rebel against society, which is the way Americans saw themselves at the time, and maybe this is why this Gothic villain becomes the antecedent of the hero in later American novels. In fact, Brown is a precursor of the American Romance represented by writers like Poe, Melville and Hawthorne. His best novel is Wieland (1798).
WASHINGTON IRVING (1789-1859) adapted European legends to the American context, providing a kind of historical past that was felt to be missing. In The Sketch Book (1819) he wrote short stories like “Rip Van Winkle” (the beginning of the ‘men on the run’ pattern typical of American Literature), or “The Story of Sleepy Hollow”. Although of European origin, they have become part of American folklore. He spent several years in Spain, after which he wrote The Alhambra (1832), tales with a Moorish flavor. He enjoyed great success in his time, but has less prestige nowadays.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851). In his ‘Leatherstocking Tales’ (already dealt with in section 3.3, p. 63) he adapted Walter Scott’s historical novels to the American situation and created the prototype of westerns. Although his literary and artistic skills have been questioned by some critics (particularly his somewhat clumsy descriptions) his stories still have great epic and mythical power. Besides, he is probably the first American writer to deal with a theme that would become a feature of American Literature: man vs. nature.
[1] Leslie Fiedler, an American critic, wrote in Love and Death in the American Novel that American Literature seems to be incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death. Male characters tend to run away from society and conventional love, and join other men in natural environments. The examples he used were Twain, Melville, Cooper, Hemingway and others. Maybe this is the reason why sentimental novels have never been popular in the US.

THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

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Read the following extracts and think of an adjective for each:

Extract 1
…the God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath towards you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire … you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince…(J. EDWARDS, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, 1733)

Extract 2
Thus shall they lie, and wail, and cry,
tormented, and tormenting
Their galled hearts with poisoned darts
but now too late repenting.
There let them dwell i’th’flames of hell;
there leave we them to burn,
And back again unto the men
whom Christ acquits, return.

The saints behold with courage bold,
and thankful wonderment,
To see all those that were their foes
thus sent to punishment:
Then do they sing unto their King
a song of endless praise:
They praise His name, and do proclaim
that just are all His ways.
(MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH,
“The Day of Doom”, 1662)
Extract 3
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere.
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
(ANNE BRADSTREET, “To My Dear and
Loving Husband” , 1678)

Extract 4
What is then the American, this new man? He is either a European or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country… He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world … The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.
(J. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECOEUR Letters from an American Farmer, 1782)

Extract 5
We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new governments…
(THOMAS JEFFERSON, The Declaration of Independence, 1776)

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MODERNISM
► Period between the wars: ‘Modernism’, a very general term used to talk about a series of different movements and tendencies (The ‘Avant-Garde’: impressionism, expressionism, imagism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism...) that tried to break with old tradition and the realistic concept of art.
► Modernism challenged the assumption of reality which is at the roots of realism: that there is a common phenomenal world that can be reliably described.
► Why? Lots of changes:
§ World War I (skeptical spirit)
§ New ideas like psychoanalysis and Marxism

Realism
Recorders of time
Conventional structure (Beginning/Middle/End)
Omniscient narrator
Literary language
Critical perspective
‘Passive’ Reader

Modernism
Different ways of capturing reality (poetry: images)
Fragmented plots.
No chronological order
Variety of narrative voices. Stream of consciousness.
All types of language
Even more critical: Lost Generation
Active Reader (opacitiy)

► Different kinds of narrators:
§ First person narrator (major participant, as in Huck Finn, minor, as in The Great Gatsby, or even non-participant, as in The Scarlet Letter). At times, unreliable
§ Second person narrator. Quite uncommon. An example: Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter Night a Traveller.
§ Third person narrator. When the narration is in the third person, the focalization (Who sees?) becomes extremely important.
► Omniscient point of view (typical of 19th century realist novels)
► A dramatic or objective point of view (Hemingway’s short stories: the narrator is like the lens of a camera that simply records what s/he sees),
► A selected or limited point of view ( ‘Jamesian’: a character is the ‘focus’ or ‘center of consciousness’, and the reader sees the action through the focus of that character).

Homework for Nov 12th: "The Story of an Hour"

2009-10-28T02:19:00.000-07:00

TEXT AND LINKS : http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb05/workshops/fiction/chopin1.asp

QUESTIONS

What sort of person do you picture Mrs. Mallard to be?

What sort of marriage do you think she has?

Does her behavior seem plausible to you?

Were you surprised by the ending? Did you see any foreshadowing hints in the story?

Faulkner and "As I Lay Dying"

2009-10-28T02:16:00.000-07:00

AS I LAY DYING (1930)

WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962)
1897 Born near Oxford, Mississippi (Jefferson in his novels, the capital of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County). He came from a distinguished Mississippi family (His great-grandfather, Colonel William Falkner (sic) was also a 19th century writer, a man of action and a public figure, and he became the model for one of his characters, Colonel Sartoris).
1918 Enlisted in the Canadian RAF. Began to write, mainly poetry.
1925 In New Orleans, Sherwood Anderson encouraged him to use prose and material from his own region.
1929 Sartoris. His first novel about Yoknapatwpha and about the Sartoris family.
1929 The Sound and the Fury. A novel with four sections, each with a different narrator and supplying a different part of the plot. A condemnation of the ‘aristocracy’ of the South, the Compson family.
1930 As I Lay Dying
1931 Sanctuary. He called it a ‘pot-boiler’, but it made him a popular figure.
1932 Went to Hollywood to work as a scriptwriter (again in 1942-45, 1951 and 1954). He liked to work with Howard Hawks. Wrote the scripts for The Big Sleep (based on Chandler’s novel) and Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not.
1932 Light in August. A penetrating story of racial conflict. It interrelates individual psychology and sociological analysis.
1936 Absalom, Absalom! The story of Thomas Sutpen, the founder of a Southern dynasty after the Civil War. Told by four different speakers. A work about an individual, about the South and about itself as a work of fiction.
1942 Go Down, Moses. A collection of short stories. In many of these stories and novels the same characters and places appear again and again to make up a complete fictional world of mythical proportions.
1949 Nobel Prize.
1962 Died of a heart attack.

Structure
The book is divided into 59 sections narrated by 15 different characters. This is how Faulkner himself described the structure of the plot: “I simply imagined a group of people and subjected them to the simple universal natural catastrophes, which are flood and fire, with a simple natural motive to give direction to their progress”. The book then describes the journey of the Bundren family (father and 5 children) to bury their dead mother in Jefferson. In order to do that, they must overcome two threats: flood and fire. Faulkner also uses a prophecy to structure the different sections: the mother predicts that her son Jewel will save her from water and fire, although, ironically, what he saves is just her dead body.

Technique and Style
This book is a very good example of modernist formal innovations. The system of multiple narration (called humorously ‘ventriloquism’ by a critic) has a triple function:
It increases the reader’s involvement. The reader has to make an effort not only to visualize the action (as in a traditional novel) or to interpret that action (as in Hemingway or in symbolist works) but just to know the nature of the action, to find out what is going on.
It allows the writer to get deeply into the minds of the characters and to show their complex personalities through techniques that reproduce their ‘stream of consciousness’.
The reader is able to see each event from multiple perspectives.
Besides, these sections fulfill another function: they have to advance the plot in an understandable manner, since there is no ‘outside narrator’. This is why they can be considered as ‘soliloquies’ rather than ‘interior monologues’.
As I Lay Dying uses soliloquies that reproduce the stream of consciousness of the 15 different characters as a way both to tell a story and to tell us more about each of them. We have unreliable narrators (like Vardaman, the retarded son who becomes so confused that he says ‘My mother is a fish’), dead narrators (the mother they are going to bury), and more reliable narrators (the Bundrens’ neighbors that help the reader to make sense of the incoherent thoughts of the Bundrens). The style of each of these narrators varies according to their own personality. For instance,
Darl is a complex character, and therefore his style is complicated and full of poetic imagery.
Cash is an extremely simple person, so his narration is simplified and very down-to-earth. For instance, one of his sections describes the 13 steps he is following to build his mother’s coffin (while his mother is still alive).
Dewey Dell’s sections are incoherent (like herself) and they jump from one thought to another.
Vardaman is a retarded boy, so he narrates his sections with very simple vocabulary and associating ideas in a rather strange manner. His emotions and thoughts are so confused after his mother’s death that he ends up identifying his mother and the fish.
Another technique worth mentioning is the use of what has been called ‘continuous present’: past, present and future events are mixed. Everything seems to happen at the same time.

Themes
As we can see, one of the main themes of this novel is the characters themselves. In one sense, then, this is a psychological novel which tries to show the way in which the minds of these very peculiar characters work. The reader has to find out the real motives of these characters that apparently go to Jefferson in order to keep a promise they made to their mother. In fact, the husband wants to go there to get a set of false teeth, Dewey Dell wants to get an abortion, Vardaman wants to get a toy train, Carl wants a phonograph... This presents another theme suggested by the novel: the contrast between the dead and the living, between the apparent reason for this crazy journey and the wishes of the living. Other themes are religion (contrast between Cora, the conventional village woman, and the dead mother, who had had sex with a priest), family relationships, social relationships in the deep South, ...
In this work, Faulkner seems to have a very pessimistic view of human nature and a very peculiar sense of humor. The book has been called a tragicomedy, and certainly the juxtaposition of tragic events with grotesque episodes (the son making the coffin while the mother is dying, the identification of mother and fish) or the comments about the smell of the corpse are examples of ‘black’ humor coming from a writer who doesn’t really seem to sympathize with his characters.
In general, this is a very open novel, subject to different interpretations. Some events are deliberately unclear, so that each reader can interpret them in different ways. For instance, when Darl burns the barn where her mother’s corpse is lying, the reason could be a desire to stop the crazy journey and let her mother finally rest, but it could also be a desire to punish the rest of the family who are going to Jefferson for selfish reasons. We never know, because he doesn’t explain it. Likewise, we cannot be sure if Darl is crazy or sane at the end of the book. He is a strange character, able to narrate events where he is not present (a suggestion of something akin to magic realism?), but is he really crazy?

Context for "A Rose for Emily"

2009-10-26T03:05:00.000-07:00

American History: http://www.animatedatlas.com/movie.html

American Geography: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm

Text and links: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb05/workshops/fiction/faulkner1.asp

Hills Like White Elephants

2009-10-21T01:19:00.001-07:00

http://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackboard/Common/Stories/WhiteElephants.html

1.- Where and when does the story take place?
2.- Could you describe the characters?
3.- What is the story about? Does it have a plot?
4.- How would you describe the style in which the story is written?
5.- A “white elephant”, apart from its literal meaning, is an idiom which refers to something considered as a waste of money, something that requires much care but provides little profit, such as a very expensive train line or a very expensive and under-used cultural complex. By extension, it is something of little or no value. Why do you think the writer chose this title?
6.- Who do you think wrote this story? Why?

Countee Cullen

2009-10-21T01:17:00.001-07:00

COUNTEE CULLEN, “Yet Do I Marvel” (1925)

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels his awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black and bid him sing.

THINKING, TALKING AND WRITING ABOUT POETRY

2009-10-21T01:16:00.001-07:00

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY #19

THINKING, TALKING AND WRITING ABOUT POETRY

Theme

What is the poem about?
Is the theme developed? Does any change take place in the course of the poem?
Is it narrative? Does it tell a story?

Organization

How is the poem structured?
How many stanzas are there?
Is it free verse?

Point of view

From whose point of view do we see things in the poem?

Linguistic features

What is the rhyme scheme?
Is there a particular rhythm?
Does the poet make use of particular sounds? Does he/she use alliteration (repetition of sounds)?
Is the choice of vocabulary significant?
Are particular grammatical forms used?
What about punctuation?
What sort of imagery is used? (Metaphors? Similes? Images?)
In general, is the language simple or complex? Why?

Mood

What is the tone of the poem? Optimistic? Melancholic? Humorous?

Evaluation

How successful is the poem? Does it work? Did you like it the first time you read it? Do you like it now?

Robert Frost

2009-10-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

ROBERT FROST
“Stopping by woods on a snowy evening” (1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

Is this Literature?

2009-10-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY #13

IS THIS LITERATURE?

Extract 1

We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among them, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ... We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, do in the name, and by the authority of good people of these states reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain ...
(The Declaration of Independence)

Extract 2
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
(Gertrude Stein)

Extract 3:
This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were
in the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
(William Carlos Williams)

Extract 4
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Love will last forever
Between me and you
(Valentine)

Extract 5
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 ...
(Walt Whitman)

Extract 6
God doesn’t exist
Yes I do!
(Graffitti)