American Literature 16-17

L.
Parmentier ~ 2016-2017
COLONIAL AND ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN

LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

IDEOLOGICAL PARADOXES OF AMERICAN CULTURE
- Liberty and power
o Freedom and political power speaking language of democracy but not practising it
- Democracy and slavery
- Religious piety and profit motive
è Studying literary texts to understand those contradictions
- Approach history from a perspective from that time
- Very broad subjects and sorts of texts

TEACHING
- English preferred the classics, Americans the English literature
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- American literature only taught in the mid-20 century as a serious course. Now it has become an
important field in literature.
- Conceptions
o Insufficiently American and literary
o Sermons, memoirs, … not seen as literary texts
o American authors were not sufficiently sophisticated
§ Debate: what is literature?
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§ Perception has changed: 17 century versus now
• Romantic view: literature as knowledge. Dialectical relationship between
texts and history.
• Contemporary view

LATE 16 T H AND 17 T H CENTURY

FIRST EXPEDITIONS
• 1584
o Commissioned by Sir Walter Raleigh: Roanoke Island (current North Carolina)
o Failure
§ Conflicts with the native people
§ Ship back to England to get help and supplies
o Lost colony

• 1607

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L. Parmentier ~ 2016-2017
o Chesapeake Bay
o First permanent settlement in
Jamestown (after James I)
o In the area Virginia (after the Virgin
Queen > Elizabeth)
• 1620
o Puritan settlers: Pilgrim Fathers on
the Mayflower, to Cape Cod,
Massachusetts (New England: area)
o www.plimoth.org
§ Try to recreate life as it was
then

PILGRIM FATHERS
• Mixed group of people (young and old) with diverse regional, social, occupational background, wanted
to be purified from English church practices.
• Successful settlement
• By 1640: 25 000 people (area: New England)
o = Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut

MOTIVES FOR MIGRATION AND COLONIZATION
The idea of America (promise of a better life)
- Migration was everywhere, also in Europe and England. A lot of people were stuck, because they didn’t
have the resources. But people constantly moved, also from one town to another.
o Ireland, Germany, France, …
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o America was one of those destination. Not a significant one until the 18 century.
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- Fundamental assumption in the 17 century
- America with the reputation of a fantasy land, paradise of treasure, effortless prosperity
o Europe as the contrary

The promises of plantation
- Planting a colony (later seen as a place where slave labour occurred). Here, planting was still a process
to keep the nation strong: political supremacy.

Reasons for migration
- Global competition for markets and resources.
o Clash between Spain, Portugal, …: who could dominate America?
§ Another front in the constant wars between those countries. Not only fought on the
continent, but also in the Atlantic.
§ Hope to find better access to (luxury) goods that people want à Triangular Atlantic
trade
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o 17 century: change in needs
§ New products: spices, oils, … è Mediterranean (France, Spain, …): unfavourable
balance of trade. England has a bigger import than export (so they pay more).
§ England has a good textile industry; they look for new markets.
§ English are constantly defining themselves against the Spanish (extraction)

- Internal economic competition

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o Rough competition: high cost of entry

o Monopolies, judicial complexity, …
o New world offers a way out è pursue private enterprise outside of those regimes
o Not an opportunity for the poor, but for the middle class merchants and second sons (first son
gets it all). The poor are very rarely mentioned; only as a resource for the rich to exploit.
§ Fantasy of upward mobility connected to America, but it’s not true.
- Fear of overpopulation in England
o Enclosure, land reform, …
o Overcrowded prisons
o Excesses of the idle rich <> idle poor
- Religious descent (New England migrants)
o Separating (corruption > leave; Bradford) and non-separating puritans (Massachusetts group)
§ Separating from the Church was illegal and they could kill you for it.
- Science and new understanding of racial differences
o Debates: origins of humans and animals, world formation, …
o Thomas De Bry’s Indians: engravings > perception of those Indians by John White. Also based
on his impressions on what Indians were ought to look like.
§ Genre of history: not very plot-heavy, sometimes difficult to read
• Be alert to the way they tell stories!

VIRGINIA

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
- Joint stock corporation
- An English soldier, explorer, and author. He was knighted. He was considered to have played an
important part in the establishment of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North
America. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown) between September 1608 and
August 1609, and led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay. He was the
first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area and New England.
His books and maps were important in encouraging and supporting English colonization of the New
World. He gave the name New England to the region.
When Jamestown was England's first permanent settlement in the New World, Smith trained the
settlers to farm and work, thus saving the colony from early devastation. This strength of character and
determination overcame problems presented from the hostile Indians, the wilderness and the
troublesome and uncooperative settlers. Harsh weather, lack of water, living in a swampy wilderness
and attacks from the Powhatan Indians almost destroyed the colony. The Jamestown settlement
survived and so did Smith, but he had to return to England after being injured by an accidental explosion
of gunpowder in a boat.
- E. M. Wingfield
o “It was proved to his face that he begged in Ireland, like a rogue without a license.”
- Devoted himself to writing; documenting the English colonial project + promotor
- Tricky figure to understand
o Believes in tradition: radical traditionalist
o Two themes in his writing that prove this:
§ Labour: “my hands have been my lands”
§ Virtue (gentleman) demands labour
o Loathed the aristocrats that came with him. You have to work hard to earn something. For
most, that was a contradiction

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WRITING OF SMITH
- Catastrophe
o Lack of food
o Death and disease
o Hopelessness
- Nobody is working hard enough; Indians are a threat > everything is about to fall apart.
- In spite of these difficulties, he praises labour and virtue.
o Toughtaftity(?) humorous

GENERAL HISTORY

- A contrast of virtue (86)
o “He” refers to Wingfield. Spanish are constructed as something opposed to English virtue. But
Wingfield is like the Spanish. “His soldiers” are Wingfield’s soldiers. “he to keep it” refers to
Smith again. Glorification of his own and his virtue.
- Emblems of Indian awe (87)
o Powhatan Indians: no clue about how complex their politics were.
o Captivity of Smith (cf. Pocahontas)
o He is showing the Indians a compass; standard trope of Indian encounter. Describe to
demonstrate the awe of the Indians of the English superior culture and technology.
o The reader and the Indians have to know about the compass and the navigation. But the
Indians didn’t speak the same language.
§ Compass as a symbol of navigation and colonization > makes the English powerful.
- Rhetoric of English wonder (90)
o Sense of Indians conjuring the devil
o Cannibalism
o Quoting poetry as a mark of sophistication (Lucretius)
o English perspective on Indian encounter; they inspire him in wonder.
- The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
o They didn’t know what other people looked like, only that it was different and maybe strange.
o Naivety versus awe
- Rescue out of captivity (by Pocahontas??)
o He only wrote about it years later while he normally didn’t leave things out.
o Enduring story
§ It invests the true power of the Indians in a young woman. She is not a threat, moment
of crisis, prospect of peaceful Anglo-Indian relations.
- Rhetoric of suffering and overcoming
o Threat of the Indians: 85
o Threat of internal dissention: 86
o First year in Jamestown in general: 92
§ No rejection of status hierarchy <> virtue
rd
§ Story told in the 3 person, refers to himself by Smith, seem a bit objective, tends to
editorialize, sacrifice and leadership, virtues in the work of colonization, …

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AUTHORSHIP OF JOHN SMITH

Many critics judge Captain John Smith's character and credibility as an author based on a single event, his
description of Pocahontas saving his life from the hand of Powhatan. Additional and probably more accurate
judgments should rest upon his relationship with both the Native Americans and colonists of Jamestown. Smith
earned his status as an American hero through his strong work ethic and compromise with the Native
Americans, themes that reappear in his writings such as The Generall Historie of Virginia and The True Travels…of
Captain John Smith. Most of the critical scepticism of Smith's credibility is a result of the differences between
his narratives. His earliest text is A True Relation of Virginia, which was submitted for publication in 1608, the
year after his experiences in Jamestown. The second, The Generall Historie, was published sixteen years later in
1624. Compared to The Generall Historie, many events are either left out or changed, including the Pocahontas
scene. Accordingly, the publishing of letters, journals, and pamphlets from the colonists was regulated by the
companies that sponsored the voyage, in that they must go "directly to the company" because no one was to
"write any letter of anything that may discourage others". Smith is now known to have violated this regulation
by first publishing A True Relation as an unknown author. Furthermore, the editor of The Generall Historie
probably "cut out...references to the Indians' hostility, to bickering among the leaders of Virginia Company, and
to the early supposed mutiny of...Smith on the voyage to Virginia."

The Pocahontas episode is subject to the most scrutiny by literary critics, for it does not even appear in A True
Relation, but does in The Generall Historie. According to Lemay, important evidence to Smith's credibility
regarding the story is the fact that "no one in Smith's day ever expressed doubt in [it], and many persons who
must have known the truth...including John Rolfe [and] Pocahontas...were in London in 1616 when Smith
publicised the story in a letter to the queen".[38]
Smith focuses heavily on Native Americans in all of his works concerning the New World. His relationship with
the Powhatan Native Americans is the sole factor that saved the Jamestown colony from sharing the fate of
the Roanoke colony (Sir Walter Raleigh).
He was friendly toward them, but never let them forget the might of English weapons… Realizing that the very
existence of the colony depended on peace, he never thought of trying to exterminate the natives. Only after his
departure were there bitter wars and massacres, the natural results of a more hostile policy. In his writings, Smith
reveals the attitudes behind his actions.

In The Generall Historie, Smith implies that the Virginia colonists resented the Native Americans and the two
peoples had mostly hostile feelings towards each other. He compares Chief Powhatan to the devil, and refers
to the Native Americans as "barbarians". Numerous times, he mentions sending spies to discover the Chief's
intent and declining Powhatan's request to relinquish their arms. He also stresses the many experiences where
the Native Americans threatened and attempted to kill him.
Lemay contests Smith's depiction of the relations between colonists and Native Americans: "[He] was not only
fair, he was surprisingly kind and humanitarian. He treated the native Americans as he treated whites…tortured
[none], executed none, and saved native Americans when others wanted to slay them." Smith's own past as a
commoner allowed him to sympathize with the Native Americans, and he believed that they were not inferior to
the whites but just "at a different stage of civilisation". The respect between Smith and the Powhatan earned
him the title of a werowance, "a chieftain among the whites". The relationship between Smith and Chief
Powhatan is further evidence of the understanding between these two cultures.

In The Generall Historie, Smith addresses a number of letters exchanged between him and Powhatan which
reflect the respect that existed between them. "Half a dozen years after Smith had left Virginia – and after the
whites had repeatedly assured Powhatan that Smith was dead – [the] leader instructed his advisor… [and]
Pocahontas to look for Smith in England." Judging from these instructions, the Chief seems to have been deeply
affected by Smith's rumoured death. This is another indication of the positive relationship held between colonists

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and Native Americans; if their associations were as Smith depicted them in The Generall Historie, Powhatan
would not have been much concerned about his absence or death.

Concerning his relationship with the colonists, Smith is considered by historical and literary critics to be an
arrogant braggart. On numerous accounts, he outwardly expressed the opinion that the colonists were
worthless; most of them were gentlemen who felt no need to do physical labour. As a method of survival,
Smith blatantly rejected the social order that existed in England, which obviously angered the gentlemen of
the colony. Smith was regularly frustrated with the amount of delegation that the colonists went through before
a decision could be made. Smith's disgust with the "gentlemen" of Jamestown was clear; he makes several
references to them as "useless parasites," for their ignorance in the laborious tasks that are required for
beginning a colony. His frustration with them did not end at their inability to work, but also extended to the
social order that they believed they were entitled to. The colonists, accustomed to the social order of England,
rejected the social construct that Smith created in Jamestown. They perceived Smith's establishment of this
new structure as a challenge to their "deserved" respect.

Smith mentions several times in his writings that having actual workers would have been better than what the
Virginia Company sent over: "twentie good workmen had been better than all them all". In Smith's hopes to
better colonize the Americas, he urges the Massachusetts Bay Company not to make the same mistake that
the Virginia Company made: "nor such multitude of Officers, neither masters, gentlemen, gentlewomen and
children as you have men to work, which idle charges you will find very troublesome, and the effects dangerous,
and one hundred good labourers better than a thousand such Gallants as we were sent me that could do
nothing."
In reality, Smith was discontent with only a few colonists who acted this way; he "claimed the early colonists
were heroes. His primary purpose in writing The Generall Historie...was to eternalise 'the memory of those that
effected' the settlement of Virginia". Smith goes so far as to compare the colonists to Adam and Eve in A
Description of New England (1616). Just as Adam and Eve spread productivity throughout the world, so the
colonists created life in the Virginia colony. Smith essentially sympathized with gentlemen; he knew that it
was not their fault that they were useless and that this trait was merely a product of the imposed standards
of English society. He recognized that "they were imprisoned by their own self-imposed limitations. What they
could and could not do was decided by their awareness of traditional roles and by the shame that they would
feel if others saw them engaged in physical work". Lemay suggests that, as a result of Smith's strict rules and the
emigration to America, these men could shed these roles and create new lives for themselves in which they could
celebrate the products of their labours and not feel humiliated.

PROMOTER OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION

One of John Smith's main incentives in writing about his New World experiences and observances was to
promote the colonization of the New World by England. Many promotional writers sugar-coated their
depictions of America in order to heighten its appeal, but Smith was not one to exaggerate the facts. He was
very straightforward with his readers about both the dangers and the possibilities of colonization. Instead of
proclaiming that there was an abundance of gold in the New World, as many writers did, Smith illustrated that
what was truly abundant within America was monetary opportunity in the form of industry. Smith was realistic
about his proposition for colonization and the benefits that it could yield. He recognized that no "other motive
[besides] wealth…would draw [potential colonists] from their ease and humours at home". "Therefore, he
presented in his writings actual industries that could yield significant capital within the New World: fishing,
farming, shipbuilding, and fur trading".

In A Description of New England, Smith illustrates America as an ideal environment for such trades and
enumerates the monetary benefits that they would bring, rather than making false promises of abounding gold

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to his readers. Smith attempted to attract interest for colonization by depicting the opportunities that fertile soil
and abundant resources would bring. He insists, however, that only hard workers will be able to reap such
benefits. Just as Smith did not exaggerate the possibilities for wealth within America, he did not understate the
dangers and toil associated with colonization. He declared that only those with a strong work ethic would be
able to "live and succeed in America" in the face of such dangers. Colonists would have to risk their lives in
order to benefit from the "phenomenal possibilities" that the New World offered. As a promoter of American
colonization, Smith did not placate his readers. He wanted potential colonists to be aware of the dangers that
they faced, the work that colonization would require, and the benefits that they stood to gain.

A DESCRIPTION OF NEW ENGLAND
- Context
o Labour was avoided unless you were a labourer.
o Genesis: reference to Adam. He was cursed for violating the law made by God > eternal labour.
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§ Cf. the sweat of one’s brow. In 17 century, it was a sign of lower status. But problem
for Smith: colonization as a good thing, but it requires labour. How to make labour
honourable?
- Labour and virtue
o Still experimental ideas, but through his writing, people get familiar with it (also people who
lack small means)
- Labour as pleasure
o English pleasure: excess, body, … (corrupting, not virtuous pleasures!)
o American pleasure: hunting, fishing, farming (labour)
o Less work (3/7 <> 6/7)
o Radical: changing meaning of labour and pleasure + anyone can participate.
- Class distinctions remain
o Smith is not a leveller. Labour pleasure for all classes, but he makes distinctions.
- The priority of wealth (94-95)
o Miller: exploring the complexity of puritan culture. Radical conception.
o TULIP: Synod of Dort, 1618-1619 (Acronym; see slide)
§ Some will be saved, some will not
§ No conditions > election is God’s choice, not yours
§ The elect people can atone for their sins
§ Irresistible grace: power of God comes into your heart; you cannot resist it or create
it.
o How do you make choices about your life? How do you decide what to do?
o Saints
- Religion in a process of colonization?
o Puritans: discipline
§ The calling
• Spiritual: devoted to God
• Worldly: devoted to your job
o New England became really rich really fast; wealth distributed.
o How to live in the world but not be of the world? Generating profits <> virtues?
- Other ideas about puritanism
o Covenant: contract
§ God and the Israelites > chosen people. Helping each other along the way; individual
covenanted churches.
§ Mayflower contract, upon arrival at Cape Cod.

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o Typological belief
§ History of Christians: guides and justifications
§ Puritans thought of themselves as Israelites: exodus, saved after life in wilderness.
Looking for signs that they are the new Israelites.
§ Typology: types of things/persons/… in the world.
o Providence
§ God controls everything; nothing happens without his allowance.
§ Intervention: general or constantly?
§ God has provided America for the puritans, the decision to go was providential. It
works out no matter what (teaching a lesson?).
§ Story of Bradford to prove God’s providence
- Origins of the covenant
o Of Plymouth Plantation, 123
§ It was bloody awful to be a puritan in England. Things were so bad, they had to go
somewhere else, so they made a covenant to make it happen.
§ Scruby group: reasons to leave. First to Leiden (The Netherlands), oppressed with
heavy labours, farmers in a commercial town.
§ Plymouth group
§ It was going to be hard, but it was possible.

AMERICAN “PILGRIMS”: WILLIAM BRADFORD
- Pilgrim Fathers
- Life
o William Bradford was an English Separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire, who
later moved to Leiden in Holland, and then in 1620 migrated to the Plymouth Colony on the
Mayflower. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact and went on to serve as Governor
of the Plymouth Colony intermittently for about thirty years between 1621 and 1657. His
journal Of Plimoth Plantation covered the years from 1620 to 1657 in Plymouth.
o The Mayflower voyage
§ The Mayflower departed Plymouth, England on September 6/16, 1620. The 100-foot
ship had 102 passengers and a crew of 30 - 40 in extremely cramped conditions. By
the second month out, the ship was being buffeted by westerly gales, causing the
ship‘s timbers to be badly shaken, with caulking failing to keep out sea water, and with
passengers lying wet and ill, even in their berths. There were two deaths on the trip,
a crew member and a passenger. (The worst was yet to come after arriving at their
destination. In the space of several months, almost half the passengers perished in a
cold, harsh, unfamiliar New England winter.)
§ They spotted Cape Cod hook on November 9/19, 1620, after about a month of delays
in England and 2 months at sea. They spent several days trying to get south to their
planned destination of the Colony of Virginia, but strong winter seas forced them to
return to the harbour at Cape Cod hook, now called Provincetown Harbour, where
they anchored on November 11/21, 1620. The Mayflower Compact was signed that
day, Bradford being one of the first to sign.
o Anchored and first explorations at Plymouth Colony
§ Up to this time, Bradford, age 30, had yet to assume any significant leadership role in
the colony. The Mayflower anchored in present-day Provincetown Harbor and, when
the time came to search for a place for settlement, Bradford volunteered to be a
member of the exploration parties. In November and December, these parties made

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three separate ventures from the Mayflower on foot and by boat, finally locating what
is now Plymouth Harbor in mid-December and selecting that site for settlement.
§ During the first expedition on foot, Bradford got caught in a deer trap made by Native
Americans and hauled nearly upside down. The third exploration departed from the
Mayflower on December 6, 1620, when a group of men (including Bradford) located
present-day Plymouth Bay. A winter storm nearly sank their boat as they approached
the bay, but the explorers managed to successfully land on Clark's Island, suffering
from severe exposure to the cold and waves.

- Bradford described them (Pilgrim Fathers) as such. What does he mean by “pilgrims”?
o Pilgrims are travelling to heaven. Go to America in order to go to heaven. Nowadays, a
pilgrimage is towards a sacred place. Pilgrimage is a sacred route to somewhere.
o Puritans were absolutely devoted to the idea of love (caritas: take care of).
§ Model of Christian charity
§ Social glue that made everything work
§ Letter from Robinson: faith also as an important factor
o Bradford understood that it was an eternal migration, in mind, but also physically.
o Arrival in America is described, sounds a bit like Smith’s General History
§ Accomplishments are special and historically important
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- 17 century writers: wilderness as a wasteland
o uncultivated, it was scary, place of the devil, to be avoided
th
- 18 century: shift
o Beautiful place, attraction (cf. Romanticism)

THE ARRIVAL IN AMERICA
- Seen as something beautiful, but lots of people died. Many were sick and those who weren’t took care
of them (caritas; Christian model).
o Contrast with the sailors on the ship: they let the others die like a dog. More virtuously
described than Wingfield
- Commonly versus the particular
o Common stock: stick together to survive
o Particulars: living outside of the plantation, not a part of the church.
§ Other people are seen as threats
- Attract servants with the promise of economic good
o They were not a part of the church. Church as a collective whole, but not everyone was part of
the group.
- The counter-covenant of Merrymount (145)
o Seen as horrible. Idealised collective community that Bradford wants for the church itself.
Servants were not equals and Bradford didn’t want that, but the Christian model says Christians
are equal è problems in definition of the group.
o Status hierarchy in England organised life (eminency). Imagining a world where that kind of
organisation is not at work.
o Free indirect discourse (dramatic irony): ironic gap between puritans’ intention and economic
reality (people wanted more land and space > covenant church couldn’t stay together).
§ Growing migration > also Winthrop’s group now
§ Price for prosperity: greedy people
§ Very difficult to not get attached to things when things keep coming your way.

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- Providential violence (153)

o Framework: Leviticus. Ritual sacrifice to show faith to God. Give up something valuable to show
this.

RECURRING THEMES
- Religious piety è sentimental morality/politeness (changing over time)
- Spiritual endeavour
- Reflective self-consciousness
- Problems of wealth è regimes of economical self-making

ON PLYMOUTH PLANTATION
Bradford, along with Edward Winslow and others, contributed material to George Morton, who merged
everything into a letter published in London in 1622, Mourt's Relation, which was primarily a journal of the
colonists' first years at Plymouth.

Bradford’s history is a blend of fact and interpretation. The Bradford journal records not only the events of the
first 30 years but also the reactions of the colonists. The Bradford journal is regarded by historians as the
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preeminent work of 17 century America. It is Bradford’s simple yet vivid story, as told in his journal, that has
made the Pilgrims the much-loved "spiritual ancestors of all Americans" (Samuel Eliot Morison).
Bradford apparently never made an effort to publish the manuscript during his lifetime. He did intend for it to
be preserved and read by others, writing at the end of chapter 6:

WINTHROP, BRADSTREET AND TAYLOR

SERMONS
- Really popular with Puritans
- “Ordinary means to salvation” <> grace: true means to salvation
o The more you listen to them, the more it helps to open up your heart
o Source of comfort and pleasure
- Understanding of the Bible

The problem of sermons
- Sola fide: only faith
- Sola scriptura: only the words of the Bible matter. Scripture is there all the time. They need scripture
because it’s a guidance.
o OT versus NT: contradictions >> sermons offer help to understand these contradictions.
Sermons allowed scripture to open itself up.
- Winthrop: layman. He did not write many sermons.
- Particular form/genre
o Intellectual resource: structure of interpretation
o Puritans believed in reason to understand
o Close reading: passage from scripture (key text)
o Puritans
§ Highly educated > reading the Bible since they were children. Sermons were an
opportunity for ordinary people to participate.
§ Bible reading groups
§ “Student” notes: word for word è communally constructed texts

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JOHN WINTHROP
- Successful governor
- 1620: Plymouth è 1630: Massachusetts Bay
- Winthrop: lawyer, expressed his concerns in sermons.
- John Winthrop was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England, following Plymouth Colony.
Winthrop led the first large wave of immigrants from England in 1630 and served as governor for 12 of
the colony's first 20 years. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city upon a hill" dominated
New England colonial development, influencing the governments and religions of neighbouring
colonies.
- Winthrop was born into a wealthy landowning and merchant family. He trained in the law and became
Lord of the Manor at Groton in Suffolk. He was not involved in founding the Massachusetts Bay
Company in 1628, but he became involved in 1629 when anti-Puritan King Charles I began a crackdown
on Nonconformist religious thought. In October 1629, he was elected governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, and he led a group of colonists to the New World in April 1630, founding a number of
communities on the shores of Massachusetts Bay and the Charles River.
- Between 1629 and his death in 1649, he served 19 annual terms as governor or lieutenant-governor
and was a force of comparative moderation in the religiously conservative colony, clashing with the
more conservative Thomas Dudley and the more liberal Roger Williams and Henry Vane. Winthrop was
a respected political figure, and his attitude toward governance seems authoritarian to modern
sensibilities. He resisted attempts to widen voting and other civil rights beyond a narrow class of
religiously approved individuals, opposed attempts to codify a body of laws that the colonial
magistrates would be bound by, and also opposed unconstrained democracy, calling it "the meanest
and worst of all forms of government". The authoritarian and religiously conservative nature of
Massachusetts rule was influential in the formation of neighbouring colonies, which were formed in
some instances by individuals and groups opposed to the rule of the Massachusetts elders.
- Winthrop's son John was one of the founders of the Connecticut Colony, and Winthrop himself wrote
one of the leading historical accounts of the early colonial period. His long list of descendants includes
famous Americans, and his writings continue to influence politicians today.

SERMON
- Opening: about economics, about class: A Model of Christian Charity (166)
o Strikes as very conservative
o Nothing we can do about the class differences, it’s what God wants
o When people prosper, people have needs and desires (ambitions > threat to the community)
è Winthrop recognises that the wish to change your class could be a problem.
- Justification for his view
o Diversity is a way of glorifying God
o Difference in economics generates different kinds of feelings/virtues. Sermons discusses what
that charity is. Not simple the charity of giving or forgiving, but the feelings you have when you
do that: caritas, love.
- Class differences not connected to bad/good.
o Not a moral identity
o God reserves the property of these gifts to himself (being wealthy doesn’t make you special è
some kind of rationalization)
- Rules of society
o Justice (law)
o Mercy (morality): nature and grace (prior to the law)
§ Assumes sin and selfishness

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o Seeking to balance the claims > creation of a set of principles.

§ Source: scripture (foundation of every claim he makes in the sermon)
o People need to be prepared for all bad things (famine, Indian attacks, diseases), but it is even
more important to give to those in need.
§ Punishment for not being liberal(?)
§ Selfishness (keep themselves alive) versus Biblical injunction (give to those in need)
- Exercise of mercy: affection that comes with it
o Feelings are necessary, otherwise they will never be truly generous
o Rules are not ultimately forcible > affection must come with it (result of loving feelings)
§ Reasons why someone would want to have loving feelings
§ “Love is the bond of perfection” (171)
• Material metaphor referring to a body (bond holds two body parts together;
popular metaphor for complex organizations) > Church and Christ were a
body. Christians are knit together and they must think of each other the way
the right hand thinks of the left hand > save each other even if that weakens
yourself.
• Also in scripture: we are all connected.
• Beautiful idea in theory, difficult in practice
- No room for protest or individualism in this model
o Way of preserving his power (Winthrop)?
o Radical model: fundamental equality
- All comes down to Adam’s sin
o After the fall: principle in ourselves to only love ourselves.
- Same sex pairs: equal love (page 174)
o Truly loving your neighbours = truly loving yourself
- The care of the public must over sway the private respects
o Fair distribution of land: you could not freeze out the poor, you had to give them a fair amount
of land
- Ending of the sermon: focus on potential for failure
o Big economy, but not according to the law of love?
o No bonds of perfection (completeness)?
o Special commission: covenant with God for this work.
§ If there is failure, the Lord will surely break us. Extraordinary, high expectations.
Failure => punishment will be great.
- City upon a Hill (Winthrop, 1630)
o Articulate an American exceptionalism
o Cf. Reagan, Kennedy, Obama, Trump, … è America as a shining light, a beacon.
o Jesus’s City upon a Hill
§ Light functions in two ways: beacon to the world, but it is also exposed (responsibility
of being an example). Reagan wasn’t interested in this second aspect.
§ Winthrop accepts it: monumental failure (not bragging <> Reagan). Profits and
pleasures > we shall surely perish.

POETRY
Poetry:
- Reflections
- Elegies for the death
- Anagrams: morally safe amusement
- Scriptural translations: often of the psalms è page 190: psalm of David; ordinary people did this.

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- Dedicatory verse
è Engaging with the word of God: process it through their reason and imagination
- Was considered acceptable for women
o Bradstreet and Taylor
o Wigglesworth: most popular (also in Anthology): page 254, stanza 210 è very popular in
America, people recited it (also children) > about the final judgement: graphic images of rotting
in hell > attractive to puritans
- Poetry to reflect on spirituality (puritan imperative to reflect on your soul)
o How have I been a good Christian?
o What laws have I kept and which ones have I violated?
o God as subject of the poems, not the author.
o Children < love for God
- Understand the theology to understand the form
o EVEN NIET OPGELET

ANNE BRADSTREET
Life
Anne Bradstreet, née Dudley, was the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first writer
in England's North American colonies to be published. She is the first Puritan figure in American Literature and
notable for her large corpus of poetry, as well as personal writings published posthumously.

Born to a wealthy Puritan family in Northampton, England, Bradstreet was a well-read scholar especially affected
by the works of Du Bartas. A mother of eight children and the wife of a public officer in the New England
community, Bradstreet wrote poetry in addition to her other duties. Her early works read in the style of Du
Bartas, but her later writings develop into her unique style of poetry which centres on her role as a mother, her
struggles with the sufferings of life, and her Puritan faith.

Poetry
- Also some poems about historical figures and history
- Our focus: domestic poems, more intimate
- Themes: fallingness (cf. Taylor), self-deprecation

Prologue
- Women writer è normally other tasks: household, kids, … First those duties, then there is time for
other stuff like poetry.
- Muses were also women
- Satire
- Stanza 8: idea of self-deprecation, but also satirizing the high ambition of some that is too much.
o Tension between humility and ambition

The Author to Her Book
- Most popular of her poems and most often anthologized
- Offspring: productivity, creativity è obscure, second-rate poetry
- Common language
o Child’s rags (clothes, also papers (collected to make paper), blemishes (poetic errors),
homespun (not fancy; metaphorical quality > rejection of European luxury, symbol for virtue),
feet (metrical feet, metre)
- Idea of materiality and its importance in her and Taylor’s poetry

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To Thomas Dudley
- Poem as a debt
- Estates: spiritual and worldly (lands, possessions)
o Share: an investment
o Tax: part of what made the common wheel work, contributing to the community to sustain
itself >> cf. the giving that Winthrop talks about in his sermon.
- Vertical spatial logic: heaven versus earth
o Thomas Dudley: deputy governor > honoured, but not puffed up.
- Line 43-46: criticizing the lower status people who have gained some wealth. They are no parading,
showing their success.
o Sumptuary laws: laws that control what you’re allowed to wear/eat/buy >> some consumption
only for the elite. Becomes a symbol almost for its opposite: humility (also a precious jewel;
not visible, not yours but God’s)
- House of her father
o Mansion prepared above, in heaven è standard metaphor; house not made with hands.
Symbol of salvation that depends on the materiality of the house.
- Economic metaphors throughout the poem
o Complicated relationship between the materiality of the metaphor and the thing it wants to
signify.
- Father: model pilgrim > example for others (cf. genre: glorify an example for others).

The Flesh and the Spirit
- Living in the world, but not being of the world
- Dialogue between two sisters in one body (cf. Winthrop: principle of self)
- Argument that the poet wants to make
th th
- Puritans: object of scoffing in 16 and 17 century by satirical writers
o Rejection of worldliness was satirized. God wants us to live in the world, why this obsession
with not living in the world?
- Answer: “Man does not live by breath alone”
o Materialistically: food
o Spiritually: you need something more than that > meditation?
- Sisters with different fathers (stepsisters)
o Father of flesh: Adam who sinned (principle of self)
§ True substance (key word)
o Father of spirit: Jesus Christ
§ Eternal substance (contradiction: not actually substance; it’s a metaphor)
- Sister of Spirit responds: thing she hears are temptations
o Offer a counterargument: Spirit is admitting that she already succumbed to the temptation of
the worldly things, but her ambition lies above.
o It’s a process (struggling) > not victorious just yet
o “The word of life, it is my meat” >> eternal substance: true substances are substituted
§ Logic of substitution
§ Salvation: worldly vocabulary > how to use it and how to escape from it?
- Flesh: dull capacity > stupid > no capacity to enjoy certain sophisticated pleasures.
o Very basic physical pleasures: food, sex, SPARKLY THINGS
- Last line: take thou the world and all that will
o Fill: conjures something very material > to have your fill: to have everything you want
§ Implies a space here: heaven
o Trading the world (also in “to my dear and loving husband)
§ Larger gesture of substitution: trade it all

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To My Dear and Loving Husband

- One of her more popular love poems, beautiful love poem
- Mines of gold: greed, selfishness > global quest for colonial wealth (Spanish, English, …) è trading all of
this for love
o Desire for gold is not a legitimate desire.
o What is the value of trading it away?
- Secular poem: love bound up in the importance of wealth and its rejection
o Recompense, repay, reward, … >> economic terms of exchange: transactional
o Love doesn’t feel that way, but the language of transaction was ready available and people
understood it.

Here follows some verses upon the burning of our house
- Dramatize and personalize the content of the flesh and the spirit. It may refer to any puritan and any
Christian.
- What does it mean to lose something you weren’t supposed to be attached to in the first place?
o Pelf > wealth
o Responses
§ Cry for help (natural)
§ “I blest his name that gave and took” è it’s okay
§ Repine, regret, remembering, mourning. She is imagining the things she lost.
• Remembering pleasurable moments
§ Chides herself for having these feelings
• World = dunghill
• She sees a mansion like her father (not made of hands)
• What it means to get a house > she builds this in in the spiritual metaphor of
the house in the sky (major purchase > major destination)

Letter to my dear children
- Conventional puritan form to show struggle in a narrative
o When coming a member of the Church: public testimony è many people did this >
expectations of this “genre”: story filled with struggle. Through this very difficult process,
people get to the experience of saving grace.
o Conventions for this genre

EDWARD TAYLOR (NOT ON THE EXAM HOORAY)
Life
Edward Taylor was of English origin and a colonial American poet, pastor and physician. His work remained
unpublished for some 200 years but since then has established him as one of the foremost writers of his time.
His poetry has been characterized as "American Baroque" as well as Metaphysical

Works
Taylor's poems, in leather bindings of his own manufacture, survived him, but he had left explicit instructions
that his heirs should never publish any of his writings and the poems remained all but forgotten for more than
200 years. In 1937 Thomas H. Johnson discovered a 7,000-page quarto manuscript of Taylor's poetry in the library
of Yale University and published a selection from it in The New England Quarterly. The appearance of these
poems, wrote Taylor's biographer Norman S. Grabo, "established [Taylor] almost at once and without quibble as
not only America's finest colonial poet, but as one of the most striking writers in the whole range of American
literature." His most important poems, the first sections of Preparatory Meditations (1682–1725) and God's
Determinations Touching His Elect and the Elects Combat in Their Conversion and Coming up to God in Christ:

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Together with the Comfortable Effects Thereof (c. 1680), were published shortly after their discovery. His
complete poems, however, were not published until 1960, by Donald E. Stanford. His poetical work has been
defined as Metaphysical, although others have preferred to particularize it as "American Baroque”.[5]

Taylor's poems were an expression of his deeply held religious views, acquired during a strict upbringing and
shaped in adulthood by New England Congregationalist Puritans, who during the 1630s and 1640s developed
rules far more demanding than those of their co-religionists in England. Alarmed by a perceived lapse in piety
of those in his congregation, he concluded that professing belief and leading a scandal-free life were
insufficient for full participation in the local assembly. To become communing participants, "halfway members"
were required to relate by testimony some personal experience of God's saving grace leading to conversion, thus
affirming that they were, in their own opinion and that of the church, assured of salvation. This requirement,
expressed in the famous Halfway Covenant of 1662, was readily embraced by Taylor, who became one of its
most vocal advocates.
Taylor's poems are marked by a robust spiritual content, conveyed by means of homely and vivid imagery
derived from everyday Puritan surroundings and glorifying the Christian experience. Written in conjunction
with his sermons, his "Meditations" each explore scriptural themes and passages, often showing Taylor's own
deep understanding of doctrine, as well as his struggle with some of the contradictions within strict Puritanism.
His poetry is full of his expression of love of God and of his commitment to serve his creator amid the isolation
of rural life. "Taylor transcended his frontier circumstances," biographer Grabo observed, "not by leaving them
behind, but by transforming them into intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual universals."

- Material metaphors: idiosyncratically
- Very strict theologian
o Halfway covenant: evolved > rigour of the parents could not be expected of the children.
§ Conservative side versus complaints (baptising children of non-members?)
§ Halfway covenant was a compromise (no communion but a baptise)
o Taylor was on the conservative side
- His poems reflect that view: rigour, explicitly meditated poem > mostly wrote them for himself, to
inspire his sermons, sometimes he wrote them after his sermons
o Poems of struggle and of searching
o He takes his uncertainty very seriously, cannot be ignored and has to be faced
- Role of poetry in religion?
o Meditation 22: writing poems to glorify God and to realise one’s inadequacy
§ Metaphysical style
§ Guiding metaphor; exploring all the possibilities
th
- Poems discovered in 20 century; valued because of their difficulty
o Highly ambiguous
o Offer another way to show how the puritans looked at the materialistic world

Prologue
- Poet is the problem; an unfallen poet would be able to do this.
o Cf. blemish lines of Bradstreet
o Poet can only succeed through the power of God (theme of the poem); God as the author of
the world
- Final stanza: typical for Taylor in its strangeness
o Appearance of jewellery shops: given all of God’s assistance and help, this … might be able to
glorify God’s words.
§ Beauty being set off by a kind of structure
§ His job is to provide that structure > beauty itself is God’s beauty and he provides the
structure

16
Meditation 8
- Bird and bread: two images that don’t seem to fit together
- New covenant of faith (old: works) > you must believe in me.
o Book of John
- The traditions or movements in poetry that was currently going on back over in England were
metaphysical poetics of John Donne, George Herbert, books like that. This poem is an example of this
kind of metaphysical poetry. The characteristics of this kind of poem are its use of strong language from
images, powerful images. Sometimes a bit jarring and also strange kind of comparisons. 'Torturing one
poor word ten thousand ways" is the way Dryden describes the metaphysical poets in a later era.
Looking back we find this same sort of thing in Edward Taylor.
- First stanza:
o So he is looking out at the sky and sees a path from God’s Heaven to his door, and there is a
basket of bread which is the Bread of Life. Remember that Galileo had recently been
excommunicated for his Astronomy, which was more natural and less Divine.
- Second stanza:
o This stanza refers to original sin, the Total deprevity part of TULIP. The Bird of Paradise is the
soul which is kept inside the prison of the body. It is rather Greek image. Some ancient Greeks
believed in the immortality of the soul so it was a divine spark which was then imprisoned in
the lump of clay that was the body, and they longed for the day that they would be free of it.
So in the opposition between the body and soul, last time we saw that the body is the evil twin
of the soul. Now the body is the cage and the soul is the bird that is enclosed in the cage.
Something else is also affecting the bird, original sin. He lost his ability to eat the divine food
and so he was hungry in a severe famine.
- Third stanza:
o If you go out and look at corn, wheat, deer, is this food for the soul? No, you can eat it but it
won’t feed the soul, it just feeds the body. The soul cannot feed on the food that animals feed
on or even on the food that feeds the physical side. Angels don’t have soul food. You can’t go
to Heaven and ask for a cup of bread or divine flour. He is twisting and looking at this idea of
the Bread of Life from various angles. There is nothing for him to feed on. But then we find
God’s grace intervene.
o This is an image you might not want to visualize. What Taylor is saying is that God is
overflowing in His love and mercy toward us. This is the irresistible grace area of TULIP. God
took his own son to make Bread of Life for us. Taylor is pushing the limits of the image as
metaphysical poets tend to do. This is the atonement area of TULIP:
- Which Bread of Life from Heaven down came and stands. Disht on Thy Table up by Angels’ Hands.
o Taylor is saying that God has provided. This is also the atonement area. Since there was no
provision to overcome sin, God made provision.
- Jesus is now the sugar cake of life. By this, Taylor is saying that he is better than just regular breads he
is like sugar loaf. Taylor is trying to see how far he can push the image before it breaks down.
- Here is another aspect of metaphysical poetry, as well as other kinds of poetry. That is the tendency to
rearrange the syntax. Souls are but petty things to admire it. Instead of saying this, Taylor says "Souls
are but petty things it to admire". When you are reading this poetry if you want to understand it, you
have to stop and say, "O.K. what’s the verb; what’s the subject; what’s the object; how would this flow
in normal English?" Then once you understand what the sentence would normally read, you can start
to appreciate what Taylor is doing with the sentence by rearranging it.
- “Fill”: cf. Bradstreet
- Bread becomes the best kind of bread (even sweet now)
o Materiality of this bread is taken very seriously > believe in the miracle of salvation by faith
o Enthusiasm in the final couplet

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MARY ROWLANDSON

Life
Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott, was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native
Americans during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her
ordeal, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson was published. This text is considered a seminal American work in the literary genre of captivity
narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and
in England, leading it to be considered by some of the first American "bestseller".

Following her ransom, Rowlandson is thought to have composed a private narrative of her captivity recounting
the stages of her odyssey in twenty distinct "Removes" or journeys. During the attack on Lancaster, she
witnessed the murder of friends and family, some stripped naked and disembowelled. Upon her capture, she
travelled with her youngest child Sarah, suffering starvation, injury and depression, to a series of Indian villages.
Sarah, aged 6 years and 5 months, died en route. Mary and her other surviving children were kept separately and
sold as property, until she was finally reunited with her husband. Passages from the Bible are cited numerous
times within the narrative and function as a source of Rowlandson's solace. The text of her narrative is replete
with Biblical verses and references describing conditions similar to her own, and have fuelled much speculation
regarding the influence of Increase Mather in the production of the text.

The tensions between colonists and Native Americans, particularly in the aftermath of King Philip's War, were a
source of anxiety in the colonies. While fearful of losing connection to their own culture and society, Puritan
colonists were curious about the experience of one who had lived among Native people as a captive and returned
to colonial society. Many literate English people were familiar with the captivity narratives written by English and
European traders and explorers during the 17th century, who were taken captive at sea off the coast of North
Africa and in the Mediterranean and sometimes sold into slavery in the Middle East. The narratives were often
expressed as spiritual journeys and redemptions.

King Philip’s War
• First decade of colonization: respect towards native inhabitants
o But then: Bradford’s desire for land è pressure on Indian tribes
o Indians also: agriculture, but different than the English
• Metacom or King Philip
o Barbarian who leads the war
o But like Winthrop, trying to keep things together
o Without guns: vulnerability
• Praying Indians: very vulnerable è between Indians and Christian colonists
o Mistreated, murdered
• Devastating war
o Into the hinterlands, where the puritans were settling
o Wap of the war = map of settlement
o 12 towns completely destroyed
• Tradition of ritualized warfare è change when Europeans arrived (introduction of guns)
o Young warriors must not die
o Masculin superiority
• Captives often adopted into the tribe (cf. John Smith and Pocahontas)
o Generating wealth (asking ransom)
è Ambiguous way of treating their captives (cf. Rowlandson) > sometimes kindly, sometimes
harshly

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Mary Rowlandson
• In America when she’s two, becomes a minister’s wife which gives her a good deal of status.
• Important family
o Sense of her own status is reduced in captivity
• Division of the narrative into removes
o Moving more than normally because in war
• Extremely popular narrative, especially in England
o Numerous imitators
o New way of telling a story (gripping)
o Adventure genre
o Probably heavily edited (help from her husband?)
• Preface (not in the NA)
o Female modesty (cf. Bradstreet in her prologue)
• Genre of the captivity narrative
o Native to America
o Precursor to the English novel? Providing a model of English identity, narrative of redemption
o Elements of narrative and plot (fiction) è individuality of the protagonist

Title page, 1682
• Explains the aims of the texts
o Memorandum of God’s dealing with her
o Dispensation of public note and universal concernment
§ Everyone should know about it
§ Sensational è she became a celebrity
• Story of endurance, individuality, adventure
o Extended manifestation of the individual narrative voice

Title page, 17773
• Focus has shifted
o More on captivity, less on God’s dealing with her
o Autonomy of individuality
• Again and again published

Original title: the sovereignty and goodness of God
• Emphasises the theology at the heart of the text and subordinates all the other elements
o God is good and is all powerful
o Everything can be explained by these two principles

Attack in Lancaster
• Very frank and specific account of the violence, sometimes neutral.
• But also about the murderers and the many deaths
o Assumptions
o Page 258: “I have often heard ….” è she has heard about attacks and about Indians before
• Emergence of a more complicated picture?
• In the midst of the attack, something happens with time
o Exact: 2 hours
o Spiritual time: not time as we know it è she is amazed, she is in awe, not counting time as she
ordinarily would
o Cf. Removes è spatial and temporal

19
• Sister killed very soon in the attack

o Action of the attack and then suddenly a mini biography of her sister >> slowing down the
action
o Tension (cf. Bradstreet) è sense of affliction of God
§ Quoting helps her to explain certain stuff
o Role of material wealth?

Six Stout dogs (page 258)
• Guard dogs: attack any Indian that should come, but in this instance they don’t do it è lesson: we
should depend on God, you can’t always depend on things like guard dogs.
• cf. theme of providence
o Reference to time: though another time
o God didn’t want the dogs to have sufficiency that day
• We can’t entirely depend on our (reasonable) expectations
• Plan of God for Mary Rowlandson

Indians
• Hell hounds, ravenous beasts, …
• Rhetoric of inhumanity è sign of European racism?
o This is written after her redemption
o But: written after all these things have happened (context!!!) > trauma can cause a lot
• Fundamental difference between Indian and Christian identity?
o Challenged in the narrative?
o Sometimes blurred? YES
• Page 259: one person escaped
o Quotation from Job > escaped to tell the news
o One of her favourites to quote > Job also maintains his faith
Providence
• All actors in life è sufficiency’s: whatever you can do, whatever you are good at (second cause)
o Guard dog: alert and vicious if necessary
o Professor: explain a text
• Tend to make the world work on a daily basis
• Sometimes God intervenes (first cause) è providential (you have to see everything that happens in this
perspective)
o Time
o Chance
• Plan of God
o Language of carrying
o Suicide: unforgivable sin > maintain her reason and sense
o 262: desperate > asks for a token è providential answer (does not always work, God decides
to give a sign or not)
• She also attributes negative things to God’s providence
o Inability of the English ‘army’ to save her (mentions this a lot)
o God wasn’t ready for her affliction to end
• Indians not as autonomous individuals, agencies
• Food as a subject of providence
• Chastity is protected = divine providence
o 285: lions (Indians) > no decent people, but they do not abuse her
• One of the main reasons to write the text è argument to readers to believe in providential thinking

20
Quotations
• Invoking a scriptural language
• Hypertext > Puritans had heard the quotations before (as good Christians) è open up a theological
world of thought and experience
• Typological
o Identifying with the author of that particular scripture
o Example: David
• Bibliomancy: Bible has a sort of magical power è Puritans did not believe in this. Although, Rowlandson
experiences something close to this: opening the Bible on the correct line. Magical? No > providence.
o She gets a Bible
§ 263: providential encounter with the Bible “it came into my mind” > she does not
think herself > first 28 chapters
§ Scripture enacts what is happening emotionally to her at that moment
o 264: enduring the experience è award
• Framework (imposed?)
o Joseph’s influence? Making these moments typological?

Themes
• Persistence
• Faith
• Chasing
o Everything enforced by the providential message
• Sinful Mary
o She admits it a few times
o Even the most virtuous person will tend to say it was the fourth commander
• Care: one of her obligations
Lives
• Complicated experience with the Indians
• Connection between Indians and the diabolical
o ≠ Christian = devil
• Embodied images of the Indians > focus on the body and what they do with it
o 276

Rowlandson’s text gives us a detailed account of IN in their life, how the WAP live. These tendencies to describe
details of their lifes, works against the tendency to see the IN as a monolithic group of people. Throughout the
remove we sense the complexity of her relationship with the IN. In the preface they are describes as diabolical,
wild, unethical. CHR saw the world in black-and-white terms, if you weren’t CHR, you were diabolical.
She focuses on the blackness of their skin, their rituals (she doesn’t know what they mean, what the purpose is),
her only way she can explain it is that they are the lively resemblance of hell. Her limited context makes her focus
on the bodies of the IND, what they do with their bodies. There’s a moment in which she sees IND dressed in
English apparel, what is a moment of confusion for her, she doesn’t expect IND to wear these clothes. She’s
fetishizing the beautiful Christian face and describing the face of the IND as ugly and diabolical. Stereotypes about
the IND: they drink and lie a lot. Kind of an American tradition: to stereotype minorities as lairs and drinkers. She
sees any kind of inconsistency as a lie. She hints that for IND lying is a method of showing power, intentional
means of destabilizing her.
Tom and Peter: praying Indians she encounters. They’re unstable: friendly and unfriendly. To what degree is her
notion of IND as liars a cultural misinterpretation. She can’t predict their behaviour like she can predict English
behaviour. What may be logical for and IND can seem illogical to her.

21
There is not much reference to language barrier in the text, how did she communicate? Sometimes she’s met
with favour, sometimes with nothing but frowns: the way she seems to explain it, is that it’s divine logic, God is
using the IND to teach her something.
1646: John Elliot founded praying towns: usually IND towns in which the IND were evangelised and converted to
Christianity. By the time of King Philips ware, about 1/5 of the IND lived in these kind of praying towns. They
served as a sort of border at the front after which there were English towns. A sort of buffer between
unconverted Indians and puritans. Praying Indians were as much mistrusted by normal Indians as they were by
Puritans. Rowlandson doesn’t trust them. Even praying Indians are brutish, this is in their nature and Christianity
cannot eradicate it from them.
She gives a long list of their sins (of the praying Indians). Praying Indians are not to be trusted. Their Christian
identity is a sort of mask. She sees them as contributing to much of the violence during the war. Tom and Peter:
they are confusing for her. She got them by the hand and burst down in tears, she’s glad to see them. Why is she
glad to see them? She doesn’t tell us exactly, but they are a sign of Christianity, a sign of community, civilization.
The encounter doesn’t last very long and she calls them madmen as well, this proves her confusion about them.

Praying towns
• Indian villages > conversion è 20% of the Indians lived in praying towns by the time of the King Philip’s
War.
• Buffer
• Could they be trusted? Rowlandson says no.
o Even praying Indians are brutish and savage > fundamental to their identity
o 279: long account of their sins
o Two identities that don’t go together very well: praying/Christian and Indians

Indian counting
• Rhetoric: constantly making reference to the number of Indians around
• Colonial obsession from the beginning
o They don’t live in towns all together, nomadic people, so difficult to count
• Third remove: the number of pagans
• Fifth remove: the number of them > beyond her skill
• Question of affliction
o Against all sufficiency’s, she survived (because of providence)
o Benevolent Christians to help her later: inverse from before

Englishness among the Indians
• 266: place where English cattle HAD BEEN
o Image of absence è emotional reaction
o Feeling of nostalgia, longing, loss
• 266: deserted English fields
o Most symbolic of all
o Being a captive, she does not denounce her identity: love of Englishness remains although she
doesn’t have a lot to affirm that identity

Positive images
• Master: best friend she’s had of an Indian; he treats her fairly (although she can’t explain it)
• 269: she doesn’t expect that kind of kindness
o Invocation of a parable
o Beginning to see Indians as potential Christians ó what she has told before
• Her view of them is changed (against her will?)

22
Eating bear meat

• Food as a focus è providence
o Hunger makes her careless
o Trauma of not eating has left her permanently hungry
o Serious revaluations: forced to rethink what tastes good and what bad
§ Rethink the value of the material, the necessity of pleasure/deliciousness,
o Definition of a human: certain things they don’t eat
§ ó Brute?
§ Bear = brute (animal)
o God has given her these things to eat è she describes her revaluation

Economics, trade and money
• Central in her experience, even if she is taking away from the English community
o Sowing clothes for food, seeing tobacco as currency, …
• Redemption
o Spiritual meaning: salvation
o Economical meaning: to have one’s freedom purchased (to be redeemed from slavery)
• She herself is an object of trade è the English will pay for her
o 279: very specific sense of her own value (price she should put on herself è difficult question;
balance) è 20 pounds was just the right amount

Unstable class identity
• Member of the gentry
• Imposing class paradigm on the Indians; she has been turned into a servant
o 288: extreme vanity of the world, no reliance on materiality è trading the world
o Servant to a Christian is better than being servant to an Indian
§ Status of a servant: normally for life
§ Downward mobility and then reversal for Rowlandson
o She gives up her world, but in the text, she is forced to live and to navigate in another world
• Transformed by her experience?
o Transculturation? Blending/merging? Englishness, but also adapting (=success) to Indian
culture
o She doesn’t sleep well anymore (post-traumatic stress disorder?)
§ Has changed her (for the good?) è reliance on God and not on worldly things
o Cost? She remarried with a merchant
o Terrorism????
§ Complicated question to assign blame

18 T H CENTURY
• Merchants became the most important people
• Boom of the economy
• Expansion of the colonies è south, Mid-Atlantic, …
o Treaty’s with Indian tribes
• Enlightenment
o Conception of the self no longer only connected with religion
o Backlash: The Great Awakening è religion became dead; attempt to break back early
Puritanism (religious affections; delight; pleasure è Edwards)
• Scientific revolution

23
• Edwards and Franklin

o Very prolific writers
• Autobiography
o Cf. Augustin: confessions
o Marcus Aurelius: meditations
o Lives as a project with perfection as the ultimate goal

JONATHAN EDWARDS
• Spiritual autobiography (cf. Bradstreet to her children)
• More specific version of a literary, fractured self: more emotionally complex picture

Jonathan Edwards was a revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. Like
most of the Puritans, he held to the Reformed theology. His colonial followers later distinguished themselves
from other Congregationalists as "New Lights" (endorsing the Great Awakening), as opposed to "Old Lights"
(non-revivalists). Edwards is widely regarded as "one of America's most important and original philosophical
theologians". Edwards' theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the
metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Recent studies have emphasized how
thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical fittingness, and
how central The Enlightenment was to his mindset. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great
Awakening, and oversaw some of the first revivals in 1733–35 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Edwards delivered the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", a classic of early American literature,
during another revival in 1741, following George Whitefield's tour of the Thirteen Colonies. Edwards is well
known for his many books, The End For Which God Created the World, The Life of David Brainerd, which inspired
thousands of missionaries throughout the 19th century, and Religious Affections, which many Reformed
Evangelicals still read today. Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation shortly after beginning the presidency at
the College of New Jersey (Princeton). He was the grandfather of Aaron Burr, third Vice President of the United
States.

THE GREAT AWAKENING
• Upon arrival, clergymen: lots of social capital ó hundred years later: minor positions
• Elaborate print culture in the colony
• Backlash happens spontaneously: phenomenon
o 1730s: reports about individuals in their community who had less saving experiences of grace
o Happened in several places in New England
o Deep need for this kind of experience (people were raised with the expectation, but didn’t
experience it)
th
o Pointing back to the rigour and piety of the 17 century
o New intellectual understanding of the emotions and the mind è connect with God’s grace:
outpouring emotional feeling (~ hysteria) è authenticity of experience: too intense, too real
o Popular phenomenon not in control of the clergy è suspicion; threat to the balance of power
(spiritual implications)
o Communal mission è work out salvation as a group. New focus on emotions was a shift on the
individual (individual pursuit)
• Conversion narrative (Edwards): genre
o Generic conventions
o Representation of struggle

24
PERSONAL NARRATIVE
• Religious affections: he mistakes them for grace
o How do you know it’s real? è if it lasts, then it’s true
§ Using reason and scripture (big fan of John Locke)
o Dog and vomit: feeling of sin
o Distracted by worldly things
o Continual self-examination, despair, … è scrupulous: he finds sin everywhere
• Focus on pleasure
o One of the most important things according to Edwards
o “Delight”, “sweetness” are reoccurring words in this context
o Emotions of all kind
• New disposition
o Whole new framework for experiencing everything
o Sometimes ecstatic
• Concerns
o Too tedious to relate ó Franklin would tell us all of it
o Telling the story of his salvation, not of his life
• Final state of his conversion (cf. Bradstreet)
o Paradoxical self-negation
o He is saved, but in the moment he feels the desire to humble himself as low as he can (not a
contradiction to him) è sense of grace gives him a sense of sin
o Degrees of humility > vile self-exultation if he’s not the lowest in humility of all mankind
§ Rejection of the self
o Our feelings in heart; when the affections are there, we have to trust them
o Authority to the imagination è danger?

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Life
Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a renowned polymath and
a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist,
statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history
of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod,
bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including
Philadelphia's fire department and the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution.

Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity,
initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States Ambassador to
France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos
as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing
institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant
values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged
the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter
Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing
the type of society America would become."

Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies,
publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette at the age of 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard's
Almanack, which he authored under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the

25
Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper that was known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the British
policies.

He pioneered and was first president of The Academy and College of Philadelphia which opened in 1751 and
later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American
Philosophical Society and was elected president in 1769. Franklin became a national hero in America as an agent
for several colonies when he spearheaded an effort in London to have the Parliament of Great Britain repeal the
unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister
to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. His efforts proved vital
for the American Revolution in securing shipments of crucial munitions from France.

He was promoted to deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753, having been Philadelphia
postmaster for many years, and this enabled him to set up the first national communications network. During
the Revolution, he became the first US Postmaster General. He was active in community affairs and colonial and
state politics, as well as national and international affairs. From 1785 to 1788, he served as governor of
Pennsylvania. He initially owned and dealt in slaves but, by the 1750s, he argued against slavery from an
economic perspective and became one of the most prominent abolitionists.
His colourful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America's most
influential Founding Fathers have seen Franklin honoured more than two centuries after his death on coinage
and the $100 bill, warships, and the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, and corporations,
as well as countless cultural references.

• Secular autobiography (not very common back then); cf. Rousseau
o Irony, humour, contradictions, … è modern, literary style
• Not a priority; couldn’t finish it è fragmentary text
• Interest in virtue (cf. Edwards), but different vision
o Vanity is transformed into a kind of virtue by Franklin
o Passages with Franklin as a vain man ó beginning of the text: providence (= Puritan
essentially); he wants God to be there
§ Desire for humility è acknowledge
§ Humility = imitate Jesus and Socrates according to Franklin (he is not unaware of the
irony though)
§ Appearance of humility: advantageous
o Convergence between Edwards and Franklin
§ E: humility is use for ambitious purposes, but pride is a sin
§ F: you can use pride and humility for your ambition (not opposites, but
complementary)
• First American celebrity (known on different continents)
o Paris: artists to make his portraits è most painted American man
• Franklin’s rationale: intention
o My Posterity: addressed to his son (and generations after)
§ Part 1 and 2: own felicity
§ Part 3: other people’s felicity
è Franklin is interested in happiness
• Conducing means
o How do you get to happiness?
o He is offering a pattern of life
o Prose writing: ability to write well

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• Very important printer in America

o Sees his life as a kind of text (481)
o Perfecting your life (different vision than Edwards: sin) > people make mistakes (errata) > cf.
printer taking out the errata. Not the same connotation as a sin.
o Language of printing: logical
§ Sinister accidents he would correct
• His life as a narrative, a story
o Controls this to a large degree è sufficiency’s (≠ time and chance): reading and writing
th
o Education: 18 century as an era of education (cf. John Locke) > students should actively
engage in learning
§ Societies, libraries, …
§ Franklin founded a library company
§ Intense desire to learn è early access to books
• The Spectator
o Addison and Steele è bring philosophy to the middle class: access to learning and thinking
that you wouldn’t have found anywhere else (upward mobility) (498)
o Imitation è model fit to be imitated
§ Deconstructing and reconstructing
o Accidentally finding a Spectator: Franklin understanding himself as a self
§ Cf. Rowlandson and bibliomancy (coming across a specific Bible passage)
• Citing Alexander Pope
o Good authority to cite
o Very subtle criticism of the most famous English poet of that time, but then “Who am I to
judge?” è joke
o Between pride and humility (on different occasions in the text)
• He sees himself as a figure of upward mobility
th
o One of the most radical things about this text in the 18 century
• “Be proud of humble origin”
o One of the first to say this
o Rise up from poor condition
o God put you in a state: stay there è but Providence can also make you rise
§ Mind: compare with the beginnings; visual sense
§ Promoting it as an iconographic image
o Self-exultation sometimes
§ Visiting his brother at his printing shop (show-off)
§ Process of learning virtue
• Dialogue
o A lot of details: take the reader into the moment
o Very clear fictional voice
• Franklin succeeded on his own terms è part of an American identity
o But text says that he has had help every step of the way
o Model of autonomy isn’t accurate è intergenerational network
• 517: Isaac Decouw
o Shows the process of imitation
o Decouw came to Philadelphia and made it with nothing into industry (like Franklin) > role
model
• 524: David Harry
o Apprentice at print shop
o Starts his own shop at the same time of Franklin

27
è Franklin is interested in types: which ones should you follow and which ones not?
è Create the appearance of industry ó people seeing you at bars and parties, … è important
for investments
• Proverbs
o Wisdom of the people
o Prudential virtue as a focus: how to do well in the world?
o A proverb of Solomon
§ History of personal success: economically and politically
§ Long, difficult sentences
§ Father Josiah, soap maker (lowest of lower middle class), was a pious, devout Puritan
è same interpretation of the proverb as Benjamin’s?
• Diligent in his calling: worldly calling > soap making
• Spiritual equal of a king
§ Franklin more interested in literally standing before kings
o Proverb how to stay rich
§ Wife: manage the home economy
• The progress of luxury (533)
o Industry and frugality (the quality of being economical with money or food; thriftiness): most
important prudential virtues
o Franklins as a family lived very frugally: no servants, cheap, ... è model fit to be imitated
§ BUT: luxury enters è projection of responsibility on the wife.
§ Free indirect discourse: her husband (voice of desire and aspiration)
o The anxiety: how to manage the process of ‘doing well’. The Franklin’s as a family, live very
frugal (a model to imitate).
o The projection of responsibility on his wife, she bought it without his knowledge. She bought
it because of the voice of desire, aspiration. He’s not to blame, she’s the one.
o We live simply and then something happens (for which he is not to blame, his wife). The moral
of the story changes: to the timely spending of money on luxury.
o He makes the failure a kind of virtue, it examples a kind of process in which virtue leads to
wealth, and wealth to luxury. Humility and pride are clashing again and being resolved into
each other.
o The use of Solomon’s proverb raises the question of religion in this text. It’s a story of self-
making.
• Younger sons
o Franklin: youngest son è nothing at all to inherit; legacy of always having to start with nothing
o Rebelling against his father è tendency of rebelling on a fairly regular basis
§ Boston
• Breaking a legal contract
§ Proprietors of Pennsylvania: constant rivalry between them and the Assembly
§ Opposition to Parliament
§ Not follow his parents in the religious tradition, although he claims some of that
tradition (protestants)
o Two opposed impulses: authority and rule-breaking
• Religion
o Conclusion that deism isn’t useful (not a conducing mean to felicity), but it can be true
o Does not believe in the divinity of Scripture è deism doesn’t make a person good
o Set of practices

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• The art of virtue

o List (ppt) è only an aid to get there; but sceptical Franklin. Getting too focused on this =
foppery of morals (caring too much about appearance)
o Where is love, kindness, …?
o He fails and ultimately admits that
o Rational approach to virtue and human limitation
o Virtues: means to an end è interested in what they can do:
§ Enhance your reputation (~ currency):
• Public credit è worth the risk?
• Character: synonym for credit è a letter of recommendation, testimony for
one’s virtue
o Virtue as instrumental hypocrisy?
§ Virtue has to get you somewhere, otherwise there’s no point
§ In need of publicity è autobiography is part of this + two letters > controlling how
people read his text (we should not always believe him)
• Part 1: for his family è has public implications
• Part 2: intended for the public è imagining a public
o Emerging sense of the power of public character
o Private character expressed publically
• Representative of America (cf. publicity)
o Vaughn: self-education highlighted (time when formal education was undergoing changes),
describing Franklin with opposites (reconciling antitheses = something good)
§ Progressive and conservative
• Part three: only a chronicle è account of his public business
o Pride: accomplishments
o Res publica: care about the state è devoted life to public service
§ Little advantages, small mindedness, materialistic
§ Humility and pride are mixed in a strange way
• Criticism
o D.H. Lawrence

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: SUMMARY
Part One
Part One of the Autobiography is addressed to Franklin's son William, at that time (1771) Royal Governor of New
Jersey. While in England at the estate of the Bishop of St Asaph in Twyford, Franklin, now 65 years old, begins by
saying that it may be agreeable to his son to know some of the incidents of his father's life; so with a week's
uninterrupted leisure, he is beginning to write them down for William. He starts with some anecdotes of his
grandfather, uncles, father and mother. He deals with his childhood, his fondness for reading, and his service as
an apprentice to his brother James Franklin, a Boston printer and the publisher of the New England Courant.
After improving his writing skills through study of the Spectator by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, he
writes an anonymous paper and slips it under the door of the printing house by night. Not knowing its author,
James and his friends praise the paper and it is published in the Courant, which encourages Ben to produce more
essays (the "Silence Dogood" essays) which are also published. When Ben reveals his authorship, James is
angered, thinking the recognition of his papers will make Ben too vain. James and Ben have frequent disputes
and Ben seeks for a way to escape from working under James.

Eventually James gets in trouble with the colonial assembly, which jails him for a short time and then forbids him
to continue publishing his paper. James and his friends come up with the stratagem that the Courant should
hereafter be published under the name of Benjamin Franklin, although James will still actually be in control.

29
James signs a discharge of Ben's apprenticeship papers but writes up new private indenture papers for Ben to
sign which will secure Ben's service for the remainder of the agreed time. But when a fresh disagreement arises
between the brothers, Ben chooses to leave James, correctly judging that James will not dare to produce the
secret indenture papers. ("It was not fair in me to take this Advantage," Franklin comments, "and this I therefore
reckon one of the first Errata of my life.") James does, however, make it impossible for Ben to get work anywhere
else in Boston. Sneaking onto a ship without his father's or brother's knowledge, Ben heads for New York City,
but the printer William Bradford is unable to employ him; however, he tells Ben that his son Andrew, a
Philadelphia printer, may be able to use him since one of his son's principal employees had just died.

By the time Ben reaches Philadelphia, Andrew Bradford has already replaced his employee, but refers Ben to
Samuel Keimer, another printer in the city, who is able to give him work. The Governor, Sir William Keith, takes
notice of Franklin and offers to set him up in business for himself. On Keith's recommendation, Franklin goes to
London for printing supplies, but when he arrives, he finds that Keith has not written the promised letter of
recommendation for him, and that "no one who knew him had the smallest Dependence on him." Franklin finds
work in London until an opportunity arises of returning to Philadelphia as an assistant to Thomas Denham, a
Quaker merchant; but when Denham takes ill and dies, he returns to manage Keimer's shop. Keimer soon comes
to feel that Franklin's wages are too high and provokes a quarrel which causes the latter to quit. At this point a
fellow employee, Hugh Meredith, suggests that Franklin and he set up a partnership to start a printing shop of
their own; this is subsidized by funds from Meredith's father, though most of the work is done by Franklin as
Meredith is not much of a press worker and is given to drinking.
They establish their business, and plan to start a newspaper, but when Keimer hears of this plan, he rushes out
a paper of his own, the Pennsylvania Gazette. This publication limps along for three quarters of a year before
Franklin buys the paper from Keimer and makes it "extremely profitable." (The Saturday Evening Post traces its
lineage to Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette.) The partnership also receives an appointment as printer for the
Pennsylvania assembly. When Hugh Meredith's father experiences financial setbacks and cannot continue
backing the partnership, two friends separately offer to lend Franklin the money he needs to stay in business;
the partnership amicably dissolves as Meredith goes to North Carolina, and Franklin takes from each friend half
the needed sum, continuing his business in his own name. In 1730 he marries Deborah Read, and after this, with
the help of the Junto, he draws up proposals for Library Company of Philadelphia. At this point Part One breaks
off, with a memo in Franklin's writing noting that "The Affairs of the Revolution occasion'd the Interruption".

Part Two
The second part begins with two letters Franklin received in the early 1780s while in Paris, encouraging him to
continue the Autobiography, of which both correspondents have read Part One. (Although Franklin does not say
so, there had been a breach with his son William after the writing of Part One, since the father had sided with
the Revolutionaries and the son had remained loyal to the British Crown.)
At Passy, a suburb of Paris, Franklin begins Part Two in 1784, giving a more detailed account of his public library
plan. He then discusses his "bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection", listing thirteen virtues he
wishes to perfect in himself. He creates a book with columns for each day of the week, in which he marks with
black spots his offenses against each virtue. Of these virtues, he notices that Order is the hardest for him to keep.
He eventually realizes that perfection is not to be attained, but feels himself better and happier because of his
attempt.

Part Three
Beginning in August 1788 when Franklin had returned to Philadelphia, the author says he will not be able to
utilize his papers as much as he had expected, since many were lost in the recent Revolutionary War. He has,
however, found and quotes a couple of his writings from the 1730s that survived. One is the "Substance of an
intended Creed" consisting of what he then considered to be the "Essentials" of all religions. He had intended
this as a basis for a projected sect but, Franklin says, did not pursue the project.

30
In 1732, Franklin first publishes his Poor Richard's Almanac, which becomes very successful. He also continues
his profitable newspaper. In 1734, a preacher named Rev. Samuel Hemphill arrives from County Tyrone Ireland;
Franklin supports him and writes pamphlets on his behalf. However, someone finds out that Hemphill has been
plagiarizing portions of his sermons from others, although Franklin rationalizes this by saying he would rather
hear good sermons taken from others than poor sermons of the man's own composition.

Franklin studies languages, reconciles with his brother James, and loses a four-year-old son to smallpox.
Franklin's club, the Junto, grows and breaks up into subordinate clubs. Franklin becomes Clerk of the General
Assembly in 1736, and the following year becomes Comptroller to the Postmaster General, which makes it easier
to get reports and fulfill subscriptions for his newspaper. He proposes improvements to the city' watch and fire
prevention regulations.
The famed preacher George Whitefield arrives in 1739, and despite significant differences in their religious
beliefs, Franklin assists Whitefield by printing his sermons and journals and lodging him in his house. As Franklin
continues to succeed, he provides the capital for several of his workers to start printing houses of their own in
other colonies. He makes further proposals for the public good, including some for the defense of Pennsylvania,
which cause him to contend with the pacifist position of the Quakers.

In 1740 he invents the Franklin stove, refusing a patent on the device because it was for "the good of the people".
He proposes an academy, which opens after money is raised by subscription for it and it expands so much that a
new building has to be constructed for it. Franklin obtains other governmental positions (city councilman,
alderman, burgess, justice of the peace) and helps negotiate a treaty with the Indians. After helping Dr. Thomas
Bond establish a hospital, he helps pave the streets of Philadelphia and draws up a proposal for Dr. John Fothergill
about doing the same in London. In 1753 Franklin becomes Deputy Postmaster General.
The next year, as war with the French is expected, representatives of the several colonies, including Franklin,
meet with the Indians to discuss defense; Franklin at this time draws up a proposal for the union of the colonies,
but it is not adopted. General Braddock arrives with two regiments, and Franklin helps him secure wagons and
horses, but the general refuses to take Ben's warning about danger from hostile Indians during Braddock's
planned march to Frontenac (now Kingston, Ontario). When Braddock's troops are subsequently attacked, the
general is mortally wounded and his forces abandon their supplies and flee.

A militia is formed on the basis of a proposal by Benjamin Franklin, and the governor asks him to take command
of the north-western frontier. With his son as aide de camp, Franklin heads for Gnadenhut, raising men for the
militia and building forts. Returning to Philadelphia, he is chosen colonel of the regiment; his officers honor him
by personally escorting him out of town. This attention offends the proprietor of the colony (Thomas Penn, son
of William Penn) when someone writes an account of it in a letter to him, whereupon the proprietor complains
to the government in England about Franklin.
Now the Autobiography discusses "the Rise and Progress of [Franklin's] Philosophical Reputation." He starts
experiments with electricity and writes letters about them that are published in England as a book. Franklin's
description of his experiments is translated into French, and Abbé Nollet, who is offended because this work calls
into question his own theory of electricity, publishes his own book of letters attacking Franklin. Declining to
respond on the grounds that anyone could duplicate and thus verify his experiments, Franklin sees another
French author refute Nollet, and as Franklin's book is translated into other languages, its views are gradually
accepted and Nollet's are discarded. Franklin is also voted an honorary member of the Royal Society.
A new governor arrives, but disputes between the assembly and the governor continue. (Since the colonial
governors are bound to fulfil the instructions issued by the colony's proprietor, there is a continuing struggle for
power between the legislature and the governor and proprietor.) The assembly is on the verge of sending
Franklin to England to petition the King against the governor and proprietor, but meanwhile Lord Loudoun arrives
on behalf of the English government to mediate the differences. Franklin nevertheless goes to England
accompanied by his son, after stopping at New York and making an unsuccessful attempt to be recompensed by
Loudoun for his outlay of funds during his militia service. They arrive in England on July 27, 1757.

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JEFFERSON, CRÈVECŒUR, WHEATLEY

JEFFERSON
Life
Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of
Independence and later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Prior thereto, he
was elected the second Vice President of the United States, serving under John Adams from 1797 to 1801. A
proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights motivating American colonists to break from
Great Britain and form a new nation, he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and
national level.
Jefferson was primarily of English ancestry, born and educated in colonial Virginia. He graduated from the College
of William & Mary and briefly practiced law, at times defending slaves seeking their freedom. During the
American Revolution, he represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration, drafted
the law for religious freedom as a Virginia legislator, and served as a wartime governor (1779–1781). He became
the United States Minister to France in May 1785, and subsequently the nation's first Secretary of State in
1790–1793 under President George Washington. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-
Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. With Madison,
he anonymously wrote the controversial Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798–1799, which sought to
embolden states' rights in opposition to the national government by nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts.

As President, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive
British trade policies. He also organized the Louisiana Purchase, almost doubling the country's territory. As a
result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. He was re-elected in 1804.
Jefferson's second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former Vice President Aaron
Burr. American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807, responding
to British threats to U.S. shipping. In 1803, Jefferson began a controversial process of Indian tribe removal to the
newly organized Louisiana Territory, and he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807.
Jefferson mastered many disciplines, which ranged from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and
mechanics. He was a proven architect in the classical tradition. Jefferson's keen interest in religion and
philosophy earned him the presidency of the American Philosophical Society. He shunned organized religion, but
was influenced by both Christianity and deism. He was well versed in linguistics and spoke several languages. He
founded the University of Virginia after retiring from public office. He was a prolific letter writer and
corresponded with many prominent and important people throughout his adult life. His only full-length book
is Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), considered the most important American book published before 1800.

Jefferson owned several plantations which were worked by hundreds of slaves. Most historians now believe
that, after the death of his wife in 1782, he had a relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered at least
one of her children. Historians have lauded Jefferson's public life, noting his primary authorship of the
Declaration of Independence during the Revolutionary War, his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in
Virginia, and the Louisiana Purchase while he was president. Various modern scholars are more critical of
Jefferson's private life, pointing out the discrepancy between his ownership of slaves and his liberal political
principles, for example. Presidential scholars, however, consistently rank Jefferson among the greatest
presidents.

32
Introduction
• The French: funding Revolution maybe to get back to Britain
th
• Topic of slavery > 18 century: appearance in North America in great numbers
o 12 million
o Part of the economic boom
o Africans excluded from religious traditions and cultures
• Later: abolitionism
• Question of emancipation: what to do with the new nation blacks?
• Colonization: idea of the whites is that they cannot live together with blacks

Jefferson’s rationale (669)
• A prediction of what will happen
• He himself not one of those with deep rooted prejudices
• Injuries
• Real distinction that nature has made between blacks and white: racial difference
• Convulsion (a sudden, violent, irregular movement of the body, caused by involuntary contraction of
muscles and associated especially with brain disorders such as epilepsy, the presence of certain toxins
or other agents in the blood, or fever in children; a violent social or political upheaval) è revolution,
civil war
• Physical and moral differences between black (slaves) and whites
o Cf. Franklin, Rowlandson: focus on the body
o Eternal monotony > black face can’t be expressive (veil of emotions)
§ Nuance and lack of nuance: fundamental difference
• Anecdotal evidence
o Oranootan
• Differences è construct himself as a very liberal-minded thinker
o Odour: they sweat more (~ working) and they didn’t have the means to perfume themselves
like rich people
o Require less sleep: also given less opportunity and less leisure
o More ardent for their female è more desire than sentiment (physical instead of emotional)
o Intellectual faculties è way of organising libraries
§ Memory (history) è only here, the slaves are equal
§ Reason (science)
§ Imagination (literature)
• No black writers
• Only mentioning Wheatley and Sancho
§ ó Crèvecœur: fundamental equality for all races (universality of human kind)
• Wheatley
o Controversial, because Wheatley was considered a prodigy (brilliant young lady who wrote an
excellent elegy); natural genius (without proper education still an exceptional poet)
• Works under her name > not even sure that she wrote them herself.
Fallacious argument
• Sancho
o Criticism of this poet is the opposite
o Highly conventional description
• Romans and Greeks (classical history)
o White slaves could still be real talents è black slavery is much easier and less cruel
o Contradicting himself: not pronounce an entire race as inferior, but that’s what he does

33
§ Enlightened observer (construction)

• Reach of mixture (end of letter)
o Generous, rational, scientific, … ó impulse (horror) > what he says here
o Puerile: immature

PHYLLIS WHEATLEY
Life
Phillis Wheatley, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly was the first published African-American female poet. Born in
West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America. She was
purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write and encouraged her poetry
when they saw her talent.
The publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) brought her fame both in England
and the American colonies. Figures such as George Washington praised her work. During Wheatley's visit to
England with her master's son, African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in his own poem.
Wheatley was emancipated after the death of her master, John Wheatley. She married soon afterward. Two of
her children died as infants. After her husband was imprisoned for debt in 1784, Wheatley fell into poverty and
died of illness, quickly followed by the death of her surviving infant son.

Engraving and life
• Reflecting, deep in thought
th
• Image shows the author > not many 18 century texts open with a portrait of the author
• A lot of poetry at the time
o Newspapers, anonymously, …
o Sharing among poets
o Elegies as a popular genre next to odes and hymns and patriotic verse
• Small number of books (more published in London than in the colonies)
• ó Bradstreet
o W: neoclassical poet > models: Pope, Milton, Gray; conservative metre, conventional images,
rhyming couplet
• Right before Romanticism è Wordsworth (20 years later) sounds much different
• Child prodigy; her job as slave was to be pleasant > therefore, they educated her. Latin and Greek.
o Phenomenon > people stopped by to see her: the slave who could write, read and recite Latin
verse
th
• 18 century verse goal: not to be original, but to be as competent/correct as possible

On Being Brought from Africa to America
• Probably most famous poem
• ~ apology for slavery è reputation for being an apologist > now: not true > we now know how to read
the poems
• Without slavery she wouldn’t have discovered Christianity
o Christians have two kinds of liberty: political and spiritual (you need both)
o Emphasis on spiritual liberty in this poem: freedom from sin, salvation
o Gave her access to spiritual liberty
• Including your name: ungentle, too individualistic, ≠ virtue
o She is violating the norms > name and face
• Use of dialogue
o “Some” people > implicitly, it’s an error: diabolic dye (materialistic view)
• Myth of Cain and Abel (children of Adam and Eve)

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o Cain as a slave, permanent mark of sin è Africans as the sons of Cain. Unity of the human race,
but also how blacks were separate. She is not arguing that, but she makes another point >
everyone can be Christian (‘refined’) and can be saved > the equal of any other saved Christian
• Apologetic poem è now seen as a powerful poem, proving equality
• Liberty as a watch-word > relating immediately to the question of slavery (all the whites talked about it;
what does it mean?)
o Sometimes giving up liberty for the benefits of the common good
o Cf. Taxes imposed externally also a bit like slavery

1774: letter to Samson Occom
• Blacks feel affliction less than whites, then maybe their love of freedom is less è W: no, this is inherent
to every human being
• Looks like the language of Franklin (humility): I humbly think
o Powerful
o Shows sophistication + how well she understood the language of liberty that white people were
using
• Slavery and liberty: incompatible + problem of colonial crisis

To the Earl of Darthmouth
• Shows sophistication + how well she understood the language of liberty that white people were using
o Silken reigns; freedoms charms
o Faction
o Iron chain: unfair taxation
• She can talk about it: was a slave herself
o Authorised to make such arguments: she knows what liberty means more than anyone because
she had it taken away from her
o Pagan land: missing one important thing > Christianity
• Opposite of the apologist perspective
o Wishes for the common good > ideal republic citizen (cf. Jefferson), but the Weathley Jefferson
talked about couldn’t have written these poems
o Argument for the freedom of blacks

J. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECŒUR
Life
He was born December 31, 1735, in France. In 1755 he migrated to New France in North America. There, he
served in the French and Indian War as a surveyor in the French Colonial Militia, rising to the rank of lieutenant.
Following the British defeat of the French Army in 1759, he moved to the Province of New York, where he took
out citizenship, adopted the English-American name of John Hector St. John, and in 1770 married an American
woman, Mehitable Tippet. He bought a sizable farm in Orange County, New York, where he prospered as a
farmer. He started writing about life in the American colonies and the emergence of an American society.

In 1779, during the American Revolution, St. John tried to leave the country to return to France because of the
faltering health of his father. Accompanied by his son, he crossed British-American lines to enter British-occupied
New York City, where he was imprisoned as an American spy for three months without a hearing. Eventually, he
was able to leave for Britain.

In 1782, in London, he published a volume of narrative essays entitled the Letters from an American Farmer. The
book quickly became the first literary success by an American author in Europe and turned Crèvecœur into a
celebrated figure. He was the first writer to describe to Europeans – employing many American English terms –

35
the life on the American frontier and to explore the concept of the American Dream, portraying American society
as characterized by the principles of equal opportunity and self-determination. His work provided useful
information and understanding of the "New World" that helped to create an American identity in the minds of
Europeans by describing an entire country rather than another regional colony. The writing celebrated American
ingenuity and the uncomplicated lifestyle. It described the acceptance of religious diversity in a society being
created from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. His application of the Latin maxim "Ubi panis ibi patria"
(Where there is bread, there is my country) to early American settlers also shows an interesting insight. He once
praised the middle colonies for "fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields...decent houses, good roads,
orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and uncultivated."

From Britain, he sailed to France, where he was briefly reunited with his father. When the United States had
been recognized by Britain following the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Crèvecœur returned to New York City. Anxious
to be reunited with his family, he learned that his wife had died, his farm had been destroyed, and his children
had been taken in by neighbors. Eventually, he was able to regain custody of his children. For most of the 1780s,
Crèvecœur lived in New York City. The success of his book in France had led to his being taken up by an influential
circle, and he was appointed the French consul for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

In 1784, he published a two-volume version of his Letters from an American Farmer, enlarged and completely
rewritten in French. A three-volume version followed in 1787. Both his English and his French books were
translated into several other European languages and widely disseminated throughout Europe. For many years,
Crèvecœur was identified by European readers with his fictional narrator, James, the 'American farmer', and held
in high esteem by readers and fellow-writers across Europe.

By the time he published another three-volume work in 1801, entitled Voyage dans la Haute-Pensylvanie et dans
l'état de New-York, however, his fame had faded and the damages of the French Revolution and its aftermath
had made people less interested in the United States. His book was ignored. An abbreviated German translation
appeared the following year. An English translation was not published until 1964. Much of de Crevecoeur's best
work has been published posthumously, most recently as More Letters from the American Farmer: An edition of
the Essays in English Left Unpublished by Crèvecœur, edited by Dennis D. Moore (Athens, Georgia: University of
Georgia Press, 1995).

Particularly concerned about the condition of slaves, he joined the Société des Amis des Noirs (Society of the
Friends of the Blacks), founded in Paris.

In 1789, during a stay in France, he was trapped by the political upheaval that was quickly turning into the French
Revolution. At risk as an aristocrat, he went into hiding, while secretly trying to gain passage to the United States.
The necessary papers were finally delivered to him by the new American ambassador to France, James Monroe.
At the end of his life Crèvecœur returned to France and settled permanently on land he inherited from his father.
On November 12, 1813, he died in Sarcelles, Val d'Oise, France.

He is the namesake of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, as suggested by Ethan Allen.
• Tory tendencies
• Letters è second French edition with more letters; published in London

Letters
• Letter III: way of celebrating American identity, freed from the constraints of Europe > they promoted
him as a kind of typical American ó French born, British writer è not an American as an author, but
he talks about the concept
o Multi-national identity recognised though

36
• Provides lots of information (cf. Jefferson > notes on state of Virginia)

• American Revolution (start: 1775)
o Which side to choose? Patriotism: loyal to king or to the colony?
o Lots of virtuous people chose for the king > imprisonment, victimization, …
o Committees of safety: ~ terrorist organisations beating up loyalists and burning down their
houses è dangerous to be a loyalist (exception: Philadelphia)
o Letter XII
• Letter I
o System of felicity: goal in life (cf. Franklin) > system that works to produce happiness
o Threats to the system + ultimate failure

Letter III: what is an American
• National genius, national pride è the nation: England
o Contrasting this with continental European nationality: stuck in an aristocratic society
o British colonial organisation confirmed è product
• Source of pleasure è looking at a farm, an immigrant arriving, social equality, …
o The American scenes inspires (cf. Wheatley: love of freedom as an interior principle)
• “A pleasing uniformity of decent competence” > independent è modern society
• Cosmopolitan attitude
• A nation of farmers
o ZIE NICK
o Requires hard work
• Serial settlements > long roads, ... è no towns; very stretched out
o Develop a fierce independence because they have to
• “Melting pot”
o Melted into a new race of men è provocative idea ó Jefferson’s notice against mixture.
Crèvecœur sees it as a good thing: promiscuous breed
o Tremendous diversity often mistakenly viewed through an English lens
o Transplantation (men are like plants) > transplanted to another soil: America (608)
• Text: system not so great as he thought it was è catastrophe that is about to happen
o Self-interest (607): individual American focused on his own good
§ Pride, obstinacy
§ As free men, they will be litigious (tending or too ready to take legal action to settle
disputes) è greed
o This can also threaten the system of felicity
• People near the great woods: back-woodsmen~ carnivorous animals (609)
o They are not farmers, they have to hunt their food > you do not know how successful you’re
going to be è breeds a bad temper
§ Problem with hunting (613)
o No role models è too much independence is wildness and highly problematic!
o Potential for failure
§ Push to the margins > original colonists (pioneers), they are still there.
§ Precursor or threat to the system of felicity
• Religion
o Becomes an individual matter
o Secularize the imperative of vocation
o The idea of generation: wives and children (male perspective)
• Economic and social mobility

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o Upward mobility in America è promoting

o Threat of idleness è poor can become rich, unemployed employed, …
o Transvaluation of the meaning of wealth (613)
o He wants to hear the (successful) stories
o Scots: most likely to succeed (hard workers) > 7/12 ó Irish: 4/12
o System of felicity only works for those who fit into it è what happens to the others??
• Pleasure è pain

Letter IX
• Charles-Town
o Different place; work at the plantation is done by slaves
§ Work is to get fruits of your labour, otherwise no purpose
o ≠ system of felicity: a lot of pleasure, but also a lot of pain
o Mother torn away from daughter (cf. Weathley > slaves do feel affliction; remind the readers)
o Pennsylvania ó South Carolina
• Pessimistic view
o Who is allowing the pain and the suffering?
• The sublime of slavery (618)
o Convulsion of the observer, not of the slave (cf. Jefferson)
o Language of the sublime is used
§ Fright, terror, convulsion
o Suffering of the witness, not of the victim (horrors of slavery)
§ “perceived a Negro”
§ Self-preservation: more black slaves than white slave owners è idea that
punishments had to be very cruel to inspire a majority to submit to a minority (comes
back in letter XII)
• Complexity of the image-construction

Letter X
• Animal cruelty è snakes (cf. downfall of Adam and Eve)
• Cruelty as a law of human nature è history of human civilization
o Start of Revolution
o Dreadful scenes
• Society is convulsed
• Irony: planning to leave his farm and go west (after celebrating the soil of Pennsylvania) > why go into
the wilderness?
o System of felicity not operating on socio-political level
o Global pessimism (letter IX) returns to him
o Self-preservation (621)
• Trans-cultural: adopt some things or manners from the Indians
o Leave problems behind, but they already did that when they came to America
o Indian country: a good refuge or just another fantasy?
• Falls back to religion (624)
• Fantasy, just like his life in Pennsylvania: very little hope for success

THE COQUETTE – HANNAH WEBSTER FOSTER
The character of the course is shifting: narrative
Piety has become a different thing: coming closer to ‘manners’, a social morality. It has a social capital.

38
- Bradstreet: piety had a social life, it mattered for her that she lived in a community. Piety was chiefly
concerned for her salvation.
- In many ways: this religious tradition hasn’t changed: Foster was married to a congregational
traditionalist. But piety now signifies in terms of society, how people (women) work in the world. We
here little of sovereignty, the blessings of affliction.
- Sin has a different character: more a question of vice (a sort of secular version of affliction), the failure
to embody virtue. It would ruin your business, make it impossible to marry… is has a social character.
Wealth, status, family and marriage. This social morality is in place to allow young women to marry
someone proper (Eliza – Boyer). Right behaviour sits right next to elegant behaviour, elegance becomes
a sign of virtue.
- Bradstreet or Rowlandson would not have understood it in this way.
- Franklin: thought that virtue needed to be seen publicly.
- Whitman: virtue is always portrayed through elegance.
th
End of the 18 century: it has taken on a more secular character. Now we hear: sentiment, sensibility,
sympathy
- More social affections than religious ones
- Sympathy: one of the more important ones
- Some people have the capacity, some don’t. Someone who works very hard, hasn’t got a lot of time for
sensibility.
- These need to be trained: conversation, readings...
th
Chastity in the 18 century
- One of Franklin’s 13 virtue
- Became thé most important virtue for women
- If you found yourself pregnant and unmarried: bad
- The novel becomes obsessed with that: the moment she has sex outside of marriage
The refinement of America
th
- In the 18 century, new American access to manufactured luxury goods and European goods: teapots,
tablecloth: resembles a greater transformation in America
- New taste for ‘refinement’ in dress, houses, eating, socialising, and traveling.
- Young ladies became ‘accomplished’ by learning French and Italian, singing, music, dancing, painting,
sewing and letter writing. à spent a lot of time refining oneself
- Triangle Trade: new wealth à new sense of refinement
th th
- America in the 18 century looks completely different from the 17 century America
- Everything about the elite changed: how they present themselves (dress, portraits…)
- If you were poor: life didn’t look that different. The change is only noticeable with the rich.
- The Revolution tended to change a lot of things in American society: some got very rich, many got very
poor. Those who invested in certain industries, invested in the government… got rich.
o Suddenly you had a class of people who had money, but didn’t have grandfathers who went to
Cambridge or was highly educated. They’re not deeply connected in the community. The new
political, social power is not connected to family. Newly mobile wealthy people.
- With all the social instability: the idea of sensibility became very important.
o Refinement could help to smoothe his path (upwardly mobile path)
The first idea which Eliza expresses is pleasure.
- At the heart of refinement: pleasure
th
- 18 c writers in EN and AM talked a lot about pleasure: could liberate you from the tedious life, from
the materiality of life but it could also make you addicted, selfish, greedy.
- Good pleasure VS bad pleasures: pleasures of the mind: good, pleasures of the body: bad, could enslave
you.
o Bodily: expensive, they do not last, they turn to pain

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o Mental: last forever if you want them to, they don’t cost you (imagination and derive pleasure
from it)
o Challenge: a person of culture: to know the difference between true and false pleasure
- The problem of pleasure
o 1786: how do you adapt pleasure to life?
o 1792: real enjoyment, false glosses. How do you tell?
- ‘The man of taste’: someone who could make good decisions VS ‘the man of pleasure’: doesn’t know
how to take pleasure properly
The man of pleasure
- Satire of the Prince of Wales

The Earl of Chesterfield
- ‘Letters to his son’: tries to solve the problem of pleasure, he got a reputation of being a man of pleasure
à a Chesterfieldian (mentioned in the novel)
- They thought of him as a not very virtuous man.

Lucy’s letter 52
- Talking about sources of amusement for Eliza: the new Boston Theatre, circuses
- For Lucy these sources need to be judged: the theatre: not that good, she doesn’t like Romeo and Juliet.
The circus: too distressing.
- A museum: she finds it refined, good pleasure.
- Eliza calls her comments perfectly just: naming good from the bad is something people did. It’s also
central to the novel. What pleasures can she indulge in?

The novel
- In England: the rise of the novel tracks with the rise of the consumer society.
- For the first time: extended stories about people, in prose…
- About an ordinary person, whose virtue is tested
- Mixed narration and dialogue
- Novels spoke to the needs and desired of upper middle class people who had time on their hands and
were faced with these questions of virtue.
th
- End of the 18 century: the novel is extremely popular but also very controversial.
- They were said to give unrealistic expectations about life. They told fantastical stories. Dealt with vice,
told stories about rakes.
- They taught sympathy (you feel bad for Eliza and want to steer her into the right direction).
- The challenge: how to read them properly

The real Eliza Wharton
- Antinovels: they based themselves on ‘facts’, more than a made-up tale. Emphasis on ‘history’.
- The Coquette: based on a true story of a sex scandal with the sons of daughters of ministers. Based on
the story of Eliza Withman.

The real Major Sanford
- This son of Jonathan Edwards went on to have a distinguished career as a Federal judge.
- Which men are men of taste and which are men of pleasure?
- How can a woman enjoy freedom without being called a Coquette?

The novel represents the moral dilemma as more complex
- It would be easy for Eliza to choose Boyer, she’s smart enough, but it’s not that simple.

40
- Lucy, Julia, Mrs. Richman: they do not seem to struggle. They’re very committed to elegance, their
refinement and wealth.
- Difficult questions: the answer is not always obvious.
- We can look at Sanford and say that he’s the worst kind of man or look at him as someone who likes
equipage, he has committed his life as a libertine.
- Eliza: torn between two social classes: she’s not very wealthy, brought up to enjoy pleasure and liberty,
but she has been told to stop.
- It’s a society that demands the elegance and refinement but doesn’t want to be too refined. Where do
we draw the line?

First letter
- A new sensation: pleasure
o She knows she’s not supposed to feel pleasure in leaving her maternal roof, but she confesses
it to her friend.
o She’s into fashion, gallantry, elegance, dissipation, flattery, the pleasures of friendship.
o She believes that marriage is the tomb of friendship. That it will end pleasure.
- Competing notion of pleasure:
o The pleasure of marriage (Mrs. Richman),

Page 840
- Boyer sends her a poem to explain what true pleasure is.
- For Eliza: a very stuffy poem.
- Her mother was the wife of a clergymen: a life of content

The refinement of Hartford
“Indeed, the customs and amusements of this place are materially altered since the residence of Major Sanford
[…] Pleasure is not diffused through all the ranks of the people, especially the rich…”
- Who are the people who enjoy these new pleasures?
- This moment in the novel dramatizes the choice between Sanford and Boyer
- Can we really blame Eliza?

Page 819
- Haley had just died: his death had taught her the fading nature of all earthly enjoyments.
o Very Puritan idea (Bradstreet and others): don’t depend on earthly pleasures
o She’s either kidding herself or lying to Lucy: she knows she’s supposed to draw a moral lesson
from his death, but she just wants to have fun.
- Coquette: little cock (Fr: little chicked), people think she has coquettish airs from the beginning.
o We really only see her flirting with Sanford, even though she has a lot of admirers
o Woman of taste VS Coquette
o Other people call her a coquette: a sort of social disease that you must not be infatuated with
o The term itself is very black and white:
o Freedom is what she wants, she only wants the pleasures she’s entitled to.
o Mrs. Withman thinks that Eliza had wrong ideas about freedom and matrimony, she hoped
that Boyer would help to clarify this for her.
o Freedom: Lucy is sceptical, she thinks Eliza is using this word. What does freedom mean?
o The real problem of the sentimental novel: problem of freedom: the seducer needs to marry
someone with money (not Eliza), he married a rich one and becomes a libertine who seduces
an unmarried woman.
o Eliza too, wants to live in the gay, fashionable world. She wants to be a distinguished person in
a high class circle of people. If she were to marry Boyer: she would be confined to a life of a

41
minister’s wife. Her mother says that she needs to know her place. It will give her freedom
from the perplexing cares of want.
o Why were not the affluence of one be combined with the virtues of another: she wants Sanford
to be rich.

Virtue and wealth
“I wish it engraved upon every heart, that virtue alone, independent of the trappings of wealth, the parade of
equipage, and the adulation of gallantry, can secure lasting felicity” (914)
- You need to be independent to be virtuous.
- Mostly: a novel about rich people. Do we believe that wealth and virtue are independent from each
other?

Morality of this novel: more ambiguous than Freeman would suggest.
- The world doesn’t know how to receive Sanford:
o He has legitimism where he goes
§ If you show up looking tasteful and rich, people will invite you in
§ Equipage has an allure, it’s not merely the allure of sparkly things and pleasure,
refinement is meant to represent virtue.
§ Equipage is a sort of symbol. A world in which you can buy your way into society. He
has the reputation of a libertine but he has the force of a gentlemen, the rank of
Sanford procures him respect.
o Mrs. Richman looks uncomfortable when Sanford visits to her place to see Eliza. If she really
was a woman of principle, she would have thrown him out, but she didn’t à equipage.
- Selby calls Sanford: much of a gentleman: a man of show (page 841) and fashion. Why does is stand in
italics: ‘much of a gentlemen’: to say he’s much of a gentleman is to state he’s nothing like a gentleman.
It invokes the phrase. His wealth and his manners give him entrance.
- Many of the gentry (the elite of Hartford, since there’s no official gentry in America) are happy to have
him in the neighbourhood. They probably don’t know him. The world that wants to have a world of
morality, but they want a man of fashion (he’ll give parties, be chique).
- Hartford: was inland, provincial, what a coup to have someone like Sanford to live in their town.
- Lucy says he ought to be banished from all virtuous society, the only people who seem to be resisting
him are Mrs. Richman and Mr. Boyer.
- His downfall: more his financial problems, not his virtue-problems. His finances allow him to have the
status he enjoys so much.
- Eliza often refers to the gay multitude, she means the people who give balls, parties, who value
equipage. It’s what Eliza wants. The existence of people like her. Maybe in Boston, New Haven.
- Page 897: Julia Granby: letter 64: she’s asked for news about Major Sanford. He’s giving a lot of parties
with a lot of bacchanalians (who enjoys an orgy of pleasure, the party people).
o Who are these people: do they actually exist? We don’t really know, but we know that there
are people who disagree with her, rich people with social connections. It’s a divided world, not
a neat and tidy one.
- Page 913: Sanford’s last letter: he makes reference to his companions.
- The way the community works as a force: a force of censure.
o Foucault: if you know if you’re being watched, you act in a certain way à Eliza is keenly aware
of public scrutinizing. She’s supposed to be a model, a virtue.
o The way Sanford and Eliza become a topic of discussion. He claims that he is independent of it.
He doesn’t care, he says he’s going to take revenge on these people by seducing Eliza (their
favourite). Eventually, their relation becomes of a topic of discussion in this town.
o Boyer: after writing his last later: he calls it the envenomed tongue of slander. Her affairs are
made a town-talk. It’s ambiguous.

42
o If Sanford thinks he is independent, Lucy counters this idea: we’re dependent beings, the
opinion of the world matters. It’s difficult to depend on the public world. She wants Eliza to
feel dependent, because the force of the world will drag her down.

Is she to blame?
- What she says she wants: is pleasure
- What she asks for: more time to make a decision
- She’s 37 years of age
- She spent a lot of time with the old clergyman, spent time mourning and from the moment she’s free,
another man comes with a marriage proposal. She wants a little more time.

A plea for more time
Page 831, page 835, page 845, page 851
She has abused the time she had: Boyer is already married.
Time is what she asked for, but it didn’t end up being her friend.
- She wanted time to think about it, to deliberate
Cato’s Addison
- The woman that deliberates is lost: deliberation is not meant for women
Not only does she want freedom, but she also wants room to think. The novel keeps telling her she can’t.
When choosing a husband: should you consider fancy?
- On the day she loses Boyer (when he comes for an answer and she’s in the garden with Sanford)
- Sanford claims it as his victory: he took full possession (had sex)
- Why did she let him in?
o She’s probably mentally ill at this moment

What the novel does with the babies
- No babies live in this novel
o Freemans baby: dead
§ Why doesn’t her baby live? Maybe Foster wants to punish her because she hasn’t
been kind to Eliza.
o Sanfords baby: dead
o Eliza’s baby: dead
o If all the babies are dying, will there be a US? It that an American novel at all? Is there evidence
that this novel is written in America and not in England?
o First novel written by an American-born woman: didn’t claim authorship until 50 years later.
o Written by a lady of Massachusetts
o There are certain ideas that get suggested that sound American, it’s otherwise not very
concerned with America as a nation.

There is some Christian rhetoric in the novel, mostly by Boyer.
- For most of the people, religion is not a primary source. God doesn’t really play such a powerful source
here.
- It is concerned with states of mind like pleasure, perceptions, judgement, reason… A new interest in
interiorities which are not religious but epistemological
- The volatility of her mind reflects the volatility of the social world she lives in

Foster’s irony à morality
- Couple moments of irony/wit:
o Page 851: Eliza before a visit from Boyer
§ “O Dear! I believe I must begin to fix my phiz.”

43
§ Reflects how much pleasure she had in wit

o Page 908: Sanford after having seduced Eliza
§ Wouldn’t it be nice if he were be able not to seduce her?
- We laugh with her: we support that irony, but it’s irony in favour of Sanford and Eliza. Opposed to Boyer
and Freeman and old fashion sobriety.

It only works in the way of letters:
- What she did: different people who write (in Pamela (Richardson) only Pamela is talking).
- There is no master narrative, we won’t know what exactly happened in Hartford
- We don’t even know who’s writing the letter before we get to the end.
- The letters decentre the narrative
- There are multiple texts: only collectively they can tell us the story.
- She leaves several scraps of writing which she leaves with her
- What is written on her stone: we, as a reader, can stare at the grave and mourn the loss of her.

Eliza Withman’s story was already famous before the novel came out
- More material
o First in the newspaper
o A seduction novel (about another sex scandal)
o A poem ‘disappointment’, attributed to Withman
o She began to grow as a phenomenon: she had fans, visited her grave

Someone needs to be blamed
- How does the novel attribute the blame?
o Her friends: a source of pressure and a source of pressure.
o The novel was a straightforward condemnation of her behaviour
o We were meant to blame Eliza, and Eliza only
o The novel tries to be a moralising novel, but also tries to offer some social critique

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Life
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, Dark Romantic, and short story writer. He was born in 1804 in
Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include
John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel
later added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne" in order to hide this relation. He entered Bowdoin College in
1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. Hawthorne published his first work, a novel
titled Fanshawe, in 1828; he later tried to suppress it, feeling it was not equal to the standard of his later work.
He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year,
he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a
transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in
Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet
Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took
Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and
was survived by his wife and their three children.

Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan
inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, Dark
romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral

44
messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography
of his college friend Franklin Pierce.
Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism, cautionary tales that suggest
that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity. Many of his works are inspired by
Puritan New England, combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes,
bordering on surrealism. His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to
express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution. His later writings also reflect his negative view of
the Transcendentalism movement.

40 YEARS SINCE THE COQUETTE (1796-1836)
Changes
• Rise of print: people wanted to read
o Still, most happened in London
o Pamphlet wars: motivation of the rebellion
§ Cf. England: newspapers debate > become what kind of constitution?
o British colonies in America: high literacy; continued into the forming of the new nation
§ People wanted magazines, (American) novels
§ Apparition of a new genre: annuals (often as a gift) > poetry, fiction, fables, …
o Circulating libraries spread across the new nation
• Transformation of authorship
o Before: mostly anonymous > interest in ideas, not in profits
§ Voice in print
§ Distanced from the act of publication (little control)
o Becoming more a part of the process of publishing
§ More market-oriented
o Make a living as an author; many tried
• Publishing houses
o Aggregate capital, taking more risks (big companies that could borrow money)
o 100 copies > 1000 copies è more people, larger area
• Content: talk about things that people WANT to read, not about what they OUGHT to read

The rise of American fiction
• Susannah Rowson – Charlotte Temple
o Bestselling novel in America for over 50 years
• Charles Brockden Brown
o First serious literary artist in America
o First Gothic novels: schizophrenia, sleepwalking, yellow fever epidemic, …
• Washington Irving
o First successful American author in England
o Writing about England and America
o English writers as a model
• James Fenimore Cooper
o Historical models (Sir Walter Scott) for writing about America’s history
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
o Twice Told Tales: first collection of stories
o First American fiction writer not to model his work on an English tradition
o Really influential, widely respected ó new culture of literature (mass audiences): most
successful writers in his area were women (writing for women)
§ Damned mob of scribbling women

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§ They had a bigger audience than he did è high culture versus low culture, literary
fiction versus mass market fiction
§ Hawthorne wanted to be a literary artist

Changes in writing
• Puritan, plain style
o Sermons (Bradford), Winthrop, …
o Focused on description of facts and objects, also on moral clarity (captivity narratives): texts
had to tell the truth
• The Coquette
o Still in the mode of telling the truth (based on a real story)
o Clarifying the moral dilemma of Eliza’s problem, but the morality isn’t so clear after all
• Hawthorne
o Not interested in moral clarity at all, only in morality
o Clarity is limiting and dull to him
o Religion is no longer a main theme
o Ambiguity
o Romanticism

AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
Aspects of American Romanticism
• The Scarlet Letter: a romance, not a novel
o Not interested in ordinary experience, but in the improbable and impossible
• Set of ideas (not a defined “thing”)
• History as myth or revision
o History not as a set of facts > creative possibility of history
o History coming to its own as a discipline (professional historians > naïve empiricism)
§ Hawthorne resists this
§ Remove facts around; explore moral ambiguity of history
• Physical and psychological journey of an individual
o Changes over time
• Inability to see the whole picture / suppression of specific facts
o Authors shows us what he wants us to see
o Left in the dark, sometimes literally
§ Cf. Robin: we only know the purpose of his journey at the end (reader experiences
Robin’s entrance as the protagonist does)
§ Reason for the veil: same mystery for reader as for the people who know Hooper
o Make the reader ask questions > dynamics of the story
• Multiple perspectives
o Mary Rowlandson: only her perspective
o The Coquette: multiple ones thanks to the epistolary form è morally unstable, no particular
centre
o Hawthorne: also no particular centre
o Each perspective motivated by a set of experiences and desire è truth itself may not be
discernible
• Power of imagination
o Imagination running wild
§ Robin: feeling lost in Boston, imagination takes over
§ Ethan Brand staring into the fire of the kiln

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o Best means of gaining something like moral clarity; pleasure of contradiction/complexity

• Richness or excess of meaning

MY KINSMAN, MAJOR MOLINEUX
• Begins with a historical preface
o Particular time and place; a lot of details
§ New England
§ 1730s
• Riots did happen early
o Temporary inflammation of the popular mind
§ Collective (mind)
§ He talks about riots
o Molineux existed, member of the sons of liberty è readers know it
§ Boston Tea Party (with Sam Adams)
§ Served as the spokesman of the group during the protest
o Story is not interested in historical veracity, not in what is good/wrong
o Interested in moral dynamics of the conflict
• Pivot to a young man: from history to individual
o Descriptions è shine a light on the protagonist he is introducing
§ Clothing, objects, character, …
§ “as if he were entering London city”: at that time, Boston was still a small town
• Focus on Robin’s expectations and how they are defeated
o Series of encounters
o Robin misunderstands the rules of behaviour and he pays for it
o Conflict between his self-perception and Boston’s perception of him
o Name-dropper (Molineux)
§ Accused of being a runaway servant
o Cudgel: constantly repeated throughout the story (6 times) è frustration (turns later into
being divided, starting to be ashamed of himself)
• Imagination: philosophical speculation when strange things happen. But Robin isn’t really able to do
this.
o First urban tavern: seeing sailors, foreigners, …
o Tries to convince himself that he is fine and that he knows what to do with ambiguity
(ultimately, he stops thinking about it)
o Thinking rationally about it, musing about his experience
§ Power of imagination takes over (p.12)
§ Imagination as a source of amusement
§ Vibrating between fancy and reality
o Living in contradiction in the city
§ Competing interests
• Denouement of the story
o Opposite of family at home
o Boil tar + feathers on the victim; ride them out of town on a rail è humiliation
§ Cruelty
§ Often patriots as a victim; losing high status
§ People often died from the experience
o Molineux’s eyes meet those of Robin
§ Climax of tragedy (Aristotelian terms)

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•
Feel sorry for the victim, but also feeling terror of being implicated = what
Robin feels
§ Peripeteia: reversal of fortune
§ Anagnorisis: recognition of important truth
• Kinsman is not what Robin had hoped he would be
• Bewilderment (p. 18)
• Kinsman is reviled; it downs on Robin
o Mob’s contagion (p.18)
§ Robin shouts the loudest
§ <> interests; reversal: contagious
• Changing allegiances; identifying with the radical crowd
• Themes
o Deceptive multiplicity
§ Multiple faces, many voices, sounds coming from different places
§ Political anarchy, social and psychological confusion
§ Contagion: shift from social to psychological confusion
o STUK TE KORT

ROGER MALVIN’S BURIAL
• Invoking imagination
• The moonlight of romance
o Partial: does not enlighten everything like the sun
§ Heroism: you cannot tell the whole story: too complicated. Hawthorne doesn’t want
to do this. Not interested in heroism.
o Reuben’s truth is casted into the shade è story about the hidden trauma of war
§ Inside his head
• Beginning: almost impossible choice
o Reader feels the difficulty of the choice
§ Hero (brave choice) ó desire of existence and hope of happiness
§ Conflict is never quite resolved in the story
• What are the contents of Reuben’s heart?
o Constantly asked question by Hawthorne
o Author never tells us what to believe about Reuben’s culpability
§ Problems caused by lack of honesty, not by his choice of leaving Roger
o Cannot handle the moral ambiguity of his situation
• Cyrus: promise of glorious manhood
o Reuben has bourn so long trying to live up to the ideal of manhood
§ Ideal tainted by war, violence, deception, …?
o Cyrus: representation of Reuben’s former self
§ Not a healthy attitude towards your child (narcissism)
• Roger’s vision of happiness
o Pointing to the future: long and pleasant path
o Patriarchal future; not the one he is experiencing and not the one Reuben will have
§ Fantasy of heterosexual reproduction (cf. Crèvecœur: importance of children and
inheritance)
o Cyrus has a fantasy of his own (p. 30): plotting out the moments of his future
§ What he learned to fantasize about; he heard stories about men, about his
grandfather è what men are supposed to do
§ Sounds absurd

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§ Hawthorne playing with fantasies and how they can motivate people into doing stuff
o Rhetorical language
o Non-rational imaginative mode
§ Sleepwalker ó hunter
• Gravestone ~ rock
o Normally for someone who’s buried, but Roger isn’t
o Handkerchief becomes a bandage: symbol for Reuben’s vow to return > doesn’t keep it
o When he comes back, tree has been blided(?)
o Cyrus as a symbol for glorious manhood in its (failed) promise
• Symbols
o Characters ascribe meaning to them so that they function as symbols
o Never definite function (ó “real” symbols)
THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL
• Importance of symbols
• Interest in typology: look for types in the world
o Cf. Puritans: types that function as symbols for vices and virtues
§ Signify with clarity
o Romanticist: symbols signifying ambiguity
§ No moral clarity at the end of this story
• Parable
o Short, allegorical story to teach a moral lesson or a religious principle
o Not to confuse people
o What does this parable want to teach? No real answer.
§ Footnote p. 120: no clarification. Different import from what?
o Drama of interpretation: crisis of meaning
§ Speculations
§ Two main categories of interpretation: sorrow (cf. Moody; footnote) or sin
• Worries of Elizabeth
• Symbol works obscurely: it typifies a mystery
o Attribution to the fabric, but the real power is in the mystery itself: what we ascribe to it.
§ Maybe something interwoven into the fabric?
o Hooper himself also involved in the mystery of the veil; own antipathy towards the veil (p. 128)
o Powerful clergyman and giver of sermons
• Pattern: language of his sad smile
o Contradictio in terminis
§ First time in response to his negative parishioners
§ Repeated until the moment he dies
o Ambiguity of his intention and of the veil itself
ETHAN BRAND
• NIET GEDAAN IN KLAS

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RALPH WALDO EMERSON

LIFE
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the
transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a
prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of
published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and
expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature". Following this work, he gave a speech
entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's
"intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two
collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his
thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet" and
"Experience". Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s
Emerson's most fertile period.

Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas
such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between
the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic:
"Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul". Emerson is one of several figures
who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world."
He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the
thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was
"the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau,
a fellow transcendentalist.

• American theory of individualism è Emerson as the philosopher of this theory
• Series of clichés
• He believes his philosophy might apply to anyone

From Puritanism to Transcendentalism
• Total depravity of the soul: everything is a consequence of the Fallingness of man, practical approach
to virtue
è infinitude of the private man:
§ From a collectivist perspective to individuality. New emphasis on the single person.
Radical shift in the thinking over the centuries in western civilization in general.
§ Emerson asks what the individual can do.
§ No Scriptural allusions in his writings
• Revelation
è nature
§ Everything that is not the soul (me = soul, not me = nature)
§ Answer to everything: know thyself, study nature
§ Source of authority for wisdom has completely changed. God’s glory is manifest in
nature (= general thought for long), but it was not the place to seek wisdom.
• Nature as wilderness
è Nature as the opposite of the soul:

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§ Puritans: errand in the wilderness. Scary and unknown place (Devil?). Place that had
to be cultivated and tamed. Emerson sees nature in very different terms, it is the
opposite of the soul, but is connected with it: beautiful, sublime, something to
celebrate. Lakes and forests as beautiful objects.
• English literary models
è cultural organicism: before, attempt at writing good literature using English models
§ Emerson is inventing the modern biography (secular) ó Franklin: aimed to be a
tolerable English writer ~ Briton. Not interested in producing new models.
§ Emerson wants to introduce new models: no longer use the Muses of Europe.
§ Crèvecoeur was doing this too in a sense. Hawthorne was also inventing a new genre:
no analogue in British literature.
§ Organic: form whose structure is sometimes hard to trace. Structure almost seems to
be elliptical. No journey to get a message across. His essays emerge according to the
logic of the ideas they articulate.
§ Shift to an abandonment of models, originality is more important (not for its own
sake), but it emerges from the necessity of the thought.
§ Some elements of Puritan culture remain
o Descendant of a Mayflower settler > he understands the Puritan tradition
o Self-reflection: monitor and study the mind.
o A belief in the corruption of society: belief that the CoE was corrupt, so they
left England. Society is, according to Emerson, corrupt too.
o Crave for a connection with a divine being: maybe through nature

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston in the early
nineteenth century. It started to develop in the aftermath of Unitarianism taking hold at Harvard University,
following the elections of Henry Ware Sr. as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805, and of John Thorton Kirkland
as President in 1810. Rather than as a rejection of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism evolved as an organic
consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. They were not,
however, content with the sobriety, mildness and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a
more intense spiritual experience. Stated in alternate terms, Transcendentalism was not born as a counter-
movement to Unitarianism, but, as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians.

Transcendentalists are strong believers in the power of the individual. Their beliefs are closely linked with those
of the Romantics, but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science.
• Transcendental knowledge
o Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy in principles not based on, or
falsifiable by, physical experience, but deriving from the inner spiritual or mental essence of
the human.[citation needed] Transcendentalism merged English and German Romanticism,
the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the scepticism of Hume, and the
transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant (and of German Idealism more generally),
interpreting Kant's a priori categories as a priori knowledge.[citation needed] Early
transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in the original and
relied primarily on the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Victor Cousin,
Germaine de Staël, and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it. The
transcendental movement can be described as an American outgrowth of English Romanticism.
• Individualism
o Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and
political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their
best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true

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community can form. Even with this necessary individuality, transcendentalists also believe
that all people possess a piece of the "Over-soul" (God). Because the Over-soul is one, this
unites all people as one being.
• Indian religions
o Transcendentalism has been influenced by Indian religions.
• Idealism
o Transcendentalists differ in their interpretations of the practical aims of will. Some adherents
link it with utopian social change; Brownson, for example, connected it with early socialism,
but others consider it an exclusively individualist and idealist project. Emerson believed the
latter; in his 1842 lecture "The Transcendentalist", he suggested that the goal of a purely
transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice.

Puritans
§ Unitarian Revolution: Puritan churches became Unitarian
o Radical liberalisation of Puritan doctrine
§ Emerson became a minister, but resigned after 3 years

Lyceum Lectures
§ On all kinds of person
§ Emerson saw this as an opportunity and became a lyceum speaker
§ Organised a group of like-minded friends: transcendental club
o Hawthorne, Theroux, Margaret Fuller, …
o Journal: The Dial
§ Emerson kept a journal from a very young age: ‘his savings bank’
o He drew from this for his lectures
§ Affluent man, gave around 80 lectures across the whole country
§ Sometimes the lectures were collected in a written form: essays (evolution of his ideas!!)
o Abstract and profound arguments in his essays
o Use of metaphors to make arguments

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
Emerson uses Transcendentalist and Romantic views to get his points across by explaining a true American
scholar's relationship to nature. There are a few key points he makes that flesh out this vision:
• We are all fragments, "as the hand is divided into fingers", of a greater creature, which is mankind itself,
"a doctrine ever new and sublime."
• An individual may live in either of two states. In one, the busy, "divided" or "degenerate" state, he does
not "possess himself" but identifies with his occupation or a monotonous action; in the other, "right"
state, he is elevated to "Man", at one with all mankind.
• To achieve this higher state of mind, the modern American scholar must reject old ideas and think for
him or herself, to become "Man Thinking" rather than "a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other
men's thinking", "the victim of society", "the sluggard intellect of this continent".
• "The American Scholar" has an obligation, as "Man Thinking", within this "One Man" concept, to see the
world clearly, not severely influenced by traditional/historical views, and to broaden his understanding
of the world from fresh eyes, to "defer never to the popular cry."
• The scholar's education consists of three influences:
o I. Nature as the most important influence on the mind
o II. The Past manifest in books
o III. Action and its relation to experience

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• The last, unnumbered part of the text is devoted to Emerson's view on the "Duties" of the American
Scholar who has become the "Man Thinking."
• Harvard: every year an opening lecture called “The American Scholar” > 1837: Emerson
o Most widely published lecture so far
• Hope and labour: differences?
o Tension between the industrial and the intellectual
§ At that time: gilded age è industry became very important.
§ New York becoming the commercial capital of the country
o Idea that American literature hasn’t produced enough to be compared to the European
literature. Often limited to colleges and universities. Audience for literature is growing though.
o Emerson: American has indestructible instinct
§ Iron of the ‘iron lids’ ~ eye lids: lids are too heavy > if they open them, they may begin
to see.
• Growing population
o Cities, industries, … are growing, but everyone keeps on reading European books (foreign
harvest) è literature as food.
• Metaphor of the hand
o Idea of individualism and self-reliance
§ Excessive autonomy is a problem > a mere finger
o Not a historical fable
o Being cut off: become a thing (machine)
o Man Thinking is the right form of the American Scholar
§ Not to be a mere thinker (mere finger)
§ Right state

è Emerson starts with a metaphor and then transforms it. Essay gets a structure here: three influences.
Nature
History
Action

Nature
• Concept has evolved since the Puritan tradition
• Spectacle of nature: we tend to be engaged by it. The Man Thinking job involves more than experiencing
pleasure from it.
• See a system of classification
o Jardin des Plantes (Paris); Lyneus è see what unity exists in nature: the web of God
o Seek relations
• Nature is the opposite of the soul: if you want to know yourself and study humanity, you have to study
nature
o Explains why Emerson uses metaphors: we are connected to nature and metaphors of nature
(of the not-me) are ways of explaining the self (= the soul)

History
• Any form of history, but particularly the form of the book
• Scholars read and write books: they take in nature and they produce books
o A book is processed nature
• Problem with books: sacredness è becomes idle.
o Cf. Mona Lisa painting: just want to see it, but what about the idea of the painting? Same with
books, films, actors, …

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o Ideas become secondary

• Bookworm
o Someone who always reads, who doesn’t do anything else
o Domestic harvest
o Books alone make poor food
è he is giving this advice because we are led to believe that books are the future: they do not
give us the necessary education we will need in life. The students he is giving this lecture to are
students who probably read books. It is not useless, but ultimately books serve an ultimate
goal: inspiration.
o Read God in Nature (not in Scripture), but do so on your own too (not only via books who are
written by someone else)
§ It matters less what you read than how you read it
• Problem with universities (page 59)
o Gowns: metonymy for the gown a scholar wears, but it refers to the university
o Pecuniary: money (university is a foundation)
§ Harvard < wit/truth
§ Kind of what happened: Harvard is now the richest university in the world
§ Stands for prestige, much more than for “the last sentence or syllable of wit” (sounds
like the most disposable thing in the world here) è lose sight of truth (cf. the above).
Focus on other things. Emerson saw this and made a radical critique.

Action
• Subordinate with the scholar, but essential. Without it: not yet man, thought cannot be truth.
• Things that are written about are things that happen in the world.
• It’s counterintuitive, but action comes to truth.
• Raw material (60)
o At all hours (manufacture)
o No idea about who the actor is; not a mechanical one.
• Angel of wisdom (61)
o Metaphor of the metamorphosis
o Truth that can help him to explain the conversion of action into thought
o Moth: angel that does not have wings: transformation of the metaphor
• Cost of literature is higher than the cost of studying business.
• Fear (65)
o Scholar must put this aside
o Rewards of being a scholar are worth the price.
§ Theory of genius: recognising the connection between you and everyone else
§ Also need to be able to reconnect with one man (cf. metaphor of the hand) è
developed in the genius, in us it’s also crude (67).
§ Talk about the common here. New trend in literature: no focus on extraordinary
things, but on common things.
• Theorizing about new romanticism: focus on the common, because
we all have things in common.
• Cf. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson
• New importance given to the single person in literature (again individualism)
o Courtly muses of Europe, calling for a kind of American literature
o No nationalistic aims though.

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SELF-RELIANCE
"Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo
Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each
individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas. It is the source of
one of Emerson's most famous quotations: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines." This essay is an analysis into the nature of the “aboriginal self on which
a universal reliance may be grounded.”

Themes
• Individual authority: Emerson mentions that citizens control the government so they have control. He
also mentions how “nothing has authority over the self.” He says, “History cannot bring enlightenment;
only individual searching can.” He believes that truth is inside a person and this is authority, not
institutions like religion.
• Nonconformity: Emerson states, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." He counsels his
readers to do what they think is right no matter what others think.
• Solitude and the community: Emerson wrote how the community is a distraction to self-growth, by
friendly visits, and family needs. He advocates more time being spent reflecting on one’s self. This can
also happen in the community by a strong self-confidence. This would help the counselled to not sway
from his beliefs in groups of people.
• Spirituality: Truth is within one’s self. Emerson posits that reliance upon institutionalized religion
hinders the ability to grow mentally as an individual.

Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide
• Facing questions
• In order to be connected to others, we have to know and not doubt ourselves. Otherwise: alienation.
• Solipsism: the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.
o To believe your own thought to be true for all men (genius)
• 260: self-trust; vibrating to an iron string. Identification.
• Self-reliance is paradoxical (reason for difficulty)
o 260: pretty oracles; children’s behaviour: they trust themselves (cf. babies: what the baby
wants, the baby gets) è problem with us: eyes conquered (corruption) > doubt, ask what other
people want from you. Clogged into jail by their consciousness

A conspiracy against manhood
• Managing risks = company, but also society. Way of sacrificing liberty for food and survival. Society
demands conformity (coherence; traditions, customs)
• Distinction between realities/creators and names/customs
• Conforming in one thing is conforming in everything
o Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind
• Challenge of self-trust is a big one (273)
• Afraid of the price
o Non-conformity è world looking at you with displeasure
o Fear of social disapproval and our own disapproval (terror of inconsistency)
• Long tradition of being misunderstood
o Scientists from the new times: Galileo, Newton è misunderstood because they were non-
conformist. We do not celebrate their non-conformity
o Inconsistency as a lack of being mature
o Foolish consistency: not keeping track of circumstances

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True consistency
• Metaphor: the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line
o Consistency all along: if you trust yourself, you will be consistent even if it appears not so
o Many people won’t see this at first, but ultimately your genuine action will explain itself.
o Primary wisdom: intuition ó tuition: education itself (now the fee you pay)
o Whim: thing you should ignore
o Fatal has a secondary meaning: destined, inevitable è perception is inevitable because of who
you are (self-trust)
• Very easy to return to clichés
o Emerson’s ideas became so popular that they became clichés
• Live in the moment
o Living above time (babies)
o Travel

Progression?
• Intellectual culture: many people attending universities; founding public universities > ordinary men
could get a college education. But this is not the answer: not making something by the study of it. Society
itself never advances: technological improvements make that we also lose some traditional things.
• Movements: America was becoming a better place, was changing people’s lives è contradicting the
spirit of the time.

EXPERIENCE

Experience is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was published in the collection Essays: Second Series in 1844.
The essay is preceded by a poem of the same title.

In one passage, Emerson speaks out against the effort to over-intellectualize life - and particularly against
experiments to create utopias, or ideal communities. A wise and happy life, Emerson believes, requires a
different attitude. The mention of "Education Farm" is a reference to Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian
community founded by former Unitarian minister George Ripley and his wife Sophia Ripley.

• Essay: concept confusion; no demystifying
• 490: outline of the essay’s structure:

Illusion
• Emerson gives us this template. The first idea of one of illusion (perception). In self-reliance, Emerson
believes in perception. That moment has now gone. Has he changed his mind? Very few spontaneous
actions in society. Spontaneity was the basis for genius. His child dying of scarlet fever, changed his
perspective. Experience of death and grief
• Illusion is a problem because our lives are defined by it. Perspectives changes
o Cf. martyrs
• Idealisation of the past, impatience for the future. No interest in present-day è trick of nature: our
perspective shifts, it’s unstable. We cannot get to the truth of objects.

Temperament
• Many-coloured, depends on our mood. We change, not the rest.
• Iron wire (cf. iron string; above)

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• Prison of glass which we cannot see; our ability to see is compromised è far cry from self-reliance:
lowered his expectations

Succession
• Fact: lenses (moods) are constantly shifting

Surface
• 478: what we experience, we only experience through our perception è live through surfaces
• Life is a mixture of power and form; no excess of either
o Skating on the surfaces requires a balance from moment to moment. It also requires self-trust.
• Pragmatism and not idealism. Clichés come to mind again.

Surprise
Reality

Subjectiveness
• Subjects and objects (dualism): Emerson is trying to describe a relationship between the two.
• Here, he says that perhaps there are no objects; we cannot perpetrate in the truth of objects. Power?
Creating. He expresses some hope.
• Returns to the idea of self-trust: all there is at this point and we can make something good out of it(490).
Subjectivity is impoverished. Never mind the ridicule and the defeat. Some sort of pep talk to himself at
the end.

EMILY DICKINSON
LIFE
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Dickinson was born in
Amherst, Massachusetts. Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived
much of her life in reclusive isolation. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she
briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst.
Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her
reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most
friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence. Dickinson was a recluse for the
later years of her life.

While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during
her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers
to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote;
they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization
and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters
to her friends.

Although Dickinson's acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing, it was not until after her death in
1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of her work
became apparent to the public. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though both heavily edited the content. A complete, and
mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson
published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955. Despite some unfavourable reception and scepticism over the

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late 19th and early 20th centuries regarding her literary prowess, Dickinson is now almost universally considered
to be one of the most significant of all American poets.
POETRY
Dickinson's poems generally fall into three distinct periods, the works in each period having certain general
characters in common.
Pre-1861. These are often conventional and sentimental in nature. Thomas H. Johnson, who later published The
Poems of Emily Dickinson, was able to date only five of Dickinson's poems before 1858. Two of these are mock
valentines done in an ornate and humorous style, and two others are conventional lyrics, one of which is about
missing her brother Austin. The fifth poem, which begins "I have a Bird in spring", conveys her grief over the
feared loss of friendship and was sent to her friend Sue Gilbert.
1861–1865. This was her most creative period—these poems are more vigorous and emotional. Johnson
estimated that she composed 86 poems in 1861, 366 in 1862, 141 in 1863, and 174 in 1864. He also believed
that this is when she fully developed her themes of life and death.
Post-1866. It is estimated that two-thirds of the entire body of her poetry was written before this year.

• Excellent education
• Very private: socially reclusive
• Prolific writer: around 1800 poems written
• Related to the tradition of American writers
o Calvinist household. By this time: religion was diversified in the USA. Strict Puritans had
liberalised and became Unitarians.
o The Second Great Awakening: revivalism, industrialisation was changing America and people’s
heart so they had to get back to religion. Return to Calvinism and the emotional intensity (cf.
Edwards)
o Dickinson rejects Calvinism but she saw God and divinity as some of the most important things
to experience and to write about è domestic life, nature. No interest in Scripture but indirect
allusions to the Old Testament. No belief in original sin. No understanding of truth directly (cf.
Emerson: souls do not touch their objects; coloured lenses).
§ Poetry as a means of access
§ Poems as an attempt to understand truth indirectly
STRUCTURE AND SYNTAX

The extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in Dickinson's manuscripts, and the idiosyncratic
vocabulary and imagery, combine to create a body of work that is "far more various in its styles and forms than
is commonly supposed". Dickinson avoids pentameter, opting more generally for trimeter, tetrameter and, less
often, dimeter. Sometimes her use of these meters is regular, but oftentimes it is irregular. The regular form that
she most often employs is the ballad stanza, a traditional form that is divided into quatrains, using tetrameter
for the first and third lines and trimeter for the second and fourth, while rhyming the second and fourth lines
(ABCB). Though Dickinson often uses perfect rhymes for lines two and four, she also makes frequent use of slant
rhyme. In some of her poems, she varies the meter from the traditional ballad stanza by using trimeter for lines
one, two and four, while only using tetrameter for line three.

Since many of her poems were written in traditional ballad stanzas with ABCB rhyme schemes, some of these
poems can be sung to fit the melodies of popular folk songs and hymns that also use the common meter,
employing alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.
Dickinson scholar and poet Anthony Hecht finds resonances in Dickinson's poetry not only with hymns and song-
forms but also with psalms and riddles.

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Late 20th-century scholars are "deeply interested" by Dickinson's highly individual use of punctuation and
lineation (line lengths and line breaks). Following the publication of one of the few poems that appeared in her
lifetime, Dickinson complained that the edited punctuation (an added comma and a full stop substitution for the
original dash) altered the meaning of the entire poem.

• Her writings: really poems?
o Long-fellow: conventional poet, famous at that time. Strict metre, use of couplets,
<=> Her poems are short, have strange punctuation. Wrote them on the back of envelopes,
sowed them into ‘books’ (=fascicles) è became one object (autonomy). Sent them to friends
as gifts together with dried flowers.
o Punctuation (commas, m-dash) , wordplay, neologisms, rhythm and rhyme, ‘own’ symbology
o Not poems for children: they are complicated although they look ‘simple’
• Mode (constantly used): poetics of substitution/suggestion/indirection. Can’t come to truth directly.
• Poems have no titles

MAJOR THEMES

Dickinson left no formal statement of her aesthetic intentions and, because of the variety of her themes, her
work does not fit conveniently into any one genre. She has been regarded, alongside Emerson (whose poems
Dickinson admired), as a Transcendentalist. However, Farr disagrees with this analysis, saying that Dickinson's
"relentlessly measuring mind ... deflates the airy elevation of the Transcendental". Apart from the major themes
discussed below, Dickinson's poetry frequently uses humour, puns, irony and satire.

Flowers and gardens: Farr notes that Dickinson's "poems and letters almost wholly concern flowers" and that
allusions to gardens often refer to an "imaginative realm ... wherein flowers [are] often emblems for actions and
emotions". She associates some flowers, like gentians and anemones, with youth and humility; others with
prudence and insight. Her poems were often sent to friends with accompanying letters and nosegays. Farr notes
that one of Dickinson's earlier poems, written about 1859, appears to "conflate her poetry itself with the posies.

The Master poems: Dickinson left a large number of poems addressed to "Signor", "Sir" and "Master", who is
characterized as Dickinson's "lover for all eternity". These confessional poems are often "searing in their self-
inquiry" and "harrowing to the reader" and typically take their metaphors from texts and paintings of Dickinson's
day. The Dickinson family themselves believed these poems were addressed to actual individuals but this view is
frequently rejected by scholars. Farr, for example, contends that the Master is an unattainable composite figure,
"human, with specific characteristics, but godlike" and speculates that Master may be a "kind of Christian muse".

Morbidity: Dickinson's poems reflect her "early and lifelong fascination" with illness, dying and death. Perhaps
surprisingly for a New England spinster, her poems allude to death by many methods: "crucifixion, drowning,
hanging, suffocation, freezing, premature burial, shooting, stabbing and guillotinage". She reserved her sharpest
insights into the "death blow aimed by God" and the "funeral in the brain", often reinforced by images of thirst
and starvation. Dickinson scholar Vivian Pollak considers these references an autobiographical reflection of
Dickinson's "thirsting-starving persona", an outward expression of her needy self-image as small, thin and frail.
Dickinson's most psychologically complex poems explore the theme that the loss of hunger for life causes the
death of self and place this at "the interface of murder and suicide".

Gospel poems: Throughout her life, Dickinson wrote poems reflecting a preoccupation with the teachings of
Jesus Christ and, indeed, many are addressed to him. She stresses the Gospels' contemporary pertinence and
recreates them, often with "wit and American colloquial language". Scholar Dorothy Oberhaus finds that the

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"salient feature uniting Christian poets ... is their reverential attention to the life of Jesus Christ" and contends
that Dickinson's deep structures place her in the "poetic tradition of Christian devotion" alongside Hopkins, Eliot
and Auden. In a Nativity poem, Dickinson combines lightness and wit to revisit an ancient theme.

The Undiscovered Continent: Academic Suzanne Juhasz considers that Dickinson saw the mind and spirit as
tangible visitable places and that for much of her life she lived within them. Often, this intensely private place is
referred to as the "undiscovered continent" and the "landscape of the spirit" and embellished with nature
imagery. At other times, the imagery is darker and forbidding—castles or prisons, complete with corridors and
rooms—to create a dwelling place of "oneself" where one resides with one's other selves.
67: SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST

• Fuller treatment of the irony of knowledge through lack/loss
• How do you know what success is?
o Know it indirectly è poem
• Line 3-4: unsettling the reading of the poem
o Physical and not intellectual experience
o How to comprehend something sweet? è sorest need
• Second stanza
o Host: generally, refers to an army
o Purple: royalty, sovereignty, authority, … (colour used a lot) è own symbology
• Third stanza
o Dying breath è poet invites us to experience this
o Ending with another association that seems strange: agony and clarity
§ Something about the agony produces clarity
§ Dramatization of what sorest need is
• Again a set of unexpected opposition, but in their unexpected nature there is some kind of truth
87: SOUTH WINDS JOSTLE THEM

• Poetry makes the access to truth possible
• Missing pronoun referent: what might south wind be jostling?
o End of stanza: might be about flowers è withholding information
• M-dashes è image of the bumblebee
• Passage suggest a migration + Cashmere: place in northern India, fibre of the cashmere goat (very soft)
o Imagination is important: butterfly flying in a soft way
• Perspective shifts: slowing down.
• I softly plucking present them here è dried flowers onto her envelopes she is sending
o Also a metaphor for writing a poem: carefully choose the words (poem about softness)
o Not mentioning flowers creates a softness of understanding (ambiguity)
135: WATER IS TAUGHT BY THIRST

• Series of oppositions, but not really opposites è engages you in the process of trying to make sense
and the process of how opposites work (= indirection) è come to truth indirectly
o Thirst versus water
§ Land is the thing you have thirst for, like water
o Throe ~ agony ó transport: pleasure, ecstasy
o Peace ó battles told (≠ war): talking about war gives us the understanding about peace really
means

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o Love ó memorial mold (experience of grieving)

§ One of the challenges of the poem: diction
th
§ A lot of vocabulary from the 19 century
o Birds ó snow
§ Obviously no opposites in the conclusion of the poem
• Punctuation
o Some makes sense, some doesn’t
o , - .
214: I TASTE A LIQUOR NEVER BREWED

• Life is about surfaces è skate well on them (cf. Emerson)
• Cf. brewed rare variety of steadfast honey (poem 319)
o Prelapsarian? Before the original sin?
• Contradictions
o An impossibility è grounds this claim in the context of other contradictions
§ Wordplay: tankard (tall beer mug)
o Inebriate of air è cliché hovering over this: being high on life (you don’t have to drink to have
a good time) > not even a thing
o Debauchee of dew: dew is distilled like liquor ~ nature’s liquor è liquor exists in nature but is
not even material
§ Drinking too much: abusive, sickness, … è social problems
nd
§ 2 great awakening Christians: ‘we should do something about this’ è claiming a
stigma è punishments
o Reeling: not balanced when drunk
o Appreciate because you’ve never experienced it
o ‘dram drinker’ è watch out for these persons
• Inebriation of air is not a form of excess: it is natural è what we are meant to do
o Continuation of this logic in the final stanza
§ Seraphs: angels è figures of moral authority ~ saints.
§ Tippler: cf. dram drinking è implicitly, it is Dickinson. Run to the window to see a
drunk (commotion).
• Cf. drunk people: reeling and leaning
• M-dash: moment of suspense
§ Sun: again an impossibility è tippler becomes almost God-like
241: I LIKE A LOOK OF AGONY

• Idea of pain or death as a source of truth
• Something perverse about the claim “I like a look of Agony” è unsettle the reader
o Not fundamental to how we operate as human beings (normally: sympathetic response)
o Idea of sympathy as a way of coordinating on how to live together (you as a person know when
to count on somebody’s sympathy. Cf. example of crying in front of the class)
• Convulsion
o Cf. Crèvecœur and Jefferson: bodily convulsions (involuntariness; not intellectually produced;
same thing with throe and agony)
• Moving from agony to death
o Death is more authentic: only happens once

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o Taking abstract concept of death and put it in a concrete context: eyes glazing + beads of sweat
upon the forehead (cannot fake this) ~ necklace: intentional decoration (but in fact the
opposite of that)
o Punctuation > different readings
o Homely anguish: guaranteeing the truth
• Radical idea transformed into an image
258: THERE’S A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT

• Hard to understand the meaning of this poem
• Winter: light pouring in è not light, thick, hazy, … Can make you depressed. Dickinson used “oppressed”
• Cathedral tunes: normally very serious music. Tunes are not. Cathedral tunes do not lift us up.
• Affliction: God, testing us. Suggestion of ideas of Fallingness (original sin).
• Internal difference: where the meanings are.
280: I FELT A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN

• Poem about madness, about dying?
• Acceptance: we don’t know what it is to die ó madness (some people recover)
o Difference in the truth?
• Very complicated images
• Bell – ear
o Making of the sound and receiving of the sound
o What is being? Complicated idea of existence;
• How is silence a category of person? Utterly alone with silence.
319: THE NEAREST DREAM RECEDES – UNREALIZED

• Image of the schoolboy (cf. Emerson – The American Scholar)
• Heaven we chase?
o Pleasure? Here: truth, love, understanding, …
• M-dashes do some heavy lifting
o Mimicking the pattern of invasion of the receding dream
• Royal clouds: heaven we don’t have access to
• Shift to the boy: bewildered. He made a mistake: thought that the bumblebee was for him
• Homesick: lost something you used to have è here: honey referring to the dream; honey is sweet like
nectar (requiring the sorest need; no direct access) è steadfast honey: steady, reliable, … (be sure of a
dinner: to know that the world is there for you and that truth is accessible)
o Translating her father’s Calvinism into a more secular belief
o Original sin separates us from original sin
• Poems arrives at a truth even though the boy does not (ambiguity)
o Form of nostalgia
o Rather pessimistic end ó positive, even transcendent notion of life
320: WE PLAY AT PASTE

• Poems seems simple and confusing at the same time
• Paste: fake jewellery
• From paste to pearl: a process of maturation/qualification
o Comma: time must pass
• Drop: literally/reject (act of judgment); plural subject > singular: ourself: self-division

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• Shape of a pearl; more than formal likeness è abstract/platonic ideal. Continuity in movement from
paste to pearl (didn’t see it because we are too young; speaker of the poem tells this retrospectively)
o Fundamental similarity: made of the same thing (sand/silicate shaping)
o Children playing with sand
• Neologism: gem-tactics
o Tactics: strategy < touch (tangere in Latin) è intention
o Things that you learn when playing with paste
o Learning while practising sands = happening slowly and visibly (fundamentally important and
we write them off as ‘near play’ but without them we never get to pearl)
§ We might think of this as babbling, children’s words, …
• Rhyme scheme
o Paste-pearl-paste-fool: soft rhyme, alliteration
o Similar-hands-tactics-sands: end rhyme (hands-sands)
324: SOME KEEP THE SABBATH GOING TO CHURCH

• Sexton: person who rings the bells in the church
• Surplice: priestly vestment (tunic)
• Pattern of substitution
o Church ó home
o A … for …
• Irony and satire
o Free direct discourse
o Speaker does not believe God is a noted clergyman
NIET OPGELET
• Heaven she chases is right there at her home: open herself up to it
• Poems: not merely expressions of ideas existing independently è we have to see them as poems.
Achievements through poetry: necessary to the process of coming to realisations.
430: MUCH MADNESS IS DIVINEST SENSE

• Extreme experiences that can lead to revelation
• Alternative ways of knowing: interested in the truth means thinking about other things
• Divinest sense is her interest, but it is often seen as madness (not all madness) è challenge is to discern
between madness and sense and the majority can’t do this
• Handled with a chain: people suffering being chained (others looked at them while they were suffering)
465: I HEARD A FLY BUZZ – WHEN I DIED

• Focus on concrete experience
• Buzzing of a fly: not a heavy duty
• Completely random association, out of proportion è why alerting attention to this on the day that you
die?
o Function of poetry and literature
o ~ dead bed scene
o a heave of storm: moment of silence in between (expectations)
o very difficult to describe stillness
• Second stanza: full of expectations
• Third stanza
o Something you normally do before you die, but not a realistic scene here
o Portions of me be assignable: enjambment

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§ Mind, soul cannot be given away

o Fly: from something big to something trivial è focussing on random things
• Fourth stanza
o Buzz is uncertain and stumbling (cf. other poem)
o Last thing before death: experience that separates her from death

1129: TELL ALL THE TRUTH BUT TELL IT SLANT –
• Another way of talking indirectly
• Lie to children until they are old enough to understand
• Responsibility of the poet: to tell all the truth
• Success in circuit lies: going around
• We are like children: lightning is too scary
• Truth dazzles gradually = what her poems do è always leave us with so many questions
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
LIFE
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an
African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in
Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining
note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a
living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as
independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had
once been a slave.

Douglass wrote several autobiographies. He described his experiences as a slave in his 1845 autobiography,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became a bestseller, and was influential in
promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). After the Civil
War, Douglass remained an active campaigner against slavery and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times
of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, it covered events
during and after the Civil War. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and held several public offices.
Without his approval, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United
States as the running mate and Vice Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull, on the Equal Rights Party ticket.

Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, whether black, female, Native American, or recent
immigrant. He was also a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, and in
the liberal values of the American Constitution. When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union With
Slaveholders", criticized Douglass' willingness to dialogue with slave owners, he famously replied: "I would unite
with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

• Most famous black man
• Very popular speaker (lecture circuit; cf. Emerson)
• “In natural eloquence, he was a prodigy”(Garrison) è big, handsome man, keep audiences enthralled.
• Early photography: most photographed person (cf. Phyllis Wheatley: biographic and documentary
evidence)
• Nothing but time and opportunity to obtain the highest form of human excellence => direct argument
with Jefferson
• Discourse of sympathy: convert the people to the abolitionist movement (cf. The Coquette)
o Imagine what it was like to be a slave è this demonstrates the importance of his work
• “Either with us or against us” ~ activist movements è choose sides (direct approach)
• Narrative would introduce readers to the slavery world because most of them had no clue about it

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Slave economy
• Assumption of white supremacy è big impact on American life
• Rapid growth of American industrial power
• Atlantic Triangular Trade è cotton industry (157 000 bails by 1812, millions by 1850)
o Southern population grew, including slaves
o Northern population grew too > cotton of the South processed in textile mills
• Steamboats, railroads: travelling became easier
• Jacksonian America < Andrew Jackson
o Grow of slavery AND of democratic liberty
§ Vote
• Constitution 1788
o Federal representation: slave = 3/5 of a citizen è questioning of representation
o South wanted slaves to be counted for purposes of representation (otherwise the North would
have all the political power), but they didn’t want them to be counted as people = expression
of the problem
• 1808
o Return slaves from non-slave states to slave states
o Slave legislation: compromise

th
Anti-slavery movement (late 18 century)
• Quakers, Pennsylvania
nd
• Evangelical Christians (2 Awakening)
• William Lloyd Garrison
o Preface to Douglass’ Narrative
o Anti-slavery Society

American slave songs
• Influenced by African traditions
• Gospel music, blues, jazz, …
• Prayer to God
• Testament against slavery
• Songs give a first theoretical insight of the dehumanising character of slavery
o Story of a person’s arriving at awareness and at insights about how slavery works
o Only a boy hearing these songs, discerning a tension between joy and sadness; what does that
contradiction mean?
o Text goes on to describe a number of these insights

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published on May 1, 1845, and within four months of this
publication, five thousand copies were sold. By 1860, almost 30,000 copies were sold. After publication, he sailed
to England and Ireland for two years in fear of being recaptured by his owner in the United States. While in Britain
and Ireland, he gained supporters who paid $710.96 to purchase his emancipation from his legal owner. One of
the more significant reasons Douglass published his Narrative was to offset the demeaning manner in which
white people viewed him. When he spoke in public, his white abolitionist associates established limits to what
he could say on the platform. More specifically, they did not want him to analyse the current slavery issues or to
shape the future for black people. However, once Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published, he
was given the liberty to begin more ambitious work on the issue rather than giving the same speeches
repetitively. Because of the work in his Narrative, Douglass gained significant credibility from those who
previously did not believe the story of his past. While in Ireland the Dublin edition of the book was published by
the abolitionist printer Richard D. Webb to great acclaim and Douglass would write extensively in later editions
very positively about his experience in Ireland. His newfound liberty on the platform eventually led him to start
a black newspaper against the advice of his "fellow" abolitionists. The publication of Narrative of the Life of

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Frederick Douglass opened several doors, not only for Douglass's ambitious work, but also for the anti-slavery
movement of that time.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass received many positive reviews, but there was a group of people who
opposed Douglass's work. One of his biggest critics, A. C. C. Thompson, was a neighbour of Thomas Auld, who
was the master of Douglass for some time. As seen in "Letter from a Slave Holder" by A. C. C. Thompson, found
in the Norton Critical Edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, he claimed that
the slave he knew was "an unlearned, and rather an ordinary negro". Thompson was confident that Douglass
"was not capable of writing the Narrative". He also refuted the Narrative when Douglass described the various
cruel white slave holders that he either knew or knew of. Prior to the publication of Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, the public could not fathom how it was possible for a former slave to appear to be so
educated. Upon listening to his oratory, many were sceptical of the stories he told. After Douglass's publication,
however, the public was swayed. Many[who?] viewed his text as an affirmation of what he spoke of publicly.
Also found in The Norton Critical Edition, Margaret Fuller, a prominent book reviewer and literary critic of that
era, had a high regard of Douglass's work. She claimed, "we have never read [a narrative] more simple, true,
coherent, and warm with genuine feeling". She also suggested that "every one may read his book and see what
a mind might have been stifled in bondage — what a man may be subjected to the insults of spendthrift dandies,
or the blows of mercenary brutes, in whom there is no whiteness except of the skin, no humanity in the outward
form". Douglass's work in this Narrative was an influential piece of literature in the anti-slavery movement.
SUMMARY
Chapters 1–4
Douglass begins by explaining that he does not know the date of his birth (February 14, 1818), and that his
mother died when he was 7 years old. He has very few memories of her (children were commonly separated
from their mothers), only of the rare night time visit. He thinks his father is a white man, possibly his owner. At
a very early age he sees his Aunt Hester being whipped. Douglass details the cruel interaction that occurs
between slaves and slave holders, as well as how slaves are supposed to behave in the presence of their masters,
and even when Douglass says that fear is what kept many slaves where they were, when they tell the truth they
are punished by their owners.
• How to tell the story of your life without that knowledge? No background.
• His father may have been his white master: misogyny è slaves as a source of prodigy and profit
o Slave code: slave laws developed by states: children followed the condition of their mother.
Otherwise, Douglass wouldn’t have been a slave.
o Often separated from their mothers. Emphasised in this story because it is so inhumane.
• Effects of misogyny: obscure the nature of slavery
o P. 17: … scripturally enslaved … è irony
o Christianity was used to justify slavery
• Representation of suffering
o Not as violent as ancient slavery (cf. Jefferson)
o Convince themselves of this idea è Narrative contradicts this
o Command the sympathy of the reader
§ Scene with Aunt Hester: Douglass as spectator. We too watch Aunt Hester being
whipped > feel the same as he felt.
§ Moment of revelation for us as well
• Clothing
o Almost always without clothes and shoes

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• Sleep
o Cf. Jefferson saying they don’t need sleep è Douglass: there is no time to sleep!
• Slave’s psychology insights: privileged slaves
o Main house farm
o Satire on the slaves? No, slaves showing to be little different from white people: universal
desire for distinction
o ~ political parties: looking for political privilege
• No critique
o Belief that masters take care of their slaves. They want to be slave and not free.
o BUT: penalty for telling the truth è so, Douglass uncovers the whole thing as a lie.

Chapters 5–7
At this point in the Narrative, Douglass is moved to Baltimore, Maryland. This is rather important for him because
he believes that if he had not been moved, he would have remained a slave his entire life. He even starts to have
hope for a better life in the future. He also discusses his new mistress, Mrs. Sophia Auld, who begins as a very
kind woman but eventually turns cruel. Douglass learns the alphabet and how to spell small words from this
woman, but her husband, Mr. Auld, disapproves, and states that if slaves could read, they would not be fit to be
slaves, being unmanageable and sad. Upon hearing why Mr. Auld disapproves of slaves being taught how to read,
Douglass realizes the importance of reading and the possibilities that this skill could help him. He takes it upon
himself to learn how to read and learn all he can, but at times, this new found skill torments him. Douglass then
gains an understanding of the word abolition and develops the idea to run away to the North. He also learns how
to write and how to read well.
• Maryland: northern state

o Burden of slavery was lighter than in a southern state like Alabama
o Nevertheless, most Americans in the North approved slavery
• Effects of slavery on white slaveholders
o Tell that slavery is hurting white people: destructing effect on the morals of white people
o Mr. Gore > colonel Lloyd: described as a kind of terrorist > never knew when they would be
punished (random and violent system); no explanation and nothing but submission.
§ Opposite of a sympathetic person
§ Demby murdered (p. 30). Cf. Crevecoeur: rationale (letter Charleston: slave in a cage)
è laws of self-preservation
§ Punish a slave severely, otherwise rebellion
§ Attitude of the owner towards the slave warrants a violent reversal. But if you are not
terrorising as a slaveholder, you’re not a good one.
• Example of Mrs Auld (Baltimore)
• Baltimore: Mrs Auld
o White woman smiling at him
o She only sees a little boy, not a slave
o Legitimate power: male figure (legal power) ó illegitimate power: slaveholder è no
responsibility (you can shoot your slave and you will not be held responsible)
• Idealized views of Baltimore
o Significance of the city in his narrative: important episode in his life, otherwise he would never
had become a free man
o As a slave, you almost never had the chance to bath; children had no clothes è always dirty;
possible diseases following from it (scurf). Moving to the city: completely different
environment > scrub off the scurf of his body.

67
o Different expectations of slaves in the city

§ Almost a free man compared with a slave on a plantation
o City important for him when he finally escapes: easier to escape from the city than from the
country
§ Lots of activity, black free man can travel with passes, they often work on boats
(transportation)
• Literacy and liberty (p. 37-38)
o Painting of Jennings: emancipation requires education (ó Jefferson)
§ Black slaves: free to become productive citizens
o Douglass’ story = him learning
§ Normally: unlawful and unsafe to learn a slave to read
§ Dehumanization now becomes a real concept è learning to read = understanding
slave ideology
§ “new and special revelation”
§ Recreating a moment of insight
o Told that it was dangerous for him to learn è develop a theory about how slavery works
§ Keeping the black man ignorant
§ He sees it as a grand achievement
o Invaluable instruction: the denial was instructive
o Couldn’t do it openly (otherwise reported), but he doesn’t emphasise this ó emphasis on his
education as being not typical (not in a school) > school of life (rhetoric of substitution)
§ Illegal for him to have a book
o Allusion to Bingham’s Columbian Orator
§ Encounters with texts!
• Mary Rowlandson: The Bible (bibliomancy)
• Benjamin Franklin: The Spectator
§ Was transformative for him
§ Widely distributed school book
§ Anthology: gave him access to texts that were simplified for children. They weren‘t
politically neutral è patriotic texts
• Dialogue between a master and slave: stoicism reply of the slave at first.
Dialogue invokes ideas that were important to Douglass about how slavery
works (lack of consent, punishments, ignorance, …) è he heard a voice in
this slave although it was not a realistic dialogue: slave speaks as if he had
had an education (truth to power). Douglass will continue to use this voice in
his narrative: voice of insight and of fearlessness)
• Process of coming to understanding: literacy helps (gives tongue to these
conceptions)
o Master was right: literacy makes him unfit to be a slave
§ He had a view of his condition without the remedy
o Mentioning abolition = rebellion; was considered a radical politics in the south. Learning this
idea of abolition > speak truth to power, inspired him.
o Share this power of literacy è Sabbath school (Sunday school): common American tradition.
A way for children to learn to read Scripture initially after church services (under the auspices
of religion).
§ Douglass has a bigger idea of what the school can do è teach the same ideas he has
learned (“sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed) è cf. Franklin: story
of community building and service to others.

68
§ Allowed by slaveholders to do this because of the connection with religion although

it was not so fun that they behaved like intellectuals.
§ Slavery shuts up the mind in mental darkness
§ Christianity in the south: ideology like slavery
• Slavery and Christianity
o Captain Auld (p. 52)
§ Quoting scripture from Luke è taken out of context: not what should happen, but
what will happen.
§ Invocation of scripture in a lot of texts that we have read this semester
• Spiritual benefit of the invoker
• Moral comfort
• Ethical guidance
• Here: as a rationale for violence and brutality
o P. 68
§ Appendix: not talking about Christianity in general
§ Spoken language (used in his orations; shaped and reshaped) > oratory quality:
repetition, dashes, …
§ Theoretical critique of slavery and of Christianity go hand in hand
• Uncovering the secret operation of slave ideology: show how they work
• Easy for us to believe that it is justified
§ How can a holiday be fraud?
§ Confusion: freedom and excess
§ Slaves: only see the abuse of it è freedom for slaves: based on consent, not simply
the ability to do what you want (virtuous freedom) > slaveholders don’t want slaves
to know what this looks like
• Insights on how slavery works: first (cultural) theorizer
o Cf. Marx and capitalism: same logic
Chapters 8–9
At the age of ten or eleven, Douglass's master dies and his property is left to be divided between his son and
daughter. The slaves are valued along with the livestock, causing Douglass to develop a new hatred of slavery.
He feels lucky when he is sent back to Baltimore to live with the family of Master Hugh. He is then moved through
a few more situations before he is sent to St. Michael's. His regret at not having attempted to run away is evident,
but on his voyage he makes a mental note that he travelled in the North-Easterly direction and considers this
information to be of extreme importance. For some time, he lives with Master Thomas Auld who is particularly
cruel, even after attending a Methodist camp. He is pleased when he eventually is lent to Mr. Covey for a year,
simply because he would be fed. Mr. Covey is known as a "negro-breaker", who breaks the will of slaves.
• Slavery and economic coercion

o P. 84: receiving a little bit (ten cents) > not notice that all of it is mine è theft (~ pirate)
o Showing the ideological critique, producing a radical conclusion: the man you serve, is a pirate
o Cf. the voice of the slave in the Columbian Orator
o Analogy: slavery = annihilation of reason
§ BUT: if a slave uses reason like this, then how can you ever enslave him?
• Slavery and brutalization (p. 46)
o Humans versus brutes
o To brutalize = to punch >> initially: to make someone a brute (~ animal)
th
o Nowadays: animals versus humans not so far away from each other > 19 century: clear
distinction è slaveholders treating slaves like animals

69
o Language of brutality and bestiality

o Death of Colonel Lloyd
§ Valued as an asset along with the property
§ Literally sent back into the country to be valued
§ Ranked with the animals è divisions are obscured
§ Property treated as any asset è more horrifying than just being a slave
• Cf. starving of the grandmother
• Mr. Covey (p. 58)
o One of the villains in American literature
o Such a violent and unforgiving man (reputation): slave-breaker in body, soul and spirit
§ Lent for a year, when slave is sent back to the owner, he is broken
Chapters 10–11
While under the control of Mr. Covey, Frederick Douglass bit his hand and has an especially hard time at the
tasks required of him. He is harshly whipped almost on a weekly basis, apparently due to his awkwardness. He is
worked and beaten to exhaustion, which finally causes him to collapse one day while working in the fields.
Because of this, he is brutally beaten once more by Covey, and eventually complains to Thomas Auld, who
subsequently sends him back to Covey. A few days later, Covey attempts to tie up Douglass, but he fights back.
After a two-hour long physical battle, Douglass ultimately conquers Covey. After this fight, he is never beaten
again. Douglass is not punished by the law, which is believed to be due to the fact that Covey cherishes his
reputation as a "negro-breaker", which would be jeopardized if others knew what happened. When his one-year
contract ends under Covey, Douglass is sent to live on William Freeman's plantation. Douglass comments on the
abuse suffered under Covey, a religious man, and the relative peace under the more favourable, but more
secular, Freeman. On Freeman's plantation, Douglass befriends other slaves and teaches them how to read.
Douglass and a small group of slaves make a plan to escape, but before doing so, they are caught and Douglass
is put in jail. Following his release 2 years later, he is sent to Baltimore once more, but this time to learn a trade.
He becomes an apprentice in a shipyard under Mr. Gardener where he is disliked by several white apprentices
due to his slave status and race; at one point he gets into a fight with them and they nearly gouge out his left
eye. Woefully beaten, Douglass goes to Master Hugh, who is kind regarding this situation and refuses to let
Douglass return to the shipyard. Master Hugh tries to find a lawyer but all refuse, saying they can only do
something for a white person. Sophia Auld, who had turned cruel under the influence of slavery, feels pity for
Douglass and tends to the wound at his left eye until he is healed. At this point, Douglass is employed to be a
caller and receives wages, but is forced to give every cent to Master Auld in due time. Douglass eventually finds
his own job and plans the date in which he will escape to the North. He succeeds in reaching New Bedford, but
does not give details of how he does so in order to protect those who helped him and to allow the possibility for
other slaves escape by similar means. Douglass unites with his fiancée and begins working as his own master. He
attends an anti-slavery convention and eventually becomes a well-known orator and abolitionist.
• Images of liberty
o P. 59: sailing boats
o Antithesis: liberty versus slavery
o Free black men working for maritime company: big physical freedom (travel the world)
• Reversals of liberty (p. 58-60)
o Chiasmus: the chiastic structure of man-slave and slave-man è powerful: not only in the
moment, but it represents the entire narrative
o To not be a man = to be feminised è this is a story of man and not of women (role of fiancée
was bigger than the reader is led to believe)
o Routes
§ EVEN NIET OPGELET

70
§ The virtue of the route was fully tested (p. 64): virtue comes from man
§ Spirit of resistance: cause???
• Covey does not know how to react to resistance of Douglass
• Didn’t turn him in because it would hurt his reputation as a severe slave
breaker
• Douglass: sense of his manhood > to assert this he had to risk his life
(irony): in order to be really living, he has to decide his life is worth giving
up > decision to escape
• Determination to escape
o Life-giving
o Patrick Henry’s speech to the Virginia Convention: liberty or death
o Reader wants him to get out
o Douglass doesn’t give any details about his escape
§ Loses narrative’s interest but gains instead a sense of how powerful that absence is
§ Cf. themes of the story: withholding knowledge > keep the slaveholders ignorant
• Upward mobility story?
o Douglass not interested in wealth
o But offering opportunities
o Ambitious, intellectual, self-taught
§ P. 66: city as a part of the upward mobility, first sign of prosperity that is about to
come (sounds like Franklin). Sense of being chosen (Providence);
o Change of status: slavery > freedom
§ Making money by working (cf. Franklin) > bent = determined. Language use comes
from labour ~ language of slavery
• Garrison’s The Liberator (newspaper)
o Douglass joins the anti-slavery cause
o Douglass’s The North Star: own newspaper
• Contrast between a free black man, former slave, writing this book and how it would have been
written by another author
• Philips: another important abolitionist in the 1840s
o Cf. Franklin at the 1776 Continental Congress
§ Hang together (united) <> hang separately (die in the gallows)
§ Problem of slavery has not gone away at all; emphasis on the danger of what he’s
doing. Turning Douglass into a national hero.
Conclusion
• Violence
• Intellectual insight
• Captivity narrative (cf. Rowlandson)
• Upward mobility story (cf. Franklin)
• Sentimental story (CF. The Coquette)
• Philosophical insights and social critiques (cf. Emerson)
• True power = existence of the book (written by a slave)

71

American Literature 16-17

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American Literature 16-17

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COLONIAL AND ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN

o Rough competition: high cost of entry

AUTHORSHIP OF JOHN SMITH

- Providential violence (153)

o Seeking to balance the claims > creation of a set of principles.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

• Sister killed very soon in the attack

Eating bear meat

• Edwards and Franklin

• Very important printer in America

• The art of virtue

JEFFERSON, CRÈVECŒUR, WHEATLEY

§ Enlightened observer (construction)

• Provides lots of information (cf. Jefferson > notes on state of Virginia)

o Upward mobility in America è promoting

§ Reflects how much pleasure she had in wit

o Best means of gaining something like moral clarity; pleasure of contradiction/complexity

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

o Ideas become secondary

STRUCTURE AND SYNTAX

67: SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST

87: SOUTH WINDS JOSTLE THEM

135: WATER IS TAUGHT BY THIRST

o Love ó memorial mold (experience of grieving)

214: I TASTE A LIQUOR NEVER BREWED

241: I LIKE A LOOK OF AGONY

258: THERE’S A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT

280: I FELT A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN

319: THE NEAREST DREAM RECEDES – UNREALIZED

320: WE PLAY AT PASTE

324: SOME KEEP THE SABBATH GOING TO CHURCH

430: MUCH MADNESS IS DIVINEST SENSE

465: I HEARD A FLY BUZZ – WHEN I DIED

§ Mind, soul cannot be given away

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE

• Maryland: northern state

o Different expectations of slaves in the city

§ Allowed by slaveholders to do this because of the connection with religion although

• Slavery and economic coercion

o Language of brutality and bestiality

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