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Lecture 1. Pre-colonial literature. The origins of american literature

1. Native American traditions influenced U.S. literature. Pre-colonial period

The foundation of American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. Native American oral tradition is quite diverse. Indian stories glow with reverence for nature as a spiritual, as well as physical, mother. Nature is alive and endowed with spiritual forces; main characters may be animals or plants, often totems associated with a tribe, group, or individual.

The Indian contribution to America is greater than is often believed. The hundreds of Indian words in everyday American English include “canoe,” “tobacco,” “potato,” “moccasin,” “moose,” “persimmon,” “raccoon,” “tomahawk,” and “totem.” literature àmerican romanticism realism

The first European record of exploration in America is in a Scandinavian language. The Old Norse Vinland Saga recounts how the adventurous Leif Eriksson and a band of wandering Norsemen settled briefly somewhere on the northeast coast of America - probably Nova Scotia, in Canada - in the first decade of the 11th century.

The first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world, however, began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded by the Queen of Spain, Isabella. Columbus's journal in his “Epistola,” printed in 1493, recounts the trip's drama.

2. Colonial beginning

Initial English attempts at colonization were disasters. The first colony was set up in 1585 at Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina; all its colonists disappeared. The second colony was more permanent: Jamestown, established in 1607. It endured starvation, brutality, and misrule. However, the literature of the period paints America in glowing colors as the land of riches and opportunity. Accounts of the colonization became world-renowned.

In the 17th century, pirates, adventurers, and explorers opened the way to a second wave of permanent colonists, bringing their wives, children, farm implements, and craftsmen's tools. The early literature of exploration is made up of diaries, letters, travel journals, ships' logs, and reports to the explorers' financial backers. Because England eventually took possession of the North American colonies, the best known and most anthologized colonial literature is English.

The story of American literature begins in the early 1600^th. The earliest writers were Englishmen describing the English exploration and colonization of the New World (America). Thomas Hariot`s “Briefe and True Report of the New - Found land of Virginia” (1588) was only the first of many such works. Back in England, people planning to move to Virginia or New England would read the books as travel guides. But it was dangerous because such books often mixed facts with fantasy. People could certainly read them as tales of adventure and excitement. Like modern readers of science fiction, they could enjoy imaginary voyages to places they could never visit in reality.

The writing of Captain John Smith (1538-1631) “True Relation of Virginia”(1608) and “Description of New England” (1616) are fascinating “advertisements” which try to persuade the reader to settle in the New World, and the Puritans (believers in a simple Christian religion without ceremony) followed his advice and settled there in 1620. Smith was often boastful about his own adventures in his books. His “General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the summer Isles” (1624) contains the story of his rescue by a beautiful Indian princess. The story is probably untrue, but it is the first famous tale from American literature. His Elizabethan style was not always easy to read, and his punctuation was strange even for the 17^th century.

3. The Puritans

Almost from the beginning, as the English settled along the Atlantic coast of America, there were important differences between the Southern and the New England colonies. In the South, enormous farms or “plantations” used the labor of black slaves to grow tobacco. The rich and powerful plantation owners were slow to develop a literature of their own. They preferred books imported from England. But in New England, the Puritan settlers had come to the New World in order to form a society based on strict Christian beliefs. Like the Puritans in England, who were fighting against the English kings, they believed that society should be based on the laws of God. Therefore they had a far stronger sense of unity and of a “shared purpose”. This was one of reasons why culture and literature developed much faster than in the south. Harvard, the 1^st college in the colonies, was founded near Boston in 1636 in order to train new puritan ministers. The fist printing press in America was started there in 1638, and America`s first newspaper began in Boston in 1704.

It is likely that no other colonists in the history of the world were as intellectual as the Puritans, most of them of English or Dutch origin. Between 1630 and 1690, there were as many university graduates in the northeastern section of the United States, known as New England, as in England. The self-made and often self-educated Puritans wanted education to understand and execute God's will as they established their colonies throughout New England.

Puritan style varied enormously - from complex metaphysical poetry to homely journals and crushingly pedantic religious history. Whatever the style or genre, certain themes remained constant. Life was seen as a test; failure led to eternal damnation and hellfire, and success to heavenly bliss. This world was an arena of constant battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan, a formidable enemy with many disguises.

Scholars have long pointed out the link between Puritanism and capitalism: Both rest on ambition, hard work, and an intense striving for success. Although individual Puritans could not know, in strict theological terms, whether they were “saved” and among the elect who would go to heaven, Puritans tended to feel that earthly success was a sign of election. Wealth and status were sought not only for themselves, but as welcome reassurances of spiritual health and promises of eternal life.

Moreover, the concept of stewardship encouraged success. The Puritans felt that in advancing their own profit and their community's well-being, they were also furthering God's plans. The great model of writing, belief, and conduct was the Bible, in an authorized English translation. The great antiquity of the Bible made it authoritative to Puritan eyes.

As the 1600s wore on into the 1700s, religious dogmatism gradually dwindled, despite sporadic, harsh Puritan efforts to stem the tide of tolerance. The spirit of toleration and religious freedom that gradually grew in the American colonies was first established in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, home of the Quakers. The humane and tolerant Quakers, or “Friends,” as they were known, believed in the sacredness of the individual conscience as the fountainhead of social order and morality. The fundamental Quaker belief in universal love and brotherhood made them deeply democratic and opposed to dogmatic religious authority. Driven out of strict Massachusetts, which feared their influence, they established a very successful colony, Pennsylvania, under William Penn in 1681.

4. Puritan literature

The most interesting works of New England Puritan literature were histories. To the Puritans, history developed according to “God`s plan”. In all of their early New England histories, they saw New England as the “Promised Land” of the Bible. The central drama of history was the struggle between Christ and Satan.

“Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford (1590-1657) is the most interesting of the Puritan histories. It describes the Puritans` difficult relations with the Indians. It also describes difficulties during the 1<sup>st</sup> winter, when half of their colony died. This is all told in a wonderful “plain style” which the Puritans admired. In order to present the “clear light of truth” to uneducated readers, Puritan writers avoided elegant language. The examples they used were drawn either from the Bible or from the everyday life of farmers and fishermen. At the same time, Bradford`s history is deeply influenced by the belief that God directs everything that happens.

“The History of New England” by John Winthrop (1588-1649) is also in the “plain style”. But it is far less cheerful. Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusettets Bay Colony and, like most of the Puritan writers, was a minister all his life. His writing style is very cold. He rarely shows shock or sadness, even when he describes scenes of great unhappiness.

The first Puritans were not very democratic. “The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion`s Saviour in New England”, by Edward Johnson, defends the harsh laws made by the Puritan leaders. Everybody had to obey these church laws. Believers in other forms of Christianity were called “snakes” or even worse names. Puritan society was a “theocracy”: the laws of society and the laws of religion were the same. Those who broke the laws were punished severely. In fact, by the beginning of the 1700^th, newer Puritan ideas were becoming important to the development of democracy.

Even in the early days, some writers were struggling hard against the Puritan democracy. Anne Hutchinson (1590-1643) and Roger Williams (1603-1683) both desired a freer religious freedom. Rogers, who went off to establish his own colony in Rhode Island, was especially important. To him, freedom was not only “good in itself”, it was a necessary condition for the “growth and development of the soul”.

The New Englanders were successful at keeping the absolute “purity” of Puritanism during the early, difficult days of settlement. But when the Indians were no longer a danger, the dark forests had become farmland, and more comfortable settlements had grown up, Puritan strictness began to relax. The change was not very slow and was not easily recognized by New Englanders at the time. So, the Puritan traditions grew weaker and weaker.

Richard Mather (1596-1669), the founder of his family in America, was greatly admired as a typical strong Puritan minister. Another preacher, who knew Richard Mather well, described his way of preaching as “very plain, studiously avoiding obscure terms”. Increase Mather (1639-1723), his son, was a leader of the New England theocracy until it began to fall apart at the end of the 17^th century. He was also a minister at North Church in Boston, the most powerful church in New England. The 1690s was the time of great witchcraft panic. In the town of Salem, Massachusetts, young girls and lonely old women were arrested and put on trial as witches. A number of these people were put to death for “selling their souls” to the Devil. Increase Mather's best-known book, Remarkable Providences (1684), tells us much about the psychological environment of the time. The book is filled with the Puritan's strange beliefs. To Mather and other Puritans, witchcraft and other forms of evil were absolutely real part of everyday life.

Increase's son, Cotton Mather (1663-1728), became the most famous of the family. He had “an insane genius for advertising himself”. He wrote more than 450 works. Whenever something happened to him in his life, he wrote a religious book. When his first wife died, he published a long sermon (religious address) called Death Made Easy and Happy. When his little daughter died, his wrote The Best Way of Living, Which is to Die Daily. Most of these works were quite short and are of little interest to us today. But some, such as his famous Magnolia Christi Americana (1702), were very long and were published in many volumes. He was certain that his longest work, The Angel Bethesda, would prove one of the most useful books that have been published in the World. The writings of Cotton Mather show how the later Puritan writers moved away from the “plain style” of their grandfathers. The language is complicated and filled with strange words from Latin. Although Mather called his style “a cloth of gold”, ordinary people usually found it hard to read.

In the writings of the earliest Puritans, we often find poems on religious themes. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) was the first real New England poet. Her Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America (1650), contained the first New World poems published in England. None of her early poems are very good. Her later poems, written with charming simplicity, show her progress in the art. She refuses “to sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings”. Instead, she gives us a look into the heart of a seventeenth-century American woman.

The poetry of Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705), on the other hand, is meant to frighten readers with a picture of the day when the Puritan god will judge mankind. The sound is often ugly, but the images are powerful.

The poetry of Edward Taylor (1645-1729) was unknown to American literary historians until 1937. Written during the last years of the Puritan theocracy, it is some of the finest poetry written in Colonial America. Like Cotton Mather, Taylor hoped for a “rebirth” of the “Puritan Way”. Mather wanted stronger leaders for society. Taylor, however, was concerned with the inner spiritual life of Puritan believers. He created rich, unusual images to help his reader “see, hear, taste and feel religious doctrine”. In one poem, he describes truly religious people. They are as rare “As Black Swans that in milkwhite Rivers are.” Sometimes, he sounds quite modern. In a poem about the making of the universe, he asks, “Who in this Bowling Alley bowled the Sun?”

Throughout American history, even in the twentieth century, there have been many sudden explosions of religious emotion. One of the most famous, called the “Great Awakening”, began about 1730. Preachers like George Whitfield toured the country, telling people to “repent and be saved by the New Light”. The sermons of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) were so powerful - and so frightening - that his church was often filled with screams and crying: “The God that holds you over the fire of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you,” he said. The sermon from which this line is taken, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1733), is still famous for its literary quality. Later in life, Edwards developed into a great theologian, or religious philosopher. In his Freedom of Will (1754), he tried to build a philosophy based on the Puritan faith.

The Puritans admired science as “the study of God's material creation”. Edwards developed this idea further. He said that there was a close relation between knowledge of the physical world and knowledge of the spiritual world. This idea created a bridge between the old strict Puritan society and the new, freer culture which came later, with its scientific study of the world.

Although literature developed far more slowly in the South than in New England, a few early writers are worth mentioning. In Virginia, Robert Beverley (1673-1722) wrote intelligently about nature and society. His History and Present State of Virginia (1705) is written in a plan, clear style, mixing wild humor with scientific observation. Although he was a strong defender of black slavery, his section on the Indians of Virginia is free of face hatred. Even more amusing is the History of the Dividing Line by William Byrd (1674-1744). Writing for London audiences, Byrd used humor and realism to describe life along the dividing line (or frontier) between Virginia's settled areas and the deep forest. His opinions about the Indians were surprisingly liberal for the time. He felt that the English should marry them rather than fight them. He had a similarly liberal view of blacks: “We all know that very bright Talents may be lodged under a dark Skin.” These ideas were certainly not shared by the majority of Southern plantation owners.

5. The Birth of a Nation

The most memorable writing in 18^th century America was done by the Founding Fathers, the men who led the Revolution of 1775-1783 and who wrote the Constitution of 1789. None of them were writers of fiction. Rather, they were practical philosophers, and their most typical product was a political pamphlet. They both admired and were active in the European “Age of Reason” or “Enlightenment”. They shared the Enlightenment belief that human intelligence (or reason) could understand both nature and man. Unlike the Puritans--who saw man as a sinful failure-the enlightenment thinkers were sure that man could improve himself. They wanted to create a happy society based on justice and freedom.

Benjamin Franklin 's (1706-1790) contribution to the creation of an American national identity is perhaps the most important theme that needs to be emphasized. Franklin's abandonment of Puritanism in favor of the enlightenment's rationalism reflects a central shift in American society in the eighteenth century. In addition, his works reflect the growing awareness of America as a country with values and interests distinct from those of England - a movement that, of course, finds its climax in the Revolution.

The writings of Benjamin Franklin show the Enlightenment spirit in America at its best and most optimistic. His style is quite modern and, even today, his works are a joy to read. Although he strongly disagreed with the opinions of the Puritans, his works show a return to their “plan style”. At the same time, there is something “anti-literary” about Franklin. He had no linking for poetry and felt that writing should always have a practical purpose.

We can see these ideas even in his earliest work, the Dogood Papers (1722), written when he was only sixteen. These are a series of short pieces which are very funny, but full of moral advice (praising honesty and attacking drunkenness, etc.). His Poor Richard's Almanac (1732-1757) gives similar advice. Almanacs, containing much useful information for farmers and sailors (about the next year's weather, sea tides, etc.), were a popular form of practical literature. Together with the Bible and the newspaper, they were the only reading matter in most Colonial households. Franklin made his Almanac interesting by creating the character “Poor Richard”. Each new edition continued a simple but realistic story about Richard, his wife and family. He also included many “sayings” about saving money and working hard. Some of these are known to most Americans today. In 1757, Franklin collected together the best of his sayings, making them into an essay called The Way to Wealth. This little book became one of the best-sellers of the Western world and was translated into many languages.

During the first half of his adult life, Franklin worked as a printer of books and newspapers. But he was an energetic man with wide interests. As a scientist, he wrote important essays on electricity which were widely read and admired in Europe. His many inventions, his popularity as a writer and his diplomatic activity in support of the American Revolution made him world-famous in his own lifetime.

Although Franklin wrote a great deal, almost all of his important works are quite short. He invented one type of short prose which greatly influenced the development of a story-telling form in America, called the “hoax”, or the “tall tale” (latter made famous by Mark Twain). A hoax is funny because it is so clearly a lie.

Franklin's only real book was his Autobiography. The first part of the book began in 1771 as an entertaining description of his life up to early manhood. The second part was written in 1784 when he was a tired old man and the style is more serious. Franklin now realizes the part he played in American history. The Autobiography can be used as a basis for examining the question of what it means to be an American and what the dominant American values are. Given the current debate over multiculturalism, a discussion of Franklin's career as statesman and writer as an attempt to create a unified American identity - and thus to suppress the multicultural elements in the emerging nation - should prove provocative.

Lecture 2. Literature of the revolutionary era

1. American Literature before the Revolution

The period just before the start of Revolution saw a flood of political journalism. This was mostly in the form of pamphlets rather than newspapers, because the pamphlet was cheap to publish and the author, if he wished, did not have to give his name. JAMES OTTIS (1725 - 1783) one early propagandist who used violent language more than reason in his attacks on British politics. Other pro-independence writers were JOHN DICKINSON (1732 - 1808) and JOHN ADAMS (1735 - 1826). Adams became later the second President of the United States. Other pamphlet writes ,like SAMUEL SEABURY (1729 - 1796) and DANIEL LEONARD (1740 - 1829), wrote for the pro-British side. Most of them had to escape from the country after the revolution.

Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 - June 8, 1809) was a British pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, inventor, intellectual, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He lived and worked in Britain until age 37, when he emigrated to the British American colonies, in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776-1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.

Later, Paine greatly influenced the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), a guide to Enlightenment ideas. Despite not speaking French, he was elected to the French National Convention in 1792. The Girondists regarded him as an ally, so, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy. In December of 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of The Age of Reason (1793-94), the book advocating deism and arguing against institutionalized religion, Christian doctrines, and promoted reason and freethinking, for which he would become derided in America.

In France, he also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income.

Paine remained in France during the early Napoleonic era, but condemned Napoleon's dictatorship, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed". At President Jefferson's invitation, in 1802 he returned to America.

Thomas Paine died, at the age of 72, at 59 Grove Street, Greenwich Village, New York City, on June 8, 1809, alienated due to his religious views only 6 people attended. He was buried at what is now called the Thomas Paine Cottage in New Rochelle, New York, where he had lived after returning to America in 1802. His remains were later disinterred by an admirer, William Cobbett, who sought to return them to England and give him a heroic reburial on his native soil. The bones were, however, later lost and his final resting place today is unknown.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801-1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States. Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806).

As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for a quarter-century. Jefferson served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779-1781), first United States Secretary of State (1789-1793), and second Vice President (1797-1801).

A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as, among other things, a horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia. When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." To date, Jefferson is the only president to serve two full terms in office without vetoing a single bill of Congress. Jefferson has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.

Philip Morin Freneau (January 2, 1752 - December 18, 1832) was a notable American poet, nationalist, polemicist, sea captain and newspaper editor.

He graduated from Princeton University in 1771, having written the poetical History of the Prophet Jonah, and, with Hugh Henry Brackenridge, the prose satire Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca.

As the Revolutionary War approached in 1775, Freneau wrote a number of anti-British pieces. However, by 1776, Freneau left America for the West Indies, where he would spend time writing about the beauty of nature. In 1778, Freneau returned to America, and rejoined the patriotic cause. Freneau eventually became a crew member on a revolutionary privateer, and was captured in this capacity. He was held on a British prison ship for about six weeks. This unpleasant experience, detailed in his work, "The British Prison Ship" would precipitate many more patriotic and anti-British writings throughout the revolution and after.

Freneau later retired to a more rural life and wrote a mix of political and nature works. The non-political works of Freneau are a combination of neoclassicism and romanticism. His poem "The House of Night" makes its mark as one of the first romantic poems written and published in America.

2. Poets of the Revolutionary era

Poets of the Revolutionary era often imitated the “neoclassical” style and themes of the greater English poets. This style was itself taken from ancient Greek and Roman writers. Usually they wrote in couplets (two lines, ending in the same sound), but they also experimented with other forms, like blank verse (without rhyme). The neoclassical poets often used old-fashioned language in their poetry. The first poetic circle was called “Connecticut Wits”. The authors hated the democratic philosophy of Pain and Jefferson. Most of them were Federalists in their politics and Calvinists in their religion. To this group belong: John Trumbull, the best writer of satire, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow.

In the years immediately after the Revolution, there were also some hopeful beginnings in drama. Although French and Spanish Catholic priests had used drama foe religious education among the Indians, drama developed very slowly in the English colonies. The Puritans and some other Protestant groups believed that the theatre was the “invention of Devil”, bad for the morals of people. In the South there were a few theatres. America`s first theatre was in Williamsburg, and the most active playwrights were William Dunlap with his successful plays “ The Father”, “Andre”, and Royall Tyler.

3. The Rise of a National Literature

In the early years of the new republic, there was disagreement about how American literature should grow. There were three different points of view. One group was worried about that American literature still lacked national feeling. They wanted books which expressed the special character of the nation, not books which were based on European culture. Another group felt that American literature was too young to declare its independence from the British literary tradition. They believed the US should see itself as a new branch of English culture. The third group also felt that the call for a national literature was a mistake. To them, good literature was universal, always rising above the time and place where it was written. The argument continued for almost a hundred years without any clear decision.

Novels were the first popular literature of the newly independent US. This was astonishing because almost no American novels were written before the Revolution. Like drama, the novel had been considered a “dangerous” form of literature by the American Puritans. Novels put “immoral” ideas into heads of young people.

In the early days of independence, American novels served a useful purpose. Unlike poetry, the language of these novels spoke directly to ordinary Americans. They used realistic details to describe the reality of American life. They helped Americans see themselves as a single nation. At the same time, the earliest American novelists had to be very careful. Many Americans still disapproved of the novel. The first American novel, William Hill Brown's “Power of Sympathy” (1789), was suppressed (stopped) as morally dangerous soon after it was published. As a result, novelists tried hard to make their books acceptable. They filled them with moralistic advice and religious sentiments.

“Modern Chivalry” (1792-1815) by Hugh Henry Brackenridge was the first important novel. In the novel the author wanted to achieve “a reform in morals and manners of the people”. The book is a series of adventures in which the author laughs at America`s “backwoods” (land far from towns) culture. The hero travels around the country with his low-class servant. He experiences problems every step of the way. Although it has been called one of the great forgotten books of American literature, the awkward structure and dialogue of ”Modern Chivalry” make it rather hard to read today.

Another novelist who described the nation`s western frontier country was Gilbert Imlay. His “Emigrants” is an early example of a long line of American novels which showed American culture to be more natural and simple than the old culture of Europe. Far more interesting and important is the work of Charles Brockden Brown. His interest in the psychology of horror greatly influenced such writers as Hawthorne and Poe many years later. Like these two writers, Brown had the ability to describe complicated and very often cruel minds. “Wieland”, Brown`s best known work, was a psychological “gothic novel”- 18^th century story of mystery and horror set in lonely places. The hero lives in the world of horror: murders are committed, people speak with the voices of others or suddenly explode into flames. All of his stories are filled with emotional power. Seduction (leading people into evil) is the central theme of his “Ormond” (1799), in which the evil seducer is finally killed by the heroine. The theme of “Arthur Mervyn” (1799) is the introduction of a young man to the world`s evil. The hero meets many people, including a criminal genius, but they all betray him. Towards the end, the novel becomes moralistic when the hero decides to do good. Royall Tyler also wrote one of the best realistic novels of the period. The hero of his “Algerine Captive” (1797) works on a ship carrying black slaves to America. Then the ship sinks and he himself is made a slave by pirates. The theme of the novel is an attack on the American government for its support of slavery.

4. Literature of the Post-Revolutionary era

The hard-fought American Revolution against Britain (1775-1783) was the first modern war of liberation against a colonial power. The triumph of American independence seemed to many at the time a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Military victory fanned nationalistic hopes for a great new literature. Yet, with the exception of outstanding political writing, few works of note appeared during or soon after the Revolution.

Americans were painfully aware of their excessive dependence on English literary models. The search for a native literature became a national obsession. America's literary independence was slowed by a lingering identification with England, an excessive imitation of English or classical literary models, and difficult economic and political conditions that hampered publishing.

In the early part of the 19^th century, New York City was the center of American writing. Its writers were called “Knickerbockers”, and the period from 1810 to 1840 is known as the “Knickerbocker era”. The name comes from “A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker” (1809), by Washington Irving. His book created a lot of interest in the local history of New York, but it was a humorous rather than serious history of the city. Irving actually invented many events he writes about in his book. The idea was to give the region of New York City a special “local color”. But more importantly, the book is a masterpiece of comedy which laughs at the Puritans and at New York`s early Dutch governors.

Irving`s next important work, “The Sketch Book” (1819), contains two of the best loved stories from American literature: Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The plots of both stories are based on old German folk tales. But Irving fills them with the “local color” of New York`s Hudson River Valley.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851), like Washington Irving, was one of the first great American writers. Like other Romantic writers of the era, he evoked a sense of the past (in his day, the American wilderness that had preceded and coincided with early European settlement). In Cooper, one finds the powerful myth of a "golden age" and the poignance of its loss.

While Washington Irving and other American writers before and after him scoured Europe in search of its legends, castles, and great themes, Cooper helped create the essential myth of America: European history in America was a re-enactment of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. The cyclical realm of nature was glimpsed only in the act of destroying it: The wilderness disappeared in front of American eyes, vanishing before the oncoming pioneers like a mirage. This is Cooper's basic tragic vision of the ironic destruction of the wilderness - the “new Eden” that had attracted the colonists in the first place.

The son of a Quaker family, he grew up on his father's remote estate at Otsego Lake (now Cooperstown) in central New York State. Although this area was relatively peaceful during Cooper's boyhood, it had once been the scene of an Indian massacre. Young Fenimore Cooper saw frontiersmen and Indians at Otsego Lake as a boy; in later life, bold white settlers intruded on his land.

Natty Bumppo, Cooper's renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, a Jeffersonian "natural aristocrat." Early in 1823, in The Pioneers, Cooper had begun to imagine Bumppo. Natty is the first famous frontiersman in American literature, and the literary forerunner of countless fictional cowboy and backwoods heroes. He is the idealized, upright individualist who is better than the society he protects. Poor and isolated, yet pure, he is a touchstone for ethical values, and prefigures Herman Melville's Billy Budd and Mark Twain's Huck Finn.

Based in part on the real life of American pioneer Daniel Boone - who was a Quaker like Cooper - Natty Bumppo, an outstanding woodsman like Boone, was a peaceful man adopted by an Indian tribe. Both Boone and the fictional Bumppo loved nature and freedom. They constantly kept moving west to escape the oncoming settlers they had guided into the wilderness, and they became legends in their own lifetimes.

The unifying thread of the five novels collectively known as the Leather-Stocking Tales is the life of Natty Bumppo. Cooper's finest achievement, they constitute a vast prose epic with the North American continent as setting, Indian tribes as major actors, and great wars and westward migration as social background. The novels bring to life frontier America from 1740 to 1804. Cooper's novels portray the successive waves of the frontier settlement: the original wilderness inhabited by Indians; the arrival of the first whites as scouts, soldiers, traders, and frontiersmen; the coming of the poor, rough settler families; and the final arrival of the middle class, bringing the first professionals-the judge, the physician, and the banker. Each incoming wave displaced the earlier: Whites displaced the Indians, who retreated westward; the "civilized" middle classes who erected schools, churches, and jails displaced the lower-class individualistic frontier folk, who moved further west, in turn displacing the Indians who had preceded them. Cooper evokes the endless, inevitable wave of settlers, seeing not only the gains but the losses.

Like Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, Herman Melville, and other sensitive observers of widely varied cultures interacting with each other, Cooper was a cultural relativist. He understood that no culture had a monopoly on virtue or refinement.

Lecture 3. Literature of the romanticism (1^st half of the 19^th century)

1. Romanticism in America. Its peculiarities

The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread, reached America around the year 1820. Romantic ideas centered around the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and the importance of the individual mind and spirit. The Romantics underscored the importance of self-expressive art for the individual and society.

The development of the self became a major theme; self-awareness a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If one's self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of “self,” which suggested selfishness to earlier generations, was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: "self-realization," "self-expression," "self-reliance."

As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology. Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states. The “sublime” - an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop) - produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension.

Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists. America's vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values.

2. Transcendentalism

The Transcendentalist movement, embodied by essayists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, was a reaction against 18th century Rationalism, and closely linked to the Romantic movement. It is closely associated with Concord, Massachusetts, a town near Boston, where Emerson, Thoreau, and a group of other writers lived.

In general, Transcendentalism was a liberal philosophy favoring nature over formal religious structure, individual insight over dogma, and humane instinct over social convention. American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism to the extreme. American writers - then or later - often saw themselves as lonely explorers outside society and convention. The American hero - like Herman Melville's Captain Ahab - typically faced risk, or even certain destruction, in the pursuit of metaphysical self-discovery. For the Romantic American writer, nothing was a given. Literary and social conventions, far from being helpful, were dangerous. There was tremendous pressure to discover an authentic literary form, content, and voice.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882), the towering figure of his era, had a religious sense of mission. Although many accused him of subverting Christianity, he explained that, for him "to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the church." The address he delivered in 1838 at his alma mater, the Harvard Divinity School, made him unwelcome at Harvard for 30 years. In it, Emerson accused the church of emphasizing dogma while stifling the spirit.

Emerson is remarkably consistent in his call for the birth of American individualism inspired by nature. In Nature (1836), his first publication, the essay opens:

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we [merely] through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs. Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past ...?

Much of his spiritual insight comes from his readings in Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islamic Sufism.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) was born in Concord and made it his permanent home. From a poor family, like Emerson, he worked his way through Harvard. Thoreau's masterpiece, Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), is the result of two years, two months, and two days (from 1845 to 1847) he spent living in a cabin he built at Walden Pond, near Concord. This long poetic essay challenges the reader to examine his or her life and live it authentically.

Thoreau's essay, "Civil Disobedience," with its theory of passive resistance based on the moral necessity for the just individual to disobey unjust laws, was an inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi's Indian independence movement and Martin Luther King's struggle for black Americans' civil rights in the 20th century.

3. New poetic forms

An even more important development was in the area of poetic form. Through Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), American poets finally freed themselves from the old English traditions.

Born on Long Island, New York, Walt Whitman was a part-time carpenter and man of the people, whose brilliant, innovative work expressed the country's democratic spirit. Whitman was largely self-taught; he left school at the age of 11 to go to work, missing the sort of traditional education that made most American authors respectful imitators of the English. His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains "Song of Myself," the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American.

In this famous autobiographical essay, A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads (1889), he says, “the time had come to reflect all themes and things, old and new, in the lights thrown on them by the advent of America and democracy”. To do this, he invented a completely new and completely American form of poetic expression. To him, message was always more important than form, and he was the first to explore fully the possibilities of free verse. In his poetry the lines are not usually organized into stanzas; they look more like ordinary sentences. Although he rarely uses rhyme or meter, we can still hear (or feel) a clear rhythm.

Whitman developed his style to suit his message and the audience he hoped to reach. He wrote without the usual poetic ornaments, in a plain style, so that ordinary people could read him. He strongly believed that Americans had a special role to play in the future of mankind. Although he often disapproved of American society, he was certain that the success of American democracy was the key to the future happiness of mankind.

Even the Civil War (1861-1865) did not disturb this faith. Whitman was a strong supporter of the North. Too old to fight, he went down to the battlefield to work as a nurse. He greatly admired President Lincoln and saw him as symbol of the goodness of mankind. Whitman's greatest poem - O Captain! My Captain! was written about the murder of Lincoln in 1865.

4. Women-writers

In 1863, when Lincoln met HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) in Washington, he greeted her with “So, you are the little woman who made the book that made the great war”. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1825) united Northern feelings against slavery. As soon as it was published, it became a great popular success. It was translated into over 20 languages and millions of copies were sold worldwide.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) was another New England woman who wrote during the Civil War era. But we find no mention of the war or any other great national event in her poetry. Her poetry is filled with images and themes taken from Emerson's essays. But almost always she gives them a new and exciting interpretation. In the early 1860s, a rather different theme began to appear in her work: pain and limitation. This new theme in Dickinson was her way of expressing a terrible suffering of the Civil War.

Emily Dickinson is, in a sense, a link between her era and the literary sensitivities of the 20th century. A radical individualist, she was born and spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, a small village. She never married, and she led an unconventional life that was outwardly uneventful but was full of inner intensity. She loved nature and found deep inspiration in the birds, animals, plants, and changing seasons of the New England countryside. Dickinson spent the latter part of her life as a recluse, due to an extremely sensitive psyche and possibly to make time for writing.

Dickinson's terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitman's. She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Her clean, clear, chiseled poems, rediscovered in the 1950s, are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature.

New England had another important woman writer, SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909). All of her realistic stories are set in New England. She was one of the leaders of the “local color” school of realism. In the period soon after the war, “local color” became an important part of American literature. It tried to show what was special about a particular region of the nation. Jewett's characters are usually ordinary people, living in ordinary little New England towns. The way they speak and the details of their lives give us a strong feeling for New England as a place.

Jewett describes her characters realistically, and deepens them with symbolism. In A White Heron, the heron becomes the symbol of freedom and beauty.

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, more commonly known as Margaret Fuller, (May 23, 1810 - July 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and women's rights activist associated with the American transcendental movement. She was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Born Sarah Margaret Fuller in an area of Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was given a substantial early education by her father, Timothy Fuller. She later had more formal schooling and became a teacher before, in 1839, she began overseeing what she called "conversations": discussions among women meant to compensate for their lack of access to higher education. She became the first editor of the transcendental publication The Dial in 1840 before joining the staff of the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley in 1844. By the time she was in her 30s, Fuller had earned a reputation as the best-read person in New England, male or female, and became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College. Her seminal work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1845. A year later, she was sent to Europe for the Tribune as its first female correspondent. She soon became involved with the revolution in Italy and allied herself with Giuseppe Mazzini. She also met Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she had a child. All three members of the family died off Fire Island, New York, traveling back to the United States in 1850. Fuller's body was never recovered.

Fuller was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment. She also encouraged many other reforms in society, including prison reform and the emancipation of slaves in the United States. Many other advocates for women's rights and feminism, including Susan B. Anthony, cite Fuller as a source of inspiration. Many of her contemporaries, however, were not supportive, including her former friend Harriet Martineau, who said that Fuller was a talker rather than an activist. Shortly after Fuller's death her importance faded; the editors who prepared her letters to be published, believing her fame would be short-lived, were not concerned about accuracy and censored or altered much of her words before publication.

5. Fiction

Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - as well as their contemporaries, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe - represent the first great literary generation produced in the United States. In the case of fiction writers, the Romantic vision tended to express itself in the form Hawthorne called the “Romance,” a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel. As defined by Hawthorne, Romances were not love stories, but serious novels that used special techniques to communicate complex and subtle meanings.

Instead of carefully defining realistic characters through a wealth of detail, as most English or continental novelists did, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe shaped heroic figures larger than life, burning with mythic significance. The typical protagonists of the American Romance are haunted, alienated individuals. Hawthorne's Arthur Dimmesdale or Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the many isolated and obsessed characters of Poe's tales are lonely protagonists pitted against unknowable, dark fates that, in some mysterious way, grow out of their deepest unconscious selves. The symbolic plots reveal hidden actions of the anguished spirit. One reason for this fictional exploration into the hidden recesses of the soul was the absence at the time of settled community. English novelists - Jane Austen, Charles Dickens (the great favorite), Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, William Thackeray - lived in a complex, well-articulated, traditional society and shared, with their readers, attitudes that informed their realistic fiction.