19th Century Literature in English 2, Lecture notes of English Literature

Download 19th Century Literature in English 2 and more Lecture notes English Literature in PDF only on Docsity! 19th century literature in English 2 – University of Antwerp Lesson 1 Mostly we are going to focus on realists > realism: truthful representation of reality, daily life of ordinary people. The discussion around it sparked in 1850, especially thanks to Gustave Courbet’s painting with the title “The stone breakers” which was sadly destroyed during the bombing of Dresden. Something to notice in the painting is the absence of faces which suggests that the scene depicted could represent anyone. It demonstrates a possibly universal condition, situation. Soon after 1850 stories, texts that depict the reality as it is and ordinary people appeared. Reality effect – attention to details and to harsh reality [ripped clothes, child labour]. Emphasis on common sense and conscious representation. Artists were moving on from romantic ideals and traits. Late romantics were already showing an interest in real life, society, mentality, the working of the mind. Link with early photography—“daguerreotype” Link with science—Auguste Comte’s “positivism” Novelty in the literary market: serialization of works + novel becomes the dominant literary form. Course content Victorian / British realism – American realism British realism: mix of topics [social panoramas, social satires] and text genres [novels, short stories]. Shared goal is to represent life as we experience it. American realism: Realism came to the US later than in Europe, because of the Civil War. Among the causes was the fact that compromises with slave traders and economy ran out and couldn’t get on anymore. Victorian Age (2nd half of the 19th century) > Age of transition, unprecedented growth, it started in 1851 with the Great Exhibition (world fair) held inside the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. To show the progress and wealth of Britain, to impress. Artifacts from the colonies, inventions, new technologies were all on display.  Trains, railways changed travelling and people’s lives. Greater mobility and circulation of people and ideas.  Urbanization : people moved from the countryside to the cities (slums) to work in factories (mass production and consumerism). They caused an awful amount of pollution, created alienation and child labor; they also brought about changes in economy [land economy and manufacturing economy].  Wealth was unevenly distributed . Rich people were getting richer by means of exploitation.  Expansion > Britain becomes the world’s banker.  Colonialism : 1858 India.  British Empire: by 1890 ¼ of the world was under the influence/power of Queen Victoria.  London substituted Paris as the center of influence and culture in Europe.  Dominant philosophy: utilitarianism = its center is the value of things.  Time of science and reason . o Charles Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” came out in 1830-3 followed 20 years later by Charles Darwin’s “On the origin of species”. Lyell was the first one to talk about evolution when it comes to living beings. It was Darwin that made a consistent theory though. o People started to rethink the narrative and started to critically examine religion. > Bible studies, analysis of this text as an historical text and not as the absolute truth about the universe any more. o Challenger Expedition: Oceanography. 1872-6. More than 400 new species were discovered. US Civil War (1861-5) and the Gilded Age The Civil War started with the proclamation of emancipation. It destroyed the country as it was before, drastic change. Massive disruption. 620000 casualties. The Gilded Age was the period that followed the Civil War. Everything needed to be rebuilt. The term was coined by Twain, as the term regionalism= effort to represent a certain reality, a certain society in a certain time and place. Gilding: the process of applying gold leaf or gold paint. Lesson 2 The Realist novel: George Eliot Painting of peasant life. In painted in 57. Daguerreotype. the first dated photograph, from 1807 (unsure). The photo here is from 1838, the first photograph without a human. You need exposition time, so since people and traffic move they don’t appear on the picture. It influences the way we start painting, it starts disappearing. Photograph also changes the way we see the world. They could have access to places without going there. She does not write books to show off. She empathizes. Adam Bede Writing= a drop of ink : to create a reflection of the world. She shows what the life was in the countryside before industrialisation and the Victorian times. There are a lot of details, the instruments, what people do, how they speak. The narrator offers us interpretation of the mirror. This chapter is a defense of presenting the characters as they are. Why not present them in a better way? the narrator says that it’s because people are like that.  (17) the narrator tells us that there Is a degree of subjectivity but these are the events as the are in my mind. But she’s bound to represent these things as precisely as she can. This is not an imitation.  A mixed entangled affair is reference to Darwin. They all come from the same living organism. Darwin use the metaphor of the tangled bank.  People are different in their own way, they must be accepted as they are.  (18) homely lives, ordinary lives, she’s not going to deal with people that don’t exist. (Madame Bovary is the most realist book of the 19th). Ordinary life is ordinary, we need to accept that in order to understand ourselves and each other better. We are not trying to make them look better than they are. (flawed mediocrity). (19) it’s particular for all of us. Represent as authentic as it is. If we do that we will understand human condition, what we all share. Everyone is equal and need to be in our art. How we should read and interpret obscenity. Madame Bovary was considered vulgar and Flaubert was brought to court. They weren’t writing uplifting romantical fiction anymore. The narrator stops the story and tells us why the novel is like this.  Middlemarch Summary (from the Internet) Dorothea is an earnest intelligent woman who makes a serious error in judgment when she chooses to marry Edward Casaubon, a pompous scholar many years her senior. Dorothea hopes to be actively involved in his work, but he wants her to serve as a secretary. She comes to doubt both his talent and his alleged magnum opus. Furthermore, the controlling Casaubon becomes jealous when she develops a friendship with Will Ladislaw, his idealistic cousin. Although disappointed, Dorothea remains committed to the marriage and tries to appease her husband. After Casaubon has a heart attack, Dorothea is clearly devoted to him, but he bars Ladislaw from visiting, believing that his cousin will pursue Dorothea when he dies. Casaubon subsequently seeks her promise that she will follow his wishes even after his death. She delays answering but ultimately decides that she should agree to his request. However, he dies before she can tell him. Dorothea later discovers that his will contains a provision that calls for her to be disinherited if she marries Ladislaw. Afraid of scandal, Dorothea and Ladislaw initially stay apart. However, they ultimately fall in love and marry. Ladislaw later becomes a politician, and, despite her sacrifices, Dorothea is content, because “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.” During this time, Lydgate’s story unfolds. He is a progressive young doctor who is passionate about medicine, especially his research. Soon after arriving in Middlemarch, he becomes involved with and later marries Rosamond Vincy, whom he finds to be “polished, refined, [and] docile,” all qualities he wants in a wife. For her part, Rosamond believes that marriage to Lydgate, who she does not realize is poor, will improve her social standing.. Lydgate comes to realize that he has made a mistake in choosing Rosamond. She is shallow and uninterested in his work, and her expensive lifestyle forces her husband to the brink of financial ruin. He seeks a loan from Nicholas Bulstrode, a widely disliked banker, but is refused. Bulstrode is not without his own problems. He is being blackmailed by John Raffles, who knows about Bulstrode’s unsavoury past. When Raffles becomes ill, Bulstrode tends to him and sends for Lydgate. During one of the doctor’s visits, Bulstrode offers to lend Lydgate the money he had previously refused, and Lydgate accepts. Bulstrode subsequently disregards Lydgate’s medical instructions, causing Raffles to die. When the true story about Bulstrode and Raffles comes to light, questions arise over Lydgate’s possible involvement in the latter’s death. One of the few people who believes his innocence is Dorothea, and he is taken by her compassion and kindness. Lydgate and Rosamond are ultimately forced to leave Middlemarch, and they move to London, where Lydgate becomes wealthy but considers himself a failure. He ultimately dies at age 50. Analysis In addition to creating a thoroughgoing and rich portrait of the life of a small early 19th-century town, Eliot produced an essentially modern novel, with penetrating psychological insights and moral ambiguity. Eliot also broke with convention by refusing to end the work with the inevitable happy ending, as women writers of romance fiction were then expected to do. Instead, she detailed the realities of marriage. While male critics castigated the bold and daring narrative as too gloomy for a “woman writer,” novelist Virginia Woolf called it “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” Love affairs, doubt about church… (24) The natural history of the ordinary man. The narrator makes reference to a religious story, about Saint Theresa. She was a leading religious figure.  At the age of 7 she took her brother and decided to fight the Moors. She realised she couldn’t do much so she went back to her life. She had to realise that she wouldn’t change history in Spain so she came back to her life and still became a Saint. Spiritual grandeur as a child was ill-matched with reality as it was. All of us are navigating our way between lofty ideas and opportunities, things we aspire to and what we can do. Why not accept that we are all Saint Theresa. We all have ordinary lives. Why pay attention to the ideals.  Variation 🡪 the variation of species. Sameness of women’s haircut 🡪 we are all the same but we are all different. We belong to the same species but we are different. The limits of variations are wide. The narrator is going o give picture even if the characters are different their lives speak to all of us because we live our life too with mediocrity. In Middlemarch: balance between general and particular how these characters are representative of all of us.  Middlemarch is a little town. “I’m going to be sincere in my representation”. The narrator is self-aware.   Feilding 18th, Tom Jones, one of the first novels of English history. (25) This particular web is a sketch of the world out there.  (38) Pier-glass = a sheet of polished steel that act as a mirror. The narrator says that the mirror is defective but it gives an accurate depiction. Hold a candle = a particular view point. The scratches represent a picture to you. You will see a reflection of you in the mirror even if the mirror is scratched. The setting is larger than in Adam Bede.  (…) Chapter 21 Confrontation of 3 characters in a love triangle. Dorothea is married to Mr. Casaubon. She falls in love with Ladislaw, younger. When Casaubon moves in, we enter his mind. Each of these characters have their own subjectivity to bear on the story. (38) he too has his own way of seeing the world. Our own particular light will have a particular reflection, we all have our pier-glass.  (44) the novel starts and ends with Theresa. Zooming out from Dorothea and saying something about our flawed mediocrity. Most if us will live unhistorical lives but that doesn’t make them (forgot) His wife was very good-looking, she listened, she is an idiot. A perfectly educated person becomes like a robot. Chapter 6, Sleary’s Horsemanship No judging. Describing circus people. Celebrating their being creative. They were sensitive, couldn’t empathize with Mr. Gradgrind. Chapter 9, Sissy’s progress Sissy is talking about her lessons to Louisa. Mr. Mcchouckamalchld is teaching Sissy that you shouldn’t look at society as a set of individuals, it’s just statistics you should be interested about. Chapter 10, Stephen Blackpool First-person omniscient narrator Narrator is taking sides, from the very beginning. E.g. Chapter 11, No way out. Facts people know everything about engines. E.g. Chapter 6. Sissy Jupe is saying goodbye to the circus people. Very natural attitude. Mr. Gradgrind brought up with facts has a very unnatural attitude. Utilitarian education has very unnatural results. Willfully naïve > why is he working with opposites, no middle ground between fancy people and utilitarian mentality. Sentimental > does he just want to make people feel something? Fact vs fancy Chapter 4, Mr. Bounderby Idle imagination, eminently practical, vulgar curiosity led the children to fancy the circus. They shouldn’t. Fact-based education. Coketown library. Literature make readers care. Fanciful metaphors also used in the description of Coketown “a triumph of fact”: elephant in a state of melancholy madness to describe the stems. Bounderby self-made man and Louisa, they end up together. He is a very rational man. He tells her that she is supposed never to wonder or fancy. Irony Mr. Bounderby moralizing and hypocritical. The Coketown community Time is the great manufacturer > progress. Things are getting better and better. Time. What are really amounting to? Father and daughter. Teaching a lesson. A little misplaced to ask someone if they love you when they want to marry you. Influential economists and demographers. Adam Smith and Malthus: government should never meddle with economy, commerce, trade. The Gradgrinds take their names after them. Lesson 4 Hard Times seminar 1. Subdued reaction, she seems resigned and doesn’t even consider bringing up the fact that she doesn’t have feelings for him, because she knows that his father won’t take it well. She is asked to see the marriage as a tangible fact. She’s gathering the facts about the whole matter: pros (rich, respected, Tom will be working for him, has seen her grow up, same social status) and cons (age, question of love) “What does it matter?” she’s giving up. Mr. Gradgrind > Fact-based attitude. Utilitarian ideal. Theory that if you let things happen in the structure that already exist, things will naturally work out. Resistance to individualism. Does her attitude remind you of other characters in Hard Times? Perhaps the Hands, they don’t even try to stand up for their rights, it’s better to just accept the future and the impositions. Reality can always get worse. 2. Fictions of Coketown > Capitalist ideal, Mr. Bounderby pretends to be the perfect example of social ascension. He declares himself a self-made man, but he was going around telling lies: he didn’t come from an extremely poor background and he wasn’t raised in poverty and famine. He was loved by his mother Ms. Pegler, who still goes into Coketown once a year to see him. Everyone can be successful, they just have to work harder. Patriotism. It’s not a choice: people wouldn’t stay in the city if they had sufficient means to leave. The Hands don’t have rights, whatever they ask for despite it being a reasonable and perfectly understandable request is immediately perceived as insatiable 3. Harthouse. How is he portrayed? Contradictory representation. He embodies Victorian individualism. “What will be, will be” is his motto. Easy ways, pleasant and agreeable man. Which role does he play? By trying to seduce her and spending time with her, he helps Louise figure out her emotions, how she is not able to feel fully because of the way she was brought up, she finally confronts Mr. Gradgrind. 4. Star: the description of the star seems to be related to Stephen’s character and honest, pure personality. Passage where he dies: heroic, tragic, peaceful, theatrical (it’s like they are playing a part). He becomes a martyr or a Christ’s figure because he dies for Tom’s crimes. 5. Mr. Gradgrind values as they are described in the last chapters: Faith, Hope and Charity – Christian, religious fundaments. The events in his life make him realize that he cannot find balance and stability in facts anymore. He opens up to feelings and humanity. Transformation in his mindset after seeing how devastated Louisa is in her unhappy marriage and complicated situation with Mr. Harthouse. Dickens brings forward a new value system in his flawed characters. Big turn towards the end of the novel. Lesson 5 Victorian poetry Ophelia. Quite realistic. Pre-Raphealites: Rosetti, Miller. Influential school of painters. They wanted to set the canon back to natural pose, classical painting. Influence of realism. Romanticized image from medieval times. Romanticism: power of Immortality, Imagination, Inspiration. Manifestoes (where is what arts, literature, poetry can teach). Victorian poetry: Narrative poems, influence and resistance, deflated romantic poetry. No sustained confidence in power of imagination. Essays and criticism, didactic value of poetry. The cry of the children by Elizabeth Barret Browning (socially active) 1843 It’s about the fight against child labor, activist poem. Tragedy going on inside coal mines. Vivid descriptions derive from a parliamentary commission report. 13 stanzas, alternating rhymes. She wants to get a message across. Sentimental language and expressions, pull your heart strings by telling in emotional terms about children suffering. from England, where Butler lived for five years in an attempt to escape the strict Anglican environment where he was brought up. Cambridge education. He wanted to be a painter first and foremost, then a writer. He was much more successful with his novels. Essayist, cultural critic, satirist, journalist. He was influenced by Origin of the species, but very often Butler misrepresents it. The chapter “the book of the machines” was first published as an essay. “The way of all flesh” renowned by the modernists for his intention to break free from the past. This novel was published after Butler’s death, when he was already very influential. Erewhon 1872 Drenched in irony, not melodrama. Element of sympathy One of the first science-fiction novels, artificial intelligence. Travel writing before the meeting with the Erewhonian society in New Zealand, newly colonized around this time (very different from ours). It seems uninhabited except for some tribes. Going to the colony to become rich, character of the book did the same. Parallelism between protagonist and narrator. Author plays around with the idea of Victorian propriety. Chowbok “William”, chief of the natives, he was a favorite with the missionaries. With alcohol you could easily bribe him and entice him. The narrator desperately wants to visit a range of mountains he can see in the distance, he asks Chowbok and he panics, he looks terrified and seems uglier than usual. The next day he reappears after running away. The main character bribes him with alcohol to get him to accept to go with him, he doesn’t tell him where they are headed (mountains). Chowbok, when he realizes where they are going, leaves him on his own. Main character set his mind to convert Chowbok, because of his “impenetrably stupid nature”, a “sinner” he is not sure whether it had taken deep root in him. The Erewhonians. They are pleased when they meet for the first time that the narrator is not afraid of them, they look Europeans, not the same, but very similar. The Erewhonians, how similar yet different. Not quite the same as British, but generically all things were the same as in Europe. Names are inverted Yram > Mary. Also the title of the novel Erwhon > No(wh)ere, not exactly but there is clearly a reference. Colonization: protagonist tried to baptize Chowbok (one of the natives) and make him a good Christian. He entertains the idea to convert and civilize the Erewhonians because he thought they might be the ten lost tribes of Israel (Old Testament). Frame narrative. Narrator is opening and closing his story by inviting the reader to sponsor him so that he can go back and colonize Erewhon’s people, they will all gain much profit from it. Narrator addresses the reader quite often in this book. “Please subscribe quickly”. Once he manages to leave he thinks of a way to go back one day with missionaries and finally colonize the Erewhonians. Let’s keep a secret the fact that they are the lost tribes. He also suggests the idea to enslave them. He has to insist that they need a proper Christian education, to stop any uneasy feeling. Erewhon is not a realist novel, but the narrator says that he will describe everything as objectively and accurately as possible. He promises that he has never willingly misrepresented his reality. Utopian /dystopian novel. Not an ideal society. Thomas More came up with the term Utopia = the good place eutopos + the place from nowhere outopos. Erewhon anticipates utopian fictions of the early 1900’s, but as a satire. Butler makes no mention to eugenics Chapter 10: Current opinions Illness is criminalized and punishable with a prison sentence. Crime is just “a severe fit of immorality” that can be straightened out, nothing more than a character flaw. Chapter 11: Some Erewhonian trials It is your crime to be unfortunate, to be sick. The more innocent you are, the more guilty you will be found. The novel wants to show how strange what is familiar to you can be. No identification as in realism (not making the unfamiliar recognizable), you get alienation (how strange our society can look like). Chapter 12: Malcontents Grotesque and exaggerated depiction of utilitarianism. Unfair: the people who need care are punished for it. Rich people deserve to be rich, even if the means used to gain their wealth were immoral. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Its influence on Erewhon. We all have the same ancestors. Variation-within-sameness/resemblance. Throughout the process of procreation and heredity, there are modifications, sometimes there are mistakes on a genetical level and they are passed down generations after generations. Many organisms carry in their bodies the proof of earlier/rudimentary stages of evolution. Example of the shape of the tobacco pipe, in some earlier specimens the bottom must have looked different. Preface to the second edition. Samuel Butler was never making fun of Darwin’s work, rather he was poking at Archbishop William Paley, clergyman and biologist. He tried to prove that creationism [Creationism is   the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation . ] is right Natural Theology, or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. Example: Erewhonians were impressed with the tobacco pipe and displeased with the watch. Look of horror and dismay. They despise machines. Same example with the watch in Paley’s work, someone must have designed it. Intricately designed mechanisms, the same as us. Dawkins in the The Blind Watchmaker, explains how he disagrees with Paley and he states that creationism is wrong. Chapter 9: To the Metropolis Learned professor of hypothetics wrote a book 271 years before the time of the narration (beginning of the Scientific Revolution), on machines ultimately destined to supplant the race of man. The whole nation followed his reasoning/unreasoning and the decision was made to get rid of all machinery. Threat of artificial intelligence can be found in the Origin of Species, The principles of Biology (introduced the idea of eugenics), then Cybernetics, or, Control and communication in the animal and the machine, and Theory of self-reproducing automata by John Von Neumann. Also Erewhon, Brave new world, 2001 a space odyssey and Do Androids dream electric sheep?. Lesson 6.1 The book of the machines 3 abstract chapters on why there are no machines to be found in Erewhon. Strongest link with Darwin’s Origin of Species because final conclusion “All of nature in all its complexity originates from the same simplest organism” is the starting point for philosophical arguments. Everything is interwoven with everything Human beings: their bodies and their minds are nothing more than a complex organism. Thoughts and consciousness are a result of the working of our brains and of chemical mechanisms, which is matter. One of the most important organs in our bodies is the eye. If one of its components fails the entire eye stops working. Consciousness too has evolved from a state of unconsciousness. Novel of ideas. Vehicle for Samuel Butler to share his own ideas. They are still relevant today. Threat of artificial intelligence is still in the news today. Lesson 8 The American Civil War (1861-1865) Painting painted by the point of view of Southerners, slave-owning states, the Confederacy. You get an impression of what that scene must have looked like, no attention to details. Effort to represent reality as specifically as possible gradually fades away. Realism arrived in the US later than in Europe. It took 30 years before the writers started to write about the Civil War. Much of the Civil War was fought in the South, in those states that had decided to secede. 600000 dead. Only war ever fought in their own terrain. 1776 Call for independence, but it started as a call for representation “No taxation without representation”. United colonies > United states. It was difficult to unite a large number of states that were very different on an economical and social level. Was there going to be a constitution? How is the legislation going to work? Congress. Expansion. Missouri had slavery when it applied for statehood. Initially there was a compromise to let Missouri be part of the United States as a free state. Didn’t work. 1820 new compromise: Missouri still allowed to have slaves, but a line was drawn right below it to mark the border between free and slave-owning states. Fugitive Slave Act 1850. 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act > Bleeding Kansas, Republican Party is founded. 1857 Dred Scott decision in Supreme Court (highest court in the US). Decision against Scott. Black people have no rights, even in the Free States they cannot apply for citizenship. Abraham Lincoln, decided to join the Republican/ Abolition Party. He was a lawyer. 1858 Lincoln – Douglas debates. Southern states noticed that Lincoln out-performed his opponent. 1860 Lincoln won the election only thanks to the division in the South. Some of the States decided they were going to be a different country, a confederacy. Confederacy: no national laws for them, each state in it would decide for itself. But there are some federal rules that override (come first) the state rules.  Federalists=Hamiltonians, coincided with Northerners  Anti-federalists=Jeffersonians, believed that federal rules could never impede the state laws. Contrary to all expectations, the South was initially winning: 1. They were fighting for their “particular institution” > slavery, slave labor, exploitation. 2. They knew the territory where fights were taking place and took advantage of that. 3. They were good at guerilla attacks. Southerners took the battle up North like in Pennsylvania, since they were stronger. Eventually northern states won. Country was funded on slavery. Slavery was officially abolished all over the US. 1865= 3rd amendment. Still Civil War is still a scar in the US. Charlottesville in West Virginia, protests following the decision to remove the statue of a Southern general during the Civil War and storming of the Capital. Time period after the Civil War is called the Gilded Age. Orators, great public speakers and lecturers. Abraham Lincoln wrote his own speeches, he was born in Kentucky (rural, poor Midwest), then moved to Indiana then Illinois. He grew up poor but managed to work himself up and made a name for himself. Famous and influential politician. He ran for President against Douglas, and he was elected in November 1860. A month later south Carolina secedes followed by 6 other states in the South “The Union is dissolved”. In March Lincoln took office, a month later the Civil War started. Emancipation proclamation written by Lincoln, became law in January 1863. It says that from then on slaves living in the South were going to be free and stay free. It eventually led to the abolition of slavery after the war, when Lincoln was already dead. He was murdered. “A house divided” 1858, first speech in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Senate race. A house divided against itself cannot stand, citation from the Bible. We are divided as a country and we must overcome this division if we want the country to survive. They must come together. It will become all one thing, or all the other, either everyone has slaves or nobody has. At the time it seemed like it could only be black or white. All states would become slave- holding states. He’s creating a legal (+ historical) case mentioning precedents. First, no black person would ever be U.S citizen. Secondly, slavery could not be excluded from any territory. Thirdly no slave could ever obtain freedom in a free state. He concludes the speech with a call to action for Republicans. “The Gettysburg Address” 1863 Very short speech in occasion of the inauguration of an Army cemetery in Gettysburg. Score: 20 years. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Second Inaugural Address 1865 At this second appearing there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Because the war was still going on, but it seemed to be coming to a conclusion finally. Both parties have their share of faults and blame. But the south is the real culprit. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in… National legacy. Most important president ever. Compromise between expansion and slavery. He managed to abolish slavery. “When lilacs last in the dooryward Bloom’d” by Walt Whitman, gay man Ultimate democratic poem. I’m speaking for the universal man. He’s using natural imagery in the poem. Things will start blooming again. “Beat! Beat! Drums!” 1861 Celebration of the call to war. We have one thing to do, to win. There is no time for anything else. Glorious tone. “The wound-dresser” 1865 Series of letters in which he catalogues the wounds he saw during the war, true carnage. Collection of everything he saw so far working as a healer. List of amputations, bullet wounds on every limb, fractures, pale expressions, cries. Anger in him: why did all of this pain had to happen? Too many wounds to take care of, but he will keep on going. Speaker is bending over the bed of sick, wounded young soldiers. Reference to Beat, beat, drums! The war kept on going longer than anyone had expected, he stopped fighting and enrolled as a wound- dresser. It’s about the suffering of the soldiers who all deserve his attention, he will try to tend to everyone. Too much pain, he cannot prevent them from suffering. People on both sides fought with all their might. The author is going to testify what he saw. He thinks that he would give up his life for a young boy, to alleviate his pain. Empathy. Huck escapes by faking his death from his violent father. He actually needs to use his fantasy and ingenuity to save his life and get away from an awful situation in his father’s cabin. Harmony on the raft, on the river there is balance, and danger on the mainland, prison. Main controversy: realism and ideology. Critical of both civilization (widow) and lack thereof (pap). Middle chapters: King and Duke, two frauds who pretend to be noble men. Narrator is not our moral yardstick Lesson 10 Huckleberry Finn, seminar 1. Huck: good boy, kind heart. Deformed conscience around Jim and slaves. Internal battle. Sin to send Jim back but also what society has taught him feels wrong. It’s awful both to steal Jim and also to think about not sending him back to where he belongs. Against the code of ethics in a slave-holding society. 2. Taking the responsibility, facing the consequences if the Duke and the King find out he told the truth. Once the truth is out she will realize his role in the whole scheme He feel bad for the girls, that’s why he feels so compelled to tell the truth. He lets his guard down because he empathizes with the girls and wants to help them. He has no experience with being honest. He has had to lie to save his life, to find food, to survive, to protect himself. He is not used to being sincere. He also feels uncomfortable because he cannot tell the whole truth. He’s leaving out so much, he omits saying anything about Jim and the whole situation. 3. Character development. First chapters, in that context Jim is only a slave, he’s flat and possesses all those characteristics that black people stereotypically have: superstition, strong accent, storytelling ability Huck becomes aware of the fact that Jim doesn’t deserve being mistreated because he has feelings just as him. He gets hurt, he values Huck’s friendship. Playing tricks with him equals not valuing him as a real person. They have to rely on one another, the respect between them should be complete. He finally empathizes with Jim and it feels humbling for him to apologize. The apology tries to set an example of racial equality. Toni Morrison > Jim is a performance, not a real representation. Black face identity. Minstrelization of black people. They like to eat watermelon. 4. Chapter 31, more psychological and realistic. There is a shift in tone Chapter 34, more adventurous and playful. It’s not the reality that Huck had been living in until that moment, it’s a game organized by Tom and he decides to play along. Frustrating to read about Tom’s crazy fantasies when Huck only wants to break Jim free. He’s pragmatic. Tom rejects Huck’s plan because it lacks creativity, imagination and style. Everyone plays along in the adventure story. At the end of the novel we find out that Jim had been set free a long time ago by his owner. The whole tale about the liberation was completely useless. 5. Jim is good, Jim might be the exception among slaves. The system is not criticized. Lesson 11 American realism: regionalism Many writers took their ideas from paintings. In 1890s there was already a degree of impressionism moving into realistic paintings. Effort to represent reality changes to effort to represent the experience of reality. How do our senses filter and distort what we see? Plot twists The bestseller of the nineteenth century was Uncle Tom’s cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It even outsold a translation of the Bible that was published in this century. Incredible impact on literature and society. Huge success and highly sentimental, the author wanted to make the readers put themselves in the characters’ shoes and feel what an accursed thing slavery is. This book rose white abolitionist fervor. Uncle Tom, slave, big tolerant man. It becomes quite a stereotypical representation. The other main character is a young woman. They make plans to flee because their owners want to sell them. Uncle Tom also tries to escape and helps everyone he finds on his way. He gets caught and gets beaten to death. He forgives them while he’s being killed. He’s like the black messiah, a meek martyr. Uncle Tom is a slur expression today: yes man, you will never speak up and you have no personality of your own. Richard Wright wrote Uncle Tom’s children. After the abolition. It’s all about African American identity Bigger Thomas in the ghetto of Chicago, 20 years old, accidentally killed a girl and then. Systemic problem related to identity issues. Either you want an Uncle Tom or you want a slave from black people. James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son, short story writer and novelist. Close friends with Martin Luther King. Book full of anger towards American racism. Author decided not to live in the US anymore, he moved to Paris. Jim in Huckleberry Finn and Tom in Uncle Tom’s cabin, they are not models for modern struggles of black people after the abolition of slavery. Toni Morrison (1931-2019) wrote an essay on Huckleberry Finn. She begins by saying that she read it 4 times. Certain alarm while reading for the first time. Second time she pinned down the fear, it was a muffle rage, something shaming. She already understood that there was something about the novel that didn’t feel right: the unease the novel causes, it was not the n-word. Profoundly distasteful complicit. Third time she read it through the lens of some influential critics at the time. She read it again for the fourth time when the idea of banning the novel from book lists in schools was being discussed. Maybe there is a reason to read it instead, because it sparks conversation. There is still some kind of unrest and unease after the novel ends. Something lingers with the readers. Quite a lot remains unsaid. She devotes a lot of attention to the silence that reigns in most of the novel. Huck, estranged, solitary outcast character. He is trying to escape the chaos of society. He’s very young and nothing makes sense to him, he witnesses many tragic scenes. The frauds that manipulate and control him are just as cruel as his father. Relationship between Jim and Huck is based on their reciprocal need for each other. Jim becomes a father figure for Huck. Even if Jim is free at the end of the book, he is still black and his position in the society will not be easy and equal to that of a white man. Toni Morrison believes that Twain decides to describe him with an over-the-top minstrelization, to make a stereotype out of him, very loyal character and at the same time bumbling fool. There is no resolution for Jim, what will happen later? We don’t know that. Anticipating this loss the author decides to avoid saying anything about their future altogether. Jim cannot continue to be a father figure to Huck (protects and takes good care of him) when the story is over. Huck needs Jim as a father figure, although their relationship is not equal, but he is a father-for-free: he doesn’t have any kind of authority, power over Huck. millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black”. He’s reading a poem A dream of fair women in preparation of a speech he’s going to give soon. Fair: good or light skinned. Someone knocks on the door, it’s Liza Jane, she was very black. “She looked like a bit of the old plantation life”. She’s looking for her husband, a mulatto man. He tells her that he doesn’t know any such man and sends her away. The day of the speech, soft dialect. He tells the story of Liza Jane to get a sentimental, heartened response. We get a plot twist at the end: Mr. Ryder is that Sam Taylor, Liza Jane’s husband. He’s been telling his own story, he asks his audience what he should have done, if he should have acknowledged her return. The Blue Veins society will not accept her and will probably kick him out. It’s a romantic ending: even if he introduces her as the wife of his youth (not his actual wife anymore?) Lesson 12 Psychological realism and naturalism It was applied to painting first. No detail, you get impressions and a focus on the movement. Central Park is up-north of New York. Stream of consciousness was coined by a psychologist. At the time the investigation was around how consciousness interprets the reality around the person. “The passing of Grandison” by Charles Chestnutt (1858-1932) It’s full of irony. This short story was published in his first collection of stories in his 1899 collection The Wife of his Youth. The story is set after the Civil War in Kentucky (right below Ohio). The son of a slave owner helps one of his father’s slaves to run away to Canada to please a woman. Deflated heroism. He asked Charity if he could love him if he did something heroic. She says that she will never love him unless he does something heroic, but she knows that he’s too lazy to do anything heroic. Owen is not setting the slave free for his sake, his is not a noble action, he just wants to prove something to the woman he wants to seduce. “We’ve got too many slaves anyway”. Title, numerous interpretations: 1_ attempt at passing Grandison into free territory in Canada. 2_ Grandison tries to pass as a meek and obedient slave, he bites his tongue to allow himself an opportunity to escape (phenomenon of passing was a strategy in the slave community). 3_ the story is passing as something is not, looks can be deceiving. Until the last page the book passes as a lost cause narrative. Next morning he approaches a slave named Tom who had long been contemplating running away. He was prudent enough to hide his true feelings. Owen goes to his father to tell him about his plan to go to New York and during that trip he might spend some time in Boston (Canada). The father adds that he will have to consult with some of the men I’m doing business with and keep an eye on the abolitionist. Owen suggests taking Tom with him, his father suggests Grandison instead because he doesn’t have a free spirit like Tom. Grandison likes his food too much and is a Yes-master, no-master. He feels true gratitude, his appreciative homage is real. We read the colonel’s (Owen’s father) indirect discourse, we enter his mind as he’s talking to Grandison. Blissful protection and wise subordination: he’s describing the relationship between the master and the slave. Grandison is chosen to accompany Dick Owen up north. Part 3: the plan is set in motion. The idea is to let Grandison free enough to try to run away on his own. “This is your chance to go and meet other free black people”. Grandison tells him that black people in the north have no sense to them, they are not as appreciated as they are in the south. Lost cause narrative: We were trying to protect our traditions, our system, our values in the south. This is how people in the south started talking about the Civil War. Grandison refuses to leave, he’s fully convinced he is better off where he is. Once the story moves up north the reader follows closely the mind and thoughts of Dick Owens. Grandison gets abducted by abolitionists in Canada and Dick Owens is finally rid of him, he’s making the journey back alone. He goes back, tells the colonel. Three weeks later Dick and Charity get married. One week after the wedding Grandison comes back. Inverting slave narrative: Grandison is escaping from the north and does everything in his power to reach the south and the plantation where he’s always lived. He kept steadily his back to the North Star. Omniscient narrator: sticks to the neutral narration and to the minds of the characters experiencing the events. Free indirect discourse is a marker of psychological realism. Plot twist. Grandison comes back to the plantation not because he likes the situation in the south, but for his family. He will escape around a month later with his whole family on his own terms and with everyone he cares about. He had been planning this all along. This is a story about black people agency. “The Gilded Age. A tale of today” by Mark Twain. He wrote this novel a decade before writing Huckleberry Finn. Something gilded is covered in fake gold, it looks rich, prosperous, glamourous, but it’s all in the surface. It’s quite worthless really. The one after the Civil War was a wealthy time: enormous amount of resources, extensive lands, growing population. Some developers, bankers and business men were becoming richer and richer. These monopolists were so influential that they became politicians. The wealth was gathering in the north. In the south there was poverty, everything was destroyed. Segregation and repression against black people. Things were taking a dark turn in the south. Sleeping giant, the US is waking up. Riches were unevenly distributed. In New York most people lived in dirt and miserable conditions, in ghettos. Plenty of them were immigrants. Huck Finn is a condemnation of American life, harshly critical. Huck cannot stay in the south and cannot even go in the north. He doesn’t want to be civilized. Grand Spike Ceremony. It was held to celebrate the railway connection from East to West. Country is entirely covered by transportation. Realism > Modernism [focus on the representation of reality: objectivity > focus on the representation of the experience of reality: subjectivity. Our experience of reality is subjective first and foremost. How do we even know the world out there in the first place? Ambrose Bierce, postmodernist author “An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890) First short story that describes the Civil War from the point of view of someone who was really there. He put his life on the line for his work. A man is about to be hanged. We are witnessing an execution: two soldiers of the Federal Army from the north are about to kill a man on a railroad bridge in the South during the Civil War. We follow the condemned man gaze, free indirect discourse. New section, we move back in time. Flashbacks. We find out the name of the man. A memory of a vision he had of sabotaging the bridge he is now standing on. He was caught because he spoke to the wrong person, a Federal Scout, a spy. Shock of tumbling down the river, the power of his mind is restored, the rope snapped. Vereker published one last book, another critic is going to review it not the narrator. The critic marries Ms. Elm. She dies of childbirth and with her disappearance dies the last chance to know what the figure on the carpet was. The story promises some kind of revelation, some ultimate meaning that is never there. Everything is deferred until the very end when everyone who knows something about it is dead and gone. The death of the author signals the birth of the reader. What the author says about his work doesn’t matter to the reader while going through a text. The figure in the carpet is the interpretation that each reader creates in his mind. Author’s intentions don’t matter. Painting by a French painter “Waiting for the train”. Realism during the Victorian age: era of progress, science. It comes from Gustave Courbet and the reflection on it. Era of positivism: Comte coined the term. Vigorous application of the scientific method: workings of the world will be revealed to us. God is an hypothesis that we no longer need. Once we understand the world and nature in their entirety, we understand the mind of God. Flaubert said that it was time to give art the precision of the physical sciences, by means of a pitiless method. Zola used the term experimental novel. Novelists are the ones who better can analyze people’s behavior and the mechanics of society. Darwin: We are simply here by coincidence. We happen to be here as a species. Bernhard Riemann started suggesting that there were more than three dimensions. Maybe they are real, maybe they are not. First dimension height, second: width and third: depth. Time might me the fourth. Authors started to write about time travelling, through the fourth dimension. Nietzsche: God is dead, our existence makes no sense, it’s absurd. The only question is why do we not commit suicide, how do we find meaning in our life? Freud discombobulated the positivist work. He questions whether we understand our minds at all. We think we know how our conscience works, but do we really? And we aren’t even aware that there are parts of our mind that aren’t under our direct control. Time and space are by gravity. Charlatans used telekinesis, Spiritism, séances to contact the dead. One of the most popular thing around. Painting. Beginning of psychological therapy, doctors are taking notes and carefully observing a patient undergoing hypnosis. It was a very popular treatment at the time to access the unconscious mind. Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide (1886) > genre fiction. Type of fictions that deals with the strangeness of reality. “Penny dreadful”, “shilling shocker” = thrilling tale, gripping story sold for a penny, very cheap. Detective story, sensation fiction, Gothic horror. Cartoon published in 1888 in a magazine The nemesis of neglect : it’s crime running around with a knife in a particular district in London. The allegory also symbols Jack The Ripper (the first mediatized serial killer). Idea that some people might be able to use their minds to access other dimensions. Main character is Gabriel Utterson, he’s a legal practitioner: lawyer. Dr. Jekyll has managed to find a serum to concoct the part of his personality prone to vice and his good side. Every time he takes the serum, the potion he becomes someone else and acts out, he does every kind of transgression. Plenty of realist tropes. Plot: Dr. Jekyll is a kind, well-respected and intelligent scientist who meddles with the darker side of science, as he wants to bring out his 'second' nature. He does this through transforming himself into Mr. Hyde - his evil alter ego who doesn't repent or accept responsibility for his evil crimes and ways. Scary environments, dark spaces. Story thrives on fear. The uncanny is a term coined by Freud. We are not in control of our own personality, over our urges and drives. They determine the way we act. An uncanny experience: something that seems familiar but yet it’s different from what you thought it was. The “return of the repressed” that’s why it seems familiar, because somewhere deep inside you knows that certain thing. The repressed side, Mr. Hyde starts to take control. Dr. Jekyll doesn’t wake up as him anymore. Some of the themes: doubles, uncanny. Dualities: vice vs virtue and morality, good and bad at the same time, conscious and unconscious. We are not in control of ourselves. Maybe the idea of propriety, decorum during the Victorian Era is fake. = Erewhon is a novel that plays with this idea. Looks can be deceiving = appearance vs reality. Richard Mansfield, actor of the first staged production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. People started hypothesizing that he was Jack The Ripper because of how great he was. Course content 1. Introduction: realism [no questions on this] 2. The realist novel: George Eliot a. His own version of realism, nuances 3. The realist novel: Charles Dickens a. Realism and worldview, ideology, sympathy effect, melodrama and stereotyped characters 4. Hard Times seminar 5. Victorian poetry 6. Victorian satire: Samuel Butler a. Erewhon, novel that tries to make the familiar unfamiliar. No identification, only alienation 7. Erewhon Seminar and the Book of the Machines 8. The American Civil War [no questions, but he might ask about the authors] 9. The literature of slavery: huckleberry finn 10. Huckleberry Finn seminar a. The implied author b. Huck’s coming-of-age and the representation of Jim 11. American realism: regionalism a. Effort to represent a certain place at a certain time. Observations, no evaluations. Plot twist: information withheld from the reader until the very end. b. Local color realism 12. American realism: psychological realism and naturalism Painting: snowy New York, cityscape. Representation of reality as it appears to the passerby. Realism and “the canon”