American_Literature_Book_unit3
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quaking leaf and fluttering shadow sent the blood backward to her heart, and quickened her footsteps. She wondered within herself at the strength that seemed to be come upon her; for she felt the weight of her boy as if it had been a feather, and every flutter of fear seemed to increase the supernatural strength that bore her on, while from her pale lips burst forth, in frequent ejaculations, the prayer to a Friend above — “Lord, help! Lord, save me!” […]
After a while they came to a thick patch of woodland, through which murmured a clear brook. As the child complained of hunger and thirst, she climbed over the fence with him; and sitting down behind a large rock which concealed them from the road, she gave him a breakfast out of her little package. [...]
She was many miles past any neighborhood where she was personally known. As she was also so white as not to be known as of colored lineage, without a critical survey, and her child was white also, it was much easier for her to pass on unsuspected.
On this presumption, she stopped at noon at a neat farm-house to rest herself, and buy some dinner for her child and self; for as the danger decreased with the distance, the supernatural tension of the nervous system lessened, and she found herself both weary and hungry. [...]
An hour before sunset she entered the village of T——, by the Ohio river, weary and footsore, but still strong in heart. Her first glance was at the river, which lay, like Jordan, between her and the Canaan of liberty on the other side.
It was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent; great cakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and fro in the turbid waters. Owing to the peculiar form of the shore on the Kentucky side, the land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged and formed a great undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending
almost to the Kentucky shore.
Eliza stood for a moment contemplating this unfavorable aspect of things, which she saw at once must prevent the usual ferry-boat from running, and then turned into a small public house on the bank, to make a few inquiries.
The hostess, who was busy in various fizzing and stewing operations over the fire, preparatory to the evening meal, stopped, with a fork in her hand, as Eliza’s sweet and plaintive voice arrested her.
“What is it?” she said.
“Is n’t there any ferry or boat that takes people over to B——, now?” she said.
“No, indeed!” said the woman; “the boats has stopped running.”
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Eliza’s look of dismay and disappointment struck the woman, and she said, inquiringly —
“May be you’re wanting to get over? — anybody sick? Ye seem mighty anxious?” “I’ve got a child that’s very dangerous,” said Eliza. “I never heard of it till last night,
and I’ve walked quite a piece to-day, in hopes to get to the ferry.”
“Well, now, that’s onlucky,” said the woman, whose motherly sympathies were much aroused; “I’m re’lly consarned for ye. Solomon!” she called, from the window, towards a small back building. A man in leather apron and very dirty hands appeared at the door.
“I say, Sol,” said the woman, “is that ar man going to tote them bar’ls over to-night?” “He said he should try, if ’t was any way prudent,” said the man.
“There’s a man a piece down here, that’s going over with some truck this evening, if he durs’ to; he’ll be in here to supper to-night, so you’d better set down and wait. That’s a sweet little fellow,” added the woman, offering him a cake.
But the child, wholly exhausted, cried with weariness.
“Poor fellow! he is n’t used to walking, and I’ve hurried him on so,” said Eliza. “Well, take him into this room,” said the woman, opening into a small bed-room, where
stood a comfortable bed. Eliza laid the weary boy upon it, and held his hands in hers till he was fast asleep. For her there was no rest. As a fire in her bones, the thought of the pursuer urged her on, and she gazed with longing eyes on the sullen, surging waters that lay between her and liberty.
1851 (20)
Expanding Your Knowledge
PERSONAL RESPONSE
STOWE’S LIFE
1.What could Stowe’s years under her domineering sister have been like?
2.What prompted her to write about a slavery issue?
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
1.What feelings did Eliza hold towards Uncle Tom? Why did she feel like her throat would choke her?
2.What were Eliza’s advantages, if any, as a fugitive? How did she explain the purpose of the journey?
3.How does the author relate the urgency of the situation? Select the passages where the pace is at its highest.
4.How important is colloquial speech in the dialogues?
5.By comparing the Ohio River to Jordan, Stowe makes use of allusion. How does this figure enrich the imagery of the novel?
WRITING WORKSHOP
zWrite an essay titled Antislavery Movement in the U. S. Resort to your local library and the Internet for fects.
zCarry out additional research to describe social life in the Southern States in the middle of the 19th century.
UNIT
3
ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 – 1865
63
WALT WHITMAN
Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest.
Walt Whitman
zWhat kind of poetry could Whitman write as seen from the quotation?
zWhat did you learn about Whitman earlier in the course of Foreign Literature?
Walt Whitman, because of his different inclinations, absorbed the voices, sights and the very spirit of the newly formed United States, creating new poetry that celebrated the democratic spirit of his native land. His poems have been translated into Ukrainian, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese. Whitman’s popularity justifies his bold claim that “the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.”
By the age of eleven, Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long
Island, New York — March 26, 1892, Camden, New Jersey) had first worked as an office boy for a prominent Brooklyn lawyer, who arranged for him a subscription to a library, where his self-education began. While most leading writers of his time received classical education, Whitman built his own rough, diversified and informal knowledge of literature, history, geography, music, theater, and archeology out of the public resources of America’s fastest growing city of New York.
Ultimately, Whitman became an apprentice printer on the Long Island Patriot, where he first felt the excitement of setting words into print. Later in his life, he could still recall this delight, “How it made my heart double-beat to see my piece on the pretty white paper, in nice type.”
Whitman resisted his father’s attempts to have him work on the new family farm. Teaching was, therefore, a way out but was also a job he was pressed to take in bad times. He employed progressive techniques — getting students to think aloud rather than recite, refusing to punish by slapping, involving his students in educational games, and joining them in baseball.
Whitman’s next career was a short fiction writer. His first published story, Death in the School-Room, arose out of his teaching experience where he hopes that the “many ingenious methods of child-torture will [soon] be gaz’d upon as a scorned memento of an ignorant, cruel, and exploded doctrine.”
In February 1848, at the Broadway Theatre, Whitman, already a journalist, met a publisher who wanted to launch a New Orleans paper, the Crescent. In a brief time they settled a deal and Whitman set out to New Orleans. The journey by train, steamboat, and stagecoach broadened Whitman’s sense of his country’s diversity, and produced a few sketches of New Orleans life and a poem, Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight, in which the steamboat voyage becomes a symbol of the journey of life.
By 1854, he had moved back to his parents in Brooklyn. “Walt,” his mother later said, “had no business, but going out and coming in to eat, drink, write, and sleep.” Little did she know that her son was composing one of the greatest books in American literature
— Leaves of Grass. In long, unmetered lines, called free verse, Whitman praised the diversity, energy, and pulsation of the nineteenth-century American life. And the consequent mystery about Whitman is his abrupt transformation from a traditional poet of the 1840s,
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resembling Bryant or Shelley, into one who abandoned conventional rhyme and meter altogether.
In the 1860s, when the nation was moving toward a war between the slaveholding and free states, Whitman’s deepest beliefs were shattered. Leaves of Grass had been built on a faith in union, in the ability of man and the nation to embrace diversity; now the United States was threatened to split apart.
In 1862, fearing that the name on the casualty list was his brother’s, Whitman immediately set off to Virginia to look for him. Though his brother had received only a wound in the face, Whitman’s relief changed to horror as he saw other dreadful sights of war, which would haunt him repeatedly.
In 1865, back in Washington, in the Indian Bureau, Whitman’s job was to meet Native American delegations of various Indian tribes. He praised Indians in his poems, and rejoiced how they “charged the water and the land with names.” Whitman often debated that aboriginal names for American places were prior and superior to those imported from the Old World.
It is paradoxical that Whitman was away from the capital during its saddest times: the main Confederate assault on Washington, and the death of the President. He heard the news about Lincoln’s assassination on a morning after April 14, 1865, when the lilac was blooming in his mother’s yard. Comforting himself he inhaled the lilac scent. Thus appeared his requiem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.
In 1870, Whitman published Democratic Vistas and Passage to India that celebrates the work of engineers, especially the global linking accomplished by the transcontinental railroad, the Suez Canal, and the Atlantic cable.
Whitman stayed in Camden in his last years, finding it a supportive social environment. Many people made pilgrimages there. In 1882, the most famous of them, Oscar Wilde, asserted that there is “no one in this great wide world of America whom I love and honor so much.”
Leaves of Grass
from Song of Myself
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I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease ... observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same,
and their parents the same.
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
1891-1892 (6)
UNIT
3
ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 – 1865
65
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
from By the Roadside
When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures,
were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where
he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off
by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air,
and from time to time, I look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
1865 (33)
Expanding Your Knowledge
PERSONAL RESPONSE
WHITMAN’S LIFE
1.In what respect is Whitman different from his predecessor H. W. Longfellow?
2.What were the reasons for Whitman’s teaching job? Whitman enjoyed. How important was debating in his personal formation?
3.Why do you think he felt sorry for the loss of native cultures?
4.What could be the reason for his abrupt poetic transition in the late 1840s?
5.Subdivide the text into several parts to be titled Early Years, School Teaching, First Fiction, Whitman — Poet, The Civil War, In Washington, Last Years respectively.
SONG OF MYSELF, 1
1.What mood does the poet celebrate? What makes him so enthusiastic?
2.How does Whitman view himself in relation to nature and other people?
3.How do you understand the original energy of Nature?
4.Find examples of alliteration. Comment on their function in this and the next poems.
5.What is the narrator’s relation to Nature and the rest of the world?
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER
1.How do the astronomer and the poet view the sky heavenly bodies in it? What are their respective techniques and approaches? What is implied about the poet’s values?
2.Whitman often uses parallelism. Find it here and in the rest of his poems, and say to what end he used it. How does it agree with his idea of simplicity?
WRITING WORKSHOP
zWrite a letter to Whitman telling of America nowadays, its political and economic stance in the world, its relations with other countries.
zChoose an event from Whitman’s life and imagining fictitious characters, events, conversations, try to write a narrative poem in free verse.
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EMILY DICKINSON
The Soul selects her own Society — Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority — Present no more —
Emily Dickinson
zWhat was the state of a woman writer in the 19th century?
zWhat hardship could she
have undergone?
This secluded American poetess has been acknowledged as one of the greatest of the 19th century. She never left her native land, her home state — once, her village — several times, and after 1872 — even hardly her house. In her last years, she dressed in white, avoided strangers, communicated chiefly by mail. But her life as a hermit was well compensated by her rich imagination.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (Dec. 10, 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts — May 15, 1886, Amherst) was educated at Amherst Academy and spent a year (1847-1848) at a female seminary. Although being deeply moved by a religious revival, Dickinson found herself unable to “convert” — that is, to experience a spiritual rebirth and testify to it before the assembled congregation.
Her father, one of the wealthiest and most respected citizens of the town, passionately defended the church and its orthodoxy against the “New Thought” from Concord. But he was powerless to protect his daughters completely from the “latest infidelity,” Transcendentalism, because a student in his office presented Emerson’s Poems to her for Christmas in 1850. After that she had two “fathers,” Edward Dickinson in Amherst, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord. She also enjoyed Shakespeare, George Eliot, Charlot Brontë. She took to the Bible, especially the Book of Revelation.
Dickinson lived solely in her books, her garden, and a few friends. After her father’s death in 1874, she isolated herself completely, being called “the nun of Amherst.”
All in all, Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems, several hundred of which are among the finest ever written by an American poet, but only seven were printed during her lifetime. Apart from the occasional verse and the small number of pure love poems, her single subject was the self and its complex destiny. She forged her own distinctive style, experimenting with grammar, capitalization, punctuation, rhyme and meter — confusing critics of her day. No matter how common the occurrence, Dickinson was sure to find meaning in it. A ray of afternoon sunlight, a bird on a walk, a shadow on the grass — everything was turned into the miraculous, the seemingly empty — into the deeply
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meaningful. |
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Success is counted sweetest |
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Success is counted sweetest |
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By those who ne’er succeed. |
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To comprehend a nectar |
A Day Dream, 1877. |
Requires sorest need. |
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UNIT
3
ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 – 1865
67
Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition So clear of Victory
As he defeated — dying — On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!
c. 1859 (24)
The Brain — is wider than the Sky
The Brain — is wider than the Sky — For — put them side by side — The one the other will contain With ease — and You — beside —
The Brain is deeper than the sea — For — hold them — Blue to Blue — The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —
The Brain is just the weight of God — For — Heft them — Pound for Pound — And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
c. 1862 (24)
Expanding Your Knowledge
PERSONAL RESPONSE
DICKINSON’S LIFE
1.How unique is Dickinson among other literati?
2.She had two “fathers.” What did each of them mean to the poetess? What is meant by “New Thought” from Concord?
3.How different was her poetic outlook from Emerson’s?
SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST
1.What conclusion can we draw from this thought? Who understands success better — the victor or the defeated?
2.Sometimes Dickinson uses slant rhyme. Identify more such examples. While being “imperfect” they bring a certain charm into the poem. Do they add to or detract the
poetic from the poem?
THE BRAIN — IS WIDER THAN THE SKY
1.The idea of the unlimitedness of human brain is supported by Dickinson’s two examples. Find proofs that Brain is wider than the Sky.
2.In the third stanza Dickinson retreats her idea before God’s omnipotence. What inner beliefs could have led the poetess?
WRITING WORKSHOP
zFind any worthy subject and try to see it like Dickinson herself. Render your reflections in either poetry or prose.
zDickinson and Whitman are both considered poetic giants of the 19th century. If we compare their poetic heritage what similarity and differences can be traced? Write an essay.
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SPIRITUALS
These quaint religious songs were to the men |
z Think of intellectual and |
cultural values of different |
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more than a source of relaxation; they were a |
peoples. How important is |
stimulus to courage and a tie to heaven. |
musical culture in the life |
Thomas Higginson |
of a nation? |
Spirituals, African-American song, usually with a Christian religious context, originated in the United States by African slaves. They are otherwise termed Negro, Black, or African American spirituals. In the 19th century the term Jubilee was more common among AfricanAmericans; Europeans often called them Slave songs or African-American folk songs.
As slaves were integrated into the Christian faith, they gradually blended their worshiping tradition with the new themes from the Bible. The imprint of Africa was evident in the style and cadence of liturgical delivery, in the use of blue notes, five-toned scale, improvised harmony, and syncopation in musical expression and dance styles. In comparison with the worship of whites, Africanized Christianity was often lively, loud and spontaneous. Slaves often held secret religious services because they were unable to express themselves freely in ways that were spiritually meaningful to them. During these “camp meetings” and “bush meetings,” worshippers were free to engage in African religious rituals such as spiritual possession, communal shouts and chants. Also it was there that slaves further crafted the impromptu musical expression of field songs into the so-called “Negro Spirituals.”
Spirituals sometimes provided comfort and eased the boredom of daily burden, but above all, they were an expression of spiritual devotion and a yearning for freedom from bondage. Songs like Steal Away (to Jesus), or Swing Low, Sweet Chariot raised unexpectedly in a dusty field, or sung softly in the dark of night, signaled that the coast was clear and the time to escape had come. The River Jordan became the Ohio River, or the Mississippi, or another body of water that had to be crossed on the journey to freedom.
Swing Low,
Sweet Chariot
Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home, Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home.
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? Coming for to carry me home,
A band of angels coming after me, Coming for to carry me home.
If you get there before I do, Coming for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I’m coming, too. Coming for to carry me home.
I’m sometimes up and sometimes down, |
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, 1934 |
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Coming for to carry me home, |
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UNIT
3
ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 – 1865
69
But still my soul feels heavenly bound, Coming for to carry me home.
The brightest day that I can say, Coming for to carry me home, When Jesus washed my sins away, Coming for to carry me home.
(25)
Deep River
Deep river,
My home is over Jordan, Deep river,
Lord, I want to cross over into campground, I.ord, I want to cross over into campground,
Oh, don’t you want to go to that Gospel feast, That promis’d land where all is peace?
I’ll go into heaven, and take my seat, Cast my crown at Jesus’ feet.
Oh, when I get to heav’n, I’ll walk all about, There’s nobody there for to turn me out.
(25)
Jubilee Singers
Negro Spirituals
Songbook, 1899
Song
Roll Jordan, Roll
Expanding Your Knowledge
PERSONAL RESPONSE
1.What ideas prevail in African-American folk songs? What could their literary influence have been on American authors?
2.Comment on refrains and repetitions. What is their function here?
3.Define the theme of the above spirituals.
WRITING WORKSHOP
z After additional research write about the role of spirituals in 20th century America.
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WHICH AUTHOR
Unit 3. Summary Quiz
1.published only seven poems in his or her lifetime?
2.re-edited poetry throughout his or her entire life?
3.experimented with grammar and punctuation?
4.was alienated from friends by a prominent anthologizer?
5.signed his works Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.?
6.enlisted in the Navy?
7.published the story Death in the School-Room?
8.foreshadowed major genres of the 20th century?
9.had two “fathers”?
10.instituted the guidelines for Transcendentalism?
11.met Queen Victoria?
12.struck a deal in a very short time?
13.joined the American diplomatic mission in Spain?
14.found kinship in German romantic literature?
15.was born into the actors’ family?
16.kept a diary of quotations?
17.welcomed Oscar Wilde as a guest?
18.left for Europe to study languages?
19.was prompted by his family to write?
20.taught under an authoritarian sister?
21.used to live at Walden Pond?
22.was unable to shave after a tragic accident?
23.started writing because of a casual bet?
24.signed up for a whaling ship?
25.preferred Indian place names to European ones?
26.wrote a monumental biography of George Washington?
27.was virtually rediscovered in the 20th century?
28.dressed in white in later years?
29.wrote in free verse?
30.created the first American sea novel?
UNIT
3
ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 – 1865
71