English 255 Exam 2
Some Secrets from the Magazine Prison-House
"The want of . . . International Copy-Right" makes it "nearly impossible to obtain anything from the booksellers in the way of remuneration for literary labor, [and] has had the effect of forcing many of our very best writers into the service of the Magazines and Reviews . . . Even in the thankless field of Letters the laborer is worthy of his hire." i.e. publishers basically get to pay authors any amount they want, because if the author wants more, they can just get it for free abroad???? There aren't any international copy-right laws.
Operational Aesthetic
*Neil Harris Theory stating that, with mystification, and being able to see the answer behind that mystification, humans can actually be enlightened. to describe the pleasure a viewer gets from seeing how something works: a machine, a magic trick, an exhibit. Harris theorized the idea of how the operational aesthetic describes how mass culture helps people exercise their reason (response to Habermas) Entertainment can allow people to exercise reason Talks about Barnum's museum and its hoaxes. Also detective fiction: there is a mystery, and then the mystery is revealed.
The Black Hole
1800-1820 Contact and early colonization ---> North American settlement ---> Creole colonial culture ---> rev. and post-rev. period ---> black hole ---> American Renaissance War of 1812 occurred in this period. England is no longer mother, but brother.
American Renaissance
1820-1865 F. O. Matthiessen: Coined the "American Renaissance" in 1941 with his book, The American Renaissance. based on five different American authors (Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Hawthorne) and saw this as a time of flourish in American history
Antebellum Period
1820-1865, period before the civil war. Also known as the Market Revolution or the American Renaissance.
Letter to Martin Van Buren
1838 Emerson didn't like it, was pressured to write it.
Trail of Tears
1838-1839
Bartleby the Scrivener
1853, takes place in 1848
Logan
??!?!!??!!!?!?! ok something about a tree ik
From the Cherokee Phoenix
A newspaper "for the benefit of the Cherokees." Proved that Indians can master print culture. Pledging to work for the wellbeing of the aboriginals, and accepting help from everyone who offers it. Published in both English and Cherokee. Do not comment on religion (not trying to offend anyone) "they (Indians) are capable of improvement in mind as any other people; and let it be remembered, notwithstanding the assertions of those who talk to the contrary, that this improvement can be made, not only by the Cherokees, but by all Indians, in their present locations. OPINION ON GEORGIA. "We" Open to civilizing Indians; sees it practical.
Romanticism
Aesthetic movement understood as a reaction to the Enlightenment and neoclassism. Emphasizes the sublime. Enlightenment versus romanticism: usefulness vs pleasure reason vs emotion science and law vs imagination order, balance, and symmetry vs disorder, imbalance, asymmetry knowledge vs ambiguity culture vs nature
Public Sphere Theory
Argues that Enlightenment reason is displaced in the 19C by a mass culture that values ~pleasure~ over ~politics~ Decline in cultural society Habermas believed commodified mass culture subverts reason and political agency. According to him, the public sphere emerges when "private people come together as a public to engage in debate over the general rules of governing their world." It makes politics—and democracy—possible. Gave way to popular culture.
Jean O'Brien
Argues that, in U.S. culture, Indians "can never be modern." (in Firsting an Lasting) (Date) Indian = savage, so if they are no longer savage, they are no longer Indians. To become modern is to become white. jean
Liberalism
As distinguished from liberal sentiment: the Lockian liberalism posits that every man has a property in the labor of his own body and its premise is that society is a contract among equal individual and the loyal subjects can either choose or make their own destinies. choice = freedom and liberty and liberalism's opposite is futile privilege. Liberalism's motto is "all men are created equal" relate to whitman??
Marx and Engles
Communist Manifesto published in 1848 Major year: John Jacob Astor dies in 47 (Bartleby)
Confession
Confessions of Nat Turner Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Memory/Counter-memory
Counter-memory addresses the gaps of amnesia. Brings things that were forgotten back to life. Asks what ~actually~ happened. If the memory says that the Indians are naturally going away, counter-memory disagrees. "Expansion" is more like destruction. Memory are Indian memorials dedicated to a tree. Emerson hated memory; Indians needed it. When settler culture remembers, they are not focusing on the present.
Gothic
Derived from the German visigoths, medieval barbarians resisting the Roman Empire. Displaced settings, vaguely limited to old world, i.e. decaying castles in unnamed locales. Often supernatural, distinctly dreary, creepy; negative effects. Themes of twinning, doubling Critical of conventional bourgeois values—like domesticity. Houses are often compartmentalized.
The Times
Edward Clay (1837): America industrializes; demonstrates the chaos that comes with that. The balloon exploding/losing air has the word "capital" on it. Man is drunk and foolish, and there are unemployed men looking for jobs. As compared to the former method of economy: the master and the apprentice. Instead of making no money, but eventually becoming a master, Ginger Nut is paid to sweep up and gains no new skills. Thoreau critiques society and paints a picture much like The Times. He believes people are shackled to this awful society. Emerson, on the other hand, has trouble facing the idea that anything is wrong in the world. He believes that it is human perception that sees the problems; they are not actually there. Society and nature are, actually, perfect. Apess's view: Apess is very theological, and may see this painting as something happening to WHITE people. He doesn't think about white working class people as allies.
Self-Reliance
Emerson (1836) This is supposed to be listened to. While this may be seen as passive, Emerson's work requires listeners to be active; to catch up with his train of thought. Circular argument "thinking" -→ process is greater than product. begins his major work on individualism by asserting the importance of thinking for oneself rather than meekly accepting other people's ideas. As in almost all of his work, he promotes individual experience over the knowledge gained from books: "To believe that what is true in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius." says the person who trusts thyself has self-esteem and is childlike. children have self-reliant behavior because they are too young to be cynical, so they are genuine. challenges conformity as maturing.
Nature: "Nature"
Emerson (1836) The transparent eyeball: Keep your mind open to nature and think for yourself. When in doubt, nature has all the answers. If you can't see nature, change the way you're looking. Look at nature like a child would. becoming a transparent eye-ball" allows the "universe to circulate through you."
Nature: "Introduction"
Emerson (1836) Trademarks of Emersonian Prose: non-linear, uses compressed aphorisms...but also repeats himself endlessly, plays with opposites / contradicts himself, favors process (thinking > finished thought), revelation > logic He's not really trying to get you to arrive at knowledge; more about getting someone to feel the process of thought. The romantic side of knowledge. "Our age is retrospective"--Emerson believes that memories are mere sepulchers and should not hold weight over the present. We should have original relationships with nature. EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO NAUTRE. Everything other than the ~soul~ is nature. But wouldn't obeying a book be obeying the past?
Nature: "Language"
Emerson (1836) Words are signs of natural thought. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. Nature is the symbol of spirit. Every natural fact is a symbol of some symbolic fact (i.e. Emersonian equal sign)
Nature: "Commodity"
Emerson (1836): commodity is "all those advantages which our sense owe to nature." Nature serves humans. All parts of nature "incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man...the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish the man." Here, Emerson is making nature seem like some sort of factory. He does not want to believe in the boundary between nature and culture. Naturalizes machinery. He even naturalizes the inequality between the man who can go read books and the man who shovels his walk, as if that's how things are just meant to be.
Nature: "Prospects"
Emerson (1836): refined, analytical science does not work. It does not find truth. Instead, truth is arrived at through "untaught sallies of the spirt, self recovery, and entire humility." in other words, being one with nature. Values unity, not order. Don't worry about classifying every animal in the world, just feel it out. Do not worry so much about understanding everything.
Transcendentalism
Everything is connected, especially all living things. God is present everywhere in nature, divinity is circulating throughout everything. Intuition is the highest form of knowledge. (very anti enlightenment) Emerson and Thoreau: Emerson likes to talk about being a pure, un-posioned child who has not tried to "figure things out." Emerson believes that things are inherently natural, even things that do not seem natural at all. Thoreau is very anticapitalism, and he believes that humans have been ruined by their obsession with working and getting and consumerism, so he wants us to get only what we need from nature. *Landscape Paintings
Antebellum Hoaxes
Fejee Mermaid: a monkey and a fish sewn together. Barnum Museum: "This way to the Egress"(opened in 41) Moon Hoax (1835): Newspaper article detailing "men" on the moon. Played off of the idea that Americans want information, and from England. Poe's Balloon Hoax (1844): wrote that the atlantic was crossed in three days in a balloon. He likes to think he is above his readers and pull one over on them; also likes to make money.
The Literary Sketch
Group of stories released serially; i.e. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving.
Walden: "Economy"
Henry David Thoreau (1854): People are corrupted by civilization and need to get back to nature. Walden was a geographical exception; it wasn't really usable. Emerson would hate the tombstone marking where the cabin originally stood. Thoreau would hate how Walden has been commercialized. Walden was ~not~ in the middle of nowhere, it was linked to Concord. Thoreau had permission to be there from Emerson. He was also not self-sufficient, and was supported by "civilized" people. Emerson embraces the market, while Thoreau rejects it. He critiques it. He tries to drop out of the market economy. "I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools..." (982). "One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me he thought he should live as I did, if he had the means" (1018).
High and Low Culture
High: learned, esoteric, inaccessible (opera, classical music, poetry, lit, "art"), and what Poe WANTS his work to be a part of. Low: Popular culture for a mass audience (cartoons, tv, action movies, comics) Poe was pissed when "lower" people read and enjoyed his works, or when children did. He wanted to be elite. Eventually, when he started his own magazine, he intentionally made it ridiculously expensive so to only appeal to a rich minority; ended up failing, obvs.
Literary Nationalism
I.e. the Dutch tales, people were tied to their own "american" literature. Books also circulated throughout the country, unifying people.
Manifest Destiny
Idea that it was the USA's destiny to fill up the map.
Indian removal
Indian Removal Act of 1830: White people believed that Indian Removal was something natural, that just "happened." The time of the Indian had just come to an end.
Indian Removal Act of 1830
Jackson forcibly removed Indians from Georgia westward.
Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper Set in 1757, during the French and Indian War. Hawkeye, a white hunter, and Chingachgook, his Mohican ally. Hawkeye proclaims his inheritance of a genuine and enduring whiteness give him the right to the land, and Chingachgook laments the demise of his tribe of Mohicans. Of the Mohican tribe, only Chingachgook and his son remain. Chigachgook's arrow ends up being more effective than Hawkeye's gun. Interracial friendship.
Liberal Sentiment
Lauren Berlant; thinking all people are equal but not doing anything about it. Feeling good about feeling bad. Empathy with a power imbalance
Jurgen Habermas
Major Postwar philosopher describing a decline from Enlightenment reason to privatized cultural consumerism in the 19 century. Public Sphere theory From the Frankfurt School, a theorist university.
1848
Major year: John Jacob Astor dies in 47 (Bartleby) Thoreau leaves Walden America: Gets California from Mexico and finishes their manifest destiny. Issues of race, slavery, region, expansion Europe: CLASS (Communist Manifesto published in 1848)
Genre Conventions
Most genres have elements that the audience expects as they have been used many times in previous films from their genre/sub genre. The conventions of a film in the horror genre are: -Either a dark isolated setting eg forest/abandoned building.Oct 19, 2012 i.e. what you think of when you think of detective fiction.
Market Revolution (Consumption side of capitalism)
Opposite of the Yeoman Republic: the creation of two separate classes of people, producers and consumers. Instead of people producing their own stuff. In relation to Irving and the War of 1812: Shift from Agrarian economy to Market economy, Rip Van Wrinkle literally goes to bed in one and wakes up in the other. National market emerges; things are made in the US and not imported, and circulated in a cohesive way. Emergence of a national book culture: books are now made in America and circulated widely. Before, you would have a relationship to your local community, and to England (since shit came in from Enlgand), but now you have a tie to AMERICA. Rise of nationalism.
Settler colonialism
Patrick Wolfe: Colonialism is not something that ended; it has continued. It "destroys to replace, and is a structure, not an event." The opposite of this is some types of British colonialism, where people go somewhere, set up camp, then leave after a while. (i.e. India) (aka franchise colonialism) Settler colonists deny their position as colonists. Begins in violence and persists in amnesia.
Industrialization (production side of capitalism)
Perhaps Tartarus of Maids side of things? Things were cyclical in this time; people would produce paper to write, and then read what was written on them.
The Memorial of the Cherokee Citizens/The Cherokee Memorials
Petitions the United States government to redress the Removal Bill. Claims that they have always been treated like American colonials and the United States as a sovereign nation. Sees a vision of civilized life for the Cherokee nation in the place they currently reside. "We now look with earnest expectation . . . That our national existence may not be extinguished..." (365) Other "Indians . . . . have melted away before the light of civilization" (365). Employs counter memory: touches on the way Great Britain fought the Indians; like a separate people, a nation. They have also already been recognized as a separate nation before by the U.S., i.e. Hopewell treaty.
Detective Fiction
Poe invented it; offers readers a chance to see ~how~ something words, i.e. operational aesthetic. also includes the loyal sidekick
The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe uses Usher to stage conflict between Enlightenment and romantic ideals. Narrator attempts to diagnose and cure Roderick's calamities; he "senses" too much and too particularly. Is it just the house causing him to be this way, though? "The worldly reason . . . assigned for this singular proceeding was . . . the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family." Rationalizes not burying Madeline as a defense against grave robbers. The return of Madeline = the return of everything (the narrator has) repressed Narrator cannot handle it; he leaves.
The Indian Orator
Popular trope; views Indians as a group that cannot break into print culture. Seen a lot in white writings Natural, embodied, not modern.
Patrick Wolfe
Says that settler colonialism is a structure, not an event. It is not something that began and ended, it continued. It is something that just IS. Cannot be dated.
The Paradise of Bachelors, The Tartarus of Maids
Separate spheres
The Cult of True Womanhood
Sex is only allowed in marriage, must be faithful to your husband before and after marriage tied back to the coquette and to Jacobs because she was not able to do that, so she cannot appeal to all the white women who uphold this.
19C Lyceum Movement
Showmen come and give supposedly educational talks, Emerson's mode of speaking in a non-religious setting. Secularization of the oratory movement in this time period.
The Vanishing Indian
The Last of the Mohicans The iconic vanishing Indian is Logan (and his tree).
Dutch Tales
The Sketch Book, which contained Rip Van Wrinkle and Sleepy Hollow, was a periodical work that consisted of essays and stories, usually with a travel theme. The recurring narrator throughout them is Geoffrey Crayon. Although it is the first "American" lit, it almost entirely takes place in England, and imitates British forms. The Dutch Tales take place in America. Washington Irving was the first "professional" American author. He was a new type of American, because he was never British and had no memory of the Revolution. United the country because everyone bought the book...even as the Missouri Compromise (1820) split it. Dutch tales and romanticism: there is a supernatural element but irving does not try to dissect it; he just accepts it. Sleepy Hollow is an enigma.
The Great American Equal Sign
The idea that, through sentiment, people are able to believe that everyone is equal under the constitution, because they are all humans. Invalidates people's indifferences and their struggles. Jacobs fights this concept; she claims that people cannot actually relate to her experiences because they haven't been through them.
affect
Two affective modes: sentimental and sensational sentimentality = tears sensational = thrills and chills
Romantic Racialism
Using slaves to believe you are a good person A nice version of slavery; Delano, for example, loves the slaves-as slaves. Compares slaves to newfoundland dogs.
Wage Labor
Versus Apprenticeship. People used to be given lodging and food and training, but no salary. But, they were taught the skills they needed to become a master. Wage labor, while seemingly offering more freedom, simply pays the janitor a dollar and does not offer him any more skills. He can only be a janitor. Seen in Bartleby with Ginger Nut.
Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving (1819) Rip's Themes: historical transformation: From King George to George Washington, monarchy to nation state, imperial subject to national citizen, oral culture to print culture, petticoat government to freedom (especially since he loses his nagging wife and achieves the freedom of bachelor status), youth to old man. But, Rip ~does~ see a "ditto" of himself: his son. Even as history changes and apparently progresses, its rupture is smoothed out into repetition. You are, after all, just replacing one George with another. (Rip goes to sleep before the revolution, wakes up in about the 1790s) He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the little village inn—but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree which used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red nightcap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes—all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe, but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was stuck in the hand instead of a scepter, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving (1820) Set in then 1790s. Dreamy place; a place that seems to exist outside of reality. A fixed point in time that is stagnant; the product of "still water." Profitability as filtered through the self. Brom Van Brunt (Brom Bones) versus Ichabod Crane: Masculinity versus femininity old dutch traditions versus yankee progress oral storytelling versus print culture farming/yeoman republic versus the market/consumerism Although Brom gets the girl, Crane gets out. He progresses. Sleepy Hollow can't progress. Ichabod is the ultimate consumer. "The pedagogue's mouth watered, as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; . . . and the ducks pairing cozily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce."
Oratory/print
We are alienated from Emerson, because he meant to speak his ideas. Speech is natural, print is alienated? But Emerson knows he needs to print his work in order to have it live on. Speech is primal, print is modern? Speech is embodied, print is disembodied?
An Indian's Looking Glass for the White Man
William Apess (1833) Print that reads like a speech about white skin and color "Let me for a few moments turn your attention to the reservations in the different states of New England, and, with but few exceptions, we shall find them as follows: The most mean, abject, miserable race of beings in the world--a complete place of prodigality and prostitution." "But, reader, I acknowledge that this is a confused world, and I am not seeking for office; but merely placing before you the black inconsistency that you place before me—which is ten times blacker than any skin that you will find in the Universe. . . . . If black or red skins, or any other skin of color is disgraceful to God, it appears that He has disgraced himself a great deal—for he has made fifteen colored people to one white, and placed them here upon this earth. . . . Now suppose these skins were put together, and each skin had its national crimes written upon it—which skin do you think would have the greatest?" The Indians are not dead, and they are not uncivilized. They are spiritually and mentally equal, but ~materially~ unequal. They are at a disadvantage.
Eulogy on King Philip
William Apess (1836) a speech layered with references to print Uses the settler culture's own tools—history, books, dates, facts—to undo its amnesia. There's a vision of resistive native Americans as violent, so Apes is recovering Philip beautifully while cultivating countermemory. The eulogy form: reanimates the dead, refuses to forget. about the past "As the immortal Washington lives endeared and engraven on the hearts of every white in America, never to be forgotten in time--even such is the immortal Philip honored, as held in memory by [his] degraded but yet grateful descendants who appreciate his character. . . . Where, then, shall we place the hero of the wilderness?" "December (O.S.) 1620, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and without asking liberty from anyone they possessed themselves of a portion of the country, and built themselves houses, and then made a treaty, and commanded them to accede to it. . . ." ^^^SETTLER COLONIALISM "Captain Standish. . .goes forward with a black and hypocritical heart and pretends to prepare a feast for the Indians; and when they sit down to eat, they seize the Indians' knives hanging about their necks, and stab them to the heart. The white people call this stabbing, feasting the savages. We suppose it might well mean themselves, their conduct being more like savages than Christians. . . . Let the children of the Pilgrims blush, while the son of the forest drops a tear and groans over the fate of his murdered and departed fathers." "Gentlemen and ladies, I blush at these tales, if you do not. . ." ^^Appealing to the whiteness of his audience; proving he can be modern (along with the mere form of this work and its references to Christianity and such) Apess wants to remember the Indians ~and~ modernize them.
The Minstrel Show
an American form of entertainment developed in the 19th century, consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the U.S. Civil War, by black people. now is offensive think of topsy
end-stopped line
as opposed to enjambment its one of whitman's solutions to formlessness
hymn
emily dickinson writes in irregular hymnal meter
Ligeia
gothic
Edgar Allan Poe
gothic, urban gothic, gothic, horror, detective (which he invented), sensation fiction Poe must always execute an innovation, a twist, a reversal of mass norms in order to separate and elevate his work from the merely "popular."
fascicle
handmade books by emily dickinson full of her poems
The Tell Tale Heart
kind of gothic but wrong setting??? urban gothic
Hudson River School
mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism and transcendentalism. 1825-1875 There is a happy union between humans (culture) and landscapes (nature). Making humans so small that they blend right into nature, as if they're a part of it. (Thomas Cole, A View of the Mountain pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains-1839) Always sublime; feelings of a human being dwarfed by the landscape, but no anxiety in that.
catalogue
one of whitman's solutions to formlessness list
Class Difference/Struggle
paradise of bachelors, tartarus of maids
Free Verse
popularized by whitman, explored by whitman and emily dickinson no specific meter or rhythm
narrative poem
song of myself
Rise of mass culture and popular genres (such as Gothic and detective fiction) and publishing venues (like magazines)
um this happened yep
the Gold-Bug
unreason ---> reason Legrand, a deductive genius with an addiction problem from an ancient good family fallen to bad times = a figure for Poe, or Dupin. What is the reader's role in detective fiction? We are the Watson! The sidekick, there to be amazed. Different genres: detective, gothic, horror, science
deixes
when a writer references the fact that a book is a book the author foregrounds the material act of reading your body and his book
