19th century literature 2

Champfleury

1st to link Realism to literature (review of The Stonebreakers painting)

Confidence in language to represent truthfully & without mediation

Champfleury:

- what you see is what you get (aka mirror of the world)

- always degree of subjectivity (but promise to represent as truthfully as possible)

realism

reality/degree in which reader recognises described world as real

Realism

art historical movement as reaction to Romanticism:

- renewed interest in plight of common people & desire to represent everyone

- serialisation & triple decker

George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans:

- essayist, critic, translator & novelist

- to Realism what Melville was to American Romanticism

- read Champfleury & introduced Realism into English-fiction

- avid reader of Darwin

The natural History of German Life

George Eliot:

- translation of "Land und Leute" & "Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft" (praises Riehl for representation of common folk)

- occasion for Eliot's literary program

- "a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity"

Eliot's literary program (5)

- art doesn't pay enough attention to common folk

- artists have moral obligation to pay attention to people who aren't like them & represent them as they are

- greatest benefit = extension of our sympathies (raw material of our sentiments)

- art = nearest thing to life (makes you bigger & extends empathy)

- showing specific facts = valuable aid to social & political reform

Silly novels by Lady novelists

George Eliot:

- criticises sentimental fiction (some exceptions)

- plea for sympathy & reform in education

- well educated women won't flaunt knowledge (cf. men)

Adam Bede

George Eliot:

- about drama & what woodworker things of that drama

- intrusive & omniscient narrator

- objectivity, but knowing there is degree of subjectivity

- need to see people in their flawed mediocrity

- still beauty & empathy in the realistic

- if we forget normal people, we only live in extremes (good vs. bad)

Middlemarch

George Eliot:

- British version of Moby Dick

- focus on 1 town (social panorama w/ complex plot & constellation of characters)

- Saint Theresa = simply living in the way that was intended (not everything will be epic)

- general vs. particular

- internal focalisation

general vs. particular

very particular story, but something general we all connect to (difference in our sameness)

Charles Dickens

- very popular novelist (both in his time & all-time)

- wanted social reform

- modernists = sceptical (no psychological depth)

- after WW2 = praise (complexity & depth in works)

Hard Times (7)

Charles Dickens:

- social satire (irony)

- religion = central to value system

- coketown = fictional

- serialised = chapters end w/ cliffhangers

- Gradgrind = man of realities (no fancy & imagination)

- myth of equal opportunity

- narrator wants to emphasise that world with only facts doesn't work (Gradgrind changes out of self-interest)

Fact vs. Fancy

Hard Times - Charles Dickens:

- recurring problem = Realist for whom?

- fanciful methaphors

- irony (literature = bad, but still library in town)

- Bounderby & Louisa

Victorian Poetry

- link w/ novels & paintings (story in verse + painting in verse)

- belated Romanticism (influence + resistance of Poet)

- no sustained confidence in power of imagination

- essays & criticisms (about didactic value of poetry)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

- most famous female poet of 2nd half of 19th century

- involved in unification of Italy

The Cry of the Children

Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

- about abuse of children in coal mines

- east rhyme & lots of repetition

- lots of natural imagery (juxtaposition: what's happening to the kids = unnatural)

- stanza 3&4 = children addressing speaker ("we are dying")

- religious crisis (God doesn't seem to care)

- children have final word

Christina Rossetti

- sister of Dante Rossetti (poet & painter)

- worked as a volunteer at St. Mary Magdalene house of charity (for fallen women)

Goblin Market

Christina Rossetti:

- narrative poem (hints of incest)

- Laura eats goblin fruits & is now wasting away

- Lizzie goes to goblins to help sister (they attack her , but she doesn't sway)

- ending = domestic bliss (sisters stop sleeping together, get married & have kids)

The Windhover

Gerald Manley Hopkins:

- early modernist poetry

- lots of alliteration

- trying to capture something of the majestic bird

- evocation through melody

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark not Day

Gerald Manley Hopkins:

- a "terrible" sonnet (about terrible feelings & depression)

- crisis of faith (praying but no answer, only hears himself)

White Man's Burden

Rudyard Kipling:

- colonialism in form of poetry

- set in colonial territory

- burden = to civilise & educate local people

- message = bringing light to darker continents & people

Samuel Butler

- essayist, satirist & novelist (Mid-Victorian Modern)

- clergyman's son (rejected Christianity & travelled to new-Zealand)

- influenced by Origin of Species (Darwin)

- successful during lifetime, but unconventional (early Modernist?)

- influential (Orwell, C. S. Lewis, ...)

Erewhon (6) /(3)

Samuel Butler:

- first published anonymously (later = Erewhon Revised)

- early steampunk

- title = anagram for nowhere

- satire of utopian fiction (ideal citizens & eugenics)

- satire on Victorian society (reverse of reality to show Victorian hypocrisy)

- partly plotted around evolution & directly engages w/ Darwin

The Book of Machines

Erewhon - Samuel Butler:

- 3 chapters

- mostly influenced by Darwin

- about possibility of machines developing consciousness via natural selection (aka AI)

- satirises Bishop William Paley (believed he had proof God was real --> watch = designed by someone; human = must be designed as well)

Abraham Lincoln

- 16th US President

- great orator & prose stylist (famous speeches)

- grew up in poor, rural south (Kentucky, Indiana & Illinois)

- Lincoln-Douglas debates (Illinois state race)

- Civil War & Emancipation Proclamation

- assassinated 6 days after end of War by John Wilkes Booth

A House Divided

Abraham Lincoln:

- speech to accept nomination for US Senate

- quote from Bible ("a house divided against itself cannot stand")

- against Kansas-nebraska Act (made slavery issues worse)

- either all states are free of all states have slavery

- makes legal case based in precedent:

* Dred Scott (no black person would be citizen & no slave would obtain freedom in free state)

* Kansas-nebraska Act (no Congress/legislator would be able to exclude slavery from any territory)

The Gettysburg Address

Abraham Lincoln:

- speech at inauguration of cemetery in Gettysburg (1st big battle of Civil War)

- written down at Lincoln Memorial

- decided to build a nation on the notion of equality (now = fighting war to see if democracy can succeed)

- for us to decide that democracy shall not fail (cf. France)

Second Inaugural Address

Abraham Lincoln:

- speech at inauguration for 2nd term

- I am here for the second time (less occasion as war is still going on)

- "both sides wanted to prevent war" (to appease confederate states coming back to Union, but still points finger)

- both sides invoke God for their stance on slavery (how could God be invoked to defend it?)

- if God wants war to go on, it will go on

Walt Whitman

- poet, essayist & journalist

- one of the most influential poets

- father of free verse (no set rhyme or metre)

- worked in hospitals during Civil War & cared for wounded

- great admirer of Abraham Lincoln ("O Captain! My Captain)

- style:

* free verse

* expansive style

* vivid realism

* democratic voice

* personal & intimate

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Walt Whitman:

- shot, quick, easily read poem (energetic)

- no time to reflect or stand still, no time for daily business (everyone = engaged in war)

- riled up the war effort (time to act!)

The Wound Dresser (6)

Walt Whitman:

- Civil War poetry

- speaker = old man trying to impart wisdom on new generation

- unearths truth about war (all that's left = field of corpses & mutilated men)

- free verse & repetition + personal & intimate

- not taking sides

- cataloguing everything in hospital

Emily Dickinson

- poet

- prolific writer (nearly 1800 poems; only 10 published during her life)

- little known during lifetime

- regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry

- unique style for the time:

* short lines

* no titles

* slant rhyme

* unconventional capitalisation & punctuation

* questioning/philosophical & ironic

* abstract & metaphorical

Poem 502
"At least—to pray—is left—is left”

Emily Dickinson:

- "At least—to pray—is left—is left"

- written when Union was loosing (only thing left = to pray)

- variation on ballad form

- typical Dickinson style (dashed & symbolism)

- "hast thou no Arm for me" = double meaning (weapon & shoulder to cry on)

Poem 1183

Emily Dickinson:

- "Step lightly on this narrow spot—"

- dedicated to Abraham Lincoln when he was re-buried

- experimenting with rhyme scheme

Poem 639

Emily Dickinson:

- "My Portion is Defeat—Today—"

- before Battle of Vicksburg (when Union took controle of Mississippi River & started winning again)

- humiliation & defeat = shown in rhyme (begins w/ rhyme & ends w/o)

Poem 444

Emily Dickinson:

- "It feels a shame to be Alive—"

- Union started winning = turn in poetry

- not completely optimistic (ashamed to feel benefits of winning)

- men who died = true divine

- is it worth all the sacrifice?

Mark Twain

- Samuel L. Clemens

- from Hannibal, Missouri (model for St. Petersburg in Huck Finn)

- journalist, travel writer, humorist, tall tales & public lectures

- former steamboat pilot on Mississippi River (where pen name came from)

- Great American novel/novelist (Faulkner = "father of American literature)

The Adventures of huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain:

- children's novel

- critical take on Southern society before abolition (controversial!)

- regionalism (vernacular, portrait of slaveholding society, focus on reality)

- focalisation = through mind of Huck (child - 1st person)

=> subjective (weighs options)

- doesn't avoid prejudices & stereotypes, even though Twain wanted to write novel about equality

- Jim in beginning = Minstrel character

Essay on Huckleberry Finn

Toni Morrison:

- about unease novel causes

- Jim = father in ill-fitting clown suit (father figure, but no authority)

- n-word = trivial (can be put in context)

- Jim & Huck = both outcasts (need each other, but not equal)

- Twain wrote himself in a corner (relationship can't last; only solution = making it inconsequential)

Implied author

image reader gets of author based solely on the text, separate from context & author's intentions

Kate Chopin

- Kathrine O'Flaherty

- Irish immigrant living in the South

- started writing to pay off dead husband's dept

- 100 short stories (local color of Deep South & Creole heritage)

- American Realism

* objective narration (narrator observes & doesn't evaluate)

* taboo topics (gender, sexuality, race ...)

* Regionalism

Désirée's Baby

Kate Chopin:

- short story published in Vogue

- about miscegenation & race relations

- free indirect discourse w/ omniscient narrator (only tells what is necessary)

- plot twist = Armand is half black

- moral conclusion = left to reader

Charles W. Chessnutt

- lawyer, author & essayist

- black, but white passing (both parents = black)

- actively identified as mixed (member of nAACP)

- American Realism:

* objective narration (only describing, no evaluations)

* taboo subjects

* Regionalism (South & it's relation to the north)

* notable use of irony

The Wife of His Youth

Charles W. Chesnutt:

- short story published in The Atlantic Monthly

- about race relations within African-American community

- omniscient narrator (rhetoric = irony)

- plot twist = it's the narrator's wife

- moral conclusion = left to the reader

The Passing of Grandison

Charles W. Chesnutt:

- short story published in collection w/ The Wife of His Youth

- inverted slave narrative (passing = multiple meanings)

- omniscient narrator (rhetoric = irony)

- plot twist = Grandison does leave (narrator withholds information)

- agency (Grandison chooses when to leave)

- looks can be deceiving

Ambrose Bierce

- writer, journalist & poet

- Civil War veteran

- pioneer of Realist fiction

An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge (5)

Ambrose Bierce:

- short story published in The San Francisco Examiner

- "one of the most famous & frequently anthologised stories in American Literature"

- narration = objective & omniscient + subjective & internal focalisation

- internal mind of protagonist = early stream of consciousness

- time = objective & subjective (watch vs experienced time)

The Open Boat

Stephen Crane:

- short story based on real life shipwreck Crane was in

- naturalism (nature will be nature; nobody will save you)

- 3rd person narrator (if focaliser = correspondent)

- oiler = only person named (Billy)

- impressionist (sense impressions of narrator = sticks to characters' experience, rest is hypothetical)

- hypothetical focalisation (omniscience vs. problem of knowledge)