19th and 20th c american lit

narratives of americanness at the turn of the century

frontier thesis - Frederick Jackson Turner

transnational america - Randalf Bourne

Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis (1893)

• “ The Significance of the Frontier in American History”

• the american frontier had an enormous impact on the evolution of the US national character: laws, democratic spirit and traits

•   ~Americans became exceptional due to the frontier experience

• composite nationality - melting pot

• Frontier experience → self-reliance and democratic spirit → independent states and strong central government

• idea: all arrivals will become americanized and let go of their past - assimilation

frontier

• conceptual dividing line between civilization and wilderness pushed west with the settlement of the continent

• Settlers/colonization <> uncultivated lands/natives

• breaks don class distinctions (same size lands)

• little to no regulations →reliance on others and the self only → democratic ideas and individualism

• return to simple society based on the family unit - anti social → desire for independence and control - dislike of regulations (eg taxes)

• 1890: declared to be closed - the entire continent is settled (troubled society)

waves of settlers in new areas

1. pioneer settlers (1st buildings, hunting, gathering, trading with natives)

2. ranches (separate but well equipped families, the pioneers moved on)

3. farmers (closer together, more connected proprietors → small towns form)

4. merchants industrialists (larger towns, economy outside agriculure)

melting pot

• not divided based on origin (only citizens and non citizens)

• against sectionality

• eventually everybody becomes americanized

• metaphor for assimilation of immigrants into mainstream american culture.

context

• 1.turn of the century height of immigration - how to handle the questions caused by industrialization and mass immigration and rapid developmen

• 2. the 1st ww debates about wether the us should interfere, should immigrants fright their former home countries

Randalf Bounrne

pre war german immigrant

pragmatic philosopher

disabled - in a wheelchair

essays (role of intellectuals in war, disability, transnational america)

questioned unlimited individualism

arguements: should the US join WW1

• reports about loss/destruction of culture → yes

• isolationist policy → no

• immigrants would fight their families

• sinking of the lusitania → THEY JOIN

American patriotism <> immigrants → failure of the melting pot idea

salad bowl idea

• the melting pot idea has failed

• the british descendants shouldnt be the ones who decide what america becomes

• we needed the new arrivals to save is from stagnation

• we become a better nation through the education of the next generation

• america is a composite nation → special

• immigrants make up the US - its better to keep some of the culture than to become completely homogenous

• integration

• Transnational america essay.

• people who keep some of their backgound end up being more successful.

• context: 19th c industrialization, debate to join ww1

what is freedom - 2 types of freedom

letting be (do what you want as long as you dont disturb others) → the immigrants have found freedom

notion based on cooperation (democratic cooperation determining ideals, purpose and institutions) the immigrants are not free - anglo saxon domination

context: defining americanness

cultural center vs cultural periphery

• types of immigrant

• keep their original cultures and take up the american culture aswell vs forget their own cultures

• balance between americannes and origin vs cultural half-breeds

• better at creating consensus and balance - will respect others as well vs between 2 cultures - belong to neither → no use/lost without purpose

Randalf Bourne’s transnational america

Randalph Bourne’s transnationalism 1916

• “Transnational America”

• immigrant cultures are embraced and integrated

• keeping both the american and the immigrant cultures

• american culture and nationlism is what we make of it

• more cosmopolitan way of looking at culture - allows fro international intellectualism

european nationalism

• based on common "national identity" - shared language, culture, ethnic background,

• different form american transnational ideas

Frederick James Turner The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and Randalf Bourne Transnational america

changes after the civil war

• industrialization

• urbanization

• situation of natives

• situation of african americans

• national progress

industrialiation after the civil war

• transcontinental railroad (heavy industry, travel - opening the west)

• factories (investments in the south)

• robber barons

• technological development (railroads, factories, telegraph)

• growing demand for products (from new states)

• immigration (+abolished slavery) → workforce

amendments after the civil war

• 1865: abolition of slavery (13^th a)

• 1866: citizenship legal status (14^th a)

• 1870: voting rights cannot be denied (15^th a)

→ changed life in the south

robber barons

• elements of the guilded age and realism

• industrialists not confined by any regulations – exploited workers

• huge rich families

• invested in the south to modernize and industrialize

• investments in culture (libraries, theatres etc)

• eg heavy industry (Rockefeller: Standard Oil Company, Carnegie: US Steel/Carnegie Steel Company, Vanderbilt: Railroads)

urbanization after the civil war

• Change in the ratio of agricultural workers and urban industrialists

• Huge growth of large cities (NYC, Chicago)

• Changing city structures (streetcars, highrise buildings, ghettos

• rampant poverty and crime – barely any police force

Jacob Riis - how the other half lives (photojournalism)

natives in the 19th c

• pioneer settlers pushing them west

• 1830s - indian removal acts → given territories further west → later only 2 reservations (Oklahoma and Dakota)

• pointless killing of buffalos to deprive them of livelihoods

zitkala sa - the school days of an indian girl

context - gilded age

african americans after the civil war

assimilation into society that did not want them → second class cititens

curtailed legal positions - jim crow laws in the south

BT Washington and WEB DuBois models of uplift

national progress post civil war

diverting attention from conflict and inner tension

FJ Turner’s Frontier thesis (to mask the negative developments of the western expansion)

chicago world exhibition (ghettos vs the white city)

the guilded age

period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s

materialistic excesses marked by widespread political corruption

gold on the surface (wealth, progress) but rotting underneath (poverty, crime, corruption, disposable workers)

professionalization in literature

started in the guilded age

in theory authors could start living purely from their writing (articles, novels)

due to growing literacy due to the printing industry and advertizing,

growing audiences → differentiation of audiences (working, middle class) → high and popular culture and literature

high and low lit

created during the late 19th century with the spread of the printing industry and growing literacy

different classes interested in different things

broke down in postmodernism

realist literature

• Focus on life as it really is – on the here an now

• Middle class mostly

• Moral problems - Actions and consequences

• Social environments and their influence on the individual

• WD Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James

• variations

Henry James the protrait of a lady

Mark Twain

• realist author - the local US scene

• satires and social criticisms

• from working class → social mobility through writing

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876

• Life on the Mississippi 1883

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884

• A Yankee in King Authors Court 1889

Henry James

• freedom and norms

• interested in: international themes, european or american culture?

• phases (early romances, middle realist, late modernist)

• Portrait of a Lady 1881

• Daisy Miller

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 (Twain)

• Adventures of an independent spirit not civilized by the social expectations

• HuckFinn runs away from home → meets a runaway slave Jim → go down to Mississippi on a raft

• Finn and Jim make friends despite social expectations

• Moral choices – is it okay to not report a runaway slave à later: even lies to protect his friend

• Usual reading: Huck Finn as the American individualism and independence American exceptionalism – able to make moral decisions outside of the mainstream,

The Portrait of a Lady 1881 (H James)

• realist novel

• Moral aspect: decide on own fate and accept consequences

• american vs european cultural positions of understanding the world (Isabel’s romanticism, trancendentalism vs Merle’s more practical, socially determined self) → merle wins out - failure of the romantic sense of the self

• isabel (orphan) inherits a bunch of money → can choose who to marry → marries a poor artist (actually arranged by merle) → shit marriage → she hates her life but accepts the consequences

• ending: ambiguous: she goes to england - does she return to her husband?

US regions

West (Jack London

Middle west (Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser)

Southwest

Southeast (Mark Twain, Charles Waddel Chesnutt, Kate Chopin)

Northeast ((Puritan New England)  Edith Wharton)

Charles Waddell Chesnutt

• Born to free blacks in Ohio

• mixed race - mulatto

• Moved to south to work as a teacher → started writing about his experiences

• never became a professional author always had to keep another job

• praised writer (Howells) for his descriptions of AA experiences

• theme: color line

Chestnutt’s What is a white man?

by anglo saxon they mean white

intermingling of races → obliteration of the lines seaparating races → class of popoulation who dont fit

states et laws for when a person is considered black/white - color line - line between opportunity and slavery

south: blacks dicived into negroes and mulattos (legislative term:all persons of color who are not negros)

since the war law are more about the intermigling of races

still growing number of mixed people → questions

color line

arbitrary imaginary line defined by the law, differentiating the whites from the colored people

separated freedom from slavery, opportunity from degradation

different in different states (white/mulatto from x% of AA lineage)

chesnutt stories

plantation literature

• genre of American literature from the South, often nostalgic for the pre-civil war period

• White person describing plantation life as it was helping the slaves

• Idealization of life on the plantation

• portays AA as simple, helpless, superstitios, jovial

• centred around the plantation house

• white slave owner as a trickster

• happy endings, morals

• black bodies as commodities

• eg joel chandler harris - the wonderful tar baby

conjure stories

• stories from the conjure woman collection by Chesnutt

• told by uncle julius

• stories about plantation life to trick the white owners of the land into doing what is best for julius

• the goophered grapevine, Po’Sandy, Sis’ Becky’s Pickaninny

• tragic endings

• desentimentalizing southern life

• anti plantation literature

the goophered grapevine

Narrated by white vineyard owner

uncle Julius advises against buying the vineyard – it is goophered

The slaves stole the grapes → conjure woman invited: anybody who eats from the grapes will die

New slave didn’t know about it → they take him to the woman to save him → his life becomes connected to the grapevine → The landlord makes money off him by selling him and buying him back

a yankee kills the plants → the slave dies with it

war → the master goes to fight → dies

uncle Julius starts working for the investor – make up for his losses on the grapes

slave marriage

forced marriage of slaves - after the civil war they would be considered void if the couple did not continue to live together

present in many of chesnutts antiplantation lit

anti plantation literature

• Rearticulation of old plantation literature – similar tools but turns them against the white supremacist positions and puts the storyteller in a trickster position

• a tool of racial uplift and better representation of AA

• Chesnutt

• tragic stories - the dark side of slavery

the conjure woman goophered grapewine chesnutt

The Wife of his youth and other stories of the color line 1899 (Chesnutt)

• collection of short stories

• Extended experience – north and south, white and black

• Psychological and moral aspects of race related social injustice

• The problems of mixed-race people

• the wife of his youth, passing of grandison

uncle julius

• narrator of the conjure stories

• gives advice to the whites in a way that benefits him through his stories (tales’ function: manipulation and power)

• narrator’s figure as a key to using folk elements differently

• a speaking subject able to formulate narratives about his identity

• wearing a mask (AA trope)

• ironic trickster

mask trope in AA lit

character that is  never allowed to speak directly due to white societal expectations/rules

tension between public personas and private realities

eg uncle julius telling the horrors of slavery and the intentions of today through stories

the tragic mulatto trope

• literary trope about biracial people struggling with their racial identity

• often portrays biracial characters as tragic figures due to their mixed-race heritage

• introduced by white author: Lydia Maria Child in “the Quadroons” and “Slavery’s pleasant homes”    

Desireé’s Baby - kate Chopin

domestic realism

genre in American literature, primarily focuses on the depiction of ordinary, domestic life, especially that of women, within the context of the 19th c

kate chopin the awakening, charlotte perkins gilman the yellow wallpaper

regionalism

a style of writing that focuses on the specific characteristics of a particular geographical region, including its culture, customs, and dialects

kate chopin the awakening, edith wharton the age of innocence

autobiographical fiction

fiction based on a writers real life experiences, may mix real events with fictionalized elements for artistic or dramatic purposes

eg anzia yezierska

kate chopin

south east - reconstruction in the south

middle class white femininity - french background

focus on coexistence of creols, cajuns, AAs, french catholics and American protestants

cajuns

French background, but working class, agricultural

kate chopins the awakening

creoles

connected to Freconnected to French background, middle class urban, catholic

kate chopins stories (she was one aswell) the awakening

the american/creole madam bovary

• the awakening by kate chopin

• realist story about adultery

• edna pontellier wants to change her life and stops living according to social expectations → intervention → she kills herself in the sea

• the sea as an important setting - learning to swim, taking clothes off - waking up and experiencing life

• problematic repreaentation of race (colored women as sexualized but silent, rulekeepers, non-human etc)

the tragic mulatta

• a woman of biracial heritage who endures the hardships of Africans in the Antebellum South,

• often raised as white and finds out later she is not

• allowed readers to identify with the victim by gender while distancing themselves by race → avoid confronting a racial ideology that denies the full humanity of nonwhite women

the awakenings of edna pontellier

develops a liking to Robert Lebrun

decision between the 2 types of women she sees (reisz: artist spinster vs ratignole: ideal french wife)

→ decides she wants to sell her paintings - moves away from family, stops recieving people and returning letters, takes a lover

→ family intervenes - think of the children

→ she refuses to go back → suicide in the sea

Hybrid identities

mix of American and immigrant/minority identity - Balancing mainstream and brought identity – “balancing act”

Mary Antin – The Promised land

alien

foreign, strange

new immigrants were considered aliens by the americans

Gertrude Bonnin – Zitkala-Sa

• Native American from South Dakota – Sioux, Pine Ridge Reservation → taken to missionary boarding school at 8

• couldn’t find place after returning to the reservation → school to become a music teacher

• belonging to 2 worlds but lost in both (cant speak her native langauge well, cant find a good job)

• repeats the cycle she was in

• translating indian stories to keep her culture and make people more familiar (perhaps then they wont centralize them) - old indian legends, American indian stories

• starts writing about her own experiences too - autobiographical fiction

captivity narrative

• american genre created in colonial times

• the natives raid the colonies and kidnap people for ransom → stories by white settlers who have returned describing their experiences through their religious convictions

• with gods help I survived

• Most famous Mary Rollinson: My captivity – return to faith through captivity – reexamination of faith

reverse captivity narrative

Native American captured by white society → going through processes of familiarizing oneself with the practices of the white societ - struggle to adapt and then struggle to fit into/get used to original place

zitkala sa/gertrude bonnin - school days of an indian girl

zitkala sa - the school days of an indian girl

reverse conversion narrative

literary work describing and explaining a process of losing faith

eg zitkala sa why i am a pagan/great spirit

zitkala sa and the problem of regionalism

• native americans dont fir into regionalism - outsiders of literary cannon

• regionalism considers the us a unified nation → natives have no space

• zitkala sa criticizes mainstream american national values, resists discourse of assimilation, promotes the preservation of native culture, resist the taking of native lands and supports the natives to learn english - so they can stand up for themselves

• → she is counter colonial (against the destruction of native culture), not regionalist

racial uplift

• The idea that educated blacks are responsible for the welfare of the majority of the race

• Response to the systematic discrimination against and  the assault on the African American civil and political tights in the late 19^th and early 20^th c

• 2 models (economic and political)

• aim: 1st class citizenship

• BTW and WEBDB models

booker T Washington’s economic model of uplift

• Need to assimilate – look at white people as examples - the best we can hope for

• Learn practical skills and take a job earn money → you will gain a good position (lower middle-class existence)

• Ignore/do not take discrimination seriously

• atlanta compromise address

• due to washingtons ex slave experiences

atlanta address 1895

• Atlanta Compromise Address

• Accommodation of white oppression/supremacy - Voluntary AA subordination

• Call on white Americans to provide jobs to blacks and in exchange they would give up claims for social and civil rights (for survival)

• Social and political rights <<< economic rights (must be achieved first only afterwards can political goals be achieved)

• Social separation: in all things social we are separate but one in things essential for mutual progress

• The notion of the new Negro for the new century

WEB DuBois’s political uplift

• Educate the talented portion of the community (1/10th) and they should work towards providing and ensuring the rights of the aa people

• Fight against discrimination

• racial relativism

• criticized washington - emacipation cant be achiveed by throwing rights away, respect can be achived by ridiculing oneself

• free mulatto from the north → different narrative than wash.

talented 10th

small percentage of the AA population who can get a good education - they will lead/determine the uplift of the rest of the community

connected to WEB DuBois’ ideas of political uplift and the souls of black folk

double consciousness of AA

Twoness - Always looking at oneself thought the eyes of others: An American and a Negro

Debate/battle of who the person is – the afro American side vs the white expectations

developed by WEB DuBois in The souls of black folk 1903

plessy v ferguson 1896

U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal".

legitimized many jim crow laws

connecte to BTW and WEBDB racial uplift and the lack of improvement in the positions of AA after the civil war

1st class citizenship

possessing all the rights and privileges of a citizen, with no discrimination or limitations - implies equal treatment of all citizens , regardless of race, ethnicity, religion etc

slave narrative

• Original US genre

• Story of a slave - experiences under slavery

• BT washington - Up from slavery: religious spiritual change → political emancipation, 2-part experience: under slavery and as a free person

• Show readers how terrible slavery is – to encourage abolishment     

Tuskegee modern and industrial institute

• Most important achievement of BT Washinton’s life

• Vocational institute for blacks built by the vocations

• Tuskegee – self-reliant AA group

• investments from white supporters – political peace

white supremacy

intellectual sense of supremacy of white people over people of color.

connection to Booker t washington and DuBois and black people at the turn of the century

harlem renaissance

• Cultural and artistic leg of a social movement rooted in the broken promises of reconstruction carried out by the black communities that formed from the musicians and artists migrationg to the northern cities after ww1 till the wallstreet crash

• to escape racism of the south, get better jobs,

• relying on the diaspora

• mixing of cultural heritage (music, drama, literature etc)

• cullen - the traditional

• hughes - the african american style

• the ide of the new negro/specific poems (the racial mountain )

diaspora

Groups of people moving away from their original place in a bigger group and keeping their culture - Like AA moving away from the south into the northern cities (2^nd diaspora (1^st: movement of slaves))

the new negro

• from alan locke’s book

• movement - new racial consciousness: spiritual emancipation, renewed self-respect, self-dependence, lack of self-pity, new positive attitude to life

• complete change from the old (BTW kind) - has to be helped up, socially intimidated

• new ways of expression art, song, short story - Langston hughes: racial mountain, contee cullen: yet do i marvel

zora neale hurston

• 1^st female AA filmmaker, anthropologist, folklorist, and writer - short stories, essays, and documentaries

• Anthropological studies at Columbia university - Learn the importance of ethnographic collection and recordkeeping

• the south and the Caribbean to record traditional stories and cultures, literary pieces, short stories interviews etc.

• the new negro woman

• “sweat“, their eyes were watching god - vernacular language

woolf on modernist fiction

focus on psychology

Life filters everything from the outside – we interpret these things – novelists should convey this varying uncircumscribed spirit with as little of the outside as possible

modernist fiction

• focus on psychology

• loss of meaning in focus (disappearing certainties)

• non-memetic representation (impressions, experimenting with form)

the great wars effects on modernism

• Pointless loss of young lives → soldiers hate their elders – sent them to war with lies of glory and duty

• Political conflict settled politically – the killing changed nothing

• new technologies

• Ironic tone develops

•  Turning away from the values of the past

• changes even in the home

the lost generation

• Men become civilized between 18 and 25 – without the civilizing experience they remain uncivilized – men in war missing civilization → Change in manners – no respect for anything

• In Hemingway’s autobiography – experiences in Paris with the war coming up - Conversation with Miss Stein

• Started being used for the generation of post war authors (  Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Eliot, Sinclair Lewis, Gershwin)

iceberg techniques

writing style developed by hemingway, the prose indicates something bigger - If the writer is writing well enough the reader will know the things implied as if he stated them, part of minimalist style

Hemingway hero

• Male special hero living life drinking smoking fucking - young adept reflective, irreverent sexually active - alcoholic

• Often have some sort of injury – has to cope - Try to balance it out by being hyper masculine

• wounded → questioning his motivations

• seeing the fighting and the situation on the battlefield → disillusioned

• coping with being the one that needs saving

• no duty in war → choosing a woman instead of ideas of glory and duty

• impossibility of personal happiness - no chance for a new life – goes on

• Farewell to arms

language of war

• realistic description of conflicts a

• matter of fact style – terrible things described nonchalantly

• surface descriptions - no psychological commentary or explicit emotions

• graphic detail

• Farewell to arms

imagism

early 20th-century poetic movement that relied on the resonance of concrete images drawn in precise, colloquial language rather than traditional poetic diction and meter.

3 principles: demanding direct treatment of the image, not using any unnecessary words, and following the musical phrase (not the meter).

ezra pound “in a station of metro“,

image

that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. 

ezra pound In a station of metro

tiresias

a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance

present in TS Elliot’s The Waste Land - in the 1st part: speaker during the burial of the dead and the 3rd part: speaker during the fire sermon -unification of man and woman

"the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest."

in the poem tiresias indicates that love has always been this dispassionate and squalid.

myth

poetic fragments of myth give form to the intertextual fragments in TS Elliot’s The waste land - reliance on extensive tradition

free verse

open form of poetry which does not use a prescribed or regular meter or rhyme, tends to follow the rhythm of natural or irregular speech.

TS Elliot’s The waste land is written in free verse

4 renassances in AA culture

1900s

1920s – Harlem renaissance

1960s - Civil rights movement

1990s – start of studying the culture

social poet

the duty the younger Negro artist to change through the force of his art the previous self hate within the black community

Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”

racial consciousness

the awareness of and acknowledgment of one's own race and the race of others, along with the social, cultural, and historical contexts that shape racial categories and relationships

alain locke the new negro

hemingway’s a farewell to aemrs

Anxiety and war experience

Frederick Henry: US volunteer for Italian army, Red Cross ambulance driver → Wounded, healed, falls in love with a nurse (Catherine) → He returns to the front, nothing has changed →  Isonzo: he is almost killed by military police trying to stop people from escaping → he deserts to Switzerland with pregnant Catherine →The baby is stillborn, and girlfriend dies →  End: losing the chance of a new life

themes: hemingway hero, language of war, memory of war, women

Anzia Yezierska

• from the Polish part of the Russian empire in a Jewish family

• 2 identities – the immigrant and the Americanized image

• fictional autobiographical stories

• education in the foreground

• the imgage of the immigrant - self fashioning

• fat of the land, wings, how i found america, the lost beautifulness, bread givers, america and i

self fashionning

planning your image – orchestrating how other people see you – the articulated version of the self

self-fashioning of the immigrant image in Yezierska’s work

edith wharton’s the age of innocence

Theme: tension between social order and the wishes of the individual

Setting: 1870s NYC cultural elite’s reaction to modernization

Ethnographic method: tribal rites of old NY – Story of exclusion individual and social subject

ethnographic representation of NYC cultural elite

in edith whartons the age of innocence

the main character Newland Archer describes the rituals, rites ceremonies and habits of the NYC elite as if they were a foreign tribe described by an ethnographer

the customs are eternal

criticism of the NYC elite

description as a never changing tribe

going on about their lives and not realizong the world changing around them

a parody of life

the real thing is never said - only arbitrary signs

archers relation to NYC social conventions

In his actions he is the conventional member of his group – he plays out the rules of his community by the letter – unable to adapt to changes

So set in his ways that he refuses to meet Ellen even after the death of may

Despite him thinking of himself as enlightened and modern – in his inner life his open and reflective but in practice he is performing according to traditions

representation of the past

a dream contrasting the real present - watching ellen on the shore in newport

unreal present and desired past - the real thing was on the bank and i missed it

waves of jewish immigration

1492: Spain banishes Jews → many immigrate to colonies → Sephardic Jew colonies – usually educated doctors lawyers teachers

1830-1880 – Jews from German speaking areas emigrate – German freedom, many settle in the southern US

1880-1924 – central and easter European (mostly from Russia) Ashkenazi Jews arrive to NY from the poverty and pogroms

1945 Holocaust survivors

Couldn’t really get a us visa during the war

1990s form the former Soviet Union

Liana Finck A Bintel Brief - Longing for old New York

Graphic novel

Representation of the Jewish past in the present – a ghost from the past brings new perspectives to the present and helps the modern woman survive loneliness

young girl grandparents newspaper cuttings are found, and a ghost comes to life from them, he shows her stories from the Bintel Brief they discuss and live through the stories

the function of storytelling for the female Jewish immigrant narrator

Transition stories – learning to might just survive –

going through depression by listening to the stories and getting advice form the editor

the function of the ghost editor for the 21st century female Jewish American narrator

teaches the narrator to see people analyze them draw conclusions as she learns to watch others, she learns to watch herself – as she is more familiar the editor disappears

to help her understand herself