I'm going to open with Wieland, and it's entirely possible that this will be all I'll get to post this week -- off to Seattle for a wedding and some fun.
Wieland is a hell of a lot better than Edgar Huntly. I find some interesting elements in its composition; for one thing, it's a somewhat epistolary novel to an entirely unknown correspondent. There's a lot of unknown/negative stuff in the novel, including Brown's language of extreme negativity; he says a lot of things (via Clara) like "not unlikely" or "not incapable of." Rather Faulknerian. We also have unknown sub-stories, like Carwin or Louisa Conway's mother's pasts. Unknown fates, etc.
But on the other hand, there's a lot of interesting knowing going on. For globalization studies, this novel is great. They're aware of other countries, come from other countries, travel around, Carwin adopts a Spaniard's outward appearance -- they even choose to leave America to live happily ever after. Quite a rejection of America as Eden or utopia -- more so since religious maniac-murderer Wieland is the one who heartily defends America's superiority over Germany when Pleyel is urging him to go over there and claim his inheritance.
Along with this goes religious diversity and seeming tolerance.
Definitely some Enlightenment thought here about mind vs. body, the influence of morbid thoughts vs. the influence of physicality. Also a quite typical contemporary emphasis on rhetoric, the influence of the voice, etc. Seems to go along with the "danger of hearing" that I brought up with the Puritans last week.
I also like the scientific elements. These weird science novels (which will pop up again, after all) are not always convincing; the ventriloquism and so forth really don't help to solve the mystery of the Wielands' father's death, for example.
What do we think of Clara? Is she right when she says that she should have been more gifted with equanimity? Is she a feminist figure, with her single household, interest in writing, and willingness to declare her feelings? Or is she all the more repressed outside of these little rebellions? Catherine's the angel in the house, for sure...
I've always wanted to write a paper on the anxieties over the Irish in particular as they pop up in Wieland and Edgar Huntly - there's so much there, and there's no scholarship on it at all. But H is absolutely correct to spot the ambiguity of identity that surrounds (such a fantastic character!) Carwin the biloquist. He might be an escaped Irish convict, he might be a converted Catholic Spaniard, and now? Is he an American? Does his 'melting-pot' self, so adaptable and malleable to fit his immediate needs, including the preternatural ability to mimic others' voices perfectly (even God's!) - embody what is best, or what makes Brown most nervous about a new American republic? The novel is set pre-revolution, but is published, if I remember correctly, in 1796, well after the Rev. But clearly the Rev and its aftermath are part of the story - What IS an American? And that the novel takes place just outside of Philly, where the Constitution was being written while Brown was studying law there...
As for the 'not's - that's also totally dope - again, if I remember correctly, the best line in the novel is Carwin to Clara: "The least I wanted to do was to hurt you" - Does that mean that hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do, or what he at least wanted to make sure he did? Phenomenal! I fucking LOVE Wieland. It is one of my favorite novels. I could talk about it for three-hundred years.
Also, with respect to Washington's farewell address favoring an isolationist foreign policy - how does that work itself out in the novel. Mettingen, after all, is, like the US itself, a kind of enlightened utopia, built on slave labor, which Carwin absolutely disrupts.
What about passion vs. rationality? Religion vs. Reason? Texts vs. Speech - which are priviliged? How are Wieland's Greek and Latin texts superceded or made outmoded by Carwin's eloquence?
As you can probably tell from my lateness this week, I have failed to do a large portion of the "assigned" reading (Cooper and Brown being the casualties). Working a 27-hour shift and having your wife visit for a mere 48 hours will tend to do that to you.
But enough excuses...
One thing I'm interested in a couple of the works for this week is nascent conceptions of American capitalism. Franklin elaborates Winthrop's naturalized sense of the existence of classes in society. Franklin is careful to point out that he never asked for financial assistance; his rise to the top, while occasionally assisted, comes across as the prototypical American success story. Franklin praises the libraries he set up, not for their ability to neutralize class disparity, but because they can make "the common Tradesmen and Farmers as intelligent as most Gentlemen from other Countries" (69). Wheatley's references to Terence suggest an awareness of the potential for her to earn her freedom through her poetic work; throughout, she uses her status as African as a selling point, as does her owner through his preferatory statement and accompanying "to the PUBLICK." But free enterprise isn't everything, as the Federalist Papers repeatedly stress that economic exchange cannot guarantee peace between disunited states.
Symphonie Fantastique is about to end, so I'll post more later.
I just want to find a way to tie the current concerns with Americanness and ethnicity together for a moment. Janaka was leaning this way in her comments on "Wieland" and "Mohicans" - but to turn the lens more closely on Cooper - think of the way that Cora and Alice are presented in the novel. Cora is the product of one of her father's previous liaisons - it's been a few years since I read Cooper, so forgive me for forgetting the specifics - but I believe her mother to have been Jamaican, or otherwise "other". You'll notice (something you cannot notice, because wholly elided in the Daniel Day Lewis movie version) in the book that Cora is described as having 'darker skin' and that when it comes to action, she is at the forefront - and that it is she, rather than her sister (which the characters anticipate) that is pursued sexually by the Native Americans. Alice, by contrast, is, as I recall, presented as naive, innocent, weaker - and 'pure' white. The love plot that is assumed in the movie between Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and Cora never materializes at all in the novel - what group, if that is a way to put it, does Hawkeye seem to fit in with, or identify with? Natives? Whites? Somewhere inbetween? What definitions of Americanness does Cooper present through Uncas (as I recall, that is the name of Chingachgook's son), Hawkeye, and Cora?
The question of 'American purity' is one, I totally agree, that comes up over and over again in American literature - in Franklin too. Think of the part of the Autobiography, amidst all the talk of the ability of Americans to improve themselves, we get these bizarre, by contrast, bits about drunken Native Americans (135 in the Penguin - "..indeed if it be the Design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed Means."), and a part where, making some kind of comparison, refers to "Don Quixote" and Sancho Panza's line about ruling a 'government of blacks, as then if he could not agree with his People he might sell them." (148 Penguin)
Self-making is a theme in all three of these works, as Janaka also points out - but what kind of self-making gains approbation? Hawkeye's? Carwin's? Franklin's?
4 Comments:
I'm going to open with Wieland, and it's entirely possible that this will be all I'll get to post this week -- off to Seattle for a wedding and some fun.
Wieland is a hell of a lot better than Edgar Huntly. I find some interesting elements in its composition; for one thing, it's a somewhat epistolary novel to an entirely unknown correspondent. There's a lot of unknown/negative stuff in the novel, including Brown's language of extreme negativity; he says a lot of things (via Clara) like "not unlikely" or "not incapable of." Rather Faulknerian. We also have unknown sub-stories, like Carwin or Louisa Conway's mother's pasts. Unknown fates, etc.
But on the other hand, there's a lot of interesting knowing going on. For globalization studies, this novel is great. They're aware of other countries, come from other countries, travel around, Carwin adopts a Spaniard's outward appearance -- they even choose to leave America to live happily ever after. Quite a rejection of America as Eden or utopia -- more so since religious maniac-murderer Wieland is the one who heartily defends America's superiority over Germany when Pleyel is urging him to go over there and claim his inheritance.
Along with this goes religious diversity and seeming tolerance.
Definitely some Enlightenment thought here about mind vs. body, the influence of morbid thoughts vs. the influence of physicality. Also a quite typical contemporary emphasis on rhetoric, the influence of the voice, etc. Seems to go along with the "danger of hearing" that I brought up with the Puritans last week.
I also like the scientific elements. These weird science novels (which will pop up again, after all) are not always convincing; the ventriloquism and so forth really don't help to solve the mystery of the Wielands' father's death, for example.
What do we think of Clara? Is she right when she says that she should have been more gifted with equanimity? Is she a feminist figure, with her single household, interest in writing, and willingness to declare her feelings? Or is she all the more repressed outside of these little rebellions? Catherine's the angel in the house, for sure...
I've always wanted to write a paper on the anxieties over the Irish in particular as they pop up in Wieland and Edgar Huntly - there's so much there, and there's no scholarship on it at all. But H is absolutely correct to spot the ambiguity of identity that surrounds (such a fantastic character!) Carwin the biloquist. He might be an escaped Irish convict, he might be a converted Catholic Spaniard, and now? Is he an American? Does his 'melting-pot' self, so adaptable and malleable to fit his immediate needs, including the preternatural ability to mimic others' voices perfectly (even God's!) - embody what is best, or what makes Brown most nervous about a new American republic? The novel is set pre-revolution, but is published, if I remember correctly, in 1796, well after the Rev. But clearly the Rev and its aftermath are part of the story - What IS an American? And that the novel takes place just outside of Philly, where the Constitution was being written while Brown was studying law there...
As for the 'not's - that's also totally dope - again, if I remember correctly, the best line in the novel is Carwin to Clara: "The least I wanted to do was to hurt you" - Does that mean that hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do, or what he at least wanted to make sure he did? Phenomenal! I fucking LOVE Wieland. It is one of my favorite novels. I could talk about it for three-hundred years.
Also, with respect to Washington's farewell address favoring an isolationist foreign policy - how does that work itself out in the novel. Mettingen, after all, is, like the US itself, a kind of enlightened utopia, built on slave labor, which Carwin absolutely disrupts.
What about passion vs. rationality?
Religion vs. Reason?
Texts vs. Speech - which are priviliged? How are Wieland's Greek and Latin texts superceded or made outmoded by Carwin's eloquence?
As you can probably tell from my lateness this week, I have failed to do a large portion of the "assigned" reading (Cooper and Brown being the casualties). Working a 27-hour shift and having your wife visit for a mere 48 hours will tend to do that to you.
But enough excuses...
One thing I'm interested in a couple of the works for this week is nascent conceptions of American capitalism. Franklin elaborates Winthrop's naturalized sense of the existence of classes in society. Franklin is careful to point out that he never asked for financial assistance; his rise to the top, while occasionally assisted, comes across as the prototypical American success story. Franklin praises the libraries he set up, not for their ability to neutralize class disparity, but because they can make "the common Tradesmen and Farmers as intelligent as most Gentlemen from other Countries" (69). Wheatley's references to Terence suggest an awareness of the potential for her to earn her freedom through her poetic work; throughout, she uses her status as African as a selling point, as does her owner through his preferatory statement and accompanying "to the PUBLICK." But free enterprise isn't everything, as the Federalist Papers repeatedly stress that economic exchange cannot guarantee peace between disunited states.
Symphonie Fantastique is about to end, so I'll post more later.
I just want to find a way to tie the current concerns with Americanness and ethnicity together for a moment. Janaka was leaning this way in her comments on "Wieland" and "Mohicans" - but to turn the lens more closely on Cooper - think of the way that Cora and Alice are presented in the novel. Cora is the product of one of her father's previous liaisons - it's been a few years since I read Cooper, so forgive me for forgetting the specifics - but I believe her mother to have been Jamaican, or otherwise "other". You'll notice (something you cannot notice, because wholly elided in the Daniel Day Lewis movie version) in the book that Cora is described as having 'darker skin' and that when it comes to action, she is at the forefront - and that it is she, rather than her sister (which the characters anticipate) that is pursued sexually by the Native Americans. Alice, by contrast, is, as I recall, presented as naive, innocent, weaker - and 'pure' white. The love plot that is assumed in the movie between Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and Cora never materializes at all in the novel - what group, if that is a way to put it, does Hawkeye seem to fit in with, or identify with? Natives? Whites? Somewhere inbetween? What definitions of Americanness does Cooper present through Uncas (as I recall, that is the name of Chingachgook's son), Hawkeye, and Cora?
The question of 'American purity' is one, I totally agree, that comes up over and over again in American literature - in Franklin too. Think of the part of the Autobiography, amidst all the talk of the ability of Americans to improve themselves, we get these bizarre, by contrast, bits about drunken Native Americans (135 in the Penguin - "..indeed if it be the Design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed Means."), and a part where, making some kind of comparison, refers to "Don Quixote" and Sancho Panza's line about ruling a 'government of blacks, as then if he could not agree with his People he might sell them." (148 Penguin)
Self-making is a theme in all three of these works, as Janaka also points out - but what kind of self-making gains approbation? Hawkeye's? Carwin's? Franklin's?
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