Oh lord, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one dragging her feet. Rough week. I don't like redeye flights.
Brief thoughts:
Scarlet Letter has a lot of themes that will be useful to pick up with other works. 1) Puritans, enough said 2) mind-body divide. This relates really well to Romero's admittedly extremely awkward use of it in Vanishing American, but it is most definitely a large concern in nineteenth-century America. Hawthorne's women are really all body, even when they're wispy body. 3) forest/wilderness vs. civilization.
Douglass, of course, starts themes that we'll see again in Af-Am narratives: spirituals, naming, the importance of reading (seen in a lot of antislavery works as well). I think it's important to note that he also carries on a thread stemming from Wheatley (I can hear Betsy now) with the idea of permitted/enabled voice and authorship. The need for white sanction/encouragement to get his voice out there is highly problematic, of course. So is Garrison's sponsorship of him.
At the same time, perhaps such a voice ultimately has more authority; he WAS a slave, and IF his authorship (and oratory) are admitted, they are final. Or did people call him a liar? Well, most likely. But nobody doubted that Stowe WROTE Uncle Tom's; still, she had to write a whole additional book to justify its content (A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin).
Also time to start thinking about the intersection with periodicals, histoire du livre people. Abolitionist periodicals are a nice little confined area to think about this -- periodicals as delivery of information and narrative. How do the different forms of literature intersect?
More later, hopefully. I'll likely run this week's reading into next week, at the price of reviewing Whitman.
I haven't gotten to Douglass yet, but the enabled authorship thing carries over, as Heidi pointed out, from Wheatley. I just want to reiterate briefly my own interest in these two authors' use of their status as blacks to sell copies. I don't mean to level accusations of crass capitalism by any means; but surely these two, as many others, must have had some cognizance of the enormous abolitionist (and ab-curious) audience out there for the "real deal." Any contemporaneous doubt about the legitimacy of the works only helps sell copies: when both Hutchinson and Hancock sign their names to the introduction to a book of poetry, interest is bound to arise. The most interesting question here, I think, is gauging Wheatley and Douglass' conception of the markets they were addressing and the power they felt they could use within such a market. (Why do we read Douglass' slave narrative so much more often than others'? Why was Wheatley the first African to publish poetry in the US? Where was everybody else?) As I noted last week, Wheatley routinely plays on her race within her poetry as a solid, pre-rhetorical fact on which to base other arguments. I want to see this not as mediated speech (is any speech anything but?), but as a conscious decision made by an author within a particular economic context.
Incidentally: why is it that Jefferson's only substantive critique of "Whately" is that she only amounts to a sycophantic Christian ("religion has produced...")?
Walden has a ton going on, but I haven't found all that much homoeroticism yet. I'll keep you updated. In contrast to Wheatley, Thoreau seems to work under the belief that he is an American Adam, perpetually able to sever himself from his context and live as a savage, or a Hindoo, or what-have-you. There is always this ability, in Thoreau, to return to the cellar, to void oneself of the unnecessary "luxuries." There is something going on here that is very different from Puritan ideology; neither Winthrop (with his appeals for charity and naturalizing of the class system) nor Edwards (with his universalist doctrine for salvation) seem to coexist easily with Thoreau.
I don't know how much has been said about gender in Emerson and Throeau. Both are constantly castigating what they regard as effeminate behaviour. "Luxury" seems to have something to do with the complacent reception of received opinions -- with failing to see anew. As far as this whole vision thing goes: Emerson is explicitly afraid of losing his sight, but his issue seems to be more visionary than visual. I don't know exactly how to make that distinction at this point; it partakes of empiricism and poetry somehow. Let me know if you guys have any ideas.
I didn't mean to suggest that there was "a" slave narrative -- clearly there were many, and of varying approaches. My question has more to do with why some writers were successful at garnering an audience and others were not. Douglass surely did not have the power himself to saturate the market, but the same could be said for Thoreau. Wheatley's awareness of Terence (and his earning his freedom through his poetry) suggests to me that there is something beyond manipulation going on here. I guess we are talking about agency here; all I want to do is problematize the idea that Wheatley and Douglass lack all agency in the production of their texts.
The Poet takes a ton of stuff from Shelley's Defence of Poetry. The "liberating gods" bit comes directly from Shelley, as is the bit about language as fossil poetry. Experience is very critical of coherence: "The grossest ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness," and souls can never touch their objects (this being the dark side of the transparent eyeball). As far as influence, Emerson would have to be influencing Thoreau, most of Emerson's work preceding Walden by a decade or two. I wouldn't call Thoreau a canonist -- he says early on in Walden that his tablecoth served the same purpose as the Iliad. Of course both men have some investment in the canon, but I think Emerson is more interested in HOW one reads: one must be a creative reader as well as writer.
I have a lot to say about these guys because that's all I got to this week. Is there any chance anyone could email me the text for the 1860-1 Calamus from the Virginia website? I can't seem to access it from where I am.
Homoeroticism in Thoreau? Is that really supposed to be a thing? There is, I suppose, a reasonably loving description of the Canadian woodsman.
I did not do Emerson... figure I'll get to it with Betsy's class... but I fought my way through Walden. Henry sure did like to talk about perch. And ice bubbles. And sand formations. And birds. What I found interesting about Walden is its absolute artificiality, of course -- but also his acceptance of this artificiality, which I think is often passed over when people are making fun of him for running off to the woods. Of course, the entire thing is one giant parable, but he also has mini-parables. He's less hammer-over-the-head about them than I expected, truthfully; he is also more interested in the outside world, though with a sort of detached quasi-scientific tone, than I expected. By this, I refer to his descriptions of the town of Concord, or his paean to Bronson Alcott (the blue-robed visitor).
I find interesting links between Thoreau and Whitman. I know that such ground has been trod a million times before, but it bears examination for orals. NATURE is the big theme, but their differing ideas of solitude are probably more fruitful for contrast.
4 Comments:
Oh lord, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one dragging her feet. Rough week. I don't like redeye flights.
Brief thoughts:
Scarlet Letter has a lot of themes that will be useful to pick up with other works. 1) Puritans, enough said 2) mind-body divide. This relates really well to Romero's admittedly extremely awkward use of it in Vanishing American, but it is most definitely a large concern in nineteenth-century America. Hawthorne's women are really all body, even when they're wispy body. 3) forest/wilderness vs. civilization.
Douglass, of course, starts themes that we'll see again in Af-Am narratives: spirituals, naming, the importance of reading (seen in a lot of antislavery works as well). I think it's important to note that he also carries on a thread stemming from Wheatley (I can hear Betsy now) with the idea of permitted/enabled voice and authorship. The need for white sanction/encouragement to get his voice out there is highly problematic, of course. So is Garrison's sponsorship of him.
At the same time, perhaps such a voice ultimately has more authority; he WAS a slave, and IF his authorship (and oratory) are admitted, they are final. Or did people call him a liar? Well, most likely. But nobody doubted that Stowe WROTE Uncle Tom's; still, she had to write a whole additional book to justify its content (A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin).
Also time to start thinking about the intersection with periodicals, histoire du livre people. Abolitionist periodicals are a nice little confined area to think about this -- periodicals as delivery of information and narrative. How do the different forms of literature intersect?
More later, hopefully. I'll likely run this week's reading into next week, at the price of reviewing Whitman.
I haven't gotten to Douglass yet, but the enabled authorship thing carries over, as Heidi pointed out, from Wheatley. I just want to reiterate briefly my own interest in these two authors' use of their status as blacks to sell copies. I don't mean to level accusations of crass capitalism by any means; but surely these two, as many others, must have had some cognizance of the enormous abolitionist (and ab-curious) audience out there for the "real deal." Any contemporaneous doubt about the legitimacy of the works only helps sell copies: when both Hutchinson and Hancock sign their names to the introduction to a book of poetry, interest is bound to arise. The most interesting question here, I think, is gauging Wheatley and Douglass' conception of the markets they were addressing and the power they felt they could use within such a market. (Why do we read Douglass' slave narrative so much more often than others'? Why was Wheatley the first African to publish poetry in the US? Where was everybody else?) As I noted last week, Wheatley routinely plays on her race within her poetry as a solid, pre-rhetorical fact on which to base other arguments. I want to see this not as mediated speech (is any speech anything but?), but as a conscious decision made by an author within a particular economic context.
Incidentally: why is it that Jefferson's only substantive critique of "Whately" is that she only amounts to a sycophantic Christian ("religion has produced...")?
Walden has a ton going on, but I haven't found all that much homoeroticism yet. I'll keep you updated. In contrast to Wheatley, Thoreau seems to work under the belief that he is an American Adam, perpetually able to sever himself from his context and live as a savage, or a Hindoo, or what-have-you. There is always this ability, in Thoreau, to return to the cellar, to void oneself of the unnecessary "luxuries." There is something going on here that is very different from Puritan ideology; neither Winthrop (with his appeals for charity and naturalizing of the class system) nor Edwards (with his universalist doctrine for salvation) seem to coexist easily with Thoreau.
I don't know how much has been said about gender in Emerson and Throeau. Both are constantly castigating what they regard as effeminate behaviour. "Luxury" seems to have something to do with the complacent reception of received opinions -- with failing to see anew. As far as this whole vision thing goes: Emerson is explicitly afraid of losing his sight, but his issue seems to be more visionary than visual. I don't know exactly how to make that distinction at this point; it partakes of empiricism and poetry somehow. Let me know if you guys have any ideas.
Tomorrow's show: Mendelssohn, Kodaly, Wagner, Mendelssohn.
I didn't mean to suggest that there was "a" slave narrative -- clearly there were many, and of varying approaches. My question has more to do with why some writers were successful at garnering an audience and others were not. Douglass surely did not have the power himself to saturate the market, but the same could be said for Thoreau. Wheatley's awareness of Terence (and his earning his freedom through his poetry) suggests to me that there is something beyond manipulation going on here. I guess we are talking about agency here; all I want to do is problematize the idea that Wheatley and Douglass lack all agency in the production of their texts.
The Poet takes a ton of stuff from Shelley's Defence of Poetry. The "liberating gods" bit comes directly from Shelley, as is the bit about language as fossil poetry. Experience is very critical of coherence: "The grossest ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness," and souls can never touch their objects (this being the dark side of the transparent eyeball). As far as influence, Emerson would have to be influencing Thoreau, most of Emerson's work preceding Walden by a decade or two. I wouldn't call Thoreau a canonist -- he says early on in Walden that his tablecoth served the same purpose as the Iliad. Of course both men have some investment in the canon, but I think Emerson is more interested in HOW one reads: one must be a creative reader as well as writer.
I have a lot to say about these guys because that's all I got to this week. Is there any chance anyone could email me the text for the 1860-1 Calamus from the Virginia website? I can't seem to access it from where I am.
Homoeroticism in Thoreau? Is that really supposed to be a thing? There is, I suppose, a reasonably loving description of the Canadian woodsman.
I did not do Emerson... figure I'll get to it with Betsy's class... but I fought my way through Walden. Henry sure did like to talk about perch. And ice bubbles. And sand formations. And birds. What I found interesting about Walden is its absolute artificiality, of course -- but also his acceptance of this artificiality, which I think is often passed over when people are making fun of him for running off to the woods. Of course, the entire thing is one giant parable, but he also has mini-parables. He's less hammer-over-the-head about them than I expected, truthfully; he is also more interested in the outside world, though with a sort of detached quasi-scientific tone, than I expected. By this, I refer to his descriptions of the town of Concord, or his paean to Bronson Alcott (the blue-robed visitor).
I find interesting links between Thoreau and Whitman. I know that such ground has been trod a million times before, but it bears examination for orals. NATURE is the big theme, but their differing ideas of solitude are probably more fruitful for contrast.
Post a Comment
<< Home