Romanticism Flashcards
American Myth
19th century tried to introduce a perfect society - anti-slavery, utopian societies are started etc.
Literature of the South
While Puritans wanted to create a City on the Hill, the southerners wanted to build a garden. They built a pseudo-medieval culture - plantation owners were at the top.
Edgar Allan Poe
Played down regional elements, because he wanted to be an universal artist. Aesthetics mattered the most for him: art is meant to exist just for its own sake. Themes of his literature:
- violence, death and madness
- poetry should reach beauty by using repetition, sound, and manipulation of rhythm
- prose should deal with truth
- melancholy and death of beautiful women
- indirection and suggestion
- opponent of rationalism, father of deduction
- no didactic value
- short stories where every word counts
- gothic of the mind (madness etc)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dark Romanticism - tackles the dark urges of human mind. Dark Romantic themes in his literature:
- alienation
- solitude
- nature
- unconscious fantasy
Twice-Told Tales
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne, first of his 3 romances. Symbolic novel taking place in Puritan America. Hester imprisoned for adultery - a strong woman who refuses to name the father of her daughter and protects her lover. The meaning of the scarlet letter changes as the book goes on (adultery, artist, angel…). Chillingworth - the devil. The forest is a place of honesty.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romances
- The House of the Seven Gables
- The Blithdale Romance
- The Marble Faun
Novel vs. Romance
Novel - concerned with superficial reality. Romance - truth of hearth.
Herman Melville
Major pessimistic themes:
- family bankrupcy
- search for father
- cosmic alienation
- absence of God and does he exist?
- corruption of nature
- origin of sin
- nature of human depravity and dark impulses
- evil in action
- evil will expand unless it’s stopped with love
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life
Henry Melville’s first book. Social criticism; mixed feelings towards natives. Cannibalistic side of the Utopia.
Omo: A Narrative of the Adventurers in the South Seas
Herman Melville. Social criticism again; Highlights destructive effects of progress on premodern societies. Loss of innocence due to colonialism.
Mardi
Herman Melville. Introduced the myth of the fall that will later reoccur in Moby Dick
Moby Dick
Herman Melville; his greatest work.
No chronology. Ishmael, frustrated with life, embarks on an expedition with captain Ahab - man determined to kill Moby Dick, a white whale who took his leg.
Moby Dick - symbol of evil at first, but in reality neither good nor bad (as it’s a man-made concept).
Ahab in his blind rage attempts to kill life itself.
Ends with Ahab dying, and Ishmael surviving to tell the tale.
White color can be terrifying: its also shows the absence of color. Ahab chases after Moby Dick to give his life value.
The novel shows the voyage to see if life has meaning - the ship is America itself.
Pierre
Herman Melville
Billy Bud
Herman Melville, left unfinished. Theme of the fall. A sailor accidentally kills a satanic character. The captain has to be objective while judging the crime; law doesn’t look at heart but facts (which makes motifs invinsible). Titular Billy is innocent, but gets hanged, ascends against sun and restores peace to the ship. Law is inhumane, central character embodies innocence - biblical Adam, initiated into evil by a satanic figure.
