Romanticism & Professionalization of literature

Question 1

Reasons for the professionalization of literature

Answer 1

• High literacy because of free public school system
• International copyright laws
• 1794 Postal Act
• Cheaper method of production
• Leisure time and expendable income

Question 2

Romanticism antecedents

Answer 2

• Charles Brockden Brown (gothic novelist)
• Washington Irving (short stories, boigraphies)
• James Fenimore Cooper (novelist)

Question 3

High Literature: genres (6) and characteristics (9)

Answer 3

GENRE:
- Short stories
- Sketches
- Essays
- Reviews
- Translations and reprints of famous European works
- Novels in the serial forms /instalments

CHARACTERISTICS
1. Literature as personal expression
2. Emphasis on feelings and subjective perception
3. Disregard for classical norms (originality and novelty)
4. Literature should have no purpose (autonomy of the aesthetics)
5. Each work = a singularity
6. Against goal-oriented rationality
7. Reason over understanding
8. Literature remains useful (cognitive mode)
9. The SUBLIME/ SUBLIMITY

Question 4

The sublime/ sublimity

Answer 4

Reveals the “higher meaning”, “mistery”, and “infinity”. It is connected to the odd, unusual, uncanny or unfamiliar. The opposite of Beauty in the sense that it is overwhelming, frightening and opaque while beauty is proportionate, harmonious, intelligible and soothing.
It is related to the sense of mystery but also to the agonic sense of existence in which life is a struggle between opposing forces and death is and ever present possibility.

Question 5

Low Literature:
formats, characteristics (10), tones and themes and authors

Answer 5

FORMATS
- Periodicals
- Cheap books
- Pamphlets

CHARACTERISTICS
1. Cheaply produced
2. “The pulps”
3. Some factual and some ficitional
4. For literate but not highly educated readers
5. No intellectual pretensions
6. Politically populist: Anti-establishment
7. Claimed to be reformist
8. Salutary influence on American literature
9. Prompted thematic renovation
10. Led to renewal of literary style

Tones and themes: scandalous, gory, sensationalistic, sordid, scabrous.

AUTHORS:
- George Lippard “The Quaker City”
- George Thompson “City Crimes” “The Gay Girls of New York” “The Lady’s Garter”

Question 6

Edgar Allan Poe’s criticism

Answer 6

Deep concern with the nature and function of literature and with literary technique
“The Poetic Principle”
“The Philosophy of Composition”

Question 7

Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry

Answer 7

Prolific, extremely musical and rhythmic

“The Bells”
“The Raven”

Question 8

Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories

Answer 8

Full of mystery, fantasy and horror
“Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque”
” Berenice”

Question 9

Edgar Allan Poe’s characteristics (8)

Answer 9

1. Settings: unspecified past + vague, unspecified locations + semi-fantastic, invented geography
2. Intense subjectivism: 1st person perspective
3. Extreme subjective states: characters usually prey to nervousness, madness, and drug-induced hallucinations.
4. Outsiders, extraordinary individuals
5. Careful construction and gradation of effects “The Murders on the Rue Morgue”, “The Purloined Letter”, “The Mistery of Marie Roget”
6. Logical horror “The Black Cat”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
7. Comment on contemporary American civilization
8. Prankster