Unit 2.1 Flashcards
The Devil and Tom Walker “Critical Reading”
Done
The Devil and Tom Walker: What’s comical?
~ was "praying violently" - Parishioners were changed ~ Waned to steal ea. other's possessions - was happy that she died - "ugh, she took the best!"
Folk Tales
~ Folk Tales are stories handed down orally among the common people of a particular culture. They related unrealistic or unlikely events in order to teach a lesson or express a general truth about life
~ Characters in folk tales tend to be stereotypes of stock characters embodying a single trait, quality, or emotion #StickMan
~ Irving makes this German folk tale distinctly USA by setting it in New England, late 1720s, a time when Puritanism was being replaced by commercialism & materialism
~ “The Devil and Tom Walker” shares the traits of a traditional folk tale but also reveals much about life in New England in the 1720s
- What traits does Tom Walker embody?
- avarice
- What trait does his wife embody?
- selfishness
- What general truth about life does “The Devil and Tom Walker” express?
- Materialism + Greed are destructive (Everyone: community, offensive person, etc.)
Washington Irving (Mrs. Cicchetti)
~ 1815: Irving went to England to save his families import business which suffered form the War of 1812
~ 1818: Firm went bankrupt; Irving decided to support himself by writing
~ 1819-1820: The Sketch Book sent form England to USA in installments. It concluded “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” + “Rip Van Winkle”
~ Irving wrote legends, folk tales, histories, and biography: The life of George Washington
Reading Strategy P. 240
Done
Romanticism (wksht): Trends that make up the Romantic Movement
~ An emphasis on imagination as a key to revealing the innermost depths of the human spirit
~ A great interest in the picturesque & exotic aspects of the past
~ An enthusiasm for portraying national life & character
~ The celebration of the beauty & mystery of nature
~ A focus on he individual
~ A fascination w/the supernatural + the gothic
~ A sense of idealism
Romanticism (wksht)
~ a movement that flourished in Europe
- “Lyrical Ballads” (1798) by British poet William Wordsworth + Samuel Taylor Coleridge
~ A reaction against Classicism
- Classicism: the dominant philosophy of the Age of Reason, which stressed reason, clarity, balance, and order as valued by the ancient Greeks & Romans
~ championed imagination + the emotions; an attitude toward nature. humanity, and society (that espoused freedom + individualism)
~ It was not confined to literature!
- Attempts at social reforms (i.e. feminist movement + abolitionism) (bc of the new emphasis on individual dignity + human rights)
- architecture: gothic (i.e. medival building styles whose design (pointed arches + flying buttresses) carried the eye the imagination
- USA music: borrowed Romantic mortifs form abroad (though still in it artistic infancy)
- Painting (i.e. Hudson River School): depicted the sweeping grandeur of USA landscapes
- “Thanotopsis” by Asher Durnad: breathtaking panorama of natural beauty; captured the Romantic awe of nature that is portrayed in many of the literary + artistic works in this unit
~ characterized the works of USA’s first group of great imaginative writers: Irving (Tom Walker + Rin Van Winkle: drawn form a national past + German legend), Cooper, Bryant (looked to nature + to the past ot reveal qualities of the human spirit), & Poe (no spirit of idealism; bizarre plosts + tormented characters; wrote short stories + poems; borrowed European gothic romances (i.e. horror stories and investigation of the supernatural, “Frankenstein” (1818) by Mary Shelley) preoccupied by the dark, irrational side of the imagination… which made more writers (Herman Melville + Nathaniel Hawthorne… explores the motives + actions of tormented souls) )
~ 1800s: USA Romanticism yielded to the philosophy of Transcendentalism
- Transcendentalism: upheld the goodness of humanity, the glories of nature, and the importance of the individual
*Romantic qualities are still used (in USA)
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
~ Name after Pres. George Washington
~ 1st USA fiction writer to achieve an international reputation #father
~ born into a wealthy NY family (around USA Revolution)
~ planned to be a lawyer
-but grew more interested in travel & writing (+devoting his life to both pursuits
~ 1807-1808: wrote satirical essays
- pen name: Jonathon Oldstyle
- “Salmagundi” a published magazine (named after a spicy appetizer)
~ 1809: “A History of New York From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty
- Ivring’s 1st major work
- humorous exam. of NY in colonial times
- Diedrich Knickerbocker (narrator) = current native NYers
~ 1815-1832: Traveled in Europe (+ encountered European folklore)
- “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” + “Rip Van Winkle”: German folk tales –> USA narratives set in NY’s Hudson Valley
- main characters: classic figures of USA literature
- Ichabod Crane: the nervous Sleepy Hollow schoolteachers harassed by a headless horseman
- Rip Van Winkle: the lazy colonist who slept for decades
“Biography: James Fenimore Cooper (179-1851)” (wksht) (And packet)
~ 1 year old: His family moved from his birthplace (Burlington, NJ) to an enormous estate in what is now Cooperstown in upstate NY
- fine manor house, 1,000-acre tract, in wilderness (was the life of a frontier boy)
~ He learned to use the bow & arrow, to ride horseback, to fish, + to shoot
~ Youth: He heard about Native USAans who not long before had lived in the forests
- he encountered some members of the Oneida tribe (who still camped in the woods)
*Formed the background for many of his novels
~ Brief stay @ Yale
~ 3 years: in Navy
~ Married and settle down (as a gentleman farmer in NY)
~ One evening: hated the dull English novel and began to be a novelist
~ 1st book: dull w/genteel English characters + English setting of which Cooper knew next to nothing
~ He chose more familiar subj. for his next novels
- Revolutionary War (“The Spy”)
- The NY frontier (“Leatherstocking Tales”)
- the sea (“The Pilot”)
Despite the romantic excesses, the melodrama, stilted dialogue, + occasional indifference to craft & detail… there was a vitality + energy to his narratives that made him a magnificent storyteller!
~ within a few years: famous in Europe
~ end of his career: he had completed 33 novels + volumes of social comment, naval history, + travel description
~ “Deerslayer”: the last + perhaps finest novel in Cooper’s 5-part adventure saga (“The Leatherstocking Tales)
~ Cooper developed: the adventure tale (a new literary mode for USA) + 1/most memorable & often imitated heroes in our fiction (i.e. Natty Bumppo, frontiersman (i.e. Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, and Leatherstocking) )
~ Elements of “The Deerslayer”
- the brave, faultless hero
- the loyal Indian companion
- the encounter w/physical danger
- physical danger as a test of prowess
- the hairbreadth rescue
~ Chingachgook: Deerslayer’s closest friend + a young Delaware chief (who is engaged to an Indian girl name Hist. She was stolen from the Hurons and adopted into their tribe. Deerslayer tried to rescue her, but got captured
William Cullen Bryant
~ journal + political activist
- fought to ensure that industrialization did not obscure USA’s democratic values
~ Age 9: Began writing poetry
~ Age 19: drafted the 1st version of “Thanotopsis”
- “Thanotopsis”- his most famous poem
~ Ten years: practiced law + cont. to write poetry in his spare time
~ 1825: most to NYC + became a journalist
~ 1829: became editor-in-chief + part owner of the NY newspapers of the “Evening Post”
~ As journalist, he defended human rights + personal freedoms
~ An outspoken advocate of women’s rights + passionate foe of slavery
~ 1st USA poet to win worldwide critical acclaim
~ His work helped establish the Romantic Movement in USA
~ Romanticism: an artistic + philosophical movement that stressed emotion over reason and celebrated individuality + the human imagination
~ Romantic writers: turned to nature as a course of spiritual comfort & guidance
~ Bryant was influenced by the work of the British Romantics
- William Wordsworth + Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Lyrical Ballads” (1798) (It revolutionized British poetry)
- Bryant incorporated aspects of romanticism into “Thanatopsis”
Bryant and Romanticism (wksht)
~ “Thanatopsis”
- his meditation on death; a Romantic vision of nature, as if reflects the human spirit + provides a key to the understanding of human nature
- Concepts of Romanticism: 1) the physical world is subj. to decline + decay; 2) the belief that while everything changes + dies, God, the Absolute, remains immortal; 3) and the belief that the natural world provides a key to the human world- that humanity is fulfilled through the life cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death
The message is unmistakably Romantic: To those who seek “communion with her, nature speaks in “a still voice”, providing “healing sympathy”
- his theme on death: Romantic (since death is the ultimate restriction on the individual. Only when death is seen as one step in the natural process of renewal, can one accept the final fate of mixing forever w/the “sluggish clod”
~ He emphasize the ancient past (as a form of establishing cont.ly w/the present
*Thus, in death, the individual joins the “long train/Of ages”, the “innumerable caravan, which moves/To that mysterious realm”
~ Blank verse (unrhymed meter)
~ lofty diction
~ inverted syntax to convey his ideas
~ archaic words (to convey a serious, philosophical tone),
~ anastrophe (the displacement of a word, phrase, or clause form its normal position in a sentence, either for emphasis or poetic effect) (**inversion enables a poet to maintain meter &/or rhyme
*Byrant presents a view of death that is neither morbid nor sentimental (through all of the previous stuff)
“A Rescue from The Deeslayer” (wksht)
Done
Tanotopsis classwork!!!
Done
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
~ Poet
~ 1839: “Voices in the Night”
~ 1st USA poet to reach a wide audience + create a national interest in poetry
- How: By writing poetry that sooth + encouraged readers
~1845: “The Poets and Poetry of Europe”: his popular anthology; accomplished his goal of bringing non-English poetry to the ordinary USA reader
~ Born and raised: in Portland, Maine
~ graduated: Bowdoin College
~ 18 years: Taught modern languages @ Harvard
- writing and publishing his own txtbooks
~ Translated foreign literature into English
- effect: found inspirational models for his work
~ he experimented w/adapting traditional European verse forms+ themes to uniquely USA subj.s
~ 1855: “Song of Hiawatha”
~ 1858: “The Courtship of Miles”
~ 1860: “Paul Revere’s Ride”
*All three (and probably more) gave romanticized view of USA’s early history + democratic deals
~ His poetry: criticized for being overly optimistic & sentimental
- But that what made him the most popular poet of his day
*So popular that 75th birthday was celebrated as if it were a national holiday
“The Song of Hiawatha: Critical Reading P. 259”
Done
