Notes de cours
Samenvatting Engels Cultuur en Literatuur
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- Universiteit Antwerpen (UA)
Dit is een samenvatting gemaakt in het academiejaar voor het vak Engels Cultuur en Literatuur aan de Universiteit Antwerpen.
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Lecture 06/10Bartleby – Herman Melville (1865)
- First impression: depression, mental ilness, empathy, WALL STREET
- Context:
- Author posted it anonymously à suffering from depression. He had written the
greatest commercial failure (at that time) which he thought was a masterpiece:
“Moby Dick” (1851). Melville had written adventurous novels, was popular. When
he publishes the book people drop him as an author à tedious book.
- 1957 the confidence man (last book): unreadable long sentences
- The Piazza Tales 1856: owns the short story
- He wants to write differently than other authors à allegory bc Bartleby is different
from the other clerks
- Story is completely dependent on the narrator = lawyer
- The lawyer starts the story presenting himself:
- Practical, down-to-earth mundane man: “Imprimis: I am a man who, from his
youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of
life is the best.”
- Melville lashes out at materialistic practical money driven American society by
defining the lawyer as he did
- Reacts differently to Bartleby throughout the story
- Features of Bartleby are anticipated in the descriptions of the other clerks
- 3 different generations work together
Entrance of Bartleby: “a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold,
the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now— pallidly neat, pitiably
respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.”
Descriptions of own efforts to understand Bartleby to undo Bartleby’s outsidership, he wants to
make sense of his alienation, and wants to incorporate him within the logic of the firm.
Reversal of power: the lawyer moves out of own building; Bartleby stays behind: “Since he will
not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices;”
Description through negation: “I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that though at
intervals he had consider- able time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—no, not even
a newspaper;” (whole paragraph about negation).
The lawyer becomes unsettled: problematic relationship between them; clerk undermines the
power relationship
“prefer”: the others start to use Bartleby’s language à contamination of the firm
Refusal becomes more radical; refuses to write anything
Reference to murder case: Samual Adams (Printer) murdered by Colt (p21)
, - Killed with hatched
- Made body disappear
- Colt was convicted and sentenced to death; on the morning of execution, he committed
suicide à anticipates the end of the story
“I WOULD PREFER NOT TO”:
- Statement against power à doesn’t want to obey orders?
- Not an outright refusal
- Creates hybrid in-between space between refusing and accepting
- There is no reason why he says this, only assumptions
Story is statement: any thinking American is a misunderstood outsider; thinking or refusing to
participate is deadly.
Lecture 13/10
→ Referring to The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- At that time, what was there in America? In terms of art → what sets us apart
from the old world?
- Raison d’etre → Big anxiety → many were in need of something of
meaning (because Europe was so far in terms of art)
- Suddenly → new generation → all contemporary (still considered the
founding fathers of American culture) → also women → movement
called Transcendentalism (span of 20 years) → all in East coast
(Massachussetts)
- Philosopher R. W. Emerson
- Wrote essays about individualism
- N. Hawthorne
- H. Melville
- Novelist (Moby Dick, etc.) → Moby Dick dedicated to
Hawthorne
- Henry David Thoreau
- Wrote seminal book: WALDEN (name of pond)
- Extremely worried about the way things were going in America
(once we were puritans, Gods chosen people, now we’re off the
tracks → worried about failed culture) → to set an
example, he left his town, went to Walden (woods with
pond), built himself a hut and lived there for 2 years,
observing nature, and then he wrote a book about it,
“Walden” (book that told his fellow Americans that they
were betraying America → shows how you can survive
individually → turn back to society → wants to set an
example of self reliance/suffiency) → wasn't really alone (w
friends, mom, …)
- Margaret Fuller
, - Philosopher about pleat of women in magazine called “The Dial”
- Together with emerson
- Walt Whitman
- Famous collection of poems “Leaves of grass”
- Homosexual poet writing about homosexuality (not easy at the
time)
- Where all the descendants of the Puritans (Founding Fathers)
- Hawthorne directly descended from Puritan blood
- Urgent idea of individualism (not puritanism) → How can you
develop a culture based on individualism? → seems
contradictory
- The idea of founding a culture based on shared desire of
individuals to be free
- America = culture made up of individuals linked to one and other
by the shared desire to be left alone (expressed in poems of
Whitman, “Leaves of Grass” → field of grass from a distance,
closer look: all singular leaves of grass)
- E pluribus unum → “out of many, one”
- Edgar Allen Poe → outsider in this group (the rest knew each
other well)
- Phenomenon later, in the 1940s, called “The American Renaissance”
(controversial because where was the naissance?)
Nathaniel Hawhtorn → Scarlet Letter
- Respected short story writer but never reached great audience but with
Scarlet Letter → he became a very prominent writer
- Precedes novel with “Custom House” → in town above Boston, Salem →
where Hawthorne lived for many years
- He went to the attic one day and found a strange object, manuscript
supposedly written by surveyor, Jonathan Pue (guy who also worked at
Customs House), he opens it up and it turns out to be interesting story
about a woman, Hester Prynne (being held together by old cloth that
formed letter A) → Scarlet Letter → edited version of the manuscript he
found
- Not true, he wants to make the reader believe it
- Another example of writer ‘stealing’ story: “Oorlog en Terpentijn” (writer
based story on stories from his grandfather in WW1)
- Story: Hester Prynne gives birth to baby girl called Pearl but there is no
husband → Hester doesn't want to tell people who the father is of the
child → refusal to tell
- Husband R. Chillingworth (at the time lived in Amsterdam) → not
the father → doctor
- “Culture where religion and law are almost identical” = legalistic society
- Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale holds public speeches berating Prynne
, - This inward struggle turns him physically sick → has to go
see a doctor → Chillingworth
- Turns out to be the father
- Both worried about their own reputation
- Prynne is outcast with punishment → led to scaffold, must stand
in front of pillory for the whole town to watch, “This woman is
standing on this stage of shame”, for three hours, punishment:
public’s gaze and is forced to wear a scarlet letter A embroided
onto her clothes for as long as she lives
- It is never explicitly said what the A stands for → likely
“adultery”
- After prison, she goes to live outside of the city. She does needlework
(dresses, etc.) to make a living. Over 7 years, she becomes a respected
women (among other women) because of her resilience
- Public vs private → refers to puritans (loathed idea of privacy,
wanted to suppress private self)
- Hawthorne defends the right to privacy in Scarlet Letter
- Quotes “the little Puritans” → children are just as cruel
- Tituba → name of girl who lived in Salem and worked as babysitter. Was of
non-white descent. One night something went wrong in the town/ with the
babies she took care of. She was accused of being a witch (no evidence at
all). Story spread through Salem → many other girls and women got accused
of witchery. Salem is the first example of mass hysteria in America. → court
was set up to decide whether person was bewitched or not:
- Put head in bucket full of water for a little too long → either you die
(turns out you're human) or you survive (turns out to be a witch)
- Killed by putting them on stone bed and putting a rock on them (stone-pressing)
- Salem trials have become metaphor for mass hysteria (compared to Red Scare
→ communists)
- One of three judges was John Hathorne → direct link between
Hawthorne and Hathorne → Hawthorne changed spelling of his name
after family’s involvement in Salem witch trials
- No puritans or witch trials anymore in 19th century → had their own
anxiety → slavery
- Hawthorne → writes about stories of puritanism to indirectly talk about
slavery
- Her outsidership did not destroy her → on the contrary → she turned it into
power (the meaning of the A changes: from a mark of sinfulness to being an
enabling force)
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