literaryterms.doc

Benjamin Franklin1. works(1) Poor Richards Almanac(2) Autobiography2. contribution(1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.(2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”.(3) Everything seems to meet in this one man “Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”.Franklin (1706-1790) was a universal genius who did not realize that his Autobiography would eventually become a classic of its kind. It shows the beginnings of his personal, civic, and political success, yet the account is uncolored by vanity. Franklin shows us that he is a human being as well as a successful man.Though his style of writing was clear and even plain in his time, we now find it a bit hard to read. It has many long words, often from the Latin language, and long sentences. But we must remember that he was writing two centuries ago. It is true that Franklins style is formal. The organization of much of what he says-if not how he says it-is informal, however. In his famous Autobiography, in particular, he talks first about one thing and then another with little attempt at connecting them. We can see a man of versatile energy and new ideas.Of course, not all of his ideas were new. In some cases he simply became the most prominent advocate of old ones, especially the beliefs that we should work hard and that we should save our money. These principles had been current since Puritan times but Franklin spread them widely by putting them into a popular almanac, or calendar, called Poor Richards Almanac, which he himself printed. It contained many popular sayings such as God helps them that help themselves, Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him, and Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. Puritanism 1. Time: 17th century2. place: New England, the North America3. Historical Background:In the year 1620, 102 Pilgrims went on board the ship “the Mayflower” for Virginia, the British colony at that time. They arrived at Cape Cod at the eleventh of November and settled at Plymouth (at the south of Massachussetts) and established the first colony, Plymouth. While on board the ship, 41 out of the 102 passengers signed “The Mayflower Compact ”, the first written law in American history.4Basic Puritan Beliefs1). Total Depravity - the concept of Original Sin2). Unconditional Election - the concept of predestination3). Limited Atonement - Jesus died for the chosen only, not for everyone.4). Irresistible Grace - Gods grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or denied.5). Perseverance of the saints - those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will be going against the will of God.5. The Function of Puritan Writers1). To transform a mysterious God - mysterious because he is separate from the world.2). To make him more relevant to the universe.3). To glorify God.6. The Style of Puritan Writing1). Protestant - against ornateness; reverence for the Bible.2). Purposiveness - there was a purpose to Puritan writing - described in Part II above.3). Puritan writing reflected the character and scope of the reading public, which was literate and well-grounded in religion.7. Common Themes in Early Puritan Writing1). Idealism - both religious and political.2). Pragmaticism - practicality and purposiveness.The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses the aspects of relationships, religion, community, discipline and punishment in the puritan community of 17th century Boston. Relationships between men and women were very constrained and that is what made adultery such a bad sin in the eyes of everyone in the community. Religion seemed to govern over all, people would look up to reverends and the community believed that fate was their destiny. Public discipline and punishment were used to discourage everyone else from committing the same crime or sin as the offending criminal did. The community was to follow the beliefs of god and to do their duties the best they could, yet were there to criticize and punish all who disobeyed the religion or laws. In 17th century Boston every thing was very strict and everyone was expected to follow the laws, which makes Hesters sin such an excellent example of the beliefs of that time period. The first scaffold scene is very important because the scene sums up the beliefs of the general public at that time, and gives a prospective of what Hester Prynne must deal with. In the beginning of chapter two the scene is described as it could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit,(47) showing that the whole town was there for a ruthless public punishment. The crowd was not there for an execution though, but there for a public punishment of Hester Prynne who had committed adultery. A townsman describes Hesters punishment to a stranger as, they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom.(58) This scene shows the weight of values and morals upon society in the 17th century and how public punishment was not only used as punishment but as a way to discourage others from committing the same crime. The community was key in this punishment because it helped alienate Hester and further her pain. The punishment brings forth Hesters underlying pain, Hester sent forth a cry she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real.(55) This pain only breaks surface once, yet throughout the whole story Hester must deal with the shame and emotional pain of the scarlet letter. The stranger sums it up best with the quotation, Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. Since religion was such a key part of their lives, anyone who did disobey their god was looked down upon. What made religion ironic in this story was how everyone looked up to a reverend that had committed the same sin as someone they looked down upon severely. Dimmesdale says, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I, must stand together! But daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!(134) The reverend knows his sin and wants be punished with Hester and Pearl, yet not until what he calls judgement day. In the 17th century, Puritans believed that there was a stern God who had decreed in advance the fate of each person for all time. Therefore, there was not much people felt they could do to become a better person in Gods eyes but do his biding with their jobs. To increase their chances of getting to go to heaven the townspeople would often get one step closer to God by getting close to a religious leader, which was bad for Arthur Dimmesdale who was probably farther away from God than everyone else because of his sin. Relationships were looked upon as something sacred and a woman should be loyal to her husband. Once married it was considered a horrible offense if you were un-loyal to your spouse. They have not been bold to put force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The penalty therefor is death.(58) A townsman explains that the penalty is death for her crime (showing the harshness of the 17th century), yet that the other party in the affair must have played a strong role in tempting her, so they just sentenced her to the letter on her chest and three hours on the scaffold. The stranger shows how most people reacted when only seeing one of the guilty two parties up on the scaffold, it irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. Women still did not have that many rights, so anything Hester said in her defense would have just have been ignored. Relationships were not supposed to be broken unless by divorce, even if the husband was at the bottom of the sea-where Hesters husband was believed to be. Through relationships, religion, community, discipline and punishment the reader can get a better understanding of what was expected of towns people in the 17th century. The Scarlet Letter shows the pain and suffering a woman went through when she broke her marriage, and disobeyed her religion. She then was sentenced to a public punishment to be humiliated, tormented, and alienated by the community around her. The fate driven religious society in 17th century Boston would not accept sin of any kind and the punishment for adultery was death. Instead, the community branded Hester Prynne with the letter A for the rest of her life and made her stand in front of the whole community as an example for everyone that sin and corruption was not accepted in their society.British romanticism The romantic period in English literature is dated as beginning in 1785 or alternatively in 1789 (the outbreak of the French revolution), or in 1798 (the publication of Wordsworths and Samuel Taylor Coleridges Lyrical Ballads) and ending either in 1830 or else in 1832, the year in which Sir Walter Scotts died. Major English writers of the period, in addition to Wordsworth and Coleridge, were the poets Robert Burns, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Walter Savage Landor; the prose writers Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Leigh Hunt; and the novelists Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley. The span between 1786 and the close of the eighteenth century was that of the Gothic romances by William Beckford, Matthew Gregory Lewis, William Godwin, and above all, Anne Radcliffe. American Romanticism1. Background(1) Political background and economic development(2) Romantic movement in European countriesDerivative foreign influenceAmerican Romanticism, like other literary movements, developed on the heels of romantic movements in Europe. Its beginnings can be traced back to the eighteenth century there. In America, it dominated the literary scene from around 1820 to the end of the Civil War and the rise of Realism. It arose as a reaction to the formal orthodoxy and Neoclassicism of the preceding period. It is marked by a freedom from the authority, forms, and conventions typical in Neoclassical literature. It replaced the neoclassic emphasis on reason with its own emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and the neoclassic emphasis on authority with an emphasis on individuality, which places the individual at the center of all life. In literary style, the Romantics preferred boldness over the preceding ages desire for restraint, maximum suggestiveness over the neoclassical ideal of clarity, free experimentation over the rules of composition, genre, and decorum, and they promoted the conception of the artist as inspired creator over that of the artist as maker or technical master. 2. features showing independence (1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien.(2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they entertained.(3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with American Romanticism.American RenaissanceThe span 1828-1865 from the Jacksonian era to the Civil War, often identified as the Romantic Period in America, marks the full coming of age of a distinctively American literature. This period is sometimes known as the American Renaissance, the title of F. O. Matthiessens influential book (1941) about its outstanding writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne; it is also sometimes called the Age of Transcendentalism, after the philosophical and literary movement, centred on Emerson, that was dominant in New England. In all the major literary genres except drama, writers produced works of an originality and excellence not exceeded in later American history. Emerson, Thoreau, and the early feminist Margaret Fuller shaped the ideas, ideals, and literary aims of many contemporary and later American writers. It was the age not only of continuing writings by William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper, but also of the novels and short stories of Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the southern novelist William Gilmore Simms; of the poetry of Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the most innovative and influential of all American poets, Walt Whitman; and of the beginning of distinguished American criticism in the essays of Poe, Simms, and James Russel Lowell, the tradition of African-American poetry by women was continued by Francis Watkins Harper, and the African-Amrican novel was inaugurated. Ralph Waldo EmersonHe was a great writer. Rranscendentalism found written expression in his essay Nature (1836): “Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.” His Harvard address, “The American Scholar”, urged America to assert its intellectual independence: “We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.” The Dial, founded in 1840, was edited by Emerson from 1842 to 1844, and published many of his gnomic, rough hewn, but frequently striking poems. His first volume of essays (1841) contains “Self-reliance” (Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds); and “The Oversoul”, which proposes a mystic Unity within which every mans particular being is contained and made one with all other. His second Essays (1844) contains “The Poet”, in which he urges the incomparable materials of America, “our log-rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes and Indians America is a poem in our eyes; it ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.” Nathaniel Hawthorne1. works(1) Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from and Old Manse(2) The Scarlet Letter(3) The House of the Seven Gables(4) The Marble Faun2. point of view(1) Evil is at the core of human life, “that blackness in Hawthorne”(2) Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation (causality).(3) He is of the opinion that evil educates.(4) He has disgust in science.3. aesthetic ideas(1) He took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these furnish the soil on which his mind grows to fruition.(2) He was convinced that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. To tell the truth and satirize and yet not to offend: That was what Hawthorne had in mind to achieve.4. style typical romantic writer(1) the use of symbols(2) revelation of characters psychology(3) the use of supernatural mixed with the actual(4) his stories are parables to teach a lesson(5) use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of uncertainty multiple point of viewEmily DickinsonEmily Dickinsons poetry comes out in bursts. The poems are short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol. But within her little lyrics Miss Dickinson writes about some of the most important things in life. She writes about love and a lover, whom she either never really found or else gave up. She writes about nature. Like Whitman, Dickinson was a courageous experimentalist. “I have no monarch in my life,”she confessed. Little that she worte seemed conventional: her choice of words, her verbal constructions, even her spelling. And, then, there are her images. To her, poetry is a bodying forth by means of concrete images of an inspired thought. Her poetry abounds in telling images. In the best of her poems every word is a picture seen. A salient feature of her technique is her severe economy of expression. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness, and plainest words. Al these characteristics of her poetry were to become popular through Stephen Crane with the Imagists such as Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell in the twentieth century. She became, with Stephen Crane, the precusor of the Imagist movement. Walt Whitman Walt Whitman1. work: Leaves of Grass (9 editions)(1) Song of Myself(2) There Was a Child Went Forth(3) Crossing Brooklyn Ferry(4) Democratic Vistas(5) Passage to India(6) Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking2. themes “Catalogue of American and European thought”He had been influenced by many American and European thoughts: enlightenment, idealism, transcendentalism, science, evolution ideas, western frontier spirits, Jeffersons individualism, Civil War Unionism, Orientalism.Major themes in his poems (almost everything):l equality of things and beingsl divinity of everythingl immanence of Godl democracyl evolution of cosmosl multiplicity of naturel self-reliant spiritl death, beauty of deathl expansion of Americal brotherhood and social solidarity (unity of nations in the world)l pursuit of love and happiness3. style: “free verse”(1) no fixed rhyme or scheme(2) parallelism, a rhythm of thought(3) phonetic recurrence(4) the habit of using snapshots(5) the use of a certain pronoun “I”(6) a looser and more open-ended syntactic structure(7) use of conventional image(8) strong tendency to use oral English(9) vocabulary powerful, colourful, rarely used words of foreign origins, some even wrong(10) sentences catalogue technique: long lis