THE BIG QUESTIONS

What does it mean to be “American”? What is “American Literature”? What

should be included or excluded in its study?

What are language and narrative, and what are their roles in your life?

What is the narrative of “American Exceptionalism”, where does it come from, to what extent is it true?

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WHAT WE’RE STUDYING (AND NOT STUDYING)

The American Continent possessed major pre-Columbian civilizations a deep heritage of culture, mythology, ritual, chant and poetry. American authors, especially recently, look to this as something

essential to American culture, and this extraordinary variety contributes to the complex multiethnicity of contemporary American Experience.

But (for the sake of this course) this is not the originating tradition of what we now call American Literature. That came from the collision between the land with its “Indians”

and the discoverers and settlers who left a developed, literate Renaissance Europe. First to explore and conquer and then to populate what they considered a virgin continent, a “new world” already promised to them in their own mythology.

THE PROMISED LAND

We can say “America” existed in Europe long before it was discovered, in speculative classical, medieval and then Renaissance writing From classical (Greek and Roman) and

religious tradition (Christian) out of vague historical memories and

fantastic tales an identity had already been given to

the great land mass on the world’s edge Atlantis, Avalon… cities of gold,

fountains of youth, etc. The idea of America as an exceptional

place, different from all others endures to this day and precedes it’s discovery.

The land often had millenarian or Utopian narratives associated with it Millenarian - relating to or believing in Christian

millenarianism from Latin mīllēnārius "containing a thousand", is the belief

by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed.

Utopian - possessing highly desirable or near perfect qualities. The word was coined by Sir Thomas More in Latin for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean.

ROMANCE, ADVENTURE!

Captain John Smith becomes one of the first American Authors

A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608)

Chivarly! Adventure! Missionary Intention! (Missionary Intention?) Pochahontas!

The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624)

Arguably creates the “noble savage” archetype

Shows us the need to narrate this “new” story but also reveals the problems in that narration, giving plot and purpose to his travels in the new world that pull from…

Renaissance theories of history the Christian faith in mission patriotic ideas of settlement value of hard work.

Excitement comes from crossing the frontier of the old world and into the new

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How would you live your life if you believed that God's will was knowable and that you were instruments of that will? What's potentially problematic about

this attitude? What contemporary groups of people

believe that God's will is knowable and that they are its instrument?

ThePuritans

ORIGINS

Where: England When: Late 16th and early

17th century King Henry VIII split from

the Catholic church over the issue of divorcing his wife and marrying a handful of other women (sequentially not simultaneously)

Henry VIII establishes his own church, the Church of England

PILGRIMS AND THE PURITANS WERE DIFFERENT GROUPS

• The term "Puritan“ began as a taunt or insult applied by traditional Anglicans to those who criticized or wished to "purify" the Church of England.

• Simplify worship, no stained glass window, no grandeur• "Puritan" refers to two distinct groups: "separating"

Puritans, such as the Plymouth colonists, who believed that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must separate themselves from it; and non-separating Puritans, such as the colonists who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed in reform but not separation.

• imagined themselves re-enacting the story of the Exodus. Like the ancient Israelites, they were liberated by God from oppression and bound to him by a covenant; like the Israelites, they were chosen by God to fulfill a special role in human history: to establish a new, pure Christian commonwealth.

For the Puritan, God guides the encounter between the traveler and the new world.

In creating their narrative account of their experiences, the story is shaped by what they know, the bible Genesis and Exodus, the tale of the Chosen People and the Promised

Land Religious tale of travail and wandering, with the Lords guidance, on a

quest of high purpose and millennial history When the puritans wrote their allegory of a Puritan diaspora, they

were following a biblical pattern, it was nothing less than god revealing himself in history, a story equal to anything in their bibles.

Allegory - a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

Diaspora - A diaspora is a scattered population with a common origin in a smaller geographic area. Diaspora can also refer to the movement of the population from its original homeland

Puritans read every natural sign for meaning from god and see their lives as a drama rooted in time’s beginnings where god has charged them to thwart the devil by building a society that represents his divine will.

It’s all one big story to them where their lives are a part of the same narrative that begins in the bible and ends in God’s final judgement

SIN AND GUILT 101

• Total Depravity: Through Adam’s fall, every human is born sinful. This is the concept of “original sin”

• *The Doctrine of Election: God would freely choose those He would save and those He would damn eternally. No one knows if they are damned or saved.

• *Predestination: Only a few are selected for salvation• *Limited Atonement: Jesus died for the chosen only, not

everyone• Irresistible Grace: God’s grace is freely given, it cannot

be earned or denied• *Perseverance of the “Saints”: Those elected by God

have full power to interpret the will of God. This meant they freely told others how to live their lives.

THE BIBLE IN AMERICA

Puritans read the bible as the story of the creation, fall, wanderings and rescue of the human race They used this as the basis for the

narrative they would form of their own lives

Cast themselves as the Israelites, God’s Chosen People

They read their own lives as a literary critic reads a book or a psychic reads a palm, looking for signs from God

JEREMIAD

Yet as time goes on, the puritan narrative becomes one of failure and woe Jeremiad: A narrative of failure and woe

Generations pass and authors summon a nostalgia that calls for the return to a lost purity of earlier times

Ironically, as time passes, Bradford (recorder of events in Plymouth) sees how men's successes in taming the environment and developing a thriving economy pulls them farther and farther from god

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

Jonathan Edwards, 1741

PURITAN WRITING

• In the black and white world of the Puritans, writing had one clear purpose: To Glorify God. This means that we’re going to learn about

• Sermons• Religious poems• Interpretation of God’s Doings on Earth• Annals, Diaries and journals about Religious Experiences

• Puritans favored the plain style of writing. They admired clarity of expression and avoided complicated figures of speech.

• Sinful vanity?• Look back at Edwards sermon, lots of imagery, but devoid of other

literary techniques• This straightforwardness becomes a hallmark of much of American

literature (though not all)

THE LEAST YOU NEED TO KNOW

John Smith helped lay the foundation of American Literature.

The Puritans were a group who separated from the Anglican Church

The Puritans believed in original sin, the doctrine of election, predestination, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the “saints”

THIS UNIT…

• William Bradford (1590-1657)• Mayflower Compact• History of Plymouth Plantation

• Includes story of first thanksgiving

• Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)• First published American poet

• Edward Taylor (1645-1729)• “greatest” American poet of the period

• Pickings were pretty slim• Cotton Mather (1663-1728)

• Supporter of witch burning• Michael Wigglesworth (1631–1705)

• The Day of Doom• Johnathan Edwards (1703-1758)

• Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God• Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711)

• A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

THE ARCHETYPAL AMERICAN NARRATIVE The American Republic

was from the outset uniquely favored. It started from scratch on a vast and virgin continent, which was so sparsely peopled by Indians that they were able to be eliminated or shouldered aside.”

ORIGIN MYTH/NARRATIVE OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM1) When was the country we know as the

United States first settled?A. 30,000 B.C.B. 1000 A.D.C. 1526 A.D.D. 1620 A.D.

AN ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT

Sparsely populated virgin continent? Historians suggest that in 1492 that the population of

the Americas was 100 Million. By comparison, there were only an estimated 70 million people in Europe.

Throughout southern New England, Native Americans had repeatedly burned the underbrush, creating a park like environment.

After landing at Provincetown, the pilgrims began looking for their new home, they chose Plymouth because of it’s cleared fields, recently planted corn, useful harbor and brook of fresh water.

It was a lovely site for a town? Until the plague, it had been the Indian village Patuxet

Plague?

Why were the American Indians so healthy until they weren’t? What’s the primary reason? What about the role of cows, pigs, horses, sheep or chickens? Social density?

Changing gears, what’s odd about this map? Why are most of our maps different?

PLAGUE?

What happened? For decades prior to the arrival of the pilgrims in 1617, British and French fishermen had fished off the Massachusetts coast. After fishing they’d go ashore to lay in firewood, get some

freshwater, and maybe snag a few Indians to sell into slavery in Europe.

The fishermen transmitted disease. Some historians think it may have been the bubonic plague, others suggest viral hepatitis, smallpox, chicken pox or influenza.

For reasons discussed on the previous slide, the Indians were especially susceptible to disease

Within three years the plague wiped out between 90 and 95 percent of the native inhabitants of coastal New England.

Robert Cushman, a British eyewitness, recorded, only “the twentieth person is scarce left alive.”

Aztec Smallpox Illustration (there aren’t any good period diseased Indian drawings)

FROM WILLIAM BRADFORD

“for a sorer disease cannot befall them; they fear it more then the plague; for usualy they that have this disease have them in abundance, and for wante of bedding & lining and other helps, they fall into a lamentable condition, as they lye on their hard matts, the poxe breaking and mattering, and runing one into another, their skin cleaving (by reason whereof) to the matts they lye on; when they turne them, a whole side will flea of at once, (as it were,) and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearfull to behold; and then begin very sore, what with could and other distempers, they dye like rotten sheep.  The condition of this people was so lamentable, and they fell downe so generally of this diseas, as they were (in the end), not able to help on another; no, not to make a fire, nor to fetch a little water to drinke, nor any to burie the dead; but would strivie as long as they could, and when they could procure no other means to make fire, they would burn the wooden trayes and dishes they ate their meate in, and their very bowes and arrowes; & some would crawl on all foure to gett a little water, and some times dye by the way, & not be able to gett in again....But by the marvelous goodnes & providens of God not one of the English was so much as sicke, or in the least measure tainted with this disease, though they dayly did these offices for them for many weeks togeather."

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

Anyone wanna ask about the spelling?

JOHN WINTHROP, GOVERNOR OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY

In 1634 Winthrop writes to a friend in England, “But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection.”

Robert Kushman writes, “those that are left, have their courage much abated, and their countenance is dejected, and they seem as a people affrighted.” After a smallpox epidemic the Cherokee “despaired so much that they lost confidence in their gods and the priests destroyed the sacred objects of the tribe.”

For the first 50 years of settlement, the white man faced no real Indian challenge, they were already dead.

Their lands only begun to grow over with weeds as they were no longer alive to tend them. The white man was then able to easily cultivate this land as the work to prepare it for agriculture had already been done.

Indians sought alliances with settlers and helped them because their tribes had been decimated and they needed to guard themselves against those tribes who had not yet been ravaged by disease

When violent conflict did develop, God still “ended the controversy by sending the smallpox amongst the Indians”, in the words of Increase Mather, “Whole towns of them were swept away, in some of them not so much as one Soul escaping the Destruction.”

HEROES AND VILLAINS

To some degree, all stories have heroes and villains, antagonist and protagonists, these are binary distinctions Structuralism tells us that western human thinking and language

is binary in nature, we break the world down into pairs of opposites. Think about it. We define things in opposition to each other.

What is up without down? Black without white? Male without female? Gay without Straight?

Deconstruction takes this one step further and argues that binaries are hierarchical, meaning one is always perceived as better than the other, even perceived as the moral “good”.

So between civilized and savage, which is perceived as better, therefore which is the good guy? Especially from the European perspective, who is the protagonist?

Deconstruction also argues that our very language then works to oppress those on the negative side of the binary, to the extent that black English speakers, gay English speakers, women, etc, actively oppress themselves via their own language. This is how the argument is made that Heterosexual white male culture enjoys a hegemonic power position.

Hegemony – dominance maintained through the capitulation of those dominated

So what we have is a narrative where the good, civilized, white European protagonists of the story triumph over their evil adversaries, the savage non-white Indian Antagonists.

Let’s problematize or deconstruct that Deconstruction – in this context, the undermining

of binary distinctions and the role they play in promoting a specific ideological agenda

Ideology - a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

A colonists journal tells of discovering two Indian houses, “Having their guns and hearing nobody, they entered the houses and found the people were gone. The sailors took some things but didn’t dare stay… We had meant to have left some beads and other things in the houses as a sign of peace and to show we meant to trade with them. But we didn’t do it because we left in such haste. But as soon as we can meet with the Indians, we will pay them well for what we took.

Later the colonist writes, “We marched to the place we called Cornhill, where we had found the corn before. At another place we had seen before, we dug and found some more corn, two or three baskets full, and a bag of beans… In all we had about ten bushels, which will be enough for seed. It was with God’s help that we found this corn, for how else could we have done it? Without meeting some Indians who might trouble us.”

It gets worse, “The next morning we found a place like a grave. We decided to dig it up. We found first a mat, and under that a fine bow… We also found bowls, trays, dishes, and things like that. We took several of the prettiest things to carry away with us, and covered the body up again.

ONE MORE FUN FACT

Scarcity of disease in pre-colonial America was also attributable to basic hygiene… Indians had it, Europeans did not. The English rarely bathed, they thought it was

unhealthy They also seldom changed all of their clothing

at once, they though it was immodest Indians thought the colonists smelled bad,

Squanto famously tried to teach them to bathe, they didn’t go for it.

YOUR AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK

Discusses disease only briefly, and in a section on Spanish Colonialism

Why introduce the effects of disease in a discussion of the Spanish? Why bury information on the English there as well?

In regards to English colonies Quotes John Smith in his description of Virginia as “Overgrown with trees

and weeds, being a wilderness as god fist made it” But the Indians had fields of corn, they taught the white man how to farm it! It’s

just that too many of them were dead to keep up with the work Ascribes the success of Jamestown to allowing the colonists to grow their

own crops and treat the land as private property Self made, tea party, entrepreneurial…

Primarily attributes Indian deaths to war Covers all non-puritan colonies in only 6 pages

Puritans get 5 all to themselves, why? Again talks about “clearing land”, and states that the “Puritans saw the Indians as

lazy”

THE NARRATIVES

Victory over the Indians Contemporary to events, settlers believed god was

slaughtering 95 percent of Indian population for them, since they (the settlers) were his chosen people and this territory was their new promised land

Generations of textbooks taught that we arrived on a largely empty continent, which through the grace of god and our own hard work we made our own

In hindsight, we got lucky that we brought diseases with us that killed off 95% of the natives so that we could not only steal their land but take advantage of the hard work they had put into cultivating it.

WHAT’S EXCLUDED

Puritan Literature is the writing of white protestant males Women’s voices are devalued African voices are rare Indian voices are nearly wholly lacking

WHAT’S EXCLUDED

Nature As William Carlos Williams would put it hundreds of

years later, settlers were late to acquire what the Indians had naturally, the capacity to “bathe in, to explore always more deeply, to see, to feel, to touch… the wild beauty of the new world.”

By the time of Thoreau, nature becomes a major part of American Lit

It’s almost ironic, these people thought they had received God’s promised land, but they refer to anything outside of their settlements as “howling wilderness”

19th century American Poet Walt Whitman later refers to the land itself as America’s greatest poem

SOURCES

Prentice Hall United States History Illinois Teachers Edition

Holt Elements of Literature Fifth Course James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told

Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Richard Ruland, From Puritanism to Postmodernism