American

Literature I Lecture Ten: Neoclassic to Romantic Names and Concepts

Professor Cyrus R. K. Patell New York University

Pope, Windsor-Forest (1713) Virgil, Georgics (pastoral) graveyard school fancy / imagination Thomas Parnell, Night-Piece on Death (1721) Edward Young, Night-Thoughts (1742) Robert Blair, The Grave (1743) Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (1798); pref. to second ed. (1800) Bryant, On Trisyllabic Feet in Iambic Measure (1819) Doppelgnger / doubling Quotes Alexander Pope, Windsor-Forest (1713) The time shall come, when free as seas or wind Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind, Whole nations enter with each swelling tide, And seas but join the regions they divide; Earths distant ends our glory shall behold, And the new world launch forth to seek the old. . . . O stretch thy reign, fair Peace! from shore to shore, Till Conquest cease, and Slavery be no more. Wordsworth, From the Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature . . . The language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best

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part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. I have wished to keep the Reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall interest him. Others who pursue a different track will interest him likewise; I do not interfere with their claim, but wish to prefer a claim of my own. There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has been done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men; and further, because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart, is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry. Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand, was to propose himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to the things of every day. Harold Bloom on Poes Poetry Nineteenth-century American poetry is considerably better than it is generally acknowledged to be. There are no figures comparable to Whitman and Dickinson, but at least the following are clearly preferable to Poe, in chronological order: Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Jones Very, Thoreau, Melville, Timrod, and Tuckerman. Poe scrambles for twelfth place with Sidney Lanier. If this judgment seems harsh, or too arithmetical, it is prompted by the continued French overvaluation of Poe as lyrist. No reader who cares deeply for the best poetry written in English can care greatly for Poe's verse. Harold Bloom on Poes Prose Poe's survival raises perpetually the issue whether literary merit and canonical status necessarily go together. I can think of no other American writer, down to this moment, at once so inescapable and so dubious. Mark Twain cataloged Fenimore Cooper's literary offenses, but all that he exuberantly listed are minor compared to Poe's. Allen Tate, proclaiming Poe "our cousin" in 1949, at the centenary of Poe's death, remarked: "He has several styles, and it is not possible to damn them all at once." Uncritical admirers of Poe should be asked to read his stories aloud (but only to themselves!). The association between the acting style of Vincent Price and the styles of Poe is alas not gratuitous, and indeed is an instance of deep crying out unto deep.

Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 10 [Discussing the opening passage of William Wilson:] This rhetoric, including the rhetorical questions, is British Gothic rather than German Gothic, Ossian or Monk Lewis rather than Tieck or E. T. A. Hoffmann. Its palpable squalors require no commentary. The critical question surely must be: how does "William Wilson" survive its bad writing? W. H. Auden on Edgar Allan Poe Poe is sometimes attacked for the operatic quality and decor in his tales, but they are essential . . . His heroes cannot exist except operatically. Take, for example, the following sentence from William Wilson:

In isolation as a prose sentence, it is terrible, vague, verbose, the sense at the mercy of a conventional rhetorical rhythm.. But dramatically, how right; how well it reveals the William Wilson who narrates the story in his real colors, as the fantastic self who hates and refuses contact with reality. Joel Barlow (17541812) Originally drawn to thought of Jonathan Edwards; renounces Calvinism, turns to Deism. Becomes interested in French revolutionary politics. French revolution turns America from youngest nation to oldest democracy. Note the paraliptic beginning: the poem invokes both epic poetry and revolutionary politics, only to disavow both. But can it do so completely, once these are invoked? How does The Hasty Pudding make a case for New World poetic materials? In what ways does it suggest that European neoclassicism (and its poetic forms) might be revivified by the New World? Note Barlows acknowledgment of the contributions of Native American culture to New World food (and, by implication, poetics). Which lines in the poem might be taken to be statements about the writing of poetry (in addition to statements about food). Hasty Pudding mixes mock-epic (after Popes Rape of the Lock) and pastoral (after Drydens translation of Vergils Georgics) In what ways does Advice to a Raven in Russia recant Barlows belief in the idea of peace through trade, through creation of mutual interests? How does the poem portray an economy of mutual interest. In what ways does Advice explore the underside of the Enlightenment and pave the way both for Romanticism and Gothic? Should we regard it as a graveyard poem?

Let it suffice that among spendthrifts I out-heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitude of novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the long catalogue of vices then usual in the most dissolute university of Europe.

Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 10 Philip Freneau (1752-1832)

Compare to Grays Elegy. "The Indian Burying Ground": How does musing upon death serve as a source for poetry? Note the opposition between "fancy" and "reason" that Freneau sets up. In what ways does the poem offer a critique of Enlightenment thought and pave the way for Romanticisms valorization of fancy and imagination. Compare the poem's treatment of Native American culture to Barlow's in "The Hasty Pudding."

William Cullen Bryant

Compare Grays Elegy to Bryants Thanatposis (which means, literally, meditation on death). What are the stylistic differences between them? In what ways does Bryant filter graveyard school poetry through the lens of English Romanticism, particularly the poetry of Wordsworth? Cf. Wordsworth's "Preface" to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads. On Trisyllabic Feet in Iambic Measure: Bryant calls for a literary revolution against the neoclassical conventions typified by the poetry of Alexander Pope. Wants to release American poetry from its bondage to the unvaried iambic and the see-saw rhythms of rhymed heroic verse; praises blank verse as freer and more natural than rhyme, and he demands a greater license in prosody to permit occasional irregularities such as feet of three syllables in poems that use iambic pentameter. Throughout the essay, Bryant uses an overtly political language: what he wants is to translate the principles of the American revolution, particularly its emphasis on freedom, into art. How does Thanatopsis bear out these principles? (Remember the scansionin the first two lines of the poem.) Richard Henry Dana, Sr. upon first reading Thanatopsis: That was never written on this side of the water. Bryant: communal nature of his thematics, individual nature of his poetic voice.

Edgar Allan Poe

Pay close attention to Poe's use of figures of speech and rhetorical devices. His poetry and prose are highly stylized (the poet W. H. Auden described them as operatic) and deliberately, self-consciously, artificial. Wordsworth as guiding sensibility for Thanatposis, Coleridge for The Raven. In Poe's first prose work, the so-called Letter to B_______, which was included as the preface to his 1831 volume entitled Poems, Poe wrote: Of Coleridge I cannot speak but with reverence. His towering intellect! his gigantic power! ... In reading his poetry, I tremble, like one who stands upon a volcano, conscious, from the very darkness bursting from the crater, of the fire and light that are weltering below. Highly artificial structure and style of poem, with its internal rhyme scheme and repeated lines. (Though Poe claimed that nothing ever remotely approaching this

Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 10 [stanzaic] combination has ever been attempted, the rhyme scheme is actually based on Elizabeth Barretts Lady Geraldines Courtship.) Thematic contrasts with Thanatposis: where Bryant seeks consolation for and in death, Poe finds none. Bloom vs. Auden on Poes prose style: Bloom argues that Poe needs a good French translation in order to be appreciated, while Auden describes Poes style as appropriately operatic. How is the prose style appropriate for the portrayal of madness, particularly a madness that masquerades as reason?

Todays Video Clip The Raven, from The Simpsons, Season 2, Episode 16: The Treehouse of Horror (Simpsons Halloween Special)

Today's Songs The Cranberies, Just My Imagination The Rolling Stones, Just My Imagination John Lennon, Imagine The Temptations, Just My Imagination