AngloAmerican Literature

The Literary Canon

Definition and Gender Representation

In Canons and Contexts (1991), a hugely influential book, Paul Lauter defines the American literary canon as “that set of authors and works generally included in basic American literature college courses and textbooks, and those ordinarily discussed in standard volumes of literary history, bibliography, or criticism” (p. 23).

At the beginning, one of the main issues was gender representation, the representation of women. The commission on the status of women in 1982 undertook a study of the representation of works by women in standard classroom anthologies, and the results were discouraging. As Fetterley noted, “In three of the latest anthologies—Norton (1979), MacMillan (1980), and Random House (1981), the space given varies between 7% and 14%” (Fetterley & Schulz, 1982, p. 4). This is a consequence to women authors of the fact that women were a small percentage in the writing field, but the fascinating thing that came up in this study is that the percentage remained the same, but the number of women included varied, so they weren’t always the same women.

Intersectionality and Contemporary Debates

To the commission, neglect of women writers in mainstream anthologies designed for college use amounted to a nearly categorical exclusion resulting from the persistent devaluing of the genres and modes in which women writers had traditionally predominated. One of the things that were studied with greater attention was the fact that the genres in which women would generally predominate were devalued, were hidden from view (sentimental novels, usually written by women), tended to be forgotten by scholars who wrote literary history.

The keyword for contemporary debates is intersectionality; it is no longer possible to think about gender as if it were a category that could explain the workings of the canon. We have to have a broader view, to take into account at the same time gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, and ability: all of these elements come together from different parts of the intersection that is contemporary culture. When we talk about the canon today we talk about the need to decolonize it, be aware of the various categories, of the various expectations concerning different axes of identity, the expectations that led to the construction of a view of the classics, literature, and culture that had white males at the center.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Background and Legacy

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) is a canonical author, unique in his ability to reflect on the cultural forces that shaped American history from the very beginning.

• Born on the fourth of July, 1804
• Salem family whose ancestors included: he came from a very important family in relation to their relation to history, because one of his ancestors was a judge in the witchcraft trials (Salem, 1682) (John Hathorne). By the time Nathaniel was born, these trials were perceived as a momentary collapse of the American ideal, so it was something he was ashamed of, but he was also interested in finding out what could have happened, what went wrong. Another one of his ancestors was a revolutionary war hero (Daniel Hathorne). He had the legacy of Puritanism and its violence and also the legacy of democratic, revolutionary ideals.

These internal conflicts emerge in his writing in a very intense and complex way. He started publishing his short stories in magazines in the 1830s, but he was the first author really interested in going back to the roots of the American experience, he wanted to write about the American past, early colonial history.

Understanding Colonial America

To understand the events that occur in his short stories, it is really important to be aware of the map of the USA in those years:

• Colonization and the creation of empires
• 1620: 103 people arrived on the Mayflower, half of them were Puritans, who wanted to start a new Christian society. William Bradford was one of them and he would be one of the first governors of the Massachusetts Bay colony; he would keep a journal for most of his life (“Plimoth Plantation”), describing the life of the colony. That journal is very useful to have a detailed description of everyday life in the colony and events. He expressed values that the Puritan community shared, that were taken for granted. When they first arrived, Bradford described the place as: “The place they had thoughts on was some of those vast and unpeopled countries of America, which are fruitful and fit for habitation, being devoid of all civil inhabitants, where there are only savage and brutish men which range up and down, little otherwise than the wild beasts of the same.” William Bradford. Of Plimoth Plantation ch.4

This is important because it is clear that in his eyes, the countries that they arrived in were unpeopled, because what they saw was that there were no Christians (civil inhabitants), there were only brutish and savage men, Pagans. He didn’t perceive the humanity of the native people living there, despite the fact that it was the Indians that helped them survive the first freezing winter, teaching them how to raise corn. He told about their first Thanksgiving, describing the help that the Pilgrims received by the Indians, but despite all of this, to him, there were no people.

May-Pole and American Mythology

There is a first example of a kind of narrative device that Hawthorne will use over and over again, going back to minor accidents/events, now probably forgotten, transforming history into myth, using an event to create an American mythology, as the destruction of Merry Mount. What he does is to turn history into myth and he wants us to learn something (sometimes he states it explicitly: he wants his short stories to be a sort of parable), to enlarge our understanding of the political and cultural forces of the times that he described.

Sometimes he is accused of being too allegorical and this is something that emerges in Poe’s reviews of Hawthorne’s tales. An allegory is a symbolic, fictional narrative that conveys a meaning not explicitly set forth in the narrative. An allegory might have meanings on two or more levels, and we can access those levels through an interpretive process. Allegory was a way of telling stories that Puritans and American readers were familiar with because the most influential fictional text available in the English colonies of North America throughout the 18th century was John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim Progress”: it was immensely influential, it was the only book, apart from the Bible, that Puritans were allowed to have in their libraries. They could only have useful books (manuals, travel guides), but nothing fictional.

The Pilgrim Progress describes the progress, the path followed by a soul, the protagonist Christian, who leaves home bringing a heavy burden on his shoulders and he has to go through a number of adventures in order to reach the Celestial City. So Christian is a sort of everyman, a sinner who goes around with a burden on his shoulders, which is the original sin, and his goal is to walk through the wilderness, the valley of death, that is human life, in order to reach the city on the hill, the light that shines upon a hill. When he goes on this journey, the people he meets are all embodiments of abstract concepts: he meets characters called “Knowledge”, “Beauty”, “Strength” and then he arrives in “Vanity Fair”. So there are elements of personification and allegory. This is what we find in Merry Mount. Hawthorne describes a number of conflicts in his way: the first one is between Puritans that arrived in the new country and then became American, non-Puritans were English people living in the colonies. Between Puritans and non-Puritans, we find a symbolic struggle because they both want to define what America is, what is the meaning of this new experience: is it simply a new country, a land of opportunity, that will enable some courageous Englishmen to become rich, or will it change the Western world with new values?

We will find a description of English folklore and the reaction of Puritans to these kinds of traditions related to the Catholic time and an example of Pagan values.

“It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement, which has since become a city. And here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthy substance with the soil; until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust.”

His family has been in the USA before the revolution, from the very beginning, and that first ancestor was extremely important in the way he looks at American history and at his own experience.

“The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination, as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor,—who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace,—a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil.”

There is this image of an ancestor that arrived imbued with Puritan values. The Bible and the sword are the two key elements at the root of American identity.

“He was likewise a bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them, in another state of being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them—as I have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist—may be now and henceforth removed.”

“Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I have ever cherished, would they recognize as laudable; no success of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success—would they deem otherwise than worthless if not positively disgraceful. “What is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers to the other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!” Such are the compliments bandied between my great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine.”

The author feels the need to tell the reader how important these ancestors were to him, how important the Puritan legacy was. But even before he told us, we had a number of clues and these are the clues that we find in short stories. Most of his short stories were written in the 1830s and in these stories, he goes back to the origins of American experience, he tries to answer the question that was everywhere in 19th-century American culture: what is an American? What are the relevant elements in the culture of the USA? This is important because in those years, after political independence was gained, the USA were still very weak; unless the US could create their own culture, they would be in danger all the time of being won back by Great Britain, they needed to find something that was unique, that made a difference, the idea of creating an American tradition, in the sense of the US tradition was crucial.

Was it worth fighting in order to remain independent? In 1812 there was a second American war of independence because the British army tried to win back the states, burning down the White House. Finding a way to create, to describe Americanness, the meaning of the American experience was crucial. In order to do so, Hawthorne felt that he had to go back to Puritan times. So he wrote a few historical short stories.

The May-Pole of Merry Mount

This is one of the first historical short stories that he published in 1835. The short story describes this early settlement, a small village called Mount Wollaston, and then later renamed Merry Mount by its own inhabitants. Merry Mount was where nowadays the town Quincy is, close to Boston. In Merry Mount, something happened in the very first year of Puritan settlement in New England, around 1627/1628. This something was basically irrelevant, so much so that it had disappeared from public consciousness, nobody remembered about it in 1833, but Hawthorne transformed, made this event a crucial turning point in American culture by writing a story that had no antecedent in the USA, it was a new genre, a new way of telling stories.

“There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in the curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted, the facts, recorded on the grave pages of 'our New England annalists, have wrought themselves almost spontaneously, into a sort of allegory. The masques, mummeries, and festive customs, described in the text, are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these points may be found in Strutt's Book of English Sports and Pastimes.”

Philosophic romance: a philosophic problem transformed in a romance and a sort of allegory. He lists the bibliography, he wants us to be aware of the fact that he is dealing with facts. The first sentence of the short story already introduces the main theme.

“Bright were the days at Merry Mount, when the Maypole was the banner staff of that gay colony! They who reared it, should their banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England's rugged hills, and scatter flower seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire.”

In Merry Mount, there was a gay colony, but something will come up. We have this conflict foreshadowed in the first sentence: jollity and gloom. Merry Mount was not a Puritan settlement: there were Puritan settlements all around it, but the people that chose to live in Merry Mount were mainly foretrades, merchants, people who had decided to cross the oceans because they were interested in making a business or living adventures, they weren’t interested in religion and they moved to the new country but wanted to keep old English tradition, such as the Maypole. In England, it was customary to celebrate midsummer eve, the eve of Saint John, on the 24th of July. Midsummer eve was characterized by bonfires, dances, music, and celebrations. What people did in Merry Mount was to preserve that tradition. At the beginning of the short story, we find this description of the festival.

“Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on midsummer eve. This venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which had preserved the slender grace of youth, while it equaled the loftiest height of the old wood monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner, colored like the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with birchen boughs and others of the liveliest green, and some with silvery leaves, fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of twenty different colors, but 'sad ones.”

All is colored, there is happiness and joy.

“On the lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of roses, some that had been gathered in the sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still richer blush, which the colonists had reared from English seed.”

This sentence gives an important clue to the main structure of the short story. This is important because this is the conflict that we will find throughout the story: on the one hand, things that come from England and on the other hand the things that had been gathered in the forest, in the wilderness. Midsummer eve is a moment of celebration, they are all dancing around the maypole, they are drinking, and they are wearing masks, they are adorned in strange and colorful ways. The colonists of Merry Mount are characterized by a joyful attitude, lightness. They are perceived by the Puritans as strange creatures that are midway between men and beasts. Some had already transformed into brutes and the others were rioting.

“Many of this strange company wore foolscaps, and had little bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a silvery sound, responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits. Some youths and maidens were of soberer garb, yet well maintained their places in the irregular throng by the expression of wild revelry upon their features. Such were the colonists of Merry Mount, as they stood in the broad smile of sunset round their venerated Maypole. [...] Had a wanderer, bewildered in the melancholy forest, heard their mirth, and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the change. But a band of Puritans, who watched the scene, invisible themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with whom their superstition peopled the blac