Angloamerican

Chiara Zecchini: anglo-american literature and culture

Libri da leggere

"Beloved" (Toni Morrison)

Famous American short stories

Religious writers. New place, no institutions. People tend to unite thanks to religion. Territory is large, distances difficult to cover. Info moves slowly. People care only about their community. 1st colonisers from Eu, accompanied by religion. They thought that this was a new beginning. Ministers look for passages in the Bible that talked about a new start. They were the chosen ones; the land is a virgin land. Happens that there were a lot of problems, in the 19^th century the aborigines will be exterminated. There are people of different origins, for example Africans were kidnapped as slaves. Spanish and French influences (for ex. Louisiana). There is a mix, land sold to the British government. It is a very long process. Problems with native Americans, weather was harsh in the North. The British brought goods.

Boston Tea Party

Throwing tea in the water against British. Books: at the beginning there were no publishers, no cultural exchange. They were typographers, short newspapers. People who come to Eu read books on ships, typographers copied them for Americans. Era of religious writings stops when people who live there find out that the condition isn’t easy. Religious people look up in the Bible why the place wasn’t that good and easy. Discourse of punishment. Book of Jeremiah full of punishment. The Jeremiah had, violence. Life isn’t that good because they didn’t fulfil God's rules. Puritanism, live in a pure way according to God. Working hard, even if something bad happens is a sign of God. Jeremiah wrote sermons that tells because things don’t work. Accusations against the people. These are the basis of American culture. God is ready to punish you.

Culture and society

In the North there was a stronger Eu influence. Concept of the melting pot: mixture of culture will make that place better. This idea stops when they understand that there is a mainstream of people (white people). Who doesn’t belong to the mainstream were a minority, different. Social conflict: white vs black. It is a problem, blacks can’t be educated, they weren’t allowed. They didn’t know about everything. When they became free they didn’t want to be educated by whites because they hate them. Blacks in the South worked as farmers and the metropolitan life they were lonely, they were outcasts.

Civil rights leaders

• Martin Luther King thinks that the solution is integration, convince people that in order to live peacefully they have to live together.
• Malcom X doesn’t think the same. He thinks blacks are a community. Black panthers: paramilitary army to exterminated black people/to purify some black areas.

Travel writers

They write journals about what they see. Scientific and para-scientific catalogues. Social cohesion from exchange of information, newspapers main source of info. Absence of copyright. Only the typographers were paid. You can’t live as a writer. They make money writing for journals and magazines. The system of sales is to subscribe. They get magazines through mail. The 1st form of communication under a national scale.

Edgar Allan Poe

E. A. Poe (1809-1849) was a short stories writer. Poe had a difficult life. Adopted but didn’t like his father. Poe gambled and spent money. He published a poem Tamerlane and sent a copy to his step-father because he wanted money but his dad wasn’t impressed and Poe burnt the copies. Edgar Allan Poe: father of detective fiction. Poe had a particular personality. He was deprived from a female figure (mother and aunt). He married with his cousin Virginia. He made use of drugs and alcohol. He wrote fantastic and irrational stories. He makes clear that the analytical faculties can’t be analyzed easily but we appreciate them in their defects and whoever has them is happy.

Poe's influence and style

The most famous journalist of his period, when Poe worked he increased subscription. He was attracted by Eu writings and culture because it was rich and old. The tales of Hoffman received his interest (German Romanticism). The best way for him to have an audience is to write short stories. Poe, using Radcliffe and Walpole’s novels and gothic style, wanted to produce a new style that denies gothic novel and give birth to American Literature, by using gothic themes and assuming that the narrator is not reliable because he’s crazy (psychological aspect, one of the first authors to introduce it) the unconscious of the human mind, ghosts and demons are one a psychological experience (ambiguity of unreliability) = we don’t know whether what the narrator tells us is true or not until the end. Right and wrong – a battle between the conscious and unconscious – are not so clear so he can catch the attention of the reader until the end of the story.

Poe's characters and works

Dupin (Poe’s character in 3 novels, such as in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") is the first detective in the world; he identifies the criminals and understands why the criminal kills his victim in such a particular way manifestation of a divine quality, through the combination of rationality and abstract imagination, making connection among things and information. Poe tries to destruct this type of imagination as it’s considered, by now, old. He uses Romantic ideas making fun of them. He talks about Gothic themes and psychological aspects. Poe is one of the most interesting writer of the 19^th century: he’s considered the inventor of mass culture/mass literature – he writes an essay "The philosophy of composition" giving some suggestions to people who want to write "in order to attract the reader, you have to write something which can be read in half an hour (short stories)" American people were too busy to read something. You can’t write something long as people don’t have the time to read it. The idea of Poe’s short stories is that you can read something interesting in only 45 minutes or one hour. He tells the reader how he writes his stories. Intention should be always very clear; be original, effects on the heart, on the emotions or on the intellect: select one of these before reading the story.

"The Tell-Tale Heart"

Christopher Lee reads "The Tell-Tale Heart" : it begins with some noises who reminds us to door opens or glass breaking, the frame of the story, as it’s a horror film (fear). The Tell-Tale Heart It’s a story about how the murder kills his victim. Gothic story. Psychological story. Hallucination. The narrator is smart but crazy. Idea of the repetition, like the beating of the heart. It starts with a quotation. It’s a story similar to European gothic genre, but American writers, in particular E. A. Poe, wanted to create something new.

T ! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been, and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Harken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

True! you can trust the narrator. He uses dash in order to break a sentence to talk about something else. He uses repetitions. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! — yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so, by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

The narrator is obsessed with the eye of the old man. The eye = I. Getting rid of himself. Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded — with what caution — with what foresight — with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it — oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I first put in a dark lantern (originally used on ships, made of all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and tin, not to be noticed by enemies) then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly — very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see the old man as he lay upon his bed. Ha! — would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously — oh, so cautiously (for the hinges creaked) — I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights — every night just at midnight — but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into his chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

Fancy = related to Coleridge. The ability of combining things. Sounds new but it isn’t. Imagination = creation. Ability to create. A new shape. Midnight belongs to yesterday and to today. Life and death. Noise and silence. I moved it slowly - very, very slowly = he had the control of his mind, this control his totally mad sublime. He has a balanced control of situation, but his mind doesn’t work normally (obsession is a proof of rationality, he wants to show us that he’s not mad unconscious, the part of our mind that we cannot control). I did for seven long nights = God creates life but, in this story, the narrator destroys life Hearty tone = he’s thinking about killing the old man / a joke.

"I see the old man" = the young man who kills the old man is a psychological story about the relationship between Poe and his step-father. I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out — “Who’s there?” I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed, listening; — just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death-watches, in the wall. Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror.

“It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain. Death, in approaching him, had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel — although he neither saw nor heard — to feel the presence of my head within the room. When I had waited a long tune, very patiently, without hearing him.

Typical gothic paragraph, a particular sensitivity to feel death; the theme of double = the old and the young man have the same sensitivity to feel the supernatural. “Death-watches, cricket” = I “tarli” ed il “grillo”: the noise they make reminds us to the heartbeatings. When I had waited a long tune, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little — a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it — you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily — until, at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.

It was open — wide, wide open — and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness — all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person. Particularity = animals which are horrible and disgusting + repetition. He humanizes the old man, obsessed by his Evil Eye, but the old man is fragmented, not see in his all figure.

And now — have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? — now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. Obsession with the old man’s beating of the heart.

Two of the lines from Longfellow’s poem are quoted by Poe in the postscript of a letter to A. M. Ide of January 25, 1845. (This letter was unknown to Ostrom or TOM. The letter was not published until 2001, when it was reproduced in an auction catalogue. It was first collected in 2008.) In the letter, Poe gives the line as “Our hearts like muffled drums are beating.”: The tell-tale heart gives us the idea of the beating of heart, that marks the passing of time.

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

Published in 1839, Poe makes fun of gothic novel more than in other stories. Only 3 characters in a story: the narrator (pretty much reliable but not very intelligent), Rodrig Usher, his friend and an aristocrat and Rodrigo’s sister (she dies). Usher Is a decadent character, inspired to Gabriele D’Annunzio. Decadentism = totally excessive behaviour and sensibility, no longer interested in physical reality but in mental one. There’s a contrast between the narrator and his friend Rodrig Usher; American people are more involved with the narrator because they are hypnotized by his story.

USHER: US – SHE – HER (2 version of Usher’s sister, sick and healthy) It refers to the protagonist « Son cœur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne. » De Béranger. His soul is in between physical and meta-physical (Usher lies in between in life and death). I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.

The mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows. The narrator is talking about the sublime, with a poetic identity of the description (images of desolating, terror and death). The gloomy effect is given by the disposition to the scene which is sorrowful; his details can be modified and bring sorrowful effects. He’s giving different points of view that make the scene less gloomy. Are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us. The narrator starts dreaming = “combination of simple natural objects” condition of darkness, everything looks bleak Freud sublime connected to unconscious and the Uncanny (something familiar but dangerous) that happens when the unconscious comes to surface. Poe is talking about making/inventing something new.

I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. To merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the “House of Usher” — an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.

This part is about the decadent side of Usher’s family who is interested both in art but also in the abstract rules and intricacies of music. A mixture, a fusion between the family and the castle. There appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. The description of the house reminds us to the idea of death.

The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene / ennuyé man of the world. The description of the building continues to show that the house is a typical Gothic one. We understand that Usher isn’t at ease, comfortable as the house and the furniture reflect his personality. He’s a decadent artist and an excessive man.

He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. A constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy — a mere nervous affection.