Appunti di letteratura e cultura angloamericana I

Short story

Irving is the first American writer of short stories and he wrote The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayon. There are no long descriptions of people or places. It derives from the white tradition, the influence of Native American traditions of short stories dealing with animals, natural phenomena, slave stories... It is difficult to say if it's a genre or a kind because it is always compared with the novel. In the past, writers thought that the novel was more important, but Edgar Allan Poe said the opposite. The writers of this genre were considered inferior. The word short of short story doesn't define the length, and the short story is different from the novel and the novella. Poe wanted to create an American culture, not to influence Europe. Writers wanted to be independent and to describe the stories of everyday life, so they started publishing their short stories in magazines because people read them and they were cheaper.

Link between short story and democracy

• Published in magazines → cheaper and spread all over, and they taught (writers celebrated the specific area of America where they lived and the exotic).
• Read by a lot of people (women, black people).
• Precursor of television.
• Topic: contemporary and common life, ordinary people.

Emerson said that short stories give a lot of importance to a single person → Henry James drew a comparison between the writer and the photographer because they catch images of the society.

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America, he defined the USA as "a new democracy where classes are confused and intermingled, knowledge and power are not infinitely divided up and scattered all around." He said that short stories are "books which are easily got and quickly read. Plots: lively emotions, sudden revelations, brilliant truth."

The colonies

At the beginning, there were only 13 colonies. We can divide them into The New England Colonies, The Middle Colonies, and The Southern Colonies.

• In The New England Colonies, we can find New Hampshire corporate, Massachusetts corporate, Rhode Island corporate, and Connecticut corporate.
• In the Middle Colonies, we have New York proprietary, New Jersey proprietary, Pennsylvania proprietary, and Delaware proprietary.
• In the Southern Colonies, Maryland proprietary, Virginia corporate and Colony, North Carolina Proprietary, South Carolina Proprietary, and Georgia proprietary.

Early colonists were very young, mostly male with no family, middling sort. They wanted to improve their economic conditions. If they wanted to go to America, but they had no money or they were slaves or criminals, once arrived they became slaves for a few years and, if they died before they paid their debt, their sons became slaves. They were mostly Scottish or Irish, so there were a lot of religious differences.

The king signed Royal charters with which he allowed grantees (proprietors or corporations) the right to colonize some specific lands. There were two types of chartered colonies:

1. Proprietary charter colonies: the power was given to an individual or to a group who governed as a private estate.
2. Corporate charter colonies: a joint-stock company obtained the power.

Southern colonies: main important goods are fish, agriculture and they're organized single crop corporate. There are a lot of giant fields and there are hot seasons for 9 months, there is a lot of fish in the sea and in the rivers. There is a conflict between white and black people and there are a lot of slaves. These territories are linked to England for the religion (Anglican). They repel Indians.

Middle colonies: based on fish. The key word is diversity → these areas have been created by strangers (German, Swiss, English). They're really democratic, everyone can vote (in the south only those who had fields and in the north only those who participated in the church). There were a lot of timberlands and there were sea and navigable rivers. They made alliances with Indians.

New England colonies: they're more independent from England because they were corporate colonies. Then they became Royal colonies when the king understood that they were too much independent. It's cold, there are little manufactures, and settlements were the Puritans' ideas spread all over. The head of government was the head of the church, every colonialist had to go to church and to pay taxes to the church. The colonies of the north have a giant importance on the short stories.

The Puritan groups

• 19 November 1620: The Pilgrim Fathers (Cape Cod) arrived on the Mayflower on the coasts of Massachusetts where they created Plymouth colony.
• 1630: they arrived in New England and created Massachusetts Bay colony with the Winthrop Fleet.

Protestants considered the English church corrupted as the Catholic church, so they separated themselves to create a new church in a new world. They always read the Bible and they’re inspired by the verse “Come out among them, and be separated” St. Paul. They’re called separatists. If anyone committed crimes, they excommunicated them. William Bradford wrote two books (1630;1646). The first is Of Plymouth Plantation and it’s about the history of Puritans, their feelings once arrived in America (creation of settlements, relation with Indians) and the retrospective interpretation of God’s design (is he present? when?). In the second book, he told about the Mayflower Compact (21-11-1620): a pact between Puritans (pilgrims among which William Bradford) and the rest of the travelers because they had the permission of the king to arrive in Virginia, but they were in Massachusetts, so they decided who could govern once arrived in New England. Only 41 men signed these documents, because the others were women or children. They recognized the fidelity to the king and they decided three points: glory of God, advancement of the Christianity church, and the honor of the king and the country. So they created together a community, and a Body Politic for survival. It is the first self-government. John Carver was elected.

1630 → they arrived in Boston with the Winthrop Fleet. The most important man was John Winthrop who wrote Model of Christianity Charity. They wanted to find a land to spread their religion, to create the new Jerusalem, they’re like the chosen ones. John followed the idea of the City upon the hill, so the fact that human have to behave properly to find the city upon the hill; and then the idea of errand (the difficulties the Puritans would encounter in their foundation of the city of God), image of wilderness, reminds them of the actual hostile environment around the Puritan settlement, an uncivilized dangerous land to be cleared and secured. They are like colonialists.

The first colonies

The first colony has been created in 1607 when 104 men arrived in Virginia and they called that land Jamestown, and this was the first permanent English settlement in the New World. They escaped by religious persecutions or economic gains. In 1620, 102 men arrived in Massachusetts and called that land Plymouth. Each colony was allowed to develop its own limited government, which operated under a colonial governor appointed by and answerable to the British Crown. With the exception of the British-appointed governor, the colonists freely elected their own government representatives who were required to administer the English system of “common law.”

Hawthorne (1804-1864)

He was born in Salem and all his family were Puritans. One of his ancestors, William Hathorne (senza W!) was a judge known for his harsh sentencing, and John Hathorne (senza W!) was a judge who condemned a lot of women for witchcraft. In 1808, his father died really young, so his mother, his brothers, and he stayed alone, but his family helped them. A leg injury made him stay immobile for months during which he read a lot.

1821-1825: He attended Bowdoin College where he met Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. Then during college, he missed his mum and two sisters, so after graduation, he stayed at home for 12 years during which he started writing books (1837 Twice Told Tales), but he never earned a lot of money from his texts, so he worked for the Boston Custom House (1839) like a "working machine". He met Sophia Peabody and they fell in love. He spent time in the Brook Farm community (1841) where he saved some money, so he could marry her. He met a lot of transcendentalists who thought that the intuition was more important than the intellect in uncovering the truths of nature. He finally left them because he was exhausted by the work.

They moved to Concord (1842), where they were really happy and he created an intellectual utopian community with Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott. They spoke about transcendentalism, abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and other reform movements. There he wrote a lot. When his first son was born, they had a lot of financial problems, so they returned to Salem where he worked as a surveyor. 1846-49 He wanted to write about his Puritan ancestry introduced by a preface about the Custom House where he worked.

When Taylor became president, he lost his position and it was a shock for the entire family, but he suddenly published The Scarlet Letter 1850, the story of two lovers who clashed with the Puritan morality, with which he became famous. He wanted to move away from Salem and from the Puritan ideas, so they went to Lenox where he met Melville, and here he wrote a lot of famous books. 1851: He wrote The House of the Seven Gables. In 1852 he wrote a campaign biography for Pierce and when he became a president he appointed Hawthorne an American Consul to Britain, so he stayed in Britain until 1857. Then his family and he went to Italy, they returned to England and they finally went to Concord in Massachusetts where they lived. Then he suffered from health diseases and he died in his sleep.

He’s a romancer (a person who imagines a situation and then writes it) and he writes in a neutral way between the real world and the fairy land. He wants to describe the contemporary history of Puritans, society, and transcendentalism.

• He wants to apologize for the errors of his ancestors, the superstition, the patriarchal oppression, and the intolerance. They thought that they’re elected from birth and that Satan could take over their likenesses and tempt others to sin.
• The transcendentalism is a religious, social, and aesthetic movement created in 1836 after the publication of Emerson’s Pamphlet Nature. It’s the American idea of Romanticism. This movement focuses on the single person and the fact that everyone has the experience of God when he’s submerged in nature. With the transparency, human minds can see over appearances arriving at the truth.

In this period there are also reforms, like abolitionism, women's rights, educational reforms, and utopian experimentations. He believes in individual freedom and that transcendentalism is too optimistic, he prefers the difference between evil and good. Hawthorne wanted to eliminate slavery, instead, Pierce thought that this phenomenon would vanish like a dream. So in 1850 with The Fugitive, the slaves who escaped from the plantations to find freedom through the Underground Railroad in Canada or in the north, could be taken by their owners without a trial by jury and reported in the plantations. What does he think about slavery? → He has a laissez-faire strategy, it isn’t necessary to create reforms, this phenomenon would vanish. Transcendentalists don’t think like this. It was necessary to preserve the Union → no wars.

Short story

He uses a lot of symbolism, allegories, metaphors, and freedom. It is necessary to join imagination and reality to make the story real to the reader. If you can’t imagine in the night, you’re not a romancer, because during the night, thanks to the moonlight, ordinary things change their appearance. At the beginning, he wrote novels (The Hollow of the Three Hills; The Salem Gazette; Twice-Told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse). He was known as a novelist when he started writing short stories. We can divide his collection of short stories into three parts:

1. Examination of Puritan history → he examined the history of Puritans from a historical point of view.
2. The psychological complexities of sin and guilt.
3. The relation between art and science.

Puritan history

He wants to show the negative aspects of Puritan traditions to move forward: we need to understand the past errors to improve. They wanted the school because they needed to read the Bible, only for this reason. To describe these topics, he always uses irony and respect. He criticizes superstition, but he exalts the difference they made between Good and Evil.

The Maypole of Merry Mount (Twice Told Tale 1837). It’s about Puritan history. It first appeared in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir in 1832 and in 1837 in Twice Told Tale. It is set in Quincy, Massachusetts, in the colony of Mount Wollaston, which was nicknamed Merry Mount. The story’s themes include the search for true happiness, the fight for religious expression, and the validity of human joy. Villagers are happy. It is around 1620, when the US was first being colonized by English people, and the future of the union was still in the making. The narrator writes that if the people of Merry Mount had their way, they would “pour sunshine” everywhere and work to make people happy. To celebrate the marriage of Edgar and Edith, two young people in the colony, the villagers dance around a Maypole, a celebratory column.

The narrator describes the Maypole as being made from pine-tree. It has a silken, rainbow-colored banner at the very top. It is adorned with silver leaves and ribbons of various colors. It also has beautiful flowers from the surrounding areas, and rich shrubs and rose bushes at the bottom. The villagers wear various animal masks: wolves, deers, goats. They resemble the woodland creatures in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The narrator calls them “the crew of Comus.” Comus is the Greek god of festivities, especially nightlife. The narrator describes Edgar as having a rainbow scarf wrapped around his neck. He holds a gold walking stick and joins hands with his wife-to-be. Edith is similarly dressed in bright colors. Her blonde hair is curly and glossy. They are facing an English priest, who is dressed in a “heathen fashion” and he is revealed to be the high priest of Merry Mount. He studied at Oxford and it is important to note that the Puritans were frequently suspicious of anyone from an elite college. He exhorts the crowd to sing and dance in honor of the young couple entering into matrimony to demonstrate to the young pair how joyful life can be. The crowd beats on drums and blows through horns and flutes. While, on the surface, this village seems to be delightful, the narrator hints that happiness here is mandated. To appear unhappy in Merry Mount is “high treason.” The newlyweds whisper to each other about some of their doubts. They’re skeptical that everyone in town is truly happy for them, and even if they were, they fear that this is the apex of their happiness as a couple → it may be all downhill from here. They also feel vulnerable: now that they’ve found someone to love, there’s the possibility that they may lose that person. As they are mortal and subject to “earth’s doom of care and sorry,” they have reason to, someday, permit themselves to feel unhappiness.

The narrator gives a brief history of the Merry Mount people. Most of them were daydreamers from England: circus performers, actors, and other people who rarely went to church. They are all very happy to be at Merry Mount, where they can practice their religion of happiness unimpeded. Through the years, they built the Maypole to symbolize their joy in life. The narrator then describes the neighbors of Merry Mount: The Puritans. The narrator jokes that their version of the Maypole was the whipping-post. They are severe, cynical people who always carry weapons with them to shoot Native Americans, and they whip their young for even thinking of dancing. The Puritans debate among themselves whether they should go over to Merry Mount and teach the people there how to respect their god. “The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel,” the narrator notes: will New England be ruled by a sentiment of frivolity and joy, or of skepticism and hard work?

All is well at the marriage ceremony until the sun sets, and John Endicott, a powerful Puritan who served as governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony for 16 years, arrives. He is accompanied by a horde of other stalwart Puritans. Soon after arriving, Endicott rushes toward the Maypole with a sword. Calling it a false altar, he cuts it down. Believing that the lustful celebrations he has witnessed are sinful before god, he orders that all of the people of Merry Mount be whipped. He also considers branding them, and cutting off portions of their ears to mark themselves as sinners. He demands that the person wearing a bear costume be shot, saying “I suspect witchcraft in the beast.” Only the newlyweds are exempt from severe punishment. Endicott sees that they can be re-educated into his style of thinking. He orders that their sole punishment is to replace their clothes with something more conservative. Edgar is also to get a haircut; his hair is far too long to be respectful and must be cut into the “pumpkin shell” style that reflected Puritan’s beliefs on order and cleanliness. Edith and Edgar decide to clean up their act and join the Puritan commune; they never think of Merry Mount again. They’re like Adam and Eve. This story started with a historical document which makes us think that the story is true, but then Hawthorne invented the story. There is an opposition between the maypole (symbol of the community) and the whipping-post (symbol of Puritans where people were whipped) and also between light and dark.

Guilt and sin