Appunti di letteratura e cultura angloamericana I

Delano though that Blacks were inferior so incapables to create an evil plan (he

thinks this also for Spaniards), so, in his opinion, the only who can commit a crime

is Benito, the one who is white. His preconceptions saved him.

Nowadays Babo is considered a Pure Evil, his brave and intelligent, but he has an

extremely violence.

Delano has an idea of slaves (as Melville's contemporaries) because he though

they were like devoted companions, so when one of them became a rebel for his

freedom, he became a violator of trust and familial bonds.

Irony appears from the extreme difference between the reality and the

preconceptions of people.

Benito's behaviour is interpreted as silence and bad temperament, rudeness,

weakness of the Old World, piratical conspiracy.

At the end Melville criticezed the benevolence of Delano because it covered his

deshumanity. Neither Babo understood the lesson.

Delano was with his boat Bachelor’s Delight in Santa Maria. Then they saw a boat

which was going to the rocks, he thought they had a problem, so he went check on.

He understood that it was a Spanish merchant boat called Saint Dominik and on

the boat there was the sentence “Follow your leader”, but it was in decay.

The captain was Cereno, but he didn’t feel good, so he had a black servant called

Baby who helped him. On the boat there were a lot of slaves and they hadn’t water

or food, so he gave them a lot of supplies. Then he noticed the great assistance

that Babo gave to Benito. Cereno told him that they left Buenos Aires six months

earlier, but then they found a terrible tempest so half of the crew died, and they

eliminated everything from the boat, like water and food. Then a lot of them died of

a disease, and when the wind stopped they drifted and they started suffering of

fever. He felt that sometimes was wrong, and then he notices a black man who

hurts a white man with a knife, but Babo said that they had fun in that way, so he

wasn’t punished. Then he understood that the salves belong to Alexander Amasa

who died, but he thought that his corpse is on the boat. Delano started thinking that

cereno is organising a plan to take his boat, because some black slaves attacked

white sailors, sailors can’t succeed in speaking with Delano but one of them said

him to escape. Then he spoke about Cape Horn to Cereno and he looked terrified,

so Babo arrived to shave him, but when Delano said again “Cape Horn” Babo

accidentally cuts Cereno who was so terrified by the blood that Delano thought that

he was incapable of murdering. Then he decided to return in this boat, but while he

was in his boat, Cereno falls in it followed by Bad who wanted to kill him, but

Delano’s men arrived and stopped him. So he noticed that near to the sentence

“Follow tour leader” there was a skeleton. He understood that there was a slave

revolt, so Babo became the leader. They killed all the sailors and obliged Cereno to

go to Senegal, but before they had to find supplies, so they went to Santa Maria.

For this reason Babo has been executed and his head placed on a pole. Some

months later also Cereno died. TWAIN (1835-1910)

Mark Twain was born in Florida in 1835, shortly after his family had moved there

from Tennessee. When Twain was about four, his family moved again, this time to

Hannibal, Missouri, a small town of about five hundred people.

Twain's father was a lawyer by profession but was only mildly successful. He was,

however, highly intelligent and a stern disciplinarian. Twain's mother, a southern

belle in her youth, had a natural sense of humor, was emotional, and was known to

be particularly fond of animals and unfortunate human beings. Although the family

was not wealthy, Twain apparently had a happy and secure childhood.

Twain's father died when Twain was twelve years old and, for the next ten years,

Twain was an apprentice printer and then a printer both in Hannibal and in New

York City 1848. Hoping to find his fortune, he conceived a wild scheme of making a

fortune in South America, because in 1845 a book called “Manifest Destiny” has

been published and the theme was to move towards the center to find a new life.

On a riverboat to New Orleans, he met a famous riverboat pilot who promised to

teach him the trade for five hundred dollars. After completing his training, Twain

piloted riverboats along the Mississippi for four years. During this time, he became

familiar with the towns along the mighty River and became acquainted with the

characters who would later inhabit many of his novels, especially Tom Sawyer and

Huck Finn.

When the Civil War began, Twain's allegiance tended to be Southern due to his

Southern heritage, and he briefly served in the Confederate Militia. Twain's brother

Orion convinced him to go west on an expedition, a trip which became the subject

matter of a later work, Roughing It. Between 1861-1866 he became a mature

reporter.

1862: he became a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

Even though some of his letters and accounts of traveling had been published,

Twain actually launched his literary career with the short story "The Celebrated

Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," published in 1865. This story brought him

national attention, and Twain devoted the major portion of the rest of his life to

literary endeavors.

1865: he convinced the editor of the newspaper to send him in Europe to allow him

to write articles every week.

1869: He wrote “ The innocents Abroad”, his best-seller.

1871: he married Olivia Longdon and they moved to Connecticut, where he came

into contact with an association called “Underground Railroad” which helped

Blacks to escape in the north.

1884: he published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn —> it’s about a poor boy

who lives in poverty, but a woman wants to civilise him, so he escapes with a black

slave, so he described the incongruities about society. This book isn’t accepted by

New England, but it was by other stated because it told the truth. It’s an innovative

book because it’s told by the point of view of the poor boy who told all the violence

on children.

Then he has economic problems, so he took a trip in Europe where he

experimented the European and the American imperialism which destroyed poor

countries like Africa and Philippines. Then he died in 1910.

He’s linked to the southwestern humor, so he published in local newspapers

sketches about local characters. In general, humors are an union between polite

and more primitive culture, and some features are regional characters, dialects,

bizarre activities, at the beginning humors writers wrote anonymously and they

were white men.

In general the narrator is a genteel narrator and the main themes were fights,

hunting, acts of violence etc.

Humorists were experimental, extravagant, slang and a mixture of political satire

and literary burlesques.

They described society attacking foolishness and American Democracy

deficiencies.

Twain published his short story on newspapers because they seemed innocents,

but in reality they criticised society.

The Innocents Abroad (1869)

It’s about a trip to Europe that in general a lot of middle-class Americans did, it was

a sort of Grand Tour. He described the exploitation of mass culture and he subtitled

it “The New Pilgrims’ Progress” because tourists arrived and accumulated

memories.

Old times in Mississippi 1875

He creates a link between the West and the South and it’s a visionary reportage

because he remembered how America was before the civil war.

Humor: it’s an envelope that carried a message, in general it describes American

lies to strangers. For example Thomas Morton wrote that Indians at the beginning

were white, and then became black.

American humours followed 3 main themes:

1) Egalitarianism: everyone is equal, also Indians.

2) Empathy: he feels the suffering of people

3) Entrepreneurialism: he denounces the exportations of slaves in fields.

He wants to denounce politics through satire and burlesque.

In general southwestern humour is folksy, a little bit vulgar, language racy and there

are exaggerated incidents.

We have the passage from a minor literary genre to an international literary

phenomenon.

Twain used local color, because, after the Civil War he wanted to focus on single

regions and to describe them using realism. He doesn't use a geentel language,

instead he used the slang of the miners, the dialects of negros and poor white to

represent their individuality.

During the period after the Civil War, romance is replaced by realism, because the

writer has to be like a photographer, he has to catch every image, so common

people and common life using a simple language.

He's like a eyewitness.

Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog (1865)

At the beginning the narrator writes in a formal way and he says how the reader

has to interprete the story. The narration is complicated and long, but it

characterized this story, and the narrator said that he will never be interrupted

during the story. He sets the story in '49 during the Gold Rush in the west, so the

story is based on the memory.

There is the local colour setting.

It's a record of bizarre events without interpretation. The story is divided in the inner

story which has a simple plot (the characters are Smiley, Andrew Jackson (the dog)

who in reality was the first president to represetn the vulgar side of democracy;

Dan’l Webster (the jumping frog) who was a New England statesman criticised for

his compromise on slavery; and the stranger); and the frame story where the

characters are the narrator (very formal) and Simon Wheeler who is sociable.

Everything depends on a bet which create curiosity

There is also a comic climax which is represented by the meeting with Parson

Walker’s wife and his thankful remark and Smiley’s comment “Well, I’ll resk two-

and-a-half that she don’t, anyway.” —> it’s a sacrilegious comment, so he will be

punish.

The narrator wanted to know the story of W. Smiley, but Wheeler told the story of

Jim Smiley during the Gold rush. He gambled on everything and a lot of times he

gained. He had a god called Andrew Jackson who was used to attack others dog

on their hind feet, but once he gambled with a man who has a dog without hind

feet, so Andrew Jackson died. Then he had a frog who was used to jump. Once he

gambled with a stranger who hasn’t a frog. So he went to find a frog for the

stranger, while the stranger put some lead in the frog. So when Jim arrived, the

stranger won 40 dollars, and Jim understood the trouble only when the stranger

went out.

Themes:

1) East vs. West

The story is set up to present an oppositional relationship between the uncouth,

uneducated, and unsophisticated image of the Westerners versus the exact

opposite image of those back