I.                   The significance of American Literature (especially the difference from English literature)

A.    The development of North American Literature reversed the history of every other national literature.

(Instead of beginning with folk tales and songs, it began with abstractions and proceeded from philosophy to fiction.)

B.     The protestant work ethic

-          A belief that work itself is good in addition to what it achieves;

-          Time saved by efficiency of good fortune should not be spent in leisure but in doing further work;

-          Idleness is immoral and likely to lead to worse sin.

C.     Two kinds of writings in pre-Revolutionary colonies

1.      Practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc, designed to inform people “at home” what life was like in the new world, and to induce immigration.

2.      Theoretical discussions of religious questions, political writings.

n      Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

n      Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence

D.    Individualism

(A philosophy that differentiated the culture and literature of the U.S. from that of Europe.)

n      Dictionary definition: a belief in the importance of the individual and the virtue of self-reliance and personal independence.

n      Background

Older Catholic religion: placed great emphasis on man’s duty to fill well the position in which God had placed him, however humble it might be, trusting he would be rewarded with an exalted station in heaven.

Newer Protestant Religion: man’s duty is to make the utmost practical use of the talents and opportunities with which God had provided him.

“Everywhere in the world poverty is inconvenient, but only in the United States, is it also a disgrace.” – Mark Twain

n      Individualism colored the work of all the great nineteenth century American writers:

Franklin: self-reliant individualism

Transcendentalists: self-reliant idealism

Poe: Romanticism

Hawthorne: Psychological Analyses

Melville: Metaphysical probings

n      Three major strains of individualism in American literature: pragmatic, romantic, and transcendental individualism.

Washington Irving—often referred to as the first American man of letters, not really American in either approach or major subject matter. He might be the first author born on the continent to make a living by his pen, or to establish a reputation as an essayist and short story writer. Yet he was only in the narrowest technical sense part of the new world. He lived more than half his adult life abroad, dealt with more English and Spanish than American material, and was quite unaffected by the distinctive ideas and attitudes developing in his young nation. —Rubinstein, P8

II.                Pragmatic individualism

Representative: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

An outstanding tradesman, citizen, scientist, statesman, and political revolutionary.

1.      Franklin’s life experience

-          10^th of 15^th children, in a soap maker’s family

-          left school before 11

-          at 12, apprenticed to an older brother, a printer in Boston.

-          Meanwhile wrote several articles for the newspaper

-          At 17, ran away to Philadelphia.

-          Set up a printing press

-          42, retired with a comfortable annual income of 500 pounds

-          planned to devote the rest of his life to such scientific experiments as the famous one with a kite which helped determine the nature of lightning and electricity.

-          involved in volunteer social activities (the founding of the American Philosophical Society, planning the University of Pennsylvania and organizing the first free hospital in the colonies)

-          became active in the national and even international political affairs.

-          1776, appointed the first American Ambassador to France, successfully negotiated the treaty of 1778 which secured French assistance for the former colonies in their war against England.

-          1785, a key member in the Constitutional Convention which consolidated the thirteen former colonies into the United States.

2.      His major literary contributions

Ø        Franklin’s uncompleted autobiography, written at intervals during the years from 1771 to 1790.

-          The first real post-revolutionary American writing, the first real autobiography in English.

-          Portrays the picture of an active, self-reliant, confident, curious and reasonable individual who took completely for granted the great value of both useful productivity and personal prosperity.

Ø        Poor Richard’s Almanac

Modeled on the sort of farmer’s annual calendar widely sold at the time. These annuals included dates of the full moon, notes of local high and low tides, suggestions as to the best time for planting various crops, predictions about the weather in the coming year, and occasional advertisements by local manufacturers or merchants. Franklin interspersed this material, year after year, with hundreds of proverbs, most of which he wrote or adapted, and bits of advice about business, marriage, manners, study and child rearing.

All of these were expressed in short, pithy sentences, often rhymed for easier memorization.

       Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

         He that would thrive must ask his wife.

       A penny saved is a penny earned.

A small leak will sink a great ship.

He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.

The emphasis on commercial success in these many other proverbs explains why Franklin has come down in American history as the perfect reprehensive of the now so much discredited American Dream of “rags to riches”, and why he is so often scorned by the idealistic young people who know him only as Poor Richard.

Ø        “Declaration of Independence” (worked with Thomas Jefferson who framed it)

III.             Romantic Individualism

Representative: James Fenimore Cooper—an important landmark in the literary history of the U.S.

Ø        History stories, very detailed adventurous stories and pioneer stories- The Leatherstocking Tales

Ø        Cooper is not a skillful writer. His dialogue is wooden and inconsistent, his Indians are hopelessly unreal, his descriptions are often longwinded and pretentious, his plot depends heavily on improbable accidents and absurd mistakes.

Ø        In The Pioneer, he unconsciously formulated a, or perhaps the central American myth—the image of an independent, self-reliant, solitary man, the quintessence of individualism, in the untouched, unimaginable huge, virgin forest.

IV.             Transcendental Individualism

Representatives: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Transcendentalism:

Emerson: consciously formulated the philosophy of transcendental individualism

- born in Boston, son, grandson, great grandson, and great-grandson of ministers.

- 1821, several years after his graduation, taught school

- 1825, returned to take a degree in theology.

- 1829, ordained as junior pastor Boston’s prestigious Second Unitarian Church. / married.

- shortly after his wife’s death, he left the ministry because of his growing disagreement with the church doctrine.

 Inherited $1000 a year from his young wife, bought a home settled down in a wooded farm village, 20 miles from Concord.

- 1835, remarried

- 1836, “Nature” was published anonymously

- “The American Scholar”—“the 2^nd American Declaration of Independence”, a declaration of cultural independence for the United States.

- 1847- 1848, his talks in lecture halls in New England, the Middle Atlantic States, England, and later the Midwest, were extremely popular.

- 1860s- 1870s, a series of ten volumes—“Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks”

Emerson’s transcendentalism:

n        God exists everywhere in nature (nature is the expression of the omnipresent spirit)

n        Each individual soul is part of the oversoul (nature is a symbol or material expression of the divinity of man.)

n        Through one’s intuition or imagination every individual can and should have direct contact with universal reality.

→Man should therefore rely on his intuition to learn the truth instead of any social laws or scientific understanding or the empirical information given him by his senses.

“…the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”—from “Self-Reliance”

Emerson’s two sources of transcendentalism:

l        Emerson’s idealistic view of the world—all men were basically divine.

l        19^th century Americans and liberal Europeans generally believed: “the new world is a new beginning of mankind; every individual should rise to their full potential.”

Two other themes running through Emerson’s work:

l        The world should be experienced freshly through each man’s direct contact with nature and his own soul.

l        The importance of learning through physical activity in the everyday world.

(These ideas were more fully developed by Thoreau and Whitman.)