# data[].attributes.body
Colonial Period (ca. 1620-1800)

Anne Bradstreet

"In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet"

Romanticism (ca. 1800-1865)

Nathanial Hawthorne

"The Scarlet Letter"

Edgar Allan Poe

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

Herman Melville

"Bartleby, the Scrivener"

Realism and Naturalism (ca. 1865-1914)

Mark Twain

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

Kate Chopin

"Story of an Hour"

Claude McKay

"If we must die"

Modernism (ca. 1914-1945)

Walt Whitman

"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

William Carlos Williams

"The Red Wheelbarrow"

Eugene O'Neill

"The Emperor Jones"

Tennessee Williams

"A Streetcar Named Desire"

Arthur Miller

"Death of a Salesman"

Ernest Hemingway

"Hills Like White Elephants"

Contemporary Literature (ca. since 1945)

Allen Ginsberg

"Howl"

Sylvia Plath

"Lady Lazarus"

Toni Morrison

"Beloved"

Paul Auster

"City of Glass"

Don DeLillo

"Falling Man"

Sandra Cisneros

"Woman Hollering Creek"

Leslie Marmon Silko

"Lullaby"

# data[].attributes.body
Zu welchem Genre gehören The Tempest von Shakespeare?

Is Iago von Othello a villain and why?

Thema Othello and colonialism/race etc.

Scarlett letter and Frankenstein: How do they have similarities (z.B. Frauenbild) when they are not written in the same time?

How can we compare AI with Frankenstein?

# data[].attributes.headline
Pre-Colonial Period (until 1620) and Columbus

# data[].attributes.subject
Pre-Colonial Period (until 1620) and Columbus

# data[].attributes.body
Native American Beginnings

Settlement dates back 28,000 years ago

Significant population (millions) and cultural diversity before European contact

Key cultural practices: power of dreams, dualism, syncretic religion and the goal of harmony

Pre-Columbian Native American Literature:

Included genres: song-poems, speeches, stories, ritual drama, and formulas for dances or performances

Stylistic characteristics: oral quality, repetition, symmetry, personification, direct audience addresses

Spanish Exploration of America:

Economic, political, and religious reasons for Spain's motivation for exploration

America as a Contact Zone: first interactions between different cultures, involving coercion, inequality, and conflict

Columbus's Journal: shows his eurocentric view of the New World and its inhabitants. He depicts Natives as "Noble Savages" and "Brutal Savages". Writing was used to justify conquest and colonization

Conquest of Mexiko: Hernán Cortés, role of disease, psychology, mixed-race mestizos in colonial rule, and involvement of Catholic Curch

# data[].attributes.body
English playwright & poet; England’s national poet

Works: 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems

Married to Anne Hathaway; three children

Spent summers (theatre season) in London apart from his family

Early works mostly comedies and histories

Later rather tragedies (Hamlet, Rome and Juliet, Macbeth)

Adapted his writing style and the themes of his writings to the political situation due to the changing monarchs

Tried criticizing the social and political conditions on a metaphorical level

Shakespearen Sonnet:

3 quatrains and a couplet

Many cases: beginning of third quatrain marks the line in which the poet expresses revelation

Rhyme schemes:

Quatrains: ABAB CDCD EFEF

Couplet: GG

Meter: most sonnets are written in iambic pentameters with ten syllables in each line

Two main motifs in his poems:

Unstoppable lust for married woman of dark complexion (“dark lady”); sonnets 127 to 154

Conflicted love for young man (“fair youth”)

Provokes speakers desire for fame (“rival poet”); sonnets 78 to 86

English sonnets differ from the Petrarchan sonnets by thematizing friendship, passionate love, sexuality

# data[].attributes.body
American author known for her pioneering short stories and novels that explored themes of identity, sexuality, roles of women in society

Born in Missouri, she was raised in a household of strong independent women after her father died in a railroad accident when whe was five

She married and had 6 children, after her husband's death, she managed his business and began writing to cope with her grief and support her family

Her work drew on her experiences in Louisiana and observations of social dynamics of the time concerning women (realism)

Best known for her novel "The Awakening" (1899) which faced criticism for its portrayal of woman's sexual and emotional awakening

# data[].attributes.body
Little song/sound

14 verses, written in strict metre, usually iambic pentameter (unstressed/ stressed)

Francesco Petrarca/ Petrarch (1304-1374) -> collection sonnets addressed to Laura who was not interested in him

The way she is portrayed differs from one sonnet to the next: in one, she is praised for her beauty, in the next, she is condemned as a cold woman

Petrarchism:

Conventions that developed from The Canzoniere´s influence on poetry

Male poet addressing female beloved

Physical/mental suffering caused by unrequited love

Blazon: catalogues the features of a women, using metaphor, simile, hyperbole (e.g. golden hair, ivory skin, ruby lips, eyes like pearls), use of oxymoron (freezing-burning)

women are presented like objects, passive, unable to response

sonnet: two quatrains and two tercets, volta happens between quatrain and tercet -> change of focus, heart, tone

introduced by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), Shakespeare (154 sonnets: on love, time, beauty, mortality, theatricality) -> challenging Petrarchan conventions (fair youth, Dark Lady)

male speaker addresses fair youth -> poem about love and immortality -> as long sonnet has reader or speaker it survives

Shakespeare Sonnet 130 -> my mistress´ eyes are nothing like the sun -> addressed to the dark lady -> Nothing like Petrarch´s laura, not idealized but real -> speaker loves real person not idealized figure

Petrarchism vs. the limits of language -> language is arbritrary

# data[].attributes.body
Analysis:

Mocks the predominant love poetry of Petrarchan sonnets

1st quatrain: one line on each comparison between mistress and something else (sun, coral, snow, wires)

2nd / 3rd quatrain: expands description to two lines --> develops arguments

Couplet: love does not need to be perfect and neither need people to be loved

# data[].attributes.body
Analysis:

Superficially: praises beauty of lover

Unlike summer’s wild temperature, the beloved is always mild

Summer personified as “eye of heaven” with its “gold complexion”

Nearly every line is self-contained clause

Central theme: poem defies time and eternity

# data[].attributes.body
Tragedy: high degree of suffering, ends in death, emphasis on a character of high social standing

History: emphasis on a historical figure, usually the reign of a monarch, a distinct political purpose (the war of the roses, Tudor myth) (national hero, patriotic)

Comedy: ends in marriage or with the promise of marriage => “Jack shall have Jill / Nought shall go ill.”

! Shakespearean tragedy does not follow this form (classical tragedy) -> much more experimental

! Shakespeare challenges conventions and makes new ways for drama and poetry, tragedy

! every tragedy includes threads of comedy (‘comic relief’), and every comedy includes threads of tragedy

# data[].attributes.body
English poet (January 22nd 1572 – March 31st 1631)

Most important metaphysical poet

His works include sermons, religious poems, sonnets and songs

Raised in catholic family, studied in Oxford and Cambridge

Critical point of view towards pre-revolutionary England; doubts about politics, economics and philosophy

# data[].attributes.body
Metaphysical Poetry

Literary movement during baroque in 17th century; opposite to cavalier poetry

Connection of two contradictory aspects of reality in a surprising and metaphorical way

Aspects: magic & alchemy; logic & mathematics; theology & metaphysics

Stylistic & thematical characteristics:

Strict line to Elizabethan & Petrarchan poetry

Focus on darkness & suspicions

Love and religion central topics; dealt with in conversation with love affair, god or allegorical figures like death

Puns, oxymora, paradoxa, exaggerated metaphors

Metrical irregularities

Summary & Analysis:

Speaker is frustrated since mistress denies physical relationship

Speaker compares being bit by the same flea to having sex

Argues that the flea bite is neither “sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead” à targets culture of English Renaissance, in which female virginity was social prestige

Religious undertone: union of speaker and mistress in flea = holy trinity

# data[].attributes.headline
William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”

# data[].attributes.subject
William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”

# data[].attributes.body
About Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Work and Thoughts:

Anglican, Juvenalian satire

sees human beings as rational animals, is frustrated with the human race

believes that mankind is not rational, but capable of reason

believes that nature is inherently corrupt

believes pride is the original sin andd the reason for prejudice and misunderstandings -> WE NEED RELIGION

His satire is droven by disillusionment, anger and sexation

art of satire: he criticizes vice, immoral behavior but does not insult a person in particular

Life:

fled to England during th ecivil war

grew up in an Anglo-Irish Protestant community -> witness of the Glorious Revolution uin Ireland (supporters of catholic James against the Anglican William of orange)

became a personal secretary to Sir William Temple

moved back and forth between Ireland and England (1704-1714)

returns to Ireland for good in 1714 as Dean of St Patrick´s Cathedral, Dublin

his own views of Ireland are somewhat ambivalent, "obscure exile in most obscure enslaved country"

after his death, he left all his money to Ireland

other information:

Distinctively Irish writer, described as first Irish nationalist, voice of liberty supporting the patriarchic cause in Ireland

Smith blames Irish poverty on English colonial restrictions, trade, failure of Ireland to protect its own economy

further works:

The Lady´s Dressing Room (1732)

A modest proposal

# data[].attributes.body
original title: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726)

Failed travels

Form of novel was satirized

Adaptions mostly focus on limited parts of story, different in purpose

Parody of Defoe´s adventure stories -> but for readers of time it was not clear -> not even clear that account is fictional

Presented as travel logue, travel narrative rooted in realism, (“true story”) -> projected realism by supported maps and drawings -> Gulliver explores territories that were known to exist

Voyage takes us to several islands/ countries -> Part 1: A voyage to Lilliput, Part 2: A voyage to Brobdingnag, Part 3: a voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdudrib, Luggnagg, and Japan, Part 4: A voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

Starts with shipwreck, Gulliver swims to shore and falls asleep on gras -> when he wakes up he finds himself tied down by an army of tiny people -> he roared so loud that they got scared and ran away -> they start communicating, first in sign language then in language of the Natives, the language he ultimately learns -> he translates documents for readers

He does not colonize unlike Crusoe, but Gulliver adapts (but not in size)

fascination with ‘exotic’ objects

Defamiliarize what seems familiar -> prompts readers to change perspective

Also concerned with little things, everyday items

Contains detailed descriptions, enhance realism in fantastical world and fascination with exotic things at time (esp. with objects from other countries)

Political tension -> Lilliput threatened by another island which it has been at war with in the dispute on how to break an egg the correct way (refers to civil war between Catholics and protestants and war between France and England)

Gulliver was asked to put end to war which he manages to do without any bloodshed, after a while he faces impeachment in Lilliput -> he has to flee to the other island and ends up in England, after two months he travels again because he is restless

New Tempest, discovers new island, all are huge and animals -> eager to devour him -> lives with farmer family -> his master shows him around the country and people pay good money to observe the tiny man -> on this island he is belittled and bestialized, compared to weasel, spider, frog, insect

He tries to adapt -> testimony to his resilience

Queen buys Gulliver off from his master and he starts entertaining the king and court with his stories

Gulliver is pathetic, nothing he can do to impress the giants, only gets laughter from his audience

He tries to make himself, and the country he comes from grander and much more wonderful than it actually is

His perspective has changed, Gulliver is tiny and insignificant, the king on the other hand is noble and just -> Gulliver tries to show off and emphasizes how wonderful the English parliament system is, politics in general and how well law functions -> king listened but laughs

Gulliver is quite proud but on island he cannot put himself in proper perspective -> in the end he is on board of a ship that takes him back to England

During third voyage ship is attacked by pirates that take him to a strange and magical island-> combination of fantasy and science, logic, creative, mystical

Two groups of people who never seem to talk with each other, they all live in their fantasy worlds, they practice astrology, astronomy and use magnetic forces to navigate island -> are extremely interested in mathematical and musical concept -> theoretical approach

Visit to academy of leader can be read as attack on philosophers (eg. experimental philosophy)

Knowledge in regard to science but no connection to real life -> idea here is: science is insignificant if it is restricted to human intellect and not conclude common sense -> intellectual alone not enough to solve problems of common people

Final Journey on utopian island -> intelligent horses and uncivilized

As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by Nature with a general Disposition to all Virtues, and have no Conceptions or Ideas of what is Evil in a Rational Creature, so their grand Maxim is, to cultivate Reason, and be wholly governed by it. […] Friendship and Benevolence are the two principal Virtues among the Houyhnhnms, and these not confined to particular Objects, but universal to the whole Race.”

Before meeting horses, he saw other creatures -> emphasizes their nakedness which distinguishes himself from the other´s because he wears clothes -> their body hair is offensive to him and also their animalistic behavior

Yahoos resemble image of natural man -> savage?

18th century account on racial difference and description of indigenous people/ Natives -> what they emphasize is not so much racial difference but racial sameness

Animals here passes faculty of reason and Yahoos are bad animalistic creatures even though there are human

High colonial description -> Gulliver takes on similar perspective on Yahoos, eventually he ahs to realize that what is based on bodily appearance makes him, when he takes his clothes off, identical to the people he despises -> only realizes it when becoming attracted to young yahoo female

“For now I could no longer deny, that I was a real Yahoo, in every Limb and Feature”

On this final island yahoos are servants to the horses, Gulliver tries to stay as long as possible but they do not want him there and send him out into the ocean -> makes it back to England but the last journey had a lasting effect on him -> in England he realizes that he despises any kind of human contact

The mechanics (and politics) of seeing -> needs spectacle and telescope to see properly -> key devices in novel -> had them in private pocket so Lacrutions did not find them when they searched him -> magnification, extension refinement of physical capacities -> shows limits to human senses -> they need something to extend their view with help of modern technology ( could also mean visual effect -> Gulliver’s inability as observer -> ultimately suggest that he is an unreliable narrator -> extending to: Englishmen/ readers inability to see true mechanisms of corrupted governance

Satire of naïve imperialism -> Swift wants to induce more skeptical view in his readers

history or his story? -> constantly reminded by narrator that the narrators account is based on facts (as in Crusoe)

critique of imperial ambition -> Gulliver reports that he never told the king about his findings even though he is bound to do so -> either not worth claiming the land or it would not be possible/ difficult to do so

“[T]hey go on Shore to rob and plunder; they see a harmless People, are entertained with Kindness, they give the Country a new Name, they take formal Possession of it for the King, they set up a rotten Plank or a Stone for a Memorial, they murder two or three Dozen of the Natives, bring away a Couple more by Force for a Sample, return home, and get their Pardon. Here commences a new Dominion acquired with a Title by Divine Right. Ships are sent with the first Opportunity; the Natives driven out or destroyed, their Princes tortured to discover their Gold; a free License given to all Acts of Inhumanity and Lust; the Earth reeking with the Blood of its Inhabitants: And this execrable Crew of Butchers employed in so pious an Expedition, is a modern Colony sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous People… BUT this Description, I confess, doth by no means affect the British Nation, who may be an Example to the whole World for their Wisdom, Care, and Justice in Planting Colonies…

Deeply ironic, colonial practice which indeed have Irishmen experienced themselves whose people were almost slaves

Lucian, The True Story (2 AD) -> key inspiration for Gulliver’s travel -> contains imaginary countries written in style of history -> one of the first sci-fi narratives which include travel to outer space and encounter with alien life-form

Tempest take sailors to moon where they fight with kings from moon over sun colonization of morning star

“[T]he chief end I propose to myself in all my labors is to vex the world rather than divert it; and if I could compass that design, without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen, without reading I have got materials toward a treatise proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it would be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy, though not in Timon’s manner, the whole building of my Travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind until all honest men are of my opinion (Swift to Pope)

Harsh and sharp attack on colonial practices, society, institutions

Gulliver´s travel can be compared to Defoe:

Both adventure stories

Both sailors who travel off to places, distant islands

Both disguised as authentic travel accounts

Both written in first person

Both regarded as children’s book

Parody of Defoe´s adventure stories

# data[].attributes.headline
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus 

# data[].attributes.subject
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus 

# data[].attributes.body
Mary Shelley (1997 - 1851) was an English novelist best known for her groundbreaking work, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818

One of the first works of science fiction and foundational in Gothic literature

was born in London, daughter of prominent intellectuals

mother died after birth, was raised by father who encouraged her education

Frankenstein was created because of a ghost story contest that Lord Byron proposed, when they were staying at Lake Geneva with friends

mother of science fiction, pioneering female author who addresses themes of identity, creation, and human responsability, bridging Romantic and Gothic literature

# data[].attributes.body
Summary

Robert Walton tells how he has met Victor Frankenstein in the Arctic after earlier having seen a “gigantic figure” crossing the ice. Victor tells of his childhood and his caring family, particularly of his love for his foster sister Elizabeth. While he’s at university, Victor becomes obsessed with science and uses dead bodies to experiment on and creates a monster made of body parts. He’s immediately disgusted by the thing he has created and abandons it. Victor falls ill and is visited and comforted by his childhood friend Henry Clerval. he’s then called home because his brother William was murdered and Justine (a family servant) is executed for it, although Victor believes that the creature had killed him. The creature and Victor meet on a glacier and the monster tells him how it survived, became educated, and asks Victor to build a female companion because he is shunned by humans. Victor agrees and begins to construct a female creature but, as he realizes the consequences, tears it into pieces. The creature is enraged and kills Victor’s best friend (Henry Clerval). Victor and Elizabeth marry but is killed by the creature in the wedding night. Victor vows to hunt the creature down. In Walton’s last letter, back in the Arctic, Frankenstein dies and the creature, still miserable, heads off, probably to its own death.

Inspiration and Context

Science in the Romantic era

Term “scientist” coined in 1834 (by William Whewell)

Foundation of several scientific societies, e.g., Astronomical Society

Many scientific discoveries, e.g., invention of battery, animal electricity (1781) Vitalism

Theory of natural energy (Wordsworth: inherent in nature, can be unleashed by imagination); Coleridge questions source of said energy

Animal magnetism

“the study of the reaction of living organisms to the

(a): theories of magnetic fluids (physiological; animal magnetism)

theories of suggestion and imagination (psychological, mesmerism) Mesmerism

Emerged from theories of animal magnetism

Based on the belief in healing by touch or by the “touch” of one’s gaze

Luigi Galvani experimented with electricity on frog legs

Result of animal magnetism

Reanimation of dead/lifeless bodies à vitalist debate The vitalist debate

Debate whether life was the product of some spiritual substance (Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam) or is life something inherent in nature (not infusible by an external agent or power)

--> Inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein

The Novel Frankenstein

Composed as part of a writing contest at Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva

Published anonymously in 1818; many people thought it was a male author

Not concerned with supernatural events, but rooted in scientific discoveries of time

early work of science fiction; different cultural, moral, psychological questions

Gothic novel

Revolutionary work (also inspired by works of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, P.B. Shelley)

Narrative structure: Epistolary novel

Letters by Robert Walton to sister Mrs Saville

Incorporates Victor Frankenstein’s story and the creature’s story

Style raises doubts about truthfulness/reliability of character’s accounts

Includes aspects of taboo: bringing creature to life/creating life; reader is reading letters not addressed to us but to his sister à fascination of forbidden

Sublime

definition:

Pleasurable pain that arises from the feeling of terror (expands the soul) (not horror!)

“To excite the ideas of pain and danger … the sublime is the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling”

Primarily experienced in nature

Sublime in Frankenstein:

Thunderbolt Victor sees when he’s 15

Victor seeing the creature in motion for first time

Every time Victor is confronted with grandness of nature --> remote and beautiful, bigger than humans - a place to find peace BUT: place of retreat of creature

creature itself is not the sublime! “beautiful”, but then “breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (no pleasurable terror, here just horror!)

Women in the novel

Either killed or unimportant

Role of women replaced by men

Victor gives birth to creature

Creature as an outsider connects to women at that time --> The Modern Prometheus and revolutionary energy

The Modern Prometheus

Victor: victorious, winner who stole fire from gods, uses his knowledge to infuse spark of life into lifeless body

Creature: revolts against his creator (Victor); “feelings of revenge and hatred”; “I am malicious because I am miserable”

Driven into crime by the treatment of society” (Rousseau: society corrupts humans)

Creature remains outsider even when it tries to connect to society --> leads to desire for revenge sparked by society --> connects to French Revolution (revolutionaries wanted to take revenge on those in power, creature on Victor)

--> Reign of Terror

Creature spreads terror, kills people

Shelley supports revolution and quest for freedom and equality; also displays dangers, esp. dangers of reign of terror

The Gothic Genre

Key features:

connection to French revolution & reign of terror

Wild remote places - isolation, haunting past/secrets, supernatural, transgression, display of uncertainties (power, law, society, family, sexuality)

imagination and emotional effects --> sublime

Ann Radcliff: terror – strongest emotion and state of awareness – finding fascination in terror (opposite of horror which petrifies)

Gothic transgression in Frankenstein

Ability to respond to creature (in comparison to Frankenstein) --> effect of gothic transgression --> question of who is the monetser in the story?

“Gothic terrors activate a sense of the unknown and project an uncontrollable and overwhelming power” … “transgression, by crossing the social and aesthetic limits, serves to reinforce or underline their value and necessity, restoring or defining limits”

# data[].attributes.body
Summary

The novel begins with Jane living at her aunt's, Mrs Reed. Mrs Reed and her children are very cruel towards Jane and one night Mrs Reed locks Jane into the 'Red Room', a supposedly haunted room in the family home.

Mrs Reed sends Jane to Lowood School where the headmaster, Mr Brocklehurst, is also cruel towards Jane. Conditions are very poor at the school and Jane's best friend, Helen Burns, dies of consumption. Jane later becomes a teacher at Lowood.

Jane applies for a governess position at Thornfield Hall and gets the post. She becomes governess for Adele. Jane begins to fall in love with her employer, Mr Rochester.

A fire breaks out at Thornfield, nearly killing Rochester as he sleeps. Jane saves him. Rochester claims it was Grace Poole - a servant - who started the fire, however Jane doesn't think it was.

Jane is shocked when Rochester confesses his love and desire to marry her. She thought he wanted to marry Blanche Ingram. On the day of their wedding, a man turns up at the church to declare that Rochester cannot marry as he is already married. Rochester reveals all about his marriage, claiming his wife Bertha, is mad and he still wants to be with Jane.

Jane cannot be with Rochester when he is still married so she runs away, becoming homeless and then sick. The Rivers family take her in and nurse her back to health.

Jane inherits her uncle's wealth and estate. She finds out that the family that took her in are actually her cousins. St John Rivers asks Jane to join him in his missionary work abroad and be his wife. She nearly accepts but when she hears Rochester calling her in a dream, she decides she cannot marry someone she doesn't love.

Jane returns to Thornfield. When she arrives, she discovers it has burnt down. Jane suspects the worst - that everyone in the household has died, including Rochester. She soon hears the truth, that Bertha burnt the Hall down and Rochester, in his attempt to save her, became blind and lost his hand.

Rochester is now living at Ferndean, his usual retreat, and is blind. Jane rushes to him and they marry. The novel concludes with Jane and Rochester married with children. Rochester also regains his sight in one eye.

for a more detailed summary see https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zw76g82/revision/1

# data[].attributes.body
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) was an English novelist and poet and one of the most significant novelists of the 19th century

Born in Thonrton, Yorkshire, Charlotte was the third of six children. Her father was a clergyman, her mother died when she was 5 years old

She and her sisters attended Clergy Daughter's School, which later inspired the depiction of Lowood School in Jane Eyre. Hard conditions along with deaths of t´2 of her sisters deeply impacted her.

The sisters created complex fictional works from an early age, writing stories and poems

Her novels often explore: desire for personal and emotional independence, especially for women, social equality and the struggles of the human heart which still resonate with readers today

# data[].attributes.headline
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

# data[].attributes.subject
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

# data[].attributes.body
Plot Summary:

The novel commences in the artist Basil Hallward's studio. He discusses his most recent painting with his witty friend Lord Henry Wotton. Henry insists that the painting should be displayed. However, Basil is worried that his obsession with the subject is too apparent. The portrait is of Dorian Gray, a young man with extraordinary beauty. He arrives later and joins the conversation.

Dorian becomes fascinated with Lord Henry's hedonistic and amoral beliefs, especially when discussing youth and beauty's fleeting nature. Dorian subsequently wishes on his soul that the portrait should become old and ugly in his place. Basil then gives him the portrait.

In the following weeks, Dorian indulges in Lord Henry's "new hedonism," wherein he pledges to live his life fully in the pursuit of pleasure. He tells of a young actress he has fallen in love with, Sybil Vane, because of her incredible acting talent and convinces Basil and Henry to go to the seedy theatre to watch her perform in Romeo and Juliet. However, overcome by her love for Dorian, Sybil performs poorly.

Embarrassed by this, Dorian cruelly breaks off their engagement and returns home to see the portrait changed: it now possesses a cruel expression. After seeing this change in the portrait, Dorian resolves to seek Sybil's forgiveness the next day. However, Lord Henry arrives with news of her suicide. Lord Henry convinces Dorian that he should not feel guilty. Sybil's death was a tragedy comparable to the various Shakespearean heroines she played on stage; Dorian eventually agrees. He then hides the portrait in the attic of his house so that no one can witness its transformation.

Henry sends Dorian a book about the hedonistic exploits of a young Frenchman. Dorian soon becomes obsessed with it. Under its influence for the next 18 years, Dorian devotes his life to the pursuit of excess and corruption with no acknowledgement of the consequences of his actions. He soon becomes more drawn to evil, which is reflected in the portrait: it shows all evil deeds as well as Dorian’s actual age. However, Dorian himself remains young and beautiful. Rumours about his exploits spread in London society, and Dorian's reputation suffers greatly.

Dorian runs into Basil one night, who confronts him about these rumours. Dorian refuses to accept blame and takes Basil to his attic to show him the portrait, which has become hideous. Basil is horrified and begs Dorian to repent; however, Dorian soon becomes enraged and holding basil responsible for the portrait, he stabs him in a fit of anger. The following day, Dorian blackmails a former friend, a doctor, to dispose of the body.

The night after Basil's murder, Dorian goes to an opium den where a vengeful James Vane, Sybil's brother, attempts to take Doran's life, but he manages to escape. Dorian is wracked with fear and retreats to his country home, where he hosts a hunting party for various guests, including Lord Henry.

James Vane follows him there but is accidently killed by the hunting party. Feeling safe again, Dorian decides to repent for his life of sin. He returns to his home in London to see if there is any change in the portrait, but it remains horrifying and has now acquired a look of cunning. In a rage, Dorian stabs the painting. His servants hear a scream and run to the attic, where they see Dorian, now a disfigured old man, dead on the floor and the painting restored to its former beauty hanging on the wall.

Literary Background: Victorian Literature

highly diverse novels of that time e.g.: Charles Dickens, Hard Times – For These Times (April-August 1854) Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847) Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1891) Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

--> all show interest in transformation (of the self)

--> social responsibility

criticise romanticists for being too self-centred and focussed on emotions – are rather rational

aim to cover national problems while also keeping close to individuals

interest in identity formation

novels: R.L. Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Fine de Siècle Literature

Great British Empire started to crumble, many anxieties, related to gender, sexuality, general decline, turn of the millennial (end of the world?), degeneration, social decline…

Key anxiety: a great prosperous time will come to an end

The Spirit of the Fin de Siècle:

departures of Victorian traditions

degeneration

anxieties about the end of the Empire

decadence aestheticism

Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

Irish playwright and novelist

Put on trial for gross indecency in 1895 à convicted on May 24, 1895

“Desire of Oscar Wilde” --> Euphemism for homosexuality

Wilde hid homosexuality through a marriage and 2 kids

Wilde’s trial and fiction & aphorisms as evidence against him

homosexuality was feared, shunned from Victorian society

exposing homosexuality was a big deal

Wilde loses the trial

his works were cited to support the ‘corruption of the young’

his fiction seen as evidence against him

judges deemed his books to be immoral through his statement

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

Wilde poking fun at society

extremely witty & funny

Wilde worked with satire

satire in order to expose Victorian hypocrisy/society

wrote lots of comedies, e.g., An Ideal Husband; The Importance of being Earnest

expose the upper-classes hypocrisies Oscar Wilde, The Importance of being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Comedy of manners --> ridicules the upper-class, their behavior, manners, hypocritic behavior --> they’re according to Wilde: greedy and self-indulgent

Wilde liked to use puns

questions how much control men have over their invented boundaries

humorous reflection on the technological progress

full of paradoxes to expose the artificiality of manners, social conventions, pleasures

Aestheticism (John Keats, Oscar Wilde, E.A. Poe, P.B. Shelley)

L’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake, not art for morality’s sake)

Emphasis on aesthetic values and pleasure

Literature and art should focus on sensual pleasure, not morality/moral agenda

"The Victorians believed that art could be used as a tool for social education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers such as Charles Dickens and George Gissing. The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from this responsibility. The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt for bourgeois morality—a sensibility embodied in Dorian Gray by Lord Henry, whose every word seems designed to shock the ethical certainties of the burgeoning middle class—as they were by the belief that art need not possess any other purpose than being beautiful."

Criticism: indicating decline, decadence, degeneration of (Victorian) values, morals, human behavior, e.g., Nordau, Degeneration (1893)

Reversed gender roles and Oscar Wilde, a dandy

feasting on the aesthetic and beauty

reversed gender roles, attributing ‘typical’ to the other gender

aestheticism represented by Oscar Wilde - dressed quite fashionable

he became a work of art, a dandy

represented idleness, decadence, irresponsibility

The Picture of Dorian Grey - Themes

·       self-absorption

·       connection between art and life

·       beauty and the fulfilment of life

·       The Supremacy of Youth and Beauty

·       superficial nature of society

·       negative consequence of influence

The autonomy of art & the fusion of the human and the artefact

pursuit of pleasure

refelcts upon autonomy of art --> art doesn’t have a moral purpose, no normative characteristic, art for the sake of art

tries to break free from art by destroying the painting

killing the portrait --> kills himself; soul cannot be separated from the work of art

# data[].attributes.body
Genre:

Bildungsroman

depicts the intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual development of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood, often showing a conflict between the individual and society’s norms and values.

Romance

1. A historical genre, like medieval romance, characterised by:

A quest, usually undertaken by a knight, to win the favours of a ‘lady’

Chivalric values and courtly love in an idealised setting

Supernatural occurrences, such as spells and magic

2. A literary mode that includes motifs such as love and conflict; a quest; idealised or magical setting

Gothic

Promotes a “mood of decay, suspense and terror” (Murfin and Ray 205); arises in England in the 1760s, especially with Horace Walpole’s The Castle Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764).

Characteristics include:

mystery and horror;

supernatural events and occurrences, ghosts;

“wild and desolate landscapes” (Cuddon 309);

Archetypes: characters who are quintessentially good or evil

a constant threat to sanity and chastity.

The importance of setting and spatiality

The setting becomes a map to reading the character’s psyche.

It is a site of dynamic interaction.

Enables us to gauge a character’s state of mind and social positioning.

The most dynamic sites of spatiality:

In-between or threshold spaces

Liminal spaces

Movement, mobility, transition between spaces

further information content wise:

Wide Sargasso Sea -> book which gives Bertha Mason a voice (her story of growing up and being married to Rochester)

# data[].attributes.body
probably somewhere from the internet

# data[].attributes.headline
Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Speckled Band”

# data[].attributes.subject
Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Speckled Band”

# data[].attributes.headline
Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party”

# data[].attributes.subject
Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party”

# data[].attributes.headline
Alice Munro, “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You” 

# data[].attributes.subject
Alice Munro, “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You” 

# data[].attributes.headline
David Malouf, “The Only Speaker of His Tongue”

# data[].attributes.subject
David Malouf, “The Only Speaker of His Tongue”

# data[].attributes.body
David Malouf, “The Only Speaker of His Tongue”

# data[].attributes.body
Das Buch hat mich komplett durch mein Studium gebracht, könnte glaub sehr hilfreich sein, vor allem für die Epochen :)

# data[].attributes.body
Old English (450 - 1066)

Middle English (1066 - 1500)

The Renaissance (1500 - 1660)

The Restoration and 18th Century (1660 - 1785)

The Romantic Period (1785-1832)

The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)

The Edwardian Period (1901 - 1914)

The Georgian Period (1910 - 1936)

The Modern Period (1914 - 1945)

The Postmodern Period (1945 - Present)

# data[].attributes.body
English Puritans and the New World:

Motivation for Migration: economic needs and religious motivations

Puritan Beliefs: was rooted in Calvinist doctrines, emphasizing original sin, predestination, strong work ethic

Mayflower and Plymouth Colony: 1620, Mayflower Compact was a foundational document for self-governance

William Bradford and John Winthrop: Bradfords "Of Plymouth Plantation" emphasizes collective effort to live by God's laws, while Winthrop's "A Modell of Christian Charitiy" envisioned society with inherent inequality but bound by collective responsibility to each other, symbolized as "city upon a hill"

Puritan Legacy: The Puritans viewed America as a "new Israel", chosen nation under God's providence

Groundwork for concept of "American Exceptionalism"

# data[].attributes.body
Early Republic:

early nineteenth-century American readers prefer British books

early American novels: sentimental, picaresque, gothic, nostalgic, didactic

First American novel: William Hill Brown " The Power of Sympathy" (romance novel of seduction"

First American short story writer: Washington Irving "Rip van Winkle" (1819)

James Fenimore Cooper: dramatizes conflict between "civilization" and "wilderness"

# data[].attributes.body
About the Story:

Published in 1894, in Vogue magazine under the title "The Dream of an Hour"

Literary period: Realism and Naturalism

About Louise Mallard, young woman with heart trouble who learns that her husband Brently Mallard died in railroad accicent

Her reaction: shock and grief, retreating to her room to be alone

Looking outside her window: she experiences relief and freedom, liberation, joy...

When she embraces her new sense of independence, her husband returns home, alive and well

Story ends with Louise collapsing and dying of a heart attact

Doctors conclude that she died of "joy that kills" (implicating that she was so excited about her husband being alive, when in fact it was the opposite)

Themes:

Explores themes of female autonomy, freedom, independence, identity, complexity of marriage from woman's perspective

Autobiographical input?

Irony and Emotional Complexitiy

Role of Woman: discussion of feminist literature: New Woman and Suffragette

Death: ultimate freedom through death? There is no going back from freedom

Symbolism:

Open window: possibilities of new found freedom; sees blooming nature; spring: new beginning, new life, bright view

Heart Trouble: ambivalence toward marriage: is in love but lacks freedom; cannot be completely happy; heart comes to life when experiencing the possibility of being free and then breaks when independence is denied

# data[].attributes.body
Key Literary Figures:

William Cullen Bryant: first genuinely American Romantic poet (believes that nature teaches us lessons)

Ralph Waldo Emerson: a leading transcendentalist emphasizing self-reliance, nature, individual's connection to the divine in worls like "Nature" and "Self Reliance"

Henry David Thoreau: centrality of individualism, works on naturalism and civil disobedience like "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience" (nonviolent resistent to unjust laws)

Nathaniel Hawthorne: explored sin, guilt, morality, often set in Puritan New England like "Scarlett Letter (1850)

Herman Melville: author of "Moby Dick" (1851), a complex novel exploring themes of obsession, revenge, human condition, darker aspects of human nature

Edgar Allan Poe: gothic tales and poems, explored madness and death in works like "The Tell-Tale Heart"(1843), "The Raven" and "The Fall of the House Usher" (1839)

Walt Whitman: revolutionized American poetry with his free verse style and themes in "Leaves of Grass" (1855) celebrating democracy, the individual, and the human body

Key Themes:

Individualism and Self-Reliance

Nature and the Sublime

Exploration of American Identity

Dark Romanticism

Birth of American literature distinct from European influences

# data[].attributes.body
Pre Colonial Period (before 1620)

American Renaissance (Romanticism and Transcendentalism) (1800 - 1865)

Realism and Naturalism (1865 - 1914)

Modernism (1914 - 1945)

Contemporary Literature (since 1945)

# data[].attributes.body
Renaissance

William Shakespeare

"Sonnet 18" (1609)

"Sonnet 130" (1609)

"Othello" (1604)

"The Tempest" (1611)

Metaphysical Peotry (Early 17th century)

John Donne

"The Flea (1633)

Enlightment

Jonathan Swift

"Gulliver’s Travels" (1726)

Romanticism

William Wordsworth

"Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (1798)

John Keats

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820)

Mary Shelley

"Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus" (1818)

Victorian Era

Charlotte Brontë

"Jane Eyre" (1847)

Alfred Tennyson

"The Lady of Shalott" (1832)

Arthur Conan Doyle

"The Speckled Band" (1892)

Oscar Wilde

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890)

Modernism

Joseph Conrad

"Heart of Darkness" (1899)

James Joyce

"The Dead" (1914)

Katherine Mansfield

"The Garden Party" (1922)

Virginia Woolf

"Mrs. Dalloway" (1925)

T.S. Eliot

"The Waste Land" (1922)

H.G. Wells

"The Country of the Blind" (1904)

Pos-Modernism and Contemporary

Seamus Heaney

"Digging" (1966)

Samuel Beckett

"Waiting for Godot" (1953)

J. M. Coetzee

"Foe" (1986)

Alice Munro

"Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You" (1974)

David Malouf

"The Only Speaker of His Tongue" (1985)

# data[].attributes.body
Romanticism and Transcendentalism:

Romanticism & Transcendentalism (another word: American Renaissance) ca. 1800 - 1865

Romanticism: "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility" (William Wordsworth)

Transcendentalism (1): philosophical idealism, a special kind of Romanticism; (belief in the power of imagination; importance of self-expression, self-determination, individualism, self-reliance, human dignity, equality of races and sexes, interdependence of natural wirld and its human inhabitants; nature is benevolent

Transcendentalism (2): becoming "one" with the world; belief that Nature is (also) symbolic (nature as a living mystery); knowing yourself and studying nature is the same activity; individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization

Cultural and Historical Context:

"Hudson River School" romanticizes and celebrates American landscapes as sublime

Contintental westward expansion of the U.S.A. -> Manifest Destiny (urbanization in the East)

National Identity: period followed the War of 1812 and early stages of the Industrial Revolution, US was establishing itself as distinct cultural and national identity, seperate from Europe

Reform Movements: significant social reform movements, abolitionism, women's rights, transcendentalism

Heavily influenced by romantic movement, emphasized emotion, nature, and individualism

# data[].attributes.body
Background

- after WWI -> isolationism and conservatism (unsettlich of America)

- writers go against these trends in their work and/or live in Europe for a while ("expatrates" like Gertude Stein)

- 3 phases: early, high and late modernism

Modernist Poetry

The Intellectual Climate

Max Weber (1905) The Protestand Work Wthic and The Rise of Capitalism: value of work in American society

Sigmund Freud (1913): THe Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Totem and Taboo: unconscious, dreams, desires, suppression

George Frazer (1890): The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion: from magic to religion to scientific knowledge

Key Characteristics:

uncertainty, pessimism, shifting perspectives, relativism (no privileging of any one culture, civilization, or way of understanding, fragmentation, symbolism (e.g. T.S. Eliot's "waste land")

Experiments in art: Picasso, Marcel Duchamp

Authors:

T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

- Born in American Midwest, studied in Oxford, became British citizen

- Friendship with Ezra Pound (american poet, mentor)

The Waste Land (1922)

- satire, rhetorical strategy, counterpoint, mythical and associative method, "Fisher Kind": archetypal quest narrative

- Five parts: The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by the Water, What the Thunder Said

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)

- enlisted in the ambulence service during WWl

- abandonded socialist political leanings after visit to Soviet Union

- remained critical of American capitalism, favored humane and cooperative economy

- Manhattan Transfer (1925) city novel

- U.S.A. , trilogy published between 1930 abd 196, consisting of The 42nd, Parallel, 1919, The Big Money

- modernist narrative form influenced by the fragmentation of painting and the shifts in perspective as well as by the montage technique of cinema (literary collage)

- narrative technqiues in Manhatten Transfer: neutral camera eye, epitaph, montage, collage, leitmotifs

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)

- published about 180 short stories

- major novels: The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Niht (1934)

- captured the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties

- His life and career very much reflected national developments: born in St. Paul, MN, F. came of age when his country established itself as a world power; F. published his frst novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), when his country was also on the upswing; married Zelda Sayer

- The Great Gatsby (1925) presents the "waste land" of the rich and corrupted

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

- after a career as a journalist he enters World War l as an ambulance driver

- aficionado of the bull ring, expert boxer, fervent fisher, impassioned hunter

-The Sun Also Rises (1926), the disillusioned account of the aimless wanderings of a group of three Americans after WWl

- depiction of a "lost generation"

- symbolic realism

- language of understatement

- "iceberg technique" --> siehe hills like white elephants

- plot: liminal situations (of life and death)

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

- use of symbolism and stream of consciousness

- a writer of American South

- Souther concerns: code of honor, chivalric, treatment of women, class consciousness, trauma of a lost Civil War, nostalgia for the antebellum past, haunted by the sins of the past like slavery and miscegenation

- literary subject: the decline of the South

- fictional microcosm: Yoknapatawpha County (modeled on Hamilton County, Mississippi)

- The Sound and the Fury (1929): multiple point-of-view technqiue, shifts in time reflect characters confusion, cut-up technique blurs past and present, four chapter all tell the same story of a familyÄs decline

- As I lay Dying (1930); Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

# data[].attributes.headline
Realism and Naturalism (ca. 1865 - 1914)

# data[].attributes.subject
Realism and Naturalism (ca. 1865 - 1914)

# data[].attributes.body
Historical and Cultural Context:

From rural, agrarian republic to urbanized, industrialized nation

National legacy of racism

1890: closing of the "Frontier" (settlements by people of European descent all the way to the Pacific Ocean)

Continuing Division between North and South after Civil War

Technological innovations: rise of industry and urbanization (Industrial Revolution England)

Transcontinental Railroad (from NYC to SF) in 1869

Spanish-American War (U.S. expansionism under doctrine of "Manifest Destiny")

Growing division between rich and poor; immigration

more national and varied literature

Central authors:

Mark Twain: local color writing (Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi)

William Dean Howells: main theorist of American realism

Henry James: international theme & psychological realism "Daisy Miller: A Study"; "the" American or "the Italian" are socially constructed categories that cannot and should not be trusted (Hemingway?); Center of Consciousness: all we are told is filtered throug the consciousness of one character; limited third-person point of view; unreliable narrator

# data[].attributes.body
Enlightment Period:

More optimistic view of human nature

Benevolent God allows human beings to employ their power of reason instead of concept of sin

Human suffering is not a result of God's wrath

Rise of science

Colonial Politics and Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin 1709-1790

Emergence of fundamental American beliefs and practices: representative government, economic independence for most whites

Taxes imposed on local levels

Public goods & self reliance

British legislation: Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765) "No taxation without representation"

Tea Act (1773)

Prohibitory Act (1775)

The 18th Century:

Diminished importance of Puritanism

Influence of European Enlightenment philosophy

Age of Reason, age of self-reliance, age of self-determination

New subjects in American literature and culture: American settings & characters

Names:

Thomas Paine: (Common Sense 1776) he published ideas of American Revolution and argued pro representative democratic republican government

Joel Barlow: satirical and patriotic poet, patriotic,

Royall Tyler: first (born) American dramatist

Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur: "Letters from an American Farmer"; life on the frontier

Phillis Wheatley: first known African-American woman poet

# data[].attributes.headline
Contemporary Literature (ca. since 1945)

# data[].attributes.subject
Contemporary Literature (ca. since 1945)

# data[].attributes.body
American novelist, short story writer, journalist

Known for his distinctive writing style characterized by economy and understatement, often referred to as the Iceberg Theory or Theory of Omission

Major figure in 20th century literature

Key member of the "Lost Generation" (American expatriates living in Paris in the 1920s)

General themes: war, love, loss, human condition, own experiences as a war correspondent and adventurer

"The Old Man and the Sea" (1952) won the Pulitzer Prize

1954: was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature

His life was marked by: numerous marraiges, travels, depression

Took his life in 1961

# data[].attributes.body
About the Story:

Literary period: Modernism

Set at a train station in Spain, where a man ("the American) and a woman ("Jig" or "The girl") are having a tense conversation while waiting for their train to Madrid

Dialogue is subtle and indirect, but they are discussing whether or not Jig should have an abortion.

The man tries ti persuade her that the procedure is simple and will allow them to continue their carefree lifestlye, while Jig is more hesitant and conflicted, hinting at deeper emotional complexities

Themes:

Autobiographical?

Lost Generation: Spain as setting

Iceberg Principle: dialogue dynamics through sarcasm, repetition, omission...

Abortion and power dynamics in relationships

Four Movements Toward Self-Realization by Stanley Renner:

1) Jig is passiv but still communicates her feelings through sarcasm and silence

2) Realizes her own mind more and more, interrupts him more

3) With his increasing pressure, she asserts herself increasingly too: repetition, climax, sarcasm...

4) Result of her development toward self-realization, she gets her way

Setting and Symbolism:

Dry, country, no trees (side of the American, abortion) vs. water, fertility (Jig's side, pregnancy)

The girl rejoins the American on his side, but her mind remains on her side (what is her decision?)

Railway symbolism: represents the decision the couple has to make; one way or the other

Madrid - Madre (Mother/Motherhood?)

White Elephant: valuable, sacred vs. undesirable, burdensome gift (pregnancy)

Examples for Iceberg Principle:

The word "abortion" is never mentioned, only "an operation"

The American "reduces" the importance of the topic ("it's perfectly simple")

Subtlety around the topic emphasizes the controversy of the topic

Readers need to actively engage with the text: what are they talking about? What are the dynamics? What do they want?

Thoughts:

Why Spain? A catholic country? Weather? Their relationsip is heated; Spain as a hot country is a useful setting to represent the heated and tense dynamics of the relationship

Names representing uneven power dynamics: "The American" as American men in general and "Jig" in contrast to the more general "American man" (Jig has sexual implications; Jig also African American "slur" --> unequal power dynamics)

Age representing uneven power dynamics: "The girl" and "The man" implication that he is older than her

# data[].attributes.headline
Timeline British Literature: Romanticism - 21st Century

# data[].attributes.subject
Timeline British Literature: Romanticism - 21st Century

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Timeline - from Romanticism to 21st Century

# data[].attributes.body
notes

# data[].attributes.body
author:

born 1940 in Cape Town

since 2006: Australian citize

2003: Nobel Prize

Foe (1986)--> focused primarily on themes of language and power

summary:

„The story starts of when Susan Barton arrives on a tropic island after suffering from a shipwreck. She is immediately rescued by a black slave (Friday) and brought to the house of his owner, Mr. Cruso. In the following scenes we see Susan arguing with Cruso because she wants to leave the island. In the end, Susan, Friday and Cruso succeed in escaping the island when a ship sails past. However, on course for England, Cruso dies of a fever and Susan is left behind with the African, who is not even able to speak. In the following section, Susan talks of publishing her 'island story'. To that end, she is continually writing letters to an author called Foe. Moreover, she decides to stay at Foe's house until he returns from his duty. When he finally returns they start quarreling over Friday's identity and the fact that he cannot speak. Furthermore, Susan and Foe discuss how they will succeed in lifting the spell of muteness which dooms over Friday. In the end, the perspective changes and the reader is witness to a scene on the shipwreck, in which Susan, Friday and Cruso lie buried.“

in short: tells the story of Susan Barton, a woman stranded, then rescued, from a desert island and taken back to England where she attempts to contact Danie Foe, a writer, and have her story documented for the world to read

Postmodernist elements:

playfulness with self-reflexive language, metaphoricity and allegorizing potential

intertextuality and metafictionality

response to Robinson Crusoe: rewriting of Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe

Raising questions of authorship (who writes?); authenticity (is s/he reliable?); and authority (whose story is it?) --> It is a powerful and philosophical tale about how stories are told, and who has the privilege of telling them

Susan Barton: silencing of the female perspective; repressed female history  Foe is obsessed with manufacturing a happy ending

Friday = representation of (black; enslaved) people who were not heard and whose stories remained untold

Unnamed narrator in the end: walks in in a dreamlike state  finds a manuscript and begins to read --> he is transported to the island and goes below the waves to the sunken ship --> finds Friday in the corner --> he screams --> symbolic meaning: animation for readers to help surpressed people tell their stories and help them regain their voice

title:

De Foe

Foe, a fragment (i.e. pointing to something that is no more or something that does not yet exist) --> the remains of Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) (what is left after re-writing his work)

friend or foe?

telling the story:

multiple narrative layers: a story within a story: “I have set down the history of our time on the island as well as I can, and enclose it herewith. It is a sorry, limping affair (the history, not the time itself) – but you will know how to set it right.” (Foe, 47)

How to preserve hi/stories

question of selection, authenticity and authorial control

Susan Barton, an unsuccessful (?) author

most important topics/themes:

feminist aspect: female experience

storytelling

language (+ power of language)

slavery

fantasies of colonialism --> marginalization and powershifts

symbol of the tongue: power of speech, truth and narrative

# data[].attributes.headline
Amerikanische Unabhängigkeit 1775-1783 Krieg, 1783 (4.Juli  1776 Unabhängigkeit der Kolonien)

# data[].attributes.subject
Amerikanische Unabhängigkeit 1775-1783 Krieg, 1783 (4.Juli  1776 Unabhängigkeit der Kolonien)

# data[].attributes.headline
"In Memory of my dear grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet" by Anne Bradstreet

# data[].attributes.subject
"In Memory of my dear grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet" by Anne Bradstreet

# data[].attributes.body
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) early American poet and first published female poet in the English-speaking world

Born in Northhampton, England, she emigrated to American colonies in 1630 with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, and her Puritan family

Her poetry was deeply influenced by her Puritan faith, experiences asa mother, wife, woman in colonial America and her reflections on nature and lifes transience

# data[].attributes.body
Analyse (internet)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Memory of my dear grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet-Analysis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Memory of my dear grandchild EB_240808_140605

# data[].attributes.body
Historical Context Renaissance in Europe

1443 fall of Constantinople

1445 Gutenberg: printing press

1492 Columbus in America

1517 Luther reformation

--> Rebirth of antique philosophy and morals – rise of Humanism and Neoplatonism

--> Anthropocentric worldview instead of theocentric

--> Renewal of religious views

--> Newfound confidence of humanity

--> New scientific and artistic aspirations

Renaissance in GB

Early Tudor Period (1485-1558)

1485–1509 Henry VII: End of War of Roses and Inauguration of Tudor dynasty

1509–1547 reign of Henry VIII

1526 William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament

1534 Separation from Roman Catholicism: Henry VIII head of the Church of England

1547–1553 Edward VI

1553–1558 Mary I (return to Catholicism)

Elizabethan Period (1558-1603)

1558–1603 Elizabeth I (return to Protestantism)

1599 Opening of the Globe Theatre

Literature

Great age of English literature

Rich theatre culture, but also prose, dramatic, lyric, and narrative poetry

In the period which saw the emergence of Humanistic education, emphatic notions of literary authorship and its first professionalization, men (and some women) were educated to be “rhetorical men” (cf. Lanham), human beings whose central competence was eloquence—a verbal and semantic versatility which as “self-fashioning” and performance in a multitude of ways informed the whole of life

Important Writers: Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson

Jacobean Period (1603-1625)

1603–1625 James I: Inauguration of Stuart dynasty

1607 Establishment of the first English colony in the New World

Literature

the time of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies and tragicomedies – still rich theatre culture

two new developments of poetry: metaphysical and chevalier

The Jacobean Age was a hugely influential and rich historical period in drama, prose, and poetry

The literature of the Jacobean Age was often dark in tone and questioned social order

The Jacobean Age was a time of great uncertainty, and many feared an impending civil war.

Important texts: prose writings of Bacon, John Donne’s sermons, Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, and the King James translation of the Bible

important authors: Donne, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Lady Mary Wroth, Sir Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, John Webster, George Chapman, Thomas Middleton, Philip Massinger, and Elizabeth Cary

Caroline Age (1625-1649)

1625–1649 Charles I

1642–1649 Civil War; Charles I executed in 1649

1643 The Licensing Order (Censorship)

Closing of theatres (moral and religious reasons but also to prevent public assemblies – fear of uprising)

Commonwealth Period / Puritan Interregnum (1649-1660)

1649–1660 Interregnum

This period extends from the end of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy under Charles II.

England was ruled by Parliament under the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell – Commonwealth of England

Cromwell’s his death in 1658 marked the dissolution of the Commonwealth – his son was not seen fit to rule

Literature 1625 - 1660

Cavalier poets: writers of witty and polished lyrics of courtship and gallantry

English Civil War was fought between the supporters of the king Charles  (“Cavaliers”) and the supporters of Parliament (“Roundheads” -  they wore their hair cut short)

Religious poets, e.g. George Herbert

Prose writers e.g. Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne.

John Milton – political writing

# data[].attributes.body
Oral tradition, most work written to be performed

400transcripts survived

Anon., Beowulf (c. 700-1000 AD)

# data[].attributes.body
Loss of inflection and case ending

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1400)

John Gower, Confessio Amantis (1386-1390)

John Lydgate, The Troy Book (1412-1421)

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400)

Wrote in vernacular English (beside French and Latin) -> shaped by invasions and foreign influence

▪ Great variety of subject matter, genre, style

▪ Drew attention to Medieval immigrants and mobility

▪ Chaucer’s tales were highly political: challenging class hierarchy, proposing class mobility, mocking clergy

▪ The prologue reveals role-play that governs social order: We are all assigned a specific role in our life, often based on our profession and we live according to the rules set out for those this specific role

Content: mixed group of people, competition who tells best tale -> winner receives meal at Tabard Inn, representation of different milieus/ societies that existed in Medieval England (nobility, clergy, laity)

Tension -> tales play with readers expectations, some pilgrims represented as ideals/ stereotypes -> praised by speaker as outstanding example of estate -> later contradictions

Challenge or support of class hierarchy? -> (by working class speaking next) BUT in pilgrimage people are on the move and classes mix -> everyone seen as equal -> rather sense of class mobility -> reaching Canterbury as common goal

Sexual comedy -> ironic due Christian journey

No single authorial viewpoint but multitude of different voices -> pilgrims are products and producers of their own story -> challenging social and moral question

# data[].attributes.body
The Restoration (ca. 1660-1700)

1660 Charles II returns from exile – restoration of monarchy à political stabilization

1660 Restoration of Charles II; Foundation of Royal Society;

Reopening of theatres

1665-66 great plaque of London – quarter of population killed

1666 great fire of London

1685–1688 James II

1688–1689 Glorious Revolution; Accession of William of Orange

Literature

John Milton (Paradise Lost)

Often: political focus; some writers welcomed Charles II with open arms, while others lamented his return

Return of theatre after 18 year ban – was highly popular

Restoration comedies would frequently comment on marriage and class (hypocrisy of upper class) and include sexual content that would have been far too explicit for stage only years earlier à Comedy of Manners/Restoration Comedy à also called Comedy of Wit due to smart and funny dialogues

Women were allowed to act on stage

Writers were free to experiment with content, structure and form.

Rise of Sentimental Drama/Comedy à replacing restoration wit with sentiment and sensibility, focus on domestic, moral trials, private woes, aimed at middle class spectators, aimed at improving audience’s sensitivity and morality

Important writers: William Wycherley, Aphra Behn, William Congreve, Richard Steele, Edward Moore, William Whitehead…

The Augustan Age/Neoclassicism (ca. 1700 - 1745)

1707 Act of Union: the Kingdoms of England and Scotland are united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain

Exploration and discovery: William Damper, Woodes Rodgers, James Cook

Colonialization (Jamestown, Virginia, Plymouth, later: colonies in West Africa, new South Wales (Australia), Cape of Hope (South Africa)

1714 George I

Technological innovations lead to the industrialization of ca. 1750  - production, improvements in infrastructure, and widespread urbanization

Literature

Neoclassicism

Return to classical forms

Focus on reason and rationality

Imitation of classical forms and genres

Stylized language

E.g. political essays, satire

Eighteenth Century Satire

associated with enlightenment: ideals of rationality, order, knowledge but also wit

Satire: tool to expose and critique social injustice, politics and people in power but also to educate public (Horatian and Juvenalian satire)

Writers: Alexander Pope (Rape pf the Lock), Jonathan Swift (A modest Proposal)

Rise of the novel

More people read than in former centuries

Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) 1719

Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) 1726

Other writers: Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Aphra Behn, Eliza Heywood

Popular: voyage narratives – fascination with exotic (but: from colonizer view - often problematic)

Realism and enlightenment: highlighting the authenticity and usefulness of the story

Establishment of the English periodical, news magazines

E.g. Daniel Defoe (The Review), Richard Steele (The Tatler)

The Age of Sentiment (1745 -1780)

1755 Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language published

1775–1783 American War of Independence: Britain defeated

1789 French Revolution: an important inspiration for British Romanticism

1803–1815 Napoleonic Wars fought across Europe; Britain is Napoleon’s staunchest enemy

Literature

More and more literature in everyday life

Culture of literacy: everyone is writing letters

Expansion of publishing, libraries and postal services

Commercial print marketplace – literature becomes more accessible and cheap

Age of Sentiment

Reaction against rationalism and idealization of reason

Emphasis on human benevolence

Focus on emotion and sensibility

Search for new poetic forms

Simple, seemingly natural language

The Novel

Feminization of the novel – rise of female writers

Aim to entertain and instruct

Epistolary novel: product of its time

Novel consisting of letters, private correspondence

Means to delve into protagonist’s mind

Idea of “writing in the moment” à important for modernism later in time

Theory of mind: Idea to put oneself into others shoes

Question of reliability

Writers: Samuel Richardson (Pamela),  Henry Fielding (Shamela), Frances Burney (Evelina)

# data[].attributes.body
key features:

Rejecting emphasis on reason

Focus on individual experience and power of imagination

Connecting to the notion of ‘sensibility’ -> innate moral sense

Focus on memories of an earlier experience (eg. childhood -> innocence)

No irony

Rejecting notion of general truth -> favor of personal, subjective truths

Deep appreciation of nature -> human experiences ´unity of being´ -> nature experienced by everyone individually

Revolutionary and experimental (eg. French/ Industrial revolution)

History:

New kind of mass production

Discovery of steel and iron

Thriving literary market -> 50% women / 60% men able to read -> Quarterly Review, First Iron printing press

French Revolution:

Power struggle: clergy vs nobility

Revolution of the people

Storming of the Bastille 14 July 1789

1792 September massacres

21 January 1793 Execution Louis XVI

1793 Reign of Terror -> France declared war on England

Sudden erupting violence

1804 Napoleon first Emperor of France

England mixed feelings -> positive: desire for freedom, authorial regime

-> negative: fearing revolutionary spirit, anxiety Napoleon conquering

Industrial Revolution:

Expansion workforce (in factories)

Flourishing trade with colonies -> commercial Empire

Increase power-driven machinery for manufacturing of goods

Trend urbanization

Improvement transportation systems

Mass consumerism

New working class (industrial workers)

Problems: low wages, objectification human workers, lack of housing in cities

The sublime:

Pleasurable pain that arises from terror -> expanding the soul (not horror -> freezing soul)

Edmund Burke: excite ideas od pain and danger, strongest emotion which mind is capable of feeling

Vastness, grandness of nature -> not able to catch with human mind

Cannot be explained with rationality, only by imagination

“It gives me pleasure to see nature in these great though terrible scenes. It fills the mind with grand ideas, and turns the soul in upon itself.”

Science:

Foundation of several scientific societies: Astronomical Society, Zoological Society, British Association for the Advancement of Science

Scientific discoveries included: invention of the battery, atomic theory, link between electricity and magnetism, animal electricity

Vitalism:

Woodsworth believed in natural energy, vital force of nature that relates to theory of life, energy is inherent in nature, can be unleashed by imagination and inspires it

Coleridge questions source of energy, God vs different source

Animal magnetism, or biomagnetism: “The study of the reaction of living organisms to the earth’s magnetic fields and artificial fields”

Based on (a) theories of magnetic fluids (physiological; animal magnetism) -> scientific

and (b) theories of suggestion and imagination (psychological; Mesmerism)

-> pseudo-scientific

the spark of life -> vitalist debate -> whether life is product of some spiritual substance/ life spark of God or if life can be infused into body/ inherent in nature / created by indv. organism

Mesmerism:

Based on the belief in healing by touch or by the ‘touch’ of one’s gaze

Anton Mesmer (1734-1815): mixture of cure and entertainment

“[M]esmerism serves as the principal link connecting primitive rites of exorcism with modern psychoanalysis.”

Mesmerism became almost equivalent to hypnosis -> used to cure certain illnesses/ pains and used for entering different sphere

Galvanism:

Attempts to reanimate the dead, lifeless matter

Experiments on prisoners

eg. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or: The Modern Prometheus

Key representatives:

1st generation: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge -> experienced French rev. more deeply, more affected by aspects of political happenings and aftermath

2nd generation: Lord George Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats

Women: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Mary Darby Robinson, Charlotte Turner Smith

# data[].attributes.body
American novelist and short story writer known for his dark romanticism and exploration of moral and psychological themes

Born in Salem, Massachussetts with deep Puritan roots

His ancestors played a role in Salem witch trials, which influenced his writing's focus on guilt, sin, and morality

explores conflict between individual desires and societal expectations, his ambivalence towads Puritanism and its strict moral codes

# data[].attributes.body
Novel set in 17th century Puritan Massachusetts

Tells story of Hester Prynne, woman who as committed adultery

Result of her sin: she is forced to wear scarlet letter "A" on her chest as a symbol of her shame and societal condemnation

Story takes place 200 years earlier than the written time, in 1642 during the Colonial time in Puritan Massachusetts

Summary:

Hester is one of the first European settlers in Masachussets, she arrives withour her husband Roger Chillingworth (who still has business in Amsterdam)

She finds herself confronted with new challenges, a live without her husband, an independence she never had before

Story takes place after she has her daughter Pearl from an affair.

She faces severe judgement and ostracism from her Puritan community: prison sentence, publicly shamed and wearing of Scarlet letter "A"

Despite that, she remains strong and dignified supporting herself and her daughter as a seamstress

Father: respected Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, he is tomermented by guilt but remains silent.

Roger Chillingworth, Hester's estranged husband, arrives in town under a false identity and dedicates himself to finding and tormenting Hester's lover

Over the course: Dimmesdale's guilt consumes him, leading to physical and mental deterioration

Chillingworth, obsessed with revenge, becomes more malevolent as he tortures Dimmesdale psychologically.

Dimmesdale publicly confesses his sin during a sermon, revealing a self-inflicted scarlet letter on his chest and dies in Hester's arms.

Chillingworth loses his purpose for revenge and dies shortly after

Hester and Pearl leave the town, but years later, Hester returns alone and continues to wear the scarlet letter by choice until her death

Historical Context:

Puritan Society: The novel is set in a Purtial community: strict religious group that settled in New Englang in the 1600s.

When John Winthrop first settled to New England in 163,, colonists who camw with him were Puritans. They boycotted the English church, because they couldn't compromise the loss of Roman Catholicism with the Elizabethan Reformation.

They were Seperatists that didn't tolerate other views and beliefs of society, wnated to establish a new life and their own social and political system

They believed in predestination, moral purity, strict adherence to religious doctrine

Known for intolerance of dissent, severe punishment of sins, particulary those related to sexual immorality

Themes of Sin and Redemption: explores sin, guilt, and reflects on Puritanical obsession with moral righteousness

critiques harshness and hypocrisy of Puritan society, showing how rigid moral code can lead to cruelty and oppression

Hawthorne's Ancestory: He descended from Puritan settlers, one of his ancestors was a judge during the Salem witch trials

Romanticism: emphasizzed emotion, individualism, deep appreciation for nature. Hawthorne uses symbolism, such as scarlet letter itseld and the natural world to reflect Romantic ideals. Novel often contrasts natural, unrestrained world with the artificial constraints of society.

Example: Rose bush growing in front of the prison: stands for nature in contrast to society. In Hawthorne’s own words the rose bush “… may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that … relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow” (48)

Key Points:

Struggle between Individualism and Conformity

Struggle to find a place in community that demands conformation

Symbolism: Scarlet letter "A" standing for "Adulterer", the personification of sin. Red color = love/sexuality but also sin and shame

Scarlet letter meaning shifts through the story: at the beginning it was her punishment, through the story the meaning shifts, it stands for all the good and meaningful things she contributed for society, her dignity and empowerement" - in the end she emroiders her scarlet letter byherself and embroideries become fashionable --> everybody sins

Being a woman without a voice: Hester has no voice but refuses to talk and tell who the father is, she keeps the right to when to use her voice and does not obey and adapt to the system she is forced to

Resistance: towards hierarchal system through dignity, being an outsider (living alone, working alone)

Hester as an martyr: sacrifice she makes to live along her wishes: As a martyr, she is aware of her individual understanding of sin, acts accordingly, but also lives with the consequences

She questions the justification of her punishment

Hester (hebräisch und heißt versteckt/geheim sein/junge frau)

# data[].attributes.body
Naturalism: Background:

"Social Darwinism"

Naturalism is a "pessimistic materialistic determinism" (George Becker)

Naturalist fiction concentrates on common characteristics in a commonplace contemporary world: life is a struggle, conditioned by environment, instinct or chance, humanist qualities, social and natural constraints do not allow to exercise free will without impediments

Key Themes:

survival, determinism, violence, taboo

universe/nature/urban setting is amoral, indifferent, hostile

Classics:

Stephen Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) or "The Open Boat"

Frank Norris: McTeague (1899)

Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie (1900)

Upton Sinclair: The Jungle (1906)

# data[].attributes.body
Victorian Literature

highly diverse novels of that time e.g.: Charles Dickens, Hard Times – For These Times (April-August 1854) Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847) Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1891) Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

--> all show interest in transformation (of the self)

--> social responsibility

--> criticise romanticists for being too self-centred and focussed on emotions – are rather rational

--> aim to cover national problems while also keeping close to individuals

novels: R.L. Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

--> interest in identity formation

--> include Gothic features

Historical Context: Mid-Nineteenth Century

Politics

New monarch: Queen Victoria (coronation 1837 at age 18)

Imperial expansion → 1815 – 1914: Britain’s ‘Imperial Century’

Britain emerges as the world’s prime naval power → ‘Pax Britannica’

Economy

End of mercantilism, beginning of free trade → Corn Laws repealed in 1846

Britain as global motor of Industrialisation → First Industrial Revolution ~1760s-1840s

Society & Culture

Precarious living conditions of the working class and the poor

Urbanisation → poverty, crime, disease, overcrowding

Social order and discipline → rigid gender roles and class distinctions, middle-class family values

Interest in Individualism and the human mind, rational thought as a value

Industrialisation and scientific discoveries destabilise status of the Church of England

The Bronte Sisters

Charlotte (1816-1855), Currer Bell, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847)

Emily (1818-1848): Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights (1847)

Anne (1829-1849): Acton Bell, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

à daughters of a clergyman from Yorkshire

à (self)educated, writing from an early age

à used synonyms to get published

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Published under the pseudonym Currer Bell --> critics however soon suspected that it was written by a woman --> Bronte didn´t like that as it drew away the attention from the actual novel

Psychological realism --> first person narrative, focus on development and private consciousness

Romance & realism

Connected to the Gothic tradition (Gothic elements) e.g.: supernatural, enclosed places, …

Features Byronic Hero --> male figure, that has a difficult character and a lot of issues, someone wandering in the hope of finding happiness, despite many problems, he still has charm and ends up with female protagonist

Genre

Realism

“the portrayal of life with fidelity. It is thus not concerned with idealization, with rendering things as beautiful when they are not, or in any way presenting them in any guise as they are not; nor, as a rule, is realism concerned with presenting the supranormal or transcendental […]. On the whole one tends to think of realism in terms of the everyday, the normal, the pragmatic” (729)

→ Focus on detail: descriptions of financial conditions, family relations, living conditions, neighbourhoods, and – especially in realist fiction since the 19th century – visual appearances

In the Victorian period frequently “concerned with contemporary social problems; for instance, the effects of the industrial revolution, the influence of the theory of evolution, movements of political and social reform” (970)

Psychological Realism

“denotes fidelity to the truth in depicting the inner workings of the mind, the analysis of thought and feeling, the presentation of the nature of personality and character. (732)

For example, stream of consciousness, inner monologues, character-bound focalization

Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel)

“a novel which is an account of the youthful development of a hero or heroine (usually the former). It describes the processes by which maturity is achieved through the various ups and downs of life” (82)

Frequently mirrors Enlightenment ideals of individualism and the common good as well

Influenced by increased interest in childhood, education, and human development since late-18th century

key features of a coming-of-age novel, based on Jane Eyre:

Guides reader through the life of the main character: in Jane Eyre from

Childhood at her aunt´s, --> miserable and lonely childhood

to Lowood school, --> receives education but under poor conditions

to Thornfield Hall, --> saves Rochester´s life and falls in love with him

to marriage --> marries Rochester

Written in perspective of Jane --> she has a strong voice, even as a child (unusual for the time – fist novel where the child has a voice)

Understanding of children at the time

On of the most famous pedagogical treatises of the time: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Émile, ou De l’éducation (1762) Engl. transl. Emile, or On Education (1763)

Assumes an innate goodness of children / people in their ‘natural state’

Society can potentially corrupt this goodness → therefore an initial phase of isolation during the child’s formative years is beneficial for its education (first raise them as individuals, then integrate them into society and make them enter the ‘social contract’)

Advocates minimal involvement of the educator, who should only guide the child in making its own experiences

Gothic

The heyday of the classic Gothic novel was between the 1760s and the 1820, but Gothic fiction in a broader sense has remained popular ever since

traditional Gothic novels “contain e strong element of the supernatural and have all or most of the now familiar topography, sites, props, presences and happenings: wild and desolate landscapes, dark forests, ruined abbeys, feudal halls and medieval castles with dungeons, secret passages, winding stairways, oubliettes, sliding panels and torture chambers; monstrous apparitions and curses; a stupefying atmosphere of doom and gloom; heroes and heroines in the direst of imaginable straits, wicked tyrants, malevolent witches, demonic powers of unspeakably hideous aspect, and a proper complement of spooky effects and clanking spectres” (356)

over the course of the nineteenth century: often combined with cultural anxieties about moral decay, physical degeneration, madness, licentious sexuality, and racial impurity

Traces of gender equality

Jane expresses a strong demand for gender equality

rebellious voice --> unimaginable for a woman to talk like that in that time

--> novel is radical and innovative

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: an Autobiography (1847)

The role of the governess:

Mostly from middle-class, educated --> being a teacher is often the only alternative for working in a factory --> many middle-class women didn´t want that

Has an in-between position:

neither part of family, nor a regular servant --> isolated position

low wages, no savings --> only possibility to quit the job is marriage

family mostly doesn't want governess to marry into their family – they want her to not be “marriage material”

--> Charlotte Bronte has also worked as a governess and a teacher at a boarding school --> she could include some of her own experiences into the story

Bertha Mason

Link to gothic --> described as a monster --> devolution

Mental illness --> Rochester being unsympathetic mirrors general reaction to mental illness during the time

Bertha is not European --> othering --> Rochester: colonizer, Bertha: colonized

Parallels to Jane:

Connected to Rochester (wife, wife-to-be)

Imprisonment (Jane: as a child, is bound to Thornfield as governess, Bertha: locked in the attic)

Both are rebellious

Hint at doppelganger motive (gothic element) --> about the stranger in ourselves

Novel criticises imperialism and colonialism, BUT: Bertha doesn´t have a own voice

# data[].attributes.body
Arthur Miller:

considered one of the greatest dramatists of

the 20th century

other works: The Crucible (1953) and A View

from the Bridge (1955)

He was considered a literary celebrity,

especially after marrying Marilyn Monroe

considered himself a writer of social plays with

a focus on morality and psychology

known for his criticism on the American Dream

Setting:

forms backdrop of actions

takes on a symbolic meaning

creates atmosphere that underlines conflicts, relations etc.

Characters:

Willy Loman: elderly salesman living in New York but traveling a lot for his job; increasing issues to remember things and mixing up present and past; suffering from depression and guilty conscience due to disrupted relation to his older son Biff and an extramarital affair

Linda Loman: stereotypical housewife; taking care of the home and the two sons; always protecting Willy and playing down his suicidal thoughts

Biff Loman: older son of Willy and Linda; really unsatisfied with his life; he is the only one knowing about Willy's affair and distastes his father for it

Happy Loman: younger son; desperately waiting for his promotion and overestimating himself; womanizer driven by his sexuality

Uncle Ben: Willy's older brother; made a fortune in Africa (it is not mentioned with what exactly); only appears in Willy's memory

Summary & Analysis:

Death of a Salesman, critically assesses the American Dream. As the Loman family struggles with what it means to be successful and happy in post-war America, its members serve as symbolic representations of the struggle to define that dream. The play ends with the death of one salesman’s Sisyphean hope for wealth and universal acclaim, yet it glimmers with hope for his son, who finally turns toward a life of meaningful work and self-realization.

# data[].attributes.headline
Emily Dickinson, "I Head a Fly Buzz - When I Died"

# data[].attributes.subject
Emily Dickinson, "I Head a Fly Buzz - When I Died"

# data[].attributes.headline
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”

# data[].attributes.subject
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”

# data[].attributes.headline
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

# data[].attributes.subject
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

# data[].attributes.headline
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

# data[].attributes.subject
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

# data[].attributes.headline
Sandra Cisneros, “Woman Hollering Creek”

# data[].attributes.subject
Sandra Cisneros, “Woman Hollering Creek”

# data[].attributes.headline
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street"

# data[].attributes.subject
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street"

# data[].attributes.body
About the Story

narrated by lawyer who runs law office in Wall Street, New York Citiy. He employs a group of copyists, or scriveners, whose job is to hand-copy legal documents

Bartleby is hired as a new scrivener, and at first, he seems to be efficient and hardworking. However, one day when asked to perform a routine task, Bartleby responds with the now-famous phrase, “I would prefer not to.” He continues to refuse more and more tasks, ultimately declining to do any work at all.

The lawyer is baffled by Bartleby's passive resistance. Despite numerous attempts to help or reason with him, Bartleby eventually stops working entirely, even refusing to leave the office after it closes. The lawyer moves his office to avoid dealing with Bartleby, but Bartleby is eventually arrested for vagrancy.

In the end, Bartleby dies in prison, having refused to eat or engage with anyone.

The Lawyer cuts off his narration, saying that there is “little need for proceeding further,” as the reader can easily imagine Bartleby’s fate. Then, The Lawyer decides to “divulge one little item of rumor” he has heard since Bartleby’s death. He isn’t sure how true it is, but The Lawyer has heard that, before working for The Lawyer, Bartleby worked as a clerk in the “Dead Letter Office” in Washington, and had been abruptly fired in a change of administration. When The Lawyer ponders the rumor, he can’t help but become emotional, as dead letters sounds much “like dead men” to him. He notes that this business of burning dead letters, carrying with them “pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping” could turn any man into a hopeless one. “On errands of life,” The Lawyer notes, these letters sped to death. He ends the story, “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”

Themes:

Isolation and Alienation: Bartleby is portrayed as a deeply isolated character, disconnected from society and his workplace. His refusal to engage or explain his actions reflects the alienation of the individual in the modern capitalist world.

Free Will and Passive Resistance: Bartleby’s passive resistance — expressed through his repeated statement, “I would prefer not to” — raises questions about free will, choice, and agency. He is not defiant in an active way but chooses not to participate in the expectations of his environment.

The Dehumanizing Nature of Work: The story explores the repetitive, soul-crushing nature of clerical work, especially in the context of 19th-century Wall Street. The scriveners, including Bartleby, are depicted as mechanical in their jobs, devoid of individuality and vitality.

Symbolism:

Wall Street: The setting, Wall Street, symbolizes the heart of capitalism and business, with its focus on efficiency and profit over humanity. Bartleby’s office and later his imprisonment are metaphors for the confinement and restrictions placed on individuals in such a society.

The Walls: Throughout the story, Bartleby is surrounded by walls—both literal and figurative. His workspace has walls, he stares at a wall from his desk, and he ends up behind prison walls. The walls symbolize barriers to communication, freedom, and personal connection.

Character of Bartleby:

Bartleby remains enigmatic throughout the story. His backstory is revealed in fragments—he once worked in the Dead Letter Office (handling undeliverable mail), which serves as a powerful metaphor for hopelessness and disconnection.

He is a symbol of passive defiance against societal norms and expectations. His refusal to explain himself leaves readers to speculate on his motivations and state of mind.

Narrator:

The lawyer who narrates the story represents a conventional, pragmatic view of the world. He is sympathetic but also perplexed by Bartleby’s behavior. His attempts to help Bartleby reflect society's struggle to deal with individuals who do not conform to norms.

The narrator's ultimate failure to understand or help Bartleby speaks to the limitations of conventional morality and compassion in a highly structured, impersonal world.

It has been argued by critics that this story itself is a “Dead Letter” from The Lawyer to Bartleby—it is only after Bartleby’s death that The Lawyer is able to understand even a little bit about his former employee’s history and mentality. Also, The Lawyer shows by far the most emotion he has in the entire story in this final passage, empathizing with Bartleby more after his death than he ever could in life. The Lawyer feels for Bartleby having had to witness so many failures by words to connect people, but, further than that, he comes to see Bartleby as a proxy for all humanity, as we all have handicaps and weaknesses that separate us, so perhaps we should try to be more connected to—and more charitable towards—each other.

Reception and Legacy:

Upon its initial publication, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" did not receive much attention, but it has since become one of Herman Melville’s most analyzed and discussed works.

The story is seen as a precursor to existential literature, exploring themes of meaninglessness, individuality, and modern alienation. It has been interpreted in various ways, including as a critique of capitalism, an examination of depression, and a reflection on personal freedom.

# data[].attributes.body
Dark Romanticism (American Gothic)

Transcendentalism

relation between characters' inner state and appearance of the house

"Double" + the Uncanny (reminds us of the British literature)

house as a metaphor of the self --> representing people, e.g. crack in the house: distractive madness

unreliability of the narrator: Does the house collapse or does the narrator see the house collapse?

appears to be an old friend of Roderick, but rarely knows him

"unity of effect": make everything part of the point of the story --> suspense and fear in the reader is created