Transcript Slide 1

American Romanticism
1836-1865
Abandon traditional authority
Emphasis on creative imagination
Nature ranks superior to civilization
Rely on intuition over rational calculation
Emphasis on the individual and subjective
experience
Commitment to revealing the “marvellous” in
personal and ordinary acts as part of
democratic art.
Preface to The House of the Seven
Gables 1851
“When a writer calls his work a Romance, it
need hardly be observed that he wishes to
claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion
and material, which he would not have felt
himself entitled to assume had he professed
to be writing a Novel. The latter form of
composition is presumed to aim at a very
minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but
to the probable and ordinary course of
man’s experience. The former—while, as a work
of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and
while sins unpardonably so far as it may
swerve aside from the truth of the human
heart—has fairly a right to present that truth
under circumstances, to a great extent, of the
writer’s own choosing or creation. If he think
fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical
medium as to bring out or mellow the lights
and deepen and enrich the shadows of the
picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a
very moderate use of the privileges here
stated, and, especially, to mingle the
Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and
evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the
actual substance of the dish offered to the
Public. He can hardly be said, however, to
commit a literary crime even if he disregard
this caution.”
Allegory
We can understand Hawthorne’s style as using
romantic allegory wherein relationships are
infused with extended comparisons in order
to bring the reader (through imagination) to a
greater significance beyond the literal context
of the narrative. In “The Birth-Mark,” hands
operate as an allegorical emblem, an object
with symbolic significance made known by its
various qualities and the role it plays in the
story.
“The Birth-Mark” 1843
“In those days when the comparatively recent
discovery of electricity and other kindred
mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths
into the region of miracle, it was not unusual
for the love of science to rival the love of
woman in its depth and absorbing energy.”
Sound familiar?
“The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit,
and even the heart might all find their
congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some
of their ardent votaries believed, would
ascend from one step of powerful intelligence
to another, until the philosopher should lay his
hand on the secret of creative force and
perhaps make new worlds for himself. We
know not whether Aylmer possessed this
degree of faith in man's ultimate control over
"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might,"
replied her husband; "but never on yours. No,
dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect
from the hand of Nature that this slightest
possible defect, which we hesitate whether to
term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being
the visible mark of earthly imperfection."
“ Its shape bore not a little similarity to the
human hand, though of the smallest pygmy
size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that
some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny
hand upon the infant's cheek, and left this
impress there in token of the magic
endowments that were to give her such sway
over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would
have risked life for the privilege of pressing his
lips to the mysterious hand.”
Allegorical emblem
The birth mark’s a “charm,” “a fairy signmanual,” “a crimson stain upon the snow,”
“the Bloody Hand,” “this mimic hand,” “the
Crimson hand,” “firm gripe of this little Hand”
He handled physical details, as if there were
nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them
all, and redeemed himself from materialism,
by his strong and eager aspiration towards the
infinite. In his grasp, the veriest clod of earth
assumed a soul” “beyond his reach.”
“He rushed towards her, and seized her arm
with a gripe that left the print of his fingers
upon it.”
“you have rejected the best that earth could
offer.”
In the story’s sexual politics, neurotic obsession
and megalomania are presented as “love.”
“Purloined Letter” 1844
Poe makes the scientific style opaque in his use
of ratiocination and narrative techniques such
as foreshadowing and flashback. In the
deductive practice, “manner becomes matter.”
C. Auguste Dupin becomes the first private
detective in literature.
Part of romanticism’s emphasis on the
individual, imagination and looking beyond
appearances.
“ ‘If it is any point requiring reflection,’ observed
Dupin, as he forebore to enkindle the wick,
‘we shall examine it better in the dark.’”
“ ‘The material world,’ continued Dupin,
abounds with very strict analogies to the
immaterial; and thus some color of truth has
been given to the rhetorical dogma, that
metaphor, or simile, may be made to
strengthen an argument, as well as establish a
description.”
Poe uses the anecdote about the 8 year-old boy
and the map puzzle game as metaphor to
explain and flesh out his process of deduction.
“ ‘But the more I reflected upon the daring,
dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D--;
upon the fact that the document must always
have been at hand, if he intended to use it to
good purpose”
“Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of
Wall Street” 1853
Franklin’s conception of cultivating morality
through the marketplace collapses.
Mike Judge’s Office Space owes a huge debt to
Melville. Check out Bartleby (2001).
Melville’s style depends upon the point of view
of an unreliable narrator whose perceptions
and interpretations do not coincide with the
author’s.
Ambiguity and alienation punctuate his style.
“All who know me, consider me an eminently
safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a
personage little given to poetic enthusiasm,
had no hesitation in pronouncing my first
grand point to be prudence; my next, method.
I do not speak it in vanity, but simply to record
the fact, that I was not unemployed in my
profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a
name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it
hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and
“deficient in what landscape
painters call ‘life.’”
“In that direction my windows commanded an
unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black
by age and everlasting shade; which wall
required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking
beauties, but for the benefit of all nearsighted spectators, was pushed up to within
ten feet of my window panes.”
“resembled a huge square cistern.”
The lawyer doesn’t acknowledge that the reason
Turkey’s work suffers in the afternoon is
because the employee drinks during the lunch
hour, hence the red face, “reckless activity,”
and who was suddenly “slightly rash with his
tongue.”
“He was a man whom prosperity harmed.”
The lawyer says that Nippers “could never get
his table to suit him. The angle either
“stopped the circulation in his arms” or
produced “a sore and aching in his back.”
From his perspective, “Nippers knew not what
he wanted.”
“Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of
Turkey I had my own private surmises, yet
touching Nippers I was well persuaded that
whatever might be his faults in other respects,
he was, at least, a temperate young man. But
indeed, nature herself seemed to have been
his vintner, and at his birth charged him so
thoroughly with an irritable, brandy-like
disposition, that all subsequent potations
were needless.”
“their fits relieved each other like
guards”
Bartleby’s hired as we’re told he’s a “motionless
young man,” “pallidly neat, pitiably
respectable, incurably forlorn!”
The lawyer puts him in the corner “so as to have
this quiet man within easy call, in case any
trifling thing was to be done.”
“I procured a high green folding screen, which
might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight,
though not remove him from my voice.”
“he seemed to gorge himself on my documents.
There was no pause for digestion. He ran a
day and night line, copying by sun-light and
candle-light. I should have been quite
delighted with his application, had he been
cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on
silently, palely, mechanically.”
“It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair.
I can readily imagine that to some sanguine
temperaments it would be altogether
intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that
the mettlesome poet Byron would have
contentedly sat down with Bartleby to
examine a law document of, say five hundred
pages, closely written in a crimped hand.”
“expectancy of instant compliance.”
“I would prefer not to.” Choice, favour,
inclination, desire.
“His face was leanly composed; his gray eye
dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled
him. Had there been the least uneasiness,
anger, impatience or impertinence in his
manner; in other words, had there been any
thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I
should have violently dismissed him.”
Bartleby responds “mildly” and “in a flute-like
tone.”
“It is not seldom the case that when a man is
browbeaten in some unprecedented and
violently unreasonable way, he begins to
stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as
it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as
it may be, all the justice and all the reason is
on the other side.”
“Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious selfapproval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him
in his strange willfulness, will cost me little or
nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will
eventually prove a sweet morsel for my
conscience.”
“Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of
magical invocation, at the third summons, he
appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.”
“his unalterableness of demeanor under all
circumstances, made him a valuable
acquisition.”
“To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
And when at last it is perceived that such pity
cannot lead to effectual succor, common
sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw
that morning persuaded me that the scrivener
was the victim of innate and incurable
disorder.”
“Not only did there seem to lurk in it a calm
disdain, but his perverseness seemed
ungrateful, considering the undeniable good
usage and indulgence he had received from
me.”
“And I trembled to think that my contact with
the scrivener had already and seriously
affected me in a mental way. And what
further and deeper aberration might it not yet
produce?”
Dead wall reveries and impaired
vision
“his eyes looked dull and glazed. Instantly it
occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence
in copying by his dim window for the first few
weeks of his stay with me might have
temporarily impaired his vision.”
“he had now become a millstone to me, not
only useless as a necklace, but afflictive to
bear.”
The Other Two 1904
The marketplace and marriage.
“As his door closed behind him he reflected that
before he opened it again it would have
admitted another man who had as much right
to enter it as himself, and the thought filled
him with a physical repugnance.”
“The lamplight struck a gleam from her
bracelets and tipped her soft hair with
brightness. How light and slender she was,
and how each gesture flowed into the next!
She seemed a creature all compact of
harmonies. As the thought of Haskett
receded, Waythorn felt himself yielding again
to the joy of possessorship. They were his,
those white hands with their flitting motions,
his the light haze of hair, the lips and eyes. . .”
“For the moment his foremost thought was one
of wonder at the way in which she had shed
the phase of existence which her marriage
with Haskett implied. It was as if her whole
aspect, every gesture, every inflection, every
allusion, were a studied negation of that
period of her life. If she had denied being
married to Haskett she could hardly have
stood more convicted of duplicity than in this
obliteration of the self which had been his
“‘I don't like the woman,’ Haskett was repeating
with mild persistency. ‘She ain't straight, Mr.
Waythorn -- she'll teach the child to be
underhand. I've noticed a change in Lily -she's too anxious to please -- and she don't
always tell the truth. She used to be the
straightest child, Mr. Waythorn –’ He broke off,
his voice a little thick.”
“At first he had tried to cultivate the suspicion
that Haskett might be "up to" something, that
he had an object in securing a foothold in the
house. But in his heart Waythorn was sure of
Haskett's single-mindedness; he even guessed
in the latter a mild contempt for such
advantages as his relation with the Waythorns
might offer. Haskett's sincerity of purpose
made him invulnerable, and his successor had
to accept him as a lien on the property.”
“Her pliancy was beginning to sicken him. Had
she really no will of her own -- no theory
about her relation to these men?”
“With sudden vividness Waythorn saw how the
instinct had developed. She was "as easy as an
old shoe" -- a shoe that too many feet had
worn. Her elasticity was the result of tension
in too many different directions.”
“With grim irony Waythorn compared himself
to a member of a syndicate. He held so many
shares in his wife's personality and his
predecessors were his partners in the
business. If there had been any element of
passion in the transaction he would have felt
less deteriorated by it.”
“If he paid for each day's comfort with the small
change of his illusions, he grew daily to value
the comfort more and set less store upon the
coin. He had drifted into a dulling propinquity
with Haskett and Varick and he took refuge in
the cheap revenge of satirizing the situation. “
He even began to reckon up the advantages
which accrued from it, to ask himself if it were
not better to own a third of a wife who knew
how to make a man happy than a whole one
who had lacked opportunity to acquire the
art.”