Transcript V. Literature of the Gilded Age

V. Literature of the Gilded AgePoetry
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Literature of the Gilded Age
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American Poetry in 19th C
 Walt
Whitman
 Emily Dickinson
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Realism & Naturalism
V. Literature of the
Gilded Age
(1865-1912)
Gilded Age - characteristics
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Urbanization
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Industrialization
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Immigration
19th Century Poetry
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Europe as role model
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William Cullen Bryant
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Henry W. Longfellow
 The
Song of Hiawatha
 ”Paul Revere's Ride”
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Edgar A. Poe
(Kalevala)
”Paul Revere’s Ride”
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
19th Century Poetry
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Emerson on poetry & America:
"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample
geography dazzles the imagination, and it
will not wait long for metres."
Walt Whitman
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Leaves of Grass
(1855)
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Develops free verse
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Emerson’s voice is
found
Walt Whitman
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Born New York (1819)
Printer, editor,
carpenter, school
teacher
Travel thru US
Publishes Leaves of
Grass (1855)
Walt Whitman
Enlists Emerson’s aid in publishing
 Wound dresser in Washington, DC during
Civil War
 Govt jobs from 1865-73
 Publishes 9 editions of Leaves of Grass
 Dies in 1892
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The Good Gray Poet
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Singing
Vitality
Self
America
Democracy
Physicality
Mystical
Transcendental
Innovation
”Song of Myself”
I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good
belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear
of summer grass.
”Song of Myself”
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the
shelves are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not
let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the
distillation—it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become
undisguised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
Beat! Beat! Drums!
BEAT! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a
ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he
have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or
gathering his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you
bugles blow.
Emily Dickinson
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Other major poetic
voice
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Distinctly different
from Whitman
Whitman - Dickinson
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Well-known
Exhuberant
National and social
concerns
Yankee
 Innovative
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Reclusive
Reserved
Private
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Puritan background
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 Innovative
Emily Dickinson
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Born Amherst, Mass
(1830)
After college,
reclusive, ”eccentric”
lifestyle
Faith important, but
doesn’t join church
Never married
Own family important
Dies in 1886
Dickinson on poetry
”If I read a book and it makes my whole
body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I
know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if
the top of my head were taken off, I know
that is poetry. These are the only ways I
know it. Is there any other way?”
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air —
Between the Heaves of Storm —
The Eyes around — had wrung them dry —
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset — when the King
Be witnessed — in the Room —
I willed my Keepsakes — Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable — and then it was
There interposed a Fly —
With Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz —
Between the light — and me —
And then the Windows failed — and then
I could not see to see —
After great pain a formal feeling comes-The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow-First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -did you not?
His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.
Dickinson - themes
Death
 Religion
 Nature
 Pain
 Love
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Realism
Reaction to Romanticism
 Tied to social reform
 Emphasis on everyday experience
 Everyday people – common man
 Character over plot
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William Dean Howells
Literature should be "simple, natural, and
honest"
"Our novelists, therefore, concern
themselves with the more smiling aspects
of life, which are the more American, and
seek the universal in the individual rather
than the social interests."
Naturalism
A branch of realism
 Determinism
 Character’s behavior controlled by
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 Environment
 Heredity
 Inner
desires
 Outer forces
Naturalism
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Frank Norris
 McTeague
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Dentist’s social descent—driven by animal greed—
ends in Death Valley
Stephen Crane
 Jack London
 Ambrose Bierce
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Next week
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Rags-to-Riches
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Regionalism
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Progressivism