Introduction to American Literature.

Historic background

Early American Literature: Brief Outline.

American studiesFoundation of America

1. The discourse of ‘America’

2. Columbus: history founded in myth

3. Is there an early American literature?

Meanings of ‘America’

The United States (but at what stage in its development?)

A continent America: North, South, and Middle Freedom, democracy, opportunity,dream World power, empire Nation of immigrants

The idea of America

A place where gold can be found (Columbus, and other Hispanic and Italian explorers)

Eden, or Paradise; the Promised Land (the English Puritans)

A Virgin land, waiting to be explored and possessed (Sir Walter Raleigh and other English poets)

Terra nullius, a wilderness owned by no-one, waiting to be conquered and cultivated (Christian European settlers)

The trouble with Columbus’ ‘discovery’

Did not know he had ‘discovered’ the America, but believed it to be the Indies

American history begins with Columbus because

Columbus’ letters to the Spanish Crown are the first written sources available

Alan Karras, Atlantic historian: ‘from this moment forward, the histories of Europe, America, and Africa are inextricably intertwined’

Tvetan Todorov, literary theorist: ‘our [European] modern history begins with the conquest of America.’

Thus, the ‘foundation of America’ lies in writing (the discourse of America) and in fighting (Europeans vs. Natives)

The trouble with early ‘American literature’

Native American literature was oral, not translated or written down until centuries later

Immigrants’ writing was multi-lingual, and has to be read by us in translation

The Puritans, who did write in English, did not write in the literary forms of poetry, fiction, or plays, but for religious reasons they wrote autobiographical accounts of settlement, captivity narratives, and letters

None of this writing was self-consciously ‘American’ at a time when the colonies were still ruled by the Spanish, French, and British crown.

A national literature is always a retrospective construction: what fits?

Early Native American Literature: Brief Outline Guide

I. Oral Literature: Myths and Legends A. Devices

1. Repetition 2. Enumeration 3. Incremental development 4. Ritual beginnings and endings 5. Use of archaic language 6. Specific structure

a. Introduction: harmonious situation b. Thesis: one or more episodes showing disruption of harmony c. Antithesis: measures employed to overcome disruption d. Conclusion: restored harmony completed by cycles of four or some power of four (four songs four nights, etc.)

Early Native American Literature: Brief Outline Guide

7. Terse style B. Functions 1. Beliefs about nature of physical world

2. Beliefs about social order and appropriate behavior 3. Beliefs about human nature and the problem of good and evil

C. Characteristics of Myths 1. Myths: primal world

2. Beings are animals spirits in more or less human form: monsters, confusions of nature 3. Mythic age flows into age of transformation (legends)

Early Native American Literature: Brief Outline Guide

D. Characteristics of Legends 1. Culture hero or transformer orders the world

2. Culture hero or transformer turns animal people into animals 3. Other beings become landmarks 4. Flows into historical time (real heroes)

E. Figures 1. Culture heroes a. Dramatize prototypical events and behaviors

b. Show how to do what is right and how we become the people we are c. Shape the world and gives it its character by theft of sun, fire, or water d. Often of divine birth e. Myths are not concerned with original owners, only with culture hero's acquisition of them

Early Native American Literature: Brief Outline Guide

2. Trickster heroes

a. Provide for disorder and change b. Enable us to see the seamy underside of life c. Remind us that culture is finally artificial d. Provide for the possibility of change e. May be over reachers who gets their comeuppance

Early Native American Literature: Brief Outline Guide

F. Themes 1. Formation of the world through struggle and robbery (Pacific

coast) 2. Movement from a sky world to a water world by means of a fall (Iroquoian) 3. Fortunate fall; creation story 4. Earth-diver myth

a. flood that occurred after creation of the universe b. recreation of the present world out of mud brought up from under the water by the earth-diver (muskrat or waterbird)

5. Theft of fire 6. Emergence myths:

a. ascent of beings from under the surface of the earth to its surface

b. ascent from a series of underworlds 7. Migration myths: accompany emergence myths  

Early Native American Literature: Brief Outline Guide

II. Facts and Figures A. Population (estimated)

1. European arrival a. 18 million in North America

b. 5 million in U. S. 2. 1980 census (estimate): 1,418,195 B. Culture 1. European arrival a. Over 300 cultural groups

b. 200 languages 2. Present-day: By 1940, 149 languages still in use

Early Native American Literature: Brief Outline Guide

C. Early Dates 1. Pequot War 1637

2. King Philip's War (1672-1676) (vs. British) 3. Pueblo Revolt (1680) (vs. Spanish) 4. Iroquois defeated other tribes for westward expansion (1644-1680) 5. Indian Removal Act (1830) 6. "Trail of Tears": Cherokee Removal to Oklahoma (1838)

Early American Period

"The First Thanksgiving," a painting by J.L.G. Ferris, depicts America’s early settlers and Native Americans celebrating a bountiful harvest.

Early American Literature

American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. There was no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived. As a result, Native American oral literature is quite diverse.

Early American Literature

Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting cultures like the Navajo are different from stories of settled agricultural tribes such as the pueblo-dwelling Acoma; the stories of northern lakeside dwellers such as the Ojibwa often differ radically from stories of desert tribes like the Hopi.

Early American Literature

Tribes maintained their own religions - worshipping gods, animals, plants, or sacred persons. Systems of government ranged from democracies to councils of elders to theocracies. These tribal variations enter into the oral literature as well.

Early American Literature

Still, it is possible to make a few generalizations. Indian stories, for example, glow with reverence for nature as a spiritual as well as physical mother. Nature is alive and endowed with spiritual forces; main characters may be animals or plants, often totems associated with a tribe, group, or individual. The closest to the Indian sense of holiness in later American literature is Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendental "Over-Soul," which pervades all of life.

Early American Literature

The Mexican tribes revered the divine Quetzalcoatl, a god of the Toltecs and Aztecs, and some tales of a high god or culture were told elsewhere. However, there are no long, standardized religious cycles about one supreme divinity. The closest equivalents to Old World spiritual narratives are often accounts of shamans initiations and voyages. Apart from these, there are stories about culture heroes such as the Ojibwa tribe's Manabozho or the Navajo tribe's Coyote.

Early American Literature

These tricksters are treated with varying degrees of respect. In one tale they may act like heroes, while in another they may seem selfish or foolish. Although past authorities, such as the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, have deprecated trickster tales as expressing the inferior, amoral side of the psyche, contemporary scholars -- some of them Native Americans -- point out that Odysseus and Prometheus, the revered Greek heroes, are essentially tricksters as well.

Early American Literature

Examples of almost every oral genre can be found in American Indian literature: lyrics, chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous anecdotes, incantations, riddles, proverbs, epics, and legendary histories. Accounts of migrations and ancestors abound, as do vision or healing songs and tricksters' tales. Certain creation stories are particularly popular. In one well-known creation story, told with variations among many tribes, a turtle holds up the world.

Early American Literature

In a Cheyenne version, the creator, Maheo, has four chances to fashion the world from a watery universe. He sends four water birds diving to try to bring up earth from the bottom. The snow goose, loon, and mallard soar high into the sky and sweep down in a dive, but cannot reach bottom; but the little coot, who cannot fly, succeeds in bringing up some mud in his bill. Only one creature, humble Grandmother Turtle, is the right shape to support the mud world Maheo shapes on her shell - hence the Indian name for America, "Turtle Island."

Early American Literature

The songs or poetry, like the narratives, range from the sacred to the light and humorous: There are lullabies, war chants, love songs, and special songs for children's games, gambling, various chores, magic, or dance ceremonials. Generally the songs are repetitive. Short poem-songs given in dreams sometimes have the clear imagery and subtle mood associated with Japanese haiku or Eastern-influenced imagistic poetry. A Chippewa song runs:

A loon I thought it wasBut it wasMy love'ssplashing oar.

Early American Literature

Vision songs, often very short, are another distinctive form. Appearing in dreams or visions, sometimes with no warning, they may be healing, hunting, or love songs. Often they are personal.

Early American Literature

Indian oral tradition and its relation to American literature as a whole is one of the richest and least explored topics in American studies. The Indian contribution to America is greater than is often believed. The hundreds of Indian words in everyday American English include "canoe," "tobacco," "potato," "moccasin," "moose," "persimmon," "raccoon," "tomahawk," and "totem." Contemporary Native American writing, discussed in chapter 8, also contains works of great beauty.

Conclusions There is much we do not know about early America, notably

about Native American societies, because of a lack of written sources

Our study of the literature and historiography of the United States is heavily influenced by the 15th C idea of America as Eden. Over time, this has evolved into

a ‘discourse of America’ (as promise of freedom and wealth) that is self-serving and self-perpetuating, and is known as American exceptionalism

this discourse can be contrasted with an Atlanticist approach, that looks instead at the multiple connections between America, Africa, and Europe

combining literature and culture with history and politics is essential in doing American Studies, because the whole is more than the sum of its parts