Movements in American Literature

Survey of American Literature 1: Colonials to Revolutionaries (1620-1820)

Bradford, Bradstreet, Edwards, Franklin, Jefferson, Mather, Paine, Wheatley.2: An Age of Renaissance (1820-1865)Emerson, Hawthorne, Irving, Melville, Poe, Thoreau, Whitman.3: Probing Reality (1865-1914)Adams, Dickinson, Dreiser, Howells, James, Sinclair, Twain.4: Between the Wars (1915-1945)Anderson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O'Neill, Pound, Sandburg, Wright.5: After the War (1945-present)Bellow, Ellison, Heller, Kerouac, Mailer, Roth, Salinger, Williams.

What is post-colonial literature?

Definition of post-colonial: “all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day”

Post-colonial literatures “emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre”

the local vs the metropolitan center Spatial metaphors: center, margin, periphery (Said: “ a

conscious affiliation proceeding under the guise of filiation”—“a mimicry of the centre” )

Development and Concerns of Post-Colonial Literature 1. texts produced by representatives of the imperial power 2. literature produced under imperial license by natives or outcasts Hegemony of RS-English (Received Standard English)—linguistic

hierarchy English vs englishes—linguistic “continuum” Place and displacement—“dislocation,” “cultural denigration” The power of marginality

Critical Models 1. national and regional models2. race-based models 3. comparative models4. wider comparative models ex. hybridity and syncretism (“the

process by which previously distinct linguistic categories, and by extension, cultural formations, merge into a single new form”) (15)

National and Regional Models

National model: ex. American literature—difference from British literature [ American literatures]

Metaphors: parent-child, parent tree-offshoot, stream-tributary (16)

Wole Soyinka—”the process of self-apprehension” (17) Regional model: ex. West Indian literature or Caribbean

literature (18)

Comparative Models the metropolitan-colonial axis—Britain as

a standard: in-school readers; a normative core of British literature, landscape, and history (Wordsworth’s daffodils); colonial adventure

Race-Based Models: the Black Writing Model

the African diaspora “Négritude”—Césaire, Senghor—essentialist

definition of Black culture (emotional; integration and wholeness,; rhythmic and temporal principles)—the danger of turning into a new universal paradigm

Black consciousness movement, Black Power movements in the US

Said—the danger of adopting “a double kind of possessive exclusivism”

Naming Commonwealth literature—1960s Third World literatures new literatures in English colonial literatures post-colonial literatures post-European

Place and Language D. E. S. Maxwell: the “appropriateness” of

using non-indigenous language—“imported tongue” alien to the place

Settler colonies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)—transplanted civilization

Invaded colonies (India, West Africa)—indigenous culture marginalized

“double vision” (local + metropolis) Limitations—not comprehensive enough (the

West Indies and the South Africa); lack of linguistic subtlety, essentialist

Thematic Parallels “celebration of the struggle towards

independence in community and individual” “the dominating influence of a foreign culture of

post-colonial societies” “the construction or demolition of houses” “the journey of the European interloper through

unfamiliar landscape with a native guide” Use of allegory, irony, magic realism,

discontinuous narrative exile

Colonizer and the ColonizedFranz Fanon and Albert Memmi“the possibility of ‘decolonizing’ the

culture”full independence—return to pre-

colonial languages (Edward Brathwaite, Chinweizu)

inevitable cultural syncreticity (Wilson Harris, Soyinka)

Dominated and Dominating Max Dorsinville To account for the changes in American literature To account for minority literatures Irish, Welsh

and Scottish literatures Subversion in the dominated literatures—empire

writes back to the imperial center

Post-colonial Language Language as a medium for power—abrogation

and appropriation to re-place English 3 main types of linguistic groups monoglossic:

“single-language societies using english as a native tongue”

1. diglossic: bilingualism—“english as the language of government and commerce”—India, Africa, the South Pacific

2. polyglossic or polydialectical: “a multitude of dialects interweave to form a generally comprehensible linguistic continuum”—linguistic “intersections”—Caribbean

The Construction of English “The world language called english is a

continuum of ‘intersections’ in which the speaking habits in various communities have intervened to reconstruct the language.” 2 ways of reconstruction:

1. Regional english varieties introduce new words

2. National and regional peculiarities“English is continually changing and growing

(becoming an ‘english’)”

Abrogation and Appropriation

“Abrogation is a refusal of the categories of the imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusory standard of normative or ‘correct’ usage, and its assumption of a traditional and fixed meaning ‘inscribed’ in the words.”—must be combined with appropriation to avoid being “a reversal of the assumptions of privilege, the ‘normal’, and correct inscription” (38)

“Appropriation is the process by which language is taken and made to ‘bear the burden’ of one’s own cultural experience,’ or…to ‘convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own ’” (38-39)

Abrogation Reactions against “the notions of centrality

and the ‘authentic’” in the process of decolonization Privileges the margins; refutes a standard code (40) or rejects the possibility of returning to “some ‘pure’ and unsullied cultural condition” (anti-universalist, anti-representational stance) (41)

The english language as a tool to textually construct a “world,” “it also constructs difference, separation, and absence from the metropolitan norm.” (44)

Metonymic Function of Language Variance

“post-colonial writing abrogates the privileged centrality of ‘English’ by using language to signify difference while employing a sameness which allows it to be understood. It does this by employing language variance, the ‘part’ of a wider cultural whole, which assists in the work of language seizure whilst being neither transmuted nor overwhelmed by its adopted vehicle.” Signifying process—post-colonial texts as metonymy; language variance itself as “metonymic of cultural difference”

Language Variance: Allusion

“the process of allusion installs linguistic distance itself as a subject of the text. The maintenance of the ‘gap’ in the cross-cultural text is of profound importance to its ethnographic functions.”

Strategies of Appropriation Contrast the appropriated english with SE (59) Editorial intrusions: footnotes, glossary, the

explanatory preface, etc. (61) Glossing: “the most primitive form of

metonymy” (62)—absence/gap between word and its referent

Untranslated words: “selective lexical fidelity” (64)

“forces the reader into an active engagement with the horizons of the culture in which these terms have meaning.”—indicating the gap, “a sign of distinctiveness”; “an endorsement of the facility of the discourse situation” (65)

Interchange: “to generate an ‘inter-culture’ by the fusion of the linguistic structures of two languages”—“a term coined by Nemser and Selinker to characterize the genuine and discrete linguistic system by learners of a second language. The concept of an interlanguage reveals that the utterances of a second-language learner are not deviant forms or mistakes, but rather are part of a separate but genuine system.”

Syntactic fusion: to mix the syntax of local language with the lexical forms of English (68);

developing (colloquial) neologisms

The Gothic

Term used by 18th Century Neoclassicists as synonymous with “barbaric” to mean anything that offended classic tastes.

Romanticists of 19th century looked on the gothic with favor.

To them it suggested anything Medieval, primitive, natural, wild free, authentic, romantic.

Elements of the Gothic that they celebrated—variety, richness, mystery, aspiration

The gothic is a way for us to examine the realm of the irrational and the perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of the civilized mind.

In America what does that represent?

The Gothic Novel

Magic, Mystery, and chivalry are chief characteristic Setting of “first” gothic novel (Horace Walpole’s

Castle of Otranto) was set in a medieval (gothic) castle with underground passages, trap doors, dark stairs, and mysterious rooms where doors slam unexpectantly.

Early American Gothic novelist Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) Wieland (1798)

Elements of the gothic have become cliche now to the point of melodrama, but the horror movie and gothic elements in fiction continue to abound and to be popular

Modern authors combine the gothic, romance, and realism

Extended to a type of fiction which lacks medieval settings but develops a brooding atmosphere of gloom and terror, represents events which are uncanny, or macabre, or melodramatically violent, and often deals with aberrant psychological states.

Characteristics of Romanticism Idealization of rural life Enthusiasm for the uncivilized or “natural” Enthusiasm for the wild, irregular, or grotesque in nature or

art Innocence over experience Use of “fresh,” even common language rather that poetic

diction Abandonment of the heroic couplet in favor of blank verse

and experimental forms of verse

Characteristics of Romanticism Sensibility (emotionalism as opposed to rationalism) Sentimental melancholy Emotional psychology Individualism Interest in human rights Sympathetic interest in the past (esp. medieval = gothic) Mysticism Primitivism Love of nature

Some Characteristics of Romanticism (American Movement 1830-1865)

--Sensibility (emotionalism as opposed to rationalism) --Primitivism --Love of nature --Sympathetic interest in the past (esp. medieval = gothic) --Mysticism --Individualism --Abandonment of the heroic couplet in favor of blank verse and

experimental forms of verse

--Use of “fresh,” even common language rather that poetic diction

--Idealization of rural life --Enthusiasm for the uncivilized or “natural” --Enthusiasm for the wild, irregular, or grotesque

in nature or art --Interest in human rights --Sentimental melancholy --Emotional psychology