MAGISTER

OPOSICIONES AL PROFESORADO

INGLÉS

TEMA 53

LA NOVELA, EL CUENTO Y LA POESÍA EN ESTADOS UNIDOS: H. MELVILLE, E. A. POE Y W. WHITMAN.

0. INTRODUCTION.

1. HERMAN MELVILLE.

2. EDGAR ALLAN POE.

3. WALT WHITMAN.

4. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

0. INTRODUCTION.

The period known as the age of a national literature and romantic individualism had great literary giants:

- Emerson

- Hawthorne

- Poe

- Whitman

- Melville

Their work is both a record of, and a reaction to, all of its shocks and strains. We sense through their work the inwardness of an age.

The most important event in American life during the first half of the nineteenth century was the rise of the Jacksonian democracy, which was not exactly what we understand by democracy nowadays. The movement towards universal manhood suffrage was slow, state by state, but it was irreversible.

On the other hand, the industrial and technological developments worked to bind the country together but exacerbated and shifted into a new dimension the conflict between the north ant the south.

It is funny to see that pro-slavery apologists could see the brutalities and miseries that it entailed since they were clearly outside the system, the fact that the worker was part of the machine. The new industrial city was being born, and those at the bottom of the industrial heap protested against the system. Labour unions existed at the beginning of the century, and by the time of Jackson's presidency threes was an attempt at national organization. An active labour press was developing and with it a lively intellectual debate that absorbed and adapted early Europeans ideas of socialism.

By 1840 many men were aware of the incoherence and injustice of the new industrialism in America as they could see what was happening in the United Kingdom. There already were other communities that, in the same period, had aimed to create the ideal society outside the industrial order, for example, New Harmony, Indiana. The idealism of the communal movement had sources beyond the social and economic. There was a specifically religious motive in the Mormons' epic conquest of the West. Other sects were the Perfectionists and the Millerites. The period was a time of frenetic passion for reform.

If, before 1860, chattel slavery was the most dramatic issue facing America, abolitionism represented the most dramatic force directed to the issue. Abolitionism was not a general northern doctrine. The abolitionists were always a minority, even during the Civil War. Abolitionism and racism were not mutually exclusive. The opposition to slavery, whether as emancipation or abolitionism, had no necessary connection with respect for, or acceptance, of the black. Abolitionism was not the same thing as emancipationist, but a rather special form of it.

Behind abolitionism, as behind the antislavery impulse in general, often lay Christian theology. Abolitionism brings us directly to Transcendentalism, a philosophical, literary and social movement that emerged among New England intellectuals in the 1830's. The root impulse of transcendentalism was theological.

By this time Puritan Calvinism had relaxed into Unitarianism, which represented the triumph of liberalism against the old orthodoxy. As Perry Miller said, the basic impulse behind transcendentalism was "a religious radicalism in revolt against a rational conservatism." It was not only a reaction against the Enlightment of the eighteen century, but against the continuing development of science in the nineteenth century.

But transcendentalists stayed outside society, and, therefore, their notion of the intuition of absolute truth did not, in any practical sense, arise. Emerson was a good example. His mission was to draw individuals out of the masses; and transcendentalism was at its core, a philosophy of naked individualism, aimed at the creation of the New American, the self reliant man, complete and independent.

Within the limitations of their age, the achievement of transcendentalism has a grandeur; they did confront and helped define the great issues of their time. American history is the record of how men tried to solve the tensions of their times, and American literature finds in this fact one of its basic themes.

1. HERMAN MELVILLE.

We sense the unending and extraordinary creative struggle between fierce and irresolvable contradictions in Melville's: the contradictory realities of good and evil, freedom and fate, knowledge and the unknowable, belief and non-belief, the life of safety and common sense and the life of dangerous, perhaps.

Unlike Hawthorne, after a brief period of great popularity, Melville lost all contact with the public world. From Moby Dick onward he lived and wrote in a kind of absolute silence, the very type of isolated writer, yet heroic, energetic and uncomplaining to the end. He died quite unnoticed, the manuscript of his final masterpiece, Billy Budd stored away somewhere in a trunk, and it was not until half a century later that the range and depth of his accomplishment began to be recognized.

Continúa...

4. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

ALLEN, G. W.: Walt Whitman as Man, Poet and Legend (1961).

BROOKS, C.: American Literature. Volume 1, St. Martin's.

CHASE, R. V.: Walt Whitman. (1961).

HOFFMAN, D.: Poe (1972).

NEWTON, A.: Herman Melville (1950).

MILLER, P.: The life of the Mind in America. (1965)

WAGENKNECHT, E. C.: Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend. (1963).

ESQUEMA

0. INTRODUCTION.

* Period of National Literature and Romantic individualism.

* Jacksonian democracy.

* Industrial developments.

* Slavery and abolitionism.

* Transcendentalism.

1. MELVILLE.

* Struggle between contradictory realities such as good and evil.

* Brief period of popularity: Typee.

* Originality and expression of fundamental humanity.

* Moby Dick: epic and metaphysical.

* Heart of the human experience.

* Major works.

2.POE

* Represents his age.

* Discontinuity between the old and the new world.

* Contempt for reformers and progress.

* Mixed feelings among his critics at the time.

* Early interest for languages and literature.

* He foresaw some of the problems during the 20th century.

* Major works.

3.WHITMAN

* Democrat and freethinker.

* He was convinced that his works spoke for every man.

* America as something significant.

* Realistic vision of things.

* Major works.

CUESTIONES BÁSICAS

1. TRANSCENDENTALISM.

2. FIRST REACTIONS TO MELVILLE'S WORKS.

3. BRIEF ANALYSIS OF MOBY DICK.

4. POE'S INTEREST IN THE POWERS OF REASON.

5. WHITMAN'S IDEAL POET.

RESPUESTAS

1. TRANSCENDENTALISM.

Transcendentalism was a philosophical, literary and social movement that emerged among New England intellectuals in the 1830's. The root impulse of transcendentalism was theological. By this time Puritan Calvinism had relaxed into Unitarianism, which represented the triumph of liberalism against the old orthodoxy. As Perry Miller said, the basic impulse behind transcendentalism was "a religious radicalism in revolt against a rational conservatism." It was not only a reaction against the Enlightment of the eighteen century, but against the continuing development of science in the nineteenth century. But transcendentalists stayed outside society, and, therefore, their notion of the intuition of absolute truth did not, in any practical sense, arise. Emerson was a good example. His mission was to draw individuals out of the masses; and transcendentalism was at its core, a philosophy of naked individualism, aimed at the creation of the New American, the self reliant man, complete and independent.

2. FIRST REACTIONS TO MELVILLE'S WORKS.

His first book, Typee (1846) was an immense and immediate success. Omoo (1847) the sequel to Typee, was well received; but readers stumbled a little over the untraditional allegory in Mardi (1849). Moby Dick simply baffled and annoyed them; here was a splendid yarn about whaling that had gotten hopelessly lost in obscure metaphysical rangings. Pierre, or The Ambiguities (1852) was dismissed as hysterical lunacy, further degraded by its suicidal and incestuous elements. As to Melville's career the rest is silence. Israel Potter (1855), The Confidence Man (1857), most of the Tales of the 1850's, Battle-Pieces (1866), Clarel (1876) and Melville's other and late poem; all of these, as he once said about Clarel to one of his rare admirers were "eminently adapted for unpopularity". There was nothing accidental in Melville's loss of popularity for his integrity forbade him to write more Typees. That was the safe, easy, self-protective way.

3. BRIEF ANALYSIS OF MOBY DICK.

Moby Dick is epic in scope and the sheer abundance of its materials. It contains several of the grand, traditional epic convention - the long and arduous journey of the great battle, for example. It is a tragic drama, a tragedy of pride and pursuit and revenge, a tragedy of thought in the mind's profoundest workings. In spite of being the most remarkable American book about the sea, it was not the first or only one.

Moby Dick is a sea-haunted novel as it is "the image of the ungraspable phantom of life". His great work is about the pursuit of the phantom, an attempt to seek out the mysteries which seems to lie at the heart of human experience. The search is intellectual. The book is too large and various, too crowded with contrasting incidents and competing ideas, too rich in metaphor and symbol. Its 135 chapters do not divide in the classical mode (beginning, middle, end) but in large stages. For example Chapter 42 "The Whiteness of the Whale" is all upon mystery and the inescapable challenge of the unknown. Continúa...