This week

IV. Literature of the American Renaissance (1837-1865)

• Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Herman Melville

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Born in Salem, MA (1804)• Ancestors Puritans• Lived in Salem &

Concord• Worked in Custom House

in Boston & Salem• Scarlet Letter made him

independent• Died 1864

Literary works

• Twice-told tales (1835)

”Young Goodman Brown”

”Ethan Brand”

”My Kinsman, Major Molineux”

• Scarlet Letter (1850)

Major themes

• Nature of sin & guilt

• Puritan past

• Isolation & alienation

• Human heart

• Effects of a personal calamity

• Self-trust vs. authority

Scarlet Letter

Characters

• Hester Prynne

• Arthur Dimmesdale

• Roger Chillingworth

• Pearl

Scarlet Letter

• Opens in town square

• Hester required to name father of child

• Refuses

• Forced to wear ”A”

Scarlet Letter

Meaning of letter…

• Adultery• Angel• AblePride

Community’s shameHidden shame

…the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. An Indian in his native garb was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the English settlements that one of them would have attracted any notice from Hester Prynne at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume.

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness. . . . The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

Symbols in Scarlet Letter

• forest vs. town

• rose vs. prison

• Pearl

“Mother,” said [Pearl], “was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?”

“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!” whispered her mother. “We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”

Herman Melville

• Born 1819 in NYC• Sailed in whaling ship

as young man (1840s)

• Began writing upon return in 1845.

• Most works focused on sea

Literary works- novels

• Typee (1846)• Omoo (1847)• Mardi (1849)• White-Jacket (1850)• Moby Dick (1851)• Pierre (1852)• The Confidence Man

(1857)

Moby Dick

• Captain Ahab

• The White Whale

• Ishmael

Moby Dick

• Meaning of the Whale?

– Unknowability of God?– Evil?– Indifference of nature?– Impossibility of single meaning?

Melville – short works

• ”Bartleby, the Scrivener”

• ”Benito Cereno”

• ”Billy Budd”

Melville - Themes

• sea & life on ship

• man & God

• native peoples

• indeterminancy

Bartleby

• Industrialization & work world?• Futility of man’s existence?• Individualism & free will (Thoreau)?• Plight of writer (autobiographical)?• Charity?• Bartleby as aspect of narrator?• ???

Benito Cereno

• American ship & Spanish slave ship

• Characters:– American captain– Spanish captain– Babo, a slave

• American captain’s inability to recognize mutiny on ship?

Hawthorne & Melville

• Admired & respected each other• Both probed metaphysical questions and

dark side of human soul

• Hawthorne recognized during lifetime• Melville rejected by public after Moby Dick

• Neither in keeping with spirit of times

Next week

IV. Literature of the American Renaissance

• Ralph Emerson

• Henry David Thoreau

• Read Walden extract!!