AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1850 UP TO 19001. GENERAL INTRODUCTION: THE NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF A POST-WAR AMERICA

Historical context

As for the historical context, the American Civil War began in 1861 and finished in1914. The year of its beginning is considered to be the year that a new consciousness was starting to emerge. In the struggle in question there were two main divisions or confronted groups: the confederalists and the unionists. On the one hand, the former were eleven Southern states who were slave-owners; whereas the latter were the non-slave-holder states. The president in those times was Abraham Lincoln[footnoteRef:1], who felt confident enough to reshape the cause of the war from union to abolishing slavery. The American Civil War was also called the war of secession since their main aim was to get separated from the rest of the states. As the law that Abraham Lincoln wanted was approved, he was assassinated just after winning the cause. [1: Abraham Lincoln (18O9 1865) was the 16th president of the United States. He preserved the Unionduring the U.S. Civil War and brought about the emancipation of slaves. Abraham Lincoln is regarded asone of America's greatest heroes due to both his incredible impact on the nation and his unique appeal.His is a remarkable story of the rise from humble beginnings to achieve the highest office in the land;then, a sudden and tragic death at a time when his country needed him most to complete the great taskremaining before the nation. Lincoln's distinctively human and humane personality and historical role assavior of the Union and emancipator of the slaves creates a legacy that endures. His eloquence ofdemocracy and his insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-governmentthat all nations strive to achieve. Key words: Civil Rights Activist, Lawyer, U.S. President, U.S.Representative.]

Literary context

The American Civil War produced some kind of literature, i.e., war literatureconcerning battles, struggles and quarrels. It comprised Herman Melville and WaltWhitman as its main writers. Civil War (1861) fiction: Melvilles Battle-Pieces (1866); Whitmans Drum-Taps (1865) and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd. In 1861, Washington Irving, James F. Cooper and Edgar Allan Poe were all dead. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau died before the end of the war. Melville is the only one (from the authors studied in the previous course American Literature up to 185O) who lived throughout the whole war. Whitman helped the injured people during the war.

[Slide: Walt Whitman (1819 1892) Leaves of GrassDrum-TapsTo the drum-taps prompt,The young men falling in and arming,The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmithshammer, tost aside with precipitation,)

The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court,The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwingthe reins abruptly down on the horses backs,The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear theiraccoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully,Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,The white tents cluster in camps, the armd sentries around, the sunrisecannon and again at sunset,Armd regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embarkfrom the wharves,(How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, withtheir guns on their shoulders!How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces andtheir clothes and knapsacks coverd with dust!)The blood of the city up-armd! armd! the cry everywhere,The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all thepublic buildings and stores,The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother,(Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him,)The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way,The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites,The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumblelightly over the stones,(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,Soon unlimberd to begin the red business;)All the mutter of preparation, all the determind arming,The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines,The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, nomere parade now;War! an armd race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away!War! be it weeks, months, or years, an armd race is advancing to welcome it.

There is a listing of things, elements and people. Walt Whitman uses constantlyparallel structures and lists of numerous things. He reiterates the actions thatthese people are doing. The focus is on how everybody is armed. Besides, he talksabout himself by talking about everybody 1st lines of Song of Myself prove so.Walt Whitman is the democrat poet of excellence. ][Slide: Walt Whitman (1819 1892) When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloomd(stanzas 1, 2, 6 & 1O)Walt Whitman who was a fighter against slavery absolutely loved Abraham Lincoln, Whitman was one of his favourite admirers. And indeed he dedicated a series of poems to Lincoln when he was assassinated in spring when flowers begin to bloom as citizens felt they had become orphans since Lincoln had passed away.Walt Whitman recalls Lincoln when flowers are springing up since it was then when the president was assassinated. In Hojas de hierba, the translation appears as it follows below:Cada vez que regrese la primavera volver a estar de luto. In other words, everyspring, the lilacs synecdoche of nature and three more thoughts would cometo Whitmans mind. By means of o, o, o at the beginning of each verse of the 2ndstanza, a representation of a tearful state is achieved. In the 6th stanza, there are many parallel structures which are an anticipation of what Whitman would be later writing about. In the 1Oth stanza, Whitman depicts the loss of his friend, namely, AbrahamLincoln. The conclusion out from this poem is that Abraham Lincoln was a loved politicianin the United States.]

Social panorama: antebellum and post-bellum of the United States

When the American Civil War began, there were fewer than one hundred millionaires in the United States. Fifteen years later, the number had multiplied per ten. It was the Gilded Age, when the ideal could become real, the era of the millionaires. The myth of the West Frontier had been declared finished. The new hero of this literature is no longer a romance of the West world, but a business man in large cities, such as Chicago, with skyscrapers. That would be the kind of literature of the Gilded Age. In 1898, there was a relevant event, i.e., the Spanish American War in which Spain lost Cuba. By 19OO, the United States had entered the era of national power and they had become having a national power. The physical aspect of the country changed abruptly not only because of the movements of the citizens to the cities but of the masses of immigrants who arrived in the States during forty years (186O 19OO).

[Digression: the Melting Pots expression. It started to emerge during those years as a metaphor to describe how America, with all the migration in those hectic decades, received people from all over the world. It is also related to the American Adam who was an idealised version of the American man. They wanted to integrate into that society, but they wanted to preserve their customs. So to speak, ghettos started to emerge because people wanted to live together with their own people and tradition and so on and so forth. The metaphor has changed to American being described as a Melting Pot depicted as a salad bowl Americas multi-culturality and diversity nowadays in which everything continues being what it is without change.

Melting Pot Salad BowlEverything mixes. There is no mixture. The lettuce stays the same, the tomato too, and so on.]

The rail roads were also multiplying, a sense of optimism, an expansion of the population due to its movements. If you were rich, it meant that you had been touched by God Puritan idea.

What literature did this era produce?

1. Literature of protest. Writers very seldom wrote about societys advantages, but about its drawbacks, errors, mistakes, and injustices in the Gilded Age. The hero is a national one who is a business man, i.e., a cruel character exploiting workers. For instance, The Gilded Age (Mark Twain), The Octopus (Frank Norris, 19O1), Maggie: a Girl of the Streets (Stephen Crane, 1893), The Titan (Dreiser, 1914), Rebecca Harding Davis[footnoteRef:2] Life in the Iron Mills (1816). All these titles point at the consequences of the Gilded Age, as an analysis of the injustices of this period. They wanted to highlight how horrible it was to dwell in those conditions. Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin explained the story of a slave who was abused by his owner. Eventually, he died of harsh and it was such a power sensitive novel. The novel had to do with slavery and its horrors since people became defenders of abolitionism after having read the novel in question. So, literature acted as a powerful weapon to change society since the novel achieved many people against slavery. Sociologists of literature claim that Uncle Toms Cabin achieved more abolitionists after the reading of the novel. [2: Rebecca Harding Davis is the successor of novels written by women which started to bloom]

2. The rise of Realism in which Pragmatism was the philosophical movement.For example, they are the works about the America of the Gilded Age,William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and so onand so forth.Realism as a literary movement refers to showing the reality of things. The movement in question affects two parts of literature, namely, both the how and the what. How is connected to the idea that Realism portrays habits, ways of speaking, dressing and so on the form. What has reference to that Realism speaks of the here and the now. It does not speak about imaginary lands in the past or in the future, but about the physical, common facts which could contain psychological facts. Realism arrived in America much later than in Europe in the hands of Balzac. Flaubert and the rest of people in the movement were already dead when this current arrived in the States. Realist writers such as Mark Twain devoted their novels to portray realistic issues. In the 189Os, Realism would be expanded to its most extreme called Naturalism, which arrived in the hands of Emile Zol and Emilio Pardo Bazn. Stephen Crane and these authors were naturalists since they adopted a Darwinian way of life. People moved by animalistic instinct. They presented human beings as puppets. For example, some naturalist writers were Frank Norris, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.There were novels centred on slums suburbs and some of their writers were journalists before they had started writing novels. It was like reportage fiction.3. The concern with the novel as an art form. This idea comes from Gustave Flaubert, in France. The transcendentalists considered them story tellers, but not writers in its wide sense. For example: Edith Wharton and Henry James, their appearance means an stylistic sophistication. It was such a very complex movement to read/interpret. Every novel has a form, so to speak, cause-effect episodes. The novel gains in stylistic sophistication and/or excellence with the presence of Henry James and Edith Wharton. It has a complex movement and the novel really becomes a form of art much more difficult to read and to interpret.4. Parallel to the interest in Realism, the Great American Novel. There are some authors such as Dreiser and his An American Tragedy, Dos Passos Although America wanted their own eneid general perspective: epopeya after the nation had suffered that tremendous war that never happened. What happened was the emergence of writers who wrote about the society which was emerging. They were not epopees, but novels on the other side of the Gilded Age. The American tragedy in Dreisers novel was a phenomenon related to his journalist career. Some crimes were continuously the same: children growing up at school were falling in love with each other; afterwards they would get married. Later on, once they had been married, the woman would stay the same whereas the man would improve with regard to his physical aspect and so on. Eventually, those men used to kill their couples in order to marry someone wealthier. So, Dreiser started to write about these crimes occurring in America, the injustices of the Gilded Age.

5. As a result of this, local-color/regionalist fiction appeared. For instance: New England (Rose Terry Cooke, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett), the West (Bret Harte), the Middle West (Hamlin Garland, E. William Howells), the South (George Washington Cable, Joel Chandler Harris andThomas Nelson Page). Literature depicted the idiosyncrasies of particular regions of America. Kate Chopin was from the South and wrote many short stories depicting life in her homeland.

6. The New Women of the end of the 19th century would be the equivalent of the Feminists nowadays. Examples of writers belonging to this group are: Kate Chopins The Awakening, Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper. When a woman married, she lost her possessions to the husband. So some women defended themselves and wrote about education, which was a new womens literature. Kate Chopin belongs both to this group and to the previous one.

7. Literature of black America towards the end of the 19th century. Writers of this groups were the ones such as Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk, among others. It was a folk literature of occupation, of railroading, mining, ranching, and so on. Du Bois wrote folk literature of occupation, how African Americans lived in the rail roads and so on during slavery. Some abolitionists were Quakers and changed their names and identities to start a new life in the North since they were run-away slaves. They wrote about the horrible hazardous treatment they were subjugated to; however, their stories were not written by them, but by abolitionists who were not illiterate as the slaves were. Exceptions: Fredrick Douglass and a woman, they both learn to write and read during their slave period. Besides, they wrote their own biography concerning slavery and the treatment they suffered.

AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1850 UP TO 19002. THE CREATION OF AMERICAN POETRY

2.1. WALT WHITMAN (1819 1892)[footnoteRef:3] [3: Walt Whitman celebrated America as the great democracy where each individual, over time, couldevolve to spiritual perfection. Declaring the human body to be the equal of the soul and asserting theequality of men and women and of all races and conditions, he found his truth in the light that camedirectly from his soul, independently of rational analysis.]

Leaves of Grass (52 sections/poems)What does the title tell you? A leaf of grass is walked on it, we lay down on it to sunbathe, it is something very insignificant as we do not pay attention to it. For an insect, a leaf of grass is something crucial. Basically, it all depends on the eyes through which you look at things. Furthermore, the idea is that human beings have lost their capacity to find the miraculous thing and people ought to look at things with different eyes.

Biographical data

Walt Whitman was born in Brooklyn in a humble family. They were nine (brothers and sisters). Its poor background made Whitman abandon school when he was twelve since he had no money at all. He read all the classics while he worked as a printer and he did not go to university. Whitman worked for several newspapers and got a first-hand experience in the South (Louisiana). In 1855, he published Leaves of Grasss first edition, which had twelve untitled poems and the Preface. He published the volume himself and sent it to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote an essay called The Poet and he invited Americans to become the voice/poet as a visionary, shaman of America. Whitman wanted to be what Emerson was claiming. Emerson was fascinated about Whitmans publication. What is more, in 1866, Whitman would publish Leaves of Grasss second edition with thirty-threepoems with the inclusion of Emersons response. Whitman never published anything else concerning poetry apart from Leaves of Grass which underwent nine successively larger, revised, and reorganized different editions between 1855 and 1892 throughout his life.

After the Civil War (1861), Whitman took care of the wounded in Washington in hospitals and he was also caring after his brother. He did not have any money but he was there helping, namely, he lived a life of constant struggle against poverty. He neither married nor had children.

As a summary, it could be concluded that: he worked as a printer in New York. Journalism as a full-time career: Long-Islander and New Orleans Crescent. 1855: first edition of Leaves of Grass (12 untitled poems and a Preface).Job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior. He started to write from Dante to Shakespeare. He never went to university. In 1855, when he was 35 years old, he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. He published the volume by himself and he sent it to Emerson. When the Civil War started, he helped the people who had been injured during the battles. He never married.

2.1.1. Poetry

Walt Whitman is very much the focus of some studies with regard tohomoeroticism[footnoteRef:4]. His lifes achievement was Leaves of Grass. [4: Homoeroticism. Eroticism centre don or aroused by persons of ones own sex. Concerning homosexuallove and desire.]

Leaves of Grass (1855)Leaves of Grass (1856): added 2O poemsLeaves of Grass (186O): added 7O poemsDrum Taps (1865)Sequel to Drum Taps (1865)Leaves of Grass (1867): added the poems called CalamusLeaves of Grass (187O)Passage to India (187O)Leaves of Grass (1876)Leaves of Grass (1881)Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891)Leaves of Grass (1891)

2.1.1.1. Section 31

Poem 31 and Serrats translation into Spanish.

2.1.1.2. Section 6

The 1st stanza from lines 1 to 8 tells what a leaf of grass may signify and imply since it contains the world through Whitmans vision. The next stanza contains another ingredient of Whitmans philosophy: everyone is EQUAL. Whitman is the most democratic poet. Grass metaphor grows everywhere and is available to everybody since it is in the South, North and so on and so forth. In the 3rd stanza, Whitman is addressing the grass. The last stanza says that death brings life and that grass shows there is no death. It is a dialogue between the self and the world. The I becomes America, i.e., dialectical relationship between the self and the world, the I with the all.

2.1.1.3. Features related to Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass is a process as Walt Whitman spent his whole life re-writing his poetry, he changed poetry altogether and modified its conventions. Whitmans poetry was an attempt to break down conventional categories of experience. In sections 14 and 15 there is a dialectical relationship between the self and the world, the I with the all. The I is identified with the all. The very last line of poem 14 illustrates so as it is a crucial verse. Readers perceive Whitmans poetic method: LISTS of characters the + noun (job). The very last stanza of poem 14 is read since the next poem (15) is rather longish. Another Whitmans feature is the one connected to pairs of OPPOSITES, antonyms, because everything is included black and white, President and prostitute; embrace of opposites: the sacred and the profane, male into female These are clearly seen in section 16. Whitman produces a poetic persona that is an image of the unified man, multiple, open, androgynous, optimistic, etc., i.e., the self being a multiple persona. Walt Whitman eagerly identifies with slave, lonely women, a bridegroom, trapper, bereaved wife, mutineer, convict, fireman, prostitute For instance, check sections 15, and 19 as well. In poem 19, the listings of all these characters constitute the self. Absolute equality is aimed at and postulated by juxtaposing the lowest and the mightiest in the American society. There is EQUALIZATION not only in lexical content terms, but also syntactical form. Whitmans personhood is very elusive and complex to grasp since he hides behind a mask when presenting characters. A paradox: although being elusive, readers get to know his personality at the end of the reading.

Main characteristics

The main features with regard to Walt Whitmans poetry are the ones that follow below: repetitions, parallel structures, verbal ellipsis, juxtaposition of images and characters in the same level, comedy, sexual and psychological complexities and intricacies due to ambiguity or different ways of understanding it, presentation of his own body in section 19: lips, hands, face, hair

Preface to Leaves of Grass

It is a kind of manifesto which must be read since Whitman explains the philosophy of his long poem. Some of the ideas presented in the Preface are: The United States is the greatest poem since it gives the poem everything to write the poem part 1 of the Preface Catalogue of things that are unrhymed poetry is seen in the last line of the second part of the Preface. It defends free verse and Whitman speaks of conventional rhymes as outdated since Americas poetry requires new forms. Walt Whitman, as an American citizen, was an idealist, a democrat, fighting for slavery, proud of his humble origins, defender of equality, and all these elements together create his conceptions about America. the American poets are to enclose old and new: for the United States is the race of races part 4 of the Preface. The poet responds to his countrys spirit, to its geography even part 4 too. When he talks about the poet, he is talking about his own project. he was a lover of the universe part 6 of the Preface; Whitman does not moralize part 1O; he knows the soul the POET part 5 of the Preface is described by Whitman as: equable man line 4 in 5th part arbiter of the diverse equalizer of his age supplier of wants master of obedience his brain is the ultimate brain he sees eternity in men and women he is a seer, an individual, complete liberty is indispensable part 17 of the Preface.

Song of Myself[footnoteRef:5] [5: Song of Myself. The longest and among the best of his poems, in which the poets soul records ina succession of vignettes and reflective interludes the picturesque surface of America and its democraticvalues, including his conviction that all mankind is immortal and evolving over time (however great)toward perfection.]

Walt Whitman completed the last edition the day before his death. With regard to Song of Myself, it is about the birth of a poet section 1 line 9, a Poet in Emersonian terms, the eyeball idiosyncratic from of free verse rhapsodic, celebratory and declamatory style. Whitman follows the movements of an era. he spiritualizes everything: he is the poet of dream. In section 2, last two stanzas. Apart from being a spiritual poem, it is also a material one.Whitman is talking about listening to all sights and seeing them from yourselves, i.e., to believe in our potential. The idea that he is conveying is that if we feel proud, then we are poets. Whitman thought poetry as a musical or oratory or song. It has musical quality. he was the precursor of the great modernist experimentalists Whitman focuses on the ordinary democratic man, the poet who creates himself. He identifies with the nation, with all mankind, and ultimately with God. The traditional heroes of epics are ancient heroes. So Walt Whitman creates an epic of the common men. According to him, the hero is the ordinary man and woman. he urges us to passionate acceptance of the miracle of the ordinary, a renewal of our capacity of wonder. In section 5, there are constant references to mystic experiences that inspired this long-lasting poem. The author is having a conversation with his inner genius/power the relationship with his inner power. there is an erotic scene in 3rd stanza of the 5th section. He is making love with his creative power which is his inner genius the movement of Song of Myself is circular rather than linear =progressive, returning upon itself in evocation of ecstasy and confession Song of Myself does not tell a story in conventional terms. It is written in the present tense. Whitmans perception, thoughts and inner world are explored within the present moment. the poem is about emotional pulsations, shifting responses, attitudinal posturing These are the features that portray the Poet in Emersonian terms. They are not Whitmans features, but the Poets ones. Song of Myself is divided into three parts: sections 1 17: first process a man becomes a poet section 3, 9th stanza: Whitman is welcoming his body as well as the rest of the world section 4, 1st stanza: he includes his family, there are autobiographical elements. He is referring very sadly to his mother, his brother and his familys lack of money. Not only bad things are Whitmans inspiration, but other gay, happy things and issues. section 8, 3rd and 4th stanzas: the author is talking about scenes and experiences he has seen. There are lists enumerating groups of people with pairs of opposites. From the very beginning, Whitman is including ALL people. section 17: it is like the summary of the first part of Song of Myself. Whitman mentions the grass as a metaphor that is everywhere and includes everyone, This little section absolutely encompasses everything. sections 18 32: revelation of the human aspects of the poet section 2O: Whitman asks rhetorical questions concerning philosophical issues. He is talking about himself but also about all of us, i.e., an incorporation of us into his discourse constantly. section 21, 1st and 2nd stanzas: he is presenting himself as a democratic poet. section 24, 1st and 2nd stanzas: the most biographical section. Whitman mentions his name for the first and unique time throughout the whole poem. He also presents himself as a democratic poet again. section 24, 9th and 1Oth stanzas: he is spiritualizing everything, he is giving the poem God-like attributes sections 33 end: the apotheosis: the shaman, the healer, the director of souls, mystic and visionary section 33: the longest section of Song of Myself. There are relevant quotations. Parallel structures are included. Where is repeated again and again, concerning space and time. In page 24, I at the beginning of each line, and he also begins with I am, i.e., there are identifications such as metaphors A is B. In page 25, the last stanza in this page refers to the American Civil War and Whitman depicts the horrors of the war. The last line of the poem refers to Whitmans participation in all the activities concerning the war: helping the wounded in hospitals.

Formal aspects of Song of Myself

Walt Whitman achieves an effect of poetic construct by allowing a conventional line of verse to be followed by or merged into a longer line in which the basic meter is partly broken. For instance, section 8. That is the movement repeated throughout all sections by Whitman. It is free verse, but not chaotic; there is a sense of coherence, both semantic and syntactic.

Other themes in Song of Myself

fraternity and love section 5 the poet as seer and as worlds EYE: the miraculous perception in the leaves of grass section 31: the grandiosity of the trivial rejection of the sentimental piety of the say section 31 and 32. Whitman is incorporating ancient Gods. Furthermore, he is mentioning all religious beliefs, modern and ancient; not any particular religion there are moments of death and darkness; the emergent poet suffers moments of doubt or anxiety, even panic and a sense of frustration which is very much more present in other poets of the same authorsection 38, 1st and last stanzas[footnoteRef:6] [6: Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a poem which was called Dejection Ode and it is attributed to theincapacity to write poetry.]

As I Ebbd With the Ocean of Life

It talks about both physical and emotional death that is converted into the source of poetry. The poem is of a mid-life crisis since it is a dejection4 poem. It describes a walk along the beach of Paumanok and the poet is invaded by a feeling of doubt since his poetry is not reaching the universe. In the 2nd stanza, it talks about the junk that the sea brings on to the shore by means of the waves; so the poet feels identified with this rubbish as he thinks his poetry is not worthwhile. The same idea is conveyed in the 3rd stanza as well. Whitman describes himself as a disaster with regard to writing poetry, the incapability of expressing ideas.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard BloomdThe poem in question is about the itinerary that Lincolns coffin took, it basically moved from Washington to Springfield Illinois. It passed several cities in a train, going along cities, stations and so on. The poem is a private response Walt Whitmans grief to a public event Abraham Lincolns death. Every spring lilacs, flowers, will continue blooming whereas Lincoln will be no longer there, i.e., it is a contrast between life and death. The President is seen as a guiding star. In section 4, thrush as an element of nature reappears in section 9. In section 14, the bird sings a song; the singing bird appears as reconciliation with death. Thereis a clear identification with death in the following stanza:

and the charm...as I held as if...and the voice...

The phrase strong deliveress also refers to death. In section 15, the author comes back to reality. In the next section, the unity is totally impermanent:

lilac (nature) + star (President Abraham Lincoln) + bird = trinity

The three of them come together since it is a re-union. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd is a song of consolation for Walt Whitmans grief for Lincolns assassination.

O Captain! My Captain!

The following poem is an elegy and a musical poem as well. In other words, it is a poem about the celebration of Abraham Lincolns victory in slavery and in the American Civil War. Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States who was assassinated while he was watching a play in theatre. In the poem, Lincoln is the captain of a ship which symbolizes the United States. In the 1st section, Lincoln achieved his promise to his country by means of: the fearful trip refers to the end of the American Civil War and the prize we sought is won is connected to the end of slavery. In spite of the happiness, the President has died. Whitman is converting the theatre the real place for Lincolns assassination into the deck the poetic place for his death.

By the end of the second stanza, Walt Whitman wants to believe that Lincolns death is a dream, he feels like this death is a product of his imagination. In the third section, although the President has achieved his promise to the United States, he is actually dead. It is Walt Whitmans most famous poem written immediately after Abraham Lincolns assassination. American kids at school have to know the poem by heart.

2.2. EMILY DICKINSON (183O 1886)[footnoteRef:7] [7: Emily Dickinson was born in the western Massachusetts village of Amherst. Except for brief visits toBoston and to Washington, D.C. and a year at Mount Holyoke, she spent her life there, mainly within thegrounds of the family mansion. Despite such limited experience she produced 1,775 poems, only sevenof which (and these over her protest) were published during her lifetime. For the first two or three yearsof her career, she wrote nearly a poem a day, and altogether, she produced verse of such quality thatshe is placed with Walt Whitman in the first rank of nineteenth century American poets.Emily Dickinsons poetry was inspired by Emily Brnte.]

2.2.1. Emily Dickinsons introduction

Emily Dickinson belongs to the American Renaissance, a period in which gigantic figures Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson of the American literature emerged (184O 187O). Although Emily Dickinson belongs chronologically to the American Renaissance, there is no connection between her poetry and the period in which she dwelled. She does not thematically belong to the period in question. During Dickinsons lifetime, she decided not to publish her works; however, she had written 2OOO poems approximately.

2.2.2. Emily Dickinsons life

She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. According to some scholars, Emily Dickinson was considered a timeless poet. She has been given several names such as the myth-in-white since she almost always was dressing in white, the pearly poet due to her whiteness and her short poems. She was also given the following two names: the poet-recluse and an island in the American lands. How a woman who had a little connection with the world outside wrote so much? She always remained alone, lived alone and kept apart. Her father was a very prominent lawyer who sent his daughter to a boarding school but she returned earlier since she felt homesick. She was agoraphobic[footnoteRef:8] since she feared society and the whole world outside. That was one of her first trips when she was seventeen. The second and last trip she took was to the ophthalmologist in Philadelphia. She was bipolar according to psychologists. Emily Dickinson did some outings to the shops and so on, but when she was thirty she stopped going out and receiving visits from her acquaintance. She loved gardening and baking; in fact, her father only ate the bread she baked. There were three important essential people in Dickinsons life: - Reverend Charles Wadsworth. He was a married man who Emily considered as her impossible love. He was a source of inspiration for her until he moved to San Francisco. Then, it was when he inspired her sad poems. Emily refused living the life of a Victorian woman as she did not want to marry and preferred spending the whole day writing. As a matter of fact, she never gave titles to her poetry; moreover, she did not want anybody to title them. The numbers given to the poems depend on the editions: some editors number the poems by name whereas some others just classify them chronologically. Poem 3O3 illustrates Emily Dickinson as a person. She shut the door to the people she did not want to socialize with. Her soul was isolated, agoraphobic. What is more, she felt very well accompanied with her own self. [8: According to Real Academia Espaola, agoraphobic (Del gr. 'plaza pblica' y fobia). 1. f. Med. Enpsiquiatra, sensacin morbosa de angustia o miedo ante los espacios despejados, como las plazas, lasavenidas, etc.]

- Thomas Wentworth Higginson[footnoteRef:9]: correspondences. He wrote in a journal called The Atlantic Monthly which Emily widely read. Besides, in a publication he gave advice to young novel writers. Afterwards. Emily felt that she wanted to publish her poetry; however, she did not dare to go to a publishing house since she was agoraphobic. Although, she wrote to the journal and attached some of her poems. Wentworth gave her an appalling response on which he stated that her poetry was not understandable at all and considered it as extremely erotic. Furthermore, he advised her not to publish. In spite of that, they maintained a correspondence between years as she considered him her mentor. They met twice because Thomas visited her twice in Amherst. When she was about to die, she asked her sister Lavinia to burn everything, so the correspondence was completely lost. [9: Despite a long career as a leading radical voice against slavery and for women's suffrage, in addition toserving as the commanding officer of the first Black military regiment in U.S. history, Higginson is mostoften recalled today as the editor who corresponded with Emily Dickinson and co-edited with MabelLoomis Todd the publication of Dickinson's first collections of poetry. Dickinson sent Higginson some ofher poems after she read his 1862 essay, "Letter to a Young Contributor," which offered generic adviceto writers submitting their first manuscripts. Though she initiated this correspondence in the same yearHigginson joined the Army to fight in the Civil War, he nevertheless maintained contact with her in acorrespondence that lasted until her death in 1886. He first met Dickinson in person in 1870, after hehad published his own first novel, Malbone, in 1869. Although a poet and novelist himself, Higginson'smost significant literary achievements were his correspondence with Dickinson, the memoir hepublished about her, and the publication of her first two volumes of poetry.]

Edward Dickinson: Emilys father. He was a very prominent lawyer who was involved in politics. When he passed away, his daughter was totally devastated. She did not have a close relationship with her mother. Emilys siblings her brother Austin and her sister Lavinia were not only her siblings, but her intellectual companions. Austin married Susan Gilberg and it is strongly believed and thoroughly analyzed by scholars that Emily was bisexual. Her sister-in-law was perhaps her platonic love during her life; Susan also inspired some Dickinsons poems. With regard to Dickinsons sources of inspiration, her family mansion and its garden in Amherst are considered the poets universe. 2.2.3. Emily Dickinsons poetry

Juan Ramn Jimnez[footnoteRef:10] quotes the following excerpt on Emily Dickinson: Una Santa Teresa laica presumida y coqueta de alma, que se jacta para la posteridad de demasiada confianza con Dios y se lleva a la tierra el secreto de esa confianza (...) es frecuente, casi constante, suponer que el poeta mejor es el ms extenso. Pero un poeta es un ser en gracia que da destellos y permanece lleno de su secreto, que nace, vive, muere y permanece como un tesoro del que regalar joyas menores, que lleva su reserva mayor a la nada para enriquecerla; esto es, un poeta enriquecedor, un abolidor verdadero de la nada (...). Emily Dickinson fue eso: una mujer en gracia que se llev el secreto del mundo a la eternidad, por si estaba vaca (...) Su poesa es como la de una esencia o un color muy concentrados, que pueden teir o perfumar hasta lo infinito.... [10: Juan Ramn Jimnez was a Spanish poet and received the Nobel Prize in Literature.]

With the previous quotation, Juan Ramn Jimnez hints at three or four important ideas, especially with the words in bold. Dickinson had various mystic aspects, apart from living the life of a nun. This idea is connected to poem 288. In this poem, the poets hermit condition is highlighted because she wanted to be nobody. She was eclipsed by the gigantic figure of Walt Whitman. In poem 1129, slant is a very used word more than twice in her poetry by Dickinson which means sesgado, parcial, no en su totalidad. Dickinsons two main features are the ones that follow below. Her peculiar use of dashes has drawn critics attention. They have not agreed to the use of dashes and her peculiar capitalization. The other characteristic is the constant use of ellipsis since she left verbs in this way. Emily Dickinsons poetry reflects her loneliness, seclusion. Her poems reflect her necessity as well as a lack of something. Her poems are an intimate recollection of inspirational moments such as a bird, the wrinkle of water, and so on. The possibility of happiness in little things was explored by the poet. She was able to see the world with the eyes of wonder in very trivial and minute things. The poet in question was influenced by the Metaphysical poets of the 17th century England such as John Donne and some others who Emily extensively read. Furthermore, it is fair to consider her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town which encouraged a Calvinist,orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. As the Bible was influential for her, her poetry contains biblical language. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. Upon her death, Dickinson's family discovered 40 hand bound volumes of nearly 1800 of her poems, or "fascicles" as they are sometimes called. These booklets were made by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems in an order that many critics believe to be more than chronological. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions (some are even vertical). The poems were initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of her many early editors, removing her unusual and varied dashes and replacing them with traditional punctuation. The current standard version replaces her dashes with a standard "n-dash," which is a closer typographical approximation of her writing. Furthermore, the original order of the works was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her order, relying on smudge marks, needle punctures and other clues to reassemble the packets. Since then, many critics have argued for thematic unity in these small collections, believing the ordering of the poems to be more than chronological or convenient.

2.2.4. Characteristics of Emily Dickinsons poetry

In poem 249, there is an expression of homoerotic love to Dickinsons sister-inlaw, i.e., Susan and/or Austins wife. It can also be a heterosexual poem because it does not speak of a receiver. For biographical reasons, it has been ascribed to a lesbian theme. The editors also preserved the dashes.

Emily Dickinsons poems are a challenge to the reader: she confuses by the

1. Use of paradox, ambiguity and irony. Her poems are compressed, oracular, telegraphic messages.

2. Extravagant metaphorical flourishes: disorienting synaesthetic effects, rare associations of elements, objects

3. Her peculiar punctuation and syntax: her system of dashes, capitalizations, unorthodox phrasing, broken rhyme and meter. Once you think you have mastered the rhyme, Dickinson changes it.

4. Experimentation: the discourse is structured around key words (in Capitals), suppressing Verbs/suppressing TIME. Ellipsis insinuation, ambiguity, silence is as important as the word. She uses enjambment.

5. Moving back and forth between abstractions and sensual images.

6. Stanzaic pattern: echoes of the Hymn Book. She was brought up in a very Calvinist environment.7. Fictionalization of herself: she plays roles, wears different masks. For instance, some of the roles she plays are exemplified in poems 754, 1138, 271, 441 and 632. Guessing at her identity is pretty complex, everything is so slippery and you cannot really know her.

Emily Dickinsons themes:

Life: 67, 258, 241, 341, 4O5, 536 & 65O. Love: 3O3, 249, 511 & 1O78. Nature: 285, 52O, 1138, 13O, 314, 328, 978 & 986. Time, death and eternity: 28O, 51O, 1O99, 49, 5O, 214 & 216. Death: 5O & 712. Silence & alienation: 28O, 3O5(a very elliptical poem about fear), 435 & 51O. Renunciation and happiness: 67, 241 & 11OO.

With regard to poem 258, the term slant is used again, as a noun in this case.

In poem 754, the role Emily Dickinson adopts here is that of a loaded gun. The I of the speaker is the loaded gun. The Vesuvian is a very aggressive active volcano in Italy; in the poem, a physical eruption which metaphorically implies passion, fire and so on. Dickinson surprises us by adopting a masculine role. There is an image of power since she hunts, she is violent, she is like a volcano in action since she is the image of a loaded gun. The gun could be interpreted as a phallic symbol. In other poems, Dickinson plays the role of a powerless woman.

In poem 1138, Emily Dickinson is playing the role of a spider. It is almost like a HQ, so dense. It is a poem about a spider sewing at night without a light. Spinster comes from spin, like a spider that is spinning. Her final victory as a spinster or spinner is in another poem.

In poem 271 Dickinson calls herself a woman in white with all its connotations such as youth, innocence, virginity and also death.

In poem 441, Dickinson adopts the role of an intermediary between the world and nature, i.e., how she felt as an island.

In poem 632, the poet adopts the role of the transcendentalist philosophers. There are echoes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his transcendentalist thoughts: limitless. It is a very rhythmic poem: there is rhyme and rhythm, octosyllables and hexasyllables. Dickinson is proclaiming to the world the power of the brain. The poet is like a pearl in her oyster.

In poem 4O5 loss, very often failure, suffering and no faith bring more satisfaction than complete happiness. Loneliness as a comparison. Even peace would be a disturbance to Dickinsons quietness and solitude. The last verse in the 2nd stanza in which Him is used, it could be God in religious terms, but Dickinson was not religious at all. She uses religious words such as sacrament, blaspheme, ordained so some critics believe that this ecclesiastical language may be a reference to Reverend Charles Wadsworth. Perhaps the poem is about the loss of love. It is really ambiguous since there is no final meaning but attempts to decipher Dickinsons poetry.

In poem 49 loss, it is an elusive poem very difficult to grasp. The I is lost and is a beggar subjugated to God. The I tries to escape but discovers that the speaker is poor once more. Loss facing the world of adults.

Poem 5O is about death. Dickinson is constantly flirting with the idea of death which is very powerfully evident in this poem. Some of Dickinsons biographers state that she attempted to suicide, but it is not proved enough. Dickinson is talking about gossip in very little towns. Remember this poem for the study of Mary Wilkins Freeman. Emily calls herself shy and ignorant, perhaps it was the image that the rest had about her since it was the just the contrary. We never know what Dickinson is trying to say: enigmatic.

Poem 712 is also about death. This theme is usually thought of as a woman, but in this poem death is a he. It is an imaginary journey with death. Dickinson is describing in a way what the ancient religions believed. In silence and alienation poems, a mad agoraphobic woman is losing her identity. An alienated person since Dickinson was afraid of being and/or becoming mad.

One of the most powerful poems is 28O.In poem 28O, Dickinson is describing the religious service or funeral of her brain until her numb was going numb. The space, as bells, tolls. Dickinson has become an ear. The last sentence is ambiguous since it can be interpreted in a twofold way: I lost my mind and reason or I became aware of what the rest of the world is about. They are two opposite views and there are echoes of Poes poetry and madness.

In poem 435, Dickinson is ahead in her conception of madness. When women in Emilys times had post-partum depressions, they were put in asylums and were called hysterics. According to the anti-psychiatry movement, what people considered madness was rebelliousness.

Poem 51O offers various images. The last stanza is like a shipwreck of the mind. Dickinson has fallen into total despair and depression. Poem 67 and its translation into Spanish: pain is what guarantees authenticity. Sometimes desire is more appealing and intense than satisfaction. To renounce something is to gain it. Privation causes appetite.

In poem 241, agony is more truthful than the look of happiness. Turning upside down negative thoughts. With respect to nature, the environment in question is a very important element in Dickinsons poetry. The poet wrote poems to her huge dog and her garden was a source of inspiration to the artist.

Poem 328 is a very well-known not complex poem about a bird in which Dickinson describes the movements of the bird. It has a very clear rhythm and rhyme scheme. It is a rather simple poem about the life of a bird that does not feel happy about contact with human beings, in other words, it is about a bird eating a worm. The poem has a breath-taking description of flying.

Poem 986 is about a narrow fellow in the grass. What does a narrow fellow suggest you? It could be a worm, a snake, a snail There is no explicit reference to any particular animal. Although the last verse is a very interesting one, we do not know exactly what it means. In the 3rd stanza, the poet adopts the role of a boy and uses the past tense. The poem has been object to many interpretations, as well as a sexual one due to its phallic elements because a boy could be exploring his sexual organs. It could be interpreted as a metaphysical loss. However, there are extra free interpretations. It is as plain as day that it is an exploration between the human and the natural, a fight between nature as a gift to human beings and nature with another meaning. The metaphors drawn by Dickinson are pretty complex to grasp.

Poem 4482.2.5. Comparison between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson

EmersonDickinson

They are almost opposites in many ways.

The ordinary world dissolves into spirituality and the experience of flying, lightness and transparency.The ordinary world dissolves intomadness, nightmare, the dark night ofsoul, zero at the bone (986)

His intuitions are those of potency andpossibilityHer intuitions are those of death andcosmic emptiness.

Idealizes the self (Transcendentalism).Refuses idealization of the self.

2.2.6. Comparison between Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

WhitmanDickinson

They were contemporaries living in the East Coast. Whitman did not know aboutDickinson since she kept apart dwelling in a very narrow Calvinistic family.Whitman certainly never read her. Besides, Dickinson probably never readWhitman because her father chose for her what to read.

As a poet, he represents EVERYBODY.As a poet, she represents NOBODY.

Poet in the middle of society; mergingwith it.Poet kept apart; poet recluse.

Poet outside in contact with the worldPoet inside interior world

Autobiographical I = lyrical selfassertionof the male poetAutobiographical I = fictions of the self.The self always under threat ofannihilation or breakdown.

Unified voice; consolidated poeticidentityFragmented voices of variousselves/masks

Sense of infinite possibility andtriumphant self-realizationIntuition of limitation and impotence

The public poet, giving voice to theAmericansThe private poet, giving voice to herinner selves

The town-crierThe keeper of secrets

Whitmans poemsDickinsons poems

The all-inclusive poem. Song of Myselfincludes everything.The almost exclusive poem since theycontain very few elements.

The huge, extensive poemsThe tiny, intensive poems

Whitman is the continent, inmetaphorical terms.Dickinson is the island, in metaphoricalterms.

I celebrate myself and sing myselfI am nobody / Who are you? (288)

Although Emily Dickinson is erotically and sexually charged, there is always ambiguity between the homosexual and heterosexual interpretations. However, she was wearing different masks and it is pretty difficult to establish he and she. According to recent feminist critics, Dickinson had a platonic love with her sisterin-law, Susan Gilberg. For instance, in Paula Bennets The Pea that Duty Locks essay, she refers to some of Dickinsons poems such as 1377 and 1722 in which Bennet speaks of a clitorocentric typology and provides an analysis which contains these elements that resemble a clitoris: peas, berries, pearls and so on.

In poem 1377, the pea is something unlawful, forbidden which is included in its pod. Furthermore, the pea acts as if it was the clitoris and the pod as the vagina. Of course, it is Bennets own interpretation which can be either homosexual or heterosexual. In poem 1722, Dickinson is talking about a feminine face. Bennet claims that a bed of hair refers to pubic hair. Whether you agree or not, interpretation is free!AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 185O UP TO 19OO

3. AMERICAN HUMOUR AND THE RISE OF THE WEST

3.1. MARK TWAIN (1835 191O)[footnoteRef:11] [11: Samuel L. Clemens grew up in the river town of Hannibal, Missouri. For three years before the CivilWar, he piloted a Mississippi steamboat and found on the river his pen name Mark Twain. Shortlyafter the outbreak of war he went west by stagecoach, finding literary gold on the mining frontiers ofNevada and California. Out of these experiences came work so rich in regional flavor and the spirit of thetimes that he has been called with justice our most American writer. The world delighted in his humourtempered by the pathos of his view of the human condition.]

Mark Twain is a pen name for Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The author was born in the town of Florida, Missouri, and is an icon for American popular culture. There are many sentences about him. For example, in Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway quoted about Mark Twain what follows below "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." William Faulkner called Twain the father of American Literature. So, Twain was the central figure of the period that we are studying. He also constantly used aphorisms such as the next ones:

- A classic is something that everybody wants to have read but nobody has read.- Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.- Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isnt.- Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting.- By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.- If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.- It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.- In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Mark came from a fairly affluent and humble family who had to move to Hannibal when Mark was only four years old. Twain had little schooling, he worked for a printer as an apprentice and then, once he finished his apprenticeship, he learnt journalism through setting type for his brother. Later on, he gave up his printing career in order to work on the Mississippi, on the riverboats. Moreover, he eventually became a riverboat pilot. It is also crucial to mention that his years on the river were a great influence for him and gave him material for several of his works, i.e., the raft scenes of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

He had a horrible distaste for the millionaires that were emerging after the American Civil War. Afterwards, he married a wealthy woman in 187O; namely, Mark Twain is a man of contrasts! He went on working on the river until the Civil War exploded across the country and shut down the Mississippi for shipping and travel. Twain joined a Confederate cavalry division; however, he was no ardent Confederate. When Twains division deserted en masse, he also did the same.It is not peripheral to argue that Twain gave the audience whatever they demanded. He wrote books for children, detective stories, and so on and so forth. Twain used a dialect[footnoteRef:12] which made him famous as he had a deft ear for language and dialect. Finally, perhaps he is universally known for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn since it is a crucial anti-slavery document. Its author emphasized increasingly on the institution of slavery and the South. He conveyed the brutality and cruelty about the life in the South that he knew so well. As America prospered and made its way economically in the post-Civil War period, so did Mark Twain. This period was known as the Gilded Age, coined by Twain. [12: When you read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Spanish, you lose the essence of the vernacular.In the English version, Jim speaks Black English while in the Spanish translation Huck looks like aprofessor in a faculty.]

There are three different Mark Twain: the Comedian, the Protester and the Romancer, it depends on the work you are reading. However, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn reunite the three variants because it was written in the 188Os but it happened forty years before, that is, when the Civil War had not started yet. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a very tragic book, but so funny. Tolstoi said Si quieres ser universal, describe tu aldea. That is what Twain did by describing little villages, he was depicting the world.

Works by Mark Twain

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865)The Innocent Abroad (1869)Old Times in the Mississippi Tom Sawyer (1876): a hymn to the illusion of a realHannibalThe Prince and the Palper (1881)Life on the Mississippi (1883)A Tramp AboardThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)A Connecticut Yankee in king Arthurs Court (1889): Arthurian England (6th C.)Puddnhead Wilson (1894)

Mark Twain wrote about himself: I am the entire human race compacted together.I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way. When it is small, as compared with the same ingredient in somebody else, there is still enough of it for all the purposes of examination. In my contacts with the species I find no one who possess a quality which I do not myself possess.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the top five American Classics, if you wish to call them like that.- A heros effort to preserve individual freedom and integrity by withdrawing from civilization, society, authority, knowledge, rationality.- Classic American theme: the tension between personal freedom and authoritarian control. It brings echoes of Thoreaus Walden, who wrote about his two-year experience out of civilization in Walden Pond living in a hut.- Hucks humour because he has no humour. He is attacked by people who laugh at him, an innocent kind-hearted boy speaking factually.- Hucks values are very American in the way that they are very pragmatic.Huck rejects religion because it does not simply do any good to him. American Pragmatism[footnoteRef:13] is one of the tenets in America. Huck is attracted by the magic, superstition since it provides good grounds to be similar to Jim. [13: American Pragmatism. A movement consisting of varying but associated theories, originally developedby Charles S. Peirce and William James and distinguished by the doctrine that the meaning of an idea ora proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.]

- Huck, the child as the representative of nature, innocence and the uncorrupted. Twains fierce indignation at the corruption of the South, its brutality and its medievalism. [footnoteRef:14] [14: Jean Jacques Rousseau (AO) and John Locke (they both dismounted the previous religious dogma thatwe are all sinners) stated that people were born as tabula rasa (good, transparent creatures) and that itis society which corrupts the human being. Mark Twain shares Rosseaus take since Huckleberry is aneat person dwelling in a hypocrite society with slavery and so on.]

- Vernacular or folk voice of the ill-educated child- Its vernacular realism, its self-creating voice and the childlike naturalness.- general eclecticism: the picaresque, the epistolary, the autobiography, the adventure story and the fugitive slave narrative. That is why the story is so rich. Mark Twain is very much a realist and a local colourist.

After The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain published only two more books. Its author died in 191O, there were almost sixteen years between his last book and his death. Two of his daughters died, his wife became an invalid and he underwent a stroke. In other words, Twain suffered many familiar tragedies which stopped his literary career.

The Gilded Age (1873) was a novel written by Twain in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. They looked at the period 186O 1865 as one which:

Uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations.

Howells quoted he called Mark Twain the Lincoln of our Literature:

The inventions, the appliances, the improvements of the modern world invaded the hoary eld of his rivers and forests and prairies, and while he was still a pioneer, a hunter, a trapper, he found himself confronted with the financier, the scholar, the gentleman. They seemed to him, with the world they represented, at first very roll, and he laughed. Then they set him thinking, and as he never was afraid of anything, he thought over the whole field, and demanded explanations of all his prepossessions, of equality, of humanity, of representative government and revealed religion. When they had not their answers ready, without accepting the conventions of the modern world as solutions or in any manner final, he laughed again, not mockingly, but patiently, compassionately. Such, or somewhat like this, was the genesis and evolution of Mark Twain.

In this excerpt, Twain is presented as an idealist, who fought against slavery throughout his whole life.

Geography

This field is very important in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as it can be checked in the following maps and/or documents:

MAP 1: Illinois as a free state whereas Alabama was a Confederate one. General view of the different states in America.

MAP 2: Path of Huckleberry and Jim. The river is also drawn.

Plot

Although later readers discover Huck has a father, he is an orphan. Furthermore, he is adopted by Miss Watson. Jim and Huck undergo a physical and spiritual journey in which Huck will experience moral lessons. In the end, some friends betray Jim and sell him. Huck feels he has to try to rescue his friend Jim, who is eventually liberated, and the main character meets his friend Tom and new adventures are achieved.

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a book of escape from society into the wilderness.

2. The use of the child as a Romantic metaphor. The roots of this use are connected to European Romanticism. William Wordsworths Songs of Innocence and Experience perfectly describe Huck. Mark Twain was borrowing features from the European Romanticism.

3. Plot and the narrative structure of the novel. There are three main parts in which the novel can be divided.

3.1. From chapter I to XVI. In chapter XVI, Huck undergoes a moral dilemma for the first moment in the whole novel. He would have to decide between what he has been taught by society or betraying the laws of the South. The question that Huck has to face is whether to follow individual creeds or social ones! Reference: chapter VI, 3rd paragraph []that you could see[] In the end, they went off and I got aboard of the raft at the time, he decides to betray his friend Jim and tells a lie when saying that Jim is not black but white! His inner consciousness does not match societys rules.3.2. From chapter XVII to XXXI. The journey on the raft with Jim takes place in this second section. Chapter XXXI marks the second time in which Huck undergoes another dilemma. Reference: chapter XXXI. Huck decides he has to give Jim up to authorities and he even writes a letter to Miss Watson. After havind written the note, a very important long passage follows it where I felt good and. Huck made many mistakes when speaking as he is an uneducated man. For example, all verbs are made regular even if they are irregular, such as know-*knowed. Huck would prefer to go to hell rather than being unfaithful to his friend: that is the CLIMAX of the novel. In chapter XXXI, the King and the Duke have betrayed Jim.

3.3. From chapter XXXII to 43. Jim is the prisoner of Mister Phelps. This part is a kind of returning to the first section. Despite this section is funny, it is believed to be unsatisfactory and unacceptable by many critics.

Mark Twain wrote the first two parts in two months. He took the novel again seven years later to write the ending of the story. The public was accustomed to reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and they would have not enjoyed a tragic ending in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. So, Twain decided a lighter and funny ending, instead of a tragic one. According to some critics, its author sold himself to audiences demand. The second and/or central part constitutes the core narrative, it is a picaresque narrative[footnoteRef:15]. [15: Picaresque narrative, such as Lazarillo de Tormes. Its structure is not a chronological linear cause-effectsequence, but a composition of little anecdotes. Picaresque narratives have many characters who donot have connections to each other, they disappear but they never reappear again. They are not roundcharacters, but (stereo)types, there is a wide variety of them which represent societys vices.]

Huck is the rogue in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there is no cause-effect structure. Besides, Twain provided the reader a broad variety of characters that represent vices such as cruelty, hypocrisy of the old values preserved in the South.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a bildungsroman a novel of maturation as well as growing up as the novel focuses on Hucks education, development from being a poor orphan illiterate boy who becomes an adult, mentally speaking, an integral person who can no longer stay in this society. Reference: chapter 43. what a trouble was to make a book End of the novel: the hero is abandoning and lighting out society. Huck is educated by means of his experience in the raft, which symbolizes a microcosms where he feels educated and being himself.

4. Symbolism of the river and the shore. Rivers are very symbolic in literature. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the river is the ultimate symbol of freedom. For Jim, the river means physical freedom whereas for Huck it means freedom from his brutal father. The river means change and flus since las aguas de un ro nunca son las mismas. In the story, Huck learns from Jim and vice versa. There is trouble when an outsider enters their realm of tranquility. The river also has its drawbacks: it takes them towards slaveholder states since they made a mistake. There are very lyrical descriptions of the river and there are constant intrusions of strangers along their journey. The river, of course, has its pros and cons. Lionel Trillings Form and Symbol: the River and the Shores essay quotes:

T. S. Elliots The Dry Salvages (Four Quartets)I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river,Is a strong brown godalmost forgottenBy the dwellers in cities ever, however, implacable,Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder ofWhat men chose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiatedBy worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

T. S. Elliot refers to the artery which divides the United States. How the Civil War changed the landscape of America! So, the river God is angry as civilization has killed the real nature of the river.L. Trilling says things about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which are selfexplanatory since they do not need extra explanations.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a great book because it is about a god a power which seems to have a mind and will of its own, and which, to men of moral imagination, appears to embody a great moral idea.... Huck himself is the servant of the river-god: he lives in a perpetual adoration of the Mississippi's power and charm.

After every escape into the social life of the shore, H. returns to the river with relief and thanksgiving, and at each return, ... there is a hymn of praise to the god's beauty, mystery, and strength, and to his noble grandeur in contrast with the pettiness of men.... generally the god is benign, a being of sunny days and spacious nights. But, like any god, he is also dangerous and deceptive. He generates fogs which bewilder, and he contrives echoes and false distances which confuse". (e.g. 96-97)

"Against the money-god stands the river-god, whose comments are silent -sunlight, space, uncrowded time, stillness and danger"

Trilling is describing what one perceives from the river as it gives Huck and Jim a nice friendship and so on, despite the storms, the fog and other negative features of the river.

Reference: chapter XVIII, last paragraph. We said there warnt no home like a raft . . . The raft is thought to be as their home. Reference: chapter XIX begins with a poetic lyrical depiction of the river: Two or three days and nights went by . . . Huck is describing his beloved river. In the same chapter, sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two . . .

5. Huck as a character: his moral dilemma between his duty to submit himself to the law and his respect for Jim. Huck is fourteen when the novel begins, he is living in Saint Petersburg with Miss Douglas, who wants to civilize and educate him. His natural wisdom reveals that he does not need clear expressions of education. Hucks natural goodness really moves the reader. Despite his shabby looking, Huck is a kind hearted person. The novel shows that behind Hucks dirty aspect, there lays a clean heart.

Reference: chapter XXII, p. 249 to 251. Reference: chapter XXXIII, p. 39O. Huck is such a good and decent character that the contact with the rest of characters is sharper since they are corrupted. Reference: chapter XVIII, p. 194 and 195. Huck is witnessing bad situations which are examples of inhumanity, cruelty and brutality. He acts with sorrow and he does not understand how people behave the way they do. He wishes going back to the raft since he cannot stomach what he sees in society. Reference: chapter XXI, p. 243.

6. Paradigmatic couple: Jim and Huck, their relationship. Comparison with other literary masculine pairs, such as Quijote Sancho; Joseph Andrews Parson Adams; Robinson Friday.

If Mark Twain borrowed from the picaresque narrative, he also referred to Don Quijote. Jim is Miss Watsons negro and one of Twains most memorable creations. Jim wants to reach Illinois to reunite the whole family together. Jim is a very primitive man who believes in superstitious explanations and magic. Jim and Huck teach each other in their own version of history. Hucks teachings are rather imprecise. Jim is presented with great dignity in spite of his simplicity. He becomes the figure of Hucks father. There are many memorable moments in which Jim saves Huck from solitude and his orphan condition, and Huck also saves him from slavery.

Reference: chapter XV, p. 146 to 147. It is an instance of Jims language. Huck understands that he has downgraded Jim and admits Jim is a human being despite his condition. Furthermore, Huck used to play tricks on Jim while he did not realize so.Reference: chapter IX by and large. Jim shows his sensitivity when hiding from other people. Reference: chapter XIV. Jim is reduced to the level of a stupid fool in the hands of Huck. Later on, he is beginning to realize Jim as an intelligent human being and not only a compassionate father. Jim is a fugitive. Moreover, the Duke and the King sold him for $4O. Judas sold Jesus to the Romans for 4O coins, too. It is a clear parallelism. Reference: chapter XXIII. Jim is actually crying when telling his personal story which is very moving to Huck. He was separated from his wife and it constitutes an instance of Jims humanity, concern, nobility for Huck. The relationship between Huck and Tom and El Quijote. Tom reads adventure books all times, so in that way Tom resembles Don Quijote as both of them believed they were knights. They confuse literature and reality. Tom takes Huck and Jim into trouble since he wants to enact what he reads throughout literature. Sancho Panza is Huck since they are realist characters.

7. Role of the minor characters: Hucks father as a drunkard, Miss Douglas, Miss Watson, Toms aunts Sally and Polly as mere clowns, the King and the Duke as funny characters rehearsing a Shakespeares play and the family that represents the South, outdated and with aristocratic ideas about honour. The rest of characters except for Huck and Jim are flat characters, i.e., stereotypes since they do not resemble human beings. In other words, they are one dimension figures. Twain presented them as only stereotypes because they represented hypocrisy and a southern society that allowed slavery, corruption, and wrong doings and so on. Twain presented a gallery of characters describing vices. All of them are vehicles for the satire of society that Mark Twain wants to give the reader. He uses them to mock a very ill society that permits slavery.

8. The use of dialect in the novel is justified and elaborated in the Explanatory Note on page 3. Twain was not totally original since he used elements of the picaresque and took other stuff from Don Quijote. What was exclusively new was the language he used. Twains concern with the language was not random nor casual, but well-thought. He used seven dialects since he knew them as he grew up in Missouri. Language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the great achievement of its author and also a vehicle for transmitting how people really are. Hucks language is indicative of his mood. On the contrary, other characters will use a bombastic language which clearly depicts their hypocrite nature. Reference: chapter XXV, p. 277. The King is using empty language full of long words, lie after lie. His language is expressive of his corrupt nature. Huck is aware of the emptiness in the Kings language. That language says nothing, but lies! Huck distrusts large abstractions, he is on the world, a down-to-earth person. Reference: chapters XIV, XV & XVI, p. 134 to 136. There is a funny explanation of Louis XVI by Huck when he has a moving conversation with Jim. Chapter XVI shows their simple plain language. They learn from each other. In the book, there are many examples of malapropisms. Reference: chapter XXXIII, p. 388 to 389. There is a tiny malapropism, putrified instead of petrified. Reference: chapter XXV, p. 283. There is a bigger malapropism made by the King, afterwards he wants to compensate his mistake. He said funeral orgies rather than obsequies. Another malapropism is the diseased.

9. In a way, it is also giving us a parody of popular romance novels. They base their lives in stereotypes. A member of family G bases her desires on what she writes, she ends up dead. It is another ingredient of the criticism; however, it is one of the most anti-slavery novels, together with Uncle Toms Cabin, already discussed. Albeit most critics argue that Mark Twain is defending abolition, others think it is insufficient, specially claimed by African-American critics.

AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1850 UP TO 19004. AMERICAN REALISM.

4.1. REALISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE (186O 189O)

(from Richard Chase, The American Novel and its introduction)

Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists centre their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence (A Handbook to literature 428)-

GENREAN AUTHORPERCEIVED THE INDIVIDUAL AS...

RomanticsR.W. Emersona god

Realists

Henry James, William DeanHowells, Mark Twain

simply a person

NaturalistsStephen Crane, Frank Norrisa helpless object

Characteristics of realism: Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Realism is a technique which consists in presenting reality in detail. It is also a subject matter because it is a presentation of a middle-class life, whereas naturalism presents a low-class life. Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot. Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject. Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; characters do not achieve excellent deeds but they take decisions living under the threats of evil intentions. Henry James is concerned with a Patrician society, i.e., high-class people and the reader has to read deeply to go beneath the characters. Characters are in an explicable relation with nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past. Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class. American Realism Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances. Realism is a strategy for imagining and managing the threat of social change. Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact. Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important; even authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses. In Daisy Miller, the narrator never judges Daisy but he is objective. The reader decides to what point of view(s) he sticks to since many opinions are presented. Henry James never directs the reader to a particular perspective, but leaves an open umbrella. Interior or psychological realism: beneath the outwardly uneventful days, it detects and traces the outlines of the spirits that are hidden there; the changes on their growth. In short, realism reveals apart from telling. 4.2. HENRY JAMES (1843 1916)[footnoteRef:16] [16: ]

- Father of Modernism - Bridge between Romanticism and Modernism- Writer of continuous search of originality, exploring differents possibilities of fiction.- Stylistic devices.- Referential ambiguity (in later works, not so much in Daisy).- Nothing is ever really finished in his work (sentences, storiesetc).- Autobiographical writer: uses of thoughts of his life.- A personal + highly subjunctive style.- Visual sensations, but the content is fundamentally concerned with understanding and emotional derived from Experience.

THEMES: problems, situations, dilemmas, Nature and love, relationships, manners, behavious..largest, most passionate, most deeply significant human themes. Constant concern to discover the most effective means of crating the illusionism of the reality of life. The tensions of civilization: men + women struggling to control their emotions + passions within the morals.

Henry James case is similar to T. S. Elliot. Henry James was born in America but later moved to London. He decided to live in France and in England. In his lifetime and later on, Henry James was accused of literary absenteeism for writing everything about Europe.

Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, and Scott Fitzgerald: these American writers were disillusioned with the post-war America, after the I World War. These writers migrated to Europe. Mark Twain and Henry James are studied together since they were contemporaries and friends. But in questions of style and interest, they were opposites.

MARK TWAINHENRY JAMES

Redskin according to some critics.Pale face according to some critics.

Realism applied to post-war material:confusions, contradictions, fears,nostalgias...

Realism applied to moral psychologicaland aesthetic complexities.

Opened American writing to a freervoice.

Opened it to a deeper art, art as a questfor knowledge of self and the widerworld.

4.2.1. Henry James biographical data He was born in Cambridge (MA). Cultivated and rich man: Henry Jamess father. Henry James had a sensuous education to swallow everything from Europe and its museums and so on and so forth. He graduated in Harvard. When 21, went to Paris and Italy for a long time where he met all the important writers publishing fiction in Europe: Flaubert, Goncourt, Maupassant, Emile Zola, Turgenev. London was his ultimate goal and said about it: My choice is the Old World my choice, my need, my life. The death of tuberculosis of his cousin Minnie Temple at 24 atrongly influenced him. Some biographies say Minnie was his unique love, others say that Henry James was homosexual. He eventually established himself in London, became and observer/watcher of America and Europe and then began writing. He could compare the two worlds: Old World = Europe & New World = America, from his perspective as an expatriate. His 21 novels. I aspire to write in such a way that it would be impossible to the outsider to say whether I am at a given moment an American writing about England or an Englishman writing about America (dealing as I do with both countries), [...] highly civilised. 4.2.2. Phases in Henry James literary lifetime

1st PHASE[footnoteRef:17] (to 1885): International Theme (America in Europe; Europe in [17: His early work was simple and direct as much Victorian writing of the time was.]

America).

Roderick Hudson

The American: (Christopher Newman [he represents the New Adam] and Claire de Cintr) The Europeans

Daisy Miller: Daisy-Winterbourne-Giovanelli

Washington Square

The Portrait of a Lady (1881): Isobel Archer-Gilbert Ormond-Madame Merle) -A woman affronting her destiny.

-Isobel: the Emersonian unconditional self, a transcendental character for a noun of psychological insight.

2nd PHASE[footnoteRef:18] (1885 1895): social and political currents; theatre; artists and society; novel: social form (the illusion of reality); moral form (left life); aesthetic form (a composed impression) [18: In his second phase, he wrote more short stories and dramatic literature. ]

The Bostonians (1886) The Princess Casamassima (1886) The Liar (1888) The Aspern Papers (1888) The Reverberator (1888) A London Life (1889) 3rd PHASE[footnoteRef:19] (1895 1916): International Theme, Cosmopolitan subjects, troubled [19: In his third incarnation, he wrote long, serialized novels.]

psychologists (esp. children). Experimental.

What Maisie Knew (1897) The Turn of the Screw (1898) The Sacred Fount (1901) The triad of the major phase: The Wings of the Dove (19O2) The Ambassadors (19O3) The Golden Bowl (19O4) The American Scene (19O7)

Autobiographies: there are three of them. American purity innocence being attacked by European complexities, corruptions, cruelties. That was the International Theme of most of James novels.

Henry James is a different writer and has very complex novels. He is usually seen as a problem for readers. His syntax tends to be intricate. His writing is comparable to an impressionist painter. He is considered a snob because he wrote about rich people and many readers do not like this feature about him.

4.2.3. Jamesian archetypes

-AMERICANS: nave, uneducated, ignorant but noble.

-EUROPEANS: wise, cunning, learned, cynical, declined, dubious not transparent intentions. Innocent Girl (America)

This triangle appears very often in Henry James novels; however, it is not the strict case in Daisy Miller but there are certain similitudes.

4.2.4. Jamesian contrasts

-innocence vs. experience. A very American theme -ordinary American life vs. rich, artistic Europe -plain present vs. dusky, deep past

4.2.5. Jamesian narrative principles

Henry James thought that fiction was ART!

-impressionism: according to Henry James, the artist gives an IMPRESSION (the edges of an image, not a full image of reality. It is the reader who has to complete the full image/reality. The novel is seen as a social form of reality, according to Henry James. -point of view: objective observer as narrator (often, limited omniscient point of view).

-felt life: a novel presents a world dilemma to which we bring out own value system. The Portrait of a Lady is one of Henry James best novel. It is very interesting that a man writes so deeply about a woman. It has a Preface which is a kind of manifesto of Henry James art. When reading Henry James, the reader has to work to get a full image about the incomplete image of reality that he presents. Read The Portrait of a Ladys Preface (1st paragraph) -psychology: novel as exploration of psychological depths of characters.

4.2.6. Compare and contrast Henry James is a particular kind of realist, not in a standard sense:

Henry James HOUSE OF FICTION: each reader looks through a different window different interpretation of the same reality position determines point of view. The windows are our eyes: metaphor! Thats why Henry James is not an easy writer

Read The Portrait of a Ladys Preface (2nd paragraph)

Henry Jamess novel can be read at 4 levels:

1. literal, surface level 2. social level (novel as social commentary. His irony Daisy Miller is very IRONICAL; his subtle humour). 3. psychological level (problems, characters needs and reasons). 4. philosophical cultural level Henry James stories matter at a grand level: uses people as representatives of nations. James novels are much more than simple stories. Henry James was very much against happy endings simply because he thought that the period was realism and life was not easy but consisted of overcoming several circumstances. He was also ironic when depicting his descriptions throughout his works. The Art of Fiction is a book of literary criticism by the British novelist David Lodge, where there is an essay which acts as a response to a previous essay. 4.3. Daisy Miller: a study

Classical Henry James: From big descriptions to little ones.NEW WORLD vs. OLD WORLD is a constant topic. Comparing Europe with America. International theme. Clash between 2: The Millers: American in attitude, manners and language. Randolph represents the Patriotic. Winterbourne comments: The cynical. Concerned with Daisys attitude and claims to be a gentlemen. Europeanized Americans: Daisy is beardheaded: No hat in 19th century. Always with parasol. FREE.Garden: Original sinnature. They met in the garden. Daisies mean friendship and love. (she loves me, she not..)Winterbourne studies Daisy: She is different from European Girls.

More on Daisy Miller:Fever: to go crazy.Colloseum: sacrifice, showdown, deathWinterbourne: Old World: American tainted by too many years in Europe.Daisy: New World.Additional Questions on Daisy Miller:Daisy: Superficial + Unmalicious.Romantic ideas in Daisy Miller: Byron is mentioned (realist work).Shelley + Keats: Buried in the same cemetery as she s when 30 or so. All rebels against English connection with society, morality, etcShelleys: Adonis elegy on beauty, youthByron died on Malaria. He also wrote a poem about the Chillo Castle where D.M went.Daisy might be considered as Romantic (connections with Lord Byron etc).Ihab Hassan, Radical innocence: 3 american characters: Daisy Miller, Huck Finn, Henry Fleming (protagonist of Cranes The red badge of courage).All young protagonists faced with their first existentialist or deal, crisis or encounter with experience. Idea of innocence: Virtue or wilfull ignorance?Innocence: as a child of nature (America) New world condemns Europe Old world prejudice.D. Miller becomes prototype of International Theme that James explored in later novels: The portrait of the lady. Presence of Italy: Renaissance. James first cosmopolitan writer. New world: Morally healthier.Daisy: cynical attitude about relations between American women and European men.Figure of the American girl: Constant figure of his work. Complex figure, eager for experience but unable because of fear, nervousJaes considered feminine novelist (own peculiar problems).Women protect their own freedom + integrity against violation by the world + n conflict with the another.A moral spontaneity: Contantly doing stuff (positive aspects of American characters). Daisys sexuality:Sexlesnes.Free spirits: bring her into trouble in the Old World (influence of James cousin).Debate on good/bad character: a contrary girlResistance to clash between Am and Europe.Gringo Viejo: What mightve happened to Ambrose when he went to Mexico.End of 19th century: sex-relationships between different races, womens freedom, but tabu subjects.

The story in question is a very silly one if you actually think about it, but you need to read between the lines to get more stuff. Within these very few pages, a lot of things are told and make the novel a full one.

It is a typical 19th century novel about social manners such as the upper-classes of the European elite in social situations. Daisy is very independent and very strong-willed, punishment is there since