...imposed, but it's the only way that the audio is good enough. One of
the first things that's interesting about Nathaniel Hawthorne is his name.
And it is a big representation of what Nathaniel Hawthorne signifies. If
anything, Nathaniel Hawthorne represents guilt and represents sin. And
there are two key words that are representative for what he brings to the
table of romanticism. It's these two elements of constant guilt expressed
in his work and expressed in the characters that he creates, and a distinct
analysis or interest in this idea of sin. As you can see, the second
semester that we're going through, he only has a very heavy component of
romanticism. In the first semester, when we started the classes, I said
that most of the course was about romanticism, and it's true to a certain
extent because in this miscellaneous box of romanticism, we've come to feel
comfortable fitting in things that aren't purely romantic, everything that
goes beyond practically Mary Rawlinson, into that box of romanticism. And
romanticism is actually a thing that grows on the American cultural scene
little by little, and it's going to grow towards the 19th century. Right
now, we're in the fourth of the 19th century, and these three authors that
I mentioned before I started to record, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Nando,
and Edgar Allan Poe, can be understood as this trinity of darkness, this
trinity of the dark feeling of romanticism. If we go back to the first
semester, we remember Emerson. Emerson represents the opposite, and this is
why romanticism is such an interesting movement, because mostly the growth
comes through opposition. We're going to see a lot of opposition in these
writers, and therefore it's going to help you when Professor Gibert sets
one of his questions in comparing and contrasting the contrasting parts
over the second system, because it's a matter of looking for the
comparison. All of these authors are going to have a love-hate relationship
with transcendentalism, and in the case of Edgar Allan Poe, it's directly
hate-hating. So the direct opposite of, and very confrontational with what
transcendentalism means. In Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Nando, we're
still going to find many elements that remind us, that resonate with
synesthetics, that we find that sound similar to transcendentalism. This
interest in nature, which is very romantic, this using nature as a sexual
force. And again, we're going to have a look after we see this first super
interesting look of romantic writers, which I consider probably the
pinnacle of American Romanticism. From this point on, Romanticism is going
to wade their way up. It's going to be transformational. It's going to
transform into something very different, and also very special and very
important for American literature. As it gears towards a realism that has a
very naturalistic view of it, but from a different perspective than
Romanticism. We'll get there, we'll see that. Now, in this first class, I'm
going to do a quick rundown of all the authors that we're going to see in
the second semester. Those are the dates. They're written in the
presentation. They're going to be on the presentation, so you don't need to
memorize them in case you want to write it down more. That's how to
structure preparing for them. From these four, first four authors, we're
going to see our first poet of the second semester, Kevin Walsh's
Longfellow, very strange case within the authors that we're seeing because
this author just doesn't seem romantic. In fact, when you read the work, if
you say, why is this author even in the book? Is he good enough? Does he
deserve to be in this collection of incredible writers? Do you recognize
this? These are names that resonate very much. If I say, I'm a fan of
Hopper, maybe some of you say, I don't really know who this guy is. Why is
the teacher so excited about him? But if I say, he started a letter, some
of you probably say, ah, he started a letter. Okay, I get you. So you have
the starter letter, Moby Dick, and everything that Edgar Allan Poe does,
how he takes the short story to new heights. So everything about these
three authors is incredible. Kevin Walsh's Longfellow is an uncomfortable
guest in the middle of these first four years, but it makes sense because
for the time, these guys were tremendously unsuccessful. They had no, they
didn't have a tremendous reputation. They didn't become overnight
billionaires because of their work. In fact... They lived a miserable life.
Most of them did not succeed in living as writers. Edmonton died in a
miserable way and his editors gave him a terrible reputation that lasted
for almost a century. Edmonton was almost forgotten and had to be rescued
by modern day scholars that appreciated and took his work in a new
perspective. We're going to see how these forgotten author items is a very
important topic in this second semester. We have another case which is as
important as Edgar Allan Poe in the first semester. This lady you've
probably not heard about her, you've only heard about her in a mild way.
Kate Shepard is considered probably the mother of feminism and from the
feminist point of view her dimension is incredible. She's a very important
writer. Because many of you study commentating textual literati before you
take this subject, probably you've become familiar with this author. But
her dimension is actually very big. Up to the 1960s she had been absolutely
forgotten. And that goes to show that sometimes literary quality and
literary recognition travel not in parallel but in absolutely diverging
directions. And that these authors are at the core of our of our facilities
for the second semester represents that they are a very good representation
of the different styles and different types of authors that we have for the
second semester. But not necessarily because they achieve the recognition,
something that we already started to become familiar with in the second
semester. One of the most important works of modern, of current literature
is a revised biography of Frederick Douglass. That I had the opportunity of
purchasing very recently, I haven't had the opportunity of reading it yet.
This is going to take us to a very important moment which The three authors
that we mentioned before that have a romantic and golfing background
decided to ignore almost completely the American Civil War. We come from
the War of Independence, barely one century before, and we tumble towards
the American Civil War. What is the representation of this incredible
turmoil and upturn in American reality? The representation of both a slave
and an abolitionist that wrote a very significant novel called Uncle Tom's
Cabin is going to focus us on the period that are these drums of war. Um...
..., without time to recover from, first is a gothic whirlpool, and then
this pre- and post-Civil War momentum, we're going to fall into the lap of
the pinnacle or one of the initial peaks of American poetry. American
poetry has been relevant in many moments of of history. It became
incredibly relevant thanks to the works of Walt Whitman and Henry
Dickinson. Absolutely divergent poets, but which can also be compared in
very significant ways. And this is just one of the important points of
American poetry, along with American modernism, or the Beat Generations at
the same time. The same height in terms of importance. Next year or the
following years, we will study contemporary American literature, and you'll
understand how this what we studied a couple of years before about Walt
Whitman and Henry Dickinson is at the same height as what you study
afterwards with T.S. Eliot or with the Beat Generation. From then on, I can
talk about this moment of these first authors being... The summit, but also
the beginning of the end of Romanticism, which fades in a very sudden way
and plummets into nothingness because there's already a very strong force
that, for example, in British literature, had become at the turn of the
century and realism takes the stage. And we're going to start to see how
Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Shepard, and Stephen Crane will close up and
prove it. The syllabus of the second semester, with a bang, each of these
authors are going to be very significant. They're going to be very
different, very rich, and they're going to provide you with a depth of
literature that is fundamental for you to understand American literature as
a whole. After that overview of the semester, let's start with Nathaniel
Hawthorne. I'm going to try to go as fast as possible because today's story
is especially wrong. Sometimes I run out of time trying to cover it in the
class. I always bring a quote from his author to exemplify the work that's
normally taken from the work that we haven't had, but not in this case.
This is something that we can use as a way of talking about romanticism as
a whole. Romanticism is not always easy to read. Despite that. Despite
Nathaniel Hawthorne Jr.'s paradoxical claim, but for sure, writing in a
transcendental, well, I was going to say transcendental product to use that
word. Writing in a significant and long-lasting way is not something that
comes through inspiration of romantic writing. These words are written and
rewritten, reviewed, redone. We're going to see today in the case of
Nathaniel Hawthorne Jr. how his work is very concise and built as a very
laborious task. In the next author, in Herman Noble, we're going to see how
after almost finishing a book, he decided to rewrite most of it because he
didn't like his tale, but afterwards turned into what we did. Thank God he
did decide to rewrite that story. Because probably the original story had a
completely different focus and qualities. In the first part, we're going to
talk about the objectives of the human. I normally just summarize the same
objectives that you can find here in the study guide. I want to remind you
that the study guide, working with one hand, is kind of complicated. Thank
you. you know I did that last year and everybody told me I can't hear you
so yeah I did this one class they said oh you sound perfect so now
apparently I sound perfect when I do this which is very unfortunate every
unit has a different focus after talking about the objective in this unit
the focus is about plots this is like a step by step guide of how to become
a scholar and the different elements of knowledge that you have to bring to
the table and the study guide is really an interesting book if you don't
have if you don't want to buy it American literature I have no idea what
you're talking about totally I don't think Nick has passed today I think he
has passed tomorrow thank you bye okay so in this unit in particular there
are four key objectives that we want to achieve the first one is learning
about why the fact that Hawthorne is one of the major writers of American
literature this other way of calling romanticism that we have bestowed upon
ourselves this renaissance is a weird name because there is nothing to be
reborn from there was no literature before so it would be like a sort of
renaissance if we're going to be precise but Americans were never too good
at French and the elements that make Nathaniel Hawthorne distinct his prose
style and this prose style is the prose style that is re-worked iteratively
until it's very well thought and there is a lot of depth in each word that
you read it's something that we're going to find not only in romanticism
it's going to become a trait of realism and it's going to move towards
contemporary writers modernists or even postmodernist writers as examples
Tommy Mark Twain comes to mind as a very polished writer Ernest Hemingway
is a typical writer that you read and everything seems very easy English,
but it's been very, very well thought. Every word is written. In the case
of Nathaniel Hoffman, the same amount of labor was put into what he wrote
and what he wanted to say in each word. There's a very conscious creation
and it's not by any means an automatic work or a first draft type of
publication. He published he is unanimously, I would say in a contemporary
fashion, acclaimed for his aesthetic qualities and he has one of the
central positions in the American literary academy. Even though because of
a matter of length we don't read the start of letter in this course. We
read John Lippin Brown, which is a story that if I had to guess an author,
I would maybe first guess Herman Melville instead of Nathaniel Hoffman and
that is another trait. These authors sound very similar. We only have the
opportunity of being exposed to one story of each, but if you go beyond and
just because you want to extend reading, you read more on Edgar Allan Poe,
you read more stories by Nathaniel Hoffman, you read more stories by Herman
Melville, you'll see how there was an obvious influence that you never know
if it's a direct influence of one over the other or if it was an influence
of the time. In some cases, it's very obvious because Herman Melville was
hugely had a huge appeal for Hoffman's work. In the case of Melville, when
we study him next week, we're going to see that it is a typical mentor,
mentorship type of relationship. The one that Herman Melville had with
Nathaniel Hoffman. We're going to Nathaniel Hoffman influenced Melville.
There is an agent from Tulsa. Melville was younger than Hoffman and he
always looked up to him as a literary father figure. He had several
literary father figures but with Emerson very soon all of these people
either directly or indirectly, in the case of Melville and Hoffman directly
interacted with Emerson. . But I think that interaction was a good way of
finding their own voice, of separating from this transcendental spirit that
Emerson provided. We're going to use the word for the first time,
psychological romance. What does that mean? It means building a character
with a psychological depth. We're going to see how this psychology of the
character is one of the biggest common traits that Edgar Allan Poe, Herman
Nauvoo, and Alexander Kaufman bring to the table. It's one of the
significant items that the three of them expand literature beyond the
frontier where they were. In previous, for example, Washington Irving or in
James Hunter McCormick, we have one. They're very flat characters where we
normally don't get to know how they think, how they feel, what their
aspirations are. In the case of these, let's say, second wave romantic
authors, that is the core of their interest. They're interested in creating
a rounder character that is much more complex and that has a psychological
dimension that we haven't seen before. That's what sets them apart from
what we have read to the moment in American literature and what we haven't
seen before. And brings American literature a step forward into a new,
unexplored, uncharted territory. But at the same time, the same way, and I
say it's very easy to contrast transcendentalism and these more darker,
gothic romantic authors, there is a tendency of inserting, sometimes with a
good reason, sometimes in a fashion that seems certainly random,
mysterious, and supernatural elements. It's going to be a very marked
tendency to include the supernatural. And from the three stories that we
read, we probably didn't have many supernatural parts in the passages that
we read, but Young, Good, and Brown is sprinkled with supernatural from
beginning to end. And in the drama post, The Mask of Red Death, I think
it's The Mask of Red Death, there is a supernatural from the beginning to
end. Another key word that we have to use allegory and subversive we're
going to be able to use allegory and subversive um very much with sender
hopper and also um we're going to be able to find connections or segways in
hermenevo and um with what what this means is that it does it makes uses a
capitalist uh the communist structure the um the allegory with with a
religious purpose and it turns it against itself the work that we're going
to read today has the structure of an allegory but it's turning this the
the story against itself the principles of it's supposed to create an
edifying lesson for self-improvement all of these ideas that we've heard
and that i that i have been running into your heads week after week in the
first semester and active purpose and curative play style blah blah blah
forget about it it's going to be exactly the opposite and i uh non-didactic
purpose uh or anti-didactic purpose i mean that don't learn from the level
don't learn the lesson from this from the story um and purity of play style
you bet you get the opposite you get a very intricate and sometimes
difficult to follow style but once you work through it it becomes a quite
enjoyable um and of course often has this ambivalence and this is where the
subversiveness comes in towards puritanism connecting to his biology he's
going he's going to have a very significant incident happening in his early
life um becoming an orphan at an early age and his father dies of yellow
fever in at age four and he decides one of the elements of separating
himself from his family lineage to include a w in his name that wasn't
there and going from hathorne to hawthorne um why is he putting that in
love with you Apparently and most probably because he felt shame for his
family livings, the immediate and the past. The immediate because the death
of his father turns his family into an impoverished one and his mother is
forced to make a terrible living and has significant problems providing for
her children. Nathaniel Hoffman's father family wants to have nothing to do
with these impoverished relatives and that creates a sense of resentment in
Hoffman that is very obvious. But if we look further and we focus on the
place where he was born... Salem, I think Salem is one of these places that
nobody plays on the map and everybody knows what it stands for. You say
Salem, you say witches. I say Salem, you say witches. This was a concept.
So why was he from Salem? Sorry, Salem. Yes. He was born in Salem. His
family belonged to the Hathorns. They were part of the founding puritans of
Salem. And the starting letter is placed in Salem. It's a testimony to the
idea that Hoffman had of his community and also of his relatives. His
father, sorry, an ancestor of Hathorns was one of the judges in the witch
trial that burns witches just because they were sinful. And again, we get
this idea of sin and it comes into the... See? Sounded not very good. I
don't know. What can I do? It's always the same thing. Let me see. Arafeli,
I can't do anything. I mean, this is as close as I can get to a microphone.
And who is Molina? Let me see. That should be Jose Rafael. Well, I think,
yes, of course, the classes will be in the ABI conferences. I normally just
publish them and leave them in the open in case people from other parts of
Spain don't have a tutor or can't go to class and they can just watch my
classes here. So they should be available over the week. If I forget to
post it, it's because I forgot. So just send me an email and I'll remember
to post it, okay? So going back to what I was saying. If you have any
questions, just type them there and I'll try to answer as soon as possible.
He was from Salon, and the idea that he connects to Salon is this idea of
sin and, what I said before, remorse, guilt, okay? Okay? So he feels guilty
for his lineage, guilty for his family past. And I think that this is
something that is visible in every single piece of work that you can read
from an author in one way or another. These elements seem to be recurrent
and repetitive in his work. In some, in a very, very obvious way because
they're central to the story of what we're watching today under the ground.
Four, in the starting letter. Sure, in the, in other stories, very famous
short stories that he wrote, like the original sin, the same. It's always
this idea of sin, guilt, and remorse. And probably to modern readers when
we read this one, when you think about this religion so much, maybe when
you have this idea that religion is not so core to your life and to... You
have to understand the set views and how important religion was. Religion
was the base of the community, especially in Puritan strongholds like
Salah. Salah suffered a decline after the early 19th century, after around
1812, because of embargo situations. Salah lost its position of power, but
it was a very relevant center of Puritan life. And we know that everything
in Puritan life revolves around religion. If we think of a typical
religious Puritan community, we could probably get closer to the idea, if
we think about those movies where we see Quakers up here in the movies,
that everything is about their traditions and how they go around, And their
lives in terms of how they serve God. And therefore, for an author that
belongs to that community, to denounce publicly the cynicism of the Puritan
community, and using the same instruments that the Puritans used to
instruct the community against them, and to mock them, is probably the
biggest form of humiliation that a community can receive. So, of course,
many people did not like Hawthorne. They were afraid. They were afraid for
his work. And that was a reason, because he was rebelling against the
community. He did all of it, too. All of these colleges that nowadays are
just other colleges in the United States, like Bodoy, were extremely
religious. He attended Bodoy for four years. And he pursued the idea of
becoming a lawyer or a doctor. And in that group, the light group, again,
he said studying was something that only the upper classes did. But not the
wealthy upper classes, it was more of the spiritual upper classes. There
were certain people that belonged to certain communities that could study
in certain places. There were other people from other places that couldn't
study. For example, Edward Hall would not have access to a college like
this. What type of friends did he make? He made friends like future
president Franklin Pierce or this other author that we might see in three
weeks, Henry Waddley Rockefeller, the most important poet of his time,
someone that we've never heard about but you'll probably never hear about
after you finish this course because he's lost all of his importance. But
that's part of the process. That's why I think it's important to learn
about him because he's not the poet that he is. So an author became an
author through necessity. We've seen other cases of authoring through
necessity and this is a case where he wished to be published, he wished to
become an author and he struggled. His first work, The Fact Show, for him
was a failure and it became an embarrassment for him. It became such an
embarrassment. That his purpose in life turned into trying to burn all the
copies that he could find of the book. He was not completely successful
because Fact Show has survived him and can still be read. Hawthorne was not
very close metaphorically to Emerson even though physically he was very
close because he was renting one of his properties. And that's the way
Hawthorne came into contact with Emerson, living in the vicinity of
Concord. I said the previous semester that Concord was going to have a lot
of importance in the course and this is the reason. He had a relationship
of far or mild affection. But a cultural collision. There weren't mixed
elements in common that connected Hawthorne to the spirit of the Thoreau's
and Alcott's of the Emerson's. But there is one that is very significant.
All of these authors, I think we have to compare that in certain nature
into their writing. But for example. Emerson Thoreau and the
Transcendentalists were more experiential writers who wrote about the
reality of the world, travel books, books of experience, books of thoughts
and reflections of the world, of the nature. Hawthorne turned to fiction
and his view of nature is not the liberating nature that we see in Emerson,
it's the dark, mysterious and sometimes threatening nature that we see in
Hawthorne. So it's a completely different view. Emerson was one of his
relations as well, Thoreau, Melville and Longfellow, a lifetime friend. He
served as an American consul in Great Britain and died, who appears to be
campaigning for re-election in 1864. Regarding his works, he can be
considered one of the big writers, one of the major writers of the century,
one of the major writers of American literature. . In this pinnacle of
literature, we can place other writers such as Henry James, Melville,
Thoreau and he also shared the same space and the same time and also the
same social environment with other authors that were extremely famous at
the time like Longfellow. All of these authors that I mentioned before have
a very good opinion. . This is something really interesting. . Back in the
day, before there was a scholarly track of studying authors, and what
happened was that the critics at the beginning of literary criticism was
authors reading other authors and commenting on other authors. So it was
equally important to be favored by the public and to be positively reviewed
by your peers. This peer-to-peer commentary was the translation of what
modern day criticism is, where there's a distinct segregation between the
authors on one side and the critics on the other. Before, those roles were
hardly the same thing. Dissictions are never going to be closure. They're
as far away from closure as you can get. They're open to... to
interpretation. And that brings me to another key word, ambiguity. Because
of this ambiguity, his work has been repeatedly interpreted, reinterpreted,
definitely interpreted, redefinitely interpreted time and time again by the
post-constructionists, new and current historians, the reader response
theorists, feminists, deconstructionists, taking into consideration that,
for example, from the feminist point of view, why feminism? Scarlett
Johansson is the first female character that is a lead character of an
American novel. Not only that, she's a hero of the story. So she's put in
the worst situation possible, humiliated by her community, and she emerges
as a hero. So it's a very bold move, very much... an opposite direction of
probably what the readership wanted to read. Because it was putting
puritanism against itself, and it was applying a role to women that wasn't
meant for it. At the same time, it was sprinkled with all this romantic and
gothic supernatural that Comfort, Melville, and Poe like so much, with the
tints of darkness and all. Um... How does he create these complex,
ambiguous works? With the calculated use of irony, paradox, symbolism,
complexity, what I said before, psychological depth, subtlety, density of
composition, and deliberate ambiguities that go as far as the names of the
characters. Douglin Brown, as a name of a story, is a typical everyman
story. I don't know if you see it with Nick, I think he's the best teacher
you could ever wish for in literature. When Nick introduced you to these
everyman stories, one of their particularities is that they're set as
examples. The names are purposefully... ...selected, and we're going to see
that in today's story. The main protagonist, Douglin Brown, is married to
his lovely wife, Faith. So he's married to Faith, and that's the initial
paradox of the story, and his journey throughout the story is how he's
going to lose Faith, underscore, and capital letters, both at the same
time. So this playing with the game... ...with the words at different
levels, these different levels of reading is what makes the story so
interesting. His work is currently viewed as a revolt against the
sentimentalized literature of the time. But this sentimentalized literature
was done by women. So, at the same time, feminists have all the reasons to
love Hawthorne, they have all the reasons to hate Hawthorne, because he was
the biggest critic of women writing literature, and he was the biggest
defender of women, including very strong women at the forefront of his most
important work, art. So this is what makes him a multilayered and difficult
to understand author, because he lives in this ambivalence. The purity of
his literary style, the so-called grammatically complex, yet rhetorically
subtle, is one of the most appreciated factors in his writing. What we said
before is that we're going to be able to reuse as a term, psychological
depth. his prose is intentionally old-fashioned. He uses words that were
already out of use at this time. Just imagine that it was hard to read for
his contemporary readers. Imagine reading him nowadays. It adds a layer of
complication, and there are archaisms, even verses all the time. Regarding
the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it took him a very long time to get it
published, and at the beginning after the initial failure of the fan shop,
he had to recur, and we're going to see that again in the next chapter.
Super failure, let's write short stories. Short stories are easy to write,
I get them published, I get paid, I eat them up. It's a commonsensical
choice of life. I can understand him perfectly well. It took Hawthorne a
long time to get published, and it came at its own expense. After that
failure, he was very, very affected by the humiliation of not being liked
by the public. It's very hard to face failure, and we're going to see how
failure and failing to be recognized as a relevant author is one of the
biggest anxieties of writers, and we're going to see another good example
at the end of the romanticism of Walt Whitman. His biggest dream was for
people to like his poetry and for people to read him, and he was
unsuccessful for the majority of his life achieving that, even though
nowadays he's considered the pinnacle of American poetry, one of the three
or four most important poets for many most important poets. But at the time
of his publishing, he was tremendously unsuccessful. I often went through
the same, as to the same case. What was his solution to this? Well, get a
job, first of all, that's what you do, and once you've got a job, try to
continue publishing, because he really wanted to publish, publish
anonymously in magazines and journals all around the United States, and at
a certain point he compiled all those stories and he published them again.
And that's why his book of tales are called Because they had already been
published, normally anonymously, and he decided to compile them and include
some of them, many of them, not young Luther Brown, for example, which he
probably didn't consider good enough to be in this population, into the
twice-hulled tales. These stories display the major themes that we see in
Hawthorne. Puritans' past of the ambiguous heritage, human sin and guilt,
the messages of nature, the Faustian pursuit of perfection, the birthrights
of the, I don't know what he said before. In the early 1930s, when he
started to write these stories, no one influenced on him. But afterwards...
He was convinced by Horatio Bridge to compile those stories in the
twice-hulled tales, and this name stems from a Shakespearean quote, as it
says there, or that's one of the theories for why he chose that name. His
work of long fiction... And it came late in his life, it came in the last
decades of his life, and it was not until 1850 when he published his
starter letter. We're going to see how this year, 1850, and the surrounding
years around it are going to be lessened. It's going to be very important
for American literature. There are many works of art that are very soon to
be published around that time, around the mid-19th century. And it's going
to mark... Also, the beginning of the end of American Romanticism. The
House of Seven Gables in 1851, and the Lithdale Romance in 1852 is most
appreciated novels, and probably the work upon which his reputation lies
upon nowadays, especially his starter letter in terms of reputation. I
mean, the United States is one of the typical books that we read...
...during elementary school or high school. So... He wrote a biography of
Franklin Pierce and one year after the start of Denver, there was a book of
fiction called Moby Dick, maybe you've heard about it, that was written by
Herman Novel next week and Herman Novel wrote in the dedication token of my
admiration for his genius. This book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hoffman. So,
Moby Dick is like the Don Quixote of American literature. It's probably the
most important, the single most important work of art in American
literature and it's inscribed to Nathaniel Hoffman. Even though for us
nowadays it's complicated to understand the dimension, the literary
dimension of Nathaniel Hoffman, all the doors get reopened for other
writers to continue or further authors to evolve in his own time he did
receive the appreciation by his peers, especially by other generations of
readers not just contemporary readers and I think that's what makes him so
important. I have two more slides to go, I think three more slides to go
and three more slides to go I'm trying to go very fast so we can read the
story and first of all this idea, we've been using the word romance novel
and even novella back and forth without closing in on what that was Sir
Walter Scott that we've already talked about here defined the romance as a
fictitious narrative in prose or verse the interest of which turns upon the
marvelous and uncommon incidents. So, this these are romances and before
Fulham's novel would probably not be called novels nowadays just a footnote
to you if you're more comfortable with the term romance, the term novel the
term novella it was actually um the word that was used in the past romance,
the word that is currently used novel, and in the middle um we have like
semi long stories that are longer than a short story they're called
novellas and that's what makes it a bit um more challenging to understand
nowadays. Hawthorne, in the preface of the House of Seven Gables, regarded
the novel as the presumed aim at a very renewed fidelity, not weary to the
possible but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience.
Similar to the current realistic novel. So, at the time, novel was used for
realism and for paying attention to the real happenings of the world, and
romance where you can let go of your imagination and explore the possible
mysterious supernatural. Romance gives Hawthorne the platform that he needs
to explore these irrational horses. And to go beyond what the reader is
expecting and to take his expectations to unexplored territory. Especially
to explore how the human mind is altered by the course of events and going
beyond what empiricism gave us. So, if we had to contrast him with someone,
we could probably contrast him with both Benjamin Franklin and John
Williams. Especially Edward, a huge fan of empiricism. The author always
insisted on using his words as romances. And if you use indistinctly the
words when you take your examination, you have to be careful to make it
very clear that you understand the difference. You're just using it for
clarity. You're using it for the current purposes in one sense or another.
I promise to go fast, but I'll do so. Young Whitman Brown and some notes on
the start of this. Regarding Young Whitman Brown, it's an example of a
literary that is very close to the literary force of a fable or a parody.
It is probably Hawthorne's best example. Of how he had a likening for a
liberalizing evil. I want to channel the likeness to our previous videos.
Here is one. Is there a way of zooming this? I don't know. I have no idea.
They changed the platform this year. Everything's easier. Okay, I don't
know. I don't know how to zoom that. I'll try. I'll have a look and see if
I can do that. Maybe there's too much work, and I can probably work on
that. I don't know how to zoom. I didn't know how to zoom in the previous
platform. I knew how to zoom in the last one. All my... All my know-how has
gone for this new platform. I have to ask if that's possible. What we're
going to see is a lot of double meaning, exploration of evil. And from the
literary point of view, you probably consider it to have less literary
quality than others and excluded it intentionally from the tricycle field.
Apart from the allegorical limitations, there are other qualities that we
can bring to the front, such as morals, philosophy, history, and
psychology. The morals of guilt, arrogance, and how Puritans basically had
a way of saying, we're the saints, we're the others, we're the good, we're
the evil. We're the... We're going towards salvation, we're going towards
damnation. That binary opposition, that polarization of reality that
Puritanism has is what Hawthorne plays with and puts into focus this
arrogance that Puritans have of being the chosen people, of thinking that
they were much more special than all the rest of the souls on the planet.
Okay. And ideas that Puritans, because they were very convenient, brought
to the table. And decided to think that it was really reasonable, to think
about witchcraft, complete interpretations of the devil, good and bad faith
or what innocents signified among others. All these motives are part of the
story we're going to read. Puritan sins in the style of witch hunts are
present as what we said at the beginning, this sense of guilt that is not
washed away, is not washed off from Hathor in any moment. Finally, The
Scarlet Letter was written right in the middle of the 19th century, and it
was his return to a full-length novel after a period of writing short
stories and literary obscurity. It became his most successful book,
although he never became rich from the sales of this book, and it has
always been considered America's first great novel. It is a historical
romance, and it focuses on the adulterous love between a Puritan minister,
that's a bit of a spoiler there, and Hester Pryde, a married member of his
congregation. In the Boston of two centuries before, so there is a sense of
guilt not only in his style, but also in all of New England, and the more
it appears an area that's surrounding where Massachusetts and the places
that he was familiar with. There is a very calculated distance between...
...the historical, religious, literary, and emotional New England of the
past, and the transcendentalist New England that was contemporary to him.
So he set his book in a previous period to what he was living on purpose,
because it served his narrative much better than placing it at the same
time. He placed it in a previous time. And that allowed him a big amount of
criticism without directly offending people, and it was not very
successful. So that story starts with the love affair, it doesn't start
with the love affair itself, but from the consequences of the love affair.
And how this lady has survived after being forced to wear a red letter and
climb onto a scaffold, a platform or a stage or something like that, ...to
be publicly humiliated by the entire... ...community, which is a very cruel
way of coming to a punishment, she was forced to wear the word as a sign of
shame for the rest of her life. And that leads us to asking, what happened
to whoever she was unfaithful with? Nothing, of course, because it was a
guy. but she does not only own her situation she exploits it and she
creates because she's a seamstress a beautiful marvelously embroidered
electric A that she wears on her bosom and A stands for adulterous okay so
I really recommend you just fast read summer's coming sooner or later write
it down on your I don't know I try not to watch movies I try not to watch
them I tend to get disappointed when I watch the movies that are based on
books the daughter that comes out of the adultery Pearl has a name of
purity represents the opposite of what purity is considered purity and you
see how she uses all these ideas of natural innocence and release from Eden
as subversive motives in his book very early on you're going to see how
they become painted with guilt and fear this part of the letter as well as
the moving ground is a tremendous work of memory and symbolism I have 25
minutes to read through only to read what I wanted to read today as an
introduction for next week I'm going to read from Young, Lippin, Brown when
we find it Professor G. Metz says on page 224 of the textbook when reading
at the beginning of the page when reading the tale this should be borne in
mind that it's protected that the protagonist does not represent orthodox
Calvinism as exemplified by first generation Puritans but a declining form
of religion held by a troubled and confused third generation of Puritans
who were historical victims of an altered relationship with God we've
already seen this time and again how the first generation of Puritans
becomes so disappointed with the following generations that are not able to
sustain that covenant and therefore comes the awakening to fail them to and
go back to the Puritan status Calvinist preachers continually warn their
congregations against presumption that is the act of declaring one's
salvation already certain just because you're a puritan doesn't mean you're
saved you have to work towards that salvation every step of your life,
every day of your life that's what Young and Brown is about it's like I'm
going to live this last night of temptation, I'm curious and I'm going to
have a look at what temptation and sin look like and then I'm going to go
back and I'm going to be happy and puritan and pure again and I'm going to
be really, really worthy of entering heaven that's the basis of the story.
Young and Brown came forth at sunset into the streets of South Village but
put his head back at the cross on the threshold to exchange a part of his
with his young wife and faith as the wife was aptly made thrust her own
pretty head into the street letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of
her cap while she called to Goodman Brown. Dearest heart whispered she
softly and rather sadly when her lips were close to his ear try thee put
off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed tonight a lone
woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of
herself sometimes pray carry with me this night to your husband of all
nights in the year because of all the nights in the year he decides to sit
forth on the nights of all the queens, of all the witches of Halloween as
that day has come to be known nowadays my love and faith replied Young and
Brown of all the nights in the year this one night must I carry away from
thee my journey as though call is it and forth and back again must need to
be done twixt now and sunrise what my sweet pretty wife does build out me
already and we but three months married recently been married then God
bless you said faith with the pink ribbons and may you find all well when
you come back amen cried Goodman Brown say thy prayers in your faith and go
to bed at dusk and no harm will come to thee so they parted and the young
man pursued his way until being about to turn the corner by the meeting
house he looked back and saw the head of faith still peeping after him with
a melancholy air in spite of her pink ribbons poor little faith and every
time you read one of these exclamations you can change faith for just
normal a normal word not the name and you'll come to another conclusion
poor little faith thought he, for his heart smote him. What a wretch am I
to leave her on such an errand. She talks of dreams too, methought. As she
spoke, there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what
work is to be done tonight. But no, no, no. It would kill her to think it.
Well, she's a blessed angel on earth, and after this one night I'll cling
to her skirts and follow her to heaven. With this excellent resolve for the
future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on the
present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by the gloomiest
trees of the forest, which barely stood aside, to let the narrow path creep
through and close immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be, and
there is this peculiarity in such a solitude that the traveler knows not
who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs
overhead, so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an
unseen multitude. There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree, said
Goodman Brown to himself, and he glanced fearfully behind him as he had it.
What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow? His head being turned
back, he passed the road, and looking forward again, beheld the figure of a
man in gray and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose
at Goodman Brown's approach, and walked onward side by side with him, your
lady of the grounds of heat. The clock of the old south was striking as I
came through Boston, and this is full fifty minutes ago. And now, double
meaning again. Faith kept me back a while, replied the young man, with a
tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion,
though not wholly unexpected. It was now dust in the forest, sorry, deep
dust in the forest, and deepness in that part of it where these two were
journeying, as nearly as could be discerned. The second calendar was about
fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and
bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in
expressions and features. Still they might have been taken for father and
son, and yet though the elder person, who was as simply clad as the younger
and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew
the world and would not have felt abashed. at the governor's dinner table
or in King William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call
him a vizier. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon and
admirable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so
curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself
like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception
assisted by an uncertain light. So he's a man in his fifties, carrying a
staff that resembles a snake. I don't know. You don't have to have a lot of
memories for it. Come, Goodman Brown, crying to spell the trouble. This is
a dull, wimpy pace to the beginning of a journey. Take my staff if you are
so soon weary. Friend, said the other, is changing his slow pace for a full
stop. Having kept covenant by meeting thee, it is my purpose now to return
whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter though most of. Say as
it goes so, replied he of the serpent smiling apart. Let us walk on
nevertheless reasoning as we go and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn
back. We are but a little way in the forest yet. Too far, too far, explain
the good man. And it's not. On capital letters, on purpose. Unconsciously
resuming his walk. My father never went into the woods on such an errand,
nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good
Christians since days of the martyrs. And shall I be the first in the name
of Brown that ever took this path and kept such company? None would say,
observed the elder person interpreting his pause. Well said, Goodman Brown.
I have been as well acquainted with your family as with every, ever or one
among the Puritans. And that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather,
the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the
streets of Salah. This is a direct reference to the witches of Salah, the
trials of Salah. And it was I that brought your father a pitch-flying knot
kindled at my own hearth to set fire to an Indian village in King Philip's
Wharf. We've already talked about King Philip's Wharf. They were my good
friends, both. And many a pleasant walk have we had along this path and
returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their
sake. So he's already been friends to his grandfather and to his father. If
it be as those say this, replied Goodman Brown, I marvel they never spoke
of these matters. For verily, I marvel not seeing that the least rumor of
the short would have driven them from New England. We are a people of
prayer and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness. Wickedness or
not, said the traveler with a twisted staff, I have a very general
acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk
the communion wine with me. The selectmen of diverse towns make me their
chairman, and a majority of the great and general court are firm supporters
of my interests. The governor and I, too, but these are state secrets. Can
this be so, cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his
undisturbed companion? How be it? I have nothing to do with the governor
and the council. They have it. They have it in their own ways, and are no
rule for a simple husband's man like me. But were I to go on with thee, how
should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister at Southern
Village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble, both Saturday and the next
day. Thus far, the elder traveler had listened with new gravity, but now
burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently as
his snake-like staff. Actually, it seemed to wriggle in sympathy. Ha, ha,
ha, shall we see again and again? Then composing himself. Well, go on,
Goodman Brown. Go on, but pray thee, don't kill me with laughing. Well,
then, to end the matter at once, Goodman Brown, consider me lentil. There
is my wife. Faith, I would break her dear little heart, and I'd rather
break mine own. Nay, did that be the case, answered the other. Even go thy
ways. Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women, like the one hobbled
before us, that through faith should come to any harm. As he spoke, he
pointed his staff at the female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown
recognized a very pious and exemplary name, who had taught him his
catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual advisor, jointly
with the minister and deacon Goodhead. A marvel truly that good clothes
should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall, said he. But with your
leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this
Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was
consorting with and whither I was going. Be it so, said the fellow
traveler. Be taken to the woods and let me keep the path. Accordingly, the
young man turned aside and took care to watch his companion who advanced
softly along the road until he had come within a staff length of all day.
She meanwhile was making the best of her way with singular speed for so
aged a woman and mumbling some of the distinct words of prayer doubtless as
she went. The traveler put forth his staff and touched her withered neck
with what seemed the serpent's tail. The devil, screamed the peaceful lady.
Then good clothes knows her old friend, answered the traveler, confronting
her and leaning on his ribbing stick. Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship
indeed? cried the good dame. Yeah, truly is it. And in the very image of my
old boss, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now he
is. But would your worship believe it? My broomstick has straightly
disappeared. Stolen. As I suspect, by the unhanged witch, Goody Corrie. At
that cue, when I was all anointed with a juice of smallage and sink foil
and whoops bane, mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a newborn babe, set
the shape of old Goodman Brown. Then ah, your worship. Then it knows the
rest of me, cried the old lady, cackling aloud. Cackling is the type of
laugh that only witches do. So, as I was saying. Then, being all ready for
the meeting and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it, for they
tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion tonight, but
now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a
twinkling. That can hardly be, answered her friend. I may not spare you my
arm, Goody-Poiced, but here is my staff, if you will. So saying, she threw
it down at her feet, where perhaps it assumed life, being one of the rods
which its owner had formerly led to the Egyptian mausoleum. Of this fact,
however, Goodman Brown did not take into common sense. He had cast up his
eyes in astonishment and looking down below, again, beheld neither good
toys nor the serpent he sat, but his fellow traveler alone. Well, wait for
him, as calmly as nothing can happen. That old lady taught me my catechism,
said the young man, and there was a world of meaning in this simple
comment. They continued to walk onward while the elder traveler exhorted
his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so
aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bottomless of
the auditor and to be suggested by himself. As they went. He plucked a
branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of the
twigs and little boughs which were wet with evening dew. The moment his
fingers touched them, they became strangely withered and dried up, as with
a week's sunshine. This idea of a week's sunshine follows the idea that two
months of a good thing is bad. Thus, the pair proceeded at a good, free
pace. Until, suddenly, in gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat
himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any farther. Friend,
said he stubbornly, my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on
this errand. What if a wretched old woman did choose to go to the devil
when I thought she was going to heaven? Is that any reason why I should
quit my dear faith and go after her? You will think better of this by and
by, said his acquaintance supposedly. Sit here and rest yourself a while,
then when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along.
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as
speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The
young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself greatly and
thinking with how clear a conscience he should make the minister in the
morning walk, and our strength from the eyes of the good old deacon. And
what calm sleep would be his that very night, which was to have been spent
so wickedly, but purely and sweetly now in the arms of faith. Amidst these
pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown heard the trap of the
horses along the road and deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the
verge of the forest. Conscious of the guilty purpose that had brought him
dither, though now so happily turned from it, on came the hoof traps and
the voices of the riders, two grave old voices conversing soberly as they
grew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road within a
few yards of the young man's hideout place. But owing doubtless to the deep
depth of the gloom at that particular spot, neither the travelers nor the
steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the
wayside, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the
faint leap from the strip. A bright light at the fort, which they must have
passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling
aside the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst, without
deserving so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more because he could have
sworn it were such a thing possible that he recognized the voices of the
minister and deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly as they were about to do.
One bound to some coordination. While yet within hearing, one of the riders
stopped to cut the switch. One of the two, Reverend Sir, said with a voice
like the deacon's, I had rather miss an ordination dinner than tonight's
meat-making. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from
Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides
several of the Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as
much delinquentry as the best of the best. Moreover, there is a goodly
young woman to be taken into communion. Might be well, deacon Gookin,
replied the solemn old tombs of the minister. Spur up or we shall be late.
Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground. The hoofs
clattered again and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air,
passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered nor
solitary Christian played. Whether then could these holy men be journeyed?
So deep into the heath and wilderness. Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a
tree for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and
overburdened. with a heavy sickness on his heart. He looked up to the sky,
doubting whether there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was a blue
part and the stars brightening in it. With heaven above and faith below, I
will yet stand firm against the devil, cried Goodman Brown. We're going to
run out of time, which is something that always happens to me with this
narrative because it's really, not really long. And after the experience
that young Goodman Brown lives in the forest, I would like to ask him to
move to the final pages where he comes back from this outlandish experience
and feels that he's been betrayed by his entire community and everyone is
possessed by the devil. And he changes his view of everything. He says, the
next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the streets of Sound
Village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister
was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast and
meditate his sermon and bestow the blessing as he passed on Goodman Brown.
He shrank from the venerable saint as a cowboy and anathema. Old Lincoln
Goodman was at domestic worship and the holy words of his prayer were heard
through the open window. What God does, the women prayed to, quote Goodman
Brown. Many boys, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine
after the homilatis, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint
of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child from the grasp of
the fiend himself, turning the corner by the meeting house to spy the head
of faith with the pink ribbons gazing anxiously. And bursting into such joy
at sight of him that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her
husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and
sadly in her face and passed on without a greeting. Had Goodman Brown
fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed of what Be it so, if you will,
but alas, it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a
sad, a darkly-menned fool that is trustful, if not desperate, mad as he'd
come. From the night of that fearful dream on the Sabbath day when the
congregation were singing a holy song, he could not listen because an
anthem of sin brushed loudly upon his ear and ground all the blessed
strains. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervent
eloquence, and with his hands on the open Bible of the sacred truth of our
religion and of the saints' lives of a triumphant death and a future bliss
for misery unutterable, then did Goodman brown-trimmed pale, dreading lest
the roof should thunder down upon the grave blasphemy of his heroes. Often
awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of faith and at
morning or even time when the family knelt at prayer, he scowled and
muttered to himself and gazed externally at his wife and turned away. And
when he had been gone and was born to his grave, a horrid corpse followed
by faith, an aged woman and children with grandchildren, a goodly
perception besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon
his tombstone for his dying hour Okay, so it's a very positive and
optimistic ending. I'm sorry. Okay, so the next week we're going to
continue with Herman Melville. Thank you very much. Great to have new
faces. Please keep coming and don't connect from home. The experience is
much worse. The audio sound is terrible. Come here and well, have a great
week. Okay, bye. Oh, thanks a lot. Bye.