Feel free to ask questions. I'll try to see you in the chat while we go
on. I've got a board here. I'm going to move there for a second. Oh, I can
see that's slightly out of range, but that's what we need to see. What they
need to see is what they're seeing. So let me change the view to the board
for a second and let me move over there. Okay. Well, what happened? Cancel.
Okay, there we go. Let me see if this is working. Okay, well, today is not
my day. Pan isn't working, so I'm just going to desist on doing that. I'm
going to go back to what we're going to do. I'm going to use a
presentation. If I run out of breath, it's because it's really hard to talk
all the time under the mask. So please bear with me. We're going to cover
American literature in this subject from the very beginning, from the
pioneers, as Douglas was saying. We've got a student that's American, so
he's going to provide a lot of perspective and insight. I hope that you
participate during the course with your own experience, and that way we
create a healthy debate. and a healthy environment of exchanging ideas. My
purpose is to try to give you enough information for you to pass the
subject, but also to acquire enough knowledge about North American
literature, and not only an understanding, but a lightening for such an
interesting part of universal, we're going to start today with John Smith.
Today is the first part of our course. We're going to talk about the
origins of American literature, which as a matter of fact is, let's say,
previous to what we can consider the United States as a nation. That is
going to be the fact for at least the first four authors. The first four
authors that we see here, that we're going to cover over the course of
October, Captain John Smith, William Bradford and Bradstreet. Mary
Robinson, our authors that are born in England, they travel as settlers, as
pioneers, in the case of Captain John Smith as an explorer, and they're
trailblazers and what we're going to see in the first periods are people
that are really groundbreaking in terms of what they add to a non-existent
American literature Captain John Smith is a very relevant map maker very
relevant explorer and a writer where some part of his work is under dispute
in terms of reliability and that's a very good way of starting because it's
going to give us grounds to debate about how reliable a narrator has to be
if reliability is important or not, what it adds and what it subtracts from
the narrative that he is telling us the beginning of the course is going to
be highly influenced by Puritan religion as can only be the case because
Puritanism is extremely relevant and extremely influential for American
culture and American religious tradition and we're going to see how all the
beginning of the course all this initial part over here that we see is
imbued by this religiousness, we're going to see how religiousness stops
being relevant over the time that America stops being a colony of the
English Empire and achieves independence the war of independence is going
to be like a turn of tide also influenced by a time of revolution a time of
enlightenment and obviously that is going to bring a new fresher
perspective that is going to include a non-religious point of view of the
world and it's going to bring it's going to open literature in a broader
scope and it's going to go beyond factual accounts to embark in the
territory of fiction so the more we step away from religion the more we're
going to step into fiction the more we're going to step into a sense of
originality and freshness that American literature achieves over the period
that is considered romanticism what we're going to see in the first term is
we can call it proto-romanticism it's like what takes place before
romanticism really steps in and is very relevant around a century into
American literature we can say that the peak of romanticism happens around
1850 if you open your history books or if you remember what you studied in
American history is a relevant time because it's right before the American
Civil War and therefore we have that bracket of time between the early
colonizers and the independents which is strongly Puritan the period of
time that goes from the moment where religion stops being predominant to
this period of the 1850s where romanticism sweeps in and not only takes the
American stage but takes the entire world as a very relevant source of
literature American literature turns into something relevant not only for
the English speaking countries but for the entire world because of the
format the short story a device that is presented by Washington Irving and
because of its unique settings and unique topics that we're going to see
time and time again what are unique topics well for example in unit 4 we
have Mary Rowlandson captivity narratives to be able to write about
captivity narratives and to be able to write about you had to be in a
frontier land where the possibility of being held hostage by Native
Americans was possible so that turns into the first distinctly American
genre we were talking about Captain John Smith who's a true trailblazer and
a pioneer his map making ability and his exploring ability probably have
gained him a higher reputation we're going to see how relevant his work as
an author was for the moment but why it's probably lost its importance over
time the second author is equally interesting William Bradford that's a
name that slipped my mind before when I was talking to Douglas William
Bradford is one of the pilgrim fathers he's probably the most relevant of
the pilgrim fathers he was a governor for the over 30 years and he gives us
a great first hand account of what it was like to be a pilgrim over the
course of time thanks to the work that is purely Puritan and Puritans have
a specific agenda they don't write for any reason they write when there is
a didactic purpose in writing and when there is something that's to be
learned by generations so in these first authors that are strongly imbued
by religion we're going to see that the purpose of writing is to educate
future generations so there is a sense of leaving animals leaving a
chronicle of their time for the future generations to profit from it in the
case of Captain John Smith we don't see that intention because he is
actually he doesn't belong to that religious community he is separate from
that religious community and that's going to be a very interesting first
glimpse at the importance of American literature what are we going to see
after we see the first four authors of early American literature what we
see these that Puritanism starts to wane today it's going to be we're going
to talk about John Smith but actually I'm also going to overview the entire
semester so I can help you get a better grasp of what we're going to see
over the course of the next few months as Puritanism loses predominance and
why does it lose predominance because a generation of American born people
grow into power and they're and don't share exactly or don't meet eye to
eye with the strongly conservative orthodox principles of Puritan religion
so Puritanism loses its predominance and there is an attempt in the
religious world to revive that sentiment that sentiment of revival is
called the great awakening and it takes place at the same time as the rest
of the world is embarked in the age of enlightenment so nothing can sound
more contradictory than a religious awakening clashing with the age of
enlightenment we're going to have a fantastic case Jonathan Edwards where
he manages to combine some of the tenets of enlightenment with some of the
principles of religious awakening so Jonathan Edwards is a very important
writer slash preacher that in we're going to have the opportunity to
discover and enjoy at the beginning of November counter opposed to Jonathan
Edwards because some of these authors sometimes are better studied in
comparison with another one we have Benjamin Franklin is the polymath he's
an incredibly interesting character and I think that we could fill an
entire course of two semesters only talking about Benjamin Franklin we're
going to narrow the scope incredibly we're going to forget that he's a
founding father ambassador to France the only signee of the Declaration of
Independence the Constitution the Peace Treaty the entire thing he's one of
the founding fathers of the American Nation a very important inventor and
sage and all of the we're going to focus solely on his role as a writer and
what he provides to American literature a sense of American this is
probably the first time we're going to grasp that concept of American this
in Benjamin Franklin which has which goes through a period where he goes
from being openly and pro British to embracing American independence and
even though that process is completely independent to this course and it's
beyond the scope of this course it's a very interesting process a vital
process that he had and other thousands of Americans had and they witnessed
the birth of a nation in the case of the next two authors we have the
opportunity to talk about slave narratives and how important slave
narratives are for understanding American literature only in the case of a
lot of people because in the case of Phyllis Wheatley we're going to see is
the first American black poet which resembles the strife of the black
population regardless of whether they were enslaved or they were freed
freedom as such was just a condition of their terrible suffering and even
if they achieved theoretical values of freedom from the bonds of slavery
they still had to endure so many trials in life that it was almost
impossible to succeed in life and carry on a normal life. Is that the first
poet that we're going to talk about? No, by no means. In the third unit I
quickly went over her. Anne Bradstreet is the first poet that we're going
to read about. Anne Bradstreet is actually she can actually be considered a
I'm an exiled British poet if we came close to that but she's also
considered the grandmother of American poetry and a pioneer in using poetry
within the Puritan framework which is a paradox in itself how Puritanism
which was contrary to artificial forms of writing to fiction would accept a
poet within its ranks and how she manages to be to stay faithful to Puritan
principles and continue writing poetry and being accepted by a very
conservative society. After we cover these eight first units we're going to
get to December where there's the final stretch of the course. We have
Washington Irving the forefather of short stories very relevant figure I
don't remember your name Julio Julio was telling me that Washington Irving
was an author that she was familiar with of course he is because one of
Washington Irving's most relevant works was a work about Alhambra Tales of
Alhambra is probably one of the most important works of the time about
Spain in the English language and it's impossible to go to Granada without
seeing a bazillion copies in every single bookstore and gift shop in all
the languages you can imagine. Washington Irving is much more than just
that peculiar writer that spent a great deal of years in Spain and had
first hand experience of monumental Granada Washington Irving is going to
be the reference for the big triumvirate of romantic writers that are
probably at the core of romanticism in American literature Nathaniel
Hawthorne Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Melville those three writers are
obviously influenced by Washington Irving only by Washington Irving I would
say a clear note Ralph Waldo Emerson is a really important author which
nowadays is basically unknown because I think the type of writing that he
did had a lot to do with philosophical reflection and a type of poetry that
is seldom read nowadays so Emerson represents a school of thought called
transcendentalism and the transcendentalist are considered a part of
romanticism but have a distinct flavor Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about
transcendentalism he was a theorist of what transcendentalism was but who
really proved that he could not only talk the talk but walk the walk we
have Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau is a pure transcendentalist he
lived by transcendentalist principles nowadays transcendentalists are
celebrated because they are pioneers in terms like keeping a balance with
nature living from the from whatever you're able to produce trying to walk
away from consumerism and a lot of topics that sound very fresh very
current but that were exposed in the 19th century Henry David Thoreau is
probably one of the most important figures that we have in American
literature because he is considered the inventor of civil protest and he is
considered a key reference and a key influence for people like Mahatma
Gandhi or Martin Luther King sorry I'm losing my breath in the middle of
these four authors I would say we have probably one of the most sellable
authors that we have here probably the first blockbuster writer that we
have in American literature but I would say from the literary point of view
one of the least interesting which is kind of paradoxic we have James
Fenimore Cooper who wrote about the Native American experience but from a
highly fictionalized point of view and with a certain agenda and some
underlying factors that make his work highly criticized by scholars
nowadays because of the bias that it produces and because it is considered
the origin of many of the stigmas that have separated America in terms of
racial diversity and how the paradigm for example of the good Indian and
the bad Indian was first portrayed in his works and how influential from a
negative perspective that has been for the generations I don't know if you
have any questions so far people in the chat wow 13 we've got a great
attendance so far I think there's like 60 people in the course to have
maybe like 25% of the people that's great it's a great attendance well I
would say that everything that we see in this course is literary to an
extent I know but I need to find words books like a chain uh emerson yeah
well because normally it's a um I mean Benjamin Franklin would have a point
of view on that um normally it's going to be the I don't know if everybody
at home heard the question the question is why some things are considered
literature other things aren't um normally it's because there's an agenda
because uh readers are we can't I'll repeat the questions thanks for your
feedback um because publishers have the agenda of selling as many copies as
possible and they're going to strongly push the authors that they think are
going to sell better and um as literature is considered a form of art but
also a form of entertainment but philosophy for example is not considered a
form of entertainment philosophy is probably not publicized in the same
degree as a best seller or what's considered literature I don't think I
convinced you very much okay yes there is oh yeah for sure for sure but
there are universities there that are becoming more open minded and maybe
even starting a postdoctoral course on other authors that were normally
considered minor authors and we're going to see how taste has nothing to do
with literary quality and it's really good that you're talking about that
I'm going to repeat what Douglas just said he was asking why some
universities were never considered including their curriculum of
contemporary authors an author like R. Martin who is mostly famous for
science fiction I would say that's a very shifting topic and you as young
scholars or as training scholars have to come to terms with the fact that
it's in your hands to change that traditional criticism is something that
is constantly being contested 50 years ago a female author was not
considered to be a great author just because she was a woman and in our
second semester we have Keisha Penn Keisha Penn was not able to publish
novels during her lifetime because the choice of topics that she had for
her novels was considered so scandalous that no one would publish her
stories some of her stories are published have been published 100 years
after her death because she was so controversial for the time she talked
about consent and adultery extra matrimonial sex casual sex lesbianism
topics that were not considered appropriate or even acceptable in the in
the 19th century for only novel the awakening that we're going to talk
about in the course but it's not the story that we're going to read was a
huge flop why was it a flop because it went against the principles of the
time and those principles are set by not only the scholars but society and
society is sometimes over conservative judgmental and doesn't accept
whatever falls out of the standard fortunately we're in a time where
literature is imbued by the same spirit that the rest of society is and the
opinion of one scholar can be contested by another scholar and that's why
when you study you're going to see how there is a contestation of racial
studies feminism and queer studies those are all I'm not accepting your
point of view I'm not accepting that you're going to say that there is good
literature or bad literature based on the choice of topic not based on the
literary quality I would say more if we go back to this list why are some
of these authors forgotten in time because they don't add up they don't
provide sufficient relevant material to the current conversation this is
probably not the best set of examples because all of these authors have
something that is distinctly relevant for them but when we get into the
second semester and we start to see the big romantics long fellow was a
superstar in his time long fellow poet he was he's one of the fireside
poets superstar he was like rock star of the time have you ever heard about
long fellow then you like poetry probably pretty much if you don't like
poetry you haven't heard about long fellow you you've probably read a poem
or two of long fellow but you've read emily dickinson's whole set of poems
emily dickinson never published in life ed brown and poe died in poverty
and was tremendously unsuccessful and because literary quality and the
taste of the time don't always go hand in hand and some authors die unable
to publish or to be recognized as successful a case that is parallel to rr
martin's case is tolkien is a very successful author after death but during
his lifetime he wasn't as successful he was he wasn't an established um
best selling author i think that could probably address part of the
question yeah they always say die young live fast die young okay well um
we're going to dive into captain john smith let me first talk about what
materials we're going to use in class what materials you should have my
covers are different but the book is exactly the same i think that this one
still looks the same when you when you buy it you can pick this up at the
library if you don't have it they have several copies um this is a study
guide the study guide is not supplementary i would say it's necessary in
this subject in particular okay because of the style it has it's um it is
not absolutely compulsory the compulsory work is this but i'll always
reference every single unit i'll make a reference at the beginning of the
unit um of the learning objective of each of the authors there's a there's
a small focus on some of the elements and if you've seen the peck the
instructions refer you to the study guide explicitly so i would say is a
necessary part of your material this is a textbook the modern one has like
brownish covers i don't know why because this one's really cool um this is
what i use as a student i mean i was i wasn't sitting here when i was in
room seven and the first day i sat in class and i and i heard uh the
lecture talking about uh american literature i said this is what i want to
do so i'm living the dream and i'm happy enough to have my student book uh
using it as the manual that we're using for the course the content of this
book if you if you buy it second hand is exactly the same as the one it's
just a republishing maybe they've um they corrected a few typos but this
book has very few typos um the author of both books is uh is the teacher
that will probably correct your exam professor tibet and this manual is a
fantastic compilation of everything you need to pass the subject everything
you need to pass the subject is here what we're going to do here is just
give you more insight on what's contained in this book so my job is to yes
i would say 95% is this 95% of your of the knowledge that you're going to
extract is this what does this have that i think is awesome it has an
incredibly concise and well written literary glossary at the end every
human focuses on a different skill that a literary scholar should manage so
i think it's really interesting for example um let me see a human one talks
about what an exploratory question is and how to approach them number two
it talks about something that is normally part of every exam how to compare
and how to contrast if you get a question in the PEC that says comparing
contrast two authors and you decide to write about one author then write
about the other and then submits that is a failed type of answer because
you're expected to look for the bridges and the cracks between the authors
that you're asked about and it used to be mainly about two authors recently
in the recent years it's normally about three authors because in every term
there's twelve authors and it seems kind of unfair to only ask about four
or five and leave six or seven out of the picture so what they're doing in
recent times is extending the amount of authors that are included in each
question for example talk about the way nature is represented in William
Bradford in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau you have to compare
if you find any similarities between the three and any differences between
the three and that's always from the point of view of what's contained in
this book you're not expected to read the entire body of work of each of
these authors because that would be incredibly long and impossible to
manage in a one year course you're expected to know the contents of each
author so my recommendation is for you to try to read the text before we
come to class if I have time in every class I'm going to read the text here
out loud so whoever is not very lazy and hasn't read the work gets that job
done I mean I'm trying to make things as easy as possible and maybe stop
and comment on certain passages that I find relevant and I have seen from
experience that are part of the exam material one way or small warning for
you here and for the people at home the class ends at seven minutes before
the theoretical ending time because they have to come to disinfect the room
we're expected to evacuate the room as if it was an earthquake drill or if
it were a fire drill I'm going to be I'm going to try to manage time it's
not my strongest point so I'll fail miserably most of the time and I'll
probably have to end abruptly if I do I'll try to complete the things in
the forum and provide any answers of any topics that were still in
discussion what I said the American literature book study guide for the
American literature book there must have in your collection I normally read
a lot from this book it's a copy I picked up from Amazon second hand really
worn out it's called from Puritanism to Postmodernism in my opinion it's
probably the book that really frames the entire period not only of this
course but even contemporary literature the other American literature
subject that you have in the in the um the course is it is it no by no
means this is something that I do because I think it provides an external
perspective and one of the things that I think is a limitation of this
course is that every single author is segmented into a unit so sometimes we
tend to lose a perspective of knowing which authors lived at the same time
as others which authors received a direct influence it's the first
reference in the extended bibliography I can recommend you to pick it up
from the library I think there's a copy here and two copies in the
biblioteca central I think that all of you are from Madrid if you aren't
maybe you have a local library where you can pick it up my recommendation
Amazon second hand books I got this one for three euros so I mean American
literature this is probably the best to have okay so very strong
recommendation because I love this book but it's a personal choice more
than something yes I write the title of the book this is called from
puritanism to post modernism and it's I think it's penguin yeah it's a
penguin it's in the extended bibliography so you should be able to quickly
find it okay if you have any questions just text me in the forum and I'll
answer your questions so far I hope the sound quality is adequate for those
of you at home every time that we come to class I'm going to provide an
advanced presentation with a few slides just to help you structure the
ideas maybe bring key points that you have to take into consideration after
the class I would love it if you just went to the forum and debated on the
ideas that you found more interesting or less interesting and you extended
the usefulness of the class to a group discussion for obvious reasons it's
more difficult to have this year in the classroom environment because we're
isolated and I only have two brave soldiers here to keep me company in this
case what I try to do with these quotes that I bring at the beginning of
each set of slides is something that frames the chain of thought of the
author in this case the quote is heaven and earth never agreed better to
frame a place for man's habitation where it fully manured and inhabited by
industrious people this is by captain john Smith and as you can see he
lived not very long beyond the time where he was on American soil he was in
the area of Jamestown around 1608 1609 he was expelled dishonorably he was
arrested while being there he was court martyred apparently he was
sentenced to death by an Indian tribe and he was saved by a so called lady
that according to legend was called Pocahontas that story to put it mildly
is in dispute and it seems like a great piece of science fiction that John
Smith produced years after being in America please Douglas yes but in this
case it means prosperous enough prepared for agricultural means ok so it is
it is manured in that sense but it's so what do we have with Captain John
Smith we probably have one of the biggest publicity campaigns of all times
Captain John Smith work can be seen, a 17th century infomercial in terms of
it was his exploring and map making was the biggest magnet that attracted
settlers and pioneers that moved not only from England but from most from
many places in western Europe to a new found land that according to his
account was very dangerous but the rewards for being there were enormous
four years before the pilgrims arrived to America and we're going to see
the pilgrims in the next units the pilgrims are normally considered the
beginning of American history Douglas can probably share with me that when
we were in school for us American history starts when the Mayflower hits
Plymouth and the Plymouth just not so many things happened before that and
what you have to understand is that England arrived late to the scramble
for American soil and it was vastly outnumbered for a serious amount of
decades by the Spanish superpower that dominated the naval operations and
also by the French so the French and the American basically and also the
Portuguese of course the Portuguese had a very strong grasp on American
territory and the only part that was left when their naval power started to
diminish that they could try to create those routes were American territory
to the West and through the endless routes to the east of the world trying
to find territories and that's why the quest for Australian for a foothold
on Australia and parts of Africa and parts of India starts at more or less
the same time because it's only when French and Spanish power diminishes
that England can expand and look for those routes from a very different
perspective that Spanish for example the Spanish Conquistadores had for
Spain the mission was to accumulate wealth to accumulate resources and
expand territorially to acquire territory that was immediately added to the
empire for the British it's a way of licensing for limited periods of time
to people that are willing to lead their motherland and try to reach a
territory where they have very few years to make as much money as they can
from the crops from the minerals they can extract from the earth or from
other sources of wealth such as furs or other elements but basically during
the first decades it's about that it's about traveling to territories that
are pre-licensed so not anybody could go to America you had to ask for a
royal license which you had to pay in advance and you had a designated
territory that you could exploit for a number of years yes but in England
that was the only purpose there wasn't a there wasn't a drive to create
English territory in a different area of the world it was a way of
expanding the wealth of the British Empire as a matter of fact one of the
points that makes the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain
goes sour so quickly is the fact that they have no power over their own
territory they have absolutely no representation in the British Parliament
and they have no say over their taxation over their way of entering in
trade deals with other territories so at the end of the day they look for a
break in that relationship and that's what sparks the war of independence
it's not about nationality it's not about a national sentiment at first
it's more about a taxation problem that turns into a search for
independence and a search for an own identity but that identity is
something like it's something that they find along the way it's not
something that is part of the initial drive to begin a conflict with Great
Britain it's just something that scales beyond control in the case of John
Smith if you've read the work of John Smith he's trying to make he's trying
to bring an account of Virginia and when we say Virginia we have to
consider that Virginia is Virginia Rhode Island Maryland Pennsylvania it's
a huge territory everything that was there was Virginia he's trying to make
an account that is written from his perspective he's a military man and
from that point of view he talks about the inhabitants of America from the
point of view of a soldier of how they organize what their rituals are how
they rank their armies how they organize the defense of their towns etc not
from the point of view of describing so much the territory he does that
also there is this contrast between what he finds interesting the things
that are interesting for a soldier and what would probably be the most
convenient thing to do if he really wanted to talk about the new found land
as something attractive for pioneers what makes it attractive for pioneers
his maps are not only useful tools of information for settlers and
colonizers they're some of the most accurate maps of the time with very few
resources he proves to be a very skilled map maker and his map of virginia
has a duration of 70 years as the best map of the territory his map of new
england is one of the most accurate maps and it can actually be held
against the current i mean the real map of the area north of virginia in
the territories of the north and massachusetts and all the area of jersey i
don't remember how much it goes north and it still holds a great deal of
relevance i added the two maps so you have a look at them and you can come
to your own conclusions from the point of view of how we're going to talk
about the author we're going to go over the objectives of the unit are
normally taken from the study guide what the big ideas you should walk away
with and in this unit it says the first objective that we have to walk away
with is understanding how unfamiliar and inhospitable the environment of
the new world was for the arrival English explorers they didn't have to
worry only about not engaging with the French or with the Spanish but they
also had to worry about what was going to wait for them there it was a
terrible trip across the ocean and I think that with this unit and the next
unit you're going to understand the ordeal that it was to arrive to the to
America so this sense of hostility and unexplored territory which can have
a deterring effect but it can also be something that is attractive for
exploring souls and also something that is very important from the very
beginning the religious and the religious between America and Great Britain
one of the key elements that distinguishes America from Britain is that
America accepts freedom of religion freedom of faith so that freedom is
fundamental for attracting all of the people that suffer from religious
persecution if you if you read or if you study the importance of religion
in Anglican Britain you can understand that even though there was a certain
degree of tolerance towards other forms of Christianism there was also a
lot of persecution and so some of those people that were persecuted for
holding other ideas for example in the case of the Puritans first they had
to flee to the Netherlands and then they ended up hiring a vessel to
transport them to America so one of the strongest points in favor of
embracing the information that John Smith would provide was that promise of
religious freedom that America provided and that's why we're going to see
that Puritanism Puritans flock to America in droves because they finally
find an English speaking territory where they don't have to worry about the
persecution and they embrace the idea with a certain degree of religious
fanaticism it is a fanatic religious following because they embrace America
and we'll see that next week as if they were the chosen people arriving to
the chosen land in a sort of rewriting of the Bible and comparing
themselves with the Israelites and their strife to find the to find the
promised land that God will deliver to them so there is a great deal of
religion involved in the people that use the Captain John Smith work to
arrive to America was Captain John Smith religious no he just wasn't he was
a soldier had a great deal of military experience but he was by no means
religious and there is very little beyond the typical writing formulas that
include God in the writing that bring us to the conclusion that he had very
strong religious feelings we're going to also see how Captain John Smith is
above all considered an adventurer and explorer and he inaugurates American
travel writing tradition something that becomes very important over the
course of time in American literature and this travel writing experience
provides new sources of not only information but entertainment to a
readership that wants to know more about exotic places which is everything
that is outside of Europe so this source material is also engaging as a
form of entertainment and travel writing tradition probably has its origin
in American literature due to the work of Captain John Smith and how he
chronicled the early days of colonization in America we're going to see
something that is very important this is probably a key word in this course
this manifest destiny this idea of manifest destiny manifest destiny is a
European idea and we can never connect the idea of manifest destiny
directly to Captain John Smith with that wording of manifest destiny
because manifest destiny is a term that was coined in the 19th century but
as a concept it was extremely obvious that the idea that people that
arrived to America had that it was their predestined right to take hold and
control everything that they found it's a very Eurocentric idea of having
the idea that everything that you colonize is colonized for the first time
everyone that preceded you were ungodly savages that deserved being pushed
out of their territory and if they resisted being exterminated and that
idea of having the manifest destiny is one of the founding seeds of the
American dream the idea of the west the idea of the frontier all of these
ideas that are important from Europe but turn into the core values of the
American feeling of that early American sentiment that American is still
nothing it's an embryo is born with this idea of the manifest destiny of
everything that is west of the shore of Cape Cod or Plymouth or whichever
point you want to reference in the eastern coast everything west is yours
for the take and it's just a matter of providing sufficient manpower gun
gun power or whatever means necessary to take what is yours and that is
going to be a brightening force not only for the early settlers but for the
entire concept of American this and is it unique to American sentiment of
course not the same way we talk about American is we talk about English
this and how they believe during the 19th century that it was their not
their God given right their God given obligation go to foreign territories
and to reeducate people into a civilized way taking home all the resources
they could in the process so we're going to see how first this idea of
landing to America clashes very quickly with the pressure that the Native
Americans suffer from being moved more and more towards the west first on
the east coast provoking wars provoking hunger provoking mass migrations
provoking a lot of suffering for the benefits of the white population that
was arriving and that had God given rights to occupy that territory and
expel whoever was previously occupying that territory so all the beautiful
ideas that the stem from Thanksgiving and all of that it's more of a
fabrication that's something that has to do with reality the reality was
that the Indians the Native Americans served their purpose while they
served their purpose and in the moment they weren't useful there were too
many they were too close they were just pushed away same thing that we can
talk about the Native American we can talk about other superpowers that
were in the territory and that is just the way that European superpowers
have managed themselves over the course of time it's not something distinct
from Captain John Smith in particular but Captain John Smith if you go back
to the quotes it's here is a land that is yours for the taking no one's
here maybe these red colored people I'm sure that we can come to peaceful
agreement that they'll move a few hundred miles to the west for no reason
at all even though they've been here since the beginning of time but that
idea that there was a perfect place for habitation was an enormous magnet
for people but didn't take into consideration that there was a pre existing
population there that was denied any right of possessing the land and
possession was only a god given right that europeans had and that's a
concept that was later worded as manifest destiny very important key
concept that you should be able to manage we're going to talk about how the
native peoples of america are portrayed by the english explorers and how we
start to create a stigma and a negative concept about them from the very
beginning because there is us and the others and that otherness that you're
going to study a lot about in post colonial literature for example is the
idea that everyone that isn't like you is less of a human being has less
rights and has a lesser degree of civilization of intelligence of rights
than you do and it starts to create that idea that it's us the civilized
people and then the indigenous diabolic devilish and that's probably the
only segue to religion to connect the idea of native American to the idea
of devilish and godly people exactly yes to connect them to a concept that
they don't deserve any type of mercy because they're not creatures of god
they're ungodly creatures they're devilish they have bad intentions and
therefore we should manipulate them as much as possible for whatever
purpose we have and exterminate them when they become useless we're going
to see the myth of Pocahontas and how Captain John Smith rewrites a story
that is, suspiciously similar to a story of Hernan Cortes with La Malinche
and how the story of Pocahontas surfaces only several years after Captain
John Smith has left America so it's not a fresh story that he tells while
he's there and he comes back telling it many years later out of nowhere
there's a rewrites of his own story where he includes this story of
Pocahontas and how he is saved from a certain death and that's the text
that we're dealing with today that saves him from certain death and the
rhetorical process of self representation and self fashioning Captain John
Smith was incredibly boastful he would speak about himself in the highest
degree he spoke about himself in the third person writing about yourself in
the third person is a enormous warning sign that there's a huge ego behind
that writer and that he's probably going to portray himself as the hero of
the story and what we have here in the case of Captain John Smith account
is a story that is suspiciously close to being a science fiction best
seller of the 17th century about a superhero that against all odds was
pardoned by the Native Americans and was able to avoid certain death after
an incredible amount of his life of his fellow explorers were killed in the
days before he was parted so we see a story that is highly suspicious of
being unreliable and in the moment we can't we find a crack in the surface
we start to see that everything that he says could pull some degree of
deviation from the facts and therefore we don't know how much we can trust
or not from his account of the matters it does give a sense of being
objective another thing is that it's really objective I mean in the case of
William Bradford for example he writes about himself he never mentions
himself he talks about the group of people the pilgrims call themselves the
saints and he talks about the saints in the third person because he wants
to create a tone in the story that has a biblical tone in the case of
captain john smith it was also maybe an attempt to create something that
sounded that sounded objective and that sounded neutral but at the same
time when you see that one character is highlighted over all the rest and
one character stands out as a hero and that character is himself it's very
difficult to match that reliability with the sense of why he wrote like
that so it's up to you to believe him or not but there are many factors in
the story that show severe cracks of being something that you should take
for fact and not think that there's a great deal of fiction imbued in that
factual environment he was commissioned to go he was an experienced soldier
and he was basically a kind of a rogue soldier so he went beyond the line
of duty and in fact when he returned from one of his exploring parties he
was court marshaled he was disarmably expelled from the colony I'll find a
way to extend because this is the first day and it was really weird it was
hard to connect I'll try to extend this I'll add a second video where we
talked about the work itself but that's the takeaway that you have to have
he is here's a chance this is my way to write about himself he's going to
have the chance to say whatever he wants exactly yeah thank you everybody
I'll record another video because today was kind of difficult to time
manage thank you very much hugely honored by your attendance I hope to live
up to the expectation talk to you next week