What I'm going to do today is I'm going to cover all the authors in the
book from Unit 1 to Unit 12. So I'm going to try to devote four or five
minutes to talking about each of the authors, and I'm going to
incrementally give you information about each of the authors regarding the
previous ones. So possible questions that could be part of exam material,
we're going to see them only in an imaginary way. As I told you before, I
haven't brought exams to this classroom for today. That's not the purpose.
That's not the purpose of this class. I'm just going to go over a general
review, and I don't have access to the exam, so I don't know exactly what
they're going to ask you. I have absolutely no idea. Those exams anyway,
Professor Givet is a thorough planner. She's probably written those exams
in August, and they're already sealed and prepared. They've been done for
months by now. So our first stop, of course, let me see if I can write
here. Let me see if this works. Okay. Where is my board here? The first
author that we're going to cover is Captain John Smith. Okay, so in the
case of Captain John Smith, we're going to start the course. We're going to
start with learning about the first explorers that arrive to America. So I
think that a good starting point would be to separate or to segregate
Captain John Smith's intention and mission with the rest of the authors
that we're going to read. The rest are either settlers or they're dwellers
of inhabitants of America. Afterwards, to be called the United States. In
this case, Captain John Smith is purely an explorer of the New World. He is
a very experimented sailor and explorer, a military man, and his military
background serves as a backdrop to his perception of the New World. He is
extremely interested in the Native Americans. There is an immediate
interest in the Native Americans, but from a descriptive point of view,
taking into consideration his trade. He's going to be interested in the
way, that the Native Americans organize, the way they create their cities,
the way they defend their cities, the way they arm themselves, the way they
defend themselves, military tactics and so on. So John Smith has many
things that make him a unique person and a special firsthand. He's going to
be a witness of this new unexplored world. And one of the things that he's
going to provide is his extreme ability in map making. As an experimented
map maker, he's going to produce some of the most accurate maps that
America will have for several centuries. So his work is by no means small
in impact. His work has a very deep and long lasting impact. First from the
visual point of view of map making, and afterwards when he returns as a
storyteller of the account of the time that he spends in Virginia, New
England and the Summer Isles, as he himself calls it. We're going to have a
problem with Captain John Smith's way of representing the new world,
because there is an obvious boastfulness in his, a boastful attitude in his
account. And this, subtracts from, it puts into question the reliability of
his account. The reliability of everything that he decides to tell about
his time in America. The second problem that we have is that we know that
the account shifts over time, a shifting narrative over time. And it
includes more and more details that were previously unrevealed, a shifting
story. And therefore, it plays against the reliability of his story. In
particular, we can refer to the episode with Pocahontas, and how he is
apparently saved from death, from this person that is a real person. But it
remains in doubt, it remains questionable that Captain John Smith ever did
get to meet Pocahontas, and that he was actually saved by her or not. So,
the events that take place in his life, well, in his brief period of time
in the new world. Let's see, go to the third, fourth slide. The events that
take place in the new world are always put into doubt, because of how there
seems to be an agenda to elevate his importance within the story. But at
the same time, the impact of his story is incredible. And he manages almost
single-handedly, to attract people to America, by the thousands. Because
there was this immediate feel, that across the Atlantic Ocean, there was a
land of opportunity, there was a land of wealth, there was a land of
riches, to be conquered and to be taken. And while some, some people will
travel to America, and we'll see that over the following units. In search
of religious freedom, others are going to travel to America in search of
wealth, in search of a better opportunity. And that was the mainstream
reason that attracted so many thousands to America over the first decades
of settling. We're talking about, in this case, our, the framework that
we're talking about is the early 16th century. Sorry, 17th century, not the
16th century, the 17th century. Things that we pointed out in the studying
the unit that I would like to bring up ideas would be I already talked
about how important his role as a map maker was and how the image of
America that's portrayed is portrayed as a land of opportunity. And others
are going to pick up on the idea that it is also going to be the land of
religious freedom. And that's going to trigger something that he already
starts to manifest, Captain John Smith, the manifest destiny. And we're
going to talk about the manifest destiny a little later. Okay. John Smith
arrives at Jamestown in 1607. He is governor of Virginia in 1608 and 16,
from 1608 to 1609. He he has a accident time in in America and when upon
returning he is never apparently he is never allowed to return to to
Virginia because among other things he had been arrested during his time
there. So there are many situations regarding the the stay of Captain John
Smith in in America that remain unknown or at least not as clear and
subject to speculation. In this course, we're going to try not to
speculate. So we're going to leave it as is. His his reliability is
questionable and the importance of his of his writings were that they were
extremely promotional and that there was a significant interest in
depicting very accurately but from the point of view of what he found of
interest his military point of view what he saw in the new world. The most
relevant or the first of his relevant works is considered the first English
work written in America a correlation of such occurrences and accidents of
notes as has happened in Virginia was written in 1608 and published in
London in the same year. So as you can see things are very fast at the
beginning but afterwards he rewrites his story several times adding
different glimpses to his early 17th century trips in the in the 19 sorry
in the 16 20s he writes two different versions of the original work the
first one called General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer
Isles and the third one sounds even more as a fictional tale The True
Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith in Europe, Asia,
Africa and America which compile partially his time in America besides
other other trips that were noteworthy in his life and mostly previous to
to his time in America the map of Virginia is the one that you can see in
the image and the map of New England is the one that you can see in the
image as I said remarkably accurate very very accurate this map precedes
the arrival of the pilgrim of the pilgrims to Plymouth in four years but
this map at the same time works as a magnet and works as a as a sort of of
layout of the promised land to the future generations and to everybody that
was planning on going to America the next author that we're going to cover
is William Bradford William Bradford is a is a religious figure that we
have to connect through a different perspective that we use for Captain
John Smith in the case of Captain John Smith we talked about an explorer
and a map maker in the case of a of William Bradford we're going to talk
about a providentialist let me see there's a question there the leader of
the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers yes please I was just trying to write because I
find I find it a bit hard to write and think of my sentences ahead of time
even if it's only a name in the case of William Bradford we're going to
talk about a providentialist governor and leader his his importance is is
prime because he belongs to what is considered the the foundational the
cultural foundation of of the United States of America nowadays Americans
study their history starting with the Pilgrims so even though the times of
of William Bradford take place one century and a half before becoming an
independent nation from a cultural point of view and due to the United
States being a very religious country in essence the the trip of the
persecuted Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower as Jose is so correctly stating is
considered the starting point of the American people so even though this is
culturally incredibly questionable this is a questionable matter no matter
how you phrase it because this is happening one century and a half before
there's even an American nation the the foundation of the American people
according to the to the most widespread belief of the Americans takes place
in this moment and what we could say that is absolutely true is that this
is a point where America and the motherland England start to diverge
significantly there is a religious the segregation religious segregation in
terms of a back in the British Isles in Britain there was a persecution for
being for belonging to a different to a different church under the Church
of England but in America there's going to be religious freedom so so this
this freedom to be religious or not be religious is used as as a strong
magnet for a Calvinist and a monk Calvinist for the Puritans to find their
safe haven and this safe haven is going to literally put them on and the
initial word that I use to to describe William Bradford providentialist or
the other word that we use a Jeremiad the Jeremiad tone of their of their
communication this sense of their situation with God and trying to be
worthy of the covenant with God and trying to maintain the covenant or this
pact that they this divine pact where they understand that they're going to
be the chosen people and America is going to be the chosen land so the idea
that we floated before of manifest destiny which is a absolutely European
concept that basically says that whatever military or geographic expansion
European nation decides to to pursue is absolutely legitimate and they have
to not they don't have to take into consideration the the rights or the the
traditions of other people that were living in that land before them what
we're going to see is going to be an ever increasing pressure over the
Native Americans and that that's that pressure is going to push the Native
Americans that were on the East Board of America farther and farther to the
center of the country until they are exterminated or they're massively
reduced and the same thing is going to happen with all of the Native
American tribes that they find on their way towards the West because one of
the things that we see in America from a very early stage is once the
scramble for the West starts it never stops the seven year war that
precedes the American War of Independence only sparks an even higher
interest in expanding westward and in extending the sentiment of the
manifest destiny that promises riches and lands and opportunity for
everybody that moves towards the West that is going to be another one of
the American myths part of this myth are the pilgrims and how they are
considered the saints in this story that are that land in America to purge
the lack of faith of other Americans that when they're aboard the Mayflower
they are known as the others and we know that vocabulary such as this
vocabulary is not neutral vocabulary is normally loaded with meaning and in
this case whenever you call someone another you're sort of dehumanizing
this group of people by saying that only a very limited group of saints
only a very limited group of pilgrims are going to have access to heaven
talks about a type of religion which was typical of the religion of the
17th century where there is no free will there is an explicit
predestination God already has his plan designed and it is up to me to be
worthy men have to be worthy of salvation and that is the only worry that
men on earth have to have they have to have an everlasting fear for not
following the covenant for not being worthy of salvation and therefore
falling as the others the non-religious Europeans and the Native Americans
that are also part of this to hell and in the case of the Puritans it is
going to be very very clear Calvinism in general that this is going to be a
fundamentalist type of religion where not everyone is destined to salvation
some are destined to salvation while others are destined to not being able
to access heaven because they don't follow the same type of reformed church
or they're not religious at all which seem to be a prerequisite for this
time so we've talked about William Bradford the person what about William
Bradford the writer let's go back to where we were and talk about William
Bradford's works in the case of William Bradford's works there are
basically two items that made his time in America especially relevant the
two parts of Plymouth Plantation the two volumes in the first volume there
are 12 chapters that describe the events of the Scooby group before going
to America and the voyage and colonies beginnings this talks about the
religious persecution and how it puts them on a mission to reach salvation
and the second volume is in the form of Annals of the Life in America it
spans from 1620 the arrival to 1646 and what we see is a gradual
disappointment of the author and that's a very important keyword
disappointment of the author towards the loss of unity in a once cohesive
community so those are the works that we read about in the course and
basically we read one chapter from book one and one chapter from book two
of this work of Plymouth Plantation okay so let's continue and suddenly
change the genre from a from a purely Jeremad style type of writing to
poetry and this is going to be our first incursion in poetry let me first
move to Anne Bradstreet's opening slide Anne Bradstreet still belongs to
families that emigrate to America so the first three authors of our
overview are going to be people that live in America but are not born in
America and I think this is a significant thing to take into consideration
Anne Bradstreet first poet in America first female poet in America so
talking about glass ceilings this can be probably the first glass ceiling
shatter in American history first female poet in America her works seem to
have been published without her knowledge or at least without her full
approval by a brother-in-law so she feels addressed at prefacing them
extending them reworking them and republishing something that would only
happen unfortunately after the author's death from the point of view of how
this impacted your work in the PEC one of the things that you have to take
into consideration and I think that this flew over the head of many of you
was the importance of self deprecation of intentionally downtoning the
importance or removing the importance of her own work was that because she
was extremely humble and extremely religious no it was it's a defense
mechanism and this defense mechanism is to avoid being excessively
criticized by the rest of the community by other Puritans because she
understood what it was to be a good Puritan so she knew that the role of
women was very limited and she had to stand out as a good mother a good
wife and a good Puritan so these ideas are pervading and the reason why she
would self-deprecate her work in for example the preface poem of her work
would be as a way of protecting her triple role as a Puritan woman she also
understood in all of the poems there seems to be there always seems to be
an inner struggle but she ultimately accepts the almightiness of God so we
could say that Anne Bradstreet walks the tight rope of the thin line that
separates sounding as if she were not a good Puritan with questioning some
of the things that a good Puritan should never question themselves about
but always ultimately within the same poem going through that journey back
to becoming a good Puritan so what she what she, does is that she
demonstrates her humanity ultimately she is able of stripping her ideas
expressing her doubts expressing her inner feelings and at the same time
using that as a path to return to the expectations of Puritanism so Anne
Bradstreet fulfills an extremely difficult role of writing poetry in a
community where poetry was not seen as something that was beneficial for
the Puritans and of course something that was beyond the duties or the
preoccupations of a good Puritan mother and wife and she managed to do that
without losing any sort of prestige regarding herself or her family she had
to defend herself for writing poetry because she was a Puritan or because
she was a Puritan mother it's like if she was a man she would already have
to defend herself but being a Puritan woman just made things worse to say
it in a certain manner it made her have to use this defense mechanism even
more as Padrillo says both Puritans are not expected to write unless there
is a good reason and we're going to see those good reasons in the next
author that we cover and the good reasons have to be following Puritan norm
and Puritan norm is not poetry it's not metaphors it's not rhyming and
looking for nice structures what Puritans the way that Puritans are
supposed to express themselves is through this work that we refer to before
when we were talking about women could write in a private atmosphere well I
mean they could write in a private atmosphere of friends and family the
problem was that these poems had gone beyond the atmosphere of friends and
family and even so what was tolerable was to write but the content of the
writing should never go beyond the tenets of Puritanism and I'm skilled in
treading those waters in a very safe way and not not walking outside of the
narrow space that she had to express her ideas in a reasonable manner
according to the standards of her community Mary Rowlinson was another
person to write and the the stories that the Puritans were supposed to read
about express and share were the Jeremiads the Jeremiads are ultimately
stories that talk about the loss of faith of God in its community among the
Puritans and how there was an attempt to restore the covenant okay this
covenant is this pact with God restore the covenant and lament about the
lack of faith so Puritans had this terrible way of seeing themselves as
tremendous underachievers in terms of religious compliance so since they
were always seeing their faults magnified and their and the good things
that they were doing as marginal or not relevant enough they always felt as
if they were in debt with their religious duties and they were always full
of this of what is called this fear of God and while that was the dominant
chain of thought Puritans as a community or as a group were very successful
things started to change when at the end of the 17th century and the 18th
century is met with a collective loss of faith before this collective loss
of faith happens we have to talk about Mary Rawlinson and how her work is
the most important representation captivity I'm so bad at talking and
writing different things at the same time I don't know if that's normal I
hope it is Mary Rawlinson is a good example of captivity narrative but her
work is a good example of captivity narrative and this is truly the first
American genre a genre that is full of emotion excitement and thrill to put
it in a different way captivity narratives were the first thrillers that
talked about how how difficult it was to to be out in the rough with the
Native Americans that were full of lust for and they're willing to commit
violent and vicious acts against the local community that was portrayed as
patient and peaceful and bearing the terrible suffering inflicted by the
Native Americans so these captivity narratives are normally pieces of
information that arrived to other readers as if they were exciting fiction
so they're treated from the same point of view as for example I don't know
Treasure Island could be treated or a Robinson Crusoe from the point of
view of Mary Rowlandson she follows she has a series of features about her
that make her story all the better first of all she's a good Puritan she's
she follows Puritan principles from beginning to end does that mean that
her character throughout the story as she writes her autobiography or this
episode of autobiography is going to be a flat character no we're going to
see a lot of evolution in the character we're going to see evolution in the
way the character thinks this is not going to prevent us from seeing a
Puritan writing at its best serving its didactic purpose what every Puritan
writing was supposed to represent was a writing that was ultimately useful
for the rest of the community and it had to serve as a lesson to be learned
by the rest of the Puritan community so that didactic purpose and that
plain style with which it is written lacking any unnecessary decor are two
of the staples of Puritan writings so as I said this plain style and this
didactic purpose of the narrative makes it much more reliable than other
works in prose that we had seen to the moment in the first place we find it
more reliable than John Smith's story because Mary Rawlinson does not seem
to have any intention of over a overdoing her merits or overstating
anything in favor of making herself her family or even her community look
any better than they should she was critical when she had to be critical
she normally finds reasons to all types of tragedy that happen around us
and she doesn't find the reasons in the Native Americans these Native
Americans served as a devilish tool so the Native Americans are immediately
stripped of any type of humanity they're turned into mere tools of the
devil to do the devil's wishes and the devil's mischief this is a
punishment for something that the Puritans have done that the community has
done so she can only endure it and try to come back to be able to survive
that narrative and be able to tell it to different generations so they can
learn about it and serve that didactic purpose Mary Rawlinson stakes at
this captivity were extremely high because not only does she lose an infant
at the beginning of the kidnapping she has two children kidnapped that are
later released in exchange of a ransom so this shows how Mary Rawlinson
after several removes acquires experience in understanding the community
where she is held hostage and that is going to produce in Mary Rawlinson a
shift in her if not in her heart at least in her spirit and a higher level
of acceptance towards the type of reality and the type of people that the
Native Americans were at that time so the same way that we say that in
general um these narratives and stories about Native Americans in early
times and we're going to see a fictional case at the end of this class have
a dehumanizing effect Mary Rawlinson's account is going to have a sort of
re-humanizing warmth in it as she comes to an understanding of the Native
Americans and you can see how the signs of kindness increase as the
narrative advances and she is able to see that improvement and that change
in her heart and to distinguish very clearly her raw tormented feelings at
the beginning of the narrative and her more peaceful balanced feelings that
she has at the end of these removes and at the end of this kidnapping again
Mary Rawlinson traveled from England to America and that is going to be one
of the distinguishing factors of these four first authors regarding the
following all the rest of the authors are going to be authors that are
going to live in America and develop their work in America in the case well
not live in America they're going to be born in America and they're going
to develop their work in America in the case of Jonathan Edwards Jonathan
Edwards is the first Puritan that we hear about in this course of the other
three previous authors that are Puritan that is born in America his is a
job that is almost impossible as he has to work on the great awakening the
great awakening is a call to rekindle spirits and make them more aware of
the tremendous crisis that the Puritans are as a people are suffering and
to try to relaunch or recapture the interest of the church goers with the
Puritan principles and to maintain this covenant of God sorry this covenant
with God this agreement with God you're going to have to interrupt me for a
second sorry you're going to have to let me interrupt my speech for a
second I have to go drink water okay I'll be back I'm going to fill my
bottle back in a moment okay give me a moment sorry about that sometimes
the world of Puritan American writers is confused because there are many
who come from this religious movement I guess that is a general statement
about all the Puritan writers or about the current Puritan community in
America Puritanism this is let's say this is an attempt to start a second
big bang in Puritanism but it's just a way of preventing and delaying an
obvious decline of Puritanism okay religious revival and spiritual revival
well I would say that maybe religious revival would be more accurate in
terms of it talks about religion and spiritual could also refer to an
attitude towards life basically what the Puritans and in particular the
preachers were aware of is that people were not extremely impressed with
the dramatic sermons that they were receiving and Jonathan Edward is famous
and his fame relies on his sermons and basically on one sermon in
particular the one we study in this unit sinners in the hands of an angry
God so the great awakening is an attempt to rekindle the talked about
covenant that we have been mentioning so frequently in this class and it
was a failed attempt and it just managed to lengthen the decline so the
decline in Puritanism is going to be significant and steady from the
beginning of the 18th century and as a matter of fact as pure leaders we're
not going to see any more religious leaders in the rest of our course and
as you can see the beginning of the course is so so influenced by religion
as a driving factor of society other elements are going to start to happen
at the same time this is a bustling 18th century and I at the same time
that we have the great awakening that we have the age of enlightenment
happening at the same time so the enlightenment of science and knowledge
can be seen initially as something that enters in conflict or in contrast
with religious awakening or with religious and spiritual revival as Paola
was saying but in the case of Jonathan Edwards funnily enough he embraces
awakening and he also embraces science and knowledge so he has a different
view this is absolutely renovating and it's an attempt to reform the way
that Puritan religion is expressed was this met with gratitude by the rest
of the Puritans no it was met with an extreme amount of criticism and many
accused Jonathan Edwards of being heretic of heresy because his sermons
were a departure from the plain style that was so Puritan and it
substituted the plain style with a very direct address that wanted to
instill fear in the people that heard the sermon and it was geared as a
fancy vehicle to create a sense of panic in the audience this is normally
attempted based on a reliance on similes and metaphors so when we talk
about the sinners in the hands of an angry God even the title is shocking
what we have is a very strong literary piece that has sometimes it has the
feeling of being a treatise sometimes it has the feeling of being a poem of
anger a poem that is trying to convey images of hell and images of the
consequences of being a sinner and is giving basically the Puritans a
wake-up call of saying this is your last chance get on board or get ready
to go to hell and you could go to hell as soon as right now if that is the
wish of God so that immediacy that urgency is something that is very
powerful in these poems sorry in these sermons urgency and so Edwards did
not use plain style didactic well it was didactic you know there is a
saying in Spanish la letra con sangre entra what is more religious is 10th
or 12th century monastic experience more religious than the inquisition in
Spain I think that you get the idea that it's a different style if the
style before was a we have to be good Puritans because we know that not
everybody is going to be saved that was the old version we have to
reinstate the covenant with God because no one else is going to do it we're
the only chosen people that have been brought to the chosen land to do the
work of God and to deserve salvation versus Jonathan Edwards style enter
Jonathan Edwards and the words would say repent because you're about to
burn in hell all of you sinners you know who you are looking at the people
in the audience prying their eyes and trying to make them feel
uncomfortable and feeling scared inside the church is that didactic it
could be if it manages to make people feel more religious and act more
religiously but plain this is not plain at all no let me read just a couple
of lines from Jonathan Edwards work I would say that it falls in very long
from being plain what it talks about people that are in sin it says in the
beginning in number one in line 10 on page 83 that they were always exposed
to destruction as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always
exposed to fall this is implied in the manner of their destruction coming
upon them being represented by their foot sliding the same is expressed
psalm 73 18 surely though this them in slippery places though cast them
down into destruction so for the Puritans to not accept exactly symbols and
metaphors are signs of not being plain style that's why it was so difficult
for Anne Bradstreet to make people understand that her poetry was not
intended for the audience to read it was trying to it was her attempt at
expressing her doubts but always returning to the covenant whereas Jonathan
Edwards is using metaphors to instill fear and he doesn't care what other
preachers believe he doesn't care what previous generations of Puritans are
thinking about him he is expelled from a congregation for his radicalness
and if we say that Puritan religion is a fundamentalist religion because it
didn't aspire to the global salvation it aspired to the salvation of a few
of their own followers the work of Jonathan Edwards is a radical attempt at
saving a fundamentalist church so you can only understand that if you add
radical to fundamental you're probably going very far to the extreme so he
was an extremist in his manner and in his acts another question could I say
that he used anaphora due to the repetition of the word wrath yes there's
both anaphora and alliteration is when you repeat a sound and let me just
show you places where he repeats sounds because it's very significant I
think I have a couple of places where I noted down alliterative ideas I
don't have it too bad I probably have it somewhere else but anaphora you
can say for sure everything that you find that makes sense within a poetic
structure and taking into consideration that he's using poetic structures
inside the framework of a sermon which is rather unusual so he follows the
standard structure of a Puritan sermon but at the same time he overdoes it
by the type of language that he produces there is an anaphoric use of for
example a god lines 34 to 36 it's used three times um there is nothing that
keeps wicked men at one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of god by
the mere pleasure of god I mean his sovereign pleasure his arbitrary will
restrained by no obligation hindered by no manner of difficulty anymore
that if nothing else but God's mere will had in the last degree or in any
respect whatsoever any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment
twice repeated um pleasure three times repeated god and twice repeated will
so as you can see there is a stacking of an idea that is repeated and
pounded time and time again as a way of driving the message home um going
on to the next author we have a benjamin franklin in the case of benjamin
franklin what we have is the yang this is a period of yin and yang um what
jonathan edwards was to religion and religious awakening benjamin franklin
was to the enlightenment of the people and and this is the era of the
people um american independence sparks many uh many uh patterns of a
popular empowerment so there's going to be an empowerment uh of regular
people and this empowerment of regular people it actually means uh that
anybody can achieve what they want if they put in enough effort in life the
concept of the self-made man and this ties into if you sprinkle a bit of
religion on it to the american dream so the american dream is the self-made
man that is independent and the first step to be independent is to be um uh
to be an independent uh a country and benjamin franklin represents and is
the epitome of the late or this or or the second half of the 18th century
american spirit or or we can say new world spirit um benjamin franklin is a
signee of the declaration of independence um the the u.s constitution the
peace treaty in france um he is a polymath that had so many roles in in
life that is very difficult to list them all i think that i i produced in
the slides just to help you um understand the dimension of benjamin
franklin's breath in in the time he was an american version of of isaac
newton to uh to put it in a certain way um but i would say that even more
diverse in terms of areas of life that he successfully conquered um he is
the uh he is um known to be a successful author printer thinker political
theorist a politician freemason postmaster scientist inventor civic
activist statesman diplomat he's one of the most influential um members of
the 18th century his life represents the 18th century in fact and how um
this very very english um area of the eastern coast of america turns into
an area that seeks uh political and cultural independence um some of the of
the of the contributions of benjamin franklin to the world uh um a very
interesting uh study of in electricity uh that led to understanding uh how
to harness the power of electricity for the use of man um the uh the study
of the waves that traverse the atlantic and how to uh travel efficiently
across the atlantic benjamin franklin's uh studies are so precise that
they're that the routes that he suggested um aboard the ships that took him
back and forth measuring the temperatures of the waters as he passed by
them um he is uh he was an accomplished publisher a and part of this
concept of the self-made man um of the most popular aphorisms uh to
humanity so he believed very much in the idea of constant self-improvement
and constant self evaluation all of these ideas as a part of this concept
of the self-made man so um the shift that we see uh from everything before
benjamin franklin to everything after benjamin franklin is the cultural
independence of america that is very slow at first and acquires speed and
uh the concept of a first creating uh um a sentiment of belonging to a
different people that were no longer subjects of a king but designers of
their own destiny this idea of empowering the people um something that was
so radically different to everything that that happened so far and um this
is not based on religious necessity to reach salvation but on a novel
concept of goodwill um goodwill the suggestions to the world through his
autobiography or his almanac um he shows us some of the mechanisms that
authors are going to use uh not so far in the future and one of those
mechanisms is um a frame narrator or the use of a pseudonym using
pseudonyms and using frame narrators as a way of comfortably conveying um
controversial ideas or ideas that are challenging um through a different
voice to one's own or creating alternative personas to oneself um the next
two units have to do with slavery in the first case self-evaluation is part
of puritan mentality but in moral in a moral pragmatic way um
self-evaluation uh would be a way of not incurring in sin and something
that would be uh taken as as always uh to do your best is to do the the
bare minimum and um so it's it's put in a negative context in puritan a
chain of thought whereas self-evaluation is a way of aspiring to perfection
so benjamin franklin and enlightenment and the the period of optimism that
followed the american independence um make a self-evaluation a positive
aspect it is uh striving for perfection whereas from the religious point of
view it was striving to avoid going to hell so the reward could not be more
different um benjamin franklin believed in personal wealth and and
personally becoming richer and he said if you follow this you're going to
be successful in life okay so it's not only about being a good person it's
about being successful and it's also about being wealthy whereas in
religion everything that you did was because you were afraid of god and
because you do not want to go to hell so your maximum aspiration was to be
saved from going to hell and reaching um uh and reaching heaven but it
seemed like uh like uh um the the reward was was more not burning in hell
rather than going to heaven it's stated in a in a negative point of view uh
this is earthly um i i don't understand exactly that uh that statement
paula um uh going back to uh olaudah not related yeah i know i know it's
not related to heaven um but uh what i'm saying is that uh the puritans put
everything in a negative perspective and um this practical materialism that
uh that uh um benjamin franklin follows is puts everything in a positive
perspective so one is extremely negative it's to avoid burning in hell and
the other one is extremely uh positive it's to uh to achieve success and
wealth in life um i always say this wrong i think it's olaudah not olaudah
olaudah equiano um uh slave narrative purely american uh genre again why
because american was tolerant uh with slavery and and was so for for the
first century of its history until the american civil war uh changed uh the
the rules uh of of slavery forever um did it do it in a perfect way no by
no means uh were there tremendous consequences unimaginable consequences
that we are only starting uh to uh to um see to their full extent even
nowadays um the the choice of of america to uh to um secure slavery in its
in its constitution uh is a foundational error that still has the
consequences in current um uh american social reality um of course uh the
the effects of the of the american civil war the effects of the chain
migration sorry the chain the mass migrations that follow the uh the
american civil war um and the the tremendous um uh social uh
differentiations that the migration and the sudden end of of uh slavery had
in america are still felt nowadays to understand all of that to understand
everything that you'll probably study when you study uh you you have to
understand uh the beginning and the beginning is that uh um the slave
narratives uh were a very powerful tool for abolitionists they were based
on on the idea that uh abolition could be achieved um through creating a
social pressure and and a social majority um as as we know that that took a
very long time uh to be carried out and um slave narratives are based on on
breaking uh two slaver rules that are are very useful for dehumanizing uh
um uh slaves as people um the first purpose of slave narratives is to
denounce dehumanization of the black people by dehumanizing uh um uh the
slaves it was easier uh to to spin a narrative of supremacism and uh to uh
create a situation that was a contradictory to the principles on which the
early american republic was created the the concepts of liberty equality
and freedom um uh this this concept of uh dehumanization was fought through
slave narratives through two fundamental aspects that they are not
intellectually inferior to whites, to Europeans, to the dominant class. And
religious belonging had for the slaves a sense of betrayal because they
were renouncing to the original religion that they might have brought in
many cases. In these cases, in both the case of Olaudah Equiano and in the
case of Phyllis Wheatley, we're going to see slaves that were brought from
Africa. So they were first-generation slaves, not slaves born in America,
first-generation slaves. And these first-generation slaves are going to
have something in common. They're going to abandon their ideas that have to
do with religion and they're going to embrace Christian religion. So it can
be pagan or it can be other types of gods, other ways of worshipping, other
African religions. Basically, there was an embracing of Christian religion
because it was a way of proving that they were also worthy of salvation.
And if they were able to be religious, they were able of salvation. And
therefore, it was even more inhumane to have them in captivity. So slave
narratives follow a fixed framework of narrating the life of a slave where
he or she is kidnapped from a remote territory. The inhumanity and the
cruelty of the process, is highlighted in that period. He arrives or they
arrive to America and they have to go through the ordeal of obtaining their
liberty, normally through violent means, by escaping, by entering in a
fight against their masters or slaveholders. And by reaching that
salvation, that normally meant traveling to the states of the North that
did not vouch for slavery. And even the territory of Canada where slavery
was not allowed, this type of situations made them normally reach their
limits. The freedom, either through escape or by buying their freedom. In
the case of buying their freedom, they would be met with a harsh reality
that Equiano met during his lifetime. He was, he perceived racism as
strongly when he was a slave in the South, that when he was a free man, in
the North. When he was a free man, in the North, he still perceived the
same underlying racism, even though it did not lead to persecution of him
as a slave. So we have to separate slavery as an institution that chains,
chains, uh, humans and slavery as, as a concept or let's say this, um, eh,
this sense of supremacism that was, was that, that was, uh, pervasive both
in the slave states and in the non-slave states. Uh, in the non-slave
states, the, the mainstream, uh, chain of thought, um, was, uh, that
slavery was not allowed, but that whites had their place. And blacks had
theirs. Uh, and in the same way, it is an extension of the suprem, uh,
supremacism that, uh, the European or the white people in America already
had towards the native Americans. Um, in the next unit, unit eight, what we
have is Phyllis Wheatley. Phyllis Wheatley has kept you busy with these,
uh, days where you were writing your Peck. Um, I've, I have to say that
it's probably, probably one of the, um, most, uh, disappointment,
disappointing, uh, correction periods that I've had because I've, I've seen
very few instances where the messages that I tried to portray in, in
Phyllis Wheatley's class were fully understood by all of you and, and, and
you had a very strong understanding of what is key to understand in Phyllis
Wheatley. Um, in Phyllis Wheatley, you basically under, have to understand
that, that her poetry is, is very sophisticated. Um, and the sophistication
comes from several elements of her, of her poetry. Um, it has a
neo-classical touch in general. Uh, it, but, uh, it, it has, uh, several
layers of meaning. And, uh, this is the first thing that flew over the, the
head of, uh, of the majority of the people that answered the pact. Several
layers of meaning. Um, in, in the, uh, the most, the most visible, the most
visible reading or a superficial reading would make you come to believe
that, uh, Phyllis Wheatley, uh, accepts, uh, her, her status and even, uh,
um, understands or justifies, uh, several times, uh, the, the institution
of slavery. And here is where, uh, we have to put in play the second part.
There's always, always, always in her poetry, a subversive hidden message.
And this subversive hidden message is absolutely abolitionist. It is, uh, a
reprimand, uh, of, uh, slave practices. And there is a stark con contrast
between, um, the use, uh, of the, the, the choice of words that she uses to
refer, uh, to, uh, black people as a race, as a people. And, uh, the words
that, that she, uh, uses, uh, for, uh, the, the intended audience, the
white people, uh, of America. The white people of America might believe
when, when listening to a poem that the poem is, is, uh, about, for
example, the scholars of Cambridge and how well they're being prepared for
the future that awaits them. But at the same time, the message is telling
them, don't make the same mistake of your, uh, of your ancestors, uh, um,
suppress, uh, the serpent in its egg. Don't wait for the egg to hatch. Um,
uh, don't, uh, don't, uh, be, um, don't, uh, form an allegiance with this
ongoing sin. Save yourself and save us. So there is always a message of if
you want to reach, uh, salvation, uh, you have to start by seeing the
injustices of the world and the biggest injustice in the world is slavery.
And you have to rectify that situation. So, um, what was disappointing
about correcting so many works is that everything stayed in the obvious in
this most visible, uh, reading of, of the verses. And very few of your
answers went beyond and talked about the subversive hidden message that in
those verses in particular, are pretty obvious. Um, in one of them, it's
talking about suppressing, uh, a serpent in its egg. It's the prevent the,
the prevent the, the sin from happening. Not any sin, not all the sins in
the world, of course, all the sins in the world, but the sin that your
parents and your grandparents are responsible for. The ones that, that they
created a situation that, that has probably sent them to hell. Don't go to
hell. Be, be the first of your kind to, uh, to reach salvation. And in the
other one, the human race divine, um, in the same poem, uh, where, um, it
talks about, uh, the salvation and joining the angelic train. Um, it's, it
seems obvious that there is a cynical use of a human race divine. If all of
the, uh, of, of the men are equal in the eyes of God, um, how can there be
some of the, uh, of the men that are more divine than others? How can there
be an entire race that is more divine than others? And that, that
contradictory way of using a vocabulary, uh, for her own agenda and
against, uh, the people that believe, that believe in a different way. This
is the wittiest way of using, uh, literature, using literature against your
enemies, using literature in favor of pushing your ideas. Um, I'm two
thirds through and I, I've got four authors to go and I've, uh, um,
surpassed the time of the class, uh, eight minutes. I'm going to quickly
gloss over the four last, uh, authors that I'm sure that you have, uh, a
solid idea about them. Um, in the first one, uh, we have, uh, um, we, we
have Washington Irving. I didn't remember if Washington Irving came before
Fenimore Cooper. Uh, Washington Irving, it has to be, uh, um, remembered
and celebrated, uh, for being the father of the short story. And even
though, uh, his, um, his, uh, reputation does not, uh, has not remained as,
as strong as the people that he inspired in a later generation. He, he is
responsible for, for creating this, uh, truly American form, uh, of, uh,
narrative, uh, truly American, um, form. So, uh, this, uh, this genre, the
genre of the short story is, is going to be the first, uh, sign of distinct
American, uh, cultural independence from, uh, from Great Britain. It's not
a matter, it's not a matter anymore of repeating structures, repeating
ideas, repeating topics. Um, it's going to be, uh, an age of discovering
new stories, discovering new realities. To get there, however, there is a
heavy reliance on, uh, German folklore. And if it's not imitating, um,
Great Britain for a great deal of time, it's because it's too busy, um,
imitating other, other literatures to find its own voice. In this attempt
to find its own voice, Washington Irvine becomes the first great celebrity
of, uh, the, the first, uh, great American literary celebrity. Um, and, uh,
from this point of view, um, the, the status that Washington Irvine holds
nowadays is, um, only rests on the legend of, of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van
Winkle. Those two stories are the only two stories, uh, that, uh, that,
that remain from the entire body of work of Washington Irvine that, uh,
make him, uh, be part of, uh, the, the most significant writers in the
American canon. Um, uh, is his, uh, is that entirely fair? Well, one of
the, one of the problems that Washington Irvine had with his own readership
was that the majority of his career, uh, was spent, um, uh, paying
attention to, uh, the, the characters, uh, you know, uh, the, uh, uh, uh,
from, uh, from the, from the script. in Spanish literature or in Spanish
history is because the Tales of Alhambra or The Alhambra, as it was
initially published, is a very significant work of fiction about Andalusian
reality and it is a combination of sketches or descriptions of places in
Granada along with some short stories that were a testing ground to create
stories with an American, so Alhambra can be celebrated as Washington
Irving's contribution to the legend of medieval Spain and the origins of
significant places like The Alhambra. Regarding other elements, and I'm
probably going too fast here, faster than what I would wish, we have James
Fenimer Cooper, Fenimer, more Cooper. He is responsible for giving
Americans American stories. He reinterprets captivity narratives, for
example, from a fictional point of view and he creates some, he creates a
paradigmatic figure of the good Indian and the bad Indian. These
representations are very harmful for the Native American people because
basically it dehumanizes them partially and it puts them in terms of a
supremacist white person that can rely on some Indians being, barbaric but
good-willed and other Native Americans being barbaric and evil and cruel.
So both of these cliches are served as ways of dehumanizing Native
Americans in the eyes of the American readership and I would say the
international readership because this is where the frontier literature
starts to really pick up speed and it becomes extremely relevant to talk
about stories that take place in America and they become interesting not
only for, for the American audience but for an international audience. In
the case of Fenimer Cooper, he's celebrated for being able to create this
American story, this American fiction. He was not very sure if he could
achieve this but finally he becomes renowned for sea narratives, the same
thing that we're going to talk about in the second semester, regarding
Herman Melville and Native American stories. Things that I have to talk
about James Fenimer Cooper is his radical view on miscegenation or the
interracial relationships, interracial marriages, something that was deemed
barbaric at the time and that he is completely against. Or at least reading
his works, we can understand that he positions himself against
miscegenation and the possibility of marriage between the white community
and the Native American community or the white community and the black
community. There was a sense that that was not natural and that should
never be allowed in this time. And he contributed to increasing that sense
by giving bad story endings to people that engage in miscegenation and
giving happy endings to people that refrained from this practice. In Unity
11, we study Ralph Waldo Emerson who is a professor at the University of
Michigan. Emerson is a figure that can be considered as much of a
philosopher as a poet, as much of a philosopher as an essayist, as much of
a philosopher as a writer. His current popularity rests on the essay Nature
and it is the foundational work for transcendentalism. Transcendentalism,
is a school of thought where very much in the line of the lack of religious
interest that we saw in Benjamin Franklin. There is a search for inner
spirituality and to be in harmony with nature. So, this contrasts openly
with the Manifest Destiny because it gives a different message of
preserving nature rather than destroying nature for the purpose of
expansion, for the purpose of improvement. Emerson is a key cultural figure
of the 19th century and he is a source of inspiration of a lot of people's
lives. Other transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau of romantics such
as Nathaniel Hawthorne or Herman Melville. He is a very clear figure of
opposition for a figure such as Edgar Allan Poe. A huge inspiration for the
biggest and most different poets of the 19th century, Walt Whitman and
Emily Dickinson. And Emerson is going to be part of our conversation in the
second semester, as you can see, because from Emerson, everything seems to
emerge from the light of Emerson. He is the cultural, he's a cultural
lighthouse of the time. Everything seems to revolve around Emerson. There
is a shift of importance and the place where Emerson decides to live,
Concord, Massachusetts, becomes a cultural capital of America for a brief
but very intense period of time where this romanticism that begins with
Washington Irving continues to grow. Transcendentalists are considered part
of the Romantic movement and Emerson, Emerson, Emerson's ideas of inner
spirituality, harmony with nature had sometimes tints of Hinduism and there
is an inheritance from Puritanism which is that works have to have a
didactic purpose. Okay? So all of these ideas, if Emerson is the person to
enact the theory of Transcendentalist, Thoreau is the true
Transcendentalist and he lives as a Transcendentalist and and proves the
things that Emerson talks about in nature and goes to live alone on a pond
only, trying to be self-sufficient and the result of his work is Walden
after spending two years, two months and two days separated or segregated
from society to be in real contact with nature and come back to talk about
it and to write about his ideas, his ideas are... against property and
against landowners and he is the father of he is the father of civil
disobedience he never received recognition during his lifetime so even
though I've left so many details outside of this talk that I could talk for
another hour and a half perfectly well I think that I've covered many
interesting factors that can help you focus better what you need to study
for this for this exam and hopefully perform well in the upcoming exam I
would like to thank you for your sustained attention throughout the
semester attending classes in person or online and wish you best of luck
for the exam whenever you decide to take it next week or in three weeks
time so thank you very much let me know how the exam goes let me know what
challenges you find I'd love to receive emails by you telling me about your
experience and best luck thank you very much