Lecture 5 American Literature Objectives Enable the Ss to know how to appreciate poems by analyzing Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” from the perspective.

Lecture 5

American Literature

Objectives

• Enable the Ss to know how to appreciate poems by analyzing Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” from the perspective of form and theme etc.

• Enable the Ss to analyze form and themes of Walt Whitman’s poems;

• Enable the Ss to appreciate form and themes of Emily Dickinson’s poems

Teaching Materials

• Edgar Allan Poe

“Annabel Lee”

“To Helen”

• Walt Whitman

“O Captain, My Captain”

• Emily Dickinson’s

Teaching Methodology

• Lecturing

• Text-analysis

Manifesto

In 1836 the publication of Nature by Emerson pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism.

Nature is regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism.

It says in the book:

A Psalm of Life ( 生命之歌 )

朗费罗《人生颂 》A Psalm of Life －－－年青人的心对歌者说的话

不要在哀伤的诗句里告诉我： Tell me not, in mornful numbers, “ 人生不过是一场幻梦！” "Life is but an empty dream!" 灵魂睡着了，就等于死了， For the soul is dead that slumbers, 事物的真相与外表不同。 And things are not what they seem.

人生是真切的！人生是实在的！ Life is real! Life is earnest! 它的归宿决不是荒坟； And the grave is not its goal; “ 你本是尘土，必归于尘土”， "Dust thou art, to dust returnest," 这是指躯壳，不是指灵魂。 Was not spoken of the soul.

我们命定的目标和道路 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 不是享乐，也不是受苦； Is our destined end or way; 而是行动，在每个明天 But to act, that each to-morrow 都超越今天，跨出新步。 Find us farther than to-day.

智艺无穷，时光飞逝； Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 这颗心，纵然勇敢坚强， And our hearts, though stout and brave, 也只如鼙鼓，闷声敲动着， Still, like muffled drums, are beating 一下又一下，向坟地送丧。 Funeral marches to the grave.

世界是一片辽阔的战场， In the world's broad field of battle, 人生是到处扎寨安营； In the bivouac of life, 莫学那听人驱策的哑畜， Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 做一个威武善战的英雄！ Be a hero in the strife!

别指望将来，不管它多可爱！ Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! 把已逝的过去永久掩埋！ Let the dead Past bury its dead! 行动吧－－趁着活生生的现在！ Act, -- act in the living Present! 心中有赤心，头上有真宰！ Heart within, and God o'evhead!

伟人的生平启示我们： Lives of great men all remind us 我们能够生活得高尚， We can make our lives sublime, 而当告别人世的时候， And, departing, leave behind us 留下脚印在时间的沙上； Footprints on the sand of time;

也许我们有一个兄弟 Footprints, that perhaps another, 航行在庄严的人生大海， Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 遇险沉了船，绝望的时刻， A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 会看到这脚印而振作起来。 Seeing, shall take heart again.

那么，让我们起来干吧， Let us, then, be up and doing, 对任何命运要敢于担戴； With a heart for any fate; 不断地进取，不断地追求， Still achieving, still pursuing, 要善于劳动，善于等待。 Learn to labor and to wait.

据钱钟书先生考证，朗费罗的名篇《人生颂》是英语诗歌中最早译成汉语的一首。

8. Edgar Allan Poe 8. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)(1809-1849)

father of modern short story

father of detective story

father of psychoanalytic criticism

1) Works1) Works

a) Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque

b) “MS. Found in a Bottle”

C) “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

《奇异怪诞故事集》

《瓶子里发现的手稿》

《毛格街杀人案》

d) “ The Fall of the House of Usher”e) “The Masque of the Red Death”f) “The Cask of Amontillado”

《厄舍古屋的倒塌》

《红色死亡的化妆舞会》

《一桶酒的故事》

g) The Ravenh) Israfel

i) Annabel Lee

j) To Helen

《乌鸦》

《伊斯拉菲尔》

《安娜贝尔•李》

《致海伦》

k) The Poetic Principle

l) The Philosophy of Composition

《诗歌原理》

《创作哲学》

2) Life2) Life

• Famous American Poet, short-story writer and critic.

Appreciation of “Annabel Lee”Appreciation of “Annabel Lee”

• The theme:

The poem is believed to have been dedicated to the memory of Poe’s wife, Virginia Clemm, who died in 1847 at the age of 26.

The form:

Poe stresses rhythm, defines true poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty”

It is an elaborate display of pure technique with little or no substance. Its poetry exists in its ingenious creation of sounds.

FootFoot （（音格）音格）• It is the metrical unit by which a line of poetry is

measured. It is a specific combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. A foot usually consists of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables. A vertical line is used to separate the feet. A foot of poetry can be arranged in a variety of patterns. The most commonly used feet are as follows:

Foot Pattern Foot Pattern

• (1) The iambic foot, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

• What ‘kept/ his ‘eyes/ from ‘giv/ing ‘back/ the ‘gaze

• The ‘fa/lling ‘out/ of ‘faith/ful ‘friends/, re’new/ing ‘is /of ‘love.

• (2)The trochaic foot, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. • ‘He was ‘louder ‘than the ‘preacher• ‘Double, ‘double, ‘toil, and ‘trouble

(3)The anapestic foot, two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.

• I am ‘monarch of ‘all I sur’vey• For the ‘moon/ never ‘beams/ without ‘bring/ing me ‘dreams.

(4)The dactylic foot, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.• ‘Slowly the/ ‘mist o’er the/ ‘meadow was/ ‘creeping.• ‘This is the/ ‘forest pri/’meval: the/ ‘murmuring/ ‘pines and the/ ‘hemlocks

• (5) Spondaic foot 扬扬格

MeterMeter

• Meter is a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The number of feet in a line determines its meter.

• English poetry includes the following eight kinds of lines:

Kinds of meterKinds of meter

• 1). Monometer line (one foot) • I/ trust

• 2). Dimeter line (two feet) • The wild /winds weep

• 3). Trimeter line (three feet) The au/tumn time/ has come

• 4). Tetrameter line (four feet) When first/ my way/ to fair/ I took

• 5). Pentameter line (five feet) The lone/ and le/vel sands/ stretch far/ away

• 6). Hexameter line (six feet) (Alexandrine)• This is the/ forest pri/meval: the/

murmuring /pines and the /hemlocks

Rhyme Schemes

• Full rhyme

• Imperfect rhyme

• Positional types or rhyme

• End rhyme/ Internal rhyme/ Beginning rhyme

Other Special Sound Effects

• Alliteration

The furrow followed free

• Assonance

Lake-fate Clean-sweep

• Consonance

Chatter pitter patter

Limerick

• There was a young lady of Niger

• Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;

• They returned from the ride,

• With the lady inside.

• And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Foot and Meter in “Annabel Lee”Foot and Meter in “Annabel Lee”

• Anapaestic / Iambic SEE page 325 note1

• All sounds, vowels, and diphthongs for example, and poetic devices such as end and internal rhymes, alliteration are brought into full play for the “rhythmical creation of beauty”.

Other devicesOther devices

• Repetition

• Parallel structure

致海伦 　　海伦，你的美在我的眼里， 　　　　

有如往日尼西亚的三桅船 　船行在飘香的海上，悠悠地 　　　　

把已倦于漂泊的困乏船员 　　　　送回他故乡的海岸。 　

早已习惯于在怒海上飘荡， 　　　　你典雅的脸庞，你的鬈发， 　　你水神般的风姿带我返航， 　　　　返回那往时的希腊和罗马， 　　返回那往时的壮丽和辉煌。 　　 看哪！壁龛似的明亮窗户里，　我看见你站着，多像尊雕像， 　　一盏玛瑙的灯你拿在手上！ 　　塞姬女神哪，神圣的土地 　　　　才是你家乡！

这首诗据坡自己说是为中学一位同学的年轻母亲斯丹娜夫人而作，写的是“我的灵魂的第一次纯洁、理想的爱”。从诗里提到的地理、历史背景来看，对斯丹娜夫人的爱慕和对古希腊史诗《伊利亚特》中的绝世美人海伦的景仰合二为一。而在最后一节里，对不可企及的美人的倾倒又升华为对艺术——甚至是对真、善、美的无穷无尽的追求。因为在西文人心中，古代的希腊和罗马已成为一种理想的境界，那里的一切似乎都是至美与至善的。

4) Evaluation4) Evaluation

• Poe remained the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure in the history of American literature.

• Poe was successful in three areas: critic, poet and short-story writer.

• Emerson dismissed him in three words “the jingle man” ， Mark Twain declared his prose to be unreadable. And Whitman was the only famous literary figure present at the Poe Memorial Ceremony in 1875.

• Ironically, it was in Europe that Poe enjoyed respect and welcome.

• Bernard Shaw said: “Poe was ‘the greatest journalistic critic of his time; his poetry is exquisitely refined; and his tales are “complete works of art”.

• Poe’s reputation was first made in France. Charles Baudelaire said that “Edgar Poe, who isn’t much in America, must become a great man in France.”

• Today, Poe’s particular power has ensured his position among the greatest writers of the world. The majority of critics today, in America as well as in the world, have recognized the real, unique importance of Poe as a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of acumen and insight. His works are read the world over. His influence in world-wide in modern literature.

Walt Whitman(1819-1892)• One of the great innovators in

American literature

• He gave America its first genuine epic poem: Leaves of Grass

Life • Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman

was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor.

• At the age of twelve Whitman began to learn the printer's trade, and fell in love with the written word.

• Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible.

• In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career.

• In the fall of 1848, he founded a "free soil" newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson.

• In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface.

• He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855.

• Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response.

• Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. In Washington he lived on a clerk's salary and modest royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed.

• He had also been sending money to his widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time writers both in the states and in England sent him "purses" of money so that he could get by.

• In the early 1870s, Whitman settled in Camden, where he had come to visit his dying mother at his brother's house.

• after suffering a stroke, Whitman found it impossible to return to Washington. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden.

• In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to a new edition of the book and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891).

• After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

Works• Poetry • Drum Taps (1865)• Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891)• Leaves of Grass (1855)• Leaves of Grass (1856)• Leaves of Grass (1860)• Leaves of Grass (1867)• Leaves of Grass (1870)• Leaves of Grass (1876)• Leaves of Grass (1881)• Leaves of Grass (1891)• Passage to India (1870)• Sequel to Drum Taps (1865)

• Prose • Complete Prose Works (1892)

• Democratic Vistas (1871)

• Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate (1842)

• Memoranda During the War (1875)

• November Boughs (1888)

• Specimen Days and Collect (1881)

Poetic Features• Walt Whitman was one of the most important

American poets in the nineteenth century and one of the great innovators in American literature. In the preface to his Leaves of Grass, he says that one of his focuses is on the sort of poet America required and the sort of poetry America needed.

• The great American poet would create both new forms and new subject matter for poetry.

• In terms of content, American poetry would not echo the sad complaints of the Graveyard school nor follow the moral preaching of didactic poets. As a matter of fact, Whitman himself was that poet and his Leaves of Grass is an example of that poetry.

• Whitman’s poetry is typical of America’s.

• Leaves of Grass grew and changed as he and his nation, America, grew and changed.

• He saw reality as a continuous flow, without a beginning or end. He disliked the nineteenth-century poetic forms that are stiff and patterned. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass are about man and nature, especially common people and ordinary Americans.

• He wanted his poetry to be for the common people. He was determined “to meet people and the States face to face, to confront them with an American rude tongue”.

• In the area of poetic form, Whitman made his great contributions. Through him, American poets finally freed themselves from the old English traditions. Throughout his life he advocated a completely new and completely American form of poetic expression.

• The poetic form he employed is now called free verse ---- the verse that does not follow a fixed metrical pattern, the verse without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

• Whitman thought that message was always more important than form. So he always developed his style to suit his message and the audience he hoped to reach.

• He abandoned conventional and hackneyed poetic figures and drew his symbolism freely from his experience. He remains one of American most important poets because he announced and instructed a completely new age.

Poem Appreciation

• O Captain, My Captain

• The following is a three-stanza poem by Walt Whitman. The poem was published in Sequel to Drum-Taps in 1865. The poem is an elegy on the death of President Abraham Lincoln and it is noted for its regular form, meter, and rhyme, though it is also known for its sentimentality verging on the maudlin.

• The poem is highly popular among American people. It portrays Lincoln as the captain of a sea-worn ship which represents or symbolizes the Union that had experienced the American Civil War and triumphant at last.

• While “The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done”, the captain lies on the deck, “Fallen cold and dead.”

• The poem expresses Whitman’s deep sorrow for the death of Abraham Lincoln who was assassinated on April 14 1865, five days after the declaration of the triumphant close of the Civil War.

• The poem contains three stanzas, each of which consists of 8 lines. The first four lines are two couplets and the last four are in the form of a regular ballad with the fifth and seventh lines iambic tetrameter and the sixth and eighth lines iambic trimeter. The rhyme scheme is aabbcded.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we

sought is won,The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all

exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and

daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells;Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle

trills,For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths –for you the

shores a crowding,For you they call, the swaying mass ,their eager

faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still.

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

life• Emily Dickinson was born into one of

Amherst, Massachusetts’ most prominent families on 10 December 1830.

• She was the second child born to Emily Norcross (1804-1882) and Edward Dickinson (1803-1874), a Yale graduate, successful lawyer, Treasurer for Amherst College and a United States Congressman.

• Emily had an older brother named William Austin Dickinson (1829-1895) (known as Austin) who would marry her most intimate friend Susan Gilbert in 1856.

• The Dickinsons were strong advocates for education and Emily too benefited from an early education in classic literature, studying the writings of Virgil and Latin, mathematics, history, and botany.

• Dickinson proved to be a dazzling student and in 1847, though she was already somewhat of a ‘homebody’, at the age of seventeen Emily left for South Hadley, Massachusetts to attend the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

• She stayed there less than a year and some of the theories as to why she left are homesickness and poor health.

• She was in the midst of the college town’s society and bustle although she started to spend more time alone, reading and maintaining lively correspondences with friends and relatives.

• Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886, at the age of fifty-six. She now rests in the West Cemetery of Amherst, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Not wishing a church service, a gathering was held at the Homestead.

Emily Dickinson’s Poetry• Emily Dickinson had no abstract theory of

poetry. It is not certain if she was familiar with the poetic theories of Edgar Allan Poe, Coleridge, Emerson, Whitman and Matthew Arnold. When editor Thomas Higginson asked her to define poetry, she gave a subjective, emotional response: "If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"

The Character of Her Verse • 1. Highly compressed, compact,

shy of being exposed. • 2. Her style is elliptical - she will

say no more than she must - suggesting either a quality of uncertainty or one of finality.

• 3. Her lyrics are her highly subjective. One-fifth of them begin with "I" - she knows no other consciousness.

• 4. Ambiguity of meaning and syntax. Wrote Higginson: "She almost always grasped whatever she sought, but with some fracture of grammar and dictionary on the way."

• 5. Concreteness - it is nearly a theorem of lyric poetry that it is as good as it is concrete. Even when she is talking of the most abstract of subjects, Emily specifies it by elaborating it in the concreteness of simile or metaphor.

• 6. Use of poetic forms such as alliteration, assonance, and consonance; also onomatopoetic effects

• 7. Obscurity. Higginson said " ... she was obscure, and sometimes inscrutable; and though obscurity is sometimes, in Coleridge's phrase, a compliment to the reader, yet it is never safe to press this compliment too hard."

Themes In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

• A few themes occupied the poet: love, nature, doubt and faith, suffering, death, immortality - these John Donne has called the great granite obsessions of humankind.

• Love: Though she was lonely and isolated, Emily appears to have loved deeply, perhaps only those who have "loved and lost" can love, with an intensity and desire which can never be fulfilled in the reality of the lovers' touch.

• Nature: A fascination with nature consumed Emily. She summed all her lyrics as "the simple news that nature told," she loved "nature's creatures" no matter how insignificant - the robin, the hummingbird, the bee, the butterfly, the rat .Only the serpent gave her a chill.

• Faith And Doubt: Emily's theological orientation was Puritan - she was taught all the premises of Calvinistic dogma - but she reacted strenuously against two of them: infant damnation and God's sovereign election of His own. There was another force alive in her time that competed for her interests: that was the force of literary transcendentalism. This explains a kind of paradoxical or ambivalent attitude toward matters religious. She loved to speak of a compassionate Savior and the grandeur of the Scriptures, but she disliked the hypocrisy and arbitrariness of institutional church.

• Pain And Suffering: Emily displays an obsession with pain and suffering; there is an eagerness in her to examine pain, to measure it, to calculate it, to intellectualize it as fully as possible. Her last stanzas become a catalog of grief and its causes: death, want, cold, despair, exile. Emily says "I like a look of Agony."

• Death: Many readers have been intrigued by Dickinson's ability to probe the fact of human death. She often adopts the pose of having already died before she writes her lyric. She can look straight at approaching death

Structural Patterns

• Major pattern is that of a sermon: statement or introduction of topic, elaboration, and conclusion. There are three variations of this major pattern:

• 1. The poet makes her initial announcement of topic in an unfigured line.

• 2. She uses a figure for that purpose.

• 3. She repeats her statement and its elaboration a number of times before drawing a conclusion.

Poem Appreciation I’m Nobody! Who Are You?

• Although the following poem is short, only consisting of two stanzas, the image is clear and vivid and pregnant with meaning and it calls for deep thought. The poem might explain the reason why Emily Dickinson preferred solitude to public life and was contented to become a recluse and stayed away from the bustle and clamorous society which she thought to be material-oriented and fame-driven.

• The poem sketches three different types of people: nobody, somebody and snobs. Clearly the poet identifies herself with nobody who she thought to be simple and honest. The self-important somebody is always boasting and advertising just like a frog and the snob admires him as a bog admires the frog whose mere merit is to blow his own trumpet and indulge in self-glorification.

• I’m nobody! Who are you?

• Are you nobody, too?

• Then there’s a pair of us ---- don’t tell!

• They’d banish us. You know.

• How dreary to be somebody!

• How public, like a frog

• To tell your name the livelong day

• To an admiring bog!

Poem Appreciation

• Success• Emily Dickinson thought that she had

never achieved success and considered failure her constant companion. But she really wished for success and believed that only those who never achieved success value it most and counted it sweetest.

• The poem also expresses a sense of distance. The thing that one has experienced will not leave a deep impression in his or her mind. Only does one keep a distance from what he or she wishes he or she will feel it most and therefore knows its value and real worth.

• Success is counted sweetest

• By those who ne’er succeed.

• To comprehend a nectar

• Requires sorest need.

• Not one of all the purple host

• Who took the flag today

• Can tell the definition,

• So clear, of victory,

• As he, defeated, dying,

• On whose forbidden ear

• The distant strains of triumph

• Break, agonized and clear.

• 成功的滋味最甜對未曾成功的人而言想體會甘露的美味需要痛徹心扉的欲念沒有一位貴人達官在當下耀武揚威之際能夠明確地定義勝利的真正涵意只有奄奄一息的輸家耳朵已經聼不見那遙遠的凱旋樂音飛揚 懊喪而清醒！

assignment

• Search information about American Realism by yourselves;

• Know something about Mark Twain, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser and their works