American Literature (Old - up to 20th century)
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… But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore." …
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) was a novelist and short-story writer.
His masterpiece is The Scarlet Letter (1850). The book is set in the 17th-century Puritan village near Boston (1640´s, New England).
It presents the problems of moral evil and guilt through allegory and symbolism.
The three main characters of the novel are:
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Hester Prynne, a young woman who lives alone, her husband has been presumed lost at sea
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Roger Chillingworth, her husband, who returns to New England unexpectedly and finds out about Hester´s adultery.
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and Arthur Dimmesdale, a young clergyman who is the father of Hester's child. He tries to keep the sin secret because
he is the religious leader of the community.
Hester, gives a birth to an illegitimate child and refuses to name her lover. As a punishment she has to embroider the letter 'A' (A stands for an adulteress) in her dress and has to wear it for the rest of her life.Hester wears the letterwith pride, so the 'A'
could stand for 'Admirable' or 'Able'. Hester lives with her daughter Pearl on her own at the edge of town, near the wild forest
and the open sea. However, her husband returns and becomes obsessed with finding his wife´s former lover.
Dimmesdale lives mentally tortured by his bad conscience. In the end, Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever
and confesses publicly to his sin, but is destroyed by his lie and guilt, and dies in Hester's arms. Frustrated in his revenge,
Chillingworth dies a year later.
REALISM in American Literature:
MARK TWAIN (1835 – 1910) He is the most famous representative of the “Gilded Age” (= 1870´s – 1890´s).
(Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well; he died
the day after the comet returned.
He was an excellent writer and journalist whose works are full of specific American humour. He set all his novels and short
stories in the region along the Mississippi river.He was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the state of Missouri. He became a steamboat pilot. While piloting a steamboat
on the Mississippi, he gained most of the material for his books. He adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain, it is a riverman’s
phrase meaning 'two fathoms deep'.
o Later, M. Twain began his career as a journalistic humorist. He used rough humour in his “tall tales”. The “tall tale” is a
description of incredible things and adventures, e.g. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
o Then he wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, a novel which satirized an era of serious social problems masked by a
thin gold gilding.