American literature - semináře - zápisy

American literature

• Scarlett letter – for the next seminar

• 70% average

• Test

• 1 absence

• Oral exam – lectures + seminars

• “melting pot” – you lose some of your typical features

• American literature = The literature written or produced in the area of United States and its preceding colonies

• The centre of early American literature → the New England colonies (east coast of North America) – people who were more religious - they often knew how to read, they were educated

• The late 18th and early 19th centuries = the nation’s first novels were published

• Books were quite expensive at those times because they used vellum = animal skin

• The War of 1812 + an increasing desire to produce uniquely American literature and culture caused that a number of key new literary figures emerged

↓

• Washington Irving

• Edgar Allan Poe

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Henry David Thoreau

• The large immigration to Boston in the 1630s – the high articulation of Puritan cultural ideals, the early establishment of a college and a printing press in Cambridge

  • For some of them it was hard because of new conditions, some of Native Americans were not so friendly

  • Literature gave them hope or religion instructions

• The first European settlements in North America had been founded elsewhere many years earlier (Saint Augustine and Santa Fe, Albany and New Amsterdam)

• Discussions of early American literature commonly include text by John Smith (Pocahontas)

• Political events, however, would eventually make English the lingua franca for the colonies at large as well as the literary language of choice

• From 1696 – 1700 only about 250 separate items were issued from the major printing presses in the American colonies

• Pamphlets and writings extolling (vychvalovat) the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonist audience – it was the first entertainment

• Captain John Smith

• Daniel Denton, George Percy, John Lawson, William Penn…

• Religious disputes – they let to establishment of New York and new colonies

• John Winthrop – The History of New England – a model of Christian Charity

• William Bradford – History of Plymouth Plantation

• Roger Williams and Nathaniel Ward – argued for state and church separation

• Thomas Morton – cared little for the church – The New English Canaan

• Bay Psalm Book – religious poetry – hymns that could be used in worship (uctívání)

• Anne Bradstreet – personal poems about her family and homelife – it was revolutionary because she was a woman (she should be at home taking care of children and home) – some of them were educated in finishing schools (they learned how to play the instrument, sing, entertain their husbands)

• Writers who wrote about experience with Indians (First nations, Native Americans):

• John Mason, John Eliot, Benjamin Church

Cotton Mather

• Theologian and historian

• The history of the colonies with a view to God’s activity in their midst (střed) and to connecting the Puritan leaders with the great heroes of Christian faith

• The Biblia Americana

• Model society

• Indians had oral tradition

• The Indian contribution to America is greater than is often believed, the hundreds of Indian words in everyday American English include – canoe, tobacco, potato, raccoon, tomahawk, totem…