AMSBE - semináře-poznámky

American studies

1st seminar, 4th October

• Test – 7/10 points credit Friday 29th November

• Resit – Friday 10th January 2020

Contents:
Lectures:

1. The First Americans. The American Revolution.

2. The Civil War. The Progressive Age.

3. World War I and the Roaring Twenties.

4. World War II and the 1950s. The Age of McCarthy.

5. The Sixties.

6. The 1980s and the end of the Cold War.

7. The USA after 1990.

Seminars:

1. Leslie Silko - The Yellow Woman

2. Emily Dickinson - Because I Could Not Stop for Death

3. Kate Chopin - Desirée's Baby

4. Ernest Hemingway - A Clean Well-Lighted Place; The Indian Camp

5. William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily

6. William Carlos Williams - The Portrait of a Lady; Ezra Pound - In a Station of the Metro

7. John Steinbeck - The Chrysanthemums

Because I could not stop for death – Emily Dickinson

• Female poet who lived in the 19th century

• She lived in Massachusetts – Amherst(in those time it was a little town)

• Descendent [disendnt] (potomek) of the Puritans (they came in the 17th century for religious and political reasons, they were against the Anglican Church)

• Her father was a priest, they were looking for a freedom

• She had never married, she lived a very calm life

• After the death of her mother, she took care of the house and her father

• She travelled to Boston and New York

• Upon her death, her sister discovered many poems Emily wrote

• She sent some poems to some publishers

• Writers at the time liked to write stories

• Her poems were published after her death success, she was declared a very special voice in American literature

• At the time, it was expected of one daughter to take care of the parents Emily

• She wrote lyrics about thoughts and feelings, others wrote large pieces

• She did not published a lot of her poems while she was alive

Because I could not stop for Death:

• We don’t know when she wrote the poem

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

• She doesn’t want to die, but we know for sure that someday we’ll die

• Death is “he” personification

• “I could not stop for him but he did for me”

• Kindly stopped for me adds a little bit more meaning to the poem

• The carriage – he invited her for a drive in a carriage gesture of politeness

• “Kindly” – she is not afraid of death, he is very kind

• Everything in this world has a beginning, development and end – nothing escapes

• Religious trinity – very important for Christian – the carriage contains immortality

We slowly drove – He knew no haste (spěch)
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

• It describes and ordinary carriage drive

• He is not in a hurry because he is kind and a gentleman, polite and careful

• In the first stanza – “I, he”, in this stanza “We, He” they’ve become a couple

• I had put away I left behind my ordinary life for him

• Leisure – her free time – writing and reading

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –