What is American about American Literature

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What is American about American Literature?

• Adamic Myth
• Invented History
• Public versus Private life
• Democratic

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Elegy

• Laments death of friend of public figure
• Used to refer only to the meter and form
• Had a lot of conventions e.g. the dead was
  represented by a shepherd and mourned by the
  natural world
• Also written about vanished way of life or the
  passing of youth (a more elastic definition)

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Walt Whitman

• Often considered Americas
• greatest, most innovative poet

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Essential Whitman Facts

• Father of American free verse (without meter)
• Directly influenced William Carlos Williams,
  Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, etc.
• Had various jobs printer, nurse, journalist,
  clerk.
• Wrote Leaves of Grass when 37
• Thought of as part of queer literature

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Transcendentalism

• After the years of Manifest Destiny,
  Transcendentalism arose in New England
• Espoused the idea of subjectivity
• Valued nature and natural law above all
• Deist but not Christian
• Its great champions were Emerson and Thoreau

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Leaves of Grass

• Whitmans poetry aesthetic hinged
  Transcendentalism and Democratic Realism
• Centered in deist values
• Praised by Emerson in a letter
• Thought scandalous by many
• Got Whitman fired from several jobs

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How does Whitmans work compare to British
Romanticism? Recap of BR

• Individualism
• Reverence for natural world, pastoral vistas
• Idealized common folk
• Physical and emotional passion
• Interest in mystical and supernatural
• Questioned life but not interested in order and
  rationality

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The Sleepers

• Subject?
• Point of view?
• Prominent or recurring imagery?
• Lucifer?
• The Whale?
• Why this organizational scheme?

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When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed

• Elegy in classic lyrical sense (almost)
• Written for the occasion of Lincolns funeral
• Poem loses initial tone along the way
• Make note of its ultimate attitude toward nature

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Compared to Shelleys Adonais

• http//classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/pshe
  lley/bl-pshel-adonais.htm

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Sarah Piatt

• Published widely in her time, esp. around Civil
  War era
• Lived in rural Kentucky, DC, Ireland, and Ohio
• Thought of as too enigmatic by critics
• Used dramatic realism and dialogue/monologue
• Wrote about marriage and children yet tried to
  deflate the sentimentality in her work

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