Clara Howard

Transcription

>> All right, let's get started. I'm told that there are some questions about what may or may not be fair game for the scavenger hunt. So if there are questions, ask them. Are there questions about...yeah? >> Is Taylor fair game if you wrote a paper on [inaudible] >> Can you use an example from Taylor? Yes, as long as it's not one that I mentioned in class or one that you used in your paper. [ Inaudible comments from audience ] >> Oh come on! [ Laughter ] Look, the course is designed to, many of the assignments in the course and the finals in the course, all that stuff is designed for you to have the opportunity to demonstrate the breadth of your reading and thinking. So if you're going to reuse something from your paper for another assignment, how lame is that? Don't do it. Take the opportunity to show us more. >> [Inaudible comment from audience] >> Why, is it a really, really good one? [ Inaudible comments from audience ] >> So, like, you've found the only zeugma in the course and you're not allowed to use it? Actually, I know of a zeugma or two and they're not in anything we've talked about. So please don't repeat stuff, ok? I mean, if you do it, we're going to, we'll accept it, we'll just think less of you. [ Laughter ] And that often has actual letter-related consequences. Alright, let's talk a little bit more about Edgar Huntly. We have a lot to get through today, and I want you to understand that Charles Brockden Brown and Washington Irving are both part of this larger project that we might say is moving from enlightenment modes of thinking, and with them, the kinds of genres that had prestige, like biography and history, into what we are going to call 'romantic modes of thinking' that are going to try to promote other faculties than reason, call them fancy or imagination, and other forms. So literature as we commonly think about it, literature as the province of the imagination. It's having something to do with fiction, or lyrical experience, or interiority, right? All of these concepts that we take for granted as being what constitute the literary are actually post-romantic conceptions of literature, of the literary. And I want you to understand that Brown and Irving in the United States context play a role in getting that to happen, right? As we said last time, the way Brown does it, in part, is to take this genre that has been denigrated, right? The novel, associated with certain other kinds of low forms, and certain kinds of leadership. He tries to make it appropriate for pedagogy and for thinking about questions of morality and virtue. So you say, you might say he tries to rehabilitate the novel and by extension, the province of the imagination by making a link back to things that we accept as necessary and authoritative, right? So, history is important because it teaches us something, philosophy is important because it teaches us something, the novel can teach us something. And I think the argument would go with Brown, the novel can in fact teach it to us in a more compelling way than these other forms can. So what we're seeing at work in Edgar Huntly is a kind of critique of enlightenment thinking from a variety of points of view. Brittany [assumed spelling], could you get the door? Thanks. And I wanted to step back and take a look at page 92, which I think I mentioned, but we might as well look at it again. Remember that Edgar thinks of himself as a scholar, and a student, and a hiker as well. So he says at the bottom of 92, 'When Sarsefield came among us, I became his favorite scholar, and the companion of all his pedestrian excursions. He was fond of penetrating into these recesses, partly from the love of picturesque scenes, partly to investigate his botanical and mineral productions, and partly to carry on more effectually that species of instructions which he had adopted with regard to me, and which chiefly consisted in moralizing narratives or synthetical reasonings,' right? So you can see it all kind of laid out for you there, and even the language of that is the language of philosophy, and the language of enlightenment. 'These excursions had familiarized me with its outlines and most accessible parts; but there was much which, perhaps, could never be reached without wings, and much the only paths to which I might forever look, forever overlook.' And that's important. He's seen a part of the woods. He perhaps is a little overconfident about how much of the woods he's seen. What happens when he starts pursuing Clitheroe and when he sleepwalks, is that he goes to portions of the woods that he hasn't mapped before. And in this sense, you might say, Brown draws on the typical motifs of the gothic in suggesting, in creating a landscape that is in fact a psychologized landscape, in which features of that landscape are actually ways of thinking about features of Edgar's mind. You might say that in typical gothic fictions or in revenge tragedies like 'Macbeth' or other things, part of what happens is that there is some kind of major upset at work. 'Something is wrong...' Shakespeare says, .'..in the state of Denmark, or as Marcellus puts it, 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,' and because of that, ghosts are walking around, there's a problem with succession, right? You can see this is a trope that carries over into gothic fiction. There was a problem of succession in Walpole's 'The Castle of Otranto.' And if things only were turned to some kind of peacefulness and normalness once that problem of succession is worked out. So things that are wrong in the social world manifest themselves through the ghostly, through an upset in the natural world. Likewise, things that are wrong internally in certain gothic fictions also manifest themselves in the natural world. Both of these kinds of wrong or upset or disorder are present in Edgar Huntly, although it's the second kind: the problems with Edgar's own thinking that seem more obvious at first, and we have to do a little work to recover that other kind, that problem, you might say, that has to do with inheritance and succession, or something like that. Ok, so, what happens to him in the woods? Let's take a look at the panther scene. This is the bottom of page 158. It places Edgar right on the edge of the pit. [ Silence ] 'What impediments and perils remained to be encountered I could not judge. I was now inclined to forebode the worst. The interval of repose, which was necessary to be taken, in order to recruit my strength, would accelerate the ravages of famine, and leave me without the power to proceed. In this state, I once more consoled myself that an instrument of death was at hand. I had drawn up with me the tomahawk, being sensible that this should, that should this impediment be overcome others might remain that would prove insuperable. Before I employed it, however, I cast my eyes wildly and languidly about, around. The darkness was no less intense than in the pit below, and yet two objects were distinctly seen. They resembled a fixed and obscure flame. They were motionless. Though lustrous themselves they created no illumination around them.' And again, whenever you see the language of light now in this book, you know, think about the ways in which the light is being described as a kind of commentary on the project of enlightenment or lack of enlightenment. 'This circumstance, added to others, which reminded me of similar objects, noted on former occasions, immediately explained the nature of what I beheld. These were the eyes of a panther.' Ok, so, he struggled around, he's been in the dark, he's in the dark, he's starving, he's gotten himself into a place where he thought things might be getting better, he might a little bit more safe, he's got a weapon, a tomahawk, and all of a sudden, a panther. 'Thus had I struggled to obtain a post where a savage was lurking, and waited only till my efforts should place me within reach of his fangs. The first impulse was to arm myself against this enemy. The desperateness of my condition was, for a moment, forgotten. The weapon which was so lately lifted against my own bosom, was now raised to defend my life against the assault of another. There was no time for deliberation and delay. In a moment he might spring from his station and tear me to pieces. My utmost speed might not enable me to reach him where he sat, but merely to encounter his assault, I did not reflect how far my strength was adequate to save me. All the force that remained was mustered up and exerted in a throw. No one knows what powers are latent in his constitution. Called forth by imminent dangers, our efforts frequently exceed our most sanguine belief. Though tottering on the verge of dissolution, and apparently unable to crawl from this spot, a force was exerted in this throw, probably greater than I had ever before exerted. It was resistless and unerring. I aimed at the middle space between those glowing orbs. It penetrated the skull, and the animal fell, shrieking, struggling and shrieking, on the ground.' Alright, that's pretty unbelievable, right? Something has happened to him. He's in the woods, he's in the dark, he's got this tomahawk, so what would you notice about the way in which this scene is presented to you? There's some aspects of it that should bear noticing for us. What do you think? Anything about the particular words that are used? Yes? >> Is he getting savage? >> He became a savage. Edgar does. Ok. How would you, if you were to say, Assertion: Edgar becomes a savage. Support that. Why is he a savage? >> Well at first he is very self-conscious and then he describes a moment where he uses all thoughts about his sort of, mental ability and uses his survival instincts. >> Ok, good. So, no more over-thinking, he's got to act. In fact, it probably took him less time to do this than he spends talking about it. And this is, of course, in retrospect, when some of the mind has come back. Ok. So, that's good. What else? What else do we note about savagery in this section? Yeah? >> Well I think there's a parallel between him killing the panther and Clitheroe killing his mistress' brother. >> Ok. >> Because there's this aspect of, you know when he says, 'There was no time for deliberation and delay, something else comes over him and he acts purely on instinct. >> So there's a kind of madness, right? The same kind of madness that comes over Clitheroe, he doesn't know what he's doing, madness seems to come over Edgar. It's, whether we want to call it instinct or even more than that. So it reinforces the parallel, or the doubling between Edgar and Clitheroe. That's good. Anything else of note? Yeah. >> He compares the instrument of death as opposed to simply a weapon... >> Ok. >> [Inaudible]... because if it was merely a weapon [inaudible] an instrument of death, it demonstrates some sort of intent of actually killing. >> Ok. Yeah. I would say that. That's right. I mean you might look at the syntax and say, 'Instrument of death' does mean you know, he's really aware of what the potential is with what he does and he has an intention behind him. You might also think of 'instrument of death, there's a certain way in which, there's almost a kind of rationalizing after the fact of what's going on. Remember he's telling this to somebody who's unlikely to actually believe it in a certain way. I mean, 'Oh come on, you? You did what? To what? Where?' Right? So he's saying there's an awareness and he says this openly at a certain point. I know you're not going to believe how, you know, old mild-mannered me doing this, but. Ok, so good. So there's a way in which, you might say, the prose is still designed to keep what's actually going at bay a little bit as if it's kind of horrifying. Right? I mean it's a little bit wordier than it might be. Anything else? What is it he actually uses to kill this panther? [Inaudible]. Yeah. >> A tomahawk. >> And who uses those normally? >> Native Americans. >> Interesting. White guy using a tomahawk. [ Laughter ] And what are other names that are given to said Native Americans? >> Savages. >> Right. Savages. So where else is savage used in this paragraph? Where's the first time he's using it in what I read to you? 'I had struggled to obtain a post where a [pause] savage was working, right? So, I mean, again, this is the same discourse. He's a man of the enlightenment. It's Bradford, right? There's no difference between the panther and the Indians. Both of them are savages, both of them are enemies. It's almost like the panther is dignified by having human-like qualities, the Indian is denigrated by having panther-like qualities. And it gives, you know, it makes us wonder a little bit about how far the enlightenment has actually taken us from the kinds of these thinking. People of the enlightenment would call them superstitious modes of thinking that would be embodied in Calvinism. The wilderness still seems to be howling here. You might think about that. Is there a kind of lack of fit between Edgar's nature walks and the wilderness that he actually comes up to here. Alright. So this happens to him. Then do you remember what happens next? Take a look, page 160. 'My hunger had arrived at that pitch where all fastidiousness and scruples are at an end. I crept to the spot. I will not shock you by relating the extremes to which dire necessity had driven me. I review this scene with loathing and horror. The whole appears to be some freak of insanity. No alternative was offered, and hunger was capable to be appeased even by a banquet so detestable. If this appetite has sometime subdued the sentiments of nature, and compelled the mother to feed upon the flesh of her offspring, it will not excite amazement that I did not turn from the yet warm blood and reeking fibers of a brute. One evil was now removed, only to give place to another. The first sensation of fullness had scarcely been felt when my stomach...' So he rips the thing apart right, and starts eating it raw, right? Just so we know what he's doing. 'The first sensation of fullness had scarcely been felt when my stomach was seized by pangs, whose acuteness had exceeded all that I ever before experienced. I bitterly lamented my inordinate avidity. The excruciations of famine were better than the agonies which this abhorred meal had produced. Death was now impending with no less proximity and certainty, though in a different form. Death was a sweet relief from my present miseries and I vehemently longed for its arrival. I stretched myself on the ground, I threw myself into every posture that promised me, promised some alleviation of this evil. I rolled along that pavement of the cavern, wholly inattentive to the dangers that environed me. That I did not fall into the pit, where I had, whence I had just emerged must be ascribed to some miraculous chance.' And that might remind us syntactically of Franklin, right? I mean, again, it's kind of like trying to make the enlightenment language fit here. Some chance saved me from, you know, the problems that might have arisen out of my want of religion, that might have arisen out of my falling into the pit. 'How long my miseries endured, it is impossible to tell. I cannot even form a plausible conjecture. Judging by the lingering train of my sensations, I should conjecture that some days elapsed in this deplorable condition, but nature could not have so long sustained a conflict like this.' Right? I mean, his ability to even analyze this situation is completely breaking down. Now, what would we say about that scene, right? Kills a panther, a little bit of discourse of savagery working in, then what? Eats panther. Anything we want to say about that? Yeah... >> [Inaudible] caused his freak of insanity. >> So it's just a freak of insanity. Good. Good phrase to note. What else? Yeah? >> His bouts of insanity seem to be pushed by the upsets as he calls them, his extreme hunger, before and beginning when he's talking about needing to know who killed his friend. All these things push him towards... >> Ok, so he's filled, there are certain necessities and when something is a necessity, you do what you've got to do. It's true. Ok. Anything else? What kind of scene, literally, imagine this: He eats, all of a sudden, ahhhh, he's feeling sick and you know, terrible things are happening and he's doing a Benicio del Toro interpretation, impersonation, and then he falls insensate, and when he gets up, he's like Superman, right? What has happened to him? What does he go on and do right after this? [Pause] I mean, one of the things I want you to see this is a kind of weird version of something like a kind of communion narrative, or a ritual conversion, right? He goes, he adopts the weapons of the savage in nature. He eats the 'reeking fibers of the brute' and consumes them, and as a result, he is kind of transformed. And you might say that the rest of Edgar Huntly are, really draws on one of the forms that we've already encountered, which is the captivity narrative. Remember there's a back-story to Edgar: his parents have been killed in this Indian raid and that's why his sister and he are living with his uncle. Take a look on page 166. He now talks about, you know, how he's gotten out of there. Middle of 166. He says this: 'Most men are haunted by some species of terror or antipathy, which they are, for the most part, able to trace to some incident which befell them in their early years.' Right? And that's a classic gothic setting. And what do you do to a gothic protagonist? You take them and make their biggest fears come true. Ok? So that's part of what's happening here. He thinks, 'You will not be surprised that the fate of my parents, and the sight of the body of one of this savage band, who, in the pursuit that was made after them, was overtaken and killed, should produce lasting and terrific images on my fancy. I never looked upon, or called up the image of a savage without shuddering.' Right? So he has a kind of template in place for behavior. He's programmed to act in a certain way. Now normally, mild-mannered Edgar, the child of the enlightenment is not going to do, be able to do too much. But this Edgar? Sleepwalking Edgar? Slightly insane Edgar? Eaten of the 'reeking fibers of the brute' Edgar? He's been able to do a few other things. Let's skip ahead a little bit to page 193 and you will see this passage. [ Silence ] Ok? I mean, he encounters his band of Indians and is like bang, bang, bang and he like kills them all. It's amazing. I mean, you know, just, you've got to imagine...did you ever see a movie called 'Total Recall'? Anybody ever watch a movie like that? 'Total Recall'? I'm thinking about, so it's Arnold... [ Laughter ] But you have to understand, in the Philip Dick story from which 'Total Recall' comes, it's more like Woody Allen, I mean it's supposed to be a mild-mannered guy who's kind of transformed into something else. So you should imagine this here. I mean, imagine Edgar as this kind of bookworm all of a sudden becoming Rambo. Because that's really what we're talking about here, right? And this is what he's addressing here. He said, so he's killed little old Kudegra [phonetic], he's killed this Indian here in the middle of 193. 'This task of cruel lenity was as last at length finished. I dropped the weapon and threw myself on the ground, overpowered by the horrors of the scene.' And now: 'such are the deeds which perverse nature compels thousands of rational beings to perform and to witness! Such is the spectacle, endlessly prolonged and diversified, which is exhibited in every field of battle; of which, habit and example, the temptations of gain, and the illusions of honor, will make us, not reluctant or indifferent, but zealous and delighted actors and beholders! Thus, by a series of events, impossible to be computed or foreseen...' So they resist the rational examination that enlightenment thinking would produce, .'..was the destruction of a band, selected from their fellows for an arduous enterprise, distinguished by prowess and skill, and equally armed against surprise and force, completed by the hand of a boy, uninured to hostility, unprovided with arms, precipitate and timorous. I have noted men who seemed born for no end but by their achievements to belie experience, and baffle foresight, and outstrip belief. Would to God that I had not deserved to be numbered among these! But what power was it that called me from the sleep of death just in time to escape the merciless knife of this enemy? Had my swoon continued till he had reached the spot, he would have effectuated my death by new wounds and torn away the skin from my brows? Such are the subtle threads on which hang the fate of man and of the universe!' Right, it's a kind of unbelievable story. In fact, we could go back a few pages and take a look at the way in which he addresses Mary. He knows that it's going to be a little bit hard to believe. This is the beginning of that chapter, Chapter 19. He says at the beginning, on page 184, 'Think not that I relate these things with exultation or tranquility. All my education and the habits of my mind, life tended to unfit me for a contest and a scene like this. But I was not governed by the soul which usually regulates my conduct. I had imbibed from the unparalleled events which had lately happened, a spirit vengeful, unrelenting, and ferocious.' Right? And he goes on to say, middle of the next page, 'Thus, I have told thee a bloody and disastrous tale. When thou reflectest on the mildness of my habits, my antipathy to scenes of violence and bloodshed, my unacquaintance with the use of firearms, and the motives of a soldier, thou wilt scarcely allow credit to my story.' In other words, he's protesting, look: 'I'm a man of the enlightenment and not a savage. I know you're not going to believe this,' right? 'But I was able to do these savage things, in spite of the fact that I'm a civilized person.' But I think there's another kind of logic that the book is actually suggesting to us. And you can see it in the words here, this idea of being put in unexpected situations. Forced to do things out of necessity, right? Is it possible that what we're seeing here is not the fact that Edgar is savage despite the fact that he's civilized? Is it possible that Edgar is forced to become savage precisely because he wants to be 'civilized'? In other words, in order to be civilized in the new world, you have to commit acts of barbarity and savagery, which are the equal of the things that you've encountered there. Only then can civilization actually take root. I mean, think about that for a moment. In some senses, it becomes a story of the new world encounter. You come here for whatever reasons. If you're a Puritan, you come to escape religious persecution. You come to have economic, a better economic life. You come to establish the city on the hill, and slowly what happens to you, you find yourself massacring Pequots, right? There's a way in which this is a commentary on the settlement narratives that we've read, the captivity narratives that we've read, and it really becomes a kind of commentary on the nature of European civilization in the new world. Savagery and civilization go hand in hand. In order, eventually, to be civilized, Edgar and all those around him, need in fact to be savage. And I think that's part of what the novel is actually dramatizing for us. That that line between the civilized and the savage is far too porous to stake everything on the primacy of reason, right? Reason's supposed to hold the line. Here we've seen a number of things, a number of ways in which reason is unable to hold the line, right? I mean, you go into nature, you meet panthers, you meet madmen, you're sleepwalking. You've got to do what you've got to do. Except let's go back to the scene a little bit later on in the chapter that I started with before on page 193, after he kills this Indian. I just want you to look at the slight of hand, or the kind of slipperiness of the prose in the middle of that second to last paragraph on 193. 'Such are the deeds which perverse nature compels thousands of rational beings to perform and to witness!' So, where's the agency there? Is he taking responsibility for it? Not exactly. It's 'perverse nature,' it's compelling us, who would otherwise be rational, to do this. Ok. But he goes on, 'Such is the spectacle, endlessly prolonged and diversified, which is exhibited in every field of battle...'Is this nature?'... of which, habit and example...' Nature? '...the temptations of gain...' Nature...and the illusions of honor...Maybe human nature? '...will make us, not reluctant or indifferent, but zealous and delighted actors and beholders!' Right? It's almost like: 'Nature made me do it, sorry mom.' But in fact, it's culture made me do it. Civilization made me do it. And I think that's one of the things that Brown is dramatizing. That's when, it's one of the things that is the project of the American gothic. The things that civilization is trying to keep a lid on, keep covered up, they come out in the American wilderness. And not only in this story, they were coming out of the American wilderness from the moment that Europeans set foot in it. And that's part of what we want...now when I said, when I was talking about Mary Rowlandson, I suggested to you that Rowlandson had a template for thinking about the woods, that's what she was designed to have. It was part of God's providence. It was not supposed to be about land rights or competing claims of culturally equal groups. It wasn't supposed to be about the West Bank kind of situation. It was supposed to be read as part of a larger biblical story. Ok. But we have certain modes of access to that other story, I mean, one is we can contextualize the war. The other is that we can kind of see that there's a kind of economic language that bubbles up in her narrative, despite itself, you might say. The same thing happens in Edgar Huntly. Remember that little whim of sub-plot? I mean, what's all that doing there? There's a notion about inheritance. He has to admit, 'You know, I was going to marry you, but, well that was depending on inheriting from your dead brother, and now, well you know the uncle's son he hates us and...' Let's talk a little bit about the one Indian figure who is not a Bradford-like faceless narrative. The one who gets a name. Who is that? Who? Somebody said it and that's the name that Edgar gives. What was it? >> Queen Mab. >> Queen Mab. Ok. Old Deb is what she's also called. Queen Mab comes from where I gave you an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet to read. She's from a fairy figure from the English poetic tradition, right, and the speech by Mercutio is a wonderful indication of the way in which Queen Mab comes and dreams, and ok. Imagine Barlow taking the old-world forms and running the new world hasty pudding through them and producing the hasty pudding poem, ok? Way cool, neoclassism works in the new world. In fact maybe it works even better. Edgar's going to try to do the same thing. Old Deb. I'm kind of interested in Old Deb. Old Deb is there, she speaks this weird language, she has these dogs around. He wants to think of her as a kind of picturesque figure, a figure of fancy, a figure from the English poetic tradition, so he gives her this name, Queen Mab. And he's interested, so long as he can make her this kind of figure. But she resists being made into that figure because what is Old Deb really? What is Old Deb really? I mean, what has she been doing while she's been out there alone? [Pause]. >> She's been sort of plotting this attack by the Indians. >> She's Osama bin Laden, folks. [ Laughter ] I mean, she's the one who has been planning all this. You know, the Indians are responsible for Waldegrave's death. She's been, why is it by the way? Because where is it that that Huntly farm happens to be located? Her old place of living, right? Her old domicile. They've stolen her land. She's got a beef, and it's a legitimate beef. She's the one that's been organizing all these Indian raids. But Edgar either doesn't know it, or he doesn't let himself know it. But the novel does, right? The novel enables us to see that there's something else that's going on here. And assume as she doesn't fit into his story, he's no longer interested in her, right? She goes off, when they finally catch her, she goes off, proclaiming all these things and he just ceases to be interested in her. So what I'm suggesting to you is that there are two kinds of things at work here. One is a problem in Edgar's psychology, that makes it gothic. The other is more like something that goes on in a play by Shakespeare like 'Macbeth' or a gothic fiction like 'The Castle of Otranto' in which we're talking is a problem with property. There's been a usurpation, and usurpation causes the gothic situation. The usurpation that's taken place here is the Europeans taking the native lands. Edgar keeps all of that at bay, and I want you to see that, that he is in fact trying, the discourse about property and money, and all that kind of stuff is kept at the margin so that you can actually overlook it if you're reading it quickly, but it's there. One of the things to say is, you know, the whole progression of what Edgar wants is not that different from what Clitheroe wants. Clitheroe wants kind of the upward mobility. Edgar wants that too. Think about when Edgar finally emerges from the woods. He goes through a succession of houses. There's Old Deb's rude hut, then there's a kind of farmhouse, and finally he gets to a mansion. I mean, that's exactly the kind of procession in the world that he wants. And there, hoping to provide the kind of [inaudible] is Sarsefield returned with, you know, and the strands of the story come together and this is [inaudible]. Great. Ok. [ Laughter ] So let's talk. We talked, somebody mentioned the term 'bildungsroman' when we first started talking about this novel. And maybe it's time to ask about that. Is this a bildungsroman? A bildungsroman is a novel of development. You go from immaturity to enlightenment perhaps. It's a novel of development. You learn, you grow, it's the novel of education. Does Edgar learn anything in the course of this narrative? He's writing it down, right? Franklin learned, Franklin identified errors. He corrected them in life and in his text. What about Edgar? Yeah? >> I think he's experiencing; he's not learning. >> He's not learning. So if you were going to make that argument, what would you tell me? What's a piece of evidence that I would, that you would use to say, 'Edgar doesn't actually learn anything'? >> Well, just the language of passivity... >> Ok, it's possible. The language of passivity. It's still that kind of weird paraphrastic enlightenment prose. Possibly. >> Over and over again he's saying, 'I was controlled by others.' >> Ok. So language of passivity that goes along with a lack of taking responsibility, right? 'Nature made me do it,' or 'Look at all the things we are led to.' That's good. That's a good start. What else would we marshal as evidence to say Edgar in fact has had no bildung whatsoever. Yeah? >> Well I mean from the very beginning, he kind of keeps getting himself involved in other people's business [inaudible]. >> The father's clemency right? Ok? >> And at the very end, he still gets involved and causes problems. >> You're absolutely right. He makes the same damn mistake at the end of the book that he made in the first pages. Right? He thinks he can fix it. Doesn't work and it has another disastrous consequence. Great. That's good, and you would want to cite that. So there's a kind of, Edgar doesn't learn anything because he still can't, despite everything that's happened, he still believes in the primacy of reason. One other thing, a formal thing that would suggest to us that Edgar is, that we are meant to realize that all along, and we should have realized this early on, that we've been reading an unreliable narrative by an unreliable narrator who doesn't learn much. What happens to the form of the narrative at the very end? Edgar signs off: 'Farewell. E.H. Solebury, November 10.' Then what? Take a look on page 273. We get a letter to Mr. Sarsefield in Philadelphia. Then we get another letter. This is where we're discovering all of the later doings of Clitheroe. E.H. Letter three. This is on page 283: 'To Edgar Huntly.' And from whom is this letter? It's from Sarsefield. And what comes after that in the book? [ Silence ] Nothing. That's the end of the book. Who gets the last word, who gets the last farewell? It's Edgar's book, he doesn't get the last word. That should tell you something, right? And you may well think of, if we're looking for a way of thinking about this...Let me see if I can find you this particular quote. It's the one where, he talks to, where Sarsefield tells, talks to him about consciousness itself. Look on page 267. It's a little bit before the end, but it might serve as a kind of summing up of the way in which this happens to launch a critique of the enlightenment. And it comes again from Sarsefield. It's the second to last full paragraph. Sarsefield is telling Edgar:'He can never be regarded with complacency by my wife. He can never be thought of without shuddering by Clarice. Common ills are not without a cure less than death, but here, all remedies are vain. Consciousness itself is the malady; the pest; of which he only is cured who ceases to think.' You know, it's a little bit like Sayid in Lost. [ Laughter ] Better off dead. Some things are better off dead. There are some things that reason can't cure. Right? That's almost a kind of Poe-like idea. It's the kind of narrators that Poe becomes interested in. So you imagine, Poe would probably be, there's a certain way in which you might say, well Poe is kind of, would most be interested in Clitheroe's story, at the guy who seems rational and then becomes mad, and it's not clear quite when that happens, but you can see the same thing going on with Edgar. I mean, Edgar comes back from actual madness at the end to become a functioning human being, but he has participated in a lot of madness, and he has that same kind of slyness that some of Poe's narrators have. Keeping certain salient details off to the sides. And if he doesn't finally succumb to the perverse in the way that Poe's narrator does in the imp of the perverse, nevertheless, he shows up, he shows us what some of the problems with reason are. So, in the end, this becomes a story about the limitations of enlightenment. It becomes a story about the encounter of the Europeans and the new world. Gothic in America is pressing, because it's an actual political situation. Forget all those stupid [inaudible], and ghosts and goblins and ghostly aristocrats who are bigger than castles, that stuff's not real. Indian hostilities, that's real, and the time in which he's writing, they're still going on. Ok. That was a nice story that I just told you, right? There's one other way to think about it, or maybe it's a complementary way to think about it. And you can ask yourself this: In the end, what is the fit between those two stories? Which is the more pressing of them? The cultural story that I just told you, or the story about Edgar's psychology? Or even better, the link between them, because is this novel actually interested in the Native Americans? Has it not also, like its narrator, used them instrumentally to dramatize something as I've been suggesting to you, about whether it be contact, the limits of enlightenment in terms of colonization, or even just the limits of enlightenment in terms of reason. Has this not, in some sense, then become a kind of allegory of the Western mind in a moment of enlightenment? And if so, hasn't it just, hasn't it, in some sense, recapitulated precisely the thing it's described. It's tromped into the wilderness, used it for its own good purposes and leaves it be. And so I want you to think about that. The question would then be: to what extent is the novel implicated in precisely the kinds of things it seems to be launching a critique of? Alright. Some food for thought. Ok. Any questions about that or observations? Alrighty then. Let's think about the guy who actually made money writing, because Brown didn't. He wrote that series of novels very quickly and then in fact, because they didn't sell very well, he had to write two other novels. And they were called Clara Howard and Jane Talbot. Do those names sound familiar to anybody, I mean, as names? What do we notice about the difference between Wieland, Edgar Huntly, Ormond, Arthur Mervyn, on the one hand and Jane Talbot and Clara Howard? >> [Inaudible comment from audience]. >> Jane Talbot and Clara Howard sound not a lot, not unlike Pamela and Clarissa. Brown wants to make money. Doesn't make it doing these gothic novels, so he goes back and writes precisely in that kind of Richardsonian vein that he was theoretically disavowing. That doesn't work either, and he eventually goes out back and makes a career as a kind of a journalist and pamphleteer. He fails, in other words, to make money as an imaginative writer. It's Irving, Washington Irving, who becomes the first successful American writer. The first person who lives off writing that we might call imaginative. And Irving, you might say, like Brown, maybe even better than Brown, has a sense of what he's up against. Very early on, he writes an essay that's on a poet named Robert Treat Paine, and we don't read him very much. But one of the things that he says is this: 'The writer is unfitting for business in a nation where everyone is busy, devoted to literature where literary leisure is confounded with idleness. The man of letters is almost an insulated being, with few to understand, less to value and scarcely any to encourage his pursuits.' Right? We're living in a culture that is a culture of business already in the early part of the 19th century, and a culture that seems to have little time to, or little, you know, considered interest in promoting a literary culture. And I've already talked to you about the ways the models that we have from England in the United States don't really apply. The model of patronage, for example, isn't there. The model of a gentleman amateur, it isn't there. Instead of patronage, we're getting this growing market place. Irving had a profound ambivalence, and part of what we understand is he does, in the course of his career, a kind of balancing act between two models. One is the man of business, because he's worried about being idle. He comes from a merchant family, he was supposed to be a lawyer like Charles Brockden Brown, he doesn't do it. Is writing just idleness? Ok, so maybe we shouldn't be, you know, a writer of commerce but can we afford to be the gentleman amateur? And will people respect a gentleman amateur in a world where everybody is full, you know, is working on business? So, there's a kind of ambivalence that Irving feels and a kind of ambivalence that he recognizes in his audience as well. You might say that it's between these two poles, writing as business, writing as kind of imagination and leisure, you don't want to sully the imagination with business too much, but you don't want to be so full of leisure that you're thought to be idle. These are the kind of Scylla and Charybdis between which Irving charts his career. And he, too, understands the potential within the copyright law of 1790, but unlike Brown and other writers, he also understands the limitations of it. He knows it's a domestic law, therefore he goes and secures his copyrights abroad. He publishes English editions first, then has them sent back to the United States. And I want you to see that this worry about what kind of business is writing, what kind of labor is it? Is it manly enough?, is a concern that will be part of American writing up until at least Hawthorne. I've already mentioned Hawthorne and the Scarlett Letter. But the opening preface portion, the Custom-House, Hawthorne is worrying in 1850 precisely about the same things. What would my ancestors say about what it is I want to do for a living? And, what are, you know, why am I not able to make money, by the way, off what I'm doing for a living, right? So, Irving is setting in place a set of ideas and a set of problems that will be resonant for later writers as well. So, I guess within the language of conceptualization that we've used in the course, one of the things that we ought to say is that Irving has a kind of canny understanding of what we call the 'horizon of expectations.' He understands that there are certain generic expectations in place, and he's going to play with those, he's going to appropriate those. He understands that there are shifting tastes that an audience might have, and shifting impressions of what an author should do. He's going to make use of those and play with those as well. So, that's part of what Irving is up to. And his first major success was a book that was called 'The History of New York, which has recently been published in a new edition by Penguin. It had its bicentennial just this year, last year. It came out in 1809 in the fall and so this new edition comes along with that. We can say about Irving then, is he's creating a kind of a New York history in the absence of a New York history. The thing that prompts him to write 'The History of New York' is a call by the New York Historical Society, which was created just a few years earlier, for any materials related to Dutch New York. I mean, they were telling people like: 'Look in your attics, look in your basement, look in your trunks, we just don't have documents.' A lot of it had been burned during the Revolutionary War, and they were interested in any material that was possible about the Dutch past. Just before Irving writes this, a polymathic kind of professor named Samuel Latham Mitchill, who's mentioned in the introduction here, had published a book called 'Picture of New-York,' which gave very, very short shrift to the Dutch portion of the city's history. And so, Irving decides that here's an opportunity, and what I want you to see is that Irving is, in some sense, taking up the project of using a form, let's call it history, in the service of the creation of another form, let's call it literature. He tries, in other words, to adopt, to adapt, some of the prestige of the historian and transform it into the prestige of a literary person. And here's a perfect opportunity, because you have an opportunity to write history where a lot of the history has gone lost. There's not a lot of documents. What there could be is a lot of local knowledge, the kind of thing, in fact, you'd get through oral tales or stories that you would listen to, bits of local lore, that even then, would have been beneath the notice of most historians. So, Irving decides that he's going to put these things together, and in fact, he jumbles actual events and personages with made-up things, in such a way that historians still have arguments about what it is that he made up and what are actually bonafide sources that can be trusted. And finally, what we get in history is an awareness that in fact, the history is, I mean this is going to sound banal to you, probably, but history is a story, like anything else. It's a story, right? A historian is an editor, takes so-called facts and assembles them into a certain kind of narrative. Therefore, Irving is quite aware that all histories are partial, and really are almost always written by the victors. Take a look, if you've got it with you, take, bring it, pull it out, if not, just listen. This is the beginning of Chapter 5 and it's page 40 of the excerpt. I want you to listen to the style. 'Chapter 5, in which the author puts a mighty question to the rout, by the assistance of the Man in the Moon, which not only delivers thousands of people from great embarrassment, but likewise concludes this introductory book.' Right? I mean that's grandiloquent, it's also poking fun at exactly the kinds of head notes that you would find in histories or works of biography. But now look what he does at the very beginning. Listen to the style that's grandiloquent. But look at the metaphor that he's adopting. 'The writer of history may, in some respects, be likened unto an adventurous knight, who having undertaken a perilous enterprise, by way of establishing his fame, feels bound in honor and chivalry, to turn back for no difficulty nor hardship, and never to shrink or quail whatever enemy he may encounter. Under this impression, I resolutely draw my pen and fall to, with might and main, at those doughty questions and subtle paradoxes, which, like fiery dragons and bloody giants, beset the entrance to my history and would fain repulse me from the very threshold. And at this moment a gigantic question has started up, which I must take by the beard and utterly subdue, before I can advance another step in my historic undertaking; but I trust this will be the last adversary I shall have to contend with, and that in the next book I shall be enabled to conduct my readers in triumph into the body of my work. The question which has thus suddenly arisen, is, what right had the first discoverers of America to land and take possession of a country, without asking the consent of its inhabitants, or yielding them an adequate compensation for their territory?' The same question I've just suggested to you that lies at the heart of Edgar Huntly. Alright, what do you notice about that? If you were thinking about standard history writing, does this look like standard history writing? I mean, what, rhetorically, what is he doing? Yeah? >> He's mocking the exact thing he's supposed to be doing? >> How's that? How's he mocking the thing that he's supposed to be doing? [ Inaudible comment from audience ] >> Ok, so he's dealing head-on with this question that may be historians have either, you might say, have either ignored or you might say, philosophers have found various justifications for. So I think that's right. There's a sense in which he is exposing to view something that most people, and most historians, would rather not talk about. But think a little bit more about the way in which he introduces this subject. What's the metaphor that he uses? I suppose we should really say it's a simile, because it's something that is likened to something else. What is it? 'Writers of history may be likened unto a...' >> An adventurous knight. >> An adventurous knight. What genre do adventurous knights come from? >> [Inaudible comment from audience] >> What? >> Fairytales. >> Fairytales, what, you know, other things? Chivalric romance, perhaps? What's at stake in saying, if you're a writer of a history, that you are like an adventurous knight? Yeah? >> It's medieval. >> It's medieval, so that would go against a sense of maybe being the very model of a modern major historian. What else? >> He's supposed to be brave and noble in all the chivalrous aspects of the knight. >> Ok, bravery, so do we expect our historians to be brave, noble, and chivalrous? >> No. >> Do we expect them to be conquering stuff? Do we expect them to be marching in triumph through stuff, our historians? And this is kind of weird, again, it's another one of these things. Irving here, would seem to be as a historian, complicit in precisely the kinds of things that he shouldn't be complicit in, right? I mean, you shouldn't be having a triumphant story. But in pointing this out, you might say he is poking holes at what the standard operating practice for historians usually is. He's, in other words, calling attention humorously to the fictionality of most fiction, of most histories by overemphasizing the links between history and fiction here. But it also has another disarming kind of effect, right? If you're making this association between history and romance, ok. But you might say there's a way in which the kind of chatty voice that he has will get you to read along and maybe not object to things that in another way you might object to, if they were told to you in another way. Take a look, for example, I don't know, you can pick any one from the course of this chapter, but take a look on page 45. He's in the midst of talking about the different justifications that white settlers had for controlling the land. In fact, he calls these the right of discovery, the right of cultivation, the right of civilization. And with civilization of course, what's really important is the church and the spread of Christianity. Middle of 45: 'The most important branch of civilization, and which has most strenuously been extolled by the zealous and pious fathers of the Romish Church, is the introduction of the Christian faith.' Interestingly, he is going after the Roman church. So it's not going to be, I don't know what, the Dutch reform Calvinists that you would find in and around the British, the English, you know the new Amsterdam, or even kind of Anglican stuff that you would find as a result of British New York, or even the kind of Calvinism that's so prevalent in Puritanism. He's going at something that would seem to be, you know, a safe target, almost like gothic fiction. We'll put our sort of uncertainties over onto them Catholics in Italy, right? But everybody knows that we're actually talking, worrying about something else. Ask yourself whether what's described here doesn't sound as if it were precisely a critique of Bradford in 'A History of Plymouth Plantation.' 'It was truly a sight that might well inspire horror, to behold these savages stumbling among the dark mountains of paganism, and guilty of the most horrible ignorance of religion. It is true, they neither stole nor defrauded; they were sober, frugal, continent, and faithful to their word; but though they acted right habitually, it was all in vain unless they acted so from precept. The newcomers, therefore, used every method to induce them to embrace and practice the true religion, except indeed that of setting them the example.' Ok, you may or may not think that's funny, but I want to, take a look at it and see how you think it works, right? How does it poke holes in something? How is the style designed to get you to come along. It's almost like he's paying you a little bit of rope and allows you to hang yourself with it at the end as the reader for that little sticking point. It's a mixture of exaggeration, of seemingly rational balanced syntax, but you can see that even, you know, where does he end up here? What's the fourth right after the right of civilization? The one that trumps them all? The middle of 47. 'The last right might be entitled the right by extermination, or in other words, the right by gunpowder.' Alright, ok, so this is all what it boils down to. Boot forth. And then I want you to ask yourself what is at stake in the larger, in terms of the larger project of writing a history, to end this chapter with what basically boils down to a fraud experiment. He says: 'ok, let's think about the people in the moon, the Man in the Moon people, and imagine that they are as superior to us in their civilization and their abilities.' He says this on page 49 in the first full paragraph. 'Superior to us in knowledge and consequently in power, as the Europeans were to the Indians, when they first discovered them.' And then he says, you know, he goes, these Moonlanders, they land on the planet, they do basically things that are all quite analogous to what the Europeans have done, and then towards the bottom of 51: 'But finding that we not only persist in absolute contempt of their reasoning and disbelief in their philosophy,' right? We won't be converted. 'But even go so far as daringly to defend our property, their patience shall soon, shall be exhausted, and they shall resort to their superior powers of argument; hunt us with hippogriffs, transfix us with concentrated sun-beans, demolish our cities with moon-stones; until having, by main force, converted us to the true faith, they shall graciously permit us to exist in the torrid deserts of Arabia, or the frozen regions of Lapland, there to enjoy the blessings of civilization and the charms of lunar philosophy, in much the same manner as the reformed and enlightened savages of this country are kindly suffered to inhabit the inhospitable forests of the north, or the impenetrable wilderness of South America.' Ok? So what I want you to see is the overall strategy here. We're writing a history, right? We destabilize history-writing by making a, using a trope that links it to romance. We then use actual philosophical arguments presented in a way that looks like actual philosophy, except there are subtle deflations through diction and style of the conclusions, and then finally we end up with an out-and-out fiction that nevertheless looks like it draws on a philosophical thought experiment. The Man in the Moon, right? What you can see then is, you know, this is the culmination of a process in this first book whereby you might say that Irving is weaning us from the authority of the historian by undermining slowly but surely the authority of the historian until finally we find much more reason in the kind of thought experiment that we have here, which verges on science fiction than most history writing. This was a big success, by the way. Part of the reason it was a big success was the style in which it's written, which is kind of engaging and you know, it sort of pokes fun, it's a kind of, it seems like vicious satire but it's also kind of leavened a little bit by the style in which it's written. But Irving also went on and was smart enough as a young man to engage in a kind of public relations campaign. He places an ad in the evening post on October 26, which supposedly comes from a landlord, who says some guy named Knickerbocker is missing, anybody seen him? He might not be in his right mind, P.S. printers of newspapers will be aiding the cause of humanity in giving an [inaudible] to the above. I mean, that's kind of the same grandiloquence that you have in the history. A little bit later on, some traveler reports having seen this Knickerbocker, and don't worry, you know, he's ok, a little bit, he had a hat and a small bundle tied in a red bandana handkerchief. Already a caricature of what a traveler looks like on the road, and he appeared to be traveling northward, was very much fatigued and exhausted. Ok. November 6, ten days later, placed by one Seth Handaside, landlord of the Columbian Hotel, 'A very curious kind of a written book has been found in his room, in his own handwriting. Now I wish you to notice him, if he is still alive, that if he does not return and pay off his bill for boarding and lodging, I shall have to dispose of his book to satisfy me for the same.' I'm going to sell this thing, right? And everybody's kind of in on the joke and not kind of in the joke. Washington Irving says this. I mean, you can see that the, a little bit later on, when he's writing the Sketch Book, he says, you know, the publicity campaign works, people get really interested and the thing is public. And many people know it's Irving, many people don't, but the interest has been peaked by this kind of sort of reality show public relations campaign. Irving, you know, says this, later on when he sends the manuscript of the Sketch Book back from England to his brother to be published in the United States: 'My talents are merely literary, and if I ever get any solid credit with the public, it must be in the quiet and assiduous operations of my pen under the mere guidance of fancy and feeling.' Now again, we should probably think of this as a kind of ironic statement. But the idea of talents are merely literary suggests that there are a lot of other talents that are much more appropriate. To be a literary person, then, in the United States in this period is almost to be un-American, right? What are you doing wasting your time on the merely literary? 'Do something with your life, you know. Go into business.' But Irving does go into business. He needs to make money writing the Sketch Book. And so you might say, it's once again time to do a kind of gut check and to think about the horizon of expectations and he does. And he produces a volume that is a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic, in part because it draws on established English form. It's the kind of magazine writing that was popular and that sold well in English periodicals and therefore, because Americans took their cue from English taste at this point, it would sell well in the United States, and added to those sorts of kinds of local knowledge that were prevalent in 'The History of New York' to create something that was new. So there are two major forms in this Sketch Book. I gave you one example of the sketch, which is the piece that was on Blackboard, called 'The Voyage, two examples of the tales. The most famous ones: 'Rip Van Winkle, and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' Ok. The sketch is again, like English magazine writing, you can imagine it, the sketch is basically a piece of writing that's fairly short in which nothing exactly happens, right? You might imagine it as a kind of piece of description that seems taken out of some longer tale, but it's sort of there. It's kind of like local color. It's just something that's of interest to the narrator and recalls a lot of British periodical writing. So it makes sense to people that this kind of thing should exist. The tale, though, in fact, you might say that the two tales that we have seem to be made all the more extraordinary precisely because of the context in the volume around them of the sketch where not much happens. Something does happen in 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and it kind of defies the rational. Unlike most of the sketches, which are first person, the tale is presented as a third-person narrative, or else you might say, the pseudonymous major narrator of the Sketch Book, this person who's called Geoffrey Crayon, has found the manuscript, and therefore the tale exists in somebody else's voice. So these two tales, 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' are theoretically found amongst the papers in Seth Handaside's inn of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I just want to briefly sketch out a couple of things about these sketches and tales that will let you see the affinities between what Irving is doing, and the stuff that's come before, not only the gothic of Brown, but also the kind of Graveyard School poetry that we looked at in Freneau and Bryant. The Sketch Book, in fact, has a kind of obsessive fascination with death. Death hovers over all of it, but it almost becomes a kind of metaphor for a more generalized sort of alienation, right? An alienation with the modern world. Death becomes a way of thinking about what's wrong with the modern world in the way that it prompts the occasional for the imagination to come forth, right? You remember that moment in 'The Indian Burying Ground' where Freneau writes that fancy will no longer have to bow to reason here in the Indian Burying Ground, as if that's what happens all throughout the rest of the world. So, for example, 'Rip Van Winkle' is about somebody who wakes up from a kind of deathless sleep. A sleep that's almost like death, you might say. And well, I mean, this pun is intended, [inaudible], Right? So, and it's presented among this kind of posthumous things. Likewise, the story of 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' is presented to us as a story about a dead Hessian coming to life. So, death hovers over all these tales, especially, and you can see it in 'The Voyage' too, in that sketch 'The Voyage.' I mean, the basic, the thing that happens inside 'The Voyage' is that the narrator sees a wreck, and when he sees a wreck, you know, he all of a sudden starts expostulating. This is on page 748 of 'The Voyage': 'Where, thought I, is the crew! Their struggle has long been over. They have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest; their bones lie whitening among the caverns of the deep. Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them, and no one can tell the story of their end.' It's overblown, again, right? You find out later on that the sight of the wreck, he says, '...gave rise to many dismal anecdotes. This was particularly the case in the evening, when the weather, which had hitherto been fair, began to look wild and threatening...' right? So he gets a lot of stories, and he tells one of them. So what you realize is that the wreck becomes a prompting for storytelling, and that finally, once he's, you know, safely able to recollect this in tranquility, he says in the middle of 750, 'I might fill a volume with the reveries of a sea voyage, for with me it is almost a continual reverie, and we realize that, in some sense, that would mean that even that episode with the wreck is part of his larger reverie. He is able to domesticate it, he's able to make it literary. And so death becomes a way of making these sketches link up with this tradition of the Graveyard School of Poetry and this idea that the romantic poet, the romantic writer, is going to find in death a time to have a kind of meditation about the imagination. Reason regime, you might say, is weakened under the thrall of death. So that's one of the things that hovers over, I think, all of these three pieces. Another though, and perhaps even more pressing is a kind of struggle throughout, between you might say, on the one hand, the literary imagination, and on the other hand, this kind of bustling modern materialistic world of business, which doesn't really have time for the imagination. And frequently in these stories, is given to us as if it's a kind of contest between the old Dutch past, which should be hospitable to story-telling, and the new modern present. Now, if I were to ask you, in the story of 'Rip Van Winkle, which of those two things is it that the story prefers? What would you say? Does the story prefer the old Dutch past? Or does it prefer the modern Yankee present? What do you think? [ Silence ] You better read it before the midterm...Yes? >> The modern Yankee present. >> Why would you say the modern Yankee present? >> [Inaudible comment from audience] The modern day machine as opposed to the old outdated one. >> Ok, so you would say that there's a sense in which the Yankee present is what, is for those reasons. How different is the Yankee present from the Dutch past? >> In the story it is apparently pretty different. >> Ok. Why would we say it's different? Because of the hustle and bustle, that stuff? >> There's always this voice of people that are talking of camaraderie. >> Ok. And by the way, what is it that he slept through? >> The war. >> Yeah, he slept through the Revolution. >> I would say, I think I would follow that by saying that it's, you know, the Yankee present with a place for Rip Van Winkle. >> Ok. >> Because Rip Van Winkle wasn't happy, or the character wasn't happy, in the past because he had his wife and he had never had that place where he could go and just be him. [ Shouting ] [ Laughter ] And in the Yankee present, there's like, there's a place for him, and he's sort of like regarded as sort of a figure of [inaudible]... >> That's good. >> ...sort of affectionate. >> One of the things you might say is that in the Dutch past, I mean, many people when they read this story for the first time, think: 'Oh, this is why he prefers the Dutch past, it's all about local color, you know, this modern world, yuck, but I think you're clueing into some of the things like ambivalence that's there, which is that in the old past, Rip Van Winkle is an idler, right? There's no place for him. He drives his family into poverty. Now, he's an esteemed elder and storyteller. Everybody wants to come and listen to him. So he has a place, as you point out. Did you want to say something on the, did you want to add something to that? No? >> I was actually going to sort of disagree with that. >> Ok. Disagreement is good. Do it. >> Just because, I don't know, it seems like in the Yankee present he's allowed to sort of be idle, and because like, for example, a lot of the things that seem problematic about the pre-Yankee era seem to be allowed sort of at the end of the Yankee era, like the schoolmaster. He's very, just kind of pedantic and... >> In 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' >> No, no. In, like, one of Rip Van Winkle's friends is the teacher [inaudible]. >> Ok. >> And now he's a member of Congress, and before he just sat lazily around talking about stuff. >> You don't want teachers in Congress. >> Yeah. [ Laughter ] Well, at that time, that's how it was kind of [inaudible]. >> Yeah, I know. [ Laughter ] >> I'm just taking it aside. [ Laughter ] Alright, let me ask you one other thing. You know, when Rip goes, he goes and he sees his son. He's like: 'Wow.' I mean, his son is called the very ditto of himself, he's exactly the same as Rip used to be. It's like they're doubled. But better than that, here's my favorite emblem about the difference between the Dutch past and the Yankee present. Do you remember the inn? The Union Inn now it's called, I think. The sign? What's on the sign of the inn? What was on the sign of the inn before? Yeah? >> It used to be King George, and then they just repainted it and wrote George Washington. >> One George, another George. 'Plus ca change,' right? There's a certain suggestion in which these two, there may not be as quite as much change as we think, or that the change might, in some certain ways, be superficial. And that's what I mean for you to see, that there's a kind of weird ambivalence. The stories seem to set up what looks like an opposition, and then they start to collapse them in interesting ways. Is the Yankee present better? Well no, right? It's hostile to the imagination, the old past is, you know, full of local lore and all that stuff, except they didn't like me in the old past, and now, they, you know are listening to my stories and I have this esteemed kind of place. Just think about 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' for, I mean...Ichabod Crane seems to be a kind of unappealing character, right? He's tall and crane-like, and he's described as consuming and devouring. There's a wonderful passage here. I was looking for a good picture to illustrate this with. If anyone can find me one I would be really, really happy. But in the middle of, you know when he goes and he imagines the Van Tassel farm, this is on page 971 if you have the anthology. Rip, you know, so he's a kind of voracious person. He comes from Connecticut, so he's a real Yankee, as opposed to Brom Bones, who's kind of like a burly Dutchman. 'The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare.' He's one of these skinny guys, so he has like an endless appetite. 'In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running around with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks paired, paring cozily in dishes like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers, he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey, but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit designed to ask while living.' Did you ever watch Looney Tunes or things like that? I'm mad, I couldn't find a picture, I'm going to find it next time. Just so the, I don't know, the wolf is running around and in a thought bubble he sees the little chicky-chickies there and they are kind of presented as food, right? That's what he's doing. He's imagining. So there's something very materialistic about him, right? He feels the same way about Katrina. He just looks at that buxom lass and all of her buxom property, and thinks: 'Wow, all of this should be mine.' So the story would seem to have a kind of bias against Ichabod Crane, right? Except, think about this. Brom Bones, who always struck me as a kind of like a fraternity type, sorry to any fraternity types who might be in here. [ Laughter ] He's pretending to be what? What is he? What's the figure who rides the night? A Hessian who's also known as more famously the... >> The Headless Horseman. >> The Headless Horseman! Ok. What does it mean if you have no head? You're like most Americans. [ Laughter ] Alright, there's a kind of mindlessness about the Dutch, right? And look at Ichabod. Ichabod is a consumer of stories. So, who's the writer figure in this story? Is it Brom Bones crafting this, dramatizing this little spectacle for us? Or is it Ichabod who consumes these tales and teaches, and kind of involved in literary culture? Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be devouring? I mean, Ichabod actually ends up all right. I think he becomes a judge, right, at the end? That's probably a better place for teachers. Maybe. So I want you to see again that this is marked by a certain kind of ambivalence. Irving appears to set up a binary between the Dutch past and the Yankee present, appears to mark the Dutch past as associated with the marvelous and the literary and Ichabod is associated with something else. And then he makes them complicated in interesting ways. I think that's part of what we say is one of the hallmarks of romantic writing. Romantic writing, as we will see, especially with Melville and Hawthorne, is able to think about contraries and think about combining them in integrated ways. Romantic writing is, therefore, a kind of integrative mode, as opposed to something like allegory, which tends to have a logic of either or. So we'll say more about that as it progresses. One last thing. I sent you this poem, 'To a New England Poet.' That's of course because it is of this line here, right? Freneau's kind of bitter about the low state of literary culture. 'Why stay in such a tasteless land, where all must on a level stand, excepting people, at their ease, Who choose the level where they please,' right? Contra that Jefferson quote I've been talking about the last few days. 'See Irving gone to British court, To people of another sort, He will return, with wealth and fame, while Yankees hardly know your name. Young poet. Lo! He has kissed a Monarch's...' Yes, that's the joke. [ Laughter ] I think he's a little bit hard on Irving, because Irving manages to appropriate British forms, but he does go down in literary history as not only the first writer to make money from writing, but also the father of regionalist writing and the short story. There's a certain way in which people like Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, and even Toni Morrison, are not quite imaginable without Irving in place in literary history. Alright, we'll leave it there. Thanks a lot.