American Literature I Professor Cyrus R. K. Patell Lecture Twelve: Brown and Irving New York University Names and Terms Copyright Law of 1790 (domestic, not international) sketch vs. tale Philip Freneau, “To a New England Poet” Quotes Irving, in an essay on the poet Robert Treat Paine: The writer is “unfitted for business in a nation where every one 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.” Advertisement in the Evening Post, October 26, 1809:
DISTRESSING.
Left his lodgings some time since, and has not since been heard of, a small elderly
gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of
KNICKERBOCKER. As there are some reasons for believing he is not entirely in his
right mind and as great anxiety is entertained about him, any information concerning him
left either at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry-street, or at the Office of this paper will be
thankfully received.
P. S. Printers of Newspapers would be aiding the cause of humanity in giving an insertion
to the above.
Reply in the Evening Post, November 6, 1809:
To the Editor of the Evening Post.
SIR, Having read in your paper of the 26th of Oct. last a paragraph respecting an old
gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker, who was missing from his lodgings; if it would
be any relief to his friends, or furnish them with any clue to discover where he is, you
may inform them, that a person answering the description given was seen by the
passengers of the Albany Stage early in the morning, about four or five weeks since,
resting himself by the side of the road, a little above Kingsbridge—He had in his hand a
small bundle tied in a red bandana handkerchief; he appeared to be travelling northward,
and was very much fatigued and exhausted.
A TRAVELLER.
Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 12
Advertisement in the Evening Post, November 16, 1809:
Placed by “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 this bill for boarding and lodging, I shall have to dispose of the book to
satisfy me for the same.
Points to Remember Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly Edgar’s Experience in the Woods: The woods as a space for aesthetic instruction under Sarsefield’s tutelage: seeking out the sublime (see p. 90). The inadequacy of this education: both the woods and Edgar’s mind are incompletely mapped The woods: Serve the same purpose for Brown that decaying castles serve in English gothic fiction: they are psychologized landscapes in which the fears, guilty feelings, and nightmares of the protagonist are made manifest. They externalize the internal state of the protagonist. The panther scene: How does the scene dramatize the limits of Enlightenment thinking, through its deprivation of sensory experience and particularly the ability to see? Note the description of the panther as a “savage,” the description of its eyes, and Edgar’s use of the tom-­‐hawk. • How is Edgar transformed by the experiences related in Chapter 16? • Compare the scene with the panther to other moments of revelation you have encountered in the course, particularly Edwards’s account of conversion in his “Personal Narrative.” • In what ways does Edgar Huntly draw on the genre of the captivity narrative as part of its project of creating American gothic (see p. 166)? Compare Brown’s Indians to Bradford’s and Rowlandson’s. Old Deb: Natives, Land and Property • Compared to Queen Mab of English folklore (see Mercutio’s speech from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet I.iv.49-­‐103). 2
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As Edgar’s attempt to domesticate Deb by rendering her familiar. Does it work? What does it tell us about the applicability of the Old World forms to New World materials? How does the presence of Old Deb (together with the undeveloped Weymouth sub-­‐
plot) suggest that this is a story about property rights and the dispossession of the Indians? Is this the “sin” that has upset the world of the novel (akin to incest or usurpation in English gothic)? Edgar’s Desire for Upward Mobility: see the progression of houses from Old Deb’s hut to the mansion where he is reunited with Sarsefield. Civilization and Savagery The paradox of civilization in the New World: Edgar protests constantly that killing Indians does not come naturally to him because he is civilized, but the novel suggests that it is precisely because he is civilized that he must kill Indians. To safeguard white civilization from savagery, in order to remain civilized, Edgar must become a savage. 151 Possibly the period will arrive 184 Think not that I relate 185 I have told thee a bloody and disastrous tale 188 capricious constitution of the human mind 193 Such are the deeds Bildungsroman – or not? • Does Edgar learn from his experiences? Why do the final words of the novel belong to Sarsefield? • “Consciousness itself is the malady; the pest; of which he only is cured who ceases to think” (p. 267)—as a critique of Enlightenment thought. Cultural Ramifications of Brown’s American Gothic • Edgar’s narrative as an inversion of gothic that re-­‐internalizes the outside world. • In what ways does it tend to appropriate the cultural conflict between whites and Indians and to transform it into an existential conflict within his own psyche between the civilized and the savage? • Remember Brown’s transformation of frontier conflict when you get to Ahab in Melville’s in Moby-­Dick. Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 12
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Washington Irving •
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Freneau and Brown: raise question of the role of letters in the new nation. The low
prestige of fiction in comparison to history and public verse.
Inherited conceptions of the nature of literature: literature as “idleness” rather than work.
Yet to regard literature as a business is to sully it: literature as the province of the
gentleman amateur. Irving worries about idleness, uses the gentleman-amateur persona
even as he becomes a professional writer.
Irving’s skill at marketing: publishes in England; retains copyrights there; uses fabricated
newspaper account to publicize Knickerbocker’s History. (See Freneau’s “To a NewEngland Poet” for an attack on Irving’s career choices.)
The History: both a commercial success and a literary and cultural satire. 1) Takes aim at
the set of attitudes that conferred unrivaled prestige upon history writing and that
therefore inhibited the development of the aesthetic imagination. 2) Reflects Irving’s
awareness that all histories are partial and reflect the viewpoint of the winners. See, for
example, the History’s critique of the treatment of American natives by supposedly
civilized European settlers.
Irving as father of the short story. Draws on taste for things English, though now best
known for the "American" tales, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
The Sketch Book contains two basic modes: the sketch and the tale. As its name suggests,
the sketch is like a picture. The sketch serves to highlight the first-person narrative voice
of the "Crayon" figure, whereas the tale presents a third-person narration, or else gives
the narrative to a voice other than Crayon's. Nothing happens in the sketch except for the
verbal action of displaying to the reader something that the narrating voice considers to
be of interest. Think of the sketch as a descriptive chapter torn from is narrative context.
In the tale, however, something does happen, often something quite remarkable, as in
"Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." These tales demonstrate Irving’s
ambivalence about his career as a writer, and about social change in the early nineteenth
century.
These stories inaugurate American local fictional; compare Dutch past to Yankee present;
seem at first to link the Dutch past to local lore and the imagination, the Yankee present
to commercialism, materialism, and the anti-aesthetic – yet the stories fail to keep the two
spheres separate. Why? Remember the picture of “George” outside the tavern in “Rip van
Winkle.”
In what ways do both Rip and Ichabod seem to serve as representatives of the nineteenthcentury American writer? Ichabod’s appetites – for stories and for food and material
comfort.
Why is it appropriate that the famous horseman is headless?
Today’s Songs Moby, “Sleep Alone” The Pretenders, “I Go to Sleep” Neil Young and Crazy Horse, “My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue)”