We’ve been toying with a fairly traditional philosophical model of freedom that thinks of it in terms of agency and determination. According to this model, agency is basically free will, which each of us possesses as long as we are in our “right mind,” while determination refers to the forces beyond our control that “determine” the options that actually confront us at any given time. In this model, agency is a given, while determination is a matter of history, chance, social structure, and the like. In this traditional model, agency is internal and determination is external. Free will is “in here,” while determination is “out there.” But guess what? Stories like “Somnambulism” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” — not to mention the theories of Sigmund Freud and neuroscience — suggest that very powerful determining forces are not external at all but are lodged in the deepest levels of the human psyche.

Now consider works like Walden (or Plato’s allegory of the cave, or The Matrix), which suggest that what we think of as reality is not reality at all. As suggested by the analogy with which Thoreau closes Walden, our conception of reality is to real reality as the morning star (aka Venus) is to the sun.

Now consider the possibility that ignorance is one of the determining forces limiting our freedom. If we are actually confronted with a choice between A, B, C, D, and E, but we are only aware of options A and B, is the choice that we go on to make fully free?

If we argue that it’s not — if we argue that freedom is partly a function of knowledge or awareness — then Walden is very much to the point. By suggesting that somewhere beyond our current awareness there lies an almost infinitely greater reality that we have not yet awakened to, Thoreau implies that there is also an almost infinitely greater kind of freedom that we have not yet attained. We might think we are really free, but that’s only because we’re still trapped in the matrix (or still stuck in Plato’s cave, or in the grip of some ideology, or whatever).

Yes? No? If yes — if in fact we are still stuck among the dark shadows of the cave — how can we get out into the bright sunlight?

Bonus questions: Is The Matrix just warmed-over Plato, only with cool sunglasses and Carrie-Anne Moss in black leather, or does it tell us something the Allegory of the Cave does not? Ditto for Walden. Read more!

In class today we tried to identify and understand the relationships between several of the more prominent elements of nineteenth century American culture: Romanticism, Manifest Destiny, the Second Great Awakening, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon and King Follett Sermon, William Cullen Bryant’s poetry, etc. We wound up with the whiteboard scribblings above.

So — to reiterate the questions I left you with at the end of class: Do the elements-plus-the-relations-between-them amount to some “thing,” some movement or cultural phenomenon? Or (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland) is there “no there there”? If there is something there, does it already have a name? If there is something there but it hasn’t already been named, what name might we most appropriately give it?

BTW, for more info on Joseph Smith and the Mormon scriptures, see the link at right for “Notes on the Mormon Scriptures.” Read more!

Early in The American Adam, R.W.B. Lewis wrote that

narrative art inevitably...stains ideas with restless ambiguity. For the experience of the aims and values of an epoch is apt to be more complex and even more painful than the simple statement of them; and narrative deals with experiences, not with propositions. The narrative art, moreover, dramatizes as human conflict what is elsewhere a thoughtful exchange of ideas; and art projects — in a single packed dramatic image — conflicting principles which the discursive mind must contemplate separately and consecutively. (My emphases)

Ideas can be conveyed in the form of a story or in the form of a series of propositions. And as all alert English majors know, form is never completely independent of content. The content is always in some way “stained,” as Lewis puts it, by the form. (Compare this idea to Marshall McLuhan’s contention that “the medium is the message” and Susan Sontag’s argument in “Against Interpretation” that content is actually an aspect of form rather than the opposite of form.)

Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur could have said what he had to say about America in the form of a nonfiction essay. He could have expressed his thoughts in a series of propositions, say, like this:

On the one hand, America holds out tremendous promise of freedom and equality, and for many that promise is coming true. While I was in rural New York I observed people of a sort never seen before, indeed not even possible to imagine, in Europe. On the other hand, even though Americans champion the ideal of freedom, they seem oblivious to the reality that many of them still own slaves….

But Crèvecoeur didn’t use the essay form. He chose instead to express his ideas in a narrative form, in the form of fictional letters written by an ordinary American farmer to a British correspondent. So what we get are passages like this:

[W]here is that station which can confer a more substantial system of felicity than that of an American farmer, possessing freedom of action, freedom of thoughts, ruled by a mode of government which requires but little from us? I owe nothing but a pepper corn to my country, a small tribute to my king, with loyalty and due respect; I know no other landlord than the lord of all land, to whom I owe the most sincere gratitude. My father left me three hundred and seventy-one acres of land, forty-seven of which are good timothy meadow, an excellent orchard, a good house, and a substantial barn. It is my duty to think how happy I am that he lived to build and to pay for all these improvements; what are the labours which I have to undergo, what are my fatigues when compared to his, who had every thing to do, from the first tree he felled to the finishing of his house? Every year I kill from 1,500 to 2,000 weight of pork, 1,200 of beef, half a dozen of good wethers in harvest: of fowls my wife has always a great stock: what can I wish more? My negroes are tolerably faithful and healthy; by a long series of industry and honest dealings, my father left behind him the name of a good man; I have but to tread his paths to be happy and a good man like him.…

The general idea seems to be that the freedoms enjoyed by Farmer James and his father permitted them to profit from the fruits of their own labor, gradually amassing wealth to pass on to their posterity. Under such conditions work becomes a joy rather than a burden.

Because he’s writing fiction, and because good fiction demands concrete, lifelike details, Crèvecoeur fleshes out this picture of felicity-and-prosperity-through-freedom with a detailed accounting of Farmer James’s wealth: this many acres, this much beef, that much pork, and so on. This list functions to make Letters from an American Farmer more believable, helping us to willingly suspend our disbelief and also seducing us into its ideology — at least until, near the end of this list, we read that bit, so casually tossed in, about “my Negroes.”

Wait a minute, we find ourselves thinking. How can it possibly make sense to mention one’s slaves in a testimony to the marvels of freedom? And then we might notice the rather dark irony of phrases like “industry and honest dealings”: whose industry? And what’s so “honest” about slavery? Then there’s the idea that all Farmer James has to do to be a “good man” like his father is to do as his father did — including, presumably, to continue to arrogate to himself and his heirs the wealth produced in part by his slaves. Undermining Farmer James’s ideal of freedom is the reality of slavery, not only in the present but projected into the future.

The fictional form of Letters demands the enumeration of concrete details, but among those details are some that “stain” the book’s “ideas with restless ambiguity” — in this case, by suggesting that the freedom under discussion is not freedom for all but only freedom for some.

What are some of the other ways Crèvecoeur’s choice to convey his ideas in narrative form “stain his ideas”? That is, what are some of the ways in which Crèvecoeur seems to be trying to tell us one thing, but is prompted by the Letters’ form to tell us other things as well? Read more!

Roadside haiku! Putting a fresh twist on an old tradition, John Morse uses poetry as social commentary. For more on roadside haiku, check out Morse's web page here. Read more!

The captivity narrative as a genre and captivity as a trope have been prominent at least since biblical times. (Think of how much mileage the Jewish national mythology gets out of the Egyptian and Babylon captivities.) Today the idea of captivity circulates through pop culture (think of Gwen Stefani singing “Just a Girl” or The Melodians reworking Psalm 137 into “By the Rivers of Babylon”) and periodically dominates the news (e.g., Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard).

In this post I want to focus on Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity as a powerful work of theodicy — that is, an attempt to reconcile belief in the goodness of God with the fact of suffering in the world. Consider Rowlandson’s description, long after her captivity has ended, of her continuing misery:

I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other ways with me. When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but His who ever waketh, my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awfull dispensation of the Lord towards us; upon his wonderful power and might, in carrying of us through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety, and suffering none to hurt us.

Suffering none to hurt us! This from a woman who watched her youngest child die in her arms. Rowlandson continues:

I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, and nothing but death before me: it is then hard work to persuade myself, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again. But now we are fed with the finest of the wheat, and, as I may say, with honey out of the rock: instead of the husk, we have the fatted calf: the thoughts of these things in the particulars of them, and of the love and goodness of God towards us, make it true of me, what David said of himself, Psalms 6.6. I watered my couch with my tears. Oh! the wonderful power of God that mine eyes have seen, affording matter enough for my thoughts to run in, that when others are sleeping mine are weeping. (175)

I find passages like these tremendously moving, but I’m not sure the book as a whole succeeds as a theodicy. In fact, when Rowlandson insists on “the love and goodness of God towards us” I’m not sure she believes her own words.

What do you think — does Rowlandson believe what she says? More broadly, does her Narrative succeed in reconciling the belief in “the love and goodness of God” with the seemingly random experience of captivity and loss?

Update: Theodicy, The Odyssey — what an awesome twosome.... Even more awesome was the way you all instantly tagged it as a homonym! Read more!

Every time I teach William Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation I get the same complaint: it’s dull. But it’s not! Once you get used to Bradford’s Puritan “plain style,” his account of the Plymouth colony’s early years is more fun than Disneyland. Yes, it reveals the early colonists to be every bit as bigoted and theocratic as the Puritan stereotype would suggest, but it also shows them to be dedicated, gutsy, and at least occasionally funny. I would recommend paying special attention to the account of the sailor with the “lusty, able body” (on page 248); the beautiful and moving description of just how vulnerable and isolated the colonists felt upon being dropped off by the Mayflower (249-250); the heartbreaking account of the “starving time” (251-252); the hilarious description of John Morton’s rival colony at Merrymount, which ends with Morton being arrested after he proves too drunk to lift his musket (254-258) (remember, sometimes a musket is just a musket); and the explanation of the shocking, just shocking, discovery that there were “so many wicked persons and profane people” in God’s Own Colony (262-263).

A few questions: At the beginning of his book, Bradford tells us he is writing “in a plain style, with singular regard to the simple truth in all things” (247). But is the truth of the Plymouth experiment really simple? And is Bradford’s plain style really so plain? Does it really give us the unvarnished truth, or is the plain style itself a rhetorical device used to make the untrue seem true?

Is Bradford’s History really a history at all? If not, what would you call it?

As examples of some of Bradford’s literary devices, consider the alliteration and internal rhyme that give so much zip to the phrases “to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies” and “fill their sides full of arrows.” Feel the poetic rhythm of “hideous and desolate wilderness” (each of the main words is a dactyl, with one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables: hí-de-ous, dés-o-late, wíl-der-ness). Groove on the anaphora in “wild beasts and wild men.” (The original spelling is “wild beasts and willd men.”) In other words, sense the poetry animating the prose — and the poet’s heart beating inside the sober and orthodox colonial governor.

Oh, yeah — anyone who thinks the U.S. Constitution established a “Christian nation” should be sure to check out the Mayflower Compact (251) to see what the charter of a real Christian polity looks like.

As for the excerpt from John Underhill’s Newes from America, it can be difficult to read — in more ways than one. As far as I know, this book has never been published in a modern edition, and the copy in your coursepack is from a microfilm of the original. The copy quality is poor, the spelling is old-school (“seeing the Fort was to hotte for us, wee devised a way how wee might save ourselves”), and the book uses the “long-s” (which looks like an “f” with the cross-stroke on the left side only).

But the excerpt is also difficult to read because of its horrific content. It begins after the fighting at the Pequot village of Mystic is already underway. The Pequots, mostly women and children, have been caught by surprise in their “palizado” or wooden fortress but are starting to mount an effective defense. The Puritans, led by Underhill and Captain Mason and having taken a few casualties, decide not to force their way into the fort but instead to burn it down. Underhill’s account of the ensuing slaughter can be compared to William Bradford’s account of the same event in Chapter XXVIII of his History.

Both accounts can be compared to this R-rated scene from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911. What would you say are the some of the hallmarks of the language used to describe and justify the Pequot massacre? What about the rhetoric of empire more generally? And what about Michael Moore’s anti-imperialist rhetoric? Read more!

Welcome to American Lit I, everyone! Let's work together to analyze the illo above... and write this semester's first post for G@A. Read more!

This land is her land. Pictured above is new United States citizen Maria Anne Pilgrim, taking the Oath of Allegiance last Friday. Just in case you were wondering... here is the oath:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

The law allows new citizens whose religious beliefs require it to omit the words “so help me God” and the bit about bearing arms.

For your final comment of the semester, pretend that that you have been given charge of a portion of Ms. Pilgrim’s cultural assimilation. You must assign her two texts that you feel will help her understand the “real” America: one an early American work from our course syllabus, the other a song.

What would you choose, and why?

Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images. h/t Andrew Sullivan. Read more!

In class yesterday we speculated a bit about who might qualify as truly “self-reliant” in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sense of that term. Among Emerson’s contemporaries and near-contemporaries, the most obvious candidates would seem to be Joseph Smith (with his highly successful new religion) and Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (with their dazzling and highly original poetry). Among our own contemporaries and near-contemporaries, the votes in class seemed to be leaning heavily toward L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.

Carefully consider Emerson’s claim that “to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.” Whether in religion, the arts, politics, or wherever — who in our own age seems best to measure up to that standard? Is it really Hubbard? (I mean, c’mon — an intergalactic alien ruler named Xenu?) If so — if the fruits of self-reliance include Scientology — should we reconsider our opinion of Emerson? Read more!

Got milk? This has nothing to do with American lit — I just think the photo is awesome. Backstory here. Read more!