AMERICAN LITERATURE
COLUMBUS:
· (1) left
o Palos, Spain (Ferdinand & Isabella)
o August 6, 1492
· arrived
o San Salvador (their name), Bahamas
o October 12, 1492
o La Navidad settlement
§ wiped out
§ like Jamestown
· returned
o with 7 natives (Taino Indians from Bahamas)
o Diego Colon (“Colon” = Spanish “Columbus”
§ captured, Christianized/baptized, displayed, translator
· (2) left
o 1493
· arrived
o November 1493
o 17 ships
o 1500+ men
o Diego Colon as translator
o European food: wheat, onions, melons, radishes, grapevines, sugar cane, fruit tress
DOUBLE-SIDE DISCOVERY:
· “wonder” at new world
· Europeans of Natives (by Columbus)
o trees, people, foods,….
· Natives of Europeans (by Diego)
o cities, fortresses, churches
o horses, animals
o nobility & wealth of leaders
o foods
o tournaments, bull-fighting
European-ization of the Americas
· fortresses, churches
· foods (see Colmb. above)
· textiles
· tools
· weapons
· religion
· slavery
o = change for the West Indie Natives
§ reshape identities, reorganize lives
NEW WORLD:
· ATLANTIC BASIN = melting pot
o 1492-1650
o European colonists
o Natives
o African slaves
§ new set of social relationships
§ cultural & social relations
o ßà
§ influence & exchange
§ went BOTH ways
§ “a many-sided process of influence & exchange”
§ “that ultimately produced a hybrid cultural universe of the Atlantic world” (5)
from WONDER to VIOLENCE:
· the “wonder” or awe of Columbus & Colon
· replaced by
· violence, struggle
o to endure – conquer – outwit (Survivor)
o “Indian Wars” = violent recoil to influx
· death to Europeans:
o frontier wars with Natives
o political in-fighting (Columbus, James Smith)
§ dissension
§ mutiny
§ riots
· death to Natives:
o wars, clashes
o disease
§ small pox, measles, typhus
§ epidemics
§ microbes that Europeans = inured/accustomed to
§ Caribbean 1st, then mainland of Central & South America
o slavery
§ “the institutional disease of slavery” (6)
§ encomienda
· instituted by Spanish crown in 1503 (1503-42)
· attempt to define the status of American Indians (Natives)
· based on its previous practice of exacting tribute from Muslims & Jews during the Reconquest of Muslim Spain
· land-grant system
· that gave a tract of land to Spanish colonist (conquistador, chosen by crown)
o (land + Indians on it)
§ plantations & mines
o Indians = labor, gave tribute to their new lord….slavery
· like feudalism:
o they serve the lord
o the lord instructs (Christianity) & protects them
§ African slaves
· 1501 (Hispaniola)
· declining numbers of Natives
o “Thus the destruction of one people [Natives] was accompanied by the displacement and enslavement of another [African slaves]. By that point, the naïve ‘wonder’ of discovery was all but unrecoverable.” (6)
· Natives = no angels
o just as violent, mean, savage as Europeans
o quick to adopt European weapons & tactics
o not just victims
§ forwarded their own aims/agendas
§ Aztecs: 1519, threw in with Cortes to overthrow overlord Montezuma
§ New England Pequot Wars: 1637, Mohegans & Narragansetts join w/English against Pequots
§ Iroquois: used Europeans means to solidify power they had before
· “means of consolidating advantages gained before the arrival of the colonists. The Iroquois had begun to organize their famous League of Five Nations before European settlement, but they solidified their earlier victories over other Native peoples by forging canny alliances with the Dutch and then the English in New York.” (6)
o “[…] they showed themselves resourceful in resisting, transforming, and exploiting” the European culture (7)
ORAL LITERATURE:
EUROPE 1492 / NATIVES 1492· centralized nation-states
· agricultural economies
· 2-3 dozen languages
· languages = related (lang. tree)
· written alphabet
· Gutenberg’s bible (1452-55)
· Caxton’s printing press (1476)
o (print culture)
· genres: comedy, tragedy, epic, ode, lyrics,… / · diversely structured societies (econ. & pol.)
· hunting & gathering, agriculture
· hundreds of languages
· languages = not related
· diverse religious beliefs
· no written alphabets
· no writing technologies
o (oral culture)
· “genres”: chants, rituals, songs, tales
· ORAL
o no written alphabet
o at least 8 different Creation Myths
o oral =
§ chanted, sung, presented in lengthy narratives
o oxymoron –
§ “oral literature”
§ “literature” = “littera” = letter
o “orature”
o “genres”:
§ Winnebago trickster tales, Apache jokes, Hopi personal naming & grievance chants,
§ Yaqui deer songs, Yumi dream songs, Piman shamantic chants,
§ Iroquois condolence rituals, Navajo curing & blessing chants,
§ Chippewa songs of great Medicine Society
o literary?:
§ 1778 Romanticism
§ redefine literature
§ from medium of expression
§ to kind of expression
· from print
· to creative, imaginative, emotional language
o translations:
§ troubles
· moving from foreign language to another
· moving from oral tradition to print tradition
o oral = performance-based
§ dramatic
· acting, voice modulation, gesture, pace, pause
· all these affect understanding, interpretation
· difficult to transcribe into writing
§ live audience
§ reaction to/from audience
§ known audience
§ author sees/knows audience
o some WRITTEN traditions:
§ visual records
§ Aztecs: shellwork belts & painted hides, tepees, shields
· DISCOVERIES of AMERICA:
o Vikings (10th C.)
o Columbus 1492 (x4)
o John Cabot (pre-1500) Italian for the English
§ St. Lawrence River in Canada
o Amerigo Vespucci (pre-1500)
§ Amazon in South America
o Pedro Cabral (pre-1500) Portuguese
o John Smith (1607) Jamestown #1
· SPREAD:
o 1492-1542 (50 yrs.)
§ east coasts of both continents
§ interior regions traversed
§ most powerful empires = overthrown (Aztecs, Incas)
§ European infiltration
o Columbus: mainland South America 1498, Central America 1502
o Cabot & Portuguese Corte-Real brothers: coast of North America 1502
o Cabral & Vespucci: east coast of South America 1502
o 1515-1520s: Spain (Charles V) = aggressive
§ Gulf of Mexico
§ Florida, Panama, Yucatan Peninsula
o 1520s-1540s:
§ deep into North America
§ Florida, Kansas, California
o Portuguese in Brazil
o French up St. Lawrence to “Montreal”
· CONQUESTS:
o over Aztecs, of Mexico
§ 1519-21
§ Hernan Cortes vs. Montezuma
o over Incas
§ 1532-33
§ Francisco Pizarro
· LATE to the PARTY: England & France:
o inconsistent backing
o bad luck
o England –
§ John Cabot: 1498, H7, dead
§ Sebastian Cabot: 1512, worked for Spanish crown (to keep going); Ed 6 backs in 1540, but to China
o France –
§ Jacques Cartier: no gold in St. Lawrence valley, 3rd voyage of 1541 = disheartening
o fishermen: for both countries continued to hit the east coast (very successful)
o New Blood:
§ England –
· 1570s+
· QE1, Bloody Mary, Sp. Armada, …. Prosperity
· public support, political sanction à curiosity, investment
· Bad Luck: 1580s Roanoke Island’s “Lost Colony” (SW Raleigh)
· à 20 yrs. of fizzle
· 1606: James I, 2nd Virginia Colony, Jamestown
§ shipwreck in Bermuda
§ starvation
§ riots
§ classes w/locals
o Richard Hakuyt’s The Principall Navigations (1598-1600)
o Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610-11)
· France –
o 1603
o late but more successful
o Samuel de Champlain – St. Lawrence settlements, pushed westward
o while English struggled in Virginia & just landed in Plymouth
LITERARY CONSEQUENCES of 1492:
· literature à expansionism
· PRINTING PRESS
o integral role in European colonialism
o Columbus’ 1493 letter to court (official Luis de Santagel)
§ narrates voyage
§ describes vernal West Indies
o “…the printing press and the European expansion into America were reciprocal parts of a single engine. Without the ready dispersal of text rich with imagery that stirred individual imagination and national ambition in regard to the West Indies, Europe’s movement westward would have been blunted and perhaps thwarted. The sword of conquest found in the pen, & in the printing press, an indispensable ally.” (11)
· 2 sides to the conquests
o 1528, Aztec writing in Spanish lamenting Cortes’ conquest & fall of city
· POLICY vs. PRACTICE:
o atrocities = due to miscommunication rather than policy
o policy:
§ made in Spain
§ took long time to get to West Indies
§ disconnected to the realities of the situation
§ often outdated/moot by the time they arrived
o practice:
§ done in Americas
o à LITERATURE
o 3 functions of this LITERATURE:
1. to inform, influence political policy back home
· description of the situation - accounts
2. to justify actions
· real power in those who could grab it
· time lag of policy
· (easier to ask forgiveness than permission)
· Cortes’ 1519 invasion of Mexico to Charles V
3. to document
· to describe, to testify to
· to play witness to the events/atrocities
· “reveal the bloody truths of Europe’s colonial dreams” (12)
o Literature & History
· SUBVERSIVE
o critical of Europe’s treatment of Natives
o not swayed by the slogans of empire, faith, wealth (ad populum)
o written by non-nobles, lower born
o New World, not just dependent province of Europe, but could inform Europe too – new ways of living, thinking, believing
PILGRAMS & PURITANS:
· Puritan vs. Pilgrim –
o Puritan = change from within the Church of England
o Pilgrim = separatists, break from COE
§ thought COE = completely corrupt
§ SCOOBY, Nottinghamshire: secret congregation (Scrooby Separatists)
§ persecution, imprisonment
§ à 1608: to Holland, Netherlands (foreigners, poverty, language, no agriculture but weaving, loss of religious identity) à petition to settle in America, to England’s Virginia Company à English investors
§ commercial as well as religious venture
· 3x as many secular settlers as Separatists on Mayflower
· Puritan = Pilgrim –
o sought to purify Christian belief & practice
o agreed w/ Martin Luther’s belief that no pope or bishop had a right to impose any law on a Christian w/o consent
o accepted John Calvin’s point in predetermination – election by God of saved & damned
· 1620:
o Pilgrims land in Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Plantation
o William Bradford
o Mayflower
o November 1620
o 1st winter: Wampanoag Indians, leader = Massasoit
· 1630:
o Puritans land in Massachusetts Bay
o John Winthrop
o well-financed trip
o Arbella
· 1691:
o Pilgrim = Puritan
§ synonymous
§ see similarities above
o by the time of the New Charter
· RELIGION:
o Calvinist doctrine of ELECTION
o God had chosen/elected who will be saved, damned long before we’re born
o not that we’re all born damned
o but that since Adam broke “Covenant of Works” (live forever in GOE as long as…)
o saved by “Covenant of Grace” (Christ redeeming bargain, sealed with His blood)
§ root of the JOY
§ celebration of Incarnation
§ strict requirements of Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) – more important than Baptism
o sermons = not to the hopeless unregenerate but to the indifferent
o emotional appeals
§ rational understanding vs. emotional saving faith
§ heart vs. mind
o rigorous, strict – to be an example to others, to set themselves apart
N. AMERICAN LANGUAGES:
· English = late to the game
o Massachusetts settlements = younger than
o Saint Augustine, Jamestown, Santa Fe, Albany, New York
· French in Canada
· Spanish in Florida
· Dutch in New York (New Netherland, New Amsterdam before 1664)
· German in Pennsylvania
· Scandinavian, Irish, Scottish, African, West Indian,…
· English & Boston:
o the large initial immigration of the 1630s
o the high articulation of the Puritan cultural ideals
o the early establishment of a college in Cambridge
o the early establishment of a printing press in Cambridge
o à eventually English as the language of literature & the vernacular
AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1700:
· last half of the 17th century (1600s)
· ENGLISH:
o British America, their colonies
o inter-colonial tool
o as “13 Colonies” took shape
o printing press
· PRINTING PRESS:
o printing of colonial writings – here & in Europe
o Cambridge, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Annapolis
o “printing was established in the American colonies before it was allowed in most of England, where restrictive laws, the last of them repealed as late as 1693,had long confined printing to four locations: London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. ” (16)
§ see what books = printed à insight into literature
· COTTON MATHER:
o most prolific colonial writer
o biographies, propriety, histories (“tearful decade” 1688-98 of New France vs. New England)
o Puritan
· RELIGION:
o dominant theme
o Puritanical
§ self-regarding
§ strict
o social issues
§ against executions (Quaker Dissenters in Boston)
§ earliest antislavery tract (Sewell’s The Selling of Joseph)
· cross-cultural interactions:
o rich array of purposes, varied main ends
o relations with the Indians (Iroquois)
· adventure & exoticism
· almanacs, governmental publications
·