Blooming Lilacs

1. Blooming Lilacs HUM 2212: British and American Literature I Fall 2012 Dr. Perdigao September 26, 2012

2. How the West Was Won • Political, geographical changes • Louisiana Purchase (1803) • Mexican War—southwest, California into nation • 1848: discovery of gold in California • Westward expansion • Relocation of Native Americans, 1830s Removal, Ulysses S. Grant forcing • Relocation of Native America in the 1860s • American identity constructed during the period • 1861-1865: American Civil War • 8 billion dollars, 600,000 lives lost • First transcontinental railroad completed in 1869 • Shipment of goods, moving into industrial age • 1840s: telegraph • 1879: Thomas Edison invents the electric light bulb • 1876: Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone • Immigration—1870s, 1880s, from Scandinavian countries; eastern and southern European countries, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Russia

3. American Expansionism • Urban migration—New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco as major centers • 1893: Frederick Jackson Turner said that the western frontier no longer existed, based on 1890 census and population density; no more “free” or “unoccupied” land • US colonization—Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines after Spanish-American War in 1898 • American expansionism • Hawaii annexed as colony in 1898 • Mythologized frontier—already lost, never a reality due to industrialization (6) • Steel industry—transport from Pittsburgh and Chicago to manufacturing in Cleveland and Detroit • US population changes: • 1870: 38.5 million • 1910: 92 million • 1920: 123 million

4. Typifying • Change from rural landscape to urban centers • Romanticism and Industrial Revolution, Enlightenment • Immigration changing “national” identity • Urban landscape as “jungle,” Darwinian model • New figures in fiction: industrial workers, rural poor, ambitious business leaders, vagrants, prostitutes, unheroic soldiers (7)

5. Stop the Presses • Importance of newspapers—cultural and political changes • Pulitzer, Hearst • Authors as journalists • Magazines publishing stories • “Literature of argument”—sociology, philosophy, psychology; exposure, reform • Like “pamphlets” in Europe, Wollstonecraft • Gender and women’s rights • Political corruption, degradation of natural world, economic inequality, business deceptions, exploitation of labor, tenement housing (14)

6. Defining the Tradition • American protagonists, “American Girl,” middle-class family, businessman, complicated citizens of new international culture (9) • After Civil War, idea of “great” American novel • Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson as key figures in the tradition • New forms of representation during the period after the Civil War to reflect the turbulence and disruption experienced • Immigrants trying to “reconcile traditional values and ways of living with American modernity” (12)

7. What is Real? • Naturalism and realism • Realism—1830s-1900—English, European, American • Moral and psychological lives of upper class, surroundings; Edith Wharton and Henry James • Power of language to represent reality (10) • Twain and James, interpretation of the real • Stream of consciousness • Naturalism—version of realism, or alternative • Life shaped by forces beyond human control • Far from middle class • Social Darwinism • Scientific, realistic, not romantic • Biology, environment, material forces shape lives, especially those of lower class • Characters’ situations within “enchanting, exciting, ugly, and dangerous metropolis” (12)

10. April is the cruellest month • “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865-1866, 1881) • Great star—Venus—as Lincoln • Bright star, lilac, thrush • Funeral procession (stanzas 5-6) • Landscape changes: Manhattan, South and North (stanza 12) • Civil War (stanza 15) • Transcends death • Private versus public mourning • Question of remembrance of those lost to war versus the remembrance of the president • Nature as consolatory or distanced?

11. How not to perform a funeral • How to write the elegy • William Carlos Williams: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174772 • How to represent this loss to America? Of America?

12. Source Material • Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) • 16th president (1861-1865) • Vampire Hunter • Prose, common speech • Declaration of Independence and the Bible as foundation for principles and ideals • Mystical Christ-like figure in death, his death as redemption of a nature • If undead? • Born in Kentucky • Incredible memory, limited schooling • Father, farmer in Indiana • Loss of mother at age 9, stepmother • Illinois, career in law

13. Source Material • 1834: Illinois state legislator • Moved to Springfield, married Mary Todd in 1842 • Elected to Congress in 1845 • Voted against abolition but for new territories to remain free • 1854: Whigs (Lincoln’s party) and Democrats compromised on slavery issues • Formation of Republican Party in 1854, Lincoln joined • Emerged as 1858 candidate for Illinois Senate • “House Divided” speech—house not to fall (counter to Usher? Other Usher) • Elected president in November 1860 • Before he took office in 1861, 7 southern states seceded to form the Confederacy • One month after inauguration, Civil War began

14. Memorialization • 1863 Emancipation Proclamation—free slaves in seceded southern states • 13th Amendment outlawed slavery • One month after new term in 1865, assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, died on April 15, 1865 • “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863” • 6000 dead • Return to terms of the Declaration of Independence, foundation for America • “For the Union Dead” poem, St. Gaudens monument • Cannot hollow the ground • Idea of mourning the dead—forgetting or remembering?

15. St. Gaudens Relief, Boston Common 54th Massachusetts Infantry, General Shaw