第5章　早期浪漫主义

Questions for Discussion and Writing Assignments

1In what sense is a fictionalized vision of American history, such as “Rip Van Winkle,” just as true as a historian’s narrative? Could “Rip” be more revealing and more powerful about American history at the turn of the 19th century than a historian’s story? Make a case in a well-written essay that includes textual analysis.

Key: It seems inevitable that we will at some point or another wonder whether a literary text—always a made-up story—can tell us anything true, especially when the subject matter being fictionalized is history. Any reader who has learned how to read literature after some rewarding experience already knows the answer: Poets “lie” not to deceive but to enlighten. It is precisely the fictional nature of literature that enables the poet and us to see more clearly what is true to history, to our humanity and to life. The fictionalization in a literary text can be said as the conceptualization of human events formalized in such a way so that we can experience the conceptualization in its details and design.

An excellent case in point is Washington Irving’s famous tale “Rip Van Winkle”, which is a narrative of “the other American dream” that tells the more complex truth. Rip could be more revealing and more powerful about American history at the turn of the 19th century than a historian’s story, because that Rip is the protagonist in this story but he does not get to tell it and his story is told by a third person omniscient narrator who impresses us as a humorous and effective storyteller who can distance himself to offer some mildly satirical comments on Rip. That will be more objective and realistic, at the same time, the narrator tells much more details of life, society, environment, personal relationship and so on at that time, which depict a panorama of the age.

2Discuss the style—including the narrative system in “Rip Van Winkle.”

Key: The short story “Rip Van Winkle” is humorous and romantic. Rip is the protagonist in this story but he does not get to tell it. His story is told by a third person omniscient narrator who impresses us as a humorous and effective storyteller who can distance himself to offer some mildly satirical comments on Rip. This narrator is further placed in yet another narrative frame: “Rip Van Winkle,” so the story goes, was supposedly a tale found in the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker (one of Irving’s invented personas).

3What, according to the textual evidence, are Rip’s connections with Dutch cultural heritage or ancestry (please note that there is more than one connection)? What does that tell us about New York as a cultural region?

Key: Mr. Knickerbocker (one of Irving’s invented personas) was possibly the author of the tale. With this fictive frame put in place, Irving connects Rip not only with a fictional Dutch writer but also with the Dutch history in the Hudson region.

It tells us that Dutch settlers in New York is one part of the culture of New York and exerts great influence to Americans.

4Rip falls into a deep slumber that lasts 20 years. Upon waking, everything has changed. Identify all the changes that have occurred. What do these changes say to us about that period of American history after the Revolution?

Key: Upon waking, Rip found that everything related to him had changed. His dog Wolf had disappeared. When he came to the village, nobody, not even dogs could recognize him. His own house went to decay and it was empty, empty especially of his feared wife, Dame Van Winkle. He also found remarkable changes in the village inn. The sign in front of the inn used to be the portrait of King George in his red coat. Now it had changed, slightly but significantly, into the image of George Washington in his blue uniform. In front of the inn, a crowd gathered. But they were an entirely different crowd.

It tells us that the 13 colonies in America had won their independence and built the United States of America. British power had been removed from this land. Everything had changed after the Revolution.

5Give several reasons why “Rip” is another American dream. Discuss it as an American dream in the literary sense. Comment on the impact of this tale on other American writers.

Key: Because that the main metaphor for the emerging American nation in “Rip Van Winkle” is a dream, the tale tells of an American dream, albeit a dream very different from the common version of American dream, which is the myth that one’s hard work is a sufficient guarantee of one’s acquisition of wealth and success in America. For that reason, we should call Irving’s story a narrative of “the other American dream” that tells the more complex truth.

Rip Van Winkle and Washington Irving’s dream recurred almost like a template in literature. Hawthorne created similar tales of dreams. “Young Goodman Brown” is such a tale. The protagonist, Young Goodman Brown walks into the woods in a dream and there he finds his newly-wed wife, Faith, in the middle of devil worship with other Puritan neighbors. Brown wakes up from his unsettling dream and he can no longer view the Puritan community with the same innocence. So Hawthorne, like Irving, tells us another aspect of American history with a dream tale. We find traces of Rip’s dream in stories by James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Melville, Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, and John Updike ad so on.

6Is Washington Irving a Puritan writer? Explain with some details.

Key: No, Washington Irving is not a Puritan writer, because that his writing style is humorous and romantic, and his works lack spirits of prudence and diligence. For example, in his “Rip Van Winkle”, the protagonist Rip was a mild man, who was well liked by the “good wives of the village,” but he simply had no skill in any “profitable labor.” His farm was the worst farm in the area. His children “were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody.” To some extent, we can say that Rip’s living doctrines are contrary to those of Puritan.

7What is James Fenimore Cooper’s several-fold contribution to American literature? What is America like through the literary lens of Cooper? What do Cooper’s critics (such as Mark Twain) say about him?

Key: He created an enduring American mythic hero in his Leather-stocking novels; writing on such subjects as the Revolution, the frontier, the sea, and the wilderness; he helped develop an appreciation for things American; in prefaces, articles and other non-fictional works, he proved an important social critic.

In Cooper’s writings we see an America in its early stage of self-evaluation, an America still trying to put its origins, its development and its vision into narratives. His novels also show the emergence of class divisions and class-consciousness, the beginnings of imperialist expansion, the roughness of life of the frontier and the optimism. In his vision of the new country, Cooper tried to achieve a balance of his belief in democracy and his inclination towards the elite. Resisting what he considered the vulgar and excessive version of frontier democracy under President Jackson, Cooper argued for a return to an American life led by an elite minority, namely, the Christian agrarian gentlemen of youth.

Mark Twain, in an essay titled “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”(1895), ridiculed Cooper’s use of syntax, dialogue, plot, narrative pace, and characterization. “Cooper’s eye was splendidly inaccurate,” wrote Mark Twain, “Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a ‘situation.’ In the ‘Deerslayer’ tale Cooper has a stream which is 50 feet wide where it flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to 20 as it meanders along for no given reason, and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the brook’s outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk 30 feet, and become ‘the narrowest part of the stream. This shrinkage is not accounted for.”

8Give a precise overview of the leather-stocking series. What is the American dilemma that Natty Bumppo embodies?

Key: The Leather-stocking series consists of five novels which, in the order of publication, are: The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). In relation to the plotline, the sequence should be: The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers and The Prairie. “Leather- stocking” is the nickname for Natty Bumppo who is in the habit of wearing long deerskin leggings. Natty is also nicknamed Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Long Rifle, Pathfinder, and the Trapper. As a type of mythic hero, Natty Bumppo is based on the legend of Daniel Boone (a folk hero), the idea of the natural man in Rousseau’s primitivism, the idealized image of American manhood, and Cooper’s youthful memory of a real character.

Natty Bumppo embodies an American dilemma. He feels at once a sense of loyalty to his civilized heritage and he has a strong impulse to run away from that civilization which is confining and corrupt. Natty’s actions reveal his complex impulses. He lives in solitude and with his own laws; he is forthright and courageous; he worships nature since in nature he finds “the impress of the Deity”; he withdraws from the advances of women and is thus sexless. For the civilization, he hopes that it will not remain greedy and corrupt but will improve.

Natty Bumppo is both the friend and foe of American Indians. He seems to respect them, but he retains his Christian superiority while living with them. When he blazes trails to help new European settlers, he helps push the Indians off their land.

9In what ways is William Cullen Bryant’s style contradictory to his love of American wilderness and a culturally independent America?

Key: Bryant’s style was contradictory to the vast American wilderness he celebrated and to his romantic sentiments and themes, because that Bryant was a romantic in his attitude and content but a neoclassical in form. And according to Whitman, Bryant was stoical and moral but was not Dionysian enough.

10Compare Bryant with Whitman in their poetic styles.

Key: Bryant became pale in comparison to Whitman’s innovativeness and scope of poetry. Whitman once said that Bryant “belonged to the classics; liked the stately measures prescribed by the old formulas ... his contribution was not novel—it was nature song, philosophy, of a rather formal cast.” It tells us that Bryant’s poetic style is formal and neoclassical.

Whitman is a daring experimentalist. He broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote “free verse”, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. There is a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. Parallelism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the lines contribute to the musicality of his poems. Whitman’s language is relatively simple and even rather crude. Another characteristic in Whitman’s language is his strong tendency to use oral English. Whitman’s vocabulary is amazing. He would use powerful, colorful, as well as rarely-used words.