Read: Thoreau, Walden (the chapter I want is not in the anthology, so you can read here online... my assistant put paper copies for all of you in the basket in front of my office door)... and review his biography (825-29)
Read: Whitman, "Song of Myself" (read the following stanzas from pages pages 1011-55: 1-26, 31, 33-34, 37-39, 41-44, 48-52) and biography (991-95)
Reminder: Please make your post reviewing pastoral strategies in one previous author, as indicated in class last week.
[More Arizona turmoil]
No homework questions, but please be prepared to discuss.
Class will meet on the grassy area in front of the main auditorium... we could also sit on the steps. It depends something on the level of "pastoralism" you desire. Hopefully the weather will cooperate!
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Tecumseh uses pastoral genre in order to unite all Indians to first, protect their hunting grounds, then, to gaoin control of politicla power.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I noticed that "Speech" form of conveying message to audiences instead of simply writes through paper work somehow relates to this "pastoral" discussion. When reading a speech, I directly think of a speaker standing somewhere in the wild field/land speaking to a group of people. Here, it is not the content of the speech that matters but the setting which this action take place.
Washington Irving uses fictional genre in order to manifest that human being is actually living under "time" instead of living on "land."
ReplyDeleteSilko uses pastoral theme in order to warn people that once the old tradition is destroyed, it can never restored.
ReplyDeleteZitkala Sa uses pastoral theme in order to construct memories for the Native Americans who have been expelled, re-gathered and detribalized.
ReplyDeleteIn her work, “Impressions of an Indian Childhood”, I also find that the land is deeply connected with the protagonist’s body and also her mothers. The distinction between the location of their tribe and “the East” is no longer the geographical matter, but the color of their skin. When she was in her original tribe, she was usually intimately close to her mother; however, when she was away, heading for “the East of the paleface people,” she was lonely, isolated and “no longer felt free.” (p. 1845)
John Smith uses pastoeal theme in order to advertise the charisma/goodness of the New Land, such as fertile land and freedom, but it needs their great culture to further educate/acculturate.
ReplyDeleteThese are good, keep posting.
ReplyDeleteEbenezer Cooke uses pastoral theme in order to express his detest toward America, even though it is economically valuable, by portraying the practical face of developing country’s life condition.
ReplyDeleteThorpe uses pastoral genre in order to satire the justification of the ownership of lands.
ReplyDeleteThis is Peggy's answer.
ReplyDeleteTurner used pastoral genre in order to manifest human’s power for mastering land and the people who lived there. The frontier theory in Turner’s work showed white people’s controlling power which extended to the whole America gradually through their colonization.
Freneau uses pastoral genre in order to advocate that America would fulfill the hope for a harmonoc society and eternal happiness some day.
ReplyDeleteJewett uses pastoral genre in order to reveal the pastoral matriarchy as enduring mode, also reminds us that an idealized rural life has always had important symbolic possibilities as an alternative to some commonplace, usually urban reality.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSarah Orne Jewett uses pastoral theme as a symbol in order to show that different groups, like women, have their independent characters and faiths, which should not be diminished and ignored by blindly following social traditions, mainstreams and steroetypes.
ReplyDeleteEsther's answer of pastoral genre:
ReplyDeleteHarjo stacks scenes of wasteland and symbols of danger in order to present her inner sense of alienation toward the American White dominant power.
Here’s Rea’s sentence.
ReplyDeleteBlackbirds are often referred to black people, such as Beatles’ “Blackbird”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAgceen153I
However, Stevens has chosen another role for this little bird.
Wallace Stevens uses blackbird as a theme in order to express the misfortune and the gloomy darkness of human heart always show up in different faces, everywhere, anytime. Thirteen ways of looking at the blackbird means people could have many perspectives on the difficulties they encounter. Just my interpretation.
This is Ting Ju.
ReplyDeleteBlack Hawk uses pastoral genre in order to create authorized speech against the land treaty with white people.
Black Hawk is not a chief, but he is strongly oppose to the treaty between the chiefs and the whites that he states "land cannot be sold." The ownership of land is given naturally, by Great Spirit. His main purpose is to educate the chiefs such concept and persuade them not to sign the treaty, and thus he wants to create a authorized voice of the land.
This is Tracy to post her thought.
ReplyDeleteRalph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882) uses pastoral genre in order to promote his idea of transcendentalism which influences many contemporary American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and later Walt Whitman.
I think their thoughts about land all contain some philosophical issues in their writings, not just simply writing the scenery.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis is Tady.
ReplyDeletePontiac(p.207) uses pastoral genre in order to remind all the Indian villages the good old past and the need to wipe out the English-speaking people from their land.
Elizabeth Bishop uses pastoral genre in order to express the competition between the artificials and nature, and also remind us the history of exploring the land.
ReplyDeleteCheever uses pastoral (suburban) theme in order to depict the emptiness of human life and the passing of time.
ReplyDeleteSuburban area can be seen as another kind of middle-place (between over-civilized and under-civilized). Also, just as park serves as retreat for the city (extension of pastoral), the swimming pools in every family are of the same function, and they provide the swimmer a place to escape (or to pursue?).
Li-Young Lee uses pastoral genre in order to link his affection to the memory in the past to his poetry. In most of his poem, he reminds the readers of the sweet connection between poetry and memory. Besides, Li-Young Lee is also good at using the device of senses in his works and that makes the readers feel like experiencing everything personally in the poem.
ReplyDeleteThis is Sydney’s answer for Tecumseh’s speech. I agree with Carol that Tecumseh uses pastoral genre in order to unite all Indians to fight against whites.
ReplyDeleteIn his speech, Tecumseh describes Indians’ common memories of landscape where they used to live. This memories build these Indian’s identity, separate they from the whites. So the Indians could call each other “brother” but see the whites as enemies.
Also, Tecumseh considers that “land” was given to “them” by Great Spirit. It was destined. The ownership of land can’t change. This opinion of land is similar to Black Hawk’s but kind of different. Although Black Hawk also thinks land was given by Great Spirit and “cannot be sold”, but he agrees that the ownership could change if the former residents don’t cultivate the land and leave there voluntarily. But for Tecumseh, this idea seems to be unacceptable.
I will respond to each post by asking a new question to extend or challenge your analysis.
ReplyDelete[Tecumseh] - Carol notes that the speech creates a setting and a rhetorical form for the defense of Indian control of their land, but can we really consider hunting grounds to be "pastoral" in the British/American sense of that time? They are not farming lands, I mean. They are a wild frontier. So how might we see Tecumseh opposing two different concepts of land ownership by contrasting two different kinds of pastoralism?
[Irving] If time or history is more important to Irving than land, as Sharon proposes, why does Irving dwell so much on the specific setting of "Rip Van Winkle" and describe it (and Rip) as a land outside of history? Is that just a fantasy, or is this pastoral sleep or oblivion in some way actually available?
[Silko] - Ken thinks that tradition cannot be restored in "Lullaby," which is perhaps true. Though Silko has also written the novel "Ceremony" which is about the recuperation of Indian tradition (like Momaday's "Rainy Mountain"). What I wonder is how can it be that some rituals involving the land represent the tragic impossibility of recuperating tradition while some rituals involving the land represent the promise that this can occur? Is it just two ways of looking at the same idea? Does it depend on which rituals and who is doing them? Can literature be a kind of "land" in which such a ritual could be performed?
[Zitkala Sa] - I find Jane's idea about Sa creating a shared memory to be a good one, especially in the way she relates it to the lost 'body' of the land and the mother. What I wonder is, how can we reconcile this with her main reading audience being primarily white? What does she have to say to them?
[Smith] - What specific aspects of the land make it attractive for British fantasies in this sales scenario Natalie describes? What makes it "good" in other words?
[Cooke] - If Ebenezer Cooke really detests the British-American province of Maryland and this is therefore a kind of anti-pastoral in the way Chaircat describes, how can we reconcile that with the fact that he (unlike the sotweed factor) actually lived in Maryland until the end of his life and had a pretty good time of it?
ReplyDelete[Thorpe] - I suggested that the big bear could in some sense represent the Indian brothers/enemies of the white frontiersmen, but I think Qian Yu is putting it too strongly to say that the main intent of the story is to criticize this seizure of land. Remember that Thorpe is writing mainly to a New York city audience. Why might they be interested in reading stories of the frontier, and how might he be satirizing some of their expectations?
[Turner] - For Turner, mastering (aboriginal) land is not a goal of its own so much as a process that remakes the (white) frontiersman. How does his picture of the process differ from what actually happened in Western expansion? How did (white) Americans seek to replace this process once the frontier was 'closed'?
[Freneau] - Emma says that Freneau looks for pastoral harmony in the future, but if so why does he locate it in the past and say that it is dead and buried?
[Jewett] - Lucille and Vincent both imply that Jewett defines the urban as male in "White Heron" and the pastoral as female or matriarchal. Yet isn't this a shift in American pastoral discourse from writers like Roosevelt and Turner, who consider wild spaces to be inherently masculine and cities to be feminizing? How can we understand this contradiction?
[Harjo] - How do we define a "wasteland"? Is it a pastoral space?
ReplyDelete[Stevens] - Here is what I'm wondering about Stevens. Does it matter that it's a blackbird? Could it be some other bird? Because those associations of black with misfortune and so on do seem difficult to avoid in an American context. What I'm saying is, if reality is created by (poetic) perception as Stevens seems to think, do objects themselves have any qualities of their own that encourage certain perceptions? For Stevens, are there certain kinds of things or places that lead more to poetic thinking, as conventional pastoralism often suggests?
[Emerson] - The same question. Why does transcendentalism seem to require pastoral space?
[Black Hawk] - How does Black Hawk claim to be "authorized" in the way that Ting suggests? After all he is not the great spirit or the great chief... so where does the authority come from?
[Pontiac] - How does Pontiac justify his alliance with the French? Are they part of the good old days as well?
[Bishop] - If the artificial and natural are in competition, how do we interpret the epiphany that Bishop experiences with the gasoline puddle?
ReplyDelete[Cheever] - If the swimming pool is a pastoral middle space, why is this 'middle' a temporary or impossible escape, whereas for earlier Americans it was a more realizable possibility? Has the American project failed, as Pynchon suggests in similar parts of "Crying of Lot 49"?
[Lee] - Not all of Lee's memories seem so sweet... and don't persimmons taste very bad unless specially ripened? So I'm wondering why this instead of another fruit?
Oh and I see Sydney already posted an interesting follow-up on Tecumseh and Black Hawk.