english 205 week8

English week 8A

· Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs

 1818-1895

                      1813-1897

READ: 

Douglass:  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1006-22) Jacobs:  Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Preface and Books I, VII, X, XLI (914-42)

Recorded Memmories: In Their Own Voices

Digitally enhanced recordings originally made by folklorists in the 1930's of ex-slaves describing their memories.  This is one of the more remarkable pieces of history you'll hear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWqVMNUawso

Frederick Douglass, the Poem

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   

this man, superb in love and logic, this man   

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

                                                                                                                                By Robert Hayden  

For an audio clip of the poet reading this piece, go here -   http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175757

 Statue of Douglass by Gabriel Koren, Gateway to Harlem, NYC

·

Harriet Jacobs

   Published reward for Harriet Jacobs

From the play Harriet Jacobs 

Written in 2011 by Lydia R. Diamond

Discussion Board：

Excerpt from one of the most powerful speeches Frederick Douglass ever read in public - July 5, 1852:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the he constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

DS:  How was it (is it?) possible for Americans to reconcile our rhetoric of "independence" and "liberty" with the bald facts of our history?

        

[Find a link to the entire speech at:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927.html]

250 words

English 205 week 8B

· Sentimentality

Attached Files:

·  Sentimental Power and Uncle Tom's Cabin.pdf (4.571 MB)

READ:

Introduction to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe, (912-13)

AND

"Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Power of Literary History"

essay by Jane Tompkins

(pdf linked above)

AND

"Feeling Right:  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the Power of Sympathy"

essay by Mary Kelley

at

http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/interpret/exhibits/kelley/kelley.html

·

Novel of Domesticity that Changed the Public Sphere

 Uncle Tom's Cabin, "probably the most influential book ever written by an American," is an unapologetically sentimental novel with the specific goal of "hold[ing] up in the most lifelike and graphic manner possible Slavery, its reverses, changes and the negro character. . . to make readers feel the pain and grief of injustice and oppression, as well as the boundless love of a mother for her child, and her grief when the child is taken from her, whether by death or a slave trader"  (Lowry 289).  The story began in a weekly publication called the National Era, and was serialized from June 5, 1851 to April 1, 1852. 

 

It was an unprecedented literary event; the subscription list to National Era rose drastically, and held the reading public spellbound.  When it was published in book form, it sold out so quickly that the publisher had to keep its presses running twenty-four hours a day to meet the demand.  It was a best-seller in the US, England, Europe, and Asia, and was translated into more than 60 languages.

  Lincoln meeting Mrs. Stowe; statue in Hartford, CT

 

Less than ten years after its publication, the US was in the midst of a Civil War.  "So this is the little lady who started this big war, " Lincoln supposedly said to Mrs. Stowe when she visited the White House in 1862.

(Lowry, Beverly, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", A New Literary History of America, Marcus & Sollors, eds. Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2009, 287-92.)

(Tompkins, Jane P.  Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1986.)

·

Discussion Board

"[Uncle Tom's Cabin] is the summa theolgoica of nineteenth-century America's religion of domesticity, a brilliant redaction of the culture's favorite story about itself--the story of salvation through motherly love." (Tompkins 125) 

                                                                              

For all of the attempts to contain women within the domestic sphere, both 19th and 20th American culture provide us with examples of radical social movements that were instigated, promulgated, and successful through the energy of women.  For example:

Abolition Movement – women were very active in the anti-slavery movement 

Temperance Movement –  which resulted in the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” was prohibited from 1920 until 1933 when the passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933  

 Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) – established in 1980; instrumental in passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (1984)

And recently, an organization called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America came online with the stated goal of “establish[ing] common sense gun reforms.”

What, if anything, do you think that this says about:

. the (un?)changing role of women in America?

. the acceptability of certain types of women (i.e., married, mothers), and the implied unaccaptability of others?

. past and current cultural ideas about maternity?

250 words

English 205 week8 comment

(make sure write where is this quote from into beginning of explanation) (you can find a quote from reading in first assignment).

Students will choose a short excerpt / quote from one of the readings of that week, type it in, then add a short (150 words or so) explanation for your choice. Was your selection important because it:

· is an example of beautiful or striking language?

· exemplifies a particular theme or character?

· makes the reader think about something in a new way?

· reflects a particular aspect of French culture?

· was just something that you liked?

For example:

"Whoever gets knowledge from God, science,

and a talent for speech, eloquence,

Shouldn't shut up or hide away;

No, that person should gladly display."  Marie de France

explanation:

In the opening lines to the Prologue to the Lays, Marie de France is providing her readers with an explanation for writing these stories down.  This is a very common and traditional rhetorical move informing readers about the ethos or qualifications of the speaker.  In this case, Marie is claiming that she is knowledgeable and eloquent and that these gifts come from God and therefore should be used.  I think it goes further than that; Marie, like most women of her day,* would have been expected to "shut up" and "hide away" as a matter of course, since women's voices were not welcomed in the public sphere.  By opening her work in this way, she preempts criticism about the appropriateness of her authorship.