For the 21st september: Notes for Reading William Apess's "Eulogy on King Philip" (1836)

 Desta vez as perguntas vão em inglês - pode responder em qualquer uma das línguas:

 - Contextualization: do some research on the Pequot leader Metacom, aka "King Philip", and on the war that wen down in the history of  Colonial America as King Philip's War - how is that war seen differently from Apess's eyes?

- Apess calls King Philip "son of the forest" (as he had previously called himself in his own autobigoraphy in 1829 - see image below). How are "forest" and (human) nature seen in the text?

- Choose an excerpt of up to five lines for an exhaustive textual analysis.

Highlights - the beginnings of US History and Early Literature

1450 - Guttenberg invents the printer
1492 - Columbus lands on Hispaniola (the Caribbean islands) - "America" (metonymy) described with exotic flourishes, enhanced by the hope of finding gold (Eldorado)
1516 - Thomas More, Utopia
1552 - Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias Ocidentales
1607 - Jamestown
1620 - Plymouth (William Bradford)
1624 - John Smith, The General History of Virginia
1626 - Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis
1630 - Massachusetts Bay (John Winthrop) - absorbs Plymouth, becoming the central community for the Pilgrims (Puritans)
1630 - John Winthrop's sermon A Model of Christian Charity (self-explanatory name)
1643 - Roger Williams (banned from Massachusetts, founds the Rhode Island Comunnity), A Key into the Language of America

1630-1651 (printed only 1856) - William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (the text as testimonial of the wonders of God in the name of His chosen people, with a plan of the city of New Jerusalem; also tells of the failure of the communal experience and of the pragmatic response to 'man's corruption) - important diary / journal form in "plain style". "Let them [the Puritans] confess before the Lord his loving Kindness and His wonderful works before the sons of men" (32) - institution of public confession

1682 - Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. M. Rowlandson
1689 - John Locke, Treatises of Goovernment
1702 - Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (sums up conservative vision of Puritan New England, with an account of the Salem Trials; need for scientific knowledge and sanitary measures)
1765 - Stamp Act
1773 - Tea Act
1773, Dec. - Boston Tea Party
1776 - Thomas Paine, Common Sense and the Rights of Man

July 4, 1776 - "A Declaration of the Representatives of the United States of America" 
1782 - St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer.
1793 (published) - Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
1802-1807 (written) - Diary and Autobiography of John Adams
1821 (published) - Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

Bem-vindo(a)s!

 Este é o blogue da disciplina de Literatura dos EUA (sécs. XVIII-XIX). O blogue é um suporte do estudo e também de extensão à comunidade, aberto a quem se interesse pelo mesmo que nós.

Para começar, quem se inspira a analisar este pequeno excerto? -  escrito por John Winthrop, líder espiritual dos puritanos a bordo do Arbella, prestes a aportar na baía de Massachusetts em 1630, após a travessia desde Inglaterra.

The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the Lord make it like that of New England." For wemust consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake.

(John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity" 1630)

Il. Gov. John Winthrop -- In honor of the birthday of Governor John Winthrop, born June 12, 1587 / K. H. Burn del c. 1860

Até 13. de dezembro - Emily Dickinson

Componha uma análise de texto literário sobre o seguinte poema de Emily Dickinson, prestando especial atenção aos pontos de contacto com tópicos e recursos expressivos de outros textos estudados em aula.

 I heard a Fly buzz – when I died —

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air -

Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me -

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see -

T.P.C. para 24 de Novembro: Walt Whitman - dualidades, di-versidades, contradições

 Do I contradict myself?

Very well then…I contradict myself;

I am large…I contain multitudes. (2808)

Tendo em conta "Song of Myself", especialmente as secções 1, 2, 6, 15, 22, 24, 32, 51, comente algumas das seguintes dualidades:

- humano / natureza (ou bestial, selvagem)

- corpo / alma

- poeta divinizado / ímpeto democrático

- compaixão / degradação

Homework for November 22 (Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener)

 

Choose one of the following questions and comment on it in the box below:

1. What symbolic undertones can be ascribed to the wall and how do these relate to the different types of walls we find in the text?

2. Characterize the narrator as character, from what he tells and shows about himself.

3. How do you interpret the last sentence of the text?

Poe, "The Raven" (1845) dito por Vincent Price