Author Archives: Stephan Amann

Supernatural Functionality in Hawthorne

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Supernatural Functionality in Hawthorne

The evocation of the supernatural throughout literary history has taken on many forms and functions. In the Romantic Period, authors utilized the supernatural for a number of reasons, typically associating it with inspiration, creativity, and the expression of powerful emotions. In this way, Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates some level of similarity. His writings typically portray supernatural elements with specific functions within the text associated with similar motifs. However, Hawthorne’s supernatural elements differ from the connecting omnipresent depictions of an inspiring spirit within nature, as seen in Wordsworth’s work. Instead, works like “Young Goodman Brown,” “the Great Carbuncle,” and “Feathertop” allude to the darker, nocturnal side of the supernatural. Depicting deep and powerful emotions or instances of plot action that are particularly charged, the universal and internal struggle between good and evil is conceptualized. Like other authors, strong emotion is portrayed; though, like the storm in the forest in “Young Goodman Brown” depicting the protagonist’s loss of faith, negative emotions are often the subject. Fear, awe, and horror are more typically associated with the supernatural in Hawthorne’s work. Creativity is often associated with the supernatural, though unlike an uplifting wind as seen in other Romantic works, Hawthorne would rather discuss the creative in terms of its perversion. In works like “Feathertop” the demonic creation of a straw man is read by critics as the perversion of creativity as they relate it to black magic. These are just a couple examples of how Hawthorne puts a negative spin on Romantic ideas of expression and creativity in relation to the supernatural. Continue reading →

Is it really everyone’s business?

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I would like to respond to Victoria’s post “the ‘choice’/'born this way’ argument.” She talks about obscurity in labels and how they are not necessary. In class we talked about what it would mean for the argument for same sex relationships if homosexuality was a choice or an orientation you are born with. What if our society thought more like Victoria. I mean, what exactly does it mean if someone is homosexual or not? As it stands now, there are those who feel very strongly about what constitutes marriage in this country. There are arguments for a strictly heterosexual view of the nuclear family, as far as legal a legal definition. In our generation, we are seeing some states rejecting this, however the debate remains heated. My question is, why is this important? Why is it necessary to label relationships and why are we deciding what can and cannot exist as a manifestation of this abstract concept? Imagine if our society simply decided to leave the choice of our life partners, and thus the sex of our life partners, up to us.

So who is hurt by allowing same sex marriages to happen? Some say the children in such a home. Some attribute a breakdown in an understanding of gender roles to same sex parents. There are religious arguments against it and psychological disorders have been associated with same sex relationships. The list goes on, presenting no real argument, in my opinion, of legitimacy. I am not sure why we are denying people basic freedoms of expression and choice, not to mention the practical applications of joint ownership and medical decision making abilities. Ultimately. If society, more like Victoria’s blog, left this decision up to the individual, I think we could finally let this one go.

Ironic Shift

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The Victoria and Albert Museum in London opened an exhibit for “Postmodernism- Style and Subversion 1970-1990.” This is interesting because of how difficult it is to pin point postmodernism’s beginning more or less its end. The very elements that make it up are in question. The Theory Toolbox mentions distinguishing factors in relation to their difference from modernism that is its freedom of form, its focus on process, and the prominence of the concept of Meta, such as a meta-narrative, or a narrative about narratives. According to Michael Keller in his blog post on “Wondering Fair,” an online forum, says this idea of the meta-narrative has invalidated the notion of a single narrative or an overarching unifying reality. This equalizing of narratives has led to both positive and negative outcomes. For one thing, according to Keller, this makes voices easier heard. Minorities for example can better express themselves and be accepted by the literary community, at the same time however, this eliminates the existence of a standard for good and bad, moral and immoral. In a world after post-modernism, in a post-post-modern world, human identity is baseless and defined within a social construct. Thus, according to Keller, the search for freedom during the post-modern movement led to the rule of the market and society’s emphasis on money.

For this and other fun things to read while procrastinating check out:

http://wonderingfair.com/2011/09/28/postmodernism-is-dead/

Biographical Reading of Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft’s NovelI have been researching the possible reasons for Mary Shelley Wollstoncraft’s writing of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus. Among the reasons I have come across one that most of us have probably encountered at some or another and that is it’s stemming from a challenge by the renowned Byron while he, Shelley, her lover Percy, and their physician were kept indoors by a storms. Percy’s love of the macabre led to the idea of telling ghost stories which of course led this group of writers to challenge each other to write one. After a horrific dream, Shelley imagines her plot. This is a pretty reasonable explanation, interestingly enough however, I have found that several more provocative ideas have been asserted. I decided to focus on a biographical approach for my final topic. It would seem many events in Shelley’s life are directly related to events and characters in her novel. The overarching themes of loss and mortality are thought to stem from her mother dying in child birth, neglect by her stepmother, and indifference from Percy. In fact, Percy and his treatment of Shelley, which seems to have perverted and distorted the loving relationship they shared. His selfish demands for a son and her miscarriage and failures to produce one lead to neglect and disappointment. This distortion of their relationship and its ties to the pregnancies of Shelley may be mirrored by the grotesque monster combined from body parts chosen for their beauty. These ideas are all contained in and elaborated on in Anthony F Dadalamenti’s “Why Did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?” which can be found on Academic Search premier, along with another article I suggest reading if you find that interesting: “Radical Parturition and Literary Labours of Mourning: the Case of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” The first one focuses on tying parallels between specific events in Shelley’s life with events in the book. The second looks closer at the language to understand the feelings demonstrated in the novel to understand the author’s feelings during her relationship with Percy.

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I have been researching the possible reasons for Mary Shelley Wollstoncraft’s writing of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus. Among the reasons I have come across one that most of us have probably encountered at some or another and that is it’s stemming from a challenge by the renowned Byron while he, Shelley, her lover Percy, and their physician were kept indoors by a storms. Percy’s love of the macabre led to the idea of telling ghost stories which of course led this group of writers to challenge each other to write one. After a horrific dream, Shelley imagines her plot.

This is a pretty reasonable explanation, interestingly enough however, I have found that several more provocative ideas have been asserted. I decided to focus on a biographical approach for my final topic. It would seem many events in Shelley’s life are directly related to events and characters in her novel. The overarching themes of loss and mortality are thought to stem from her mother dying in child birth, neglect by her stepmother, and indifference from Percy. In fact, Percy and his treatment of Shelley, which seems to have perverted and distorted the loving relationship they shared. His selfish demands for a son and her miscarriage and failures to produce one lead to neglect and disappointment. This distortion of their relationship and its ties to the pregnancies of Shelley may be mirrored by the grotesque monster combined from body parts chosen for their beauty.

These ideas are all contained in and elaborated on in Anthony F Dadalamenti’s “Why Did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?” which can be found on Academic Search premier, along with another article I suggest reading if you find that interesting:  “Radical Parturition and Literary Labours of Mourning: the Case of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” The first one focuses on tying parallels between specific events in Shelley’s life with events in the book. The second looks closer at the language to understand the feelings demonstrated in the novel to understand the author’s feelings during her relationship with Percy.

A New and Rich Medium

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The thought of viewing video games as a rich medium for story telling is not new to me. I think the first game I played, beat, and played again was the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The mythic tale of Princess Zelda and the heroic wood elf Link in the Kingdom of Hyrule captivated me the way a good adventure novel would. More recently I have been playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR), again. Though this game is not an adaptation from the original movies, it is based on a growing amount of literature written as a sort of mythology behind George Lucas’s initial tale. Our discussions in class made me consider the reasons I chose to replay old video games. I realized my preference for the game depended on elements that we find ourselves talking about in English classes. KOTOR’s settings were vast and immersive at times, and at others closed and claustrophobic. Vast landscapes would intrigue me, encouraging exploration which would often progress the plot. Sometimes the tone was set by the environment. Many suspenseful moments were spent in dimly lit corridors of dead ships in the middle of deep space. The heroes and villains depicted are rich with character. Through questions of morality, politics, and a heavy influence from choices made in dialogue the lines of an age-old struggle between good and evil are screwed and challenged. This is just an example of a game I found notably rich; and the industry grows each day, as new games are developed. I am sure there are many games of scholarly value on the market or in development today.

Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”

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I would like to work with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” It is a short story produced in 1835. This is a canonical text. In fact, my American Literature class read and discussed this work a few weeks past. The plot is advanced through a series of encounters with the supernatural. Set in a Puritan framework, Goodman Brown experiences the temptation of sin and interacts with the dark supernatural elements, while he deals with feelings of paranoia and sadness. In the forest, he encounters first an elderly man, who becomes a Satan figure. This figure tempts and pushes Goodman Brown to continue down the path. Goodman Brown struggles to maintain resolve, though is eventually led to a meeting of a renowned witch, the elderly man, and many reputable members of his town. This experience changes the protagonist, who returns distant and forlorn. In high school, I read “the Fall of the House of Usher” for class, and my teacher, noticing my interest suggested I read “Young Goodman Brown.” I loved the the witch’s sabbath scene and held appreciation for suspicion of authority figures. I always thought my teachers, in school, but mainly at church, were preaching doctrine they neither practiced nor believed. I reread it this year with a more informed mind and enjoyed it even more. The supernatural aspect prevalent throughout the work still catches my interest. Hawthorne utilizes these elements in interesting ways. I hope, through research focused on this aspect of his work, I will have a better understanding of the conventions Hawthorne adheres to, and how they function within the text. So far, I have found several sources of relevance and have already begun reading some of them. I have collected nine of the full text articles online and have catalog information for some sources housed locally.

Hawthorne accused of plagiarism … by Poe?!

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As I began collecting sources for our “business casual” proposal for Monday, I came across an article, http://web.ebscohost.com.nuncio.cofc.edu/ehost/detail?sid=bebcb5bd-ff63-4d5c-8bbe-1c7c7519004e%40sessionmgr15&vid=10&hid=8&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=6413341 , by William Crismon, investigating a charge by Poe against Hawthorne. It seems Poe found striking similarities between the works of Hawthorne and Ludwig Tieck. Though the passage holding the claim of Hawthorne’s plagiarism, or more likely his unoriginality, is vague, Crimson uses an assumption that neither Hawthorne nor Poe was able to read German. Thus, he is able to limit the works alluded to by Poe, in his charge, to “the Friends,” by Tieck, and “Young Goodman Brown,” by Hawthorne. Defining the works is necessary in the article, as it was a specific claim in specific contexts. Once this designation is made, Crimson goes on to compare the two works noting an interesting similarity through his distinctly opposite piece. The setting, a forest scene, and prominence of mysticism demonstrate an initial similarities, however a close reading of Tieck’s relatively forgotten work shows some notable differences. For example, the gender of the supernatural evil element is different. Hawthorne’s masculine satan contrasts Tieck’s dark female. Also, the supernatural appears in the day in “the Friends.” Young Goodman Brown’s journey takes place at night. I agree with Crimson and think it is important to remember that the German Romantics were regarded as the best, and so Poe’s charge was probably not one of plagiarism but conformity. It is interesting that Crimson’s article is actually highlighting the paragraph we looked at earlier in this class. Crimson asserts Poe told Hawthorne to “mend his pen” as not to fall into conformity with established conventions.

What did you expect?

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We have all, at some point or another, heard or read the nature of women described in negative terms: deceitful,wicked, etc. It can get pretty rough at times, asserting the fall of man was caused by Eve’s feminine attributes, including gluttony. I think gluttony is especially harsh, as it is a particularly of the seven deadly sins. In a way, it separates femininity with grace. Critics also refer to the stories in Chaucer’s tale as caricatures. If we apply this notion to the Wife of Bath as a caricature of the feminine… well it’s not flattering. We definitely see deceit. She inflicts her cunning on each husband to achieve her ends. She lies, cheats, and pretends to cheat while publicly chiding them. She even uses scripture to introduce heretical ideas on marriage and chastity. The text lends to the notion of her intentions, at times, being based solely on achieving wealth.

I think a reading which views her as a somewhat cold product of her situation is more appealing to me. It is not as though she had a great first impression of marriage. Her first husband kept a mistress, which perhaps not terribly uncommon, would send a confusing message to a young girl. We know she was married young. Perhaps this shaped her perceptions of what marriage really was, separate from love. Thus manipulation and accruing wealth was just part of looking out for herself. It was not until her fifth marriage that her methods were placed in the context of love.

the Story’s Nuances

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Our last class touched quickly on something that, I think, has become a pretty prevalent issue for our generation. In an attempt to accommodate and assimilate new ideas in as much of an objective manner as possible, we rough the rather refined edges of established doctrine. For example, the concept of a story presented some difficulty in pinning down. Most traditional definitions for a story have some allusion to plot action, or events about characters, happening over time, and relayed to an audience. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, for example, tells the story of a schoolmaster and his misadventures in a haunted region, pretty straight forward; and the article we read seemed pretty devoid of plot elements. Some, rather open minded readers, as we have been somewhat trained to be, may argue for the existence of plot elements in the essay, but here I think we can agree, it is not a story. The sonnet, however, shows how we blur these lines drawn by definitions. Here we have, what I saw, to be a description of the speaker’s feelings as he deals with the irrational nature of love. With this in mind, I tend to lean away from the notion of this as a story. This is more or less what we decided in class. However, the more I thought about it the more I could see, perhaps, an argument for an implied plot line. Clearly a character, the speaker, experienced an event, falling in love and feeling its particular brand of suffering, which happened in time and was read by an audience, us.

This issue of time is where the controversy arises. Seeing poetry, in many ways, as an attempt to capture a moment, I again assert my opinion that this is not a story, though I may have moved on the continuum. It seems to me, that the story of the speaker falling into irrational love is traced, as he describes the conflict between reason, personified as a doctor, and love. This may be the play action, to put it in football terms, that has events occurring over time. A stretch, in my view, but I think it shows a particular quality in the later generations of literary critics, scholars, and students. We are becoming less willing to accept established doctrine and more likely to try and see things in different ways. I wonder if this sort of concept, that of this sonnet being thought of as a story or not, would even have been entertained in a college setting 20 or 30 years ago.

Don’t hate on the Canons Swagga

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Reading a couple of responses down, it seems clear the canon, or idea of a canon, is seen negatively. I think someone called themselves a “canon hater,” which is hilarious. Any way, I thought it might be fun to play devil’s advocate, and explore an argument supporting the canon. I began thinking: What is it used for, and is it the best tool for that task? The Eaglestone articles talk about the many ways the canon can spread and maintain cultural identity. This is certainly true, however the mentioned use for education, it seems to me, has always been and still is the basic purpose of the canon. It is a collection of works deemed valuable for teaching an appreciation of literature. We must have a standard for teaching skills and concepts related to the English discipline, if we are to quantify one’s education. If each school, or more problematic, each teacher was able to pick his favorite works, we would see an amazing variety of what exactly an English degree was and how it was taught. This lead to other concerns, such as who is picking the canon, it’s ability to change and be updated, and the difficulties surrounding the judgment of a somewhat subjective concept, aesthetics; and I agree. These are valid concerns. That being said, I think the most important thing to consider, if the canon is a tool for learning, is not whether we agree with what is the best work, but which work demonstrates the curriculum effectively. When I would select works for teaching a middle school English class last semester, I maybe wanted to use Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to demonstrate alliteration, but it really wasn’t the best work for those students at that time. I think it would be a tough argument to say a universal canon is not necessary for standardizing the curriculum of the English discipline.

Personally, I think the second question is more interesting. Whether or not this canon, or the concept of a canon at all, is the best tool for achieving a rigorous and uniform curriculum. This really brings up the concerns mentioned above, especially for those with widespread qualms with the list. We need to trust the authorities picking the works. We want them to be advocating the values and elements we think are most important. I would be interested to hear from professors on this matter. Are these books effective in teaching the curriculum? Also, bad decisions and mistakes are made, I am sure, so we need a canon that is able to change and adapt. As expectations and developments within the discipline change the way we look at literature, the canon must change to more effectively teach these new skills and concepts. It would be nice if we could somehow involved everyone vested in this matter in the selecting of these works, however this is impossible. So again, we are left with a trust issue. I’d like to hear what you all think, if you feel inclined to respond. And furthermore, what are some other possibilities, beyond a canon, for an effective tool in teaching the standards of our discipline?