Post on Walt Whitman

Please click on the comments section to add your posts (for the discussion question writers) or to read the discussion questions for our class on Whitman.



(Photos: Whitman in 1854, at age 35, and in 1887, at age 68)

Lowell Mill Workers

Melville's "Tartarus of Maids" is based in part on the mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts. Here are some images from those mills.

Two weavers

At the loom


Boott cotton mill






Sources, and find out more, at these websites:
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/21boott/21boott.htm
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/lowell.html

Melville tales: Paradise/Tartarus and Bartleby

Please give these questions some thought as you read for tomorrow. We'll address them together in class.

1) Like many other stories we've encountered so far, these tales take as their subject "bachelors" and "maids." Think about why these single men and women--unattached, unencumbered by certain social ties--might be resonant characters for these writers? What are some of the common characteristics between, say, Bartleby and Ichabod Crane? The narrator in House of Usher and the narrator in Bartleby? The maids of Melville's "Tartarus" and the Beatrice in Rappaccini's Daughter?

2) These stories are about the world of work rather than the domestic sphere. What kind of work do we see being done? What is the relationship between work and home, or between public life and private life? What sense do we get of the private/domestic lives of Melville's characters? And how is it significant that Bartleby makes work into a domestic space?

3) All of these tales include images of reproduction and copying. In "Tartarus of Maids" Melville makes an explicit link between images of female reproduction and the great paper-making machine; the main activity in "Bartleby" is copying legal documents. How do you think copying functions symbolically for Melville? Is anyone doing "original" work?

4) There are subtle regional dichotomies set up in "Paradise" and "Tartarus." What can we make of the relationship between England and the U.S. that is implicitly set up in the pairing between the two tales? What about the relationship between North and South in "Paradise"?

5) Why are the "bachelors" matched with the "maids", and what connection do they have with one another? They're not part of the same industry or even on the same continent, so why would Melville pair these tales?

Paper topics

This paper is due Monday, February 16 at 4 p.m. to my office, Cushing-Martin 134. It should be approximately 5 pages long.

Irving’s male characters are often the town gossips, the storytellers, and the repositories of community history. Why? What role do women play in the production of stories? Discuss the connection between gender and storytelling in his tales.

Analyze images of consumption in “Rip Van Winkle” or “Sleepy Hollow.” Why are Irving’s stories so filled with eating, drinking, smoking, and “consuming” stories?

Analyze the role of sleep, dreams, and trance states in one or two of the following tales: “Rip Van Winkle,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “The Birth-Mark,” “Ligeia,” or “House of Usher.” Why is everyone so sleepy? How do Poe, Hawthorne, and/or Irving contrast the world of sleep and dreams with the workaday world, and to what end?

Compare the conversations that Everell has with Digby and that Everell has with Magawisca in chapter four of Hope Leslie. How do the characters’ different class, race, and gender statuses affect their competing claims? How does Everell relate to each character differently?

Emerson famously imagined himself as “transparent eyeball” and privileges those with an “attentive eye” (1115). Discuss Emerson’s use of visual metaphors. Why is sight such a key symbol for him? In what sense does it allow him to access both the physical world and the spiritual world? If you prefer, you may choose to analyze a different sense instead (hearing, touch, etc.).

Both William Apess in “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” and Abraham Lincoln in “The House Divided” speech, use religious imagery and Biblical references to make a case against racial inequality. Compare their use of such imagery: how does it give their arguments structure? What kind of claims do they make on the reader/listener?

Windows, thresholds, doorways, staircases, enclosed chambers, walled gardens: examine the role of architecture in Hawthorne or Poe. Why do these writers place so much emphasis on the structures their characters inhabit, and especially on liminal (borderline) spaces? What is the connection between architecture and the psychological states of their characters? Between the structure of their dwellings and the structure of their stories?

Wombs, tombs, and bridal chambers: Discuss the relationship between sexuality, birth, and death in Poe. What is the relationship between reproduction (childbearing) and Poe's obsessive doubling and repetition? Why do none of the male-female pairs produce children, and why do the children seem to be parentless?