ENGLISH: CULTURE AND
LITERATURE
FRANK ALBERS – 2023-2024
INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
Goal = to think about literature beyond literature itself
Perspective: outsidership (you force yourself to think about the issue of power)
Power > used to pursue goals, diminish others
Who has the power in a society? Who decides who belongs where?
Every culture > division: who belongs? What’s proper? Based on what?
o Every culture therefore creates outsiders
What is an outsider?
o By different groups, different individuals, for different reasons
o Race, gender, religion, nationality, mental and physical disabilities, language, expertise, sexual
preference
o Polarising power = it decides some towards the ins and the outs (like religion)
Spleen?
o Melancholy sickness, overall dissatisfaction of life, hollow feeling, pointless, mourning
without an object
o Also sort of outsidership
makes you feel like you do not belong, even without reason for feeling that way
alienates you from your surroundings and the people you love
o Self-generated outsidership (not through society)
o Inexplicable
o Linked to the romantic era of art
o Linked to adolescence > where do I belong? Between being a child or adult?
LESSON 1: BARTLEBY
Opaque, frustrating
Deeper meaning to it
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: HERMAN MELVILLE
Writer of Moby-Dick (1851)
o Crazy captain: Ahab
o Invites people to come with him on a voyage
o To search Moby-Dick, a white whale
o Tried to catch it with a harpoon
o Whale ripped his leg off
o His thirst for revenge = economic goal
New York
NY newspaper called him insane
Obsessed with William Shakespeare
Felt isolated by American culture society > depression
, Alcohol problems, suicide of his son, marriage problems
In his revenge he wrote: Pierre
Financial difficulties
1866: takes a job at the NY Old Custom House
o Banal, idiotic
1891: died, colleagues did not know Melville was a writer
1920s: rediscovered Moby-Dick (linked it to capitalism)
Mother = Dutch
Successful novels and short stories before he wrote Moby-Dick
HYPOTHESIS ON BARTLEBY
Many links to irony
o Rational human being would fire Bartleby
o Lawyer describes him as a pragmatic, practical man > descends into endless defer > to his
surprise he cannot do what he should have done right away (fire him)
o Caught in an endless spiral of deferral > cannot come to a decision > Bartleby confronts him
with something he cannot accommodate within his logic
Lawyer = belongs to the world of law, money, courts, documents
BARTLEBY
= enigma to the lawyer
= nothing is certain > only through sources
Rumour > dead letter office as former job of Bartleby
THE LAWYER
Old-fashioned language, almost pompous, snobby
In control of everything
Advances himself as the first significant character in this story
Controlled by lists: first clerk, second clerk, …
Compared to now: govern reality by putting things in excel sheets
‘I’m a safe man’ = efficient, practical, in control of things
The late John Jacob Astor = successful businessman, hotels
Very prudent (methodical)
Style of parody
o ‘I was not unemployed, I was not insensible
o creating a sense to his character
o accommodate the negation of Bartleby’s statement
WALL STREET
Headquarters of capitalism
Office isolated by walls
Abundant references to walls
Wall – street > opposite things
Incapsulated, suffocating office
Stuck between walls
Wall outside window as well
White wall <> black wall
, ‘huddled at the base of a wall’ = where Bartleby dies
PAGES 7-8: I WOULD PREFER NOT TO
Throws the lawyer off
Not an outright refusal
Lawyer misreads > why do you refuse?
Bartleby = consistent
Lawyer began to reason with him > might be what Bartleby defies
Lawyer goes through mood swings himself, giving him different jobs, find something he is willing to do
PAGE 12
Allusion
Stab at R.W. Emerson
o Most famous philosopher
o Friend of Melville
o Wanted to become a preacher but had problems with the church
o Well-known, influential intellectual
o Gave speeches on what it means to be an American
Now, one Sunday morning…
SUGGESTIONS, HYPOTHESES
1) Bartleby is Herman Melville’s alter ego, his decision and disappointment
2) Bartleby is a depressed man
How a sane person fails to read a depressed person?
Chain of failed attempts
3) Bartleby represents Jesus Christ
4) Bartleby is about the risks
The story is a warning about the risks of any kind of intellectual rebellion in America
It suggests that he turns down this world
Never manages to formulate an alternative
I don’t want this but I also don’t know what else I would want
“the standing social order of America is morally outrageous, of money-grabbing lawyers who
are full of themselves. You only realize what is wrong when another lawyers tells you it”
(A. Delbanco)
If you do not agree with capitalism, this is what happens to you
Cul-de-sac = dead-end street
Ineffectual and distinctively risky nature of rebellion
, LESSON 2: THE SCARLET LETTER
Puritan town
Colonial New England > Salem
LINK TO THE AUTHOR: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Tituba = West-Indian slave girl, babysitter
Would tell kids voodoo tales
1692, Salem
Kids loved it
She was accused of being possessed by the devil
Other young women were accused of witchcraft
Turned into a collective frenzy
How to prove you were/were not a witch?
o Pushing your head in a bucket full of water for an unpleasantly long time
o If you died > you weren’t a witch (but you were dead)
o If you lived > you were a witch
19 young women in Salem, Massachusetts were hung
Lower rated witches (wannabes) > mere punishments or prison time
o Rock put on top of women > to push devilish feelings, secrets, witchcraft out
Decided to form a special court to trial those women who were being accused of witchcraft
o Three white male judges: John Hathorne
o Direct predecessor of author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Summer of complete hysteria
Pinnacle of puritanism, puritanical hysteria
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
He might have added the ‘w’ to his name to distance himself from his predecessors
1804
Hypnotized by the past
Dark cloud still hanging over Salem
Born into history
Read about family’s involvement in the past
Religious, conformist society
Anomaly after civil war:
o South: needs slavery to prosper
o Myth of America: everyone is free
o New England, where Hawthorne lives > abolishment of slavery
1842: marries somebody who belonged to the high society
o Sophia Peabody
o Sister of Elizabeth Peabody (one of the first ever feminists)
The Concord years (north Boston)
o All authors of this age knew each other
o All worried for the development of America
