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Engels: Cultuur en literatuur summary, 2022
Complete summary of all the lectures taught by Frank Albers (2022), very detailed summary of all the novels and his explanations. I scored a 17 on the exam because of this summary.
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Lesson 1Power relations are omnipresent-> everywhere
Not necessarily negative of itself, it’s neutral, you can use your power to do good.
All cultures create outsiders, there’s not culture that includes everybody, this mechanism is
omnipresent. Religion, skin color, language, sexuality, gender -> this makes outsiders
Difference relations of power in a culture manifest themselves through the way in which
they create insiders and outsiders;
Looking at outsiders we can examine and analyze the relations of power in a culture. Those
relations manifest themselves into creating power.
Political approach, literature matters, it tells you something about relations in a culture
Being a woman meant to be excluded form positions of power
Scarlett letter:
Puritanical England
Spleen: a void, not being satisfied, you don’t know why, feeling of discomfort it can
deteriorate into depression, melancholy, you feel alienated from your own culture
Unlike women or race, spleen is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and outsider because of spleen is
something you do to yourself,
Gatsby put himself outside time, he doesn’t accept history or chronology, he is a kind of self-
inflicted outsiders,
Many teenagers feel alienated, spleen, you are trapped between two worlds, -> catcher in
the rye
Beat generation -> on the road , spoke joua,
How empires fabricate lies to justify their power
When you see yourself only from the perspective of how white people see you
,Bartleby
About: empathy, societal conventions, depression, mental illness,
Published it anonymously
Melville is suffering from depression when he published the book because he had
just written the greatest commercial failure in American literature which he thought
was an absolute masterpiece namely, Moby dick.
Moby dick: 600 pages, haunt of white whale, press reacts ‘Melville went insane’->
today it is the best novel
He creates such difficult sentences etc. to give its readership the finger because they
didn’t like his book
Why does he say ‘I prefer not to’: he doesn’t want to obey, he want to have a
position of power, -> there is no final explanation for it, we have no idea if the
representation of Bartleby is correct, all we can do is trust or analyze the narrators
explanation of Bartleby
Narrator feels the need to talk about himself first, (first page) , the easiest way of life
is the best -> irony: he presents himself as a matter of fact, down to earth, practical,
mundane man -> Keep in mind, Melville had his audience on his mind that didn’t
stern Moby dick. The lawyer Is the person that also wouldn’t like Moby dick. Melville
lashes out to a materialistic, someone like the lawyer can’t make sense of Bartleby.
In a way the features of Bartleby are already anticipated in the description of the
other clerks
Three clerks represent three different generations
P6 first description of Bartleby, very theatrical introduction, immediately in terms of
physical and mental strangeness.
To prefer not to is not an outright refusal, it is a sentence that creates a kind of
hybrid in between space.
The lawyer tries to normalize Batrleby, to neutralize his eccentricity to make sense of
his aloofness, in addition an effort to undo Bartlebys outsidership.
The lawyer moves out of his own building -> huge ironic reversal
P14 since Bartleby is so opaque, the only way for the lawyer to make sense of him to
the reader he uses negation, he sums up all kinds of things he is not, Bartleby is the
sum of his negations in the lawyer’s interpretation.
Power relationship becomes extremely problematic (gives him money, …)
Language use: the others catch themselves in using prefer too-> language of normal
people is also affected, contaminated by Bartleby
As the story goes on, his refusal becomes more radical, escalation on Bartleby’s part,
P21 Bartleby says his vision is getting worse, “tragedy of the unfortunate…” = very
famous murder case in Melville’s time, murder cold man was sentenced to death and
on morning of execution he committed suicide-> this anticipates the ending of the
story
Overall meaning:
o Melville’s own comment on his own situation as a wrtiter
o He identifies with bartleby, he does not want be the same as other writers
o About a man who is clearly depressed, no willpower
o Criticism of a crass material amarica, the world of money, finance and the law
and how they intersect.
, o Could also be a critique of capitalism
o Or caricature of narrator
Quote: huge statement on the fact that any thinking American was by definition a
misunderstood outsiders, the word of walls street, finances, -> deadly for anyone
who challenges this
, First generation of American authors
Do we have a raison d’etre in America or are we just merely continuing Jane Austen
or Charles dickens?
In the middle of nineteen century a generation appears suddenly we are confronted
with a bunch of contemporary artists. And accidentally all of them seem much more
talented than their predecessors. The movement is called transcendentalism and has
artists such as r. w. Emerson, h. Melville, Henry David Thoreau (Walden), Margaret
Fuller (the dial), Walt Whitman (leaves of grass), Edgar Allen Poe
1850-1860 very short period but suddenly American literature seemed to be on the
map.
Group was called American renaissance -> weird name because there was never a
naissance
Predecessors were puritans (arbella 1630) -> these people weren’t puritans but
INDIVIDULISTS
Individualism was their idea: how you found a culture on individualism, isn’t that a
contradiction, how can we create social cohesion with all these different people from
different backgrounds, America is a country made up of individuals who are linked to
one another by the common desire to be left alone,
Withman son of myself-> celebration of individualism (who you are)
From a distance it looks like one unity, but from close up its all leaves-> e pluribus
unum: out of many one. -> out of many leaves you make one American
Walden pond: Thoreau was worried that America was going to be a failed country
(too materialistic), built a hut in the woods and lived there for two years. He wanted
to be self-reliant.
Scarlet letter
Hawthorne never reached a big audience, but with the scarlet letter he became a big author.
Custom house in Salem (Boston), Hawthorne lived and worked many years in Salem
in the custom house, He went to the attic of custom house one day and found a
strange object. A Manuscript written by the 18th century Jonathan Pugh- > interesting
story about a woman called Hester Prynne -> triple time frame
Bunch of paper held together, and the piece of cloth has the shape of the letter a.
He reconstructs the story -> triple timeframe “I’m not the author of this book, I just
found it, I’m merely the deliverer of the text”-> THIS IS PART OF THE FICTION
Why didn’t he just start the novel, why make things so difficult-> you can create a
double track narrative, you can have to stories and merge them which is more
interesting
Also, because he has connections
Tituba, girl was a non-white babysitter and she was accused with no evidence of
being a witch -> story spread through Salem and all women where accused of being
witched-> first story of mass hysteria in Salem, a court was set up to decide whether
they were bewitched -> one of the three judges was Hathorne (his grandfather) ->
direct link to author
There were no witches anymore in the nineteenth century bit there was slavery.
The witches of Salem where the slaves of the nineteenth century.
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