Midterm Study Guide pt. 3

This study guide will focus on our poets...both Puritans and Colonials.

Let's start with Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), a female poet whose work (The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America) was published at a time when few women and some men were not published.  Have you seen a picture of the title page of the edition published during her lifetime (1650)?

The poems of hers that we read follow:

• The Prologue
•  In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory
•  An Epitaph on My Dear and Ever-Honoured Mother Mrs Dorothy Dudley Who Deceased December 27 1643 and of Her Age 61
•  To Her Father with Some Verses
• Before the Birth of One of Her Children  
• A Letter to Her Husband Absent upon Public Employment 
• Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House July 10th 1666 Copied Out of a Loose Paper

Note that the titles in purple were not published until after Bradstreet's death.  "The Author to Her Book" is another poem in that category.  Comparing it and "The Prologue" could be worthwhile!

We also looked at John Donne's "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," a poem written to his wife as he left for a job abroad, and his later Sonnet 14, a poem written as he struggled with a call to the ministry.  The poems are linked below:

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/mourning.php

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20308

Note that John Donne is an English poet and predates Bradstreet.  (He lived from 1572 to 1631, and for him, Shakespeare was a contemporary writer.)  His poems were not published in his lifetime although they did circulate in manuscript among select readers.  Below is a picture of Donne as a young man.



We also read the poems of Edward Taylor (c. 1642 - 1729), a New England poet who was also a minister in Western Massachusetts.  Taylor's poems were not published until 1939.  Not surprisingly, no portrait of him survives, so here is a picture of his gravestone.  It is a great example of a Puritan gravestone!

The poems of Taylor's that we read follow:

• Prologue
•  Meditation 8 (First Series) John 651 I am the Living Bread
• Upon Wedlock and Death of Children

Feel free to compare Taylor's poems with Bradstreet's...or with the poems of George Herbert (1593-1633), another minister who was also a secret poet.  Below is a link to "Love (III)," the poem of his that I read in class.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/love3.htm



Technically, although Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784) lived long after Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor did, we might also consider her a Puritan poet...or at least a very devout Christian who also wrote poetry.  Many of her poems are also poems of address.  Is she a neo-Classical poet or a pre-Romantic poet?  Is she an American poet or a Colonial poet?  (Note that our editors place her in the section titled "A Literature for a New Nation."  Ironically, her career fizzled out because of the American Revolution.  During a war, people have priorities other than poetry.)

The poems of hers that we read follow (watch for updates!):

• On Being Brought from Africa to America
•  To the University of Cambridge [Harvard] in New England
• A Farewell to America To Mrs SW

Here is a picture of London in 1807!  Thomas Rowlandson's "The Miseries of London" is satirical, but it gives us an idea of the city's hubbub and cleanliness (or lack thereof).  Perhaps William Wordsworth was right about London!  Or was Mary Robinson?  (See the link below for her "London on a Summer Morning":

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182520




Below is a picture of Mary Robinson who was an actress and celebrity before she was a writer.  The 1781 portrait is by Gainsborough, one of the two most noted portrait painters of Robinson's time.


Here is an example of the other noted portrait painter's work: Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale) and her daughter from her first marriage.

Midterm Study Guide pt. 2

This study guide will focus on our narratives of exploration, including Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative.  These narratives were *very* popular in their day! 

We'll begin with Columbus' 1493 letter to Luis de Santangel, secretary to the royal court of Span. 

The picture above is a 1906 illustration of one of Christopher Columbus' ships (probably the Pinta) on its way to the Americas.  Note that Columbus' four voyages were limited to the Caribbean.

 

The Biography Channel recently did a show on Columbus.  Here is a link to its extensive biography:

 http://www.biography.com/articles/christopher-columbus-9254209

You may prefer its more interactive web site:

http://www.biography.com/columbus/#aChristopherColumbus


I wish that I had known about the above film about Cabeza de Vaca--even if it is in Spanish. 

Next on our list was the Spanish army officer Cabeza de Vaca's narrative of his travels through Florida, Texas, and Mexico.  Here is a route of most of his travels.  These took place from 1528 to 1536.  The map below is from PBS' web site.


PBS also has a wonderful overview of Cabeza de Vaca's journey and its aftermath:

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/cabezadevaca.htm

Note that, like Rowlandson, Cabeza de Vaca was a captive.  Consider how he depicts the Native Americans and their landscape and how he presents his religion.  What role(s) do gender, nationality, and one's reason for being in the Americas play?




Next we read an excerpt from French explorer Samuel de Champlain's Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain (1613, 1619).  Consider how this explorer represented his relationship to the Native Americans...at least from the excerpt we read!  Above he is depicted meeting with Etienne Brule, a man who lived with the Algonquin and then with the Huron.  Ultimately, the Huron killed Brule, believing that he had betrayed them.


Then we leaped ahead to 1804-1806 and the United States of America.  Below is C.M. Russell's 1905 painting, "Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia."





Although our anthology does not include excerpts from the Lewis and Clark expedition, here are the sites we looked at.  Note that these excerpts linked to below include journals from other members of the expedition such as Sergeant John Ordway and Private Joseph Whitehouse.

Here is a useful overview from the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation:
http://www.lewisandclark.org/?p=story&n=history-of-the-expedition

These excerpts concern the expeditions' encounters with the Salish of Montana:

http://www.nps.gov/archive/jeff/lewisclark2/thejourney/NativeAmericans/Salish.htm

These excerpts tell us about Sacagawea, their Shoshone guide:

http://www.mathcs.bethel.edu/~gossett/DiscreteMathWithProof/sacajawea/quotes.html

Here is another sampling from the late fall of 1805 when the expedition was in Oregon (see the picture above):

http://www.lewisandclarktrail.com/section4/orcities/astoria/1805history1.htm


We finished this section with the captivity narrative (1682) of Mary Rowlandson, a minister's wife and mother of four who was seized by Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nashaway/Nipmuc during a battle of King Philip's War.  (A Wampanoag chief, "King Philip"'s actual name was Metacom.)  The illustration above is from a 1770 edition of Rowlandson's narrative. 

I also want to include some pictures of the places that Rowlandson went to in her nearly three-months' odyssey through central Massachusetts, southern Vermont, and southern New Hampshire.  First is a picture of Lancaster, MA, where Rowlandson and her children were captured.


Next is the site of Metacom's encampment near Northfield, MA.


Below is an old photograph of Mount Wachusett, another stop on Rowlandson's odyssey.


For other, newer pictures of Mount Wachusett, see this link to Mark Cashman's web site on places to hike in New England:

http://www.newenglandtrailreview.com/images.asp?TID=109&index=33

As someone who grew up near Mt. Wachusett, I think of that "mountain" as a place where people go skiing, so it's nice to know that it's still a little wild and one could still have an idea of what Rowlandson saw.

Finally, here is the place where Rowlandson was ransomed.


Again, consider the impact that gender, religion, and reason for being in the Americas all have on Rowlandson's narrative.  Also, consider the differences between the various Native American peoples.  Think in terms of Native American peoples, literatures, and cultures.

I must not forget Capt. John Smith's narrative (1624) and Native American (Laguna) poet Paula Gunn Allen's poem "Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe."  Did you know that Smith was not the only author of his history?  Also, the excerpts that we read take place in and around Jamestown, VA (pictured below--hurray for Wikimedia!)


Below is a picture of Pocahontas in Western dress.

Midterm Study Guide pt. 1

This study guide will be devoted to our Native American readings.

We began the semester by looking at a number of trickster tales.  See Prof. K.L. Nichols' site for a description of the trickster:

http://members.cox.net/academia/coyote.html#introduction

Librarian, music teacher, and children's author S.E. Schlosser's site has more of a definition:

http://www.americanfolklore.net/tricksters.html

Note that the trickster is not limited to Native American literature, but in EN 211, we will focus on the Native American tricksters: Coyote (S.W. & N.W. America), Raven (N.W. America as far as Alaska!), and Rabbit (S.E. America). 

We discussed the following stories about Coyote.

Here is a link to  "Coyote and Bull," a story from the Nez Perce tribe.

http://www.ucan-online.org/legend.asp?legend=5913&category=8

"The Origin of Eternal Death" is also known by the Wishram as "Coyote and Eagle go to the Land of the Dead"

http://www.native-languages.org/wishramstory.htm

In this story from the Shoshone, Wolf tricks Coyote:

http://www.shoshoneindian.com/legend_001.htm

Is the Native American Coyote like Looney Tunes' Coyote?  Or are they quite different?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvgADFXHajs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYTWnjFqTDk

Or is Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes' Trickster?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvXEElJFR6g



The Raven above comes from the Tlingit, but the story ("Raven and His Grandmother") that we read comes from the Aleut:

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore27.html


The picture above is from a retelling of an African story.

Closer to us geographically is "Rabbit and Fox," an Iroquois story:

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore40.html

"How Rabbit Brought Fire to the People" is a Creek story:
http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore61.html

We also discussed orality, the features of stories (and other discourse) that arise when a culture has no written language.  These features may include reliance on performance and key phrases, episodic qualities, flat characters who act rather than reflect, and a flexible, pragmatic past.  See this link for Art Bingham's review of Father Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy:   http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/ong_rvw.html  If you are going to continue with literary studies, I hope that you will be able to read Fr. Ong's book someday!

See this link from the Milwaukee Public Museum for more information about oral tradition, specifically in Native American cultures:

http://www.mpm.edu/WIRP/ICW-14.html



Then we moved on to the creation myth.  The first group of readings were "The Origins of Folk Stories," a Seneca (upstate NY) story, and "How the World Was Made," a Cherokee creation myth.  (The picture above is a sketch of a Seneca longhouse, which I found at SUNY Geneseo's Rochester Young Scholars Academy.  For more information, you may go to this page on longhouses in general:  http://scott.k12.va.us/martha2/longhouses.htm .  It is by Martha Vermillion, a teacher of Virginia history in Scott County.) 

We also watched some videos of storytellers:

First is the video of Len Cabral:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhoYeJPNC88

See this link for DZApache's video of "How Coyote Got His Cunning":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EraMx3PgU4g

You may also enjoy this production of "Coyote and Horned Toad" from a middle school in Arizona:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjUlyarH9F0

We also watched the following videos from Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=58586975

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=58587247

The basket above is an Akimel O'odham basket that New Mexico's Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian auctioned off recently.

The next group of readings were the Akimel O'odham's "The Story of the Creation" and the Seneca story of "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky." Since "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky" is not in our book, see this link to read it:

http://www.indianlegend.com/seneca/seneca_003.htm

We also discussed the following essay by N. Scott Momaday, a Native American novelist: "The Becoming of the Native Man in America before Columbus."  Momaday is a member of the Kiowa people.  Below is an early 20th c. painting by a Kiowa.

See this link for more background on the various Native American peoples:

http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/125/Native_American_Folktales_Background>Native American Folktales (Background)

Cabeza De Vaca

Link

Follow this link for a picture of Cabeza de Vaca performing surgery.  Thank you, Zeynep! 

Here is a link to PBS' biography of Cabeza de Vaca:

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/cabezadevaca.htm

Follow this link to find his narrative of exploration:

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/one/cabeza.htm

Here is a map of part of his route:

Map of Rowlandson's Removes

Link

Above is a link to a map of Mary Rowlandson's journey while she was a captive.  Zeynep found this map.  Below is a map of the Northeast (including New England)  in case you need it.  Hooray for Mapquest and Brewster Academy!

Lewis and Clark - Landscape

Link

Above is a link to Tommy Emanuel's slide show of places that Lewis and Clark's expedition visited. Thank you, Danielle, for posting that link!

At the top of the page is the National Parks Conservation Association's map of the Lewis and Clark Trail.  I think that it may help to see their route.  Below are some pictures from the trail. 

Perhaps this is what it was like to travel on horseback across Montana.








Enjoy!

Biography: Sacagawea: Guide & Friend

Link

Above is a link to a short video clip on Sacagawea.  Danielle originally posted it at her site.  The picture at the top is from a sculpture of members of the expedition (Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea & her son, Clark's slave York, and Lewis' dog Seaman).  The sculpture is outdoors in Kansas City, Missouri, and the picture was posted at Wikipedia.

For more information about Sacawagea, see these links:

http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0400/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0400/stories/0401_0107.html

http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/saca.html