September 22, 2014 The Scarlet Letter

Learning Targets:

I can make connections between literature and religious and literary movements, specifically The Scarlet Letter, Puritanism and American Romanticism.

Homework: Read and annotate chapter 18, paying careful attention to Hawthorn's treatment of characters in light of what you know about the tension between Romanticism and Puritanism. 

Activity 1: God in America - The Puritans - 12:40 to 33:20.

Activity 2: Romanticism 

American Romanticism Power Point

Activity 3: September 22, 2014 Romanticism in The Scarlet Letter Journal

In chapters 15-17, what evidence do you see of strains of Romanticism in The Scarlet Letter?  

ØSkim back through the chapters  15-17of  The Scarlet Letter by and review your annotations; write a 8-10 sentence analytical paragraph about one or two key passages which suggests that Hawthorne's novel addresses or reflects some of the values of American Romanticism. 

ØMake a precise and concise argument about how the passage reflects this movement;

ØPractice using the “short quote” integration technique which involves weaving short phrases from the text into your prose as opposed to always quoting full sentences.

Using Short Quotes

Eg. The small run down wooden prison where Hester is kept at the beginning of the novel is meticulously described with a series of words with negative connotations. Words such as “gloomy”, “ugly”, “rust” and “weather-[stained]” help create a bleak setting and a foreboding atmosphere in the novel’s opening chapter (Hawthorne 33).   However, the narration also notes that the “fragile beauty” of a fully in bloom rose bush thrives  in this rough and unkempt setting (33). The fact that “delicate gems” like roses can survive in such a harsh and ugly environment conveys the sense that Hester too can retain her dignity and beauty despite being imprisoned in  such a dismal and depressing structure (33).   

• Romanticism is the name given to those schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason.
• Romantics believed that the imagination was able to discover truths that the rational mind could not reach.
• Usually accompanied by powerful emotion and associated with natural, unspoiled beauty.
• Imagination, individual feelings, and wild nature were of greater value than reason, logic, and cultivation.
• Romantic writers tried to reflect on the natural world until dull reality fell away to reveal underlying beauty and truth.
• 
  
• Summary of Romanticism
• • Values feeling and intuition over reason.
  • Place faith in inner experience and the power of imagination.
  • Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature.
  • Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication.
  • Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual.
  • Reflects on nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development.
  • Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress.
  • Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm and the inner world of the imagination.
  • Sees poetry as the highest expression of imagination
  • Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folklore.

• The romantic hero was one of the most important products of the early American novel.
• The rational hero, like Ben Franklin, was worldly, educated, sophisticated, and bent on making a place for himself in civilization.
• The typical hero in American Romantic fiction was youthful, innocent, intuitive, and close to nature.

Characteristics of the Romantic Hero

• Young or possesses youthful qualities.Innocent and pure of purpose.Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle.Has a knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning.Loves nature and avoids town life.Quests for some higher truth in the natural world.

What if God was one of us? 

A Puritan Preacher's dilemma...a man who is supposed to be God-like but is also all-too-human.

Journal: Close Reading of a Key Passage from the Homework Reading – Pages 115-136

Skim back through your annotations of the homework reading and use one paragraph/ a half page excerpt as a starting point to write a close reading  response that makes a concise and precise argument about that passage.

ØTone of the passage? How does the style – diction, syntax, sentence structure, punctuation etc. impact the tone?

ØMood? How does the diction, imagery, and/or dialogue shape the mood of this passage and this section of the novel?

ØCharacterization? In what ways are the actions and words of key characters revealing in   this section of the novel? 

Romanticism in American Literature and Hawthorne's writing 
American Romanticism Power Point
What evidence do you see of strains of Romanticism in the last five chapters and the novel as a whole?

Examples of inferential questions from 2H novels: 

"He was familiar with that hollow feeling. He remembered it from the nights after they had buried his mother....the empty space of loss, regret for things which could not be changed." (73) How has this hollow feeling from Tayo's past returned to him? What do you think caused it? Do you believe that the empty feeling described is worse now than it was in the past? Why would this be?

‘When we gaze at the night sky’ he says, ’we are looking at fragments of the past.’  What does Stephen mean by this? Also, could that phrase (and some of what follows it) be relevant in some way to Elaine’s life as well?

1.  “After he has gone back, to wherever he’s going next, I think of getting him a star named after himself, for his birthday.  I have seen an advertisement for these: you send in your money, and you get a certificate with a star map, your own marked on it.  Possibly he would find this amusing.  But I’m not sure the word birthday, for him, would still have meaning (363).”  What might Elaine mean with this cryptic comment about the word “birthday”?  Is this comment connected to his speech on the universe?  Is the “star” as a “birthday” present significant in a symbolic way, or just something a theoretical physicist might like?