Universidad de Navarra

11.10.2013

CLASSIC CHARACTERS IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN

LITERATURE

Herman Melville's between literary sophistication and politics in Benito Cereno

The transatlantic slave trade, triangle route

Started at the XV century (Portuguese, then Spanish, Dutch, English etc.).

1789 – Slave revolution in San Domingo (Haiti).

By 1860, 4.000.000 slaves were in the US, a third of the population.

Legal in the US until 1865 (XIII Amendment) and in Mississippi until… Feb. 2013

Slavery

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Thirteenth Amendment, Dec. 6, 1865

Born in NY in 1819.At the age of 22 he set

sails on a whaler for the South Seas.

3 years later he got back and moved to NY where he started writing (based on experiences).

A form of a “rarest literary immortality”.

Herman Melville

“In fact, like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to Negroes, not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs.”

“All this, with what preceded, and what followed, occurred with such involutions of rapidity, that past, present, and future seems one.”

“Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves.""Because they have no memory," he dejectedly replied; "because they are not human.“ […]

"You are saved, Don Benito," cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained; "you are saved; what has cast such a shadow upon you?""The Negro."

“Benito Cereno, borne on the bier, did, indeed, follow his leader”

Famous Quotes

Cereno, Babo and Delano

And Aranda

Race –controversial issue in Melville’s writing. Slavery - Slavery under attack or a just reality under American

XIX century system. Friendship by compliance or by fear? The interaction of the three worlds - Americans, Europeans

and Africans interaction – Africans as slaves, Europeans as slave trade and Americans as a good helping by stander that

The end conversation - “In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, I explore how emotions work to shape the 'surfaces' of individual and collective bodies.”

The Death of Don Alexandro Aranda – a “symbolic display of the skeleton of a modern slaveholder in place of the image of Columbus”.

The Hegelian Master and Slavedifferent perspectives of interrelations. - Delano/Cereno/Babo each one in his context. Analyze what is seen to the naked eye. Looking for the reason for the phenomena (occurrence).

Main themes:

Hegel: Dialectics Master & Slave

Question of authority - According to Hegel, in order for the white (master) to be able to say I´m white, it has to be black. There is constant movement on the deck of white and black. This movement creates a game of perception, at times as rivals (the black boy hitting the Spanish, white boy coming up to the deck etc.) and other times all mixed together (working on the sails).

Universal consciousness, every man that thinks contribute to humanity).

The Hegelian Slave/Master Dialectics

Where do we go from here?Antonio Gramsci

Relates as well to the scarlet letter in which Gramsci said that it is all Economy, meaning, the relation between the basic classes to the upper class.

Hegemony, what unites the country is not the status but the nation. We shouldn´t talk ideology but hegemony to be one.

Alejandro Aranda´s skeleton – implicit imagery of cannibalism.

Colors – Black, White and GraySkin, Blood, Bones“please, master, while I wipe this ugly stuff off the razor, and strop it again.”

Clothes – Delano judges the situation on the deck by the clothes they wear.

symbols / imagery / metaphors

Grayness – The dominant color sense the beginning of the story. Not only in the imagery but in the intrinsic ambiance.

Dehumanization – reciprocal brutality in order to keep them from aspiring to natural freedom.

The shaving scene – “The trope of the barbershop violence” Yalon.

Emotion, the narrative of fear – “emotions can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity.” (Scheer 2012: 193).

Motifs:

There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it. Allegory transforms the phenomenon into a concept, the concept into an image, but in such a way that the concept always remains bounded in the image, and is entirely to be kept and held in it, and to be expressed by it. Symbolism . . . transforms the phenomenon into idea, the idea into an image, and in such a way that the idea remains always infinitely active and unapproachable in the image, and even if expressed in all languages, still would remain inexpressible. --Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

Goethe: Symbolism vs. Allegory

Write about one of the following:- Do you know any other Barber scene in art.

Compare the two using Yadon’s article.- Imagine a different ending. What would you have

liked it to be?- Who is the villain? Analyze the characters in the

story.- Is the revolt justified? Explain. What would you

have done as one of the sailors, join the rebellion, oppose it, risk your life to save others etc.

- What is the relation between the literary esthetic and politics in Benito Cereno?

Task

Did then the bold Slave rear at last the SwordOf Vengeance? drench'd he deep its thirsty bladeIn the cold bosom of his tyrant lord?Oh! who shall blame him? thro' the midnight shade

Still o'er his tortur'd memory rush'd the thoughtOf every past delight; his native grove,Friendship's best joys, and Liberty and Love,All lost for ever! then Remembrance wrought

His soul to madness; round his restless bedFreedom's pale spectre stalk'd, with a stern smilePointing the wounds of slavery, the while

She shook her chains and hung her sullen head:No more on Heaven he calls with fruitless breath,But sweetens with revenge, the draught of death.

Or analyze Robert Southey’s poem:

Next week

Colonialism and its aftermath. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

To read:- Todorov, Tzvetan, La conquista de América, el problema del otro (pages 195-212)