English 2034 America & Benito Cereno

First History • First nations (“Indians”) prehistory in North and Central America

First Settlements • Jamestown (1608)

• Puritan dissenters and providence

First Settlements • “A new heaven and a new

earth”• “Divine providence”

Jamestown Massacre, 1622

• Indian / European hostilities

European possessions at 1750

American War of Independence 1765-83

• War and constitutionalism• The ‘rebel’ attitude

The Old South• French / European aristocratic values• Classless, or not?• Questionable allegiances to industrial north?

Civil War, 1861-65• North / South legacy

Slavery • Southern bitterness after reconstruction• Freedom and racism

The sea in Literature• The “romance” of

exploration and travel• Shipping as a

commercial and capitalistic activity, but also adventure

• Are ships what trains, then cars, then airplanes represent? Freedom?

Herman Melville (1819-91)

• Born in New York City to a merchant of French goods

• Became a teacher, then a sailor in 1839

• Married; moved his family to Massachusetts in 1850; became a customs inspector

• Major novel: Moby Dick (1851)• Died of cardiovascular disease• Little critical success in his

lifetime

Benito Cereno • First serialized in Putnam's Monthly in 1855• Re-published in The Piazza Tales (1856)• Based on a real encounter with a ship overthrown by mutinous slaves in 1805• Critical reception: “read by some as racist and pro-slavery and by others as anti-racist and abolitionist”

1807: International slavery prohibited by Congress1865: Slavery abolished

Themes • European racist fears of “black rage”; Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest

• Is Melville criticizing Captain Delano for not seeing how evil the black slaves are– or does he see them as fighting for their freedom?

• Is Babo a murderous monster, or a misunderstood victim?

• How innocent is Captain Delano in this economy of slavery?

• Or: is it just a story about “evil,” with no real race question?