History, Literature and New Historicism

History, Literature and New Historicism By using Concept Map and two Examples

Outline • Concept Map • “Marked with D” by Toni Harrison • “Young Goodman Brown”

Concept Map –Draft

Concept Map –Draft (2)

Toni Harrison (1937-) • Always uses rhyme; like to use puns and silence, too. • Born to a working-class family in Leeds, UK. His father, Harry, is a baker, and his mother, Florence Horner Harrison, a housewife. • Two elements that separate him from his family: • Goes to an elite school in 1948 • Becoming a poet

“Marked with D”1 When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven Not unlike those he fuelled all his life, I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven And radiant with the sight of his dead wife, Light streaming from his mouth to shape her name, ‘not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie’.2 I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame But only literally, which makes me sorry, Sorry for his sake there’s no Heaven to reach. I get it all from Earth my daily bread 3 But he hungered for release from mortal speech That kept him down, the tongue that weighed him down.

“Marked with D” (2) The baker’s man that no one will see rise 4 And England made to feel like some dull oaf Is smoke, enough to sting one person’s eyes And ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf. Note: 1 “D” means dough, how a baker is marked by his products. See the next page for the original nursery rhyme. 2 Florrie, an intimate term of address for his wife. 3 A variation of the Lord’s Prayer. 4 rise = 1) to rise to heaven, 2) rise with ‘yeast.’ See how 1) the red rhyming words imply ironies and constraints in a worker’s life; 2) the blue words, spaces for resistance by the speaker or the workers themselves.

The nursery rhyme Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man! Bake me a cake just as fast as you can. Pat it and prick it and mark it with "B."Put it in the oven for baby and me, For baby and me, for baby and me. (a Flash version) Merry and lively as it is, this rhyme supports to bourgeois ideology of taking the working class’s labor for granted.

Questions • Textbook Chapter 2 – p. 247 • Is the culture described in this poem similar to ours? • How is our reading of this poem shaped by our history, and – our class? (e.g. Ariel, who can flame magically; Richard, who goes to Heaven to join Elise?)

“Young Goodman Brown” 1. Traditionally has been read as an examination of crises of faith, morality, and/or psychosexuality (the visit to the forest as a sexual experience).

“Young Goodman Brown” 2. New Historicist: grounds the story in the late 17th- and early 18th-century documents about witchcraft to which Hawthorne had access. (Ref. textbook 251 – The puritans 1) escaped oppression for religious freedom; 2) hated gaiety, parties, beautiful clothes, and alcoholic beverages.  proved to be wrong by contemporary historians.)  The documents from which Hawthorne worked, especially those involving how you tell a saint from a witch or any other sinner, limit the scope of Hawthorne's investigation into Brown's (or his own) psyche to that made possible by the language and content of the Puritan documents.

“Young Goodman Brown” 3. Cultural Materialist reading of Gender construction and transgression “1830s was a critical decade of change. Young Goodman Brown, probably written no earlier than the initial years of the decade and published anonymously in 1835, chronicles Hawthorne's observations about the anxieties caused by such discrepancies between ideology and behavior” (Kiel)

Puritans -- feared that love of spouse could rival and interfere with love of Christ. Heritage of Her Own, ed. Nancy F. Cott and women, thought to be morally superior to men, were entrusted with preparing children for Christian salvation. Passion-less; Sexless Views of Women • both periods sometimes confuse sex with • “going to the devil”; • 2. the nineteenth-century ideology of separate spheres • 3. clear boundaries between male/female, • public/private, and work/home were blurred

Questions • Textbook Chapter 2 – p. 247 • How is the story to be compared with “Rip Van Winkle”?

References • “Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown': Early Nineteenth-Century and Puritan Constructions of Gender” James C. Keil. The New England Quarterly, Vol. LXIX, No. 1, March, 1996, pp. 33-55. Reprinted in Short Story Criticism, Vol. 29

History, Literature and New Historicism