Apocalypses in American Literature (PS II - SS 2007 -Uni Bamberg)

Gone missing

2007-08-17T05:20:00.000-07:00

+ Wake-up Call + Wake-up Call + + Wake-up Call + Wake-up Call + Wake-up Call +

I have not yet received all term papers - so those of you, who have not yet handed in theirs - be so good and get them ready as soon as possible (!), hand them in at the office in U9, and - be done with it.

+ Wake-up Call + Wake-up Call + + Wake-up Call + Wake-up Call + Wake-up Call +

I schedule the Apocalypse

2007-08-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Guys!

August 15 is drawing near, oh, so near - don't forget that this is the last day to submit your term papers...if you want, you can just drop them up in the office in U9, or alternatively, drop them in my mail box. And here I mean the physical thing: I want a printed copy to rub my red in, not just a word or pdf file.

This is the End

2007-07-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Apocalypse Now it was today, or parts of it. The passage Kurtz is reciting is from a poem by T.S. Eliot - The Hollow Men:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.  Alas!
Our dried voices, when                       
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar                           
Shape without form shade without colour,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;



Note that the poem's header reads - "Mistah Kurtz - he dead" - which is itself a quote, from Joseph Conrad's 
The Heart of Darkness, on which Coppola's movie is partly based.

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Our seminar took us, to draw a concluding line, a long way through American literature and culture...

We started in

- Session I (April 18, 2007) -

with a reading of the Apocalypse, the one of St. John the Revelator, resident of the isle of Patmos.

Next, we took the apocalyptic to the American scene and in

- Session II (May 2, 2007) -

analyzed how it can be interpreted as one of the early defining moments of early American culture:
we had a look at John Winthrop's The City upon a Hill, which, as it turned out, soom came to have
loads of problems to tackle.

And then - tadaa! - Cotton Mather entered the class room, to stay, for a while. In

- Session III (May 9, 2007) -

we read parts of his Wonders of the Invisible World and analyzed his portrayal of the not quite so new danger
that had crept unto the colonial site, witchcraft.

In

- Session IV (May 16, 2007) -

we went even deeper into the text and saw how Mather is defining his own role as a public intellectual in the face
of what he perceived as a world-wide and world-threatening danger to humankind.

And let me just silently hush over

- Session V (May 23, 2007) -

where we had an all too boring look at Jonathan Edwards and his notebook on the apocalypse.

- Session VI (May 30, 2007) -

gave us a first overview of the class and the materials we had read so far. It also introduced Herman Melville and
his protagonist Ishmael, as a carrier of a specifically modern, 19th century sense of the end.

- Session VII (June 6, 2007) -

then finally got us into the waters of the Mississippi river, which we shipped down on board the Fidèle, the stage
of the Confidence Man. In restrospect, I'd say we managed to get quite something out of that difficult, but darkly
funny novel.

Moving deeper into the political and allegorical structure of the novel,

- Session VIII and Session IX (June 13 and June 20, 2007) -

gave us the time to scrutinize Melville's use of Indian Hating - and the function it has in the novel.

A more easy-going text was the basis of our next meeting -

- Session X (June 27, 2007) -

and we read Jack London's The Scarlet Plague and its treatment of the annihilation by plague.


Into the weird then it was, when we read two stories by HP Lovecraft, followed by a New Puritan short story.

- Session XI and Session XII (July 4 and July 11, 2007) -

And that was about it, of course - that left us a class session to deal the peculiar charm of the zombie apocalypse
(as laid out in Shawn of the Dead) and of course, the dark symbolism of Apocalypse Now, the Coppola movie.

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So. What do we take from the class? May I propose some bullet points?

1) Apocalypse was one of the earliest and strongest intellectual and cultural movements in US history.
2) Apocalypse is not necessarily about destruction (though it can be as much) - it's about revelation (of a truth, religious, spiritual, historical, etc.) and transformation, or the lack thereof (such as transformation of a body of
believers into post-apocalyptic post-history).
3) There are differences between religious apocalypses and secular apocalypses. There are also continuties, and
often the two concepts, religious and secular, will exchange concerns. Think of how real apocalypse was as a historical force for thinkers like Cotton Mather - on this life, this world, this site. It was happening here and had definite effects on the present time.
4) Apocalypses happen in all genres (we read, among others, sermons, historical tracts, short stories, and a novel) and on all levels. It is neither exclusively a high cultural nor low cultural thing - it comprises literally the whole body politic.
5) Apocalypse is also about power. Think of the great influence preachers like Cotton Mather had on their populace: apocalypse and the apocalyptic threat could be used to move people. Also think of the ways London's The Scarlet Plague narrates a power struggle: here, apocalypse is also the liberation of the proletariat, and the novel seems to warn against it.

Lovecraft/The New Puritans - Sessions XI & XII - July 4 & July 11, 2007

2007-07-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

Lovecraft it was, on 4 July, of all dates: The Colour our of Space & Nyarlathotep.

Again, I guess I could have done a better job pointing at the ways he uses his apocalyptic theme in these stories: maybe it's because I've been working with these texts for so long that I'm dumb to the fact that not everyone easily recites large quantities of L's text.

Anyway, The Colour out of Space.

The story was written 1927 - and yes, it is colour, not color. Lovecraft cultivated as a mannerism the use of English spelling, and he also cultivated himself as, really, a sort of displaced Englishman who for some reason had been cast on American shore: in his works, he is definitely American, so American Gothic that it screeches with pleasure - Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Brown, Bierce: he's tracing them all.

The Colour out of Space is generally counted as one of his strongest stories - that despite the fact that he barely does plot. Very little goes on in terms of actual action, but each scene is carried on and on to create an atmosphere. Also, there are hardly any reference points in the story for the reader to identify with, and that is also something Lovecraft had the habit of doing. You are alone, on your own in the story (and that is very much working towards the atmosphere - think of wandering alone through a haunted castle: isolation sucks when the planet is struck with terror and horror.

CoS is a sort of nuclear apocalypse - not that L thought of that explicitly, but the signs are there: the color has strange material attributes and is difficult to handle in a labaratory, it scorches the countryside and turns nature into a grey, brittle mass. Lovecraft was normally more explicit about his aliens - we looked at some images of Cthulhu with all his tentacles - and here he creates an abstract alien: destructive, completely inaccessible (you can't talk to the color or make it do things, it's just devastating the site, draining its lfe force: people go insane, and still they can't leave the place.

Apocalypse is, as we have seen, also a synonym for transformation - and the people here undergo a very curious transformation - literally one into nothingness. They are falling apart to grey pieces and chunks...without ever fighting the color in any way. This apocalypse may be secular, but it's still inevitable and cannot be halted in its course, quite like the biblical model.

Nyarlathotep -

a strange one. I admit. The story fascinates for its sheer linguistic - how would you call it? - whirliness. He's pushing the prose, tries to create a breathless stream of words that builds up into that maelstrom at the end of the story. Nyarlathotep conquers and the world goes down, while the idiot gods in the background play their drums. On an interesting note, Nyarlathotep shares many of the features that are commonly associated with Antichrist-figures in quite conventional evangelical writings on the apocalypse. I'm thinking of evangelical (or "evangelical") fiction like the Left Behind-novels (which also place a great stress on the event of the rapture: we had that today): he's extremely charismatic, very confident in his use of fashionable technics and technology, yet also very intimidating and horrific. He moves the masses at his will, and at the same time destroys their world: ain't that clever.

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Today: some Puritans return. Huh. It was for a reason it came to this, a very obvious reason: we started with the Puritans, and now we're gonna take them back to England.

The collection our story was taken from is called, All hail the New Puritans, and Puritan, as we found out, is more a description of their prose stylistics, not so much of their morals. I quote here the 10 point manifesto, as jotted down on Wikipedia -

Primarily storytellers, we are dedicated to the narrative form. (that's a good one - they believe in prose. I would like them even if that was the only sentence in the manfesto)
We are prose writers and recognise that prose is the dominant form of expression. For this reason we shun poetry and poetic licence in all its forms. (That's pretty much nonsense - true, prose dominates over poetry on the present literary market, and poetry has moved deep into academic discourse and out of public discourses, but that doesn't mean you have to shun poetry. It can still do things.)
While acknowledging the value of genre fiction, whether classical or modern, we will always move towards new openings, rupturing existing genre expectations. (Wow! That's so completely...unoriginal, really. That's what innovative writers have been doing for 2,500 years, and no big deal. Lovecraft did it very routinely, mixing horror and science fiction and infusing apocalypse into the two of them.)
We believe in textual simplicity and vow to avoid all devices of voice: rhetoric, authorial asides. (That is a strong announcement...it makes their prose very immediate, very firmly locked on the present, and no nonsense.)
In the name of clarity, we recognise the importance of temporal linearity and eschew flashbacks, dual temporal narratives and foreshadowing.
We believe in grammatical purity and avoid any elaborate punctuation. (That also sounds strong, but really it gives their prose a plainness that is not always favorable.)
We recognise that published works are also historical documents. As fragments of our time, all our texts are dated and set in the present day. All products, places, artists and objects named are real. (Interesting, isn't it? Are they writing fiction, or history? Or both? Again, they go down into the present moment, their prose has to work right here and now - much like original Puritan prose, where you also always read a clear and definite utilitarian purpose. Literature is never just expressive of beauty, it does things, it works.)
As faithful representation of the present, our texts will avoid all improbable or unknowable speculations on the past or the future.
We are moralists, so all texts feature a recognisable ethical reality. (But they don't promote an ethical reality by their interpretation, the way the Puritans did in their theocratic state. The New Puritans observe, first of all.)
Nevertheless, our aim is integrity of expression, above and beyond any commitment to form.

The story we read was written by Scarlett Thomas, titled Mind Control - an odd little piece of prose around the lives of three people - the narrator, male or female (we can't really tell), Mark's dad (the fish guy), Mark's mom (the ice lady). They seem traumatized, all three of them - and only later did we realize the obvious (and I was the last to do so), namely that this trauma might be based on Mark's death, as explained in the opening paragraph.

The fishman is into the apocalypse: and his daughter in law guards the radio to filter the news on the last things he might receive when listening to what's-his-name from Indiana...of course, the Indiana preacher is interesting to Mark's dad not so much when he delivers the apocalyptic message in a religious way (he doesn't listen to the Jesus-songs), but more when he's going into details on the worldly preparations that need to be taken care of (mind the water purifier).

The fish? What do the fish do? They are not religious symbols (as in loaves and fish), but still seem to hold some spiritual meaning to the dad. Maybe he also projects his son into the swarm of fish - and so when the fish go, he re-experiences Mark's death once more.

So. The world is going down (or so the Indiana guy has it), and who cares? Does it all matter? Nah. It's more a media phenomenon that you can get involved in however far you like (like, take the secular, but not the spiritual preparations), apocalypse à la carte, if you will.

The Apocalypse will go on the Road, some.

2007-07-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

Note that the upcoming class session on Wednesday, July 11 will not take place in our regular class room. NO. There has been another room change. We will be in...

M3/126N (!)

- that's in the big main building...

See you there...

To read...and write: Notes on the Term Paper

2007-07-04T02:24:00.000-07:00

Alright then. Some pointers...hmmm...

As I see it, no one will want to to write their essay on Michael Wigglesworth, right?

1) How about the poetry of Edward Taylor (1642-1729)? As a poet, as an artist he was way more accomplished than Wigglesworth & in fact is more interesting to read. A small selection from his works are here. You could read some (2-3 to them) to analyze how he gets the second generation Puritan experience (the decay of the Puritan belief - the war(s) with the native population - the Puritan community in danger - and so on) into verse. Or you could concentrate on his unlikely revival in the 1930s - when his manuscripts were re-discovered...and link it with the general revival of interest in Puritan colonial times, pioneered by, among others, Perry Miller of Harvard University. Possible working titles like "The Puritan Revival: 1920-1960" come to my mind here.

Sound exciting? Or not yet exciting enough?

2) The apocalyptic Fringe

Throughout American history, apocalyptic cults have had a considerable influence - think of the Millerites, a highly influential 19th century religious group, or, more recently, the Branch Davidians, who went down in flames in Waco, Texas? What elements (of their belief, of their position in society, of their cult actions, etc.) did they share, what happened to them, what influence do they have on modern American society? You would have to work with their texts, mind you - pdf copies of the Millerite Journal, The Midnight Cry, are even available online.

3) Apocalypse now...and over the last 30 years, or so.

Ever since the 1970s, apocalypse has been a hot topic in American culture, thanks also to evangelical media-preachers like Hal Lindsey. The Left Behind - series of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins has had and still has an amazing success - what do they do with the end of the world? Are their novels religious novels? Why do they appeal to such a wide readership? What view of the world do they present - what are the historical and socio-political constellations? You would have to read at least one of the Left Behind-novels, which I realize is a punishment, but one that is worth it.

4) California Apocalypse

We read Jack London - with him in mind, you could read George R. Stewart's Earth Abides - a fascinating 1949 novel on a post-apocalyptic world being (sort of) recolonized once again? What happens to society? Education? What is going on with the countrysite and how does Stewart write about it? Will civilization return? Why was Stewart writing a novel like this at the time he did?

5) Ecological Apocalypses

You might not think of it this way, but ecological thought (as in "Greenpeace" or "Green Party") also may be interpreted as a reaction to the final days to come, to nature's apocalypse. You could read John Christopher's No Blade of Grass (1956), an interesting novel describing the final days after an unwholesome virus plague has practically destroyed the worldwide stock of grass seeds - the world is starving to death. What concerns does the book talk about? Have any of them come true? How is the apocalypse treated, what do the protagonists do in the final days? Is there an echo of the pastoral tradition?

6) Apocalypse now, now, now!

You might want to read and analyze Cormack McCarthy's The Road (2006) - what is his view of civilization? His style in describing its downfall? What tone does the novel have? What is the character constellation and what effects does it have on the plot? The book is on hold in the library, just in case you're wondering.

7) Apocalypse Now - but now for real

You're all familiar, I guess, with the 1979 movie of the name. You could analyze the movie (and its literary backdrop - Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, which you would have to read - and try to understand and describe the apocalypse presented there? Where is it happening in the book, where in the movie? When is it happening? Does the movie describe the Vietnam War as an apocalyptic experience? What role does race play as an issue? Are there religious undertones?

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Some more approaches that came to my mind...

8) Apocalypse and Heroism

Ever seen movies like Armageddon? Or The Core? Or The Matrix? Or 12 Monkeys (Bruce Willis again)? You could base your term paper on a reading of these movies (or any other disaster movies you might know and enjoy), but I would insist that you resort to at least one written apocalypse, of your choice - for example, Matthew P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud, a short and very exciting turn of the century novel: how is heroism used and portrayed there? How is it used in these more modern movie apocalypses? What relation do the characters have or build toward the planet? What are their motives? Their ethics, their religion? How do they handle the end of the world?

9) Nuclear Apocalypse

After 1945, nuclear apocalypse was an actual option, and it was soon adapted into fiction. We read, last time, on July 4, Lovecraft's The Colour out of Space, an early nuclear apocalypse (long before the Manhattan project was completed) - other famous novels of that genre include Neville Shute's On the Beach, a pretty scary and intimidating novel. How is the apocalypse treated here? How is hope (for survival, among other things) dealt with? What stand does the novel take on science and on progress? On history, in general? What stylistic devices does the author use to write his apocalypse, what atmosphere does he manage to create?

What are your chances of surviving a Zombie Apocalypse?

2007-07-01T05:01:00.001-07:00

Yeah, indeed - what are your chances?

38%

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Session X - June 27, 2007 - Jack London: The Scarlet Plague

2007-06-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

Jack London: The Scarlet Plague

Before we went into the text, I tried to get attention back to that frontier issue: around the turn of the century, you already had to go far to find any real frontier that offered frontier hardships. Klondike was one of these - or rather the Klondike River, near the town of Dawson City. London's most famous novel, The Call of the Wild, is set in front of that background of late 19th century Yukon gold rushes.

You certainly can have that feeling at times when you're reading one of his stories - his characters are always in a position where they - what the heck! - could just get up, reign in the dogs to the sled and move out into the wild...to do things. Hunt maybe, fish, or just find a meditative backdrop.

If there is spirituality, it is carved into the sense of adventure he creates, that very physical activism that makes characters go out and do things - I think you can find that in The Scarlet Plague, a post-apocalyptic story: the world has been devastated and effectively cleared by a massive sweep of an ultra-lethal plague (correspondent to level 2 on Jamais Cascio's apocalypse scale), only a handful of survivors remain. And, naturally, they are organized in tribal structures.
Granser makes the case for us:

"Yes, Yes, Edwin; I had forgotten. Sometimes the memory of the past is very strong upon me, and I forget that I am a dirty old man, clad in goatskin, wandering with my savage grandsons who are goatherds in the primeval wilderness. 'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,' and so lapsed our glorious, colossal civilization. I am Granser, a tired old man. I belong to the tribe of Santa Rosans. I married into that tribe. My sons and daughters married into the Chauffeurs, the Sacramentos, and the Palo-Altos. You, Hare-Lip, are of the Chauffeurs. You, Edwin, are of the Sacramentos. And you, Hoo-Hoo, are of the Palo-Altos. Your tribe takes its name from a town that was near the seat of another great institution of learning. It was called Stanford University. Yes, I remember now. It is perfectly clear. I was telling you of the Scarlet Death. Where was I in my story?"

Note that he, the old man, is not the narrator - there is an omniscient narrator pulling his strings, and obviously this narrator is not part of the apocalyptic experience: no need to keep him alive for the sake of the narration, he has it all organized in his hands.

We analyzed the state of pre-apocalypse society in this story and saw that American democracy has been turned into a capitalist oligarchy, where presidents are no longer elected, but called into office by a "Board of Magnates". The state is being run like a business venture from top to bottom. The working population is being held in slavery ("ironically called freemen"), enserviced to the intellegentsia and the economic elite. The coming apocalypse then causes a major transformation, indeed: power has gone to the proletariat, and they are characterized none to friendly - variously termed as animals, brutes, and so on. And obviously, the exercise of power is not one that comes easily to them: once they have it, they abuse it. Thus, the Chauffeur, rather than playing out his power over Vesta van Warden,

"I went on with him to his camp, and there I saw her, Vesta, the one woman. It was glorious and . . . pitiful. There she was, Vesta Van Warden, the young wife of John Van Warden, clad in rags, with marred and scarred and toil-calloused hands, bending over the campfire and doing scullion work-she, Vesta, who had been born to the purple to greatest baronage of wealth the world has ever known."

...kills her in one of his fits of rage -

"It was while he was drunk, once, that he killed Vesta. I firmly believe that he killed Vesta in a fit of drunken cruelty though he always maintained that she fell into the lake and was drowned."

Or does he? Who are we supposed to align with here? Not the hairy Chauffeur brute, probably, but also not Granser, the former literature professor - note how absolutely inefficient his attempts to perpetuate culture are. When it comes to the worst and Vesta's life is at stake, all he comes up with - foolishly - is a ham-handed attempt to barter with the Chauffeur, thereby commodifying the woman. This might seem inevitable in his position, almost pragmatic - all out of a sudden, human existence is being magnified in scope, "embiggened", as the Springfield folk have it. There are only a few dozen individuals left, after all, and each life must needs be secured and linked into the reproductive cycle: women like Vesta are by default called to biological efficiency (= as many births as possible).

And still, even decades after the event, Granser can drool on and claim that it was all a matter of private jealousy he cultivated toward the Chauffeur -

"-Bill-that was it; Bill, the Chauffeur. That was his name. He was a wretched, primitive man, wholly devoid of the finer instincts and chivalrous promptings of a cultured soul. No, there is no absolute justice, for to him fell that wonder of womanhood, Vesta Van Warden. The grievousness of this you will never understand, my grandsons; for you are yourselves Primitive little savages, unaware of aught else but savagery. Why should Vesta not have been mine? I was a man of culture and refinement, a professor in a great university. Even so, in the time before the plague, such was her exalted position, she would not have deigned to know that I existed. Mark, then, the abysmal degradation to which she fell at the hands of the Chauffeur. Nothing less than the destruction of all mankind had made it possible that I should know her, look in her eyes, converse with her, touch her hand-ay, and love her and know that her feelings toward me were very kindly. I have reason to believe that she, even she, would have loved me, there being no other man in the world except the Chauffeur. Why, when it destroyed eight billions of souls, did not the plague destroy just one more man, and that man the Chauffeur?

He doesn't seem to acknowledge just what had occured to the planet - or maybe he decides to ignore the post-apocalyptic reality to take refuge in a pre-apocalypse world of concepts where jealousy was an option.

Laying a finger on the outlines of the apocalypse presented, we saw that salvation was not one of its constituents: Granser survives due to his immunity - by coincidence, not by a virtue of a righteous, god-fearing, witch-hunting life. History, and humankind, is longer moving toward a definite goal (that is, it is not teleological), but rather keeps rambling and rambling on, beginning all over again once a cycle has been completed.

Humans are so meaningless

2007-06-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

Note: next time, July 4, we'll not be in our regular class room. Instead, we'll meet in MS12/009 - same building, two or three rooms further on.
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On a quick note, I'll throw in the reading texts for next week - this time by horror godfather HP Lovecraft.

Next time, I want to to go into two of his stories - one that we've already heard about today, sort of, the one with the meteor -

The Colour out of Space (1927)

- a grand horror story.

And in addition -

Nyarlathotep (1920) -

an almost fragmentary and disregarded little story that I think holds some potential toward an apocalyptic reading. I'm looking forward to hearing your reactions - he's not quite easy to read, but if his texts are difficult, they are so in a way very different from Melville's Confidence Man, as I'm sure you'll notice.

Session X - June 27, 2006 - Jack London: The Scarlet Plague

2007-06-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

A reminder - we'll discuss Jack London this week, a fabulous little story of his, called, "The Scarlet Plague", that I'm sure you'll enjoy reading...

Session VIII & IX - June 13 and June 20, 2007 - The Confidence Man continued

2007-06-20T12:55:00.001-07:00

Time won't save our souls, Time won't save our souls.
(Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Shuffle your Feet)

We did it! We read The Confidence Man and survived this most complex of Melville's novels, his final April Fool's gift to the reading public that had largely ignored most of his novels. We went deep into that most riddled passage - on Indian Killing - which comprises chapters 25-28. For that part of his novel Melville drew largely on James Hall's Sketches of History, Life, and Manners, in the West (the passages we read are here), and we gathered some points on the differences and changes Melville made.

Melville

- black and white – drastic stories

- “Beware of the Indian!”

- “friendly Indians rare”

- The Moredocks in Ohio: John Moredock the only survivor

- the white man not depicted as an aggressor at all – only the evil Indians are

- backwoodmen described as Alexander the Great, which is here meant as a compliment, maybe an ironic compliment of sorts, as Alexander had a rather massive trail of blood in his back when he marched on India.

Hall

- white man: aggressive invader, pushing his expansion

- but also: aggressive Indians (assaulting the Moredock family)

- “an eye for an eye…”

- the white man is to blame first, as he commited the first aggressions
- (white) backwoodmen outside civilization: rather negative image of the backwoodmen

We then read a short passage on All Races: "Made in the Image of God" - actually taken, as the gracious Norton edition informs me while I'm typing this, from a review of Francis Parkman Jr.'s The California and Oregon Trail; being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life, written by in 1849.

Melville was not an Indian hater himself, that much was clear from the passage. Why then does he give us such an unequivocal regime of Indian hating? The headline of crucial chapter 26 runs -

Containing the Metaphysics of Indian-Hating, according to the Views of One evidently not so prepossessed as Rousseau in Favor of Savages.

- which is, of course, an allusion to the French philosopher's notion of the noble savage, pioneered not by him alone. The notion, roughly, describes the "savage" as potentially happier than whites, as he/she knows how to treasure and savor the simple things: "savages" had an innate sense of moral that was not inferior.

Melville doesn't give us a noble savage, or any savage at all: he gives us rather the confidence man in yet another disguise (that reading was first introduced by Elizabeth Foster, in edition of the novel, in 1954, and it still seems valid. The signs are there, at least.

We picked out paragraphs from chapter 26 -

And though, knowing the Indian nature, as he thinks he does, he fancies he is not ignorant that an Indian may in some points deceive himself almost as effectually as in bush-tactics he can another, yet his theory and practice as above contrasted seem to involve an inconsistency so extreme, that the backwoodsman only accounts for it on the supposition that when a tomahawking red-man advances the notion of the benignity of the red race, it is but part and parcel with that subtle strategy which he finds so useful in war, in hunting, and the general conduct of life.

[that is, the Indian may lie to himself and pretend he is friendly and kind, but the backwoodsman will not make the mistake of trusting him, or: giving him his confidence, as he knows about the depravity of the Indian/Confidence Man]

Then -

Years after, over their calcined bones and those of all their families, the chief, reproached for his treachery by a proud hunter whom he had made captive, jeered out, "Treachery? pale face! 'Twas they who broke their covenant first, in coming all together; they that broke it first, in trusting Mocmohoc."

[the chief refers to the covenant of the Wright and Weaver families, explicated in a previous paragraph, namely: that never should all five brothers Wright-brothers come to Mocmohoc's camp together, that is: they made a pact that there should always be a back-up outside the camp - they broke that, and Mocmohoc (nice idea here - to mock - it certainly fits here) derives from that a justification for his killing them. Indians, as the passage describes them, are never trustworthy.]

- and lastly we have the cosmopolitan play Indian himself:

"One Moment," gently interrupted the cosmopolitan here, "and let me refill my calumet."

(all passages taken from chapter 26)

So. Is Melville's Indian just another masquerade of the confidence man? I wasn't quite sure, hence I tried to push that frontier point, going back for a short moment to the Mathers and their image of the Indian as a satanic messenger, deployed to make the Puritan frontier experience just a little more difficult.

We had it that the Fidèle, "our" Mississippi steam boat, was a stand-in, an allegory of the world as a whole and the USAmerican world in particular. I'm sure we noted that somewhere - it is going down the river, to New Orleans: passing through territories that had very recently (prior to the 1850s, in which, as I take it, the action unrolls) been frontier land. Was Melville trying to create a sophisticated, advanced frontier villain here, when he turned the Indian into a diabolic figure? Hershel Parker, editor of the Norton edition, mentions in one of his contributions to the edition ("The Politics of Allegorizing Indian Hating") that one of his ancestors had fought as a volunteer in the Mexican war of 1848. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 had cleared the way for "negotiations" that would help move tens of thousands of native Americans into frontier country west of the Mississippi. Maybe the Indian confidence man, playing tricks on the white man, is a sort of avenger for the crimes acted on the Indian nations even at that time, especially this dubious removal act, see above?

Session VII - June 6, 2007 - Melville Continued: The Confidence Man

2007-06-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

The 4 Chevaliers of the Apocalypse! There seems to be the expression - "chevalier of fortune" - the same seems possible in French - see here (link opens Word-Document, and that document is obviously dealing with a Tarock deck, or something like it) - and, taking the knightly connotations into wordlier concerns, chevalier may also mean something like gentleman, and that doesn't get us much closer to the way the word is used in the novel. The Norton Edition - oh mighty, mighty Norton Edition! praise thee, Almighty! - explicates the term as "Swindlers, here engaged in picking pockets", and indeed, a few more clicks get us to the Chevalier D'Industrie, that is someone who uses his (knightly?) virtues (perseverance, stamina, wit, and so on) to a banal, industrial, mechanical, and not too honorable end, I take it.

The Confidence Man (1857)

The Confidence Man was Melville’s final novel, about the last thing he wrote in prose. As most of his previous novels, this one was no commercial success – and he seems to have cancelled his novel writing also because he was fed up with writing for a market that didn’t honor it in a financial way. At this point, we don’t need to go through a complete list of his novels: there are 11 of these, written over the course of 11 years, and during that time he went from hopeful to less hopeful to completely desperate. By the middle of the 1850s, he was so deeply into debt and financial problems that his wife and his brother took his finances out of his hands.

When The Confidence Man came out in 1857, readers didn’t quite seem to grasp what it was: it was only later, in the 20th century, that readers appreciated the allegorical depth of the book. The print run was small, not many novels were sold, and Melville turned to writing poetry (which he had hardly more success with), to lecturing, and finally to working as a custom inspector in New York City, and that would have been the first time in his life his financial survival was secure. He died in NYCin 1891. At the time his reputation had somewhat drifted into the obscure – it was only in the 1920s that he was re-discovered by literary criticism, and he has been popular ever since, so that by now he’s is (justly!) considered as one of the greatest American writers at all. Scholarly criticism on his work and life keeps coming up at great numbers.

We went into the first two chapters, to sort of give the confidence man a decent admission to the stage - he is that ultra-flashy figure on the ship, Fidèle, and with him faith/the faithful are going down the river...to New Orleans, but also to the end)

AT sunrise on a first of April there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the city of St. Louis.
His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends. From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd, it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a stranger. (emphasis mine)

He's opening his own hunting season (by installing that placard that draws notice to the mysterious impostor from the East) - and then walks around with his signs, advertising charity. The boat becomes his stage, and his stage only - we read the beginning of the second chapter, where the audience, the passengers utter these curt, hypothetical remarks as to the nature of the fur-hat-wearer, as minor characters in a play would.

We also read that passage from Hawthorne's Twice-Told-Tales, to look at another confidence man, a satanic beggar, as it were -

While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show box, the unceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed pretty nearly of the old show man's age, but much smaller, leaner, and more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance, and a pair of diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the show man, in a manner which intimated previous acquaintance; but perceiving that the damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand, and signed by several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating that the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune, and recommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous disbursements had left me no more than a five dollar bill, out of which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation, provided he would give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked keenly in my face, and discerned that I had none of that abominable spirit, characteristic though it be of a full blooded Yankee, which takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.
[...]

The Class Reviewed & Melville Introduced

2007-06-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

Session VI – May 30, 2006 – The Class Reviewed & Melville Introduced

To the early Puritan writers and thinkers, Apocalypse was a matter of survival, a crucial concern that immediately affected the community – the day of doom was coming in any way, and people needed to be prepared for it. That was all the more true as the Puritan settlements were founded into an outstanding position – as John Winthrop puts it in his 1630 sermon:

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken...we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God...We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

Even to Winthrop, the colonies were in an exposed historical position – they were a role model for the world. Note that he is still talking about this world, planet earth – he is not reaching out to a world beyond, to salvation or damnation. When he fears that the Puritan settlers may be “consumed out of the good land whither we are going”, he refers to the Atlantic sea board, not to paradise, and the dangers there were very material and physical: starvation, epidemics, the opposition of Native Americans and French. There were many ways for Puritan settlers to be involved in life-threatening circumstances – but then, of course, they also dealt out blows to their new homeland in a way that made it clear that they were there to stay, and hopefully – to prosper. The first 20-30 years after the landing of the Mayflower in 1620 were a time of harsh dogma and rigor – these Puritans really meant business and tried to curb and stop short any danger that might pose a threat to the Puritan community. We already heard about the Pequot war of 1637, during which the Pequot nation was virtually annihilated – and importantly, this was more about politics and power, and less about a more or less symbolic fight against evil Indians – in their fight against the Pequot nation, the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonists were not above collaborating with Indian allies of tribes other than the Pequot.

More dangerous for the survival of the group as it came to the Americas – as a Protestant elite community – was the resistance from within: Indians could, with any amount of bad will, be degraded to barbaric savages in the way of Christian history, that is: they could be removed and disposed of, if necessary. What, however, could you do with Puritan believers who went renegade and broke the tight community spirit? These heretics had to be kicked out of and expelled from the community – and in a country just barely yet colonized, this was a serious punishment, of course. We heard about the case of Anne Hutchinson, the female renegade preacher who held enormously successful bible classes in her home – and who finally had to go into exile. She may have fallen from the grace of the Puritan fathers, because she was an uncommonly powerful woman, and as such a danger to established male and female spheres: women were not exactly liberated in Puritan society. More importantly, however, she was a heretic – a threat to the dogmatic unity that the Puritans wanted to have preserved: one community of believers linked in a firm opposition against Anglican and Roman Catholic churches who had come to the new world to spread the Protestant gospel.

The appeal to a sense of community surfaces again and again in writings of that early colonial period – it is almost desperately fought for in Michael Wigglesworth’s Day of Doom, parts of which we read: he goes to some length to gather every Puritan of the colonies under his umbrella of sin and damnation, stresses that each sinful settler was obliged to the welfare of the colonies and therefore in a need of reformation..and that included the smallest of the small.

You sinners are, and such a share
as sinners may expect,
Such you shall have; for I do save
none but mine own Elect.
Yet to compare your sin with their,
who liv'd a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less,
though every sins's a crime.

A crime it is, therefore in bliss
you may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
the easiest room in Hell.
The glorious King thus answering,
they cease, and plead no longer;
Their Consciences must needs confess
his Reasons are the stronger. (stanzas 180-181)

While the Puritans practiced infant baptism, as Christian Crouch had the good grace to explain, they became genuine Puritans and full community members when they entered their church - a public confession to all the other members included. Only in the church was provided for the baptism they would need to be saved.

The enemy within was more threatening than the enemy without. This was even more so when the Puritan settlers finally discovered the social phenomenon that witch hunts had been in the old world for centuries: it would certainly be wrong to blame it all on Cotton Mather, but still, his case for the whole witch industry is a strong one. Witches existed and had to be found out, which required reflection but also strength and rigor: after all, their masquerades were many, they could easily pretend even to innocence, and before you knew it, they had bedevilled your cattle or sheep! In a way the witch craze, not restricted to Salem, though linked most prominently with it, was a mode of auto-aggression – and now that auto-aggression was no longer executed merely in a rhetorical way, but also in a physical way that included fires, pyres, and stakes.

You always get the feeling that thinkers like Cotton Mather were living under a very conspicuous and forceful impression of an immanent end – the end of all was always only just a step away, and you therefore had to choose your path in a most careful manner.

In contrast, Jonathan Edwards – though only a few decades away from Mather in time – presents an outlook on history that seemed way more promising and optimistic. This was the age of radical progress, and he was writing on the eve of the American and French Revolutions and during the heyday of Enlightenment philosophy: something great was going on, rational, scientific methods seemed like a promise for civilization and Edwards argued that religion would be able to go hand in hand with it. The world would move down an successful road into bliss, and Puritan religion would still be a part of it. Edwards is really creating an outlook on the world and on world history, he’s looking into the future – whereas Mather seemed just barely able to peer behind the colony borders, if at all, and barely able to go beyond that tight and snug and almost at times cozy colonial world that the Puritans had fought for so hard.

Edwards died in 1757.

19 years later, the Declaration of Independence was drafted. 30 years later, the US Constitution was ratified. 32 years later, the French Revolution kicked off: all of these major events are, in their own respective ways, closely linked with the development of American apocalypses.

The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
[it's unanimous: the colonial community still expressed its unity, but now it is unity on a democratic cause that would require a violent struggle - the War of Independence - but against very material political forces, not, say, against witches. The supernatural no longer has the importance for creating a community spirit it still had for Mather]

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God [laws of nature and of nature's god: rational thought and religion go together here] entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, [for example: by means of a vote. When Puritans disagreed with their community's overall direction, the choices open to them all somehow led into exile] and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. [out with thee! - King of Britain: French and Indians had lost the privilege of being the most important carriers of evil, as they had been to the Puritans, now action was also taken against the British king and his servants]

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

What did all this mean to the concept of apocalypse?

To begin with, it became smaller in scope: the survival of the community was now in the caring hands of a government chartered under a democratic constitution – apocalypses received a more individual face, there was no longer what you might call one coherent apocalyptic movement united in the belief that certain steps were necessary in preparation of and for the end. At the same time, the community was enlarged – there was no way to depend on Puritans alone to colonize that giant and vast land: people of all creeds and non-creeds had to be recruited as settlers to still largely empty land. As population became more diverse, apocalypses became more diverse, as well.

And with Melville apocalypse is finally entering the realm of the humorous...

First, the case for Moby Dick as an apocalyptic story...

The story follows the whaling voyage of a ship name – tadaa! – the Pequod. Driven by mad-eccentric-choleric Captain Ahab, who had a leg severed by Moby Dick, the infamous white whale, the crew finally launch a battle royal against the monster whale – and everyone dies in the attempt, except of course – the narrator, Ishmael.

The novel is more than a bit drawn out in allegorical terms – no dates are given, all crew members have symbolic names – but it is also unmistakably American. Melville describes the whaling voyage at length as an American enterprise, the whaling industry as an American sphere of influence, and he also gives us all kind of quaint details on the impact the whaling trade has on coastal communities like Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. Also, the ship is home to an American microcosmos - with all ethnicities (black, white, Indian) gathered into one confined space: the Pequod stands in as a symbol for the US, and its final destruction - is an apocalyptic turnabout of the world into destruction.

There are some points to follow if one wants to draw out the apocalypse the novel is presenting –

The Individual, Ishmael

The sense of community will come only as an afterthought. At the beginning, the narrator Ishmael is on his own, following his impulses in a Romantic manner:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

The Apocalyptic Beast

The narrator is at pains to show that Moby Dick is not just a whale, but a beast – taken from some fable or, rather, straight out of the Bible. His common byname throughout the novel is Leviathan - that name is applied to all whales in the book, but our whale, Moby Dick, has some extra special powers: to begin with, he is able to reside at several places all over the world – at one and the same time, like a fabled beast, or like a New England witch. Also, these Leviathans are a big issue in world literature, as Melville presents it - and that one special whale has a massive novel all of his own, thank Melville.

The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job? And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!

The Apocalyptic Community, finally

I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.

Finally, Captain Ahab manages to swear the ship's crew in on the fight against the beast - and it doesn't come easily. They are far from enthusiastic at first: it takes a charismatic man/preacher like Ahab to do the trick. Once, however, they have entered the apocalyptic movement, they follow through with it to the bitter end. All men go down. Moby Dick is alive.

Response Paper

2007-05-31T04:17:00.000-07:00

Choose ONE (!) of the topics below and write a response, using 500-700 words, about 2 pages (unless you doublespace your paper and use a 24 font, or something like it). I don’t actually handcount words, so you don’t need to, either. If you use literature to back up your argument (and I recommend that you do), be sure to reference it either in footnotes or, if you have several entries, in a bibliography attached to the end of the paper. Still, mind that you are not writing a term paper – use the limited space and try to give an answer to one of the questions as precise as possible. For some of the questions, you might have to refer back to texts we have been reading in class.

The deadline to meet is June 13 – no exceptions. I would suggest you hand in the thing on that date, in class, and I’ll return it to you a week later.

1) Apocalyptic Voice

As we have seen at the beginning of the class, John the apocalyptist is extremely touchy on the issue of authority. He makes it very clear that his text is to be read verbatim, and no mistakes here:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. (Revelation of St. John 22.19)

First of all, try to explain and paraphrase the final sentence (“And if anyone takes words…”) in your own words! Then try to find three apocalyptic thinkers or apocalyptic communities in history and explain/compare how seriously, how verbatim they took the word of John and what they made of it in their lives! You might think of part-time apocalyptists like Isaac Newton and Christopher Columbus here, but also of apocalyptic communities like the medieval Joachimites, the 19^th-century-USA Millerites, or, of course, the Puritans (you can easily find comprehensive information on all these groups, and on various others, online, of course!).

2) Puritan Apocalypse

Go back to John Winthrop’s sermon on The City upon a Hill (1630) (online here - http://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html - among other places). Explain in your own words what the city upon a hill stands for. Then go into the first few decades of Puritan history in America – how did the city upon a hill fare? Did it prosper? Did it fail? Try to give evidence: you might think of the Puritan war against the Pequod nation here, or of the witch trials, or of…you name it!

3) Reagan’s Shining City

In his farewell address, delivered on January 11, 1989, then US-president Ronald Reagan famously used the image of the city on a hill –

And that's about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still. (the full text of the speech is here - http://www.localvoter.com/speech_rr6.asp - go ahead and read it, it’s not too long).

Explain in your own words how Reagan was using the image of the city on a hill! What does it mean to him? Then go ahead and compare the historical circumstances – 1630 (when Winthrop held his sermon) and 1989 (when Reagan held his) – are there differences, are there similarities?

4) Wigglesworth and The Day of Doom

We read parts of Michael Wigglesworth’s The Day of Doom (on your handout! Also, the complete text is online here - http://www.puritansermons.com/poetry/wiggindx.htm). Go back to the poem, read it or parts of it and find out about the following:

formal qualities: what meter is he using? Give examples from the text!
What images and metaphors is he using? Find three and describe how he uses them!
Reception: how was The Day of Doom being received in 17^th century New England? Why did people react the way they did? Do you think it is a convincing, maybe even a strong poem? Give reasons!

Could you wait like 15 minutes before you start that apocalypse, please?

2007-05-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

Beware!

I will be a little late for class on Wednesday, so the session is more likely to start at 6:15, not at 6 sharp.

Meanwhile, try to think of whales...white whales, if you want, and Mississippi steamboats: Melville is so waiting! I know, he looks very stern on the photographs that are around of him, so very stern and serious-minded: you wouldn't think he had a self-ironic humor in his works that was around 200 years ahead of his time...

Session V - May 23 - Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening

2007-05-23T15:02:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Information on his -

Life: here, here, and here.

Thought: here, here, and here.

____________

I now realize it was a mistake to focus on his Notes on the Apocalypse, but then, the mistake is made, and gone is the chance to focus rather on, say, some of his excellent sermons - we read through his collage of newspaper items on what he made out as the fall of France and the Vatican, and man - isn't it unexciting and repetitive.

If there is something we can take from the lesson, it is that Edwards' apocalypse was more cosmopolite and suave than Mather's: where Mather was summonig witches on the colonial stage, provoking trials at one place and one time, Edwards is looking into worldly events for proof of the final things to come. Of course, as we noticed - he is very biased in doing so, establishing a record that imparts all heroism to the British and all cowardice to the French (and some to the Italians, of course): they're drinking, starving, corrupt, and burdened with a haphazard king whose only outstanding ability is the exaction of taxes.

And, yes - the whole thing we read is so boring, I think, because it is exactly no more than a collage without personal references, either to himself or to the reader/listener. Once you find out that he is shooting at the French, the text disappears as an object of interest.

It's interesting to note that, to him, history is going on before it ends for good: human progress, in secular and in religious terms, was a real possibility to him, and we'll return to that next time - soon after his death, history was moving mighty fast, with monumental revolutions going on both sides of the Atlantic, and I'll say a few words on the importance of apocalyptic thought for the events of the late 18th century: on independence, tea floating in Boston harbor, and the role of apocalypse in the whole ensemble.

Session IV - May 16, 2007 - Wonders of the Invisible World Continued

2007-05-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Intellectual and the End of the World as he knew it

That there is a Devil, is a thing Doubted by none
but such as are under the Influences of the Devil.
(Cotton Mather: Wonders of the Invisible World)

The witch trials were not the end of innocence and meekness – innocence had been decapitated violently decades and decades before when the Puritan settlers had taken possession of the colonial site with all due and undue brutality, thereby nearly extinguishing the Pequod. Innocence had in fact been lost, but now, at the end of the 17th century even the idea of innocence was at danger – the notion of a simple, unburdened Puritan community life was no longer an option. It still was very alive in Michael Wigglesworth – his doomsday verses are all dedicated to a return to innocence (whether or not he thought that return was possible is another question, but at least he plants it into his poem as a motive: people would repent and things would be fine once again).

Cotton Mather, like Wigglesworth, is painfully aware of the steep fall the Puritans had taken – in “Enchantments Encounter’d”, the first main part of the work (not on your handout), he finds that –

All this notwithstanding, we must humbly confess to out God, that we are miserably degenerated from the first Love of our Predecessors.

He goes on at great length in this introductory chapter to stress the opposition of the first generation Puritan martyrs – the predecessors – and the present-day Puritan population. The predecessors had accomplished the impossible – they had subdued the territory of the devil (that is, a country inhabited not by Protestant Europeans, but by indigenous people) and made it a Puritan land. What did their descendants have to compare with that?

A bunch of apocalyptic witches at their door, to begin with.

Still in the introduction, he finds that –

Wherefore the Devil is now making one attempt more upon us; an attempt more difficult, more surprising, more snarl’d with unintelligible circumstances than any that we have hitherto encountered; an attempt so critical that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet.

He’s claiming that a “Horrible PLOT” is at work, executed by witchcrafty evildoers against the Puritan population. On these first few pages, he’s mentioning so many, many devils, demons, and witches – you really start to know he’s serious the way he is beating it into you. There is no way, he argues, to take witchcraft as a local phenomenon – no, it is everywhere in the country, practically the whole American site is infested with it. From here on, the battle was everyone vs. everyone. There was no longer an presumption of innocence: everybody could be guilty of witchcraft, everybody could be a potential bearer of Satan who may work his evil even while his bearer may seem innocent. Since everyone was a potential witch, methods had to be devised to reveal the true witches out of the potential mass.

One of these was badmouthing your neighbors. In a highly revealing passage Mather states that

If any Man or Woman be notoriously defamed for a Witch, this yields a strong suspicion. Yet the judge ought carefully to look that the Report be made by a man of honesty and credit.

If needs be, even a woman would do to raise the accusation, of course. The passage is contradictory in its own way - over the whole length of the Wonders he makes an effort to make witchcraft comprehensible as also an intellectual phenomenon that you had to invest brainpower on to get behind its tricky disguises and ruses - but then he says that, basically, anyone can recognize it, at least to such an extent that made it possible to raise a finger against neighbors, townsfolk, anyone.

Next, after the introduction, he’s giving us a chapter called “A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World” – basically a sermon on a passage from the book of Revelation, a very famous passage. The sermon, or parts of it, was held in early August 1692, while the Salem trials were still unrolling.

In it he is talking about the following quote from Revelation, as he gives it:

Wo to the Inhabitants of the Earth, and of the Sea; for the Devil is come down unto you, having great Wrath; because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. (Rev. 12.12 - in the manuscript it's given with that chapter reference, but chapter 12.12 is, actually, a very different verse in any version of Scriptures I'm looking it up in. Hmmm.)

Without going into too much detail – it’s a long sermon, explaining in all ways possible why and how the devil is at work in the world and why his threats need to be taken seriously – there is one passage that stands out, rigorously:

There is little room for hope, that the great wrath of the Devil will not prove the present ruine of our poor New England in particular. I believe, there never was a poor Plantation, more pursued by the wrath of the Devil, than our poor New England; and that which makes our condition very much the more deplorable is, that the wrath of the Great God Himself, at the same time also presses hard upon us. It was a rousing alarm to the Devil, when a great Company of English Protestants and Puritans, came to erect Evangelical Churches, in a corner of the World, where he had reign’d without any controul for many Ages; and it is a vexing Eye-sore to the Devil, that our Lord Christ should be known, and own’d, and preached in this howling Wilderness. Wherefor he has left no Stone unturned, that so he might undermine his Plantation, and force out of our Country.

It is our country, The Puritans' country, not the country of Satan’s supposed agents – and as such he lists the usual suspects: the heathen Indians and the Catholic French, against who the British were fighting at in the First French and Indian War at the time Mather was preaching the sermon. Both were not too available as sparring partners: the Indians, as far as they were pertinent to Massachusetts at the time, had already been fought and killed, and the French were, of course, a major world power that the British mother country had to bring up all its forces to fight. In cooperation with their Indian allies, they also directed raids at British settlements - one of these became notoriously known as the Schenectady massacre (February 8, 1690). Still, they were more a vague danger than a palpable threat to the community - and the community needed someone to put to trial, publicly.

Hence, in come the witches: these were easily available. Hell, anybody could be a witch, even your best neighbor!

An Intellectual's Reservations

The following passages are taken from The Third Curiositie and the table of contents on the first page of our handout.

III. If a Drop of Innocent Blood should be shed, in the Prosecution of the Witchcrafts among us, how unhappy are we! For which cause, I cannot express my self in better terms, than those of a most Worthy Person, who lives near the present Center of these things."The Mind of God in these matters, is to be carefully look'd into, with due Circumspection, that Satan deceive us not with his Devices, who transforms himself into an Angel of Light, and may pretend Justice and yet intend Mischief." But on the other side, if the Storm of Justice do now fall only on the Heads of those Guilty Witches and Wretches which have defiled our Land, How Happy!

II. Some Counsils, Directing a due Improvement of the terrible things, lately done, by the Unusual and Amazing Range of Evil Spirits, in Our Neighbourhood: and the methods to prevent the Wrongs which those Evil Angels may intend against all sorts of people among us; especially in Accusations of the Innocent.

What is his problem here? He needs to reconcile two irreconcilable claims: first, that everybody may be guilty of witchcraft, even while appearing innocent, second, that no innocent person may be penalized. He needs to unite a theological belief in the universal guilt of the Puritan colonies and a juridical belief in the presumption of innocence.

What is his self-understanding, as it is expressed in the text?

He's making much of being a historian, as we have seen - as a scholar, so his story is supposed to go, he approaches his topic impartially and emotionally uninvolved. Of course, he also had to sell his work - and there was actual editorial (maybe even: artistic?) work going on here. The book did not go from the pulpit straight into the heart.

There might have been more of these, if my book would not thereby have been swollen too big; and if some other worthy hands did not intend something further in these Collections for which cause I have singled out Four or Five, which may serve to Illustrate the way of dealing, wherein Witchcrafts use to be concerned; and I Report matters not as Advocate but as an Historian.

He also stresses that he “was not Present at any of them” (same paragraph) and that he didn’t hold personal grudges and prejudices against the people accused – that is, he is putting a distance between himself and the subject of inquiry, or appears to do so.

Strangely however, he begins his first case narration with a very personal note –

Glad should I have been, if I had never known this man, or never had this occasion to mention as much as the first Letters of his name. But the Government requiring some Account of his Trial to be Inserted in this Book, it becomes me with all Obedience to submit unto the Order.

G.B. stands for George Burroughs, a Puritan minister who seemed to have some brutality issues with his wives (who, obviously, he didn’t treat too well). This allegations of violence blended over into a trial in Salem (to where he was deported), where several indicted women named him as Satan’s chief messenger: a super-witch or – wizard, if you will.
When standing at the gallows he reputedly claimed, once again, his innocence and then said the Lord’s prayer, which witches and wizards were supposedly not able to do. People demanded he be exonerated from the gallows, when they heard him praying, but to no avail: he died.

The charges against him were pretty generic, as Mather presents them - your regular witchcraft compendium deported from Europe to America: supernatural strength plays a role, the invisible devil man that, Mather tells us, only GB is capable of seeing, and his leading and seducing a circle of female witches.

Obviously, Burroughs was not able to tell his story, so Mather had to do it for him (see the bottom of page 4 of out handout) – how is GB portrayed as speechless? Why does Mather do that? What are his interests in doing it? Would it even matter at all if Burroughs had been very conversant about defending himself?

Yes!

Mather wants to be authentic: his Wonders of the Invisible World was to be an authentically Puritan account of the witch trials, and as such it had to be dominated by a Puritan voice – his, Mather’s, voice. There was no way to portray Burroughs as anything else than a tacit and silent man who lies the moment he opens his mouth. Mather also doesn’t mention Burrough’s prayer at the gallows – guilt had to be absolute to make sure no innocent person was harmed, hence Mather makes sure not to take note of any mitigating circumstances.

Note how Mather tries to attach a strict dogmatical line on the Puritan experience - we read The First Curiositie, where he is spending some time on the Indian settlement of Mexico as a sort of hoax on the Old Testamental story of the 40 year pilgrimage through the desert, which the Puritans might take as very similar to their own situation in the new world. Also, he makes clear in that chapter that miracles were fine only as long as they happened under Christian auspices, not, however, under the hands of witches.

Session III - May 9, 2007 - Wonders of the Invisible World: The Corruption of the Apocalyptic Site

2007-05-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Alright then - here is the complete etext of the Wonders of the Invisible World (by Cotton Mather) - we will be reading the table of contents he gives us (THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD), of course - as well as the
the Author's Defense, (which says a lot about the perception of the role he saw for himself!), and we will read one of the trials he describes, that of the Reverend George Burroughs (note what he is saying about Indians!)...he's also getting back to the Indians in his first Curiositie (aka, observation)....

The Context

Last week we read selected passages from Michael Wigglesworth’s apocalyptic mega-bestseller The Day of Doom, which describes, basically, a day of doom for absolutely everyone, and no exceptions. Of course, people did not even want to be an exception – the coming apocalypse would be a judgment for everyone, and therefore people wanted to be on the right side – God’s side – once the judging would begin.

Wigglesworth’s long poem is all about guilt – he’s looking for guilt inside himself and inside his audience.

In vain do they to Mountains say,
Fall on us, and us hide
From Judges ire, more hot than fire,
for who may it abide?
No hiding place can from his Face,
sinners at all conceal,
Whose flaming Eyes hid things doth 'spy,
and darkest things reveal.

Guilt, to him, is a Puritan thing – he does not take it and project it on some external forces (such as "barbaric heathens", "Barbaric Indian heathens", "Atheists" [who he nevertheless thinks are stupid]. Hence, the remedy for guilt is self-reflection – people were to take something from the poem and use it to look into their, supposedly, wrong ways and then to change them and themselves.

All that changed pretty soon – evil had always been sort of around for the Puritan settlers. It took them only a few years after their arrival to clash violently with the Pequot Indians, who were, to them, no more than a bunch of heathens.

Then in came witchcraft and gave evil a whole new face.

The Witch Trials

The American colonies were, fortunately, hesitant to adopt that feature of the early modern life: the witch hunt. Europe had had its first share of witch hunts back in the 15th century, and the witch craze lasted well into the 18th century. In America, on the other side, the phenomenon was restricted to a rather short period of time around the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is closely linked with the name of Salem, Massachusetts. As in the old world, the fear of witches was not primarily a populist thing – rather, it was expressed most explicitly by the leading intellectuals of the day. One of these, in fact: by far the most important one in late 17th century America, was Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the son of Puritan minister and writer Increase Mather and, of course, the grandson of Reverend John Cotton, who had been the leading intellectual force of the first-generation Puritans. Increase Mather, the elder Mather had somewhat preceded his son and had written

An Essay For the Recording of
Illustrious Providences

which was published in 1684. The essay is a sort of supernatural best-of, recording strange and supernatural incidents, not only related to witches and witchcraft, in the New England area.

In 1688, Cotton Mather, the son, continued the family tradition and saw the publication of

Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions

where he describes his personal experience with Goody Glover, a woman who had been prosecuted and finally hanged for supposedly bewitching the 13 year old Martha Goodwin and her siblings. Mather had talked to her before her death and insisted that she confess and repent her deals with the devil. Naturally, she didn’t do that. Unlike his father, the younger Mather focused his attention on witchcraft as the most prominent sign of evil and decay.

Now, some of the points I wanted to stress in our lecture of the text, were -

Sin/Sinfulness: what role does sin play for Mather? Who are the sinners?

Decay: how does Mather see the New England site? When he published the book, some 70 years had passed since the arrival of the first Puritan settlers - is he optimistic about the state of the Puritan colonies, or pessimistic?

Mather's Role: what role does he see for himself in the development of New England as the site of an apocalyptic hope for salvation? What is his role?

In the Memorable Providences, Mather is recording a singular and unique case, that of the Goodwin family.

The witch craze was bigger when it returned in Salem, Ma., four years later, in 1692 - and for a short time, people in the colony were whipped into a witch frenzy, with all the dire consequences.

What happened?

The daughter of the Reverend Parris, Elizabeth Parris, and her cousin Abigail Williams showed symptoms similar to those of the Goodwin children four years before - talking in tongues, moving in a strange fashion, hallucinating, and so on. Pressured by their parents and the community, they finally accused three women of bewitching them. One of these was Tituba (once again, the picture we had in class: she has the weeds and herbs dangling from her basket, supposedly to brew some witches' brew. And note how stylish and snazzy Cotton Mather looks in the picture: where did that extravagant haircut go all out of a sudden?), who lived captured as a slave in the Parris household.

Between March and November 1692, more than 20 people were charged and executed in the Salem trials, until the Salem community finally came to its senses and stopped the witch hunt. The final trials were held in the spring of 1693, and noone was convicted there. Cotton Mather published The Wonders of the Invisible World in 1693 – the book chronicles parts of the Salem witch hunt, but it also defends, above all, the belief in witchcraft. Next time, we'll go deeper into the text - especially into Mather's notion of evil (and good), and how it relates to the history of New England!

Session II - May 2, 2007 - The City upon a Hill...will fall

2007-05-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

To begin with - a link, namely to the library tutorial you need to sign up for some time over the next few weeks...
__________
__________

The class! On Columbus...and the Puritans...and Apocalypse!

The header for the day was -

The Apocalyptic Inception of American Literature

- I wouldn't want to push the point too far, but it's remarkable at least that the Puritans were not just happ-go-lightly nation builders who went to the new world because in the old world realty was really too expensive to build the site for a decent dissident community.

Once again, we started with John, the apocalyptist -

John, as we have seen in the excerpts we read is very specific that what he is preaching about is immanent, it must soon come to pass –

(Revelation 1.1) – The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.

This was written some 1.900 years ago. No matter how much time is passing since the original Apocalypse/Revelation, the apocalypse-event is always immanent and about to pass – and if it is not yet, the believer must do his or her best to bring it about, to work for the apocalypse.

This mission – to bring about the apocalypse as a way to end history – pops up time and again throughout the development of Western civilization, and often it is taken up by thinkers or scientists or explorers who we explicitly think of as really modern and ultimately important for the development of modern civilization.

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) is one of these – one of the greatest scientists of modernity, he formulated, among other things, the general law of gravitation. Less known is the fact that he invested an awful lot of time and space on religious writings – and he concentrated largely on apocalyptic prophecy. Once again, apocalypse and prophecy become ways to approach the historical timeline – looking back on history, Newton thought, the prophecies of the book of Revelation and the book of Daniel would help make sense of the contents of history -

God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling them to fore know things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreter’s, be thereby manifested to the world. (Newton)

His work on The Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John was finally published in 1733, six years after his death.

While Newton’s apocalyptic take on history was reactive, you might say, taking it in an retrospective act to create an understanding of history, the reverse might be said about Christopher Columbus – his voyages to the Americas had the aim not only of expanding Spain’s sphere of influence but also, implicitly, of raising money and gold for a final crusade into the Middle East to regain Jerusalem. This, he thought, would happen under the leadership of one last world king reigning over the final age of planet earth, and that king would have to be Spanish, of course. He compiled a host of apocalyptic prophecies into one book, the Book of Prophecies, and used it to advertise his travels at the Spanish court, in order to raise money. When his ships arrive in the Americas in the 1490s, this seems like the beginning of a whole new chapter of history – to Columbus, however, this was only the first step in the end of human history. When Europeans had first set foot on the new continent, they had also ushered in the Last Judgment of the World.

The Puritans

The term Puritanism designates various religious groups of the 16th and 17th centuries who were united in the belief that the Anglican Church had not gone far enough in breaking with the Roman Catholic Church. It’s important to note that these people (who, for most the time, didn’t call themselves “Puritans”) were not stigmatised outcasts – they participated in the daily political and religious life of 16th century England and were represented in Parliament. Still, one of their concerns was to purify the English church from Roman influences (hence, “Puritans”) – and from the beginning that was an agenda they wanted to pursue from within the state. It was only later, after several internal schisms and struggles, that some of them did indeed break away from the English state and the Anlican state church.

Belonging to this group were the Pilgrims – a group of Puritan dissenters from the English midlands who had migrated to Amsterdam in 1607/1608 to escape religious pressure back home in England. After some 10 years in their Dutch exile, the congregation of dissenters was starting to fall apart – some were even moving back to England. In order to preserve the congregation and also attracted by the possibility to do missionary work, thoughts of an oversea colony came up. This would not be the first English colony on American soil, of course – a colony had been founded in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia (and we also shortly hinted at the mysterious and spooky end of the colony in Roanoke, Virginia).

On September 6, 1620, finally, 102 members of the congregation set sail from the Netherlands, on board the Mayflower, and reached the American coast by the middle of November. They landed in present-day Massachusetts and founded Plymouth Colony.
The Plymouth group was comparatively small and tightly locked together – dissenters who went to the new world because the old world didn’t anywhere come close to offering them the religious and spiritual environment they sought for. As a group of migrants, the Plymouth pilgrims are often confused with a later and substantially larger group of Puritan emigrants.

After several smaller colonization attempts in the 1620s (one of them at Salem), the late 1620s saw other groups of Puritans depart from Europe, sail the Atlantic and found what became famously known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony – a relative mass migration setting in around, when governor John Winthrop (who was elected governor before the train even arrived at the American mainland) commanded a fleet to Massachusetts that would bring almost 1.000 Puritan settlers to the New World. They first settled around Salem, but soon relocated to what was later to become Boston. It was an exclusive community – political power in the colony could be shared only by those who where also full members of the congregation. They believed that mankind as a whole was under eternal damnation, but that a few had been chosen for salvation – the elect – and these few were consequently in a covenant with God. That covenant, or: contract, included that the elect had to take care that God’s laws were exercised in society.

Winthrop’s most famous and lasting contribution to the world of letters is the sermon he supposedly gave on board his ship, the Arbella, before the settlers disembarked. Most likely he gave the sermon when he and his fellow Puritans were still in Europe, but in any case it is an introductory sermon, setting the tone for the colonization enterprise these Puritans were about start. Originally, the sermon goes under the name of A Model of Christian Charity, but it is more widely renowned as the City upon a Hill sermon. In it, he is not talking at length about architecture and infrastructure of the new settlement, nor is he talking about building regulations or whatever: the city upon a hill comes in as a concluding image at the end of the sermon – he gives a very detailed list of the ideal virtues of the new settlers (such as charity), and then states that the colony will be to the world like a city upon a hill, that is out in the open, highly visible to everyone as a potential moral model and therefore under the obligation to be a moral model.

The following passage is taken from the very end of the text (and here is the complete text).

Now the onely way to avoyde this shipwracke, and to provide for our posterity, is to followe the counsell of Micah, to doe justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, wee must be knitt together, in this worke, as one man. Wee must entertaine each other in brotherly affection. Wee must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other's necessities. Wee must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekeness, gentlenes, patience and liberality. Wee must delight in eache other; make other's conditions our oune; rejoice together, mourne together, labour and suffer together, allwayes haueving before our eyes our commission and community in the worke, as members of the same body. Soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his oune people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our wayes. Soe that wee shall see much more of his wisdome, power, goodness and truthe, than formerly wee haue been acquainted with. Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when hee shall make us a prayse and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the Lord make it likely that of New England." For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill. The eies of all people are uppon us. Soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee haue undertaken, and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. Wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of God, and all professors for God's sake. Wee shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whither wee are a goeing.
I shall shutt upp this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithfull servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israell, Deut. 30. Beloued there is now sett before us life and good, Death and evill, in that wee are commanded this day to loue the Lord our God, and to loue one another, to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commandements and his Ordinance and his lawes, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that wee may liue and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whither wee goe to possesse it. But if our heartes shall turne away, soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worshipp and serue other Gods, our pleasure and proffitts, and serue them; it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good land whither wee passe over this vast sea to possesse it;

Therefore lett us choose life
that wee, and our seede
may liue, by obeyeing His
voyce and cleaveing to Him,
for Hee is our life and
our prosperity.

These good intentions – justice, mercy, love – lasted only a few years, if at all, before things started falling apart. Over the following few decades after Winthrop’s arrival in 1630, the Puritan community fell from grace step by step. Winthrop, alas, died in 1649, before things got really bad.

A short chronicle of the fall would include points like –

- Heresy: the Puritans’ strict interpretation of Protestant theology was soon expanded by heretics who revolted against it. The two most famous of these are Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) and Roger Williams (1603-1684). Hutchinson was an independent preacher who held bible classes in her home. She was very successful in it and soon became a notable influence on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was finally expelled from the colony in 1638. Williams, of course, was one of the founders of Providence, RI – a pastor and theologian, he arrived in 1631 and proved to be just a little more radical than the Puritan establishment in his complete renunciation of any links with the Anglican church. He also believed that the state was in no position to interfere with its citizens’ religious beliefs, and that put him at conflict with other Puritan leaders who, in their communities, established their religion as virtual state religions.

In the late 1640s, the colony in Rhode Island was established officially – and one of its almost revolutionary features was the liberty of conscience its inhabitants enjoyed: everyone could choose every religion he or she pleased, and the colony soon was home to groups of Baptists and Quakers, for example, who had been persecuted and driven away in other parts of the colonial American world. There was a constant rhetorical fight going on between the liberal Rhode Island Colony and the older colonies.

- War: as early as 1637, the settlers went into open war with the Native Americans of the site, the Pequots. During the Pequot War of 1637, the largest part of the tribe was killed, while survivors were sold as slaves to the West Indies.

- Dogmatic Sloppiness: the first generation of Puritan settlers had generally been very pious and devoted to their faith. Their descendants in the new world, the second and third generation Puritans, began to shift their interests to more secular areas, especially into commerce. The colonies, after all, were rich in resources, and exploiting these could easily be regarded as more attractive than Puritan piety and spirituality. The original idealism – that desire to be a city upon a hill, a religious beacon to the world, had quickly faded under the strain of reality, and believers had somehow to be brought back to discipline.

That was one of the motivations of Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705). A second-generation Puritan who had come to America in 1638, he was a minister, a medical doctor, and also a poet. By far his most popular work is the Day of Doom (1662 - see the link for the complete text, if you feel brave enough to read it), and we read parts of that. While it’s not exactly high-class poetry – in fact, it’s pretty boring in parts and somewhat long to read – it was incredibly popular in the 17th and 18th centuries and is generally hailed as the first American bestseller ever. He doesn’t do and say anything much in the poem, except:

- that things have gone really, really bad. The end is near, and you’d better believe it.
- that noone is going to get away with it. Everyone is guilty of sin against God, and everyone will have to pay.
- that there is hope only for the Saints to behave as piously as Puritans should.

Obviously, many Puritan settlers at the time felt that Wigglesworth was indeed right, that they had fallen to sin and that they had to reform their ways right away to avoid the worst, going to hell. Note that apocalypse/the day of doom is a very sudden and unexpected thing (it comes in the night) – there is no way to anticipate it. Its most interesting parts, to me, are revealed when Wigglesworth, the man, comes through and pushes away Wigglesworth, the die-hard Puritan rhetor on the end of the world. We talked about the following stanza -

All filthy facts, and secret acts,
however closly done,
And long conceal'd, are there reveal'd
before the mid-day Sun.
Deeds of the night shunning the light,
which darkest corners sought,
To fearful blame, and endless shame,
are there most justly brought.

Throughout the poem, he's almost consumed by guilt, literal, stone hard guilt gnawing at him before it gnaws at his audience - the "filthy deeds" are supposedly his before they are anyone else's. Where did a 17th century Puritan minister and teacher turn to when he wanted to discuss his apparent homosexual leanings? To his diary, of course.

Session I - April 18, 2007 - Introduction

2007-04-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

Session I

So, the semester has finally started. In this first session I hope I was not too efficient about scaring students away. After a few introductory remarks on course requirements, we began by reading that short article from the Village Voice, with a mention of Charles Manson's call on the apocalyptic. More interesting than that, and I guess in retrospect I didn't make this clear enough, was that quote the article has in the final paragraph, taken from a song by American band Collective Soul, a quote pertinent to the apocalyptic in its own quaint way -

“Teach me how to speak/Teach me how to share/Teach me where to go/Tell me will love be there. . . Oh, heaven let your light shine down"

I felt strongly reminded of John, the apocalyptist, who we had the pleasure to meet today, not in person or spirit, but as the first-person narrator in the excerpts on that two-page-handout with a best-of-sample from Revelations -

Remember that very final paragraph at the end of the handout (and the end of Revelation, of course)?

(22.19) I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. (22.19) And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

It seems that God has taught him to speak - and he does that with a lot of anger and full of righteousness: he, after all, is the one with the divine inspiration (1.1-1.2 - "He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ" - and note that he saw the revelation, he didn't just listen to it) - but not how to share the word. Any reader, one would think, would be forced to make interpretations of his or her own, as this is just what people do in reading a text - and certainly so in a text as wild and flurried as Revelation) - and that is just what John tries to outlaw here, interpretations: since, according to him, his text is the divine word itself, not a iota of it may be changed.

How far does that extend? If you go by the word of John, even a simple translation would not be legitimate, it seems, especially not when it goes between languages that are as grammatically and syntactically incompatible as Ancient Greek and Modern English, as any such interpretation is also an interpretation.

It's quite possible to take the text at face level, as evangelical defenders of a strict biblical literalism would, of course - any maybe that is the easiest and most coherent way to make sense of this odd text: it removes the urge to interpret all these weird symbols and metaphors and takes the book as a straightforward description of the final stages of the history of planet Earth.

______

What I'd like to take away from this session is an understanding that apocalypse is not a synonym for catastrophe - rather, it's a very distinct way of segmentalizing the historical timeline, with all implications this has.

It's important that Revelation is very precise with durations, but not at all with dates: "it will soon come to pass" is all that John has to offer on the point, and this was 1900 years ago. He seems to have a rather lax definition of the term "soon". That notwithstanding, he's absolutely clear about the precise course of the upcoming apocalypse - that's what is making this book so different to me. His style is deliberately precise and cutting and doesn't match at all the weird content it is expressing - all these over-the-top symbols (such as the dragon) are described in a very sober language, not in a totally mad rant. And he doesn't spare with precise numbers - we read, to name the most obvious example, about the millenium, that is the one thousand year period of God's reign on earth that will pass before the final battle.

Noteworthy is the degree to which John is using apocalyptic language as a means of power - there is, as we have read, no compromise possible: either you are in among the saved that will survive the final battle, or you are out. This is a clear and - to John - easy choice (remember that he speaks in the conviction that he is the bearer of the divine spirit), and consequently there is no compassion at all for all who make the wrong decision. Also, there is no way back once you've made your decision, because an indelible mark comes with it -

He [=Satan] also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. (13.16-17)

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (20.15)

It takes some serious action not to wear the mark - which may explain why some believers in an infallible bible have serious problems with barcodes, implants, and other devices that may function as a mark. On a more every-day level, the Euro currency has also been interpreted as a mark of the devil - it is the mark we have to use to do business, no matter what kind.

Europeans believe that the monetary system called ECU (European Currency Unit), now in place, will serve as the medium of commercial exchange and trade. However, the Bible reveals that a mark (or the symbolic number 666) on the right hand or forehead will replace the ECU and become the mandatory currency expression necessary to conduct trade and commerce in much of the world. Those refusing to accept this mark will be killed. (Arthur H. Brown, Europe After Democracy, 1993, pp. 138,139)

The final sentence seems to cast a heap of doubt on the whole thing - I can't seem to remember the German government, or any other ECU government, prescribe the death penalty for those who refuse to pay using Euro coins and bills, rather than, say, lumps of silver. Lumps of silver just ain't so very practical to carry around in a wallet.

Going on, Christian Crouch gave us an ad-hoc introduction, better than I would have been able to, on the terms of pre-millenialism (gist: humans are living before Christ's 1000 year reign), post-millenialism (gist: the 1000 years are already up and rolling, and Christ will return at the end of them) , and a-millenialism (gist: the number 1000 in this context is a symbolic, not a literal, number). Now, you don't have to memorize these terms, but the idea behind them - there is a historical timeline, and there are ways to take a position on it, the final phase/the end of history that Revelation describes included.

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So far. In case you haven't noticed: it's everywhere. The end of the world, I mean - Thursday, April 19, will see the box office start of Sunshine, yet another disaster movie, dealing with the re-ignition of an extinguished sun. You may also remember Armageddon - which takes its title and motive from Revelation. Yes, apocalyptic John also has disastrous meteors in his arsenal, we read about that:

The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. (8.11)

What do you think: would John have approved of a space mission to destroy the meteor Wormwood? Or not?

Got any other feedback or remarks on this week's class session? Then go ahead and post them here.

Don't open till Doomsday

2007-04-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

We were warned of this coming so long ago
Immortal secrets... man shouldn't know
Entering a realm where we just don't belong
We called them and they're coming.
[The Misfits: Don't open till Doomsday]

One week to go till class starts...

...you might want to read Revelation, to get a taste for the ancient, original apocalyptic thing - it may feel kind of long, once you start reading it, but it gets bloodier, more brutal, and weirder by the line. You may want to open your windows and start reading it aloud, so your neighbors can join in the apocalyptic fun. I'm sure they'd love to. If you find you're really, really into it, you might want to go on and read the book of Daniel (which precedes Revelation, both chronologically and in the bible canon), but you don't have to - I'm gonna drop a few words about it, come time.

I should add the precaution that I don't plan to bring a religious background to these religious texts - I'd prefer to read them, for the sake of this class, as works of fiction.

A little background information, thorough enough for our purposes, can be found here.

Also, feel free to bring hard copies of the Revelation text to class next week - I'm going to prepare a handout with select passages, but I'm not going to copy the entire thing several times over.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet...the bees are gone: the passing away of large parts of the worldwide bee population (some seem to have survived on Hawaii, though) really begs the question: is this a sign of the last times? Are the bees leaving the planet because its destruction is immiment? Who can say? The disappearance of so many bees should prove to have grave effects on agriculture, I should think...an apocalyptic scenario involving the massive failure of the agricultural industry, is John Christopher's The Death of Grass (or, in the US: No Blade of Grass), not part of our reading list in this class but still highly recommended as a very spooky book.

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Edit April 14 - and now it's the cellphones that are destryoing bee populations...

(Preliminary) Bibliography

2007-03-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

You are not supposed to read all, or even most, of these works - the list is more supposed to be a useful and representative cut into the extremely vast body of writings on all points of the apocalyptic. Believe me, it's VAST...as far as these works are available in the Bamberg Opac, I've included the catalog numbers.

Barr, David L. “The Apocalypse of John as Oral Enactment.” Interpretation 40 (1986): 243-256.
[ 15/.ZT 4020-40 ]

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.
[an absolute landmark study on maybe the most influential Puritan genre: the jeremiad. Bercovitch is very outspoken on what he believes is the apocalyptic foundation of all American culture - useful, despite its age!] [ 40/HR 1708 FE 9151]

Brummett, Barry. Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991.
[ 40/ER 990 LE 6949 ]

Caird, George B. A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine. London: A & C Black, 1984. [the whole thing annotated by a non-fundamentalist theologian] [ 15/xtl 57 CA 717-27 ]

Cohn, Norman. Cosmos, Chaos and the World to come. The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. [ 10/irg 93 CR 1478 ]

Engler, Bernd, Joerg O. Fichte, and Oliver Scheiding, eds. Millenial Thought in America. Historical and Intellectual Contexts, 1630-1680. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2002.

Freese, Peter. “From the Apocalypse to the Entropic End: From Hope to Despair to New Hope.” Eds. Peter Freese and Charles B. Harris. The Holodeck in the Garden. Science and Technology in Contemporary American Fiction. Normal: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004. 334-356.

Heard, Alex. Apocalypse pretty soon. Travels in End-Time America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Kibbey, Ann. The interpretation of material shapes in Puritanism. A study of rhetoric, prejudice, and violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. [ 40/HS 1721 FP 3104]

Korshin, Paul J. “Queuing and Waiting: the Apocalypse in England, 1660-1750.” Eds. C.A Patrides and Joseph Wittreich. The Apocalypse in English Renaissance thought and literature. Pattern, antecedents and Repercussions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. 240-265. [ 40/HI 1117 FM 2356]

Kreuziger, Frederick A. Apocalypse and Science Fiction. A Dialectic of Religious and Secular Soteriologies. Chico: Scholars Press, 1982.

May, John R. Toward a New Earth: Apocalypse in the American Novel. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972. [ 40/HR 1819 FG 5605]

O'Leary, Stephen. Arguing the Apocalypse. A Theory of Millenial Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Robinson, Douglas. American Apocalypses. The Image of the End of the World in American Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. [ 40/HR 1712 FN 7313]

Seed, David, ed. Imagining Apocalypse. Studies in Cultural Crisis. London, Macmillan Press, 2000.

Söfting, Inger-Anne. "Desert Pandemonium: Cormack McCarthy's Apocalptic 'Western' in Blood Meridian." American Studies in Scandinavia 31.2 (1999): 13-30.

Stein, Stephen J., ed. The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism. Volume 3. Apocalpyticism in the Modern Period and the Contemporary Age. New York: Continuum, 1998. [ 15/yur 98 CS 1914-3]

Taylor, Justin. A Mountain Walked or Stumbled: Madness, Apocalypse, and H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu.” <http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/lovecraft_taylor.pdf>.

Uhlig, Christiane, and Rupert Kalkofen, eds. In Erwartung des Endes. Bern: Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2000. [ 40/EC 5410 LH 8579]

Weber, Eugen. Apocalypses. Prophecies, Cults and Millenial Beliefs through the Ages. London: Hutchinson, 1999. [ 40/HG 432 LH 6436 ]

(Preliminary) Schedule

2007-03-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

This schedule is, I might add, an ideal - I don't honestly think we're gonna make it through all these points entirely. We will definitely have to deal with 1) the Puritans 2) Melville 3) the differences between traditional, religious apocalypse and secular apocalypse 4) and some of the modes of secular apocalypse (Jack London - TS Eliot - Paul Auster will have their appearance).

Session I (April 18) - Introduction to the class, our materials, to apocalypses in general (short), ancient, "traditional" apocalypses in general (short), THE apocalypse, aka The Revelation of St. John (longer, much longer).

April 25 - on this beautiful evening in late April, no class session will make your day: we'll have to cancel it. Why? You are supposed to be in U9/111 at 6 pm to attend the introductory session of the tutorial on "Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten". The tutorial will take place NOT ONLY on Wednesday evenings, but on various other scheduled occasions - so you can attend this class and the tutorial.

Session II (May 2) - The apocalyptic inception of American colonization - introduction: the Puritan settlers and the City Upon a Hill - Puritan literary genres and writers - The Apocalypse in Puritan Rhetoric - poetry by Michael Wigglesworth.
Session III (May 9) - Cotton Mather and in particular, his Wonders of the Invisible World (small parts of it, not the whole thing) - the corruption of the apocalytic site - witchcraft and magic -
Session IV (May 16) - Cotton Mather continued - the post-millenial and more optimistic view on apocalypse of Jonathan Edwards - the Great Awakening
Session V (May 23) - The Confidence Man introduced

Session VI (May 30) - May 30: I'll hand out the list of topics for our response paper on this day. I'll also post it here. And - The Confidence Man continued a little more.

Session VII ( June 6) Capitalist Apocalypse: excerpts from Ignatius Donelly's Caesar's Column - the urge to re-colonize the country: Jack London's The Scarlet Plague and George R. Stewart's Earth Abides
Session VIII (June 13) - Jack London continued - & 2) Weird & Gothic Apocalypse: stories by H.P. Lovecraft

June 13: Last day to submit your response paper.

Session IX (June 20) - Weird Apocalypse continued - HP Lovecraft: The Colour out of Space - Nuclear Apocalypse
Session X (June 27) - Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things.
Session XI (July 4) - In the Country of Last Things continued

By July 4, at latest, you ought to have some idea of what you would like to write your term paper on. You are absolutely free in your choice and I will gladly help you find and refine a topic, within reasonable limits (your paper should naturally take up a topic more or less related to our class discussions) - just talk to me about it, even before July 4, if you like.

Session XII (July 11) - The two Bush administrations and apocalyptic rhetoric - the impending climate change and apocalyptic fears - apocalypse, power, and politics
Session XIII (July 18) - Apocalypse, Power, and Politics continued - and: last things, as it were. We could read some comic strips on the apocalypse, or we might consider turning the seminar into an apocalyptic cult unit with a vision for the final days to come.

August 15: Last day to submit your term paper.