Lit. N.

Americana textos

I. COLONIAL PERIOD

1. “From of Plymouth Plantation” Book I, Chapter 9 Of Their Voyage and How

They Passed the Sea; and of Their Safe Arrival at Cape Cod – William Bradford
It was written between 1630 and 1651 by William Bradford. Bradford was the leader of and
governor of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. Bradford discussed his thought on religion
and the Bible compared with the mission of the pilgrims.
The first book was written in 1630. This book focuses mainly on the journey of the pilgrims from
England to North America and discusses the founding of the Plymouth settlement. Bradford uses
episodes from the voyage as teaching tools for future generations of Christian readers. He implies
that unvirtuous people, such as the sailor, will be punished for their sinfulness. Notice that
Bradford describes the profane sailor as “the first” to be thrown overboard, implying that only
one person on the Mayflower died. Also Bradford characterizes Native Americans (when he calls
Indians, since it was initially believed that America was part of India) as wild and savage, an
example of an inherent racist bias almost all European colonists held against Native people. The
tone is depressing. Bradford message is that they must keep their faith in God in order to be alive
because God protects them. He’s giving an idea of the role that plays God. Today the book is
regarded by historians as one of the most important works of the 17th century.
The settlers of Plymouth Colony were known as Pilgrims Fathers and were separatists, they
believed that the Church of England was corrupt, and that true Christians must separate from it.
They were poor and uneducated. They arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. They were escaping
from persecution in Europe and their main reason to the new land was to find religious freedom.

2. “To My Dear and Loving Husband” – Anne Bradstreet

The poem begins with Bradstreet describing herself and her husband as one being. She states that
there is no other woman in the world who is as happy with her husband as she is. She prizes her
husband’s love more than gold and all the riches of the East. She describes her love as thirst by
writing “that Rivers cannot quench” her desire. She needs his love and cannot live without it - she
claims that only his love can “give recompense.”
Then, Bradstreet shifts into a spiritual perspective, writing that there is no way she can repay her
husband for his love and that she hopes Heaven will “reward thee manifold.” The main idea she
wants to describe is eternal and unconditional love. She uses some archaic words like “ought”
that means anything. The diction is not complex, words just talks about women, men and love.
She uses direct words and plain style. The tone is joyful, she’s emotionally very happy, she
expresses extreme happiness. She has no doubts, she’s confidence with her husband feelings and
her feelings.

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In the three first lines, there’s an anaphor “if ever”. Here she emphasizes the marriage. She omits
the verb “are” in lines one and two, and she also omits “then” in line three. In the first line we
also find a paradox “if ever two were one”, that is contradictor, two persons cannot be one. From
line five to six, she’s comparing her love with gold (metaphor), she values her husband love more
than gold and money. From line five to seven we have a hyperbole; she exaggerates the love she
feels. In the last part she expresses how grateful she is to her husband for loving her and ask god
to repay him in many ways; she and her husband should love each other so strongly while they’re
alive that they will live forever.

II. The Revolutionary Period

1. “From The Autobiography” – Benjamin Franklin

Franklin’s tone at the beginning of the book is humble and indicative of a belief in
utilitarianism. He claims to write only so that his own life may be an example for his son
of how one can live well and how one can get through hardships. Franklin’s book is a
story of self-betterment, it is written to be a model for the betterment of others. Franklin
noticed the problem that there were not enough books and that only rich people could
afford them. He wanted everyone to have the opportunity to be able to read and have
access to books.
In the second part he talks about his personal information on how he was educated when
he was a child “I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian”. He does not practice
because he has doubts and he make clear that he prefers good citizens rather than people
who prays. When he states “I wish’d to live without committing any fault at any time” he
wants to reach perfection, and he is telling people that they should not conform.
In the last part, he enumerates some virtues which emphasizes the idea of reach success
on earth, not to improve faith. The message he wants to send is that everybody can
improve and be better.

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III. The Romantic Period

1. “Thanatopsis” – William Cullen Bryant

"Thanatopsis" starts by talking about nature’s ability to make us feel better. The speaker tells us
that nature can make pain less painful. It can even lighten our dark thoughts about death. He tells
us that, when we start to worry about death, we should go outside and listen to the voice of nature.
That voice reminds us that we will vanish when we die and mix back into the earth. The voice of
nature also tells us that when we die, we will not be alone. The poem ends by telling us to think
of death like a happy, dream-filled sleep.

This poem was written by William Cullen Bryant during the Romantic Period.
Thanatopsis means “Thanatos” which is death and “opsis” which is view. Hence this
poem is a way of thinking and looking at the concept of death.The author is referring to
the person who has relation with the invisible forms of Nature. Nature is personified in
the poem; she smiles and speaks. For the romantics, Nature is something living, she
responds to our emotions.

From lines 17-45: the poet takes a hopeful attitude. Nature is giving us hope, she is
teaching us that we are going back to earth, to the natural elements.
From lines 31-45: Nature is talking. We return to the earth when we die and when we
die we are not alone. The mighty sepulcher is earth. the principal idea is that we do not
have to be afraid of death, because when we die, we become one.
From line 74-52: the speaker is the poet. The final advice is that we have to enjoy life
while we are alive ('carpe diem’ topic)

Thanatopsis is about man’s relationship with nature, a relationship of respect. The poem
is an elegy, it shifts from grief to conflict or from melancholy to comforting. It is often a
consolation to those who fear death.

In “Thanatopsis,” nature is a force and an idea, but she is also a lady. This poetic device is called
personification. By turning an idea like nature into a woman, with a voice and a personality,
Bryant makes nature more relatable, and also more comforting. One of the major ideas that holds
this poem together is the contrast between the freedom and the open space of nature and the
confinement of the grave. When the speaker mentions the grave in this poem, he is usually talking
about a scary, dark, unhappy place. By the end, though, he helps us to see why it might not be so

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bad after all. In this poem, the sun rules the land of the living, and when you die, you leave the
sun behind forever. It is important to note that, even though the sun is a symbol of life, it is not
alive. The poem makes a big deal out of the eternal life of the sun, as opposed to the brief life of
humans. The ocean in “Thanatopsis” is giant, scary, and a bit sad. That is a big contrast to the
shining golden sun, for example. It is not part of the human world of death and fear, but still, it is
kind of dark. In “Thanatopsis,” the couch turns out to be a metaphor for the grave, but with a
difference. It refers to the place we go when we die, but it isn’t scary or awful. It’s cozy,
comforting, and it makes death seem like a nap more than a prison.
One of the big ideas in “Thanatopsis” is that all the people in the history of the world are part of
a long line, heading down into the grave. It is all part of getting us to focus on the big picture of
death, not just on our little personal fears. This poem is written in blank verse. Finally, the reason
why this poem is romantic is because the poet shows nature as a teacher and as an inspiration, he
has some romantic escapism, and he uses imagination together with emotions.

2. SELECTED POEMS – Edgar Allan Poe

Sonnet To Science
“Sonnet to Science” is about a poet’s lament over the dangers of scientific development and its
negative implications for poetry and creativity.

The poet in Poe’s sonnet worries about and rejects scientific belief because he regards it as too
unimaginative. For him, science is a predator or, like a vulture, a carrion-eater, and it has crippled
his imagination with “dull realities.” In his apostrophe to science, he alludes to characters from
Greek and Roman mythology, such as the Hamadryad and Naiad nymphs and Diana, the Roman
goddess of the hunt, describing their forced banishment as evidence that humanity is too willing
to discard its creative soul. To reinforce the value of the past over the value of the thoughtless
future, Poe uses a traditional English sonnet form to arrange his thoughts. The lines are heroic
because they use iambic pentameter, or a series of five iambs, where each iamb is an unstressed
followed by a stressed syllable.

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Despite the apparent message of the sonnet, some details of "To Science" could serve to
undermine the poet’s words. He ironically personifies science in the first line, which may suggest
that he unconsciously recognizes some humanity even in what he perceives as the stultifying
influence of science. On the other hand, his personification may highlight his fundamental
incompatibility with science, since he cannot help but poeticize the mundane. In addition, the use
of a rigid sonnet form may also indicate that poetry is itself not as free-formed as the poet
characterizes it to be, or alternatively it may suggest that some constraints do not necessarily
indicate the strangulation of the imagination.

“Annabel Lee”
Edgar Allan Poe wrote “Annabel Lee” a few months before his death. Although the poem may
refer to a number of women in Poe’s life, most acknowledge it to be in memory of Virginia
Clemm, Poe’s wife who married him when they were young and then died. The work returns to
Poe’s frequent fixation with the Romantic image of a beautiful woman who has died too
suddenly in her youth. The principle themes of the poem are: love, death and grief.

The poem specifically mentions the youth of the unnamed narrator and especially of Annabel Lee,
and it celebrates child-like emotions in a way consistent with the ideals of the Romantic era. Many
Romantics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries viewed adulthood as a corruption of the
purer instincts of childhood, and they preferred nature to society because they considered it to be
a better and more instinctive state. Accordingly, Poe treats the narrator’s childhood love for
Annabel Lee as fuller and more eternal than the love of adults. Annabel Lee is gentle and
persistent in her love, and she has no complex emotions that may darken or complicate her love.

The poem’s setting has several Gothic elements, as the kingdom by the sea is lonely and in an
undefined but mysterious location. Poe does not describe the setting with any specificity, and he
weaves a hazy, romantic atmosphere around the kingdom until he ends by offering the stark and
horrific image of a “sepulcher there by the sea.” The location by the sea recalls the city of “The
City in the Sea,” which is also located by the sea and which is conceptually connected to death
and decay. At the same time, the nostalgic tone and the Gothic background serve to inculcate the
image of a love that outlasts all opposition, from the spiritual jealousy of the angels to the physical
barrier of death. Although Annabel Lee has died, the narrator can still see her "bright eyes," an
image of her soul and of the spark of life that gives a promise of a future meeting between the
two lovers.

As in the case of a number of Poe's male protagonists who mourn the premature death of beloved
women, the love of narrator of "Annabel Lee" goes beyond simple adoration to a more bizarre

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attachment. Whereas Annabel Lee seems to have loved him in a straightforward, if nonsexual,
manner, the protagonist has mentally deified her. He blames everyone but himself for her death,
pointing at the conspiracy of angels with nature and at the show of paternalism inherent in her
"highborn kinsmen" who "came and bore her away," and he remains dependent upon her memory.
While the narrator of the poem "Ulalume" suffers from an unconscious need to grieve and to
return to Ulalume's grave, the narrator of "Annabel Lee" chooses ironically to lie down and sleep
next to a woman who is herself lying down by the sea.

“The Raven”
“The Raven” is the most famous of Poe's poems. It can be divided in three parts; the first part
from stanza one to six, the second part from stanza seven to thirteen and the last part from stanza
fourteen to eighteen. The unnamed narrator appears in a typically Gothic setting with a lonely
apartment, a dying fire, and a "bleak December" night while wearily studying his books in an
attempt to distract himself from his troubles. He thinks occasionally of Lenore but is generally
able to control his emotions, although the effort required to do so tires him and makes his words
equally slow and outwardly pacified.
"The Raven" refers to an agonized protagonist's memories of a deceased woman. Through poetry,
Lenore's premature death is implicitly made aesthetic, and the narrator is unable to free himself
of his reliance upon her memory. He asks the raven if there is "balm in Gilead" and therefore
spiritual salvation, or if Lenore truly exists in the afterlife, but the raven confirms his worst
suspicions by rejecting his supplications. The fear of death or of oblivion informs much of Poe's
writing, and "The Raven" is one of his bleakest publications because it provides such a definitively
negative answer.
At first the narrator attempts to give his experiences a rational explanation, but by the end of the
poem, he has ceased to give the raven any interpretation beyond that which he invents in his own
head. Each figure represents its respective character's subconscious that instinctively understands
his need to obsess and to mourn. The protagonist is unable to avoid the recollection of his beloved.
The raven actively stimulates his thoughts of Lenore, and he effectively causes his own fate
through the medium of a non-sentient animal.

3. SELECTION OF POEMS – Walt Whitman

“I Hear America Singin”

The poem consists of one stanza, which is made up of eleven lines. Whitman writes in his
characteristic free verse. The structure is simple - it follows the simple list format that Whitman
commonly employs in his poetry. One by one, he lists the different members of the American
working class and describes the way they sing as they perform their respective tasks. He formats

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each line and sentence similarly, as many begin with the word "the," and contain phrases that are
variations on "as he ___" or "on his way to ___." This structural choice gives the lines a quick
pace and a rhythmic whimsicality. Because of this, the poem gives the reader the sensation of
hearing these carols in rapid succession.

This poem exemplifies the theme of musicality in Whitman's poetry. Whitman uses music to
emphasize the interconnectedness of the human experience. Even though each worker sings his
or her individual song, the act of singing is universal, and by extension, all of the workers unite
under one common American identity.

The tone of the poem is joyful, whimsical, and hopeful. Whitman celebrates in the common
American worker, magnifying his characters with descriptors such as "robust," "friendly,"
"blithe," and "strong." He highlights individuals that often go unnoticed in classic poems; these
older verses focus on tales of brave soldiers and heroes. Ultimately, “I Hear America Singing” is
a love poem to the nation. Whitman uses the small variations in individual experiences to crafts
a wholesome, honest, and hardworking American identity.

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

Whitman wrote this poem in free verse, like most of his other poems. It consists of one single
stanza with eight lines. The lines vary in length and have different stressed and unstressed
syllables, which gives the poem an anecdotal feel. The first four lines of the poem all begin with
"When" as the speaker recalls sitting and listening to the astronomer lecture. These first four lines
function as a setup; and the final four lines describe the speaker's reaction to the experience well
as the lesson from the poem.
In this poem, Whitman uses the example of the astronomer to show the difference between
academic learning and experiential learning. The speaker finds the astronomer's lectures stars and
mathematical formulas to be boring. He does not feel any sort of connection to the subject matter
until he goes outside and sees the stars for himself. Looking up at the night sky is not an experience
that one can experience in a classroom, no matter how "learn'd" the teacher might be Whitman
felt very strongly that experiencing life's marvels was the only real way to learn.

Whitman writes the speaker's voice to emphasize the fact that he is not an academic. For example,
he shortens "learned" to "learn'd" when describing the sophisticated professor. The speaker
quickly grows bored while listening to the astronomer talk about theories and mathematical
equations. The astronomer, however, represents a highly educated and refined class that has a
more structured approach to learning.

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Ultimately, this poem serves to highlight the difference between wisdom and knowledge. In the
context of this poem, wisdom is the process of learning through experience and exploration (the
speaker appreciates the wonders of the night sky only when he sees it for himself). Knowledge,
on the other hand, comes from research, reading, and established theories. Academic knowledge
is a more tangible form of intelligence; while wisdom, on the other hand, is intuitive. The
astronomer attempts to relay his academic knowledge in his lecture, but the speaker does not
connect to the subject matter from such a distance.

“Beat! Beat! Drums!”

Whitman wrote this poem at the beginning of the Civil War. Whitman uses the drums and bugles
as symbols of the war itself (during the wars of early American history, drums and bugles would
signal the beginning of each battle). In this poem, the speaker commands the instruments to play
so loudly that they disrupt everyone's lives, just like war changes a society. This was especially
true of the Civil War, as all the soldiers were American, and all the battles took place on American
soil. The war dictated everything that happened during period of American history. In this poem,
Whitman does not let his reader escape the incessant drumbeat and trumpeting bugles, just as
there was no escaping the Civil War.

Whitman employs onomatopoeia when he writes about these instruments, using words
like whirr, pound, and thump. He draws the reader into his world, so while we read about the
instruments playing, it is possible to hear them as well. It adds an additional experiential
dimension to the poem. The onomatopoetic diction becomes increasingly intense towards the end
of the poem, as if the sounds of war are getting louder as they grow closer and more dangerous.

The end of the poem is rather macabre because the speaker commands the music to be so loud
that it even wakes the dead. While the horns and bugles signal the beginning of the battle, and the
mention of the dead invokes images of war cemeteries with rows upon rows of graves - the end
result of the battles. Just as Whitman uses onomatopoeia to allow readers to hear the sounds of
war, he also makes the reading experience visual with these potent images of death.

4. SELECTION OF POEMS – Emily Dickinson

“I Heard A Fly Buzz – When I Died” 465

Like many of her poems, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – “has a speaker who communicates
to the reader from beyond the grave. This poem, however, unlike “Because I could not stop for
Death, “is focused not on what comes after death—eternity and the afterlife—but instead is
focused on the actual rites of dying, of having one’s last moments. Indeed, this poem’s only

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dealings with the question of afterlife and eternity come in the fact that the speaker is speaking
from beyond the grave, and in order to speak must have some kind of existence after death. The
clues that the death scene itself is the most important element of the poem is clear for several
reasons. First, the poem is entirely located in a room—even in its metaphors, the perspective does
not leave the room, with the only exception being the imagined still air between “the Heaves of
Storm,” which is a generic enough image not to pull the reader out of the bedroom. In addition,
Dickinson repeats the phrase “in the Room,” in the first and second stanzas, making sure the
reader has not wandered away from this setting.

Finally, the fly’s importance also emphasizes this focus on the process of death. Were it the
afterlife, faith, or the journey to eternity that proved most important, the fly would be a minor
character; but it is, instead, the only significant character besides the speaker in the poem and the
character that best represents the poem’s climactic moment. Its significance is so apparent that it
comes between the speaker and “the light" -- this small, very earthly bug thus supplants
spirituality and the afterlife. This bug and its consequences ultimately represent the speaker’s
inability to hold on to spirituality, faith, or hope, in the face of death.

The speaker is participating in a common deathbed ritual of the time—people would, as the end
came near, will away their possessions, followed by a kind of climax where they would announce
the presence of God or of some spirit ready to take them to the next life, before they died, and all
of this before an audience of their close friends and family.

Dickinson’s speaker succeeds in willing away her objects, but she is distracted by the idea that
not all of her is “assignable”—presumably, this unassignable part being her spirit or soul. Just as
she has this thought, and thus is likely close to seeing “the light” and announcing that “the King/Be
witnessed – in the Room –,“ she is interrupted by the fly. This fly, which reminds us of the most
physical aspects of death, the rotting and decomposition of the corpse, stands between the speaker
and the spiritual “light.” While physicality distracts the speaker from a final revelation, however,
the poem does not say that all hope should be lost, for the speaker’s very ability to write this poem
means that there is an afterlife, after all.

“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” 712

Dickinson’s poems deal with death again and again, and it is never quite the same in any poem.
In “Because I could not stop for Death—,” we see death personified. He is no frightening, or even
intimidating, reaper, but rather a courteous and gentle guide, leading her to eternity. The speaker
feels no fear when Death picks her up in his carriage, she just sees it as an act of kindness, as she
was too busy to find time for him.

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It is this kindness, this individual attention to her—it is emphasized in the first stanza that the
carriage holds just the two of them, doubly so because of the internal rhyme in “held” and
“ourselves”—that leads the speaker to so easily give up on her life and what it contained. This is
explicitly stated, as it is “For His Civility” that she puts away her “labor” and her “leisure,” which
is Dickinson using metonymy to represent another alliterative word—her life.

Indeed, the next stanza shows the life is not so great, as this quiet, slow carriage ride is contrasted
with what she sees as they go. A school scene of children playing, which could be emotional, is
instead only an example of the difficulty of life—although the children are playing “At Recess,”
the verb she uses is “strove,” emphasizing the labors of existence. The use of anaphora with “We
passed” also emphasizes the tiring repetitiveness of mundane routine.

The next stanza moves to present a more conventional vision of death—things become cold and
more sinister, the speaker’s dress is not thick enough to warm or protect her. Yet it quickly
becomes clear that though this part of death—the coldness, and the next stanza’s image of the
grave as home—may not be ideal, it is worth it, for it leads to the final stanza, which ends with
immortality. Additionally, the use of alliteration in this stanza that emphasizes the material
trappings— “gossamer” “gown” and “tippet” “tulle”—makes the stanza as a whole less sinister.

That immorality is the goal is hinted at in the first stanza, where “Immortality” is the only other
occupant of the carriage, yet it is only in the final stanza that we see that the speaker has obtained
it. Time suddenly loses its meaning; hundreds of years feel no different than a day. Because time
is gone, the speaker can still feel with relish that moment of realization, that death was not just
death, but immortality, for she “surmised the Horses’ Heads/Were toward Eternity –.” By ending
with “Eternity –,” the poem itself enacts this eternity, trailing out into the infinite.

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