Jacob Riis photographs

Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890) was a non-fiction expose of the very same Lower East Side that Crane explores novelistically in Maggie. In addition to his prose, Riis includes photographs with his text. Many of these photographs belonged to a set of images he used to illustrate - - via "magic lantern" - - his very popular lectures.

Both Riis and Crane belong to the Progressive Era and identify with the social reform advocated by Progressives. At the same time, a comparison of the two writers will probably show as many differences as similarities in their attitudes toward poverty, class, the ghetto, and reform.

Let's put these two authors into dialogue with each other. Here's what you need to do:

1) head on over to this page on how to read a photograph. Review the terms used to describe the various elements of a photograph; think about how the way a photograph is composed might affect what a photograph means.

2) go to the New York Times' online Riis gallery;

3) examine the 13 images collected there and ask yourself some questions:
- - what places, people, and activities are represented in the photos?
- - how are the photographs framed or posed? in other words, how does Riis
arrange people, places, or events for the camera?
- - what kind of audience is Riis aiming for when he takes his photos? what in the
photos gives you clues about Riis's intended audience?
- - what kinds of emotions and attitudes does Riis want to provoke in his viewer?

3) select four photographs: two that would seem to be perfect illustrations for Crane's novel; and two that would seem to challenge, disagree with, or critique Crane's depiction of the Lower East Side.
- - explain how and why your two photos would work well with Crane's text. Most importantly, what similar attitudes toward class or poverty or reform do the photo and Crane's text share?
- - explain how the other two photographs seem to disagree with Crane's novel. That is, how do these two photos present alternative views or interpretations of the themes of class, poverty, reform, gender, etc. presented in Maggie.

4) Write up your analysis: typed, two pages, check for errors.

Tenement walking tour .. .

For Thursday, October 23, you will take a walking tour of a typical Lower East Side tenement.

Think about some of the following questions as you take the tour:
* what are the big differences you notice between tenement apartment then and housing today?
* what physical features of the tenement so you think would most significantly affect the way of life of those who lived in the this space? How?
*where and how does the interior space of the tenement reflect life in the Lower East Side outside the apartment?

After you've finished the tour, and thought about the questions, answer the following question in a one-page, typed response: how does your tour of the tenement help to explain some significant theme, motif, or event in Crane's novel, Maggie?

Suggested reading: For those of you interested in exploring the tenement and the Lower East Side a bit more fully, you might want to read some excerpts from Jacob Riis's "How the Other Half Lives." Here is Riis's chapter on the tenement; here is his chapter introducing the Lower East Side; and here is a chapter about working-class women of the Lower East Side.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Two things for Thursday:

Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (see syllabus for link), Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5;

Your write up on the Dickinson motif - - no more than a couple of paragraphs or so, typed or untyped.

Essay #1 (Due: Tuesday, October 7,2008)

Prof. Hanley
English 158
American Literature

Essay #1

You have a friend who doesn’t like to read. In particular, he or she really dislikes literature. Your goal in this paper is to convince your friend that he or she needs to read one of the texts we’ve looked at so far this semester.

What you’ll need to do:

• select a text (by Irving, Poe, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson);

• think about what you like about this text;

• think about your audience - - how you’ll persuade your friend;

• use the text to persuade your friend, i.e. use quotation to illustrate or support your arguments for the importance or necessity of reading the text

• draft and then type up your missive (double-spaced, font no bigger than 12 point, no smaller than 11, no longer than 2 pages);

• proofread for typographical, spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors;

• hand in your final product at the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 7, 2008.

Emily Dickinson

You'll find the Emily Dickinson poems that we'll be discussing in class here. Stay tuned for which poems we'll be discussing on which day (9/25 and 9/30).

If you really dig Emily Dickinson, you can browse through her collected poems online.

Mr. Emerson, meet Mr. Whitman

R.W. Emerson's 1855 letter to Walt Whitman (appended to the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass):

DEAR SIR--I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "LEAVES OF GRASS." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.

I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks, and visiting New York to pay you my respects.

R.W. EMERSON

A photostat of the original letter can be found in the Library of Congress - - you can see it by clicking here.

Whitman's 1856 response to Emerson can be found here.

Whitman

From Leaves of Grass (1855):

I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;

You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart,

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

Whitman, circa 1855



Whitman, in later life (circa 1873-1891):