memoirs, they are sanitized. they are vetted and there for minimum controversy. >> >> the of wisconsin madison professor jennifer rosen hagan. talks about anabel and reality. she talks about authors herman margo and work products of 19th century moral code. her class is a little over an hour. >> thank you and welcome to our lecture. nature as we know her is no saint. trial and to molt in melville's america. to put some that we give our

papers. that is because a title announces what is at stake for a lease hopefully announces what is at stake. i hope as nature as a saint, is that kind of title. you may think because the lecture is about melville, that it is a melville quote, but it is a walt emerson quote. someone who was addressing some of the same kind of questions and concerns that melville was. though nature as we know it is drawn rum ralph waldo emerson's essay called experience in 1884. he is trying to say what would our lives we like. how would we make sense of ourselves. how would we make sense of our world world.

that is to say, we did not have our inherited elysian telling us how to make sense of our religion. we didn't have europe saying to the new world here is how to make sense of yourself and your new world. what would it be like if we took our experience as, in fact, the indication of what and right -- of what right and wrong is. and then he goes on to show us why that is so hard to do. yes, experience is a thorny thing. he wrestles with it in the piece. what i love about this piece is not only the title, which why -- i'll explain in a little bit, but the way he opens up the essay. call me ishmael is one of the

great opening lines. emerson gives us one of the great opening lines of a modern essay. he opens up asking where do we find ourselves? it is a very arresting -- and in it you hear emerson trying to question himself. where is he morally speaking? the rest of the essay is trying to a right himself. i think it is a nice way of taking stock of where we find ourselves in this class. we find ourselves in the educational science building, not the educational building where we started out. we find ourselves on october 5. we find ourselves on week six of the course, the seddon -- seven

deadly sins of american history. you know what we are doing. we are using the seven deadly sins as a way of understanding american history on the early contact up to our own day. what are the seven deadly sins? we struggle with those a little on the first day. wrath, lust, pride, sloth, utne -- gluttony, greed. there is no send without context. in his study of the seven deadly sins in 2010, there is no send without history. it does not make sense to talk about sins without talking about a historical moment in which it is articulated or expressed and

punished. another way of putting it is that since have a history and that is what we are trying to figure out. what kind of history does pride, greed, gluttony, rap, sloth have in america? how do they open up something about a particular. in life? we start with the colonial. and we go up to our own day and we are seeing how these sins get made and remade into american intellectual and cultural life. one of the things we are seeing, even in the early weeks of our course, is that ideas about then have a racial component -- about sin have a result component -- racial component. one is not necessarily a sin for another.

with lust and colonial america, it is a factual -- based on gender. how something is once considered a sin, how it goes on to be a cultural virtue. a great example where going to see -- we are going to see as gluttony. we are learning not only good and evil has a history, but we're also paying attention as historians, how we use sources to try to access those moral

world. and to try to listen to what the motivations are of different historical actors. for the last couple of weeks, we export colonial america. now we are moving forward. we are in the early republic. we are looking at the next couple of weeks, is up to the civil war. we call it antebellum america. the sin we are now exploring is wrath. we are using one source because if i added another one, you would kill me. so, just one. it is a big one. what source only using? moby dick. wonderful, yes. why moby dick?

i have to say -- i told a colleague of mine who is an american renaissance expert that i was teaching the seven deadly sins class and that i was teaching moby dick. he said, wonderful -- pride. [laughter] i think there is some pride going on here. some dangerous, reckless pride. there are other sense going on like lust -- sins going on like lust. i don't want to insist that it is the only thing we're going to hear, but for now i am doing the heavy lifting on wrath. i think i'm in at least good company -- a french philosopher

from the 20th century thought about moby dick as an -- stacy, the mind? >> there is an idea of gladness and of the whale hunt. >> this is a novel of hatred. it is many other things. it is not only that, but it is also that. so, what i -- why i chose moby dick. i just wanted to make sure you read moby dick. it will be a book that you take with you for the rest of your

life. if not, you can come back and we can talk about it. also because i think there is hatred, anger, what we call wrath just seething in particular characters, moments. that is why it i think it is a terrific source for the sin of wrath. let's go back to emerson. have any of you ever read any emerson? stacy, it is a -- is it a name that is familiar? have you read thoreau? thoreau tends to be read more.

if you'd know emerson, you probably think of him as an on person to becoming and talking to us about wrath because his reputation is of a sweetie pie. a positive thinker. a motivational speaker with the attitude of just go for it. this is the emerson we get, not the emerson who cuts with a knife. i want to introduce you to the emerson who topples our equilibrium. so why pick emerson here to help

us listen into wrath at this moment? i think he is in conversation with melville. they are contemporaries. they are seem the same problems of 19th century america. they are in conversation. but also, if for no other reason than to remind us what we already know, which is no one text is representative of any text. we saw that looking at different sources. any source you are going to pick as a historical source is blinkered, is limited in some way. he is a particularly articulate commentator.

the only way to make sense of melville's to put him in the dialogue with other thinkers from his day. one of those is emerson. right now, i want emerson to do a little work for us. and some of the issues that melville is wrestling with an moby dick. -- in moby dick. i'm going to read this. i think that is the intensity of this quote. he writes, nature as we know her is no saint. he likes of the church. the statics, the graham writes, --

[quote] as one writer put it, emerson worked with lightning strikes that even at the level of singler -- singular, he is telling us something. nature as we know her is no saint. the lights of the church, the aesthetics, the gin choose, the graham-ites. she does not the fingers by any favor. -- distinguished by any favor -- distinguish by any favor. [inaudible]

>> kyle, you had your hand up too? >> it doesn't have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. --i guess. it will just come and destroy. >> nature does not also have favorites. get the christian, the aesthetics, the gentoo's, none of them have a lock on knowing the truth. she does not have any favorites. she does not the fingers. here is a prolific mood --

holistic -- perllistic mood. he wants a first-hand relationship with the universe. he says guess what i'm not going to think that the church or sexism or the graham might performers, any one of them will help me understand nature better. i don't want that relationship and that nature isn't a saint. she comes eating, and drinking, and sending -- sinning. her darling, the great, the strong the beautiful, are not children of our law. what does that mean? [quote]

>> it is not something that nature thinks about. it does not respect our little codes of ethics. it does not respect our sense of propriety. does not respect our ends of right and wrong. so who want to come -- so if you want to come with a right relationship with the universe, at least forgetting, or criticizing these religions that think they have a lock on code that we think is going to help us, that is not put us into that delusional -- original relationship.

i think we see an melville, is not -- and melville is not always a happy one -- in melville is not always a happy one. i can hear melville getting upset. he does not need emerson. and yet we hear him saying something. it's not the exact same thing, but it is in conversation with emerson. this is a next her from a letter he writes to a your friend daniel hawthorne. a popular, very accomplished author and his own day. herman melville was very good friends with him and in the letter of 1851, which is the year moby dick was published, melville was praising hawthorne or his literary field of genius.

his ability to be unafraid of the darkness and the universe. what he is praising hawthorne for doing is saying this is an excludable universe, but you have the courage to say no. what we hear is him confessing about something and himself. and i'm going to have someone read this. when it, you want to do that? >> perhaps, after all, there is no secret. we are inclined to think that god cannot explain his own secret. that he would like a little information. we mortals astonish him as much. [quote]

>> i find that last line confusing so i had to read it and reread it and reread it. let's just hold off on the last line, but is as important -- it is important. can someone put this in terms that are more resonant in terms of how we talk in 2015. take it line by line. so, he is talking here about the universe. the world. when he says, perhaps there is no secret and then go on. someone do a guess.

there are many of you that i know are good at this. kyle? >> i'm not 100% sure. >> of course you're not. >> it kind of sounds like leaving in god holds us back from the truth. like he's saying there is no secret. it is just -- god cannot when his own secrets because there is none. there is nothing that he has that we don't. >> he says we are inclined that god cannot explain his secrets. and he would like a little information upon certain points himself. what?

god needs a little points of help? we have an omission of an all-knowing god. we mortals astonish him as he astonishes us. that is not saying there is a god. that is a saying if there is a god, we are mutually -- mystified in both directions. that gets in the way of a god that is all-knowing. it goes on, but it is this being of the matter with which we choke ourselves. as soon as you say me, god, nature, so soon you jump off the stool. what?

>> once you are social or other universal idea, or you are putting someone -- something so far above you, you could just kill yourself. >> you kick the stool out from under year. you don't get from any closer to this question of being. he says that word is a hangman. take god out of the dictionary and you would have him in the street. i'm not going to subject the last line to exit jesus. just keep in mind as you read moby dick, think about the people that populate that vote.

i don't want to insist on this because there are a million interpretations, but what if you think about that line -- take god out of the dictionary and think about god as the man in the street. i think that is a helpful way to at least listen into who are these characters that populate the peak on -- peacod. it would be dishonest -- historically inaccurate, but also true, that he would say the same thing about the words in. that send -- about the word sin. sin is a hangman word. next week we are going to bear

down any text. we're going to really work with this as a primary source for listening into mid-19th century america. we're going to subject whole chapters into interpretation. even the resonant phrase. we're going to see if we can hear what melville is trying to tell us that separates him from the america of 1851 and our america of 2015 about what he means by god. what he thinks about individual sin, or in this case, social send -- sin. not just sin of the singular figure, but --

next week is about zooming in or bearing down, but for today, we are zooming out. taking a panoramic view. we want to take a more broad look about america and the mid-19th century to see what he is eating. what moral problems does he think he is confronting in the text. we want to look a little bit at the context of moby dick and what it tells us about melville's mind. his view of the world. so, remember, his mind and you of the world are a product of his own time and place. he is a commentator, but he is living it too. he does not have any special perks in which he can comment on. he himself is shaped by those ideas.

we don't want to just use his mind as just looking at america. if moby dick is a novel of hatred, let us not forget it is also a novel of lying. there is not just hating going on, there is desiring, and wanting. every sin has its counterpart. every negative emotion has its positive side. so i want you to listen as this book is a confession. -- as if this book is a confession, but also a commentary on social criticism. so what issues or at lease what issues are -- at least what issues are pressing on his moral

imagination? i'm going to press on at least three. very speedy, not getting indeed, but just to alert you that might be sources of things being commented on any text. once we do this, then come back in about 10 minutes -- the first context, if you will, of melville's midcentury america is that he is writing this at a time of intense fervor and liberalization.

we see staggering growth and diverse a vacation. different movements, all aimed at reforming american society and bringing it closer in line with their interpretation of the bible and the word of god. it is a time of intense religious pluralism and fervor. also, i don't like the other word we use, secularization. it is ridiculous to talk about 19th-century america as coming increasingly secular if i secular we mean nonreligious. if we mean by worldly, then yes.

that is people are not becoming less religious, they are just trying to bring their religious thoughts more line with the time. i think the better word is liberalization. that is religion as a gets press through red nationally -- rationality and reason. that goes on to be what we call liberal product is him. he is living in it, but he is critical of it. as and douglas -- anne put it, moby dick was critical of liberal product is him. will we see in moby dick, is that melville craves some view of the world that is sublime.

not beautiful. that is mysterious, nonsensical. a god who is inscrutable and not what we would later here and the 19th century -- in the 19th century. melville doesn't want his got to be his friend. if there is going to be a god, it is going to be a god worthy of all and admiration and terror. -- awe and admiration and terror. melville needed calvinism for his moral imagination. does that make sense?

so it's like someone who is catholic, but does not actually believe in all the stuff. but loves the bells in the literacy. you might not believe in the tenants come at the worldview, but there may be something about it. the ritual, the architecture of the church, the smells of the church, the holidays. i think that is a good way of talking about melville. he did not believe it, but he needed it. and yet on the other hand, we also see in moby dick, and appreciation or differences and diversity. at the same time, he is very much in his day and that he is looking around and seem somewhat

open to an appreciative of diversity. certainly to the idea that no one group has a lock on moral truth. so i think we can look at the novel and see his wrestling with that. i think it does not pick up to the good degree -- to the degree of his american life. i say this is the. when we witnessed the democratization of democracy. democracy became more inclusive, at least among white males. we see impulses captured by the rise and presidency of andrew

jackson who served from 1829-1837. he goes on to be one of the great dictators come about later in american history. so jackson's politics helped crystallize nagging doubts of the time and outset are still with us today. -- doubts that are still with us today. how easy is it to pull off democracy, equality? a concern of the day was, does democracy somehow create a craving for the strong leader? to counteract its leveling forces? these are the crucial questions

of the day. what kind of leader does a democracy produce? what kind of leader is appropriate for democracy? and the question about in a horizontal society without loyalty, are -- because human beings don't do well with a flattened moral landscape. we hear these questions answered and moby dick, as in the text. like the writer margaret fuller. many have argued persuasively that melville draws his inspiration from jackson. this figure from -- within iran will. -- i run -- iron will.

they said he would strike the sun if it ever insulted him. there is an interesting version of that where an admirer of andrew jackson in 1840 does not say you actually strike the sun come up that likens him to the sun. that brilliant light was andrew jackson. so in addition to widespread political transformation, this is also a pyramid --. a period of market revolution. it is a period where receded transformation -- where we see the transformation of the manufacturing industry.

where things moved to shops and factories. that helps explain some of the transformation. thanks to industrialization and technological involvement, we not only get a greater distribution of goods, but we also get a greater division of workers. which means less independence and control over the labor process and its rewards. moby dick is very much caught in this moment. it is very caught in the questions of labor and independence and a mass labor force. you think a novel that takes place on the high seas would be a one of escape from industrialization.

ishmael certainly takes from the seas to get away, but then what does he do? right in the first chapter he realizes that a whaling ship may be another exploited system. where workers are trapped with a system that is just unjust and economically punishing is the one on land. what does he say? i'm going to go ahead and read it because i can read fast. this is ishmael and he is making the decision if he should got to see. [text on screen] >> i'm a slave so i'll just go

get battered and bruised and that economic system. in the 1840's and 1850's, a question like that, who ain't a slave is not just a tossup question. what is free labor? what constitutes free labor?

who ain't a slave is not just a cast-off question, it is a question that announces a problem that he is going to try to figure out in the book. so it is a question of what is free labor and what is slave labor and his slave labor really free -- it's slave -- is slave labor really free? think about it in 1790, there were 690,000 slaves in america. eventually there were 4 million.

we are seeing the persistent growth in numbers of slaves so slavery is the defining moral problem of melvin's day. -- melville's they -- day. i think this is a powerful quote from southern historical -- historian michael brian. --to drive the project forward while holding millions of bondage, produced anxiety. so we see that anxiety and things like -- in things like these iron horns.

can someone read what that says here to give an indication as to what the artifact was? >> to keep her from running away. >> remember when we look that runaway wife advertisements last week? those were just a small number that were typically posted at this time. most were runaway slaves at this time. people trying to retrieve their property. a good way of making sure that runaway slaves would not run away again, was using this device which is called i record -- iron horn.

anxiety of start proportions -- -- stark proportions. this is outside virginia which is outside the nation's capital. we can see it in slave advertisements in 1865. we see it in moby dick. we're going to move ahead to ideas about race. what other ideas that we see? to put it differently, what context do we see?

that is the vibrant discussion about race. this goes about discussion about slavery and using racial theory to justify why slavery was ok. they use the bible as well. melville was appalled by slavery and yet, i think as you read moby dick, you'll see that sometimes he is pushing against racial ideas, but on other times it is not so clear. that is just what i want to alert you to. the way he's i dressing -- addressing things about race.

at some time, so this is a page out of a very famous book. this new example -- is an example before darwin's origin of species. i don't want to overstate it. it is not like we get darwin and the world breaks into and the world gets into a big evolution. it is just to say that darwin's discovery or recognition for natural selection changes what people think about evolution.

prior to darwin, -- which is very racial hierarchies. in very racial, sinful views about races. it is very categorical. we see sometimes melville a that language and i think other times was very critical of it. through ishmael, we have a little saying a man can be honest through any sort of skin. we see his friendship or what others have identified as love. melville himself before writing moby dick, actually wrote several popular novels on ships in the high seas.

he himself had been a sailor and traveled around for three years. at this time, many of the whaling ships came from different parts of society. we can see that melville makes the -- maybe picked up that sensibility of friday and different. -- variety and difference. at the very least, i want to alert you to the fact, or to pay attention to who are the characters in this novel. when you start to pay attention to who the characters are, you realize race and racial difference is something that is interesting to him.

there is a lot he is saying with the use of these different characters. you've got to do -- dagu. you've got pip, the cabin boy. you've got tashdego, the noble savage. or the native american who is respectable and refined. we have the mysterious oriental vanilla. we have ishmael. this is a picture of ishmael indie hebrew bible or the new testament.

i don't think that is what ishmael looks like. he was gently over -- older. his anyone member who ishmael was from the bible? where what muslims call their koran? >> son of abraham. >> yes and who was his mother? >> [indiscernible] >> the first son is ishmael, but then sarah gets jealous and so she makes abraham, takes them out of the -- takes them out of the house -- kicks them out of the house. we have the beginnings of a new

religious project three as many years later, mohammed would come to identify himself and his followers as an line with ishmael. so ishmael is one of the fathers of islam. all the religions that go back to abraham, judaism, christianity, and then islam. they all have the same origin. they are all genetically linked, but they all have different paths. i think it is not insignificant that ishmael is called ishmael, he is obviously alerting us to a different track. last, but not least we can't talk about race without talking about the white whale.

the imposing, formidable, inscrutable, all-powerful, or seemingly all-powerful, white whale. we had 150 years that people think they knew what the white whale meant. moby dick is also a character in a story or at least a commentary on racial difference.

we have melville -- this is what this means and it is usually never write. i just want to give you an alert to the kinds of things melville is working in and the kinds of things we can see in the text, among others. issues about political and economic transformation, democratization, and the rise of market capitalism and industrialization. the institution of slavery and the ideas of race. this should be an ideal primary source. this is like, perfect. there is a tricky par with that and that is moby dick was a commercial flop. it was a disaster. readers were very disappointed because he had written these wonderful stories of the high

seas and they were expecting more of that and instead what they got, was an imposing monument. they did not want an imposing monument. when we think of melville as is great, towering, novelist for the ages, well he wasn't. this brought him near financial ruin. it brought him to like it ruin. the rest of his intellectual, or his career, is a very sad one. though, he does manage to push out a few more books. this was not -- at least in his own lifetime. and yet, melville's moby dick picks up many years later. actually in the 1920's and americans rediscover this book. it is in the 1940's that one of the great commentators, madison,

he was an enduring nature of our age. some moby dick, as a primary source, is a little tricky. if sales are andy -- are any indication of how much it spoke to readers of his day, it didn't. so we need to both listen and pushback from the text. at the very least, we need to be very cautious in the same way we should be cautious with any primary source. every primary source is blinkered, partial, gives us one perspective. again, to make moby dick as big as it is do all the heavy

lifting for the ideas of sin for wrath -- or wrath in general, is not a good idea. i just won a to pick up on this. melville gets rediscovered in the 1920's and its from that, it is a pretty straight line for melville as one of the major authors of our american past. it goes from the 1920's from -- until today. or as he put it, the shoddy democracy of his time.

i'm going to show you some of the illustrations next week. it might be the best moby dick illustration from the 1930's. we look at them not only a comment of moby dick, but also america and the 1930's. right after the crash, america entering the great depression. he's reading moby dick in a particular way, because of the demands of his time. i wanted to remind you that there are other things going on in moby dick. it is not just wrath. where do we see the wrath? newton, a critic from the midcentury thought that melville

was a story of lust and homoerotic lust. [onscreen text] >> etc. etc. etc. we are going to pull up these quotes next week. he thinks what this story is about is lust. being choked down by eight it's up friday from the state. it is a beautiful meditation on lust. matheson who i quoted earlier, thanks that it is pride.

he says the tragedy of extreme individuals and the tragedy of self-will, it seems cut off on any possibility of elevation. the white well was so ambivalent, he found respected value shifting. his symbols were most comprehensive when they enable him to elicit what remains primeval and our formalized humanity. -- in our formalized humanity. that is what this is a study of. it is a study pride. i won't read the quote, but the quote is the indication that statre would have said it is not only a novel of hate, but also of pride.

one political thinker says basically, forget all of that. let me read to you what he says. he says the intellectuals of our time, and by that he is talking about satret -- statre -- and folks like matheson, have put their stamp on psychology. some of them are men with very great gifts. with all of them, human beings are the naked and the dead for whom there is nothing but here and it turned in the. basically, he is saying all of these writers are putting their own interpretation on melville and thinking he is with his own.