美国内战与重建美国内战与重建transcript19-word资料(精).doc

Civil War and Reconstruction:Lecture 19 Transcript April 1,2008 <<back Professor David Blight: Itused tobesaid that inthe old wars fought bythe Irish clans that they had anagreement. Idon't know ifthis is true, but Ilove the idea, that nomatter how much they slaughter themselves with broadswords and knives and whatever else those maniacs used, that they should always spare the poets. Don't kill the poets, because the poets had tobeleft totell the story. Most great poets don't gotowar, they write. This week you're reading agreat poet, . Doctorow, apoet inprose, apoet infiction. Doctorow, assome ofyou must know, isafamous American writer for his historical fiction. Much ofhis fiction isoften very historical and you'll find, ifanyone takes the time some day, that large chunks ofthe monologue you hear from William Tecumseh Sherman inthis novel isdirectly out ofhis famous memoirs, and then every now and then Doctorow will embellish oradd a few lines. Most ofthe people inthis book were real people, but there are some invented. Insome ways, possibly the most brilliant inventions inthis book are the slave characters, orthe freedman characters, and what Doctorow does with them through this sort ofanguished crucible of all out war. Look especially for those journeys into Sherman's own mind, Sherman's psyche, those meditations ofSherman's ondeath. Page 88and 89tobeexact is, Ithink, ettable mediation bySherman onthe meaning ofdeath and just what itmeans and why heinsome ways enjoys it. Herman Melville wrote awhole bunch ofpoems during the Civil War. He was one ofthe poets spared. Hewasn't very famous yet, asyou know, for Moby Dick ;that was e later. Maybe our greatest writer ofthe eenth century; also wrote alot ofpoetry, and hewrote almost all ofhis poetry during the Civil War, asdid, bythe way, Emily Dickinson. Don't know ifany ofyou are Emily Dickinson fans, but Emily, the Belle ofAmherst, wrote between 900 and 1000 poems inher life, and fully two- thirds ofthem inthe four