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This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Cambridge Sketches

F >> Frank Preston Stearns >> Cambridge Sketches




Hawthorne was an idealist, and he idealized the materials in Story's
studio, for literary purposes, just as Shakespeare idealized Henry V.,
who was not a magnanimous monarch at all, but a brutal, narrow-minded
fighter. The discourse on art, which he develops in this manner, forms
one of the most valuable chapters in the "Marble Faun." It assists us in
reading it to remember that Story was not the model for Hawthorne's
"Kenyon," but a very different character. The passage in which he
criticises the methods of modern sculptors has often been quoted in later
writings on that subject; and I suppose the whole brotherhood of artists
would rise up against me if I were to support Hawthorne's condemnation of
nude Venuses and "the guilty glimpses stolen at hired models."

They are not necessarily guilty glimpses. To an experienced artist the
customary study from a naked figure, male or female, is little more than
what a low-necked dress would be to others. Yet the instinct of the age
shrinks from this exposure. We can make pretty good Venuses, but we
cannot look at them through the same mental and moral atmosphere as the
cotemporaries of Scopas, or even with the same eyes that Michael Angelo
did. We feel the difference between a modern Venus and an ancient one.
There is a statue in the Vatican of a Roman emperor, of which every one
says that it ought to wear clothes; and the reason is because the face
has such a modern look. A raving Bacchante may be a good acquisition to
an art museum, but it is out of place in a public library. A female
statue requires more or less drapery to set off the outlines of the
figure and to give it dignity. We feel this even in the finest Greek
work--like the Venus of Cnidos.

In this matter Hawthorne certainly exposes his Puritanic education, and
he also places too high a value on the carving of buttonholes and
shoestrings by Italian workmen. Such things are the fag-ends of statuary.

His judgment, however, is clear and convincing in regard to the tinted
Eves and Venuses of Gibson. Whatever may have been the ancient practice
in this respect, Gibson's experiment proved a failure. Nobody likes those
statues; and no other sculptor has since followed Gibson's example.

Hawthorne overestimates the Apollo Belvidere, as all the world did at
that time; but his single remark concerning Canova is full of
significance: "In these precincts which Canova's genius was not quite of
a character to render sacred, though it certainly made them interesting,"
etc.

He goes to the statue gallery in the Vatican and returns with a feeling
of dissatisfaction, and justly so, for the vast majority of statues there
are merely copies, and many of them very bad copies. He recognizes the
Laocoon for what it really is, the abstract type of a Greek tragedy. He
notices what has since been proved by severe archaeological study, that
most of the possible types and attitudes of marble statues had been
exhausted by the Greeks long before the Christian era. Miss Hosmer's
Zenobia was originally a Ceres, and even Crawford's Orpheus strongly
resembles a figure in the Niobe group at Florence.

But Hawthorne's description of the Faun of Praxiteles stands by itself.
As a penetrative analysis of a great sculptor's motive it is unequalled
by any modern writer on art, and this is set forth with a grace and
delicacy worthy of Praxiteles himself. The only criticism which one feels
inclined to make of it is that it _too_ Hawthornish, too modern and
elaborate; but is not this equally true of all modern criticism? We
cannot return to the simplicity of the Greeks any more than we can to
their customs. If Hawthorne would seem to discover too much in this
statue, which is really a poor Roman copy, he has himself given us an
answer to this objection. In Volume II., Chapter XII., he says: "Let the
canvas glow as it may, you must look with the eye of faith, or its
highest excellence escapes you. There is always the necessity of helping
out the painter's art with your own resources of sensibility and
imagination." His cursory remarks on Raphael are not less pertinent and
penetrating. Of technicalities he knew little, but no one, perhaps, has
sounded such depths of that clairvoyant master's nature, and so brought
to light the very soul of him.

The "Marble Faun" may not be the most perfect of Hawthorne's works, but
it is much the greatest,--an epic romance, which can only be compared
with Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister."



HAWTHORNE AND HAMLET.

_A Reply to Professor Bliss Perry._

To compare a person in real life with a character in fiction is not
uncommon, but it is more conducive to solidity of judgment to compare the
living with the living, and the imaginary with the imaginary. The chief
difficulty, however, in Hamlet's case, is that he only appears before us
as a person acting in an abnormal mental condition. The mysterious death
of his father, the suspicion of his mother's complicity in crime, which
takes the form of an apparition from beyond the grave, is too much of a
strain for his tender and impressible nature. His mental condition has
become well known to physicians as _cerebral hyperaemia_, and all
his strange speeches and eccentric actions are to be traced to this
source; and it is for this reason that the dispute has arisen as to
whether Hamlet was not partially insane. If the strain continued long
enough he would no doubt have become insane.

As well as we can penetrate through this adventitious _nimbus_, we
discover Hamlet to be a person of generous, princely nature, high-minded
and chivalrous. He is cordial to every one, but always succeeds in
asserting the superiority of his position, even in his conversation with
Horatio. If he is mentally sensitive he shows no indication of it. He
never appears shy or reserved, but on the contrary, confident and even
bold. This may be owing to the mental excitement under which he labors;
but the best critics from Goethe down have accredited him with a lack of
resolution; and it is this which produces the catastrophe of the play. He
must have realized, as we all do, that after the scene of the players in
which he "catches the conscience of a king," his life was in great
danger. He should either have organized a conspiracy at once, or fled to
the court of Fortinbras; but he allows events to take their course, and
is controlled by them instead of shaping his own destiny. Instead of
planning and acting he philosophizes.

Of Hawthorne, on the contrary, we know nothing except as a person in a
perfectly normal condition. His wife once said that she had rarely known
him to be indignant, and never to lose his temper. He was the most
sensitive of men, but he also possessed an indomitable will. It was only
his terrible determination that could make his life a success. Emerson,
who had little sympathy with him otherwise, always admired the perfect
equipoise of his nature. A man could not be more thoroughly himself; but,
such a reticent, unsociable character as Hawthorne could never be used as
the main-spring of a drama, for he would continually impede the progress
of the plot. A dramatic character needs to be a talkative person; one
that either acts out his internal life, or indirectly exposes it.
Hawthorne's best friends do not appear to have known what his real
opinions were. This perpetual reserve, this unwillingness to assimilate
himself to others, may have been necessary for the perfection of his art.

The greater a writer or an artist, the more unique he is,--the more
sharply defined from all other members of his class. Hawthorne certainly
did not resemble Scott, Dickens, or Thackeray, either in his life or his
work. He was perhaps more like Auerbach than any other writer of the
nineteenth century, but still more like Goldsmith. The "Vicar of
Wakefield" and the "House of the Seven Gables" are the two perfect
romances in the English tongue; and the "Deserted Village," though
written in poetry, has very much the quality of Hawthorne's shorter
sketches. "And tales much older than the ale went round" is closely akin
to Hawthorne's humor; yet there was little outward similarity between
them, for Goldsmith was often gay and sometimes frivolous; and although
Hawthorne never published a line of poetry he was the more poetic of the
two, as Goldsmith was the more dramatic. He also resembled Goldsmith in
his small financial difficulties.

In his persistent reserve, in the seriousness of his delineation, and in
his indifference to the opinions of others, Hawthorne reminds us somewhat
of Michael Angelo; but he is one of the most unique figures among the
world's geniuses.

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