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Romanticism and the American Renaissance 1820 – 1865

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Romanticism and the American Renaissance 1820 – 1865 Unit 3 ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 – 1865 z Define Romanticism It does not follow because many books are as a literary movement. written by persons born in America that there Which representatives of exists an American literature. Books which Romanticism in English and imitate or represent the thought and like of other literature do you Europe do not constitute an American literature. known? Before such can exist, an original idea must z What were the leading genres animate this nation and fresh currents must call for the Romanticists? into life fresh thoughts along its shores. Margaret Fuller American Romanticism coincides chronologically with European Romanticism. The longing for harmonious personality (Cooper, Chateaubriand), the search for Truth in Beauty (Poe, Keats), the perception of “the world in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour” (Melville, Blake) paralleled each other. But the Europeans had many century old traditions, while the American Romantic writers had to replace the printer with the writer, and persuade their countrymen that literature was as honorable an occupation as corn harvesting. On the other hand there were all the basic requirements for an independent national literature in America: enthusiastic writers, attractive subjects, an increasing number of printing presses, book stores, schools and libraries. Kindered Spirits, 1849 32 UNIT The American pioneer Daniel Boone 3 guiding the new settlers from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky At the beginning of the 19th century American cultural and intellectual life was framed by the ever-expanding southern and western frontiers, culminating in 1853, when the continental boundaries of the US were completed. Geographical expansion came to be part of broadening the nation’s literary horizon. Aspiring literary minds turned to personal accounts of life west of the Allegheny Mountains. Widely publicized literary works by W. Irving and J. F. Cooper attracted still greater attention to the frontier, especially in coastal cities of the Atlantic. But the settlers’ literary interests centered on practical books such as various guides to farming, medicine, agriculture, horsemanship and everyday problems. A controversial aspect of American life was the displacement of a large number of Indians as white settlers conquered the wilderness. Even though the white newcomers used the Indians’ knowledge of agriculture and medicine for their own benefit, they wrote books about Native Americans like The American Savage: How He May Be Tamed by the Weapons of Civilization. Most readers were still fascinated with captivity narratives, a literary genre exemplified in the 17th century by A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682). Eventually, they gave way to the heroic deeds of the legendary frontier figures like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. Their popularity paved the way for the even more celebrated tradition of the tall tale and local color fiction later in the 19th century. Davy Crockett’s Legendary Shooting Match with Mike Fink Mike was a boatman on the Mississip, but he had a little cabbin on the head of the Cumberland, and a horrid handsome wife, that loved him the wickedest that ever you see. Mike only worked enough to find his wife in rags, and himself in powder, and lead, and whiskey, and the rest of the time he spent in nocking over bar and turkeys, and bouncing deer, and sometimes drawing a lead on an injun. So one night I fell in with him in the woods, where him and his wife shook down a blanket for me in his wigwam. In the morning sez Mike to me, “I’ve got the handsomest wife, and the fastest horse, and the sharpest shooting iron in all Kentuck, and if any man dare doubt it, I’ll be in his hair quicker than hell could scorch a feather.” This put my dander up, and Davy Crockett ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 1820 – 1865 sez I, “I’ve nothing to say agin your wife, Mike, for it can’t be denied she’s a shocking handesome woman, and Mrs. Crockett’s 33 in Tennessee, and I’ve got no horses. Mike, I don’t exactly like to tell you you lie about what you say about your rifle, but I’m d—d 1 if you speak the truth, and I’ll prove it. Do you see that cat sitting on the top rail of your potato patch, about a hundred and fifty yards off? If she ever hears agin, I’ll be shot if it shan’t be without ears. 1833 (11) Still, the quest for truly national literature remained a topical issue. The North American Review (founded in 1815), the first journal that printed exclusively American material, called for American writers to put an end to imitating British and continental stereotypes, and by the end of the 1820s, Americans could celebrate the publication of Washington Irving’s Sketch Book (1819), William Cullen Bryant’s Poems (1821), some of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales, Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane and other Poems (1827), and Noah Webster’s American Dictionary (1828). The fame of the Knickerbocker School (J. K. Paulding, J. H. Payne, W. Irving, and briefly W. C. Bryant and J. F. Cooper), added brilliance to the American literary scene and made New York the national literary capital. It was also the time when many literary clubs were founded. In 1824, Cooper, together with William Bryant, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Thomas Cole, the English born painter, organized the Bread and Cheese Club. Among the members of the Saturday Club were Emerson, J. R. Lowell, H. W. Longfellow, O. W. Homes and the historians John L. Motley and William H. Prescott. The Authors Club united dominant magazine editors of the early 19th century. “The literature of the United States is a subject of the highest interest to the civilized world,” wrote Cooper, “for when it does begin to be felt, it will be felt with a force, a directness, and a common sense in its application, that has never yet been known.... I think the time for the experiment is getting near.” As if according to this prophesy, Irving adapted European literary heritage to American settings, Cooper turned Natty Bumppo into the American archetype of individual freedom and self-reliance, which served the fictional predecessor of countless mountain men and wilderness cowboys. Though they were writing in Europe, these two writers paved the way for the great flowering of American literature. In 1823, knowing that the British Navy would be involved in defending Latin America from the Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria, President Monroe pronounced his refusal to tolerate any further extension of European domination in the Americas: “The American continents... are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any Euroupean powers...” The Monroe Doctrine expressed solidarity with the newly independent republics of Latin America. It was the time, when democracy, with its good and bad, did flourish, when customs and people themselves were changing. Hair wigs and waistcoats were being replaced by loose overalls. The sewing machine, telegraph, and the assembly line were invented. It was the time of the Second Great Awakening and liberating of the church, when the Baptists, Methodists, Protestants, Mormons and the Seventh Day Adventists appeared. America was becoming a very diverse nation, and the times, when only one path to God was officially recognized, seemed far back in the past. It was also the time when the first large estates, accompanied by trickery and corruption, came onto the scene. The Americans may have somewhat forgotten the testament of the first settlers, but the providence idea was still glowing and it acquired a new form — pioneer-frontiersman grew into the American Prometheus, — and the wilderness path to the Appalachians turned into the road. The American Renaissance (1836-1865) was marked by two turmoils, the Panic of 1837 and the Civil War, as well as by two presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. The former, from the backwoods of Tennessee, seemed a prosaic leader, falling off from 1 damned, darned adj., interj. both swearing or taboo words, are used as an exclamation, or a sound expressing an emotional reaction rather than any particular meaning 34 the daring age of the founding Fathers. The latter ruled with unprecedented authority during a long and brutal Civil War. An “idiomatic Western genius,” as Whitman called him, Lincoln left behind a legacy of his spoken and written prose, — colloquial, expressive, modest and always to the point. For 30-year-old Mark Twain, Lincoln’s style proved that simplicity was one of the secrets of eloquence. Address at Gettysburg, pennsylvania Four score and seven-years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that UNIT war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that 3 we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
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