th
1820-1865

AKA
 ANTEBELLUM LITERATURE
 (1820-1860)
 AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
 AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
 (1830-50s)


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


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 creative powers of individual mind
 almost god-like powers regenerative power of nature , American landscape

“America is a poem in our eyes” (“The Poet”) limits of historical traditions , associations stultifying effects of established institutions mystical glories of pre-socialized infancy
 infancy of USA self-reliance non-conformity possibility of the miraculous in the here & now

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
 1830-50s
 spark in 1830s
 Emerson
 peak in 1850s
 Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
 American writing =
 achieves its 1st significant maturity
 coming of age

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
 Right Time:
 culturally
–
 time of peace


 after Revolutionary War
 after War of 1812 politically
–

 from Enlightenment & Revolution> optimism re: man’s possibilities & man’s perfectibility democracy> value of individual

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
 Right Time:
 economically
–
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 peace after war growing business, commerce growing leisure class
 coming depression of mid-century, panic of 1837 religiously
–
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 stern Calvinism = replaced by purely logical Deism
& its (over)reaction to Great Awakening’s emotionalism
 unsatisfied
& hungry for something new, personal but not traditional reaction to growing materialism

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

 aesthetically
–



 felt restrained by Neo-Classicism
 (form, lack of emotion) less @ form more @ inspiration & emotion heart over rules

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
 anti-American Literature:



not taught in US schools until mid-20thC
not taken seriously seen as subordinate to British lit

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
 against idea of American Renaissance:

 selling idea created in 1941 (we need a “ren.” as British) critics of the period excluded women, blacks, Indians, ….
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 critics were disinterested in popular writers of the day (not until 1970s, 1980s) critics were disinterested in works outside of New York &
Massachusetts critics had ignored the period’s social/political contexts: immigration, slavery,… critics had overemphasized the separation of English &
American literary traditions
*how can it be a “rebirth” when it’s only beginning, still in the process of becoming

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE


centrality:

 building on writings that preceded it & pointing to future possibilities fulfillment of calls for “American” literary tradition
 from 1790s+
“American” literature:

1820s


1st great culmination of American literary nationalism helped spawn the “Renaissance” to come next


Irving, WC Bryant, JF Cooper, CM Sedgwick
(bigger readership than 1830s, 1850s)

1820s
 LITERARY NATIONALISM (#1):
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 end of Revolutionary War (1790s) sign of a great nation = great national literature felt new country had raw materials for it different moral themes from Europe

1820s


BUT
 vulnerability, uncertainty, fragility
 not sure if US would last

French Revolution’s Reign of Terror
 Napoleonic Wars
 War of 1812/2nd War w/England
 British burned Capital & White House
 delay of national literature

1820s
 1815:

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 defeat of British at New Orleans by Andrew Jackson
 national identity
ANDREW JACKSON = America


 national mythology
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 republican hero incarnation of the democratic spirit of the age anti-aristocratic anti-monarchical
average person (obscure background) added w/fighting Indians in Florida became US president 1828

1820s
 Andrew Jackson & Effect on Literature :
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 celebration of ordinary people & their abilities hostility to unearned social distinction & inherited wealth
( common man )
( anti-aristocracy )

1820s
 LITERARY NATIONALISM (#2):
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
 optimistic nationalism calls for a new American literature
North American Review , Boston journal


“ literature of our own ”
“American” images, allusions, metaphorical language
 true freedom = “ complete emancipation from literary enthrallment ”

1820s
 1820s:
 answered call



Irving’s Sketches
Bryant’s Poems
Cooper’s Spy & Pioneers

1820s
 NOT separate from British lit. traditions
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BUT alongside shared language shared love of Brit. It greats
 Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton,


Addison & Steele, Pope
Wordsworth, Byron, Walter Scott

1820s
 CRITICAL of early national culture:

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 reverential to European historical & cultural past & skeptical about boastful US culture w/little interest in art & history (or w/a cultural past of its own) demythologizing of past (Revol. War) tempered by awareness of rise & fall of great nations

“ENLIGHTENMENT notion

 evidenced in American & French Revolutions

** impermanency, mutability **

1820s
 uncertainty:

 change in US geography


Louisiana Purchase 1803 (doubled size BUT also caused more problems

) free states vs. slave states
 Missouri Compromises 1820/21 lack of national consensus
 states’ rights, slavery, internal improvements, national tariffs

1820s
 nature:


 part of our national character great landscapes comprehend God’s spirit in it

LITERARY MARKETPLACE
 British lit in US:

 easy access
 ocean  port  rivers within months of original publication
 tough for US writers to publish in US

“subscription system”:
 had to arrange committed purchasers prior to publishing

LITERARY MARKETPLACE
 geography’s importance:

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 big cities – big ports = big publishing businesses
 ocean
 port
 rivers
New York
 Erie Canal (1825)

Ohio territory
Philadelphia
(not Boston until R/R)

LITERARY MARKETPLACE
 copyright laws:

 no international copyrights most British works = pirated copies


 no royalties paid to authors
 (DVDs, CDs todays)
 cheaper than publishing American lit b/c of national copyright
 American writers & “day jobs”
 no professional US writers (except Irving)

LITERARY MARKETPLACE
 1820-65: changes in US that helped US publication

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 population growth
 4 million (1790)

30 million (1860)
 Irish immigration of 40s, 50s territorial expansion technological developments in publishing increased urbanization transportation developments
 canals, railroads

LITERARY MARKETPLACE
 mid-19th C:

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Irish immigration economic depression migration to cities
Mexican War that brought 1.2 m sq.miles (now
= 3msm) gold rush


 travel literature
 newspapers & magazine boom

LITERARY MARKETPLACE
 newspapers & magazines:

 newspapers: 400
 thousands magazines: 100

600

Graham’s & Godey’s Lady’s Book
 = new medium for publication

 poetry fiction

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 personal essays travel writing political reportage women writers

LITERARY MARKETPLACE
 WOMEN:

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 writers editors successful, prosperous
 argument against women writers:


 inflaming their imaginations
& undermining their moral place in the privacy of home
(domesticity)
 SUBVERSION:

 often challenging the notions of domesticity from within cultural power of domesticity

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 Renaissance in the sense of

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 a flowering excitement re: human possibilities a high regard for individual a defiance of British lit. traditions, for American a struggle to understand what "American" could possibly mean
** rebirth of founding ideals

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
Revolutionary ideals
Enlightenment principles principles of Declaration of Independence, Common Sense,
Federalist

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 REFORM:

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 conviction that American literature & culture = not living up to their Revolutionary or democratic promises (Enlightenment ideals) reform movements
–
 women’s rights
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 temperance abolition, anti-slavery plight of the urban poor anti-Catholicism (Protestant evangelical reform)
 a “protest” against Catholicism
*doctrine of reform = central to American Renaissance period

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 RW EMERSON & Reform:


 personal :
 Transcendentalism society :
 abolition, temperance, women’s suffrage literature :
 rejects American literary nationalism as timid, imitative

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 LITERARY NATIONALISM (#3):


 in RWE’s “
American Scholar
” speech – exhortation to break dependence on “ courtly muses of Europe
” a new call for “American” literature

TRANSCENDENTALISM

Emerson’s “the Transcendentalists” (1842 lecture)

“The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy.”

TRANSCENDENTALISM

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 Kantian, through his anti-Lockean (only known through experience)
Fuller, Thoreau, Whitman the existence of an ideal spiritual reality

 that transcends the empirical & scientific is knowable through intuition


(intuition as means to knowledge)
(intuition vs. empirical/scientific) power of the creative imagination possibility of the miraculous divinity of the self

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 WOMEN & Reform:

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 involved in the plight of the urban poor
& w/women’s rights
Fuller’s “Great Lawsuit”
Seneca Falls Convention 1848
E. Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments”
 ANALOGY: men = Britain
 social institutions & legal codes serve male interests
New York’s married women’s property act
Power:


 domestic power (property rights) public power (voting) check patriarchal power (slavery, temperance)

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 TEMPERANCE:

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 drinking = male activity lured men away from home, wives, children money drunkenness
 social unrest domestic abuse, rape, prostitution
“animal passions” addiction

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 HYPOCRISIES:



disillusionment *** boasted US = bastion of freedom & equality
Yet…….


RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
HYPOCRISIES:

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 genocide of Indians

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Indian Removal Act 1830 few protests by white writers mostly Indian writers @ bad-faith treaties & land-grabbing schemes slavery of Africans

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 anti-slavery literature by whites & former slaves
Melville: “man’s foulest crime”; America as “intrepid, unprincipled, reckless,
predatory, w/boundless ambition, civilized in external but a savage at heart”
Thoreau: against Mexican war, anti-slavery
Civil War = holy war against slavery to redeem the millennial promise of a nation, Emersonian reform, DOI principles expansionism that ignored sovereignties (Mexico)



MANIFEST DESTINY
War w/Mexico (1846-48)
Thoreau: against war for expansion of slavery

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 CIVIL WAR:

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
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April 12, 1860 (Fort Sumter, SC)
April 9, 1865 (Appomattox, VA)
600,000+ dead most writers supported the anti-slavery angle
= holy war against slavery to redeem the millennial promise of a nation,


Emersonian reform
Declaration of Independence principles
critical of American’s under-estimation of costs of war

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 CIVIL WAR:
 afterward:


 reconciliation
 Melville, Whitman

( opposite of Thomas Paine) death of Lincoln


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 failure of Reconstruction
 to educate former slaves to follow through on reform at heart of CW political corruption materialism anti-black violence (lynching)

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT
 DISILLUSIONMENT




 to live up to founding ideals principles in the DOI
@ liberty & equality
before Civil War
 re: women, Indians, slaves, Mexico
after Civil War
 re: lynchings, carpetbaggers, scalawags

1820-65

SMALL & LARGE WORLD
 small world:

 conversations w/each other
 direct & indirect influences
 counterinfluences

 productive friendships rejections of friendships & influences ….
wrote responses to each other’s works

 literal literary

SMALL & LARGE WORLD
 large world:

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 beyond the US borders travelled, lived, worked abroad interests in literatures south of the border world literature: ancient, contemporary looked to the American past (colonial) for literary inheritance influenced & read, better appreciated in the future (20th C)

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 images allusions metaphorical language themes
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 common man anti-aristocracy critical of US (Subversion) social reform disillusionment w/Rev. promise fear of impermanency
alongside European lit. traditions media of newspapers & magazines women writers