Handout 3
Transcendentalism and Variations on the Gothic
Transcendentalism
A synthesis (Schlegel, Coleridge, Far-East)
Aim: to solve the problems of wilderness vs. civilization and individual vs. society.
Ralf Waldo Emerson (1803-82): Nature
Reshaped (more optimistic) puritanism
 Nature is the material manifestation of a higher divine principle; modern man drew away Nature and must find his way back (vs. puritan: innate depravity; wild: wilderness is not instinct with God, so it's wicked, too)
 Principle connecting man and world: spiritualism ( Oversoul: present in man and
Nature, having an effect on society, too; can be reached through intuition and education; )
 Aim: pragmatism to achieve progress. In literature: "The American Scholar" – the concept of creative reading ; genius must be turned into useful product.
 Practice: utopistic communes (eg. Brook Farm, North American Phalanx)
◦ physical work and meditation done together → bankruptcy
◦ example of the typical American attitude: a critical, defecting behavior concerning what is American; artificial world, documentable from the start – a micro-America
 Effect in his life: his place in society is hard to determine (graduating from university, teaches, then becomes priest, quits, starts lecturing, writing 2nd-rate poetry, essays → prophet); just like
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
 Emerson's disciple and general servant
 Individual utopia: an example for life reduced to the minimum
 Walden, or Life in the Woods (investigations, meditations, life-style modeling)
 Criticizes American democracy (eg. Civil Disobedience )
Conclusion
The transcendentalists set an example of what an American is: an outsider, a critic and a craftsman. This schizophrenic attitude will complete itself in the Gothic.
Gothic : combining fiction, horror and Romanticism
 Claire Reeve: romance (irrational, dark)

novel (daylight, rational picture of world)
 Walpole: 2 types of romances; the one depicting the inside gives deeper insight into reality
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): The Moral Gothic
 The reversed world suggested by Thoreau is manifest in Hawthorne's writings
 the American conscience (ancestor: judge in the Salem witchcraft trials)
 finds innate depravity in puritans

man cannot get rid of sin (puritan concept)
 power of blackness in writing (Melville on Mosses from an Old Manse )
 Gothic; human soul as darkness
 allegoric tale or romance
 atmosphere: ambiguity, no set moral system, everything is relative;
 1837 Twice-Told Tales; 1846 Mosses from an Old Manse ; 1850 The Scarlet Letter

Handout 3
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
 No literary centre, no standard criticism and general taste

tries many places in vain
 Aims at becoming a critic and a one-person-literature, uniqueness
 Basis: European Romanticism
◦ until 1840's: America is not dealt with thematically;
◦ Gothic; historical models to be followed as aesthetic quality
 Hawthorne's heart-searching, but without a guilty conscience

the subconscious and the basic fear
 agoraphobia becomes claustrophobia; what is inside is important
 Technique: American
◦ conscious composition ("The Phylosophy of Composition")
◦ detective stories (solutions based on associations)
 The depressing atmosphere of his writings reflected in his life
◦ orphan at the age of 2, step-parents
◦ years of wandering (Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York)
◦ when 27, marries 13-year-old niece who dies at 24
◦ alcoholism, sudden death at 40
 The status of literature is still undefined
◦ Emerson calls Poe "the jingleman"
◦ Whitman considers his writings unhealty and demonic
 Poe's life demonstrates that literature destroys the individual; literary success means personal failure; the relativity of literature and success, culminating in:
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
 Carrier as a course of development is relative again
 poor childhood, various jobs (ship)
 promising literary start, 4 successful adventure-novels
 Moby Dick :
◦ adventure as ontological example

failure; symbolism too relative (black is white and vica versa) and unclear
◦ Making the American experience a story
◦ glorifying and annihilating the American enterprise, then telling it
 “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
◦ same drowning experience, but agoraphobia in the sea becomes claustrophobia in the office; there isn't a hero, only a symptom
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Bitter Bierce
 unhappy childhood, disastrous marriage ending in divorce
 Civil War experience (Chicamauga, An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge)
 pessimism, cynicism
 genre of short story exclusively; aiming at perfect structure, continuing Poe's tradition but more satirical and absurd
Conclusion
The person of the American writer symbolizes the ambiguity of the American success that becomes manifest in more and more pieces of literature.