CHAPTER ELEVEN
An American Culture
AN AMERICAN CULTURE

By the 1830s, the United States was developing
its own distinct culture as illustrated by
movements in literature, the arts, and education.
Frederic Edwin Church
conveyed the romantic
sensibility in Twilight in the
Wilderness (1860). The
clouds glow with religious
portent, and their reflected
light pervades Nature.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

In Search of Native
Grounds





Of American novelists before
1830, only James Fenimore
Cooper made successful use
of the national heritage
James Fenimore
Cooper was the first
American novelist to
explore native themes,
settings, and characters.
The Spy (1821),
The Pioneers (1823),
The Last of the
Mohicans (1826)
AMERICAN PAINTERS
American painting reached a level
comparable to that of Europe, where
many of the best American painters still
trained
 American painters such as Benjamin
West, John Singleton Copley,
Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert
Stuart excelled as portraitists
 American painting was less obviously
imitative of European styles than was
American literature

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY
Paul Revere by John
Singleton Copley
John Hancock by John
Singleton Copley
WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE
BY JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY
BEN FRANKLIN BY BENJAMIN
WEST
THOMAS JEFFERSON BY
CHARLES WILLSON PEALE
GEORGE WASHINGTON BY
GILBERT STUART
ROMANTICISMTRANSCENDENTALISM

The Romantic View of Life

Romantic Movement—was a reaction against Age of
Reason


romantics valued emotion and intuition over pure reason, and
they stressed individualism, optimism, patriotism, and
ingeniousness
Transcendentalism—a mystical, intuitive way of
looking at life that aspired to go beyond the world of the
senses, represented the fullest expression of
romanticism
LEADING TRANSCENDENTALIST
THINKERS

Ralph Waldo Emerson—

THE leading transcendentalist thinker,
urged Americans to put aside their
devotion to things European and seek
inspiration in immediate surroundings

although he favored change and believed
in progress, the new industrial society of
New England disturbed him profoundly

Emerson valued self-reliance and disliked
powerful governments
LEADING TRANSCENDENTALIST
THINKERS

Henry David Thoreau—

like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau
objected to society’s restrictions on the
individual

Thoreau spent two years living alone in
a cabin at Walden Pond to prove that
an individual need not depend on
society, wrote Walden—antimaterialism

Essay-“Civil Disobedience”
explained view on proper relation b/t
individual/state
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE
WALDEN POND, AS SEEN TODAY, WHERE HENRY DAVID THOREAU
LIVED FROM 1845 TO 1847: “I WENT TO THE WOODS BECAUSE I WISHED
TO LIVE DELIBERATELY, TO FRONT ONLY THE ESSENTIAL FACTS OF
LIFE, AND SEE IF I COULD NOT LEARN WHAT IT HAD TO TEACH, AND
NOT, WHEN I CAME TO DIE, TO DISCOVER THAT I HAD NOT LIVED.”

http://ricklondon.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/wal
den3.jpg
Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers
Concord, MA
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Nature
(1832)
Self-Reliance
(1841)
Henry David
Thoreau
Walden
(1854)
Resistance to Civil
Disobedience
(1849)
“The American
Scholar” (1837)
R3-1/3/4/5
EDGAR ALLAN POE

Poe epitomized the romantic image
of the tortured genius

haunted by alcohol, melancholia,
hallucinations, and debt, he was
nevertheless a master short story
writer and poet, a penetrating critic,
and an excellent magazine editor

‘The Murder of Rue”, “Pit and
Pendulum”, poem “The Raven”
In 1845 Edgar Allan Poe, impoverished and an alcoholic, was living in the
“greatest wretchedness.” His young wife was dying of tuberculosis. That same
year he wrote “The Raven,” a poem about an ill-omened bird that intrudes on
a young man’s grief over the death of his beloved. “Take thy beak from out of
my heart” the man screams. Quoth the raven—famously—“Nevermore.”
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Hawthorne rejected the egoism and
optimism of transcendentalism

he was fascinated by New England’s
Puritan past and its continuing
influence

his best known works, including The
Scarlet Letter and The House of
the Seven Gables, concerned
individuals and their struggle with sin,
guilt, and the pride and isolation that
often afflict those who place too
much reliance on their own judgment
HERMAN MELVILLE

like Hawthorne, Melville could not
accept the transcendentalists’
optimism

he considered their vague talk about
striving and their faith in the goodness
of humanity complacent nonsense

in his most famous work, Moby Dick,
Melville dealt powerfully with the
problems of good and evil, courage
and cowardice, faith, stubbornness,
and pride
WALT WHITMAN

the most romantic and
distinctively American writer of
his age, Whitman believed that
a poet could best express
himself by relying uncritically on
his natural inclinations

his greatest work, Leaves of
Grass, often shocked or
confused his readers with its
commonplace subject matter
and its coarse language
WALT WHITMAN, THE MOST ROMANTIC
AND THE MOST DISTINCTLY AMERICAN
WRITER OF HIS AGE. (THE NATIONAL
ARCHIVES)
What was Whitman's
greatest contribution to
U.S. literature?
 Who were the other
great writers of his age?
 What were the general
themes of U.S. writing?

THE WIDER LITERARY RENAISSANCE
pre-Civil War literary renaissance also
included New Englanders Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf
Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and
James Russell Lowell
 Southern literature was even more
markedly romantic than that of New
England, as demonstrated by novelists
John Pendleton Kennedy and William
Gilmore Simms
 several historians achieved prominence
during this period, including George
Bancroft and Francis Parkman

Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
DOMESTIC TASTES

Charles Bulfinch’s “Federal” style of architecture flourished
in the North

wood-turning machinery contributed to the popularity of the
“Gothic” style

“Greek” and “Italian” styles also flourished, the former
particularly in the South

new technology allowed the mass production of textiles
with complicated designs, including wallpaper, rugs, and
hangings
DOMESTIC TASTES
(CONT…)

combined with the use of machine methods in the
production of furniture, new textiles had a profound impact
on furniture in American homes

more affluent Americans decorated their homes with the
works of American genre painters, “luminists,” and
members of the Hudson River School

beginning in the 1850s, the lithographs of Currier and Ives
brought a fairly crude but charming form of art to a still
wider audience
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY
common school movement, led
by Henry Barnard and Horace
Mann, urged creation of stateadministered schools taught by
professional teachers
 movement was based on an
unquenchable faith in the
improvability of the human race
through education and a belief that
democracy required an educated
citizenry
 by the 1850s, every state outside
the South provided free
elementary schools and supported
institutions to train teachers

Horace Mann
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY
(CONT…)

historians have identified several reasons for the success
of the common school movement

common schools helped to “Americanize” immigrant
children, and they brought Americans of different economic
circumstances and ethnic backgrounds into early and
mutually beneficial contact with one another

they also instilled good employee values
READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF
CULTURE
as the population grew and became more concentrated,
and as middle class values permeated American society,
particularly in the North, popular concern for “culture”
increased
 industrialization made it possible to satisfy this new
demand
 improved printing techniques reduced the cost of books,
magazines, and newspapers
 moralistic and sentimental “domestic” novels reached their
peak of popularity in the 1850s

READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF
CULTURE
(CONT…)

Americans devoured reams of religious literature

self-improvement books were popular as well

philanthropists established libraries and public lectures

mutual improvement societies known as lyceums founded
libraries, sponsored lectures, and lobbied for better
education
THE STATE OF THE COLLEGES
the cost of private colleges meant that relatively few
students could afford them; since students were hard to
come by, discipline and academic standards were lax
 the college curriculum focused on the classics rather than
on practical or scientific studies until the 1840s
 Harvard and Yale established schools of science; Harvard
allowed students to choose some of their courses, and
instituted grades

THE STATE OF THE COLLEGES
(CONT…)

colleges in the South and West began to offer mechanical
and agricultural subjects

Oberlin College admitted women in 1837, and the Georgia
Female College opened in 1839

white males constituted the overwhelming majority of
students, but only 2 percent of white males went to college
CIVIC CULTURES
cities and towns sought to become local and regional
centers of learning, art, and culture
 in the East, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia vied for
primacy
 in the West, Cincinnati, Lexington, and Pittsburgh sought
to become regional centers of culture
 members of the professions were generally accepted as
the arbiters of taste in cultural matters

SCIENTIFIC STIRRINGS
few Americans pursued science on more than a part-time
basis, and few American scientists achieved international
recognition in the half century after the Revolution
 Tocqueville attributed this to Americans’ distrust of theory
and abstract knowledge
 nevertheless, Americans accounted for some advances;
national and state governments sponsored geological and
coastal surveys; and the Smithsonian Institution was
founded

AMERICAN HUMOR

the juxtaposition of high ideals and low reality formed the
basis for much American humor

James Russell Lowell’s Bigelow Papers turned “Down
East” humor to more telling satirical effect

Seba Smith’s character, Major Jack Downing, and Johnson
J. Hooper’s creation, Simon Suggs, provided satirical
lenses through which to examine Jacksonian America