Group five
Alex Billman
Jawoin Williams
That one persons name ???
The Blossoming of a National Literature
Literature was imported or
plagiarized from England
Americans poured literature into
practical outlets (i.e. The
Federalist Papers, Common Sense
(Paine), Ben Franklin’s
Autobiography, Poor Richard’s
Almanac)
The Knickerbockers group in NY
wrote the first truly American
literature

Washington Irving (17831859) - 1st U.S. internationally
recognized writings, The Sketch
Book
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James Fennimore Cooper
(1789-1851) - 1st US novelist,
The Leather stocking Tales (which
included The Last of the Mohicans
which was popular in Europe)

Washington Ivring
Literature dawned in the 2nd quarter of
Trumpeters of
Transcendentalism 19th century with the transcendentalist
Ralph Waldo Emerson

movement (circa 1830)
transcendentalism clashed with John
Locke (who argued knowledge came
from reason); for transcendentalists,
truth came not by observation alone,
from with inner light
Ralph Waldo Emerson was popular
since the ideal of the essay reflected the
spirit of the U.S.

he lectured the Phi Beta Kappa
Address “The American Scholar”
He also wrote On the Duty of Civil
Disobedience, which was idealistic in
thought, and a forerunner of Gandhi and
then Martin Luther King Jr., saying it is
not wrong to disobey a wrong law
Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass
(poetry) and was “Poet Laureate of
Democracy”
Non-transcendental Literature
Professor Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
Professor Henry
Wadsworth
Longfellow
 Harvard teacher
 Lived serene life except
death of two wives
 Appealed to less cultured
masses
 Themes from Europe
 Inducted into the Poet’s
Corner of Westminster
Abbey
 Poems: “Evangeline”,
“The Song of Hiawatha”,
“The Courtship of Miles
Standish”
Non-transcendental Literature
Professor James Russell Lowell
Professor James
Russell Lowell
 Harvard teacher
 Distinguished
essayist, literary
critic, editor, mad
diplomat
 Biglow Papers:
political satires of
the Mexican war
and condemned
slaveryexpansion
Non-transcendental Literature
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Louisa May Alcott
From Concord, Mass.
Supported her family
because her father didn’t
Little Women
Emily Dickinson
From Amherst, Mass.
Lived as a recluse poet
Themes of nature, love,
death, and immortality
Poems published when
she died
Non-transcendental Literature
Edgar Allen Poe
William Gilmore Simms

From the South

Called the “Cooper of the
South”

Wrote 82 books

Themes of southern frontier in
the colonial period and the
Revolutionary era
Edgar Allen Poe

Orphaned who ended up
writing after a failed suicide
attempt

Reflected the morbid
sensibility of life

Prized in Europe more than
America

Poems and short stories: “The
Raven”, “The Gold Bug”, “The
Fall of the House of Usher”
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Salem, Mass.

He rejected Puritan ideals

Showed the struggle between
good and evil

The Scarlet Letter and The
Marble Farm
Herman Melville

Orphaned whaler

Moby Dick: complex allegory
of good and evil

Book was ignored at
publication

Became popular in the 20th
century

The dawn of scientific achievement
Jefferson was an
amateur inventor and
won a medal for the
new type of plow he
had invented
 Borrowed and
adapted European
ideas
Benjamin silliman
(1810- 1888)
 Chemist and geologist
 Taught at Yale
medicine
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Primitive methods , despite
the growth of medical
school ( bleeding method)
Illnesses resulted from
improper diet , hurried
eating, perspiring and
cooling off to quickly and
also unknown germs.
Short life expectancy
No painkiller during
surgery 
Early 1840’s doctors and
dentists employed laughing
gas as a anesthetic
Artistic achievemnts
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Many of the common
builings followed
european models
Public and important
structures followed
greek and roman
structures
Jefferson was one the
greatest architects of
his time – monticello
and the university
of virginia
painting
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Small amounts of money
for masterpieces slowed
the production of artwork
Suffered puritan prejudice
that art was a waste of
time
Very few artists emerged
Gilbert stuart (1755-1828)
Charles wilson peale (17411843)
John trumbull (1756-1843)
Portrayers of the past

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George bancroft (18001891) secretary of the
navy. He helped found the
naval academy at
annalpolis. Published a
history of the united states
to 1789 in six (originally
10) volumes
William H. prescott
(1796-1859) publishes
accounts of the conquest of
mexico 1843 and peru
1847
William H. prescott
continued

Francis parkman
(1823-1893) wrote
his volumes of the
struggles between
france and britain
times before the
making of america
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http://www.historycooperative.org/j
ournals/cp/vol-03/no01/peterson/images/parkman6.jpg
http://www.ushistory.org/Declaratio
n/images/trumbull.jpg
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