19th Century American Literature

1820-1865

AKA ANTEBELLUM LITERATURE

(1820-1860) AMERICAN ROMANTICISM AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

(1830-50s)

AMERICAN ROMANTICISM

AMERICAN ROMANTICISM 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

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 – peace after war growing business, commerce growing leisure class coming depression of mid-century, panic of 1837

religiously – 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 Right Time:

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, …. 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

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):

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:

defeat of British at New Orleans by Andrew Jackson national identity ANDREW JACKSON = America

national mythology 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:

celebration of ordinary people & their abilities hostility to unearned social distinction &

inherited wealth (common man) (anti-aristocracy)

1820s LITERARY NATIONALISM (#2):

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

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:

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

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:

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 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:

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 personal essays travel writing political reportage women writers

LITERARY MARKETPLACE WOMEN:

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, REFORM, CONFLICT Renaissance in the sense of

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

Revolutionary ideals Enlightenment principles principles of Declaration of Independence, Common Sense,

Federalist

RENAISSANCE, REFORM, CONFLICT REFORM:

conviction that American literature & culture = not living up to their Revolutionary or democratic promises (Enlightenment ideals)

reform movements – women’s rights 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

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 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:

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: 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:

genocide of Indians Indian Removal Act 1830 few protests by white writers mostly Indian writers @ bad-faith treaties & land-grabbing schemes

slavery of Africans 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:

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 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

SMALL & LARGE WORLD of

AMERICAN WRITERS

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:

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)

“AMERICAN” LITERATURE

“AMERICAN” LITERATURE images allusions metaphorical language themes

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