An American Renaissance

HUM 2212: British and American Literature IFall 2012

Dr. PerdigaoSeptember 7-10, 2012

Building a Tradition• American literary tradition, imitation of battle for independence from

Britain

• Breaking from the English literary tradition, influence of those texts, the texts in larger literary tradition (back to the classical world)

• Story of emancipation as well as inheritance

• Tradition and innovation

• Loss/liberation

• Crisis/opportunity

• American Renaissance, publishing after 1830, flourishing American tradition

• American literature not generally taught in American universities; if taught, as subordinate to English literature (3)

• Period defined by F. O. Matthiessen’s American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941) (3)

• Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman (3)

Evolutions and Revolutions• Tradition still coming into being, developing and changing during

the period (4)

• Challenges to tradition—exclusion of women and minority writers (4)

• War of 1812 , Andrew Jackson’s success in New Orleans in 1815 against the British—national mythology of republican hero, antiaristocratic, antimonarchical person from an obscure background, who incarnated the strengths and virtues of the U.S. nation (5)

• Literature reflects those ideas and ideals, celebrating the everyman and resistance to social distinction and inherited wealth (5)

• American nation in flux—geography, boundaries, identity (7)

• Landscape seen as marker of character (Irving, Cooper, and Bryant) (7)

Changing Landscape• A growing reading public and publishing industry

• Transatlantic production—access to British texts, publication or distribution in Boston, New Yo9rk, Philadelphia, Charleston

• Interest in Romantics (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats) (9)

• Erie Canal—completed in 1825—solidified New York’s publishing industry with distribution west; Boston flourished with railroads in the 1840s

• Issues of publication, copyright, difficulty of American writers publishing

• Few professional American writers before the Civil War, work as editors, lecturers, professors (9)

• Technological advances led to thriving publishing industry from 1820-1865, along with the expansion of the country’s geography and population (10)

• Newspaper culture—400 between 1800-1825, by 1860, thousands

• Roles of women changing during the period—place at home, through writing (12)

Influence and Change• Transcendentalism

• Influence of Romanticism

• The strength of the individual; the importance of creativity; ideas about the regenerative value of nature; limits of institutions and traditions (13)

• Reform movements in writing—ideas about the promise and potential of America and need for change (14)

• Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy

A Tale of Two Men• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau

(1817-1862)

• Eulogy

• Elegy

• Shelley’s Adonais: Emerson’s Thoreau

• Thoreau as Emerson’s “American Scholar” (1837), the “nation’s declaration of cultural independence” (13)

• Idea of American character, identity, writing

• Self-reliance, non-conformity

• American Revolution, French Revolution, Romantics

• Relationship between art and activism

• Civil rights, issue of slavery, women’s rights

A Tale of Two Men• Emerson’s influence on Fuller, Thoreau, Whitman, even Poe,

Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson (13)

• Frederick Douglass’ Narrative “imbib[ing] the spirit of Emersonian self-reliance” and “Emerson’s notion of the divinity of the self” (18)

• Influence on American writers, politics, and English writers

• Reciprocity within traditions—the transatlantic

Emerson’s Life and Times• Emerson born in Boston on May 25, 1803

• Son of Unitarian minister

• 8 years old when father died

• Sent to Boston Public Latin School at 9

• Harvard (1817-1821)

• Harvard’s Divinity School, ordained by Unitarians in 1829, promoted to pastor at Boston’s Second Church (211)

• Loss of wife Ellen in 1831 (married for 2 years), spiritual crisis (211-212)

• Resigned position, traveled to Europe—met with Coleridge and Wordsworth (212)

• Inheritance from wife’s family

• Anonymous publication of Nature, influence within circle of friends (“Transcendentalists”)

Emerson’s Life and Times• Prose, poetry

• Journals published in late twentieth century as Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks (213)

• Legacy in the contemporary era

• “transparent eye-ball” (216-217)

• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

• From Emerson’s “The American Scholar”: • “Perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will be

something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years” (244).

Emerson’s Life and Times• From “Thoreau”: • “No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his

country and condition was genuine, and his aversation from English and European manners and tastes almost reached contempt” (331).

• “His power of observation seemed to indicate additional senses. He saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard. And yet none knew better than he that it is not the fact that imports, but the impression or effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.” (335)

• At end, “Life Everlasting” plant: “His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home” (341).

Thoreau’s Beginnings• Father a storekeeper who opened a pencil-making business in the 1820s

(961)

• Voracious reader in childhood

• Attended Concord Academy in 1828

• Thoreau began studying at Harvard in 1833 (only one in family to attend)

• Returned to Concord in 1837 after graduation to teach at local elementary school

• Taught at Concord Academy in 1838 (brother John as teacher and co-director of school; school closed due to John’s failing health [died in 1842]) (961)

• Met Emerson in 1836

• Thoreau attended meetings of the New England Transcendentalists (961)

• Wrote for The Dial, Emerson’s journal; ultimately published over 30 essays, poems and translations in the journal during its run until 1844

• Thoreau lived in Emerson’s house, as handyman and help to Emerson’s wife Lydia

Thoreau’s Beginnings• Moved to Staten Island in 1843 to tutor sons of Emerson’s brother

William; moved back home to Concord in six months, back to family home

• Worked as surveyor, helped father make pencils

• Started lecturing in 1844

• Began “experiment” at Walden on July 4, 1845, on Emerson’s land in cabin he built

• 1846—spent one night in Concord jail for refusing to pay poll tax (objecting to war against Mexico), inspired “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849)

• Thoreau subsidized publication of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; worked on Walden between 1847-1854

• Ticknor and Fields published the book with two thousand copies; most sold by 1859

• Work as abolitionist in concord, delivered “Slavery in Massachusetts” at rally in Framingham, MA (963); defense of John Brown in 1859

Thoreau’s Beginnings• Died in Concord on May 6, 1862

• Legacy emerging over time

• Publications in Boston-based Atlantic Monthly between 1862-1863

• In 1906, journals published

• Mahatma Gandhi read “Resistance to Civil Government” in exile in 1906; influence on Martin Luther King Jr. (964)

• In twentieth century, literary reputation matching or surpassing Emerson’s

Thoreau’s Legacy• “Resistance to Civil Government,” “Civil Disobedience”

• Role of the individual in society

• “But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it” (965).

• “all men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable” (967).

• Conclusion: role of the state, future of democracy

Thoreau’s Legacy• From Walden:

• “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, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” (1028)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)• “Uncle Walt”

• Call and response from Emerson in “The Poet” (1842) to Whitman (1310)

• Corporeal body, connection between the body and the world

• Adopts free verse, changes modes of expression

• “A poet of democracy, Whitman celebrated the mystical divine potential of the individual; a poet of the urban, he wrote about the sights, sounds and energy of the modern metropolis” (1311)

• Influence on Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Cherrie Moraga; Pablo Neruda

• Born in Long Island on May 31, 1819

• Whitman’s father—farmer turned carpenter, moved family to Brooklyn during building boom

• Whitman left school at 11, worked in newspaper printing office, stayed in Brooklyn on own in 1833 when family returned to Long Island (1311)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)• Taught at schools in Long Island, started newspaper in 1838

• Wrote prose, poetry, fiction

• Left teaching to work at New World, became editor of Manhattan daily the Aurora

• Political career—speaking at Democratic rallies and writing for the Democratic Review

• Fired from the Aurora; wrote temperance novel Franklin Evans, or the Inebriate for New World in 1842; in 1845, special contributor to Long Island Star

• Attending operas—influence on Leaves of Grass

• Editor of Brooklyn Eagle, writing literary reviews

• Fired from Eagle—opposed to acquisition of more territory for slavery

• Turned to poetry and began work that later appeared in Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)• 1853-1854 began work on poetry for Leaves of Grass, took out

copyright in 1855

• Image of the poet, as the “American bard” (1312)

• Defying convention in image, in poetry

• Emerson and Thoreau visiting him in 1855 and 1856

• Returned to journalism

• Addition of poems in editions of Leaves of Grass

• Moved to Washington, D.C. in 1863, work as nurse

• “O Captain! My Captain!” to Lincoln after assassination

• Clerk at Department of the Interior in 1865

• Fired for writing obscene book (1313)

• Suffered stroke in 1873, left Washington; move to New Jersey

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)• 1870s and 1880s success and recognition

• Longfellow and Oscar Wilde visited him in NJ

• Continued to lecture

• Sixth edition of Leaves of Grass in 1881, Boston district attorney threatened obscenity charges

• Increased sales with edition’s release in 1882 through Rees Welsh and Company

•Edited complete prose works; “deathbed” edition of Leaves of Grass

• Died in Camden, NJ on March 26, 1892; buried in mausoleum (1314)