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Emerging America Literature

During the mid-19th century, a period now known as the American Renaissance, many American literary masterpieces were produced that helped establish a uniquely American style of literature. This period saw the rise of transcendentalist writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman who emphasized individualism and finding spirituality in nature. Their works, along with novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, helped distinguish American literature from British literature and expressed themes of national identity during this time of self-confidence and humanism in the United States.

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Elmer Pajarito Belarmino
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60 views

Emerging America Literature

During the mid-19th century, a period now known as the American Renaissance, many American literary masterpieces were produced that helped establish a uniquely American style of literature. This period saw the rise of transcendentalist writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman who emphasized individualism and finding spirituality in nature. Their works, along with novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, helped distinguish American literature from British literature and expressed themes of national identity during this time of self-confidence and humanism in the United States.

Uploaded by

Elmer Pajarito Belarmino
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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THE EMERGENCE OF

MODULE
“AMERICAN” LITERATURE

The Emergence of “American” Literature

The mid-nineteenth century often has been considered an “American


Renaissance” due to the number and quality of literary works produced.

The major works of literature produced during the mid-nineteenth century “American
Renaissance”

The decades before the Civil War saw several


American literary masterpieces. This period, now
referred to as the “American Renaissance” of
literature, often has been identified with American
romanticism and transcendentalism. Literary
nationalists at this time were calling for a movement
that would develop a uniquely American literary style
to distinguish American literature from British
literature. Authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman
Melville, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman wrote their best and most famous
works during this period. In recent years, female authors such as Emily Dickinson and
Harriet Beecher Stowe have been added to the list of great authors from the period.

Nationalism

The idea of supporting one’s country and culture.transcendentalism: A movement


of writers and philosophers in New England in the nineteenth century whose members
were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on
the belief in the essential supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the
revelation of the deepest truths.American Romanticism: An artistic, literary, and
intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth
century; in most areas it was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1840.
The American Renaissance

During the mid-nineteenth century, many American literary masterpieces were


produced. Sometimes called the “American Renaissance” (a term coined by the scholar
F.O. Matthiessen), this period encompasses (approximately) the 1820s to the dawn of
the Civil War, and it has been closely identified with American romanticism and
transcendentalism.

Often considered a movement centered in New England, the American Renaissance


was inspired in part by a new focus on humanism as a way to move from Calvinism.
Literary nationalists at this time were calling for a movement that would develop a
uniquely American literary style to distinguish American literature from British literature.
The American Renaissance is characterized by renewed national self-confidence and a
feeling that the United States was the heir to Greek democracy, Roman law, and
Renaissance humanism. The American preoccupation with national identity (or
nationalism) in this period was expressed by modernism, technology, and academic
classicism, a major facet of which was literature.

Protestantism shaped the views of the vast majority of Americans in the antebellum
years. Alongside the religious fervor during this time, transcendentalists advocated a
more direct knowledge of the self and an emphasis on individualism. The writers and
thinkers devoted to transcendentalism, as well as the reactions against it, created a
trove of writings, an outpouring that became what has now been termed the “American
Renaissance.”

Major Literary Works

Transcendentalist Writers

Many writers were drawn to transcendentalism, and they started to express their
ideas through new stories, poems, essays, and articles. The ideas of transcendentalism
were able to permeate American thought and culture through a prolific print culture,
which allowed the wide dissemination of magazines and journals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson emerged as the leading figure of this


movement. In 1836, he published “Nature,” an essay arguing that
humans can find their true spirituality in nature, not in the
everyday bustling working world of Jacksonian democracy and
industrial transformation. In 1841, Emerson published his essay
“Self-Reliance,” which urges readers to think for themselves and reject the mass
conformity and mediocrity taking root in American life.

Emerson’s ideas struck a chord with a class of literate adults who also were dissatisfied
with mainstream American life and searching for greater spiritual meaning. Among
those attracted to Emerson’s ideas was his friend Henry David Thoreau, whom
Emerson encouraged to write about his ideas. In 1849, Emerson published his lecture
“Civil Disobedience” and urged readers to refuse to support an immoral government. In
1854, he published Walden; or, Life in the Woods, a book about the two years he spent
in a small cabin on Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts.

Walt Whitman also added to the transcendentalist movement, most notably with his
1855 publication of twelve poems, entitled Leaves of Grass, which
celebrated the subjective experience of the individual. One of the
poems, “Song of Myself,” emphasized individualism, which for
Whitman, was a goal achieved by uniting the individual with all other
people through a transcendent bond.

Other Writers

Some critics took issue with transcendentalism’s emphasis on rampant individualism by


pointing out the destructive consequences of compulsive human behavior.

Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick; or, The


Whale emphasized the perils of individual obsession by
telling the tale of Captain Ahab’s single-minded quest to kill a
white whale, Moby Dick, which had destroyed Ahab’s
original ship and caused him to lose one of his legs. Edgar
Allan Poe, a popular author, critic, and poet, decried, “the
so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists.” These
American writers who questioned transcendentalism
illustrate the underlying tension between individualism and
conformity in American life. Other notable works from this
period include Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the
Seven Gables (1851).

As often happens, historians emphasize the works produced by white men during
the American Renaissance, but many African Americans and women produced great
literary works, too. Emily Dickinson began writing poetry in the 1830s, and Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) rose to a prominent reputation in the late
1970s. African-American literature during this time, including slave narratives by such
writers as Frederick Douglass and early novels by William Wells Brown, has gained
increasing recognition as well.

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