American Romanticism (or the American Renaissance)
For many years, this period and these writers
were known as the American Renaissance, a coin termed by F.O. Matthiessen
in his book of that name in 1941. This book set the parameters of how
to read and connect these writers until relatively recently, when its
limitations, especially in terms of defining the "canon" of literary
giants and what made them (all male) "giants" have been recognized and
challenged. However, the term is still useful to some degree. It is
a misnomer, if one thinks of the period as a time of rebirth of some
earlier literary greatness, as the European Renaissance, because there
was nothing to be "reborn." The great writers of this period, roughly
1840-1865 although more particularly 1850-1855, marked the first
maturing of American letters. It was a Renaissance in the sense
of a flowering, excitement over human possibilities, and a high regard
for individual ego. It was definitely and even defiantly American, as
these writers struggled to understand what "American" could possibly
mean, especially in terms of a literature which was distinctively American
and not British. Their inability to resolve this struggle--and it was
even more a personal one than a nationalistic one, for it questioned
their identity and place in society--did much to fire them creatively.
Ann Woodlief's Introduction
However, we will call this American
romanticism, though it shares many characteristics with British romanticism.
It flourished in the glow of Wordsworth's poetic encounter with nature
and himself in The Prelude, Coleridge's literary theories about
the reconciliation of opposites, the romantic posturings and irony
of Byron, the lush imagery of Keats, and the transcendental lyricism
of Shelley, even the Gothicism of Mary Shelley and the Bronte sisters.
Growing from the rhetoric of salvation, guilt, and providential visions
of Puritanism, the wilderness reaches of this continent, and the fiery
rhetoric of freedom and equality, though, the American brand of romanticism
developed its own character, especially as these writers tried self-consciously
to be new and original.
The glory years were 1850-1855. What
was it in American culture and British influences that led to the
incredible flowering of masterpieces in this era: Emerson's Representative
Men, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables,
Melville's Moby-Dick and Pierre, Thoreau's Walden,
and Whitman's Leaves of Grass. After over 200 years on this
continent, why was the time ripe? There is nothing comparable in so
short a period in Europe. Is there any relationship between this literary
outburst and the conflicts which would soon lead to war?
As is so often true, there are no good
answers, but lots of good speculation. Cultural there was time for
literature and art; the practical matters such as the essential of
making a living and establishing political independence had been squared.
There were American publishers and even more important, copyright
laws protected writers from having their works printed, without their
permission or pay, in England. There were readers, often women eager
to expand their minds. It was actually possible to make a kind of
living as a writer, although it was difficult and limited, making
these writers agonize over the problem of "vocation." There was also
a strong national pride, self-conscious and anti-British.
Politically the time was ripe. The 18th
century left a heritage of optimism about man's possibilities and
perfectability. The lofty ideals of democracy asserted the value of
individuals, regardless of class, and education. Of course, these
values primarily applied to white males. In fact, tensions were building
which cried out for creative release. Inequality, not equality was
the rule for many, especially women and slaves. The clash of these
realities with the idealistic rhetoric led writers to take extremes,
championing individualism yet also seeing the darker sides of a fragmenting
Economically America had never been
wealthier. But the rising materialism and focus on business at the
cost of the mind and the spirit was spawning reform movements all
over America. Over 150 intentional communities--from the Shakers to
Oneida to Brook Farm--were formed by people disillusioned by the materialistic
values and inequities of American society. Yet there was enough affluence
for people to develop and appreciate writing and reading, and a growing
leisure class with cultural pretensions. There was one period of crisis--the
Panic of 1837--but that only increased the drive toward material values.
Religion, always a basic concern for
Americans, was also ready for romanticism and its kind of pantheistic
religion. The stern dogmas of Calvinism had been replaced by rationalistic
Unitarianism and Deism. However, they were so rational and so determined
to avoid the emotional excesses of the Great Awakening that they seemed
dry and cold, unable to satisfy deep spiritual yearnings. People,
especially Emerson, were looking for new spiritual roots, personally
involving and meaningful, but not traditional.
Connected to this was the rise and professionalization
of science, which seemed to many to conflict with religion. Many felt
a psychic dislocation, that the bottom had dropped out of their world
since traditional values and conventional reality were just not enough
for them. They tried to impose meaning individually, for institutions
and dogmas seemed to possess little truth. Philosophically, they reacted
against the materialistic educational theories of Locke and rationalism.
They found Truth more a matter of intuition and imagination than logic
and reason. They rejected the mechanistic view of the universe so
dear to Franklin and Deists and opted for a more organic view, seeing
the world more as dynamic and living.
Aesthetically, the romantics were also
in a state of revolt, primarily against the restraints of classicism
and formalism. Form, particularly traditional literary forms, mattered
much less than inspiration, enthusiasm, and emotion. Good literature
should have heart, not rules, although it is never so simple as that.
There were specifically American components
to the romanticism of our authors. They were particularly aware of
nature, especially its wild aspects, and were beginning to comprehend
that it was being lost as fast as they were appreciating it. The physical
frontiers were being conquered in this time of "manifest destiny"
and there was little wilderness to explore (and exploit). They turned
to artistic, metaphysical, and intellectual frontiers to recapture
the ecstasy of exploration and discovery.
Reaction was a major, but not the only,
mode for these romantics. They confronted the distinctively American
pressures for conformity and definitions of success in terms of money.
They spoke out, to some degree, against slavery, promoting the ideals
of Jacksonian democracy, that "any man can do anything" (if he's white
and educated). They sought to creative a distinctive American literary
voice; it was time for the cultural revolution to follow the political
one. They felt compelled to declare cultural and individual independence
from Europe, even though they had little idea of what form that could
Matthiessen set the canon of American
Renaissance writers: Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and
Whitman. Indeed, for years any other works lived in their imposing
shadows. Yet this was a fairly tight group. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne,
and Melville all knew each other well, were even friends and neighbors,
as was Margaret Fuller. They knew well the works of Poe (who died
in 1849); he in turn wrote about Emerson. Whitman claimed that Emerson
brought his "simmering, simmering, simmering" to a creative boil.
Dickinson was devoted to Emerson's works, though she rarely agreed.
It is hard to understand any writer in this period without seeing
numerous ties and influences, although they would each, except for
Whitman, assert their own individual vision and art and deny the most
obvious influences. They were, after all, romantic individualists!
Matthiessen had trouble going beyond
his own white male perspective, and in recent years, the value of
lesser-known writers has been recognized as well as the mass of popular
writers (many were women) that they were responding and reacting to.
David S. Reynolds
tells that story well in Beneath the American Renaissance.
However, we have only one semester to study this period. Our focus
must necessarily be on those "masterworks," with glancing attention
to other works. We cannot recreate the historical/social/economic/political
context to which these writers responded and reacted as they explored
the tensions and contradictions of their time and place, especially
as they were enacted in themselves. But we must constantly be aware
that they did not write in a vacuum, by any means. They especially
wrote in response and reaction to each other, and that we can and
To make it easier to make connections
between these writers, as we must do to understand any one of them
and their works, the course is organized not according to author but
according to certain romantic themes and ideas which each kept exploring.
These are certainly not the only points of comparative contact, but
they are useful and important ones. Perhaps we will risk some confusion
here and certainly we will have to neglect some biographical context
as we "mix and match" writers. But we will be able to focus on those
ideas which united (and even divided) them that makes us able to call
them all "romantics." After we have read a work, we will "revive"
it in discussions of later topics, taking the different perspective,
for there must a certain arbitrariness in "assigning" a work to only
one theme. Great and complex works must not be limited like that!
So rather than progressing through time and historical/biographical
contexts, we will keep circling recursively (as Emerson says we must),
seeing how the different works and writers explore the major aspects
of romantic thought and art.
Our base is necessarily Emerson, the
literary giant of his time in America, for better or worse. Though
his writing is often difficult to read, it was, in fact, the match
that lit all of the creative fires of his time. He put his pen on
all of the sensitive spots in the American creative psyche; Whitman
was not the only one to "boil."
See also the American
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, © Ann Woodlief