3. Romanticism (1820-1860)

If we glance at American literature of the 19^th century and compare it to English literature we immediately notice that the Americans are much more fond of writing short stories. The short story was the national form of American literature. First they were tales of wonderful adventures in the forests and prairies, hunting stories, fairy-tales heard from Indians and Negroes. Many authors took the subjects of their stories from the ones they heard pass from mouth to mouth. The American magazines the aim of which was just to amuse the busy reader for half an hour, preferred to give their pages to the short stories and it became a better paying form of literature.

The writers of Romanticism depicted life as a struggle between vice and virtue. But when they looked for the triumph of virtue in real life, they could not find it. Thus, the most characteristic feature of Romanticism is the great gap between reality and the ideal – the dream of the poet, artist or writer. The approach of the writers to life was almost exclusively through the emotions. They wanted to show reality but their creative methods, peculiar to them alone, resulted in works that in fact depicted very strange and unusual aspects of life.

Romanticism gave a powerful impetus to literature development, and produced great poets and writers who were true patriots, loved their country and recognized the importance of developing national literature and national history.

The major exponents: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Alan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman.

Toward the mid-1900’, a new generation of American writers appeared. These writers did not turn to England for inspiration. They wrote about their own country and its people. They experimented with literary forms and introduced new themes and ideas.

AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM

• was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in the early-to mid-nineteenth century. It began as a protest against the general state of culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian Church which was taught at Harvard Divinity School.

Among their core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that ‘transcends’ the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual’s intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. The transcendentalists emphasized intuition (feelings) more than observation and experience. They believed that the knowledge people get from their own instincts transcends (goes beyond) knowledge that results from logic and deduction.

Ralph Waldo Emerson became the spokesman of the transcendentalists. The publication of his essay “Nature” (1836) is usually taken to be the central moment at witch Transcendentalism became a major cultural movement.

Emerson wrote: nature “is the apparition of God…the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual and strives to lead the individual back to it”. This communion with nature was the source of the term “transcendental”, as Immanuel Kant had described in his “Critique of Pure Reason”(1788): “I call all knowledge “transcendental” which is concerned, not with objects, but with our mode of knowing objects”.

Emerson closed the essay (“Nature”) by calling for a revolution in human consciousness, he called for “a new consciousness” to emerge from the new idealist philosophy.

“We will walk on our own feet;

we will work with our own hands;

we will speak our own minds…

a nation of men will for the first time exist,

because each believes himself inspired by the Devine Soul which also inspires all men.”

Among his other best essays: “Self-Reliance” (1841), “The Over-Soul” (1841).

In the same year (1836) Transcendentalism became a coherent movement with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Massachusetts, usually at Emerson’s house, by New England intellectuals and writers including George Putnam, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Henry Hedge, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau (whose “Walden” (1854) exhibited a philosophy of nature and of individualism that proved to be the most important and effective expression of the movement’s ideas) .

From 1840 the group published frequently in their journal The Dial, along with other venues.

The practical aims of the Transcendentalists were varied; some among the group liked it with utopian social change, while others found it an exclusively individual and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter.

The Transcendentalists desired to ground their religion and philosophy in transcendental principles: principles not based on, or falsifiable by, sensuous experience, but deriving from the inner, spiritual or mental essence of the human.

The American Transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in the original, and relied primarily on the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Victor Cousin, and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it. In contrast, they were intimately familiar with the English Romantics, and the Transcendental movement may be partially described as a slightly later, American outgrowth of Romanticism.

Transcendentalism did have a part in and an effect upon the evolving American society. Almost from the beginning of the historical and critical interest in this movement, there has been curiosity about its manifestation as a social force, contributing to such reforms as antislavery, communitarianism, women’s rights, the labor movement and environmentalism.

• One way to look at the Transcendentalists is to see them as a generation of well educated people who lived in the decades before the American Civil war and the national division that it both reflected and helped to create. These people, mostly New Englanders, mostly around Boston, were attempting to create a uniquely American body of literature. It was already decades since the Americans had won independence from England. Now, these people believed, it was time for literary independence. And so they deliberately went about creating literature, essays, novels, poetry, and other writing that were clearly different from anything from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation.

• Another way to look at the Transcendentalists is to see them as a generation of people struggling to define spirituality and religion in a way that took into account the new understanding their age made available.

With the demise of the Transcendental Club, the end of publication of The Dial in 1844, Transcendentalism ceased to exist. Nevertheless, it continued to have a profound effect on American Culture for at least the next century through the works of its most influential spokesmen, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and through the works of those who, like Hawthorn, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and E.A. Poe, responded most profoundly to the intellectual challenges presented by the transcendentalists.

THE BOSTON BRAHMINS. Some of the most popular authors of the 19^th century belonged to upper-class New England society. They became known as “Boston Brahmins”. The name came from the Brahmans or Brahmins, the highest caste of the Hindu religion. Leading Brahmin authors included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Longfellow (1807-1882) was one of the most influential poets of his day. In 1847, he published “Evangeline”, one his best narrative poems. It is written in unrhymed hexameters (six poetic feet in every line). The poem is based on the forced removal of French settlers from Nova Scotia by the British during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Two lovers, Gabriel and Evangeline, are separated as a result of the removal. The poem describes the lifelong devotion of Evangeline as she searches for Gabriel for many years, finally finding him in old age, dying of the plague. The poem played on the then popular appeal of sentimental love stories and of depiction of the American landscape.

In the poem “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855) Longfellow pictured the humanity and nobility he saw in American Indians. The poem focuses on an Indian hero named Hiawatha, whose life, like that of his people, is full of triumphs and tragedies. The poem ends with the death of Hiawatha’s wife, the coming of the white man, and his won symbolic departure into the sunset in his canoe. In the poem, Longfellow presented the Indian’s mythology, which he had read about in the writings of the experts of the day.

Longfellow translated poetry from 18 languages. His most significant translation was of Dante Alighieri’s medieval poem the “Divine Comedy”. Some scholars feel Longfellow made the finest translation of the “Divine Comedy” in the English language.

To the modern reader Longfellow’s sentimental and optimistic poetry often makes him seem somewhat old-fashioned. In fact, however, he consistently experimented in verse forms from outside the English tradition. He used his extensive knowledge of the literature of other countries as a source for both the form and content of much of his poetry. (Thought some critics called his work “artificial and imitative”). He wrote for the common middle-class reader in a clear, sometimes elegant style that represented popular American values.

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) – the first great prose stylist, the first American writer recognized in Europe. His first work (1809): “A History of New York from the beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty”. Irving wrote this book under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, an eccentric man who became one of the author’s most popular characters. This book is a boisterous, satirical account of the state during its colonial past and in Irving’s day.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851) Principal Works: “The Leather-Stocking Tales”, among them:“The Pioneers” (1823), “The Last of Mohicans” (1826), “The Pathfinder” (1840), etc. These novels are about Natty Bumpoo, a frontiersman. These action-filled stories contrast two ways of life. Natty Bampoo and his brave, noble Indian friends live on a freedom close to nature.

The settlers bring civilization and social order, but they also selfishly and thoughtlessly misuse the wilderness. Cooper’s conservative ideas about society are reflected in many of his writings. His works show his concern for the freedom of individualists and the rights of property owners.

EDGAR ALAN POE (1809-1849) – one of America’s greatest and highly influential poets, short-story writers, literary critics; a forerunner of symbolism, impressionism, detective fiction, horror fiction and the grotesque in modern literature. Principal Works – “ Raven”, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, “The Imp of the Perverse”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, etc. Poe’s most popular tales are filled with the strange, the bizarre, and the terrible. He insisted that these tales of terror were expressions of psychological and moral realities, rather than sensation for its own sake. Many of Poe’s stories subtly present the theme of moral responsibility.

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891) Principal Works - “Typee” (1846), “Redburn” (1849), “White-Jacket” (1850), “Pierre” (1852), “Moby Dick: or, The Whale” (1851) – an adventure tale and a symbolic study of good and evil.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORN (1804-1964) Principal Works - “The Scarlet Letter” (1850) – the novel which dramatizes the tragic effects of sin, “ The House of the Seven Gables”, “The Marble Faun”.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-18861) – one of the most innovative 19^th -century American poets. The subjects if Dickenson’s poetry are the traditional ones of love, nature, religion and mortality, seen through Puritan eyes. Much of the dramatic tension stems from her religious doubt. Many lyrics mix rebellious and reverent sentiments. The eccentricities and technical irregularities include: frequent use of dashes, sporadic capitalization of nouns, ungrammatical phrasing, off-rhymes, broken meters, bold, unconventional and often startling metaphors, and aphoristic wit.

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892) published the first edition of his poems “Leaves of Grass” in 1855. To many critics, Whitman’s flowing free verse was like a breath of fresh air in American poetry. Whitman sang the praises of America and democracy. He glorified both physical and spiritual life in “Song of Myself” and other poems. The poet’s love of America grew from his faith that Americans might reach new worldly and spiritual heights. Whitman wrote: “The chief reason for the being of the United States of America is to bring about the common good will of all mankind, the solidarity of the world”. In the preface to “Leaves of Grass” he wrote: “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem”. He believed that his “Leaves” had grown with his own emotional and intellectual development.

Whitman wrote “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and “O Captain! My Captain!” – poems on the death of Abraham Lincoln.

Whitman wrote in a form similar to thought-rhythm, or parallelism. This form is found in Old Testament poetry. The rhythm of his lines suggests the rise and fall of the sea. This structure is better suited to expressing emotion than to logical discussion.

In general, Whitman’s poetry is idealistic and romantic.

Whitman’s essay “Democratic Vistas” (1871) deals with his theory of democracy and with the creation of democratic literature.

4. AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1870-1950

REALISTS, HUMORISTS

Mark Twain (1835-1910), “The adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876),

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884)

Petroleum V. Nasby

William Sydney Porter (O Henry)

Dorothy Parker

James Thurber

Ogden Nash

E.B. White

“INNOCENTS ABROAD”

Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady”, “Ambassadors”. Bayard Taylor

Lafcadio Hearn

NATURALISTS

Stephen Crane

Frank Norris

Harold Frederic

Theodore Dreiser, “Sister Carrie”, “An American Tragedy”

Jack London, “The Call of the Wild”, “The White Fang”

Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer”, “Tropic of Capricorn”, “Rosy Crucifixion”

SOCIAL CRITICS

Upton Sinclair

Sinclair Lewis, “Main Street”

Thomas Wolfe

Nathanael West, “The Day of the Locust”

John Steinbeck, “The Grapes of Wrath”

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Jean Toomer

Countee Cullen

Claude McKay

Langston Hughes

THE “LOST GENERATION”

Ernest Hemingway, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “The Old Man and the Sea”

F.S. Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”

William Faulkner, “The Sound and the Fury”

REGIONALISTS

Ellen Glasgow

Erskine Caldwell

Robert Penn Warren

Edith Wharton

William Saroyan

Margaret Mitchell, “Gone with the Wind”

Edna Ferber

POETRY AND DRAMA

Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Stephen Vincent Benet

Eugene O’ Neill, Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Marc Connelly, Lillian Hellman, etc.

5. LITERATURE OF “THE LOST GENERATION”

The 1920’s were a very peculiar time. It was called the Roaring twenties. America experienced a time of great prosperity and new modern ideas. Everything was changing hectically. The role of woman advanced, people idealized sports and silver screen stars while modern technology altered the landscape dramatically. However, America remained fiercely conservative and religious. The Conservatives pushed Congress to pass the Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the sale, production and transportation of alcohol.

Prohibition Laws did not restrain the younger generation as the Government hoped it would. “Prohibition, although, intended to eliminate the saloon and the drunkard from American society, served to create thousands of illegal drinking places called “speakeasies” and a new and increasingly profitable form of criminal activity, the transportation of liquor, known as “bootlegging”. Prohibition, sometimes referred to as “noble experiment”, was repealed in 1933. This “Lost Generation” – a term invented by Gertrude Stein and used by Ernest Hemingway – had fought in World War I and no longer believed that Law and Government represented all justice and right. They were disillusioned, “lost” and confused. Post-war America invariably resembled a giant party full of drinking, jazz music and “flappers” with bobbed hair who smoked and ventured out of their houses un-chaperoned. It was an era of gangsters, bootleggers, flappers, expatriates. Moreover, the consumer era was established and gave rise to brand new spending opportunities for the majority of Americans in the 1920’s. Everybody wanted a piece of the All American Dream and – at least superficially – everybody could claim it. The American Dream was originally about “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, as Thomas Jefferson sates in his Declaration of independence of 1776.

The American Dream, that motivated thousands of immigrants to come to America, dictates that hard work, skill and effort are the sole tools via which a person – no matter how humble his origins are – can achieve success. During the 1920’s, though, the American Dream became a corrupted notion, lingering over the heads of the poor, the rich and the “nouveaux riches”. The sudden rise of the stock market following World War I did not only lead to grand, national prosperity but also to a newly found materialism. People indulged to a distorted interpretation of what the American Dream was all about: a person from any social background could make a fortune, even through illegitimate means, and then lead a dreamy life similar to the carefree, funfair like extravaganza of the rich. Consequently, the flux of easy money and the relaxation of ethics corrupted the very essence of the American Dream.

F. S. Fitzgerald was not only an irrefutable product of this fast-paced era of endless partying and drinking, but he was also a very sensitive “seismograph” registering and artistically depicting every aspect of the “Jazz Age”, in his novels and numerous short stories. Fitzgerald won instant acclaim as the literary representative of his generation – the Lost Generation. In his novels, the majority of which are instilled with autobiographical elements – he describes the confusion and despair caused by the hunt for material success.

Fitzgerald was part of a small but influential movement of writers and intellectuals dubbed the “Lost Generation”, who were shocked by the carnage of World War I and dissatisfied with what they perceived to be the materialism and spiritual emptiness of life in the United States.