The American Renaissance II

The Other American Renaissance, Poe and the Short Story

Canon Formation: The Making of the Period of the A.R.

Washington Irving and His Literary Friends at Sunnyside, Christian Schussele, 1863

F.O. Matthiessen, The American Renaissance (1941)

rediscovered literature of the A.R."in the name of a distinctly national tradition, a classic literature newly recovered for its quintessential 'American-ness'" impetus was his realization of "how great a number of masterpieces were produced in one extraordinarily concentrated moment of expression" (1850-55) selects Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman und Melville as representative because of "their devotion to the possibilities of democracy" canonized 'dissenters' and thus dissent itself problematic: real criticism of the idea of America is foreclosed establishes a closed WASP male canon which excludes other voices

Edgar Allan Poe

(1809-1849) Born in Boston to traveling actor parents, orphaned at age 2, brought up by the John Allan family in Richmond, Virginia illustrious personality, ascribed a reputation of alcohol and drug abuse, financial impasses, and bizarre, morbid, even violent personal habits stylizing himself as a Byronic hero, marriage to his young cousin Virginia, mysterious death

Poe
wrote poetry, a prose romance (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838), short fiction (Tales of the Grotesque an Arabesque, 1840 and Tales 1845), reviews, criticism and theory ("Philosophy of Composition" 1846, "The Poetic Principle" 1848) although from the South was no regionalist exploits the contemporary taste for the grotesque and the Gothic, focusing on the "terror of the soul" considered "outside the main currents of American thought"

Poe's Critical Theory

severs the direct connection of poetry and truth, i.e. assails the American union of the aesthetic and the moral celebrates the aesthetic centrality of the individual symbol and rejects didacticism and 'usefulness' argues that a conception of overall effect and precise denouement must precede actual writing in search of visionary spiritual beauty still emphasizes meticulous craftsmanship and minute attention to detail emphasizes the importance of the unity of effect or impression on the reader which, by necessity, requires a certain brevity and choice of subject to evoke a particular emotion from the reader

"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839)

exemplifies Poe's critical demand for a single, unified effect, concentrating on "the fatal demon of fear" is typically set in an anonymous landscape/ dreamscape is structured around the careful exploitation of point of view and ambiguity

marked by 'downward transcendence' (Voloshin) in contrast to transcendentalist optimism

Women Writers of the A.R.

Nina Baym writes in the Columbia Literary History of the United States: "It is probably no exaggeration to say that close to half the literature published by Americans in the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was written by women. It is certainly the case that, in its own time, this writing was taken seriously and women writers were respected as well as successful. The subsequent removal from the record is part of the literary history of a later day when exponents of various literary movements especially post-Civil War realism and post-World War I modernism found it convenient to allegorize women authors as exemplars of all that was wrong with literature, all that the new writers were committed to correcting and erasing" (305)

Best-sellers: Caroline Kirkland, A New Home: Who Will Follow (1839) Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World (1850), first American text to sell over a million copies Maria Cummins, The Lamplighter (1854) E.D.E.N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand (1859) Fanny Fern (alias Sara Willis Parton), Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (1855) autobiographical novel which chronicles the process of becoming a woman writer writing in the 19th century opened up new professional possibilities for women

Women in the 19th-Century

better education than previous generations and also more time for reading, esp. fiction confined to the domestic sphere, no right to vote, no control over property issue of what was 'appropriate' to women remained conflicted in social and cultural life "separate spheres" vs. "full participation" Rise of Feminism First Womens Rights Conference: Seneca Falls Convention (1848) "Declaration of Sentiments", modeled on the Declaration of Independence: "all men and women are created equal"

Sentimental Novel didactic in form, sincere in tone, ranging from plain to rhetorically ornate in style, highly melodramatic in plot "Sentimentalism": the conscious effort to rouse and emotional response in the reader an optimistic overemphasis of the goodness of humanity; providing upright moral examples and positive social values

Domestic Novel concentrates on the domestic sphere and its values affiliation, intimacy, altruism domestic sphere is turned into a shelter against the centrifugal powers of society female submission to patriarchy is transformed into identification with the will of God

sentimental or domestic novels aim for the reformation and perfection of man in the light of Christian ideals Example: Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World (1850)

A closer look at 19thcentury women's writing reveals that the authors often overcame limitations through various possiblities of subversion with regard to Style Subject matter Characters Form/Genre

Background to Slavery
No issue during the middle decades of the 19th century engaged the passions of Americans as those of slavery and race Several political accords (Missouri Compromise 1820, Gag Rule 1836, Compromise of 1850) to balance the interests of pro- and anti-slavery states in the Union, since, as Lincoln cautioned, "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 "Underground Railroad"

The Debate over Slavery

Pro age-old institution supported by Biblical texts positive good helped civilize and Christianize childlike/barbaric people more humane than "wage slavery" supported by "scientific theories" that proved that blacks were less than human slave master as the patriarchal head of an extended family Contra blacks are human and consequently the ideas of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" apply to them as well "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." chattel slavery, which reduces people to property and disrupts families, is a fundamental violation of God's laws

Abolitionist Writing
came from white activists like John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison, and from black authors such as David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet Most famous fictional abolitionist work: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Slave Narrative

first appeared in the United States around 1703, but most were published during the era of abolitionism, from 1831 to the end of the Civil War in 1865 hundreds were published by abolitionist and black presses for their propaganda value, ranging in size from a few pages to whole volumes; by the 1840s some of them were achieving large sales Famous examples include: Narrative of the Life Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (1860) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written By Herself (1861) by Harriet Jacobs

Characteristics of the Slave Narrative

autobiographies which describe firsthand the evils of slavery, strategies of resistance and subversion, and narrate thrilling escapes designed to rouse white readers' sympathy and to mobilize them against slavery often draw on Biblical allusion and imagery prefaced by a testimony or letter of authenticity generally written by a white editor the slave's voice had to be authorized and authenticated by a white voice use phrases such as "written by himself" to establish an identity as a writer not only constitutes a transition from illiteracy to literacy but a rite of passage from bondage to freedom, from chattel to human being

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

has the inventive power of a novel employs a significant number of formal and plot elements common to gothic and sentimental fiction, changes the protagonist's name yet is clearly an autobiographical slave narrative in many respects forms a counterpart to The Life of Frederick Douglass concentrates on the female experience of slavery

Literature:
Baym, Nina. "The Rise of the Woman Author." In: Elliott, Emory (ed.) Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia UP 1988: 289-305. Bell, Michael Davitt. "Women's Fiction and the Literary Marketplace." In: Bercovitch, Sacvan (ed.) The Cambridge History of American Literature Vol. 2 1820-1865. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1995: 74-123. May, Charles E. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne 1991. Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell 2004. Sekora, John/Darwin T. Turner (eds.) The Slave Narrative: Original Essays in Criticism and Theory. Western Illinois University 1982. Sundquist, Eric J. "The Literature of Slavery and African American Culture." In: Bercovitch, Sacvan (ed.) The Cambridge History of American Literature Vol. 2 18201865. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1995: 239-328.

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