THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

(1828–1865)

LECTURE # 10

LECTURER: AIDA TULEGENOVA

 ALSO KNOWN AS THE ROMANTIC PERIOD IN
AMERICA AND THE AGE OF TRANSCENDENTALISM,
THIS PERIOD IS COMMONLY ACCEPTED TO BE THE
GREATEST OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

Romantic Period
The Age of Transcendentalism
 SCHOLAR F. O. MATTHIESSEN ORIGINATED THE PHRASE "AMERICAN RENAISSANCE" IN HIS 1941
BOOK AMERICAN RENAISSANCE: ART AND EXPRESSION IN THE AGE OF EMERSON AND WHITMAN.

THE THEMATIC CENTER OF THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE WAS WHAT MATTHIESSEN CALLED THE
"DEVOTION" OF ALL FIVE OF HIS WRITERS TO "THE POSSIBILITIES OF DEMOCRACY".

HE PRESENTED THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE TEXTS AS "LITERATURE FOR OUR DEMOCRACY” AND
CHALLENGED THE NATION TO REPOSSESS THEM.

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 UNIQUE AMERICAN LITERARY STYLE TO DISTINGUISH AMERICAN LITERATURE
FROM BRITISH LITERATURE.
WALTER CHANNING IN A NOVEMBER 1815 ISSUE OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW CALLED
FOR AMERICAN AUTHORS TO FORM "A LITERATURE OF OUR OWN," WHICH WAS AMPLIFIED BY
JOHN NEAL AND OTHER LITERARY CRITICS.
FOLLOWING THIS CALL, THERE WAS A WAVE OF LITERARY NATIONALISM IN AMERICA FOR
MUCH OF THE 1820S THAT SAW WRITERS SUCH AS WASHINGTON IRVING,
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, AND JAMES FENIMORE COOPER RISE TO IMPORTANCE IN AMERICAN
LITERATURE. THIS MOVE TOWARD EXPRESSING NATIONALISM THROUGH LITERATURE IS
CONSIDERED CENTRAL TO THE EMERGENCE OF THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

OVERVIEW
 • Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller are credited
MAJOR WRITERS with shaping the literature and ideals of many later
INCLUDE writers.

Walt Whitman, • Other major contributions include the poetry of Henry

Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry David Thoreau,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Edgar Allan Poe,
Herman Melville.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=oIEnO_3gh8E
Wadsworth Longfellow and the short stories of Melville,
Poe, Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
• Additionally, this era is the inauguration point of
American literary criticism, lead by Poe, James Russell
Lowell, and William Gilmore Simms.
• The years 1853 and 1859 brought the first novels
written by African American authors, both male and
female: "Clotel," by William Wells Brown and "Our
Nig," by Harriet E. Wilson.
FOR SEMINAR:
TO COMPARE AMERICAN AND BRITISH ROMANTICISM

• 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature. The American Scholar. Literary Ethics. The Transcendentalist. The
• Over−soul. Address before the Cambridge Divinity School. English Traits. Representative Men. Poems.
• 2. Henry David Thoreau. Excursions. Walden. A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. Cape Cod.
• The Maine Woods.
• 3. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mosses from an Old Manse. The Scarlet Letter. The House of the Seven Gables.
• The Blithedale Romance. The Marble Faun. Our Old Home.
• 4. Transcendentalism in New England. By O. B. Frothingham. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1875.

• Walt Whitman,
• Edgar Allan Poe,
• Herman Melville.
• Fireside poets