American Literature: 1820-1865

Examining an American Renaissance

An American Renaissance?

• Appreciation for American Literature• Until 20th century, most

American universities did not teach the subject

• American literature seen as ‘beneath’ English literature• F.O. Matthiessen’s American

Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman

• Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman

Criticism & Growth

• Criticism of “American Renaissance”?• Exclusion of certain groups• Women, African Americans, immigrants • Avoiding ‘popular’ writers • New York & Massachusetts

• “Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself”

A Little History…

• Post American Revolution• Patriotic works begin emphasizing a

separate national identity— “distinctively American works”

• War of 1812• What happened?• Impact on American Literature? • Andrew Jackson

• Backlash • Skepticism of American culture• Washington Irving

An Expanding Nation

• Issue with Copyright • National copyright law not in place until 1790• But not until 1891 did US writers get international

copyright protection and foreign writers receive similar protection in the US

• Pirated English writing…• Impact on a writing ‘career’

• Growth of America • 1790 (four million); 1860 (thirty million)• Increased urbanization • Expansion of railroads, canals, other forms of

transportation• Expansion of US territories to the West

Reform and Conflict

• Theme of this period: Reform • Antebellum writings

focused on antislavery, temperance, women’s rights, and even nativist anti-Catholicism

• Emerson & reform• “The American Scholar” • Conviction that

American literature and culture not living up to Revolutionary or democratic promises

Antebellum Themes

• Women’s Rights• Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments”• Throughout the 19th century, in most states, married

woman had no legal rights to property or earnings within marriage

• Manifest Destiny• Thoreau & Mexican-American War• Emerson & Indians

• Slavery • Melville: “man’s foulest crime” • Thoreau: “Slavery in Massachusetts”

Civil War

• Initially, major writers of the period portrayed the war as a “holy war against slavery” • US Exceptionalism

• What changed?• Disillusionment

• Post-Civil War & Reconstruction • Resurgence of segregationist

practices • Economic stratification