Introduction to the American Renaissance

America had political independence but did it have cultural independence?

Emerson:  Representative Men (1850)
Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter (1850), House of Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852)
Melville: Moby Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852)
Thoreau:
Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
Whitman: Leaves of Grass (1855)

Why was the time right?

There were American publishers and even more important, copyright laws protected writers from having their works printed, without their permission or pay, in England. The Copyright Act of 1790 granted protection to American writers but all others could be pirated. Only Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper had any success. 

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 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 society.

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 The stern dogmas of Calvinism had been replaced by rationalistic Unitarianism and Deism.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.

America was without a cultural heritage, but it had plenty of nature. "America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination and it will no longer wait for metres." But they 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.

F.O Matthiessen set the canon of The 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. Whitman claimed that Emerson brought him "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.

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.

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."

Thanks to Ann Woodlief for this introduction.