The
Ø characterized by growth and "rebirth" of culture
Ø period of rapid development and change
Changes in:
Ø industry: mills and factory system(
Ø technology: easier to:
communicate: Morse's telegraph/code
farm: John Deere steel plow & Cyrus McCormack's reaper
Ø transportation: easier to:
transport goods: canal craze in Northeast [ABE canals]
travel: railroads [which forged westward expansionism movement]
[failed] travel: plank roads [popular only during this time period]
Ø medicine: development of anaesthia
Ø politics: Republican party formed
Ø expansionism & Manifest Destiny
TX admitted to
slavery
woman's movement
Women's Temperance League
Ø literary movements: 3 distinct groups:
Ø Transcendentalists, Anti-Transcendentalists, Fireside Poets
Ø and then there's Emily Dickinson who defies categorizing and stands in a class of her own
|
|
ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISTS |
|
v similar to romanticists v primary belief: utopian optimism (utopian = a perfect society; optimism=thinking on the bright side) v Genre= essays and poetry v Writers= Emerson and Thoreau v loved nature v interact with nature: do something physical: run, walk the dog, sports outside; outside activities v high drug use at this time in Eng; they used laudanum (opium/poppy which came from v in N.E., people wanted to get to the same place as the Eng without drug use (by interacting w/nature and meditation) v Ts believed in: individualism, simple lives, "less is more" and communal living (small groups of intelligent free thinkers) v Ts believed that nature unifies: beauty, spirit, discipline, and idealism v SELF, SELF-RELIANCE |
§ Similar to gothic § Primary belief: life is cruel and nature will get you § Genre= novels & short stories § Writers= Hawthorne and Melville § Saw nature as evil or cruel § These writers were often disillusioned, embittered, and negative § Often the American Dream failed for them and they suffered rejection § A-Ts focused on: guilt, hypocrisy, pessimism (thinking negatively), harsh realism, insanity, and moral responsibility § Had a dark vision of the world |
§ Were the 1st to write for the common man
§ Poets were: Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and Lowell
§ Wrote about: patriotism, inspirational national themes, love, nature, the home, and "family values"
Ø Henry Wadsworth Longfellow = leading intellectual in NE; professor at Harvard; towering reputation in
his lifetime
Ø Oliver Wendell Holmes = unofficial poet laureate
Ø John Greenleaf Whittier = from hardworking Quaker farm family
Ø Russell Lowell
-Whittier and Lowell were:
-born into wealthy families
-enjoyed rank/privilege
-antislavery; supported the North during the Civil War
IN HER OWN CLASS: EMILY DICKINSON
|
EMERSON's "Nature" |
THOREAU's Nature |
|
§ Believed nature could exhilarate, calm, soothe, and repair the spirit § Wanted man to use nature as a tool to interact w/nature to get to a higher place, God, spirit, or whatever… § Believed nature produced harmony and delight: the natural feel good feeling |
§ Use to find out what is truly important in your life § A place to live free and uncommitted § A place to sort out how to continue to live your li |
§ Know & trust yourself
§ Be yourself and not a clone of someone else
§ Work is happiness
§ Form small Utopian groups of like intellects
§ RISK DIFFERENCE
§ Enjoy the "sweet spontaneous"
THOREAU AND WALDEN
§ "less is more"
§ live deliberately and by YOUR choice
§ acquire only the bare essentials [Thoreau was very anti-materialist]
§ live fully before death
§ "Simplify, simplify, simplify"
§ avoid excess [in anything]
§ dream your dream but put a foundation [work ethic] underneath it