The American Renaissance Janvi Madhani Mrs.

OConnell Period III

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What is renaissance? Renaissance is a rebirth of ideas, philosophies, thinking, and a way of life. It is the renewal of life, vigor, culture, and interest. It is the spark of reformation. Such an event took place in American history known as the American Renaissance. Concerning America in the 18th and 19th century, Thoreau states that he finds the mass of men and women living lives of quiet desperation, and driving themselves like slaves (1854). The literature of that time was constrained and tied with norms having no scope for imagination. It struggled to find a uniquely American voice in the existing literary genre. The minds of the people were even narrower than the literature. In the fields of the arts, there was no major improvement either. The American Renaissance in the 18th and 19th century reformed American culture and beliefs in the fields of literature, transcendentalism, and romanticism in the arts. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own mindsA nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men. says Ralph Waldo Emerson (Matthiessan 7). This quote sums up the entire renaissance ideology. It talks about regaining the individuality of each man which had been lost. This movement marks a very significant page in history. During this time period, the greatest and most treasured novels were produced. Among, these masterpieces are Moby Dick, The House of Seven Gables, Uncle Toms Cabin, The Scarlet Letter, Little Women, and Tom Sawyer. Another significant facet of the renaissance was the emergence of the transcendental philosophy. Some of the finest art was even produced. Some of this art includes the sculpture of Lincoln Memorial, the paintings of Lake George by the Luminists, and the composition of the Concord Sonata. These facets together make the renaissance so influential. America was finding her voice and shaping herself for the first time as a free nation through this revival.

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There is only one school of literature that of talent. says Vladimir Nabokov. Such a school of literature bursting with talent, emerged only during this time period. The efforts of these talents formulated what we now know as American literature though it had been greatly influenced by European literature. The novels, poems, and short stories produced, utilized native dialect, history, landscape, and characters in order to explore uniquely American issues of the time, such as abolitionism, temperance, religious tolerance, scientific progress, and the expanding western frontier. Short stories and fiction of the time encompassed a broad range of subjects, settings, and styles. They included Gothic romance, detective and horror stories, sea tales, historical fiction of colonial America, and progressive social problem tales. All of these contributed to the first generation of great American literature (Miller 7). One of the literary geniuses of this time includes Walt Whitman. Some of his well known works include, Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself. His work is known to break the boundaries of earlier poetic form and is generally prose like. Thus he is sometimes known as the father of freeverse though he was not the one who invented it. Whitman also used unusual images and symbols in his poetry such as rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris. He also openly wrote about death and sexuality which were very offensive topics of the time (Bloom 14). Another literary genius was Nathaniel Hawthorne. His most famous work is the Scarlet Letter. Hawthornes work centers mostly around New England and many of his works feature moral allegories inspired by Puritan beliefs. His fiction works are a part of the Romantic Movement. More specifically, they are dark romanticism. Dark romanticism is the literary subgenre that presents individuals as prone to sin and self-destruction, not as possessing divinity and wisdom; a fairly new idea of the time (Bloom 6).

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Lastly, another great writer of this time period was Henry David Thoreau. His most famous works consisted of writings on natural history and philosophy. Thoreaus literary style consists of natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meaning, and historic lore. His work also displays poetic sensibility and philosophical austerity. Thoreau is often known as an individual anarchist. This is nothing but the philosophy of emphasizing an individuals will over external determinants such as society, traditions, and groups (CUNY). During this literary renaissance, the language used in literary works took a different turn. F. O. Matthiessan says, Their tones were sometimes optimistic, sometimes blatantly, even dangerously expansive, sometimes disillusion, even despairing Different literary figures also emerged. Some of them being clinamen (irony of presence and absence), tessera (synecdoche of part for whole), kenosis (metonymy of emptying out), daemonization (hyperbole of high and low), askesis (metaphor of inside vs. outside), and apophrades (metalepis reversing early and late) (Matthiessan 12). The second major facet of the American Renaissance was the introduction of Romanticism in the arts. Romanticism was an intellectual and aesthetic phenomenon. It stresses personal emotion, free play of imagination, and freedom from rules of form. It is the cult of the individual, the cultural and psychological nativity of I, the self, and the inner spark of divinity that links one man to another and all men to the greater divine. (Bloom 31) Symbolism and myth hold great importance in the Romantic conception of art. Symbols were the human aesthetic correlatives of natures emblematic language (CUNY). Symbols were valued because they could concurrently suggest many things, and were considered superior to one-to-one communications of allegory.

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Romanticism was a turn away from neoclassicism. Neoclassicism prescribed the idea that the general or universal characteristics of human behavior were undeniably more suitable subject matter than the peculiarly individual manifestation. Controversially, the Romantic theory stated that art was valuable not so much as a mirror of the external world, but as a source of illumination of the world within.(CUNY) This individuality translated into the revolution of feeling against form. The turn away from neoclassicism was simply the rejection of classical equipoise in favor of Romantic asymmetry. Romantic musicians and artists ceased struggling to make their expressions fit conventional forms and audaciously carved out new forms to encompass their thoughts and expressions (Matthiessen 198). Romantic artists emphasized their connection with nature and were greatly inspired by it. They gave great attention to using their art to describe natural phenomenon accurately and to capturing sensuous nuance especially for landscape paintings. However, accuracy of observation was not sought for its own sake. Their art reflected deep appreciation of the beauties of nature. For the romantics, nature was how the spirit was revealed to humankind. They believed in the metaphysical or spiritual nature of reality. (Phillips, 5) Romantic artists tried to capture the same feelings nature inspired in them, in their art. Imagination was a key factor in Romantic art. Their definition of imagination was a mans ultimate shaping or creative power and the primary faculty for creating all art. Uniting both reason and feeling, imagination is extolled as the ultimate synthesizing faculty, enabling humans to reconcile differences and opposite in the world of appearances. The reconciliation is a central idea for the Romantics. (CUNY) Along with imagination, emphasis was also given to intuition, instincts, feelings, and emotions.

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A true romantic figure was a wanderer, both literally and figuratively. It was someone journeying in search of new lands, new places of imagination, and new vistas for the soul. Exotic lands, the amorphous world of dreams, the dark terrors of the psyche as well as the dizzying heights of creativity and the dazzling beauties of Nature these were all waystations along the Romantic questers route. (IHAS) The final facet of the American Renaissance was the emergence of the transcendental philosophy. It was the philosophy that urged each man to find, in Emersons terms, an original relation to the universe (Phillips 21). The transcendental train of thought emphasized the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical. One of the core beliefs of transcendentalism is the inherent goodness of both man and nature. Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions corrupt the purity of the individual. Their faith was that men are truly at their best when self-reliant and independent (Miller 10). Transcendentalists value literature not as an end, but as a tool to help solve problems that haunt the soul. They want to look into the truth of things. The universe has acted on them. For them life is not a dream; it passes in front of them in a dread and solemn beauty (Miller, 2); thoughts stir up from the lowest depths; unconsciously they become students of God; and secret communion with the divine presence is their preparation for a knowledge of books, and the expression of their own convictions. (Miller, 2) In conclusion, the American renaissance marked an energetic revival of the mind and spirit. The entire path of literature was revolutionized. Great writers like Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Poe, Emerson, Dickinson, and Whitman paved the path of literature for the years to come. In the arts, romanticists started exploring within rather than trying to portray the exterior. The thoughts

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of the people changed through transcendental philosophies. This philosophy explained to them their relationship with the universe, the divine, and the ultimate truth. The culture and beliefs of America were reformed through these three great facets of the American Renaissance.

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Works Cited