Chapter Three

American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper

I. American Romanticism

1. Intellectual Background
The Romantic period stretches from the end of the 18th
century through the outbreak of the Civil War. (18201865)
Politically: Democracy and political equality became
the ideal of the nation; and the two-party political
system was in the making.
Economically: The spread of industrialism, the sudden
influx of immigrants, and the pioneers pushing the
frontier further west lead to an economic boom.
Literarily: The new nation cried for newer literary
expressions; magazines appeared in big numbers such
as The American Quarterly Review, The Southern
Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harpers Magazine,
facilitating literary expansion in this new country.

Chapter Three
American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper
2. Foreign Influence (Derivative and Imitative)
The Romantic movement, which had flourished earlier
in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be
a decisive influence without which the upsurge of
American romanticism would hardly have been
possible.
The British romantic writers such as William
Wordsworth, Taylor Coleridge, Byron, Robert Burns,
Shelley and Sir Walter Scott exerted a great influence
upon their American brothers.
The British Romantic literary pieces such as Lyrical
Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge and
Walter Scotts border tales were esp. prevalent in
America. (Scotts Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the
Lake, Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian)

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American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper

3. Native Factors (Different and Distinctive)

Although the foreign influences were strong, American Romanticism exhibited

from the very outset distinct features of its English and European counterpart.
American romanticism was in essence the expression of a real new experience
and a new sensibility: new place; new faces; new sight, smells, and sounds; new
cultural factor (American Indians).
American Puritanism as a cultural heritage rendered American moral values
basically puritan. Public atmosphere of the nation predominantly conditioned social
life, cultural taste, and literary expression. One of its palpable manifestations is the
fact that American Romantic writers tended more to moralize and use symbols than
their English and European brothers.
As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American Romanticism
was both imitative and distinctive, both derivative and independent.

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American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper

II. Washington Irving (1783-1859)

1. Literary Status

Father of American literature

The first professional American writer

The first American Romantic writer
The first American short story writer
The first American imaginative writer
to be recognized by the Europeans

2. Life

Born into a wealthy New York merchant family

Read widely from very early age studied law
Cared for his family business in England
Went bankrupt wrote to support himself

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American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper

3. His Works:
A History of New York (1809)
The Sketch Book (1819-20)
The History of the Life and Voyages of
Christopher Columbus (1828)
The Alhambra (1832)
Life of Goldsmith, Life of Washington
The short story as a genre in American literature probably began
with Irvings The Sketch Book, a collection of essays, sketches, and
tales, of which the most famous and frequently anthologized are
Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
4. Division of his writings:
Irvings career can be roughly divided into two important phases,
the English period which span from his first book up to 1832 the
American period stretching over the remaining years of his life.

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American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper

5. Writing Style
Irvings style can only be described as beautiful though imitative.
A. Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible: he wrote to amuse
and entertain.
B. He was good at enveloping his stories in a rich atmosphere,
which is often more than compensation for the slimness of plot.
C. His characters are vivid and true so that they tend to linger in
the mind of the reader.
D. He was such a humorous writer that it is difficult not to smile
and occasionally even chuckle.
E. His language was finished and musical.

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American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper

6. His Masterpieces
Rip Van Winkle got suggestions from a German source. Irving
changed the setting of the original and added conflicts of his own to
make it American. It is a fantasy tale about a man who somehow
stepped outside the main stream of life.
Rip Van Winkle is a simple, good-natured, and hen-pecked man. He
does everything except take care of his own farm and family. He helps
everyone except his wife and his own folks. So he is welcome
everywhere except at home. He is one of those happy mortals, who
take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got
with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than
work for a pound.

Plot Summery of Rip Van Winkle

The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after
the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of
Dutch descent, lives in a nice village at the foot of New York's
Catskill Mountains. An amiable man whose home and farm suffer
from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife. One autumn
day he escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains.
After encountering strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts
of Henry Hudsons crew, who are playing nine-pin, and after
drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree
and falls asleep. He wakes up twenty years later and returns to his
village. He finds out that his wife is dead and his close friends have
died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into
trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of King George III,
not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has
taken place. An old local recognizes him, however, and Rip's now
grown daughter eventually puts him up. As Rip resumes his habit of
idleness in the village, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old
Dutch settlers, certain hen-pecked husbands especially wish they
shared Rip's luck.

Plot Summery of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow narrates the memorable event of an apparently

headless horseman throwing his head at his rival in love, and the memorable
character of Ichabod.
The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town New York
in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lean,
lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut who competes
with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-yearold Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. As Crane
leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued
by the Headless Horseman who is supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who
had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the
American Revolution War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly
quest of his head". Ichabod mysteriously disappears from town, leaving Katrina to
marry Brom Bones, who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of
Ichabod was related".

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American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper

III. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

1. Literary Status:

The first American Frontier novel

The first American Sea novel
The first American Spy Novel
The first American Historical Novel
His Leatherstocking Tales as the American National Epic

2. Life:

Locally famous family Yale University at 14 five years

at sea comfortable life began to write accidentally
failed in his first novel Precaution his second novel The
Spy (Harvey Birch) firmly established with his The
Leatherstocking Tales

III. James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

3. His major works:

Precaution (1820)
The Spy (1821)
The Leatherstocking Tales includes
The Pioneers (1823)
The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
The Prairie (1827)
The Pathfinder (1840)
The Deerslayer (1841)

III. James Fenimore Cooper

4. His Masterpieces:

A. The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James

Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo, known by European
settlers as "Leatherstocking," 'The Pathfinder", and "the trapper" and by the Native
Americans as "Deerslayer," "La Longue Carabine" and "Hawkeye".
B. Natty Bumppo first appears to be a real frontieersman in his crube cabin, a man of
flesh and blood in the virgin forests of North America. But as he moves out of The
Pioneers into the world of The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder,
and The Deerslayer, he does so gathering more and more of a halo of a legendary and
mythic nature around him. He becomes a type, a representation of a nation struggling
to be born, progressing from old age to rebirth and youth.
C. The five Cooper tales constitute a mythic reproduction of the whole process: the
old and dying Leatherstocking in The Pioneers and The Prairie relives anther phase
of middle-age maturity in The Last of the Mohicans and The Pathfinder and enjoys
another lease of youth in The Deerslayer.
D. Bumppos growth and progress embodies none other than the American quest for
an ideal community; through this character Cooper tried to create a national myth of
his own.

III. James Fenimore Cooper

5. Writing Features:

A. Plot construction: Cooper was good at inventing plots. His plots

are sometimes quite incredible, but his stories are immensely
intriguing.
B. Landscape description: His landscape descriptions are majestic
and suggestive of sir Walter Scott, the legendary spirit of whose
border tales might have been a source of inspiration for him.
C. A rich imagination: He had never been to the frontier and among
the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books about them with
his rich imagination. Free from injustice, he treated the American
Indians as noble savages.
D. Clumsy style: his style is dreadful; his characterization seems
wooden and lacking in probability.

III. James Fenimore Cooper

6. His Contribution

a. Cooper hit upon the native subject of

frontier and wilderness.
b. He contributed to American literature
different subgenres of novels: spy novel, sea
novel, frontier novel, and historical romance.
c. He created the first legendary frontier
hero Natty Bumppo as the typical Pioneering
figure.
d. He introduced the West and the frontier as
a usable past into American literature, thus
ushering in the Western tradition into
American world of letters.