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.
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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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2. Life
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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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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.
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.
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2. Life:
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)
4. His Masterpieces:
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.
5. Writing Features:
6. His Contribution