American Literature
long term its effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant. In the U.S, romantic Gothic literature made an early appearance with
Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) and Rip Van Winkle (1819), followed from 1823 onwards by the Leatherstocking Tales of
James Fenimore Cooper, with their emphasis on heroic simplicity and their fervent landscape descriptions of an alreadyexotic mythicized frontier
peopled by "noble savages", similar to the philosophical theory of Rousseau, exemplified by Uncas, from The Last of the Mohicans. There are
picturesque "local color" elements in Washington Irving's essays and especially his travel books. Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre and his
balladic poetry were more influential in France than at home, but the romantic American novel developed fully with the atmosphere and melodrama
of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850)
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