The Origins of American Literature (0)

The origins of American literature
The first Americans were explorers and settlers , adventurers and idealists who crossed the ocean in search of new opportunities or to escape the poverty and intolerance . Their writings were matter -of- fact accounts of life in America, which explained colonisation to Englishmen back in the homeland. An example of this form of writing is John Smith’s A True Relation of Virginia , which is widely recognized to be the first example of Am lit.
The early years of colonisation produced a mass of utilitarian writings including biographies, accounts of voyages, diaries, sermons, pamphlets. Much of the material addressed the problems of Church and State. There were few examples of fiction, poetry or drama. Anne Bradstreet of Massachusetts published some lyrical poems of high literary quality ( 1650 ) and Edward Taylor, who was born in England but lived in Boston, wrote some poetry in the style of John Donne and the metaphysical poets . All 17th cent Am writings were, both in content and form, similar to English lit of the same period .
The great literary figures of the 18th cent were Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and Thomas Jefferson ( 1743 -1826).
The common sense and witty aphorisms of Franklin’s popular Poor Richard ’s Almanac series appealed to colonial readers. Franklin also wrote effectively on the question of allegiance to the British crown but it was his protégé, Thomas Paine, who inspired colonists during the dark days of the Revolution with his stirring pamphlet Common Sense (1776), which sold over half a million copies, and American Crisis Papers (1776-1783).
Thomas Jefferson was also an influential political writer . He made important contributions to the 85 essays of The Federalist papers, which effectively outlined the Am governmental system and the basic principles of republican theory. Jefferson also wrote the Declaration of Independence (1776), which identifies the moment in which the nation was born, and in stirring language explains the reasons for its birth .
In the post-Revolution period the search began for a characteristic Am lit. The most important writers of the early 19th cent were Washington Irving (1783-1859), James Fennimore Cooper (1789- 1851 ) and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
Irving’s first venture into lit was a collaboration with his brother and a friend on the Salmagundi Papers (1807-1808), a serial publication, later reissued as a book, which depicted life in New York in the first decade of the cent. This was followed by A History of New York (1809), a satirical attack on the upper class old Dutch families of New York. Irving’s early works were very heavily influenced by neo- classical satirists such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. After he met Sir Walter Scott and became familiar with imaginative German lit, a new romantic note became evident in works such as The Sketch Book (1819-1820), which includes Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Bracebridge Hall (1822). Irving was the first Am writer to win the respect of British lit critics . (also the first internationally famous author from the USA)
James Fenimore Cooper was perhaps the most popular writer of the period. He drew inspiration for his five volume series of Leatherstocking Tales (1823- 1841 ) from Walter Scott’s Waverley novels. The tales, which include The Last of the Mohicans, recount the adventures of the great frontiersman Natty Bumppo, nicknamed ‘Leatherstocking’. Cooper shows great skill in weaving history into the exciting plots and in creating credible and identifiably Am characters. His works sold widely in Am, Britain and Europe .
Edgar Allan Poe was a southerner who moved north to find work as an author and editor in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. His gothic tales of horror included the Romantic elements of fantasy and terror . His masterpieces The Fall of The House of Usher (1839) and The Masque of the Red Death (1842) show a deeply analytical mind which Poe also applied to literary criticism. His novel The Murders in the Rue Morgue is widely considered to have given rise to the genre of detective stories . The characteristic mixture and haunting imagery can also be found in his poetry, of which The Raven (1845) and Annabel Lee (1849) are good examples (Also The Bells ).
Somewhat overlooked by his contemporary fellow countrymen, Poe’s work was particularly influential in France , where it was ( discovered and) translated by Charles Baudelaire .
The mid-19th cent was a period of astonishing literary creativity in Am lit. In the short space of 6 years, four monumental lit works were published: Nathaniel Hawthorne ’s (1804-64) The Scarlet Letter (1850), Herman Melville ’s (1819-91) Moby Dick (1851), Henry David Thoreau ’s (1817-62) Walden (1854) and Walt Whitman ’s Leaves of Grass (1855). This period witnessed the highest lit expression of the Puritan tradition and the emergence of a new cultural and philosophical movement , Transcendentalism.
Although the Am frontier was being pushed westward, Massachusetts and Virginia, the Puritan strongholds in the east , remained the centre of cultural activity .
The Puritan heritage is clearly evident in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote about the conflict between the good and evil set in the dark, Puritan, New England past. In his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter he uses a mixture of fantasy and realism , symbols and allegories to explore one of his constant themes : the relationship between the individual and society.
Herman Melville dedicated his greatest work, Moby Dick, to Hawthorne, in recognition of his friendship and the contribution he made in revising the first draft of the novel. When it first appeared , Moby Dick was described as a ‘wild and mad novel’, but it was quickly recognised as an important development in the novel genre. The metaphysical and symbolic style, the juxtaposition of tones and the innovative narrative technique make it a rich and a complex work which encompasses many themes, including the battle between man and nature , the conflict between good and evil and man’s quest to live in a largely hostile world.
The emergence of the Transcendentalist movement in New England in the middle years of the century marked a significant break from the Puritan tradition. Influenced by English Romanticism and German and Eastern philosophies, the Transcendentalist exalted feeling and intuition over reason . They rebelled against the materialism of contemporary society and rejected the established Church. Unlike the Puritans , they believed that man was fundamentally good and should be allowed to develop free from rules and restrictions. The most influential figures in the Transcendentalist school were the poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson ( 1803 -82) and the novelist Henry David Thoreau.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was the spokesman for the movement, wrote several influential essays including Self-Reliance and The Over- Soul (1841-44). He visited England and met Coleridge , Wordsworth and Carlyle (a strange figure in British literary world). His work were widely read in the United States and Britain and he was among the first writers to urge his fellow countrymen to abandon European models and create a distinctly Am lit with its own themes and style.
Henry David Thoreau applied the Transcendentalist philosophy to his life and to his writing. In 1845 he effectively left civilisation and went to live in a small hut on the edge of Walden Pond , a small lake in the Massachusetts countryside. Thoreau spent two years there, working the land , walking, observing nature, reflecting on life and keeping a detailed journal which he later developed into Walden (1854), his most celebrated work.
Transcendentalism: A reliance on the intuition and the conscience, a form of idealism ; a philosophical romanticism reaching America a generation or two after it developed in Europe. Transcendentalism, though based on doctrines of ancient and modern European philosophers (particularly Kant ) and sponsored in America chiefly by Emerson after he had absorbed it from Carlyle, Coleridge, Goethe , and others , took on especial significance in the USA, where it so largely dominated the New England authors as to become a literary movement as well as philosophic conception. The movement gained its impetus in America in part from meetings of a small group which came together to discuss the “new thought ” of the time. While holding different opinions about many things, the group seemed in general harmony in their conviction that within the nature of man there was a something which transcended human experience – an intuitive and personal revelation. Variously called the Symposium Club and the Hedge Club, the group was soon known as the Transcendental Club because of the ideas advanced by its members .
As the “movement” developed, it sponsored two important activities: the publication of The Dial from 1840-44 and Brook Farm . Some of the various doctrines which one or another of the American transcendentalist promulgated and which have somehow been accepted as “transcendental” may be restated here . They believe in living close to nature (Thoreau) and taught the dignity of manual labor (Thoreau). They strongly felt the need of intellectual companionships and interests (Brook Farm) and placed great emphasis on the importance of spiritual living. Man’s relationship to God was a personal matter and was to be established directly by the individual himself (Unitarianism) rather than through the intermediation of the ritualistic church. They held firmly that man was divine in his own right, an opinion opposed to the doctrines held by the Puritan Calvinists in New England, and they urged strongly the essential divinity of man and one great brotherhood. Self- trust and self-reliance were to be practiced at all times and on all occasions, since to trust self was really to trust the voice of God speaking intuitively within us (Emerson). The transcendentalists felt called upon to resist the “vulgar prosperity of the barbarian”; believed firmly in democracy, and insisted on an intense individualism . Some of the extremists in their number went so far as to evolve a system of dietetics and to rule out coffee , wine and tobacco – all on the basis that the body was the temple of the soul and that for the tenant ’s sake it was well to keep the dwelling undefiled. And most of the transcendentalists were by nature reformers, though Emerson, - the most vocal interpreter of the group – refused to go so far in this direction as, for instance , Bronson Alcott. Emerson’s position here is that it is man’s responsibility to be “a brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight path to everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honourably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him to go in honor and with benefit.” In this way most of the reforms were attempts to awaken and regenerate the human spirit rather than to prescribe particular and concrete movements which were to be fostered. The transcendentalists were, for instance, among the early advocates of the enfranchisement of women.
Ultimately, despite these practical manifestations, transcendentalism was an epistemology, a way of knowing, and the ultimate characteristics which tied together the frequently contradictory beliefs of the loosely formed group called “The Transcendentalists” was the belief that man can intuitively transcend the limits of the senses and of logic and receive directly higher truths and greater knowledge denied to the mundane methods of knowing.
Among the most famous of the transcendental leaders, in addition to Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott were Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, F.H. Hedge, James Freeman Clark, Elizabeth Peabody, Theodore Parker , Jones Very, and W.H. Channing . But the arch -advocates in literature of most that the transcendentalists stood for were Emerson and Thoreau; and the two documents which most definitely give literary expression to their views were Emerson’s Nature (1836) and Thoreau’s Walden (1854).
East coast dominance of the Am lit scene was broken by Mark Twain , the pen-name of Samuel Longhorne Clemens (1835- 1910 ). Twain, who grew up in Missouri along the banks of the Mississippi , wrote about cowboys, stagecoach drivers and low-life criminals – people living in the West . In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), he paints a realistic picture of the life of two young boys growing up in the Mississippi area. The themes of childhood and nature recur in his masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). In both these works Mark Twain shows his deep distrust of ‘respectable’ society and his sympathy for social outcasts and the common man. He uses humour to criticise the practice of slavery and the hypocrisy and prejudices of his times. In his characterisations he displays a penetrating insight into human psychology.
Mark Twain’s use of language is also strikingly original . The stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are told from the point of view of the young protagonists and contain slang, regional dialect and illogical sentence constructions that make the dialogue come to life. As a writer Twain did not emulate European models; he created a distinctly Am lit style. Many critics agree with Ernest Hemingway ’s claim that ‘all modern Am fiction comes from Huckleberry Finn’.
Transcendentalism was represented in poetry by the work of Walt Whitman (1819-92). The first of 9 editions of his collection of poems Leaves of Grass appeared in 1855 to little public recognition, although it did win the admiration of Whitman’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his poems Whitman celebrates America, its natural beauty, its people and its spirit of democracy. He also explores himself, his feelings , perceptions and intuitions. Many contemporary readers were shocked by his celebration of the body and the theme of love between man and man which led to rumours about his homosexuality. Whitman was a highly experimental poet who believed that poetry should not be bound by rules and restrictions. He tended to avoid the use of metaphors or similes and his poetry is often strongly declarative and non-figurative.
The poetry of Whitman’s contemporary, Emily Dickinson (1830- 1886 ), was even more strikingly original. Born in New England, Dickinson spent most of her life in quiet isolation detached from events of her time. Her poems are extremely personal and intimate. Recurring themes include nature and death and, although she had rejected orthodox religion , much of her work contains a strong sense of spirituality . Many of her poems, however, are ironic and witty suggesting that their creator was a woman of great humour. Dickinson’s style was completely unconventional and showed a total disregard for standard poetic forms . Her technique is so innovative that her work was considered unacceptable for publication. Apart from a few poems, most of her work was published posthumously.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Life Family background She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a successful lawyer and a prominent member of community who raised his children according to austere Puritan principles. During her early years Emily was witty and sociable, but from her mid-twenties she began to withdraw from the outside world.
Retreat into reclusion By the age of thirty she had become a total recluse, living her life in total isolation: ‘You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself, that my father bought me. They are better than beings because they know , but do not tell .’ For over 20 years she never left her father’s house, wore only white clothes and received very few guests. The townspeople of Amherst referred to her as ‘The Myth ’.
Poetry and letter-writing Dickinson was an avid reader and letter writer and exchanged letters with a large number of people, some of whom she never met personally. She submitted some of the 2,000 poems she wrote for publication, but only seven were published in her lifetime . Her contemporaries found her work bewildering.
Love and the outside work There is much speculation about her emotional life and it has been suggested that there was a disappointed love affair . Her interest in the outside world was so minimal that even events such as the Civil War that ravaged the country in the years 1861-1865 had little or no impact on her.
Published posthumously After her death in 1886 her sister found her poems, all bound up in handmade booklets. The first volumes of her poems to be published appeared in 1890 and 1891 .
Works Traditional themes/original style During her reclusive life Emily Dickinson wrote almost 2,000 poems, mostly short lyrics in simple quatrains and almost all untitled and undated. In her poetry she scrutinised the material world that surrounded her and the inner world of her emotions . The subjects of her poems are traditional – love, nature, religion and mortality . However, her treatment of these subjects is highly original. The language is cryptic and dramatic; the imagery and metaphors are strikingly original. Early publishers corrected her eccentric punctuation, which included the frequent use of dashes, seemingly random capitalisation of nouns , ungrammatical sentences and broken metre.
Metaphysical influence The influence of the 17th cent Metaphysical poets can be seen in the intensity of the emotions she expressed and her use of startling metaphors.
Inner struggle and nature Her poetry often reveals a painful inner struggle that may have been caused by religious doubt . Although she could not accept the doctrines of orthodox religion, she seemed to long for the comforts of unquestioned faith . Hers is the poetry of funerals, volcanoes, storms and shipwrecks, but it is also the poetry of butterflies, birds and sunrays. Her ability to capture in words the smallest detail of nature was one of her greatest talents.
Reputation Initially she was considered to be an eccentric minor poet. Today she is regarded as one of the outstanding poets of the 19th cent and a major influence on the poets of the 20th cent.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Life Early jobs He was born into a working class family on Long Island , New York. Completed his institutional education at the early age of twelve and worked as an office boy, a printer ’s apprentice and a wandering school teacher . He then became the editor of two local newspapers and began writing poetry and short stories. In the late 1840s he spent a brief period as an editor of a newspaper in New Orleans , which ended when his opposition to slavery became an issue of friction with the owners. He travelled through the South and Midwest and was deeply impressed by the vastness of the Am landscape and the variety of its people. He was also influenced by the work of the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and the revolutionary ideas of the American Transcendentalist movement.
Writing poetry Not much is known of what he did in the early 1850s apart from the fact that he returned to New York and started writing poetry. In 1855 Leaves of Grass, a collection of 12 poems, was published with a portrait of an anonymous poet in working man’s clothes on the title page. Whitman’s mentor, the influential poet Ralph Waldo Emerson hailed his work as ‘the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that an American has yet contributed’. However, other literary critics and the reading public were unimpressed.
The Civil War years During the Civil War, Whitman served as a volunteer nurse in military hospitals and as a correspondent for The New York Times. His experience among the wounded inspired him to write two collections of poems: Drum Taps (1865) and Sequel (1865-66), which includes his famous elegy to Abraham Lincoln, ‘O Captain ! My Captain!’
Last years He spent the rest of his life working on the subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass, which grew to include 400 poems. His literary achievements were largely disregarded by the public of his day, which was shocked by his frankness in sexual matters and his rough working man image . He held a series of minor posts in Washington and struggled to survive on a meagre income. In 1873 he suffered a paralysing stroke. He continued to add to Leaves of Grass right up until his death in 1892.
Works Farther of American poetry Whitman was the first distinctly Am voice in poetry. Like Mark Twain in prose, he broke with the British literary tradition which had influenced Am poetry up until that point.
Style He was boldly experimental in his work. He believed that Am poetry should be like the country it represented – free of restrictive rules and repression . Instead of the tightly constructed sentences of his contemporary poets, he used long, loosely rhythmic lines that replicated the natural stresses of ordinary speech . Whitman believed that a poet should be a man of the common people. He wrote in strong, declarative sentences, avoiding rhetorical figures such as metaphors and similes.
Leaves of Grass, Whitman’s masterpiece, is the work of a lifetime. Originally published with just 12 poems, it eventually grew to include 400 in what is now referred to as the ‘Deathbed’ edition, published just before his death in 1892.
Themes Many of the poems in this collection are a celebration of America – its landscape, its people and democratic principles on which it was founded . The poet himself is the subject of other poems in which he explores his own feelings, perceptions and intuitions, and his task as a poet of giving voice to his people. He also deals with physical love and the celebration of the body. His frank openness about sexual matters and his exaltation of both male and female body shocked contemporary audiences.
Reputation At the time of its first publication in 1855, only a handful of intellectuals expressed favourable opinions about Leaves of Grass. The average reader was shocked and outraged both by Whitman’s innovative form and controversial content. In many respects he was half a century before his time. The changes in social and lit attitudes which took place towards the turn of the cent led to a reappraisal of his work. Today he is considered to be the father of Am poetry, a daring innovator, and a major influence on later poets.