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Big Idea Overview and ResourcesBig Idea 1: Optimism and Individualism Big Idea 2: Kinship with Nature Big Idea 3: The Power of Darkness Big Idea 1: Optimism and Individualism Overview After the Revolutionary War, people in the United States entered the nineteenth century with a strong feeling of hope. They had won their freedom from England and were inspired to create a new sense of identity. Extraordinary achievements were now the result of ordinary citizens. Andrew Jackson, who was born into poverty, was elected president. As a representative of the common man, his popularity grew along with the United States' democratic sentiment. The 1820s marked a period during which ordinary people started to believe that they could make a difference in society. They organized movements to reform social and political ills. Power was no longer in the hands of the few. A decade later, society continued to celebrate individualism and question established cultural practices and beliefs. The influence of Romanticism resulted in a literary and philosophical movement called Transcendentalism. Leading this movement was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who believed that individuals could accomplish great things by being true to themselves. At the center of Transcendentalism was a philosophy known as Idealism, which teaches that reality exists not in material objects but in our ideas about these objects. Other revolutionary thinkers of this Transcendentalist era were Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a prolific author and speaker. However, he is perhaps best known for writing essays, which are short pieces of nonfiction on virtually any topic. While Emerson's essays are formal, his style, influenced by his training as a Unitarian minister, was unique and persuasive. His beliefs helped promote the idea that every person has unlimited potential. Web Resources The Web of American Transcendentalism The American Renaissance and Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson Big Idea 2: Kinship with Nature Overview Man and nature have been in conflict for centuries, and concerns over preserving the environment still exist today. During the nineteenth century, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) expressed his respect and reverence for nature through his writing. The Native American view of nature was not to see the wilderness as wild but as tame, beautiful, and open, said Luther Standing Bear, a member of the Sioux. Some of the first Europeans to settle in America saw indigenous animals and plants as things to be enjoyed, but many others viewed them as things to be feared. William Bradford, a leader of the Pilgrims who reached New England in 1620, was among those who sought to conquer rather than commune with nature. Thoreau, a New Englander with an individualist streak, held views about the environment and society that were more in sync with those of the Native Americans. Eschewing luxury, Thoreau lived for two years in a small cabin at Walden Pond, near his home in Concord, Massachusetts. There, Thoreau meticulously observed his surroundings and recorded his experiences in a journal. Thoreau's politics also were radical for his time. He was a determined abolitionist and opposed the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Thoreau saw the U.S. government as a threat and viewed law as something that did little to protect people's civil liberties. Thoreau both wrote about and acted on his beliefs. He protested the war by refusing to pay taxes and was jailed as a result. A person's individual conscience, he wrote in Civil Disobedience, is more important than the law. Web Resources The Writings of Henry David Thoreau The Thoreau Reader Start Your Own Blog: eBlogger The U.S.-Mexican War U.S.-Mexican War: 1846-1848 Big Idea 3: The Power of Darkness Overview Not all famous writers from the Romantic period shared the views of optimists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe were among the authors who wrote about the darker side of human nature. Melville, in fact, believed that Emerson's optimism ignored life's "disagreeable facts" and characterized it as "nonsense." Melville explored less optimistic themes in many of his works. His first works were romantic tales of adventure that took place in the South Seas. However, his classic novel, Moby-Dick, symbolized evil in the form of a huge white whale and described man's struggle against it. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a neighbor and friend of Melville. Hawthorne's fiction was influenced by the histories and legends of his Puritan ancestors. The strange, dark legends that exposed man's struggle between good and evil are captured in Hawthorne's writing. Some of Hawthorne's works are considered gothic literature, a literary genre which explored darker themes and subjects. A classic example of Gothic literature from the European Romantic era is Frankenstein, written by English author Mary Shelley during the nineteenth century. The atmosphere, plot, settings, and characters in gothic horror novels often reflect darkness, mystery, fear, and/or insanity. Edgar Allan Poe was the first American to master this style of writing. While Emerson and fellow Transcendentalists believed that all humans are inherently good, Poe was fascinated by the darker impulses of human nature. Many of his works contained themes of loss and sorrow, ruin and revenge, and disease and death. Poe, although known primarily as a writer of Gothic fiction and poetry, also introduced the detective story genre into American literature with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Web Resources The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) Log InThe resource you requested requires you to enter a username and password below: | ||
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