ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The first unit of this block, “HISTORICAL

OVERVIEW/ GENESIS OF AMERICAN

LITERATURE” is entirely prepared by:

Dr. P. Muralidhar Sharma

Assistant Professor, School of English

Gangadhar Meher University, Sambalpur

OSOU shall remain grateful to Dr. Sharma for his

generous contribution in the making of this block.

The contents of the other units in this block has been

taken from various open source websites with due

referencing and acknowledgement. The link to those

sites have been mentioned in the “Suggested Readings”

section at the end.

BACHELOR OF ARTS (HONOURS) IN

ENGLISH (BAEG)

BEG-8

American Literature

Block-1

History of American Literature

Unit-1 Historical Overview/ Genesis of American

Literature

Unit-2 History of American Literature: 1700-1800

Unit-3 19th Century Unique American Style

1

UNIT-1 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW/ GENESIS OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE

Structure

1.0 Objectives

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Genesis and Evolution, and the Defining Myths of American Literature—City

On A Hill The Frontier Spirit, The American Dream, Manifest Destiny, E

Pluribusunum

1.2.1 Genesis and evolution

1.3 Defining myths of American Literature

1.3.1 City on a Hill

1.3.2 The Frontier Spirit

1.3.3 The American Dream

1.3.4 Manifest Destiny

1.3.5 E pluribus Unum

1.4 Let us sum up

1.5 Unit End Questions

1.6 Suggested Readings

1.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit will introduce the Learners to the socio-cultural and intellectual backgrounds

of American literature. The content focuses on America’s evolution from its colonial

past to an independent nation. The unit also maps the course of the development of the

ideas of nationhood, pluralism and cultural identity. Through a brief but critical

account of voyages, discoveries, revolutions and assertions, the unit charts the literary

map of America from its beginnings to the 19th century. Major landmark events like

the Civil War, American Revolution and Declaration of Independence are dealt with

in some details with a critical overview of their implications for the nature of literary

and cultural development. Trajectories of literary evolution and change, with

particular emphasis on genres like poetry and prose are mapped. Prominent authors

and cultural innovators and their roles in shaping the nation are discussed. The unit,

apart from offering an introduction to American literary history, also anticipates the

next unit on American poetry from the syllabus. Both the units constitute a continuum

of ideas, and readers can immensely benefit from the links and connections they

discover in both the units.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The narrative of the evolution of American literature is deeply embedded in

America’s encounters with diverse people and their traditions. These encounters added

a multicultural ambience to the American landscape that remained one of its chief

2

cultural traits. The multiple genealogies of American literature lent a unique kind of

pluralism which became an important element in the formation of national identity.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in the ‘New World’ that he mistook for the

continent of India in the year 1492, he couldn’t help but notice the strangeness of the

land and the inscrutable mannerisms of its people. He observed that the land was rich

with vegetation, with herbs and shrubs whose names he did not know, and that the

people did not have a religion and could be converted to Christianity, for the larger

benefit of the English nation. The landscape, Columbus believed, was endowed with

Edenic beauty, pristine and uncontaminated. This notion of America, as an imagined

Eden and a land of immense possibilities permeates early constructions of the nation

in literature. The earliest forms of literature in America include Oral texts by the

Native Americans. These texts were transmitted by word of mouth, and were inclusive

of the performativity aspect. Some of the common themes and motifs in these texts

were the evolution of the sun, moon, stars, sky, agricultural motifs like the corn,

buffalo, and so on. These tales were based on the myths of origin and creation, as well

as foresaw apocalyptic endings. Myths such as that of the arrival of the White Man on

the continent and the subsequent disintegration of the tribal communities recurred as

common threats to a closely-knit way of life. A majority of these tales recounted the

encounter between the European settler and the native inhabitant, and carried a set of

cultural motifs and patterns.

1.2 GENESIS AND EVOLUTION, AND THE DEFINING MYTHS OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE—CITY ON A HILL THE FRONTIER

SPIRIT, THE AMERICAN DREAM, MANIFEST DESTINY, E

PLURIBUSUNUM

1.2.1 Genesis and Evolution:

Spanish and French encounters with the Native Americans produced travel and

ethnographic accounts where the primitive lifestyle and barbaric customs of the tribes

are perceived with curiosity and disdain. The underlying intentions of conversion to

Christianity and civilization predominate these accounts. Some of these accounts were

also heroic tales of conquests where the conquering nation’s glory was celebrated. The

arrival of the English settlers, backed by their belief in the providential plan for the

recovery of a ‘lost’ Eden is another landmark in the history of American literature.

Their conviction to civilize the people through settlement was manifested in their

vision of a ‘New England’. Captain John Smith, whose name is usually evoked in

relation to New England, modelled this colony after English precedents. Prominent

among the Puritan narratives was John Winthrop’s sermon of 1630, titled “A Model

of Christian Charity” which he delivered to his congregation as they set sail on the

Arabella for the New World. The seventeenth century also witnessed the evolution of

poetry by the Puritans, prominent among whom were Elizabeth Bradford (1663-1731)

and John Saffin (1626-1710). Their poems were rich with biblical motifs and were

mostly modelled upon the poetry of the classical poets, Ben Jonson, John Donne, John

Milton and John Dryden. Theological verse, especially by Michael Wigglesworth

(1631-1705) became very popular in seventeenth century America. Wiggleworth’s

3

The Day of the Doom became very popular with readers and was one of the best-selling

poems of colonial America. The epic-poem voices some of the prominent Puritan

beliefs, presented through a dialogue between Christ and the sinners. Other popular

theological texts printed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony include didactic texts such

as The Bay Psalm Book and The New England Primer. The books were in constant

demand throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and underwent a series

of revisions.

Anne Bradstreet (1612-72), who arrived with her husband as part of John Winthrop’s

group, produced some of the best poems of her time. Collected in The Tenth Muse

Lately Sprung Up in America which got published in London in 1630, her poems are

remarkable for their gentle interrogation of orthodoxies and the mild tone of protest.

She writes with a complete awareness of her creative inferiority as a woman writer,

best voiced in her poem “The Prologue”:

My foolish, broken, blemished Muse, so sings;

And this to mend, alas, no art is able,

‘Cause nature made it so, irreparable.

Addressed to her husband, children, and evoking images of domesticity, familial

bonding, and sense of community, some of her poems also make use of the epistolary

form. There is an unmistakable tone of intimacy especially in the poems like “To My

Dear and Loving Husband” and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public

Employment” where marital love and conjugality are celebrated.

Other contemporaries of Bradstreet include Edward Taylor, whose The Poetical

Works of Edward Taylor was posthumously published in 1939. His later verse is

replete with biblical imagery and has a didactic tone. His work falls into the tradition

of meditative writing, where man’s relationship to God is explored with the use of a

series of recurrent spiritual motifs. Both Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor best

expressed their Puritan faith in the form of poetic utterances.

The American Revolution, or the United States War of Independence, that was fought

between 1775-1783 remains one of the major events of the late 18th century that

influenced literature. As an immediate consequence of the Revolutionary War, 13 of

Great Britain’s North American colonies won political independence and formed the

United States of America. The war nullified British attempts at greater surveillance

and control of its American colonies, and transformed into an international event with

the involvement of France and Spain against British forces. Texts like Thomas

Jefferson’s (1724-1826) A Summary View of the Rights of British America published

in 1774, Thomas Paine’s (1737-1809) Common Sense of 1776 and J. Hector St Jean

de Crevecoeur’s (1735–1813) Letters from an American Farmer of 1782, articulate

the need for America to emerge as an independent nation. The United States

Declaration of Independence (1776) is one of the major landmark events in the history

of the evolution of the nation. Jefferson, who was the chief architect behind this

foundational document, envisioned a nation where man’s rights and dignity would be

4

safeguarded. The Declaration voiced the urgency of the United States to free itself

from what it perceived as the “tyranny” and “oppression” of the British Crown:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to

dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to

assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which

the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the

opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel

them to the separation.

The American Declaration of Independence is one of the early and strongest

statements of the envisioned autonomy of the United States. It asserted the inevitability

of political and administrative independence where the ideals of equality, liberty, life

and happiness would be promoted. The document is considered to contain the genesis

of the American Nation in its modern form, and has inspired several patriotic myths

about its asserted glory.

1.3 DEFINING MYTHS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

1.3.1 City on a Hill:

The phrase “City on a Hill”, is taken from John Winthrop’s sermon of 21st March 1630

titled “A Model of Christian Charity” that was delivered at Holyrood Church in

Southampton before the first group of Massachusetts Bay colonists set sail on the ship

Arabella towards Boston. A phrase borrowed from the parable of Salt and Light in

Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount”, “City upon a Hill” was cited towards the end of

Winthrop’s treatise. He alerts his fellow Puritans that they would be “as a city upon a

hill, the eyes of all people are upon us”. His words are a stringent reminder to the

colonists of their covenant with God and sense of duty: “So that if we shall deal falsely

with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his

present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world”. The

phrase articulates Winthrop’s vision of a society that would be a model for all other

societies in Christendom to emulate. He self-consciously defined his society as a

monument intended for others to seek guidance from. This sermon, as well as

Winthrop’s vision of New England has attained a centrality in the origin of the

American nation.

1.3.2 The Frontier Spirit:

The myth of the Frontier in the American context refers to the spirit territorial

expansionism beginning from the 17th century onwards. It was an indicator of the

advancing border colonized and converted into settlements by Europeans moving

westward. In his prominent work on the subject, The Significance of the Frontier in

American History, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner defined it as “the temporary

boundary of an expanding society at the edge of substantially free lands”. It implies a

process by which the untamed wilderness is exposed to European civilization. Turner

5

attributes America’s unique national character to the Frontier spirit, thereby arguing

that “to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics”.

1.3.3 The American Dream:

The American Dream is the ideal of egalitarianism that crucially informs the

understandings of the American experience. It embodies the notion of a national ethos,

encompassing the ideas of equality of opportunity, justice, liberty, and upward social

mobility. Although the idea of such an ideal has its roots in documents such as The

American Declaration of Independence, the tern gained currency with the publication

of James Truslow Adams’ book The Epic of America in 1932. The book was a veiled

reaction to Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy (1925), in which the

protagonist craves for upward social mobility, regardless of the consequences. The

term has been crucial in shaping the nationalist psyche throughout the 20th century,

especially during the World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The thematic

repercussions of the American Dream can be traced in works like Mark Twain's The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Willa Cather's My Ántonia, F. Scott

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Theodore Dreiser's An American

Tragedy (1925) and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977).

1.3.4 Manifest Destiny:

The phrase “Manifest Destiny” first appeared in an editorial published in the

July-August 1845 issue of The Democratic Review. The phrase emerged as a

justification for the territorial expansion and expansion of hitherto unexplored

parts of Northern America. The move westward, towards the Pacific and

beyond, led to massive eviction of Native Americans. The phrase represents

the collectively held belief in the 19 th century that the United States is destined

by Providence to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism

across the entire North American continent. This ideology led to the

intensification of the debates over slavery, leading to the Civil War between

the Northern and Southern states of America.

1.3.5 E pluribus Unum:

E pluribus unum, meaning “Out of the many, one” in Latin, represents the national

motto of the United States of America. It appears prominently in the Great Seal of the

United States, which was approved by an Act of Congress in 1782. The term signifies

the union of the thirteen colonies to form a single nation. It has come to be understood

as one of the defining myths of American nation and the expression of its underlying

national spirit. The term appears on the Great Seal along with “Annuit cœptis” the

Latin term that translates as “he approves the undertaking”, and “Novus ordo

seclorum”, meaning "New order of the ages".

1.4 LET US SUM UP

American Literature stands out as one of the most remarkable time period in the

Literary History. It took the credit of bringing out some major changes in the spirits

6

of America. It bought secularism and that added greatness to its Literary History. It

further acted as an indicator of the advancing border colonized and converted into

settlements by Europeans moving westward. As we go deeper, we find that this unit

talks about all such advancements and changes in the history of America that portrayed

in the literary works of the American writers. This unit also puts forth the American

Dream of egalitarianism that crucially informs the understandings of the American

experience.

1.5 UNIT END QUESTIONS

1. How did the relationship between the European settler and the native inhabitant

shape America’s cultural identity?

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

2. Write a note on early American poetry.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

3. Comment on America’s colonial past and its literary legacy.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

7

4. How did America assert itself as a nation independent of its colonial burden?

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

.………………………………………………………………………………………

….……………………………………………………………………………………

5. Write short notes on the following:

a. The American Revolution

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………....

b. City on a Hill

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

………………………

c. The American Dream

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

8

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………

d. Manifest Destiny

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………

1.6 SUGGESTED READINGS

John Winthrop: ‘A Model of Christian Charity’. Norton Anthology of American

Literature: Volume A. Norton.

Thomas Jefferson: ‘A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of

America, in General Congress Assembled’. Norton Anthology of American

Literature: Volume A. Norton.

A History of American Literature. Richard Gray. Blackwell Publishing.

American Literature. Nandana Datta. Orient Blackswan: Hyderabad.

Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vol. 9. American Literature. Ed. Boris Ford

Highlights of American Literature. Dr. Carl Bode (USIS)

A Short History of American Literature. Krishna Sen and Ashok Sengupta. Orient

Blackswan.

The Story of American Literature. Ludwig Lewisohn

9

UNIT-2 HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE:

1700-1800

Structure

2.0 Objectives

2.1 Introduction

2.1.1 How it began

2.1.2 Puritan narratives

2.1.3 The early 18th Century

2.2 Growing Secular

2.2.1 Secularity in Poetry

2.2.2 Benjamin Franklin

2.2.3 And others: towards the Revolution

2.2.4 What about the women?

2.2.5 Other voices

2.2.6 Poetry, drama and fiction

2.3 History of American Literature (1800-1900)

2.3.1 Early 19th-century literature

2.3.2 Washington Irving (1789-1859)

2.3.3 James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851)

2.3.4 William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

2.3.5 American Renaissance

2.3.6 The Transcendentalists

2.3.7 Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

2.3.8 The Brahmin Poets

2.3.9 Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

2.3.10 Two Reformers

2.3.11 John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

2.3.12 Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

2.3.13 Women Writers of the Era

2.3.14 Harriet Jacobs (1818-1896)

2.3.15 Novelists

2.4 Plays in American Literature

2.4.1 Plays of Eugene o Neil.

2.4.2 Notable Prose/Short Story Writers

2.4.3 Lost Generation, 1920

2.4.4 Beat Writers, 1950s

2.5 Introduction to Literature of Colonial America

2.6 Native American Interactions

2.6.1 Slavery

2.6.2 Puritan Philosophy and Influence

2.7 Let us Sum up

2.8 Unit end questions

10

2. 0 OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, the students will be able to have a knowledge about the

clear history of American Literature. American Literature has been the womb to a lot

of new discoveries and new ideas evolving that includes E pluribus Unum. This unit

puts light on America turning into a secular state and how secularism became a part

of the literary works that was written during this period. The learners will as well get

a broader outlook about the early 18th century and also will also put light on few of the

most remarkable writers of that era.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

2.1.1 How It Began

In Henry James’ The American, a character says of Christopher Columbus (1451-

1506) that ‘He invented America: a very great man’. Now Richard Gray writes in A

History of American Literature that ‘Columbus, however, was following a prototype

devised long before him and surviving long after him, the idea of a new land outside

and beyond history: “a Virgin Countrey”’. Therefore, fundamental to this European

encounter with the New World was the myth of Eden: Gray writes that ‘European

settlers were faced not so much with another culture as with nature, and not really

encountering a possible future but, on the contrary, returning to an imagined past.’ In

this context, Columbus’ observations of the natives are noteworthy: ‘These people go

naked’; ‘their manners are very decent’. As Gray argues, ‘he could see this only as a

sign of their aboriginal innocence.’ And, later, William Crashaw (1572-1626) and

others went on to compare Virginia to the Promised Land and the immigrants to the

Israelites. Now, faced with the strangeness of the natives, Columbus advised his royal

masters to ‘adopt the resolution of converting them to Christianity.’ And Gray writes:

‘Conversion was one strategy […] for dealing with America and the Americans they

encountered. Comparison was another: the New World could be understood, perhaps,

by discovering likeness with the Old […] Naming was another ploy’. Therefore, the

narrative that was being forged in this way was a hybrid of the Old World and the New

World. In the first half of the sixteenth century, many Europeans came to America in

search of gold. Of course, they did not find it, but The Journey of Coronado 1540-

1542 (1904) reveals an encounter with what Gray puts as ‘the vastness of America,

the immense emptiness of the plains’. Gray writes: ‘If space is the central fact of

American experience, as writers from Walt Whitman to Charles Olson have claimed,

then this was the European discovery of it.’ Gray also tells us: ‘Into that making, from

its earliest stages, went not only the Spanish and the Portuguese, the French and the

Native Americans, but also the English and their immediate neighbours in Scotland,

Wales, and Ireland. From the beginning, the story of America is a story neither of a

monolith nor a melting pot but a mosaic: a multicultural environment in which

individuals negotiate an identity for themselves between the different traditions they

encounter. And the tale of American literature has been one of pluralism: collision,

conflict, and even congruence between different languages and literatures’.

11

2.1.2 Puritan narratives

Between 1630 and 1651, William Bradford (1590-1657) wrote Of Plymouth

Plantation which was an unfinished account of the colony up to 1646. At the very

beginning of the book, Bradford claimed that he would present ‘the simple truth in all

things’; however, he came to develop the idea of the divine plan behind the civilizing

mission of the European saints, the elect group of believers. Gray writes: ‘Like so

many great American stories, Of Plymouth Plantation is a search for meaning. It has

a narrator looking for what might lie behind the mask of the material event […] [T]his

habit of interpreting events with the help of a providential vocabulary was to have a

profound impact on American writing—just as, for that matter, the moralizing

tendency and the preference for fact rather than fiction, “God’s truth” over “men’s

lies,” also were.’ However, as the narrative proceeded, it grew more and more elegiac

with the passing of the communitarian spirit of the first generation of immigrants

whom Bradford called ‘Pilgrims’ and the second generation’s search for better land

and further prosperity. Next, we can think about John Winthrop (1588-1649) who had

called England ‘this sinful land’ as early as 1622 and set out for New England with

nearly four hundred other Congregationalist Puritans, ten years after Bradford’s

landing at Plymouth, to build there a good society.

However, there were also various challenges to that Puritan discourse. Such challenges

emerged from people like Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), Thomas Morton (1579?-

1642?) and Roger Williams (1603?-1683). Morton’s only literary output was New

English Canaan (1637) which was a satirical attack on Puritanism. In Gray’s words,

‘It sets out to show that New England is indeed a Canaan or Promised Land, a naturally

abundant world inhabited by friendly and even noble savages […] A celebration of

what he calls “the happy life of the savages,” and their natural wisdom, occupies the

first section, […] [I]n the third section […] Morton describes the general inhumanity

of the Puritans’. In The Bloody Tenent of Persecution (1644), Williams argued for

Christianity to be free from secular interests: he believed, as Gray points out, that ‘the

Massachusetts Bay Company charter itself was invalid because a Christian king had

no right over heathen lands.’

2.1.3 The early 18th century

Let us begin with Cotton Mather (1663-1728) who had more than four hundred

publications during his life time: The Negro Christianized (1706), Bonifacius; or,

Essays to Do Good (1710), The Christian Philosopher (1720), India Christiana (1721),

to name a few of them. Now, as Gray points out, ‘Mather’s belief in the supreme

importance of conversion led him, after all, to claim that a slave taught the true faith

was far better off than a free black; and it sprang, in the first place, from a low opinion

of both African and Native Americans, bordering on contempt […] Mather made no

secret of his belief that “the natives of the country now possessed by New Englanders”

[…] were “miserable savages,” “stupid and senseless,” […] They had “no arts,” […]

“little, if any, tradition … worthy of … notice”; reading and writing were “altogether

unknown to them” and their religion consisted of no more than “diabolical rites,”

“extravagant ridiculous devotions” to “many gods.”’ To some extent, it certainly

reminds us of Columbus’ observations: he could not make sense of their customs and

12

found it either odd or abhorrent. Besides, Columbus also observes that the natives were

‘without any religion that could be discovered’. Therefore, while Columbus also

desired their conversion, he still saw the natives as marked by the aboriginal

innocence. But, Mather saw them as marked by savageness. And, therefore, for

Mather, they had to be ‘civilized ere they could be Christianized.’ For a brief

discussion of his longest work, Magnalia Christi Americana; or, the Ecclesiastical

History of New England (1702), let us simply take a look at what Gray writes about

it: ‘It is also an American epic, one of the very first, in which the author sets about

capturing in words what he sees as the promise of the nation […] The echo of the

Aeneid is an intimation of what Mather is after. He is hoping to link the story of his

people to earlier epic migrations […] he is also suggesting a direct analogy with the

journey of God’s chosen people to the Promised Land. His subject is a matter of both

history and belief’. Next, we can think about Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) who, Gray

tells us, was ‘living at a time when Puritanism no longer exerted the power it once

did’. He wrote a journal from 1673 to 1728, eventually published as The Diary of

Samuel Sewall (1973). In an entry for June 19, 1700, he writes that, following his

conscience, he felt ‘call’d’ to write against ‘the Trade fetching Negroes from Guinea.’

And just after five days, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial, Sewall’s attack on the

practice of slavery, was published in Boston. In this book, he attacked slavery on the

ground that it was a violation of biblical precept since ‘all men, as they are the Sons

of Adam, are Coheirs; and have equal Right unto Liberty’. However, as Gray writes,

‘[h]is journals reveal the more private side of Puritanism: a daily search for the right

path to follow in order to make the individual journey part of the divine plan […]

[T]hat was to remain ingrained in American writing long after the Puritan hegemony

had vanished.’

2.2 GROWING SECULAR

Again, Gray writes at length: ‘The power of Puritanism was, in fact, waning in New

England well before the end of the eighteenth century. The number of “unchurched”

colonists had been large to begin with, and they grew in number and power over the

years […] and, by the end of the eighteenth century, more than 275,000 African slaves

had been brought to America […] It certainly helped to promote the growing secular

tendencies of the age. Religion was still strong; and it was, in fact, made stronger by

a sweeping revivalist movement known as the Great Awakening, in the third and

fourth decades of the eighteenth century […] The Great Awakening, however, was

itself a reaction against what was rightly felt to be the dominant trend: the growing

tendency among colonists to accept and practice the ideas of the Enlightenment, albeit

usually in popularized form. Those ideas emphasized the determining influence of

reason and common sense and the imperatives of self-help, personal and social

progress. According to the philosophy of the Enlightenment, the universe was a

rational, mechanical phenomenon which, as the English philosopher John Locke put

it, ran rather like a self-winding watch. […] And man, using his reason and good sense,

could ascertain the laws of this mechanism. He could then use those laws for his own

profit, the betterment of society, and his own improvement […] It was an ethic with

13

an obvious attraction for new generations of immigrants eager to stake their place and

improve their lot in a new land with such abundant resources. And, even for those, the

vast majority, who had never heard of the Enlightenment, the secular gospel of reason,

common sense, use, profit, and progress became part of the American way.’ The

increasingly secular tendencies of the period are to be found in the travel journals of

Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727) and William Byrd of Westover (1674-1744). Like

the earlier European accounts, they didn’t see the New World as either Eden or

Wilderness. Although God is mentioned at times, there is no sense of being guided by

the providence. As Gray tells us, Knight’s ‘writings reveal a lively, humorous, gossipy

woman alert to the comedy and occasional beauty of life in early America […] She

recalls, for instance, how moved she was by the sight of the woods lit up by the moon’.

On the other hand, Byrd tells us in a letter published in The Correspondence of the

Three William Byrds (1977) that in America he lived ‘like […] the patriarchs.’ As the

contemporary Robert Beverley II (1673- 1722) writes in The History and Present State

of Virginia (1722), the majority of the immigrants were ‘of low Circumstances […]

such as were willing to seek their Fortunes in a Foreign Country.’ There was already

an anticipation of the later Southern argument in defense of slavery: slaves were seen

as children who needed the guidance and support of a benevolent patriarch. What we

see here in Byrd— ‘the idea of the indolent, elegant aristocrat’—was ‘an alternative

to the ruminative Puritan or the industrious Northerner’ (Gray).

2.2.1 Secularity in poetry

If we take a look at Nathaniel Evans’s (1742-1767) poetry, which were posthumously

published as Poems on Several Occasions (1772), we see that the poems were rarely

religious: ‘Hymn to May’, ‘To Benjamin Franklin, Occasioned by Hearing Him Play

on the Harmonica’, ‘Ode to the Memory of Mr. Thomas Godfrey’ etc. Although he

criticized the greed and immorality of the time, the criticism developed from a secular

morality. We have also the female poets who introduced a female perspective to the

familiar subjects and sometimes even focused on the issues specific to their own sex,

like childbearing, for instance. They were also conscious of the difficulties of the

women in the society: ‘How wretched is a woman’s fate,/’ an anonymous poet wrote

in ‘Verses Written by a Young Lady, on Women Born to be controll’d’ (1743),

‘Subject to man in every state/How can she then be free from woes?’ For another

anonymous poet, the solution, as she put it in ‘The Lady’s Complaint’ (1736), was in

‘equal laws’ that would ‘neither sex oppress’: it would ‘More freedom give to

womankind’. Annis Boudinot Stockton (1736-1801) wrote ‘To Laura’ (1757)

addressing her friend Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (1737-1801)—pen name ‘Laura’—

who was herself one of the most well-known poets of the eighteenth century. Both of

them wrote poems on married love, such as ‘Epistle to Lucia’ (1766) and ‘An Ode

Written on the Birthday of Mr. Henry Fergusson’ (1774). Like Evans, Stockton also

wrote on public figures—for example, ‘The Vision, an Ode to Washington’ (1789).

And in ‘On a Beautiful Damask Rose, Emblematical of Love and Wedlock’ (1789),

Fergusson explored a philosophical issue like the transience of love. Gray writes about

them that ‘[w]hat is remarkable about many of these poems written by women is their

sense of a shared suffering and dignity, sometimes associated with the core experience

of childbirth.’ Jane Colman Turell (1708-1735) wrote: ‘Thrice in my womb I’ve found

14

the pleasing strife, / In the first struggles of my infant’s life: / But O how soon by

Heaven I’m call’d to mourn, / While from my womb a lifeless babe is born?’ However,

as Gray notes, ‘[t]hat sense of shared suffering and dignity can also extend beyond the

specifically female sphere’: later, Sarah Wentworth Morton (1759-1846) became quite

well known for a strong antislavery poem, ‘The African Chief’ (1823). While, on the

one hand, we have these educated white women poets, we have, on the other hand,

Lucy Terry (1730-1821), an African slave who eventually became a free black: she

wrote a poem called ‘Bars Fight’ (eventually published in 1855) that captured the

experience of pain and a witness of courage during a battle between whites and

Indians. ‘To America, one schoolmaster is worth a dozen poets,’ said Benjamin

Franklin, because ‘[n]othing is good or beautiful but in the measure that it is useful’.

However, many people still believed that poetry helped in the making of America: as

Gray writes, ‘[t]he full force of that reply had to wait until the Revolution, when

writers and critics began to insist that the new American nation needed an American

literature, and more specifically an American poetry, in order to announce and

understand itself.’ Even Cotton Mather, who had attacked poetry for its fictional aspect

and sensuality, wrote a proto-epic called Magnalia Christi Americana, celebrating the

‘Wonders’ of the New World. Towards the end of the century, Joel Barlow attempted

a more specifically poetic epic in Vision of Columbus, an enlarged and revised version

of which appeared later as The Columbiad. Ebenezer Cook (1667-1733) and Richard

Lewis (1700?-1734) had already tried their hands at producing other forms of early

eighteenth-century poetry than epic—satire and pastoral. Cook’s claim to fame rests

on his satirical poem The Sot-weed Factor; or, a Voyage to Maryland. In the form of

the Hudibrastic verse, this piece is a satire on English snobbery and preciousness. As

Gray writes, ‘Cook has taken an English form and turned it to American advantage.’

Lewis, on the other hand, wrote, among other things, pastoral that indicated at the

superiority of American nature. When Lewis refers to ‘the out-stretch’d Land’, we

immediately understand that it is that same encounter—that we have seen before and

which many other poets would experience—with space, the primary aspect of the

American landscape. ‘Lewis, however,’ Gray notes, ‘devotes more attention than his

European predecessors tended to do to the ideas of patient toil rewarded, the value of

self-subsistence, and the pleasures of abundance’— things that are (to become)

typically American. Now, although there was a growing trend towards the secular in

the eighteenth century America, religious influences did not entirely disappear. The

most important figure in this context would be Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). He

became what he was due to his deeply religious upbringing—both his father and

grandfather were clergymen. He felt compelled not only ‘to sit and view the moon

[…] the clouds and the sky,’ ‘to behold the sweet glory of God in these things,’ but

also, as Gray puts it, ‘to review and discipline the conduct of his life.’ Between 1722

and 1723, he composed seventy Resolutions with the aim of improving himself in the

light of his faith. In 1734, he preached a few sermons which certainly had an effect on

many of the congregation who apparently felt exactly the kind of conversion Edwards

was preaching and had himself experienced. As an account of this awakening of faith

in his community, Edwards wrote a book (developed from a pamphlet) called A

Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737). In a way, as Gray suggests,

this congregation anticipated ‘the Great Awakening that was to sweep through many

15

parts of the American colonies in the next few years’. However, his embodiment of

faith was a bit complicated, as Gray points out, insofar as ‘Edwards wanted to harness

reason in the service of faith and, if necessary, to defend mystery with logic [which]

is nowhere better illustrated than in […] such works as The Great Christian Doctrine

of Original Sin Defended (1758) and Two Dissertations (1765)’. What makes Edwards

more complicated than others is his implicit philosophical dialogue with authorities

like Descartes and Locke on the one hand, and his Puritan inheritance on the other

hand.

2.2.2 Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

As Gray writes, ‘Franklin embodied the new spirit of America, emerging in part out

of Puritanism and in part out of the Enlightenment that was coming to dominate the

culture.’ However, it does not make him similar to Edwards. In his Autobiography—

which he worked on in 1771, 1784, 1788, 1788-89 and of which although an American

edition was published in 1818, the first complete edition came out only in 1867—

Franklin presents himself as an exemplary figure. The first section of his

Autobiography holds a detailed account of his ‘first entry’ into the city of

Philadelphian in 1723. As Gray notes, ‘what he emphasizes [here] is his sorry

appearance and poverty.’ The second section reveals his conception of ‘the bold and

arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.’ Gray writes: ‘Springing from a

fundamental belief that the individual could change, improve, and even recreate

himself with the help of reason, common sense, and hard work, Franklin’s program

for himself was one of the first great formulations of the American dream.’ By 1748,

he had, indeed, made quite a lot of money and also become quite famous. Thus,

Franklin gave birth to the notion which Gray puts as that of ‘the self-made man as

hero, on his first appearance, poor and unknown and unprotected, entering a world that

he then proceeds to conquer.’ His The Way to Wealth (1758), which brought together

many of his proverbs embodying his philosophy, was a nationwide bestseller and

reprinted several hundred times. The dream of the self-made man could be realized

only in America, where, as Franklin says in ‘Information to Those Who Would

Remove to America’ (1784), ‘people do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is

he? But, what can he do?’ All ‘Hearty young Labouring Men’ could ‘easily establish

themselves’ in this ‘Land of Labour’, which is why ‘a general happy Mediocrity

prevails’, here, in America. Gray writes that ‘throughout his life, Franklin was not only

an inventor of proverbial wisdom but a masterly essayist’. In his ‘Silence Dogood’

papers, as Gray informs us, he ‘satirize[d] follies and vices ranging from poor poetry

to prostitution.’ He also attacked violence against Native Americans in A Narrative of

the Late Massacres (1764) and the superstition leading to the accusation of witchcraft

on women in ‘A Witch Trial at Mount Holly’ (1730), and satirized the slave trade in

‘On the Slave Trade’ (1790) and British imperialism in ‘An Edict by the King of

Prussia’ (1773). Thus, he shaped his persona of ‘the friend of all good men’. He was

also a member of that committee which went onto draft the Declaration of

Independence. He was also one of the three American signatories to the treaty that

ended the Revolutionary war. And he became a member of the convention which

drafted the Constitution of the United Sates. Gray writes that ‘Franklin was, in short,

at the heart of the American Revolution from its origins to its conclusion. And he

16

shows, more clearly than any other figure of the time, just how much that Revolution

owed to the principles of the Enlightenment.’

2.2.3 And others: towards the Revolution

In Letters from an American Farmer (1782), J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur (1735-

1813) says that ‘the American is a new man, who acts upon new principles’. Gray tells

us that ‘[t]hat was a common theme in the literature surrounding the American

Revolution. As the American colonies became a new nation, the United States of

America, writers and many others applied themselves to the task of announcing just

what this new nation represented’. What is typically American about Crèvecoeur’s

narrative is the amalgamation of fiction and autobiography. In this text, we find his

belief in the superiority of the American nature in comparison to the European culture.

Secondly, he says that America is ‘not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who

possess everything, and a herd of people who have nothing’; the American owes

nothing to ‘a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord.’ And, thirdly, he also says

that ‘here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.’ However, as

Gray notes, ‘[t]ravelling to South Carolina, James is reminded of the obscenity and

injustice of slavery […] [which] leads James to reflect on a terrible exception to the

American norm of just laws and useful toil rewarded.’ Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was

another writer from this period. Gray writes that ‘[u]nlike Crèvecoeur, however, Paine

was unambiguously enthusiastic about the Revolution.’ In Common Sense (1776), he

argued in the typically Enlightenment spirit—with emphasis on ‘simple facts, plain

arguments, and common sense’— for the independence of America and the formation

of a republican government. With the defeat of Washington and the retreat at the end

of 1776, Paine tried to rouse the nation for further resistance in first of the Crisis

papers. After returning to England in 1787, he wrote The Rights of Man (1791-1792)

as a kind of reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

Although it was very popular, nevertheless, for his arguments against a hereditary

monarchy, he was charged with sedition and forced to flee to France. Again, for his

protest against the execution of Louis XVI he was imprisoned in France. Still, in The

Age of Reason (1794-1795), he attacked religion for its irrationality. Next, we have

Thomas Jefferson (1724-1826), who was, as Gray writes, ‘[a] person of eclectic

interests—and, in that, the inheritor of a tradition previously best illustrated by

William Byrd of Westover’. He played a pivotal role in the formation of the American

nation. In A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), he argued for

America’s freedom from British control on the ground of ‘a right which nature has

given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed

them.’ In 1776, he became a member of the committee which would draft the

Declaration of Independence. Gray writes that ‘if any one person can be called the

author of that Declaration, it is undoubtedly Jefferson.’ However, Gray also notes that

‘like Crèvecoeur, Jefferson also felt compelled to confront the challenge to his idyllic

vision of America posed by the indelible fact of slavery.’ He condemned slavery and

argued for emancipation in Notes on the State of Virginia (1787). However, he was of

the opinion that the freed slaves should be sent somewhere else where they would

stand as ‘free and independent people’. John Adams (1735-1826), first vice president

and second president, had a very sceptical mind: Jefferson’s idealism stood in

17

opposition to Adams’ pessimism. If Jefferson thought that ‘a natural aristocracy’ of

‘virtue and talents’ could replace ‘an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and

birth,’ Adams though that ‘both artificial aristocracy, and Monarchy have grown out

of the natural Aristocracy of “virtue and talents.”’

2.2.4 What about the women?

Abigail Adams (1744-1818), wife of John Adams, consistently raised the question of

freedom and equality for women. In 1776, she wrote to her husband that ‘in the new

Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would

Remember the Ladies’; ‘Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the

Husbands’; ‘Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.’ If the new laws are

not ‘more generous and favourable’ to women than the old laws had been, she warned,

‘we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any

Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.’ And, Gray notes: ‘”All men are

created equal,” the Declaration of Independence announced. That explicitly excluded

women. Implicitly, it also excluded “Indians” and “Negroes,” since what it meant, of

course, was all white men.’ Among the leading voices, Thomas Paine was someone

who also raised the question of the rights of women: ‘If we take a survey of ages and

countries,’ Paine wrote in ‘An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex’ (1775), ‘we shall

find the women, almost—without exception—at all times and in all places, adored and

oppressed.’ Judith Sargent Murray’s (1751-1820) 1790 piece, ‘On the Equality of the

Sexes’, makes her, arguably, one of the first American feminists. In this piece, she

argued, as Gray summarizes, ‘that the capacities of memory and imagination are equal

in women and men and that, if women are deficient as far as the two other faculties of

the mind, reason and judgment, are concerned, it is because of a difference in

education.’ In her 1784 essay, ‘Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of encouraging a

degree of Self-Complacency especially in Female Bosoms’, she said that a young

woman should be considered ‘as a rational being’.

2.2.5 Other voices

Although Hendrick Aupaumut (?-1830), a Mahican Indian, tried, in A Short Narration

of my Last Journey to the Western Country (written about 1794 and published only in

1827), to convince his people that the American republic would extend its rights to the

Native Americans as well, Samson Occom (1723-1792) was a Native American who

did not quite believe it. As Gray informs, ‘Quite the contrary, during the Revolutionary

War Occom urged the tribes to remain neutral’. For him, as for many others, the

solution of their problems was in separation. His Collection of Hymns and Spiritual

Songs (1774) was the first Indian bestseller. Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833), an

evangelical minister, was one who articulated the rage of the African-Americans at the

huge gap between the promise of the Revolution and their reality. As gray writes,

‘Haynes, along with Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, helped to produce the first

significant body of African-American writing’. In ‘Liberty Further Extended: Or Free

Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-Keeping’ (written early in the career but

unpublished till 1983), he makes use of the Declaration of Independence, the founding

documents of the nation, and the Bible, to develop a vigorous argument against

slavery. In a petition, Prince Hall (1735?-1807) too asks for the emancipation of ‘great

18

number of Negroes who are detained in a state of Slavery in the Bowels of a free &

Christian country.’ We also have Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), whose

autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus

Valla, the African, Written by Himself (1787), in Gray’s words, ‘established the form

of the slave narrative and so, indirectly or otherwise […] has influenced American

writing – and African-American writing in particular – to the present day.’ In this

work, he viewed Africa as the Eden, the prelapsarian world. And, in many ways, he

turned the typical European charges upside down: he was frightened of the white

people and thought that he would be eaten; later, he was convinced that his white

masters were ‘savages’. However, he also befriended ‘a [white] young lad.’ Gray

writes that ‘[t]heir close friendship […] serves as an illustration of the superficiality

of racial barriers […] and, besides, anticipates a powerful theme in later American

writing – of interracial and often homoerotic intimacy.’

2.2.6 Poetry, drama and fiction

Although Lucy Terry came before with her poem ‘Bars fight,’ Jupiter Hammon (1711-

1806?) was the first African-American poet who got his work published: Evening

Thought: Salvation by Christ, With Penitential Cries (1760), a series of 22 quatrains,

and Address to the Negroe: In the State of New York (1787), a prose work. In the

prose work, he argues for the reconciliation between the black people and slavery. His

works are prefaced by an acknowledgement of the white people he served. Gray

writes: ‘That anticipated a common pattern in African-American writing. Slave

narratives, for instance, were commonly prefaced by a note or essay from a white

notable, mediating the narrative for what was, after all, an almost entirely white

audience – and giving it a white seal of approval. And it has to be borne in mind when

reading what Hammon has to say about slavery: which, in essence, takes up a defense

of the peculiar institution’. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), with the help of the woman

who bought her from a slave market, got her Poems (1773) published in London. Her

poetry, notes Gray, ‘paints a less than flattering picture of Africa’. She writes in ‘To

the University of Cambridge, in New England’ (1773): ‘’Twas not long since I left my

native shore / the land of errors, and Egyptian gloom: / Father of mercy, ’twas thy

gracious hand / Brought me in safety from those dark abodes.’ However, sometimes

an Edenic or idyllic image of Africa—of Equiano’s type—can also be found in

Wheatley. Among the white poets of the time, we have Philip Freneau (1752-1832),

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), and Joel Barlow (1754-1826). Interestingly, Freneau’s

long poem (written together with his college friend Hugh Brackenridge), The Rising

glory of America (written in 1771, published in 1772 and revised in 1786), Gray notes,

‘tends to confirm the power of the mother country even while Freneau and

Brackenridge struggle to deny it.’ In his ‘Literary Importation’ (1788), he writes: ‘Can

we never be thought to have learning or grace / unless it be brought from that damnable

place.’ This ‘damnable place’ is certainly a reference to Britain. And Gray writes that

‘[i]n some of his poetry, at least, Freneau was working toward a form of literary

emancipation’. In ‘To an Author’ (1788), he also focuses on the difficulty of writing

poetry in a certain historical context ‘Where rigid Reason reigns alone, / Where lovely

Fancy has no sway, / nor magic forms about us play’. He further adds: ‘An age

employed in edging steel / Can no poetic raptures feel.’ Dwight’s most ambitious

19

work, Greenfield Hill: A Poem in Seven Parts (1794), written in imitation of the

pastoral and elegiac modes of British writers, portrays an idyllic life in the American

countryside where ‘every farmer reigns a little king’. It also attacks slavery. However,

as Gray observes, ‘despite Dwight’s references to “Indian woes,” his basic message is

that their removal was a necessary step in the march of progress.’ Royall Tyler (1756-

1826), who wrote seven plays, gave birth to the American tradition in drama. He is

best known for his play The Contrast (written in 1787, produced in 1790 and published

in 1792). Written after watching a performance of R. B. Sheridan’s The School for

Scandal and clearly influenced by the English eighteenth century comedies, this was

the first comedy by an American writer to earn a professional production. The theme

is typically American since, as Gray summarizes, ‘the contrast of the title is between

[…] European affectation […] [and] American straightforwardness and republican

honesty.’ Among the first American novels, we have The Power of Sympathy (1789)

by William Hill Brown (1765-1793), Charlotte Temple (1794) by Susanna Haswell

Rawson (1762-1824), and The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton (1797) by

Hannah Webster Foster (1758- 1840). The Power of Sympathy is a romance that deals

with a contemporary scandal of incest and suicide in the Morton family. Its didactic

purpose is clearly visible in the preface: ‘To Expose the dangerous Consequences of

Seduction’ and to reveal ‘the Advantages of Female Education.’ Gray writes: ‘Hardly

distinguished in itself, the book nevertheless establishes a currency common to all

three of these early American novels: a clear basis in fact, actuality (so anticipating

and meeting any possible objections to fiction, imaginative self-indulgence, or day

dreaming), an even clearer moral purpose (so anticipating and meeting any possible

objections from puritans or utilitarian), and a narrative that flirts with sensation and

indulges in sentiment (so encouraging the reader to read on). Even more specifically,

The Power of Sympathy shares the same currency as the books by Rowson and

Webster in the sense that it places a young woman and her fate at the centre of the

narrative, and addresses other young women as the intended recipients of its message.’

In the preface to Charlotte Temple, the first American bestseller, Rowson writes that

her novel is ‘not merely the effusion of Fancy, but […] a reality’ as the basic facts

were related to her by ‘an old lady who had personally known Charlotte.’ She says, ‘I

have thrown over the whole a slight veil of fiction’. And she also insists on the moral

purpose of her writing: ‘For the perusal of the young and thoughtless of the fair sex,

this Tale of Truth is designed’. What follows this preface is a tale of seduction of a

young girl and her suffering. Judith Sargent Murray’s The Story of Margaretta (1798)

and Foster’s The Coquette still revolve around the theme of seduction. None of these

writers took writing as profession; the first person who earned the title of a

professional writer is Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). (However, it is now

believed that there were definitely many other writers who tried to earn their living

through writing during this time.) Influenced by William Godwin, Brown wrote a

treatise on the rights of women, Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798). After that, within two

years, he wrote four other novels: Wieland; or, The Transformation (1798), Arthur

Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 (1799-1800), Ormond; or, The Secret Witness

(1799), and Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799). Gray writes that

‘Brown was ‘one of the first American writers to discover the uses of the unreliable

narrator.’ However, he was, like others, careful to point out that his fictions were based

20

on facts: for example, he wrote in the preface to his first novel that there had been ‘an

authentic case, remarkably similar to Wieland.’ Gray writes: ‘he anticipates so much

of what was to happen in American fiction in the nineteenth century. His fascination

with aberrant psychology, deviations in human thought and behaviour, foreshadows

the work of Edgar Allan Poe; so, for that matter, does his use of slippery narrators. His

use of symbolism, and his transformation of Gothic into a strange, surreal mix of the

extraordinary and the everyday, prepares the way for the fiction of Nathaniel

Hawthorne and Herman Melville.’

2.3 HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE (1800-1900)

The title of this module is the “The History of American Literature (1800-1900)”. It

tries to trace the history of the American literature which is said to have started during

the 17th century colonial times when the British were the rulers of the land. The British

writers P a g e | 2 produced literature with the theme of exploration but the nature of

their content was also to glorify the British rule. However, the American native writers

beginning with Washington Irving produced literary works with the anti-colonial

rhetoric. In the initial stages of the American literature the writers emphasised on the

writings dealing with national imagination and it goes on to create a romantic sensation

in the corpus of American literature. The module also analyses the development of

realism and different currents of literary movements in the 19th century history of

American literature. The American literature basically is the corpus of literary works

produced in the English language in the United States. In general it depicts the socio-

political-cultural and economic dynamisms of the United States. To trace history, for

almost more than a century, America was merely colonial provinces scattered along

the eastern seaboard of the North American continent from where only a few brave

souls dared to venture towards the west. After a successful revolt against the British

colonizers, America achieved independence. But in the initial phases of American

history, the different provinces of America had their autonomy and were considered

many nationalities until the emergence of the unified sense of American nationalism

which led to the formation of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation

state. Gradually, by the end of the 19th century the United States extended her territory

across the regions. By the same time the United States had also become one of the

major powers of the world and developed gigantically. In the course of time, as the

lives of people experienced radical changes by the inroads of science, industry, as well

as the changes, they also changed their ways of perceiving and the entire notion of the

world. The growth of history and the radical development of the United States shaped

the literature of the country. The production of American literature began with advent

of the American Revolution which emphasized on differences that were soaring up

between American and British political consciousness. The American colonized

people opposed the British colonialism and slavery. The prominent figures such as

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine wrote intensively against the British

colonization and this opposition gradually led to the new national imagination in the

American society. They used American day to day lives, changing dynamisms,

historical perceptions, and nostalgic propensity. They wrote in various prose genres,

21

invented new forms, and in many ways they earned through literature. As the new

genres appeared, the American literature got unprecedented readership and wide

popularity in and out of the United States.

2.3.1 Early 19th-century literature

After the American Revolution, and especially after the War of 1812, the growing

demand of national imagination of the American people created an ambience for the

American writers to produce a literature concerning nativity. As response to the

growing demand of national imagination, the four prominent authors such as

Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Fennimore Cooper, and Edgar

Allan Poe emerged in the period. They created the literary development in the

aftermath of the American Declaration of Independence and in the ensuing formation

of the nation. They produced literary works which brought dynamism to the national

life of American people.

2.3.2 Washington Irving (1789-1859)

Washington Irving was born in a moderate trader family of New York and he was

appointed as cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe. Though he had talent, he

would not perhaps become a full-fledged writer as he had financial crisis. But it was a

series of unexpected incidents which actually forced him to take up writing as a

profession. With his friends` help, P a g e | 4 he could publish The Sketch Book (1819-

1820) both in England and in America, and gained copyrights and payment from both

the countries. The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon, Irving’s pen name consists of his

two best remembered stories, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

“Sketch” is about Irving’s subtle, elegant, but more or less casual style, and pastel is

about his ability as a creator of rich, nuanced tones and emotional effects. In the Sketch

Book, Irving transforms the Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River into a

fabulous, magical region. This transforming of imagined history was widely accepted

by the American readers as this related the history to the imagination of a new nation

(Van Spranckeren, 22).

2.3.3 James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851)

James Fennimore Cooper like Irving also came from a Quaker family. He was brought

up in his Otsego Lake in central New York State. He spent his boyhood in feudal and

peaceful environment but once he had witnessed the scene of an Indian massacre.

When he was a boy, Cooper saw frontiersmen and Indians at Otsego Lake and in later

life, he saw bold white settlers trespassed in his land. This personal experience enabled

Cooper to write intensely about the wilderness of American history and the lives of

the frontiersmen and their different cultures. Natty Bumppo, Cooper’s renowned

literary character based on his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, a Jeffersonian

“natural aristocrat.” In The Pioneers, Cooper discovered Natty as the first famous

frontiersman in American literature and the literary prototype of numerous cowboy

and backwoods heroes. Natty is the idealized and upright individualist. Though he is

poor and isolated, he is pure and an example of ethical values (Van Spranckeren, The

connected themes of Cooper`s five novels altogether known as the Leather Stocking

Tales exhibit the tribal life of Natty Bumppo. They are Cooper’s best achievements

22

and constitute a vast prose epic. They portray the North American continent as setting,

Indian tribes as characters, and great wars and westward migration as social

background. The novels bring life to frontier America from 1740 to 1804 (23).

2.3.4 William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Bryant came from Cummmington of Massachusetts and grew up in wonderful scenery

of the state. He was the first American poet to write a political satire "The Embargo".

His blank verse hymn “Thanatopsis," came out in the North American Review in 1817.

It was a great work which won him popularity in England. His poem is still considered

a poetical masterpiece of the time and it is said that Wordsworth also learnt it by heart

and valued it most. Under Wordsworth and other Romantic poets` influence, he wrote

nature lyrics that portrayed the New England scene. In later stages he became a

journalist and fought the liberal editor of The Evening Post. However, he was eclipsed

by the genius of Washington Irving

2.3.5 American Renaissance

F. O. Matthiessen in his 1941 book American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the

Age of Emerson and Whitman used the phrase "American Renaissance". For him, the

American Renaissance was concerned about the dedication of all his five writers of

his book to "the possibilities of democracy." As an effect of the Renaissance the

authors of the 1830s - the classic New Englanders, the humourists, Herman Melville,

Walt Whitman, and many others— commenced their work with new spirit for the

national consciousness. They were influenced by the larger democratic forces and also

by the romantic era which emphasized on producing literature depicting native scenes

and characters in order to create a new picture of America. The wave of Romanticism

created a very positive and conducive space for most American poets and creative

essayists. It also created for them a new vision and exhilarated artistic and intellectual

environment which was responsible for the realization of the national consciousness

and creating a space for distinctive American voice. But more specifically,

romanticism conceptualized art as inspiration, spiritual and aesthetic dimension of

nature, and metaphors of organic development. The Romantic spirit seemed

particularly conducive for the American democratic values. It emphasized on

individualism, the value of a common person and it also looked to the inspired

imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values. Certainly the New England

Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their

associates were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic Movement

(Van Spranckeren, 26).

2.3.6 The Transcendentalists

The appearance of Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against the 18th-

century rationalism and the 19the-century humanitarian thought. The fundamental

belief in the unity of the world and God was the ground for the movement. The soul

of each individual was thought to be equal with the world. The principle of self-

reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the recognition of the

individual soul with God. The concept of Transcendentalism was closely linked with

Concord, a small New England village of Boston. It offered a divine and cultural

23

alternative to American materialism. It was a place of high-minded conversation and

simple living. The place attracted the literary figures such as Emerson, Thoreau,

Hawthorne, and other figures like Fuller, Alcott, and Channing (Van Spranckeren, 26).

The Transcendentalists published a quarterly magazine, The Dial, which continued for

four years and was first edited by Margaret Fuller and later by Emerson. The magazine

dealt P a g e | 7 with reformation and literature. A number of Transcendentalists were

abolitionists, and some were involved in experimental utopian communities such as

nearby Brook Farm and Fruitlands (27).

2.3.7 Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord and lived there permanently. Throughout

his life, he minimized his necessities to the simplest level and managed to live through

financial crisis but yet preserved his self-independence. A dissenter, he always tried

to live his life according to his rigorous principles. This attempt was the subject of

many of his writings. In his masterpiece Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854),

Thoreau, a lover of travel books gives us an anti-travel account for the first time in

American literature. But paradoxically it gives us an insight of self-discovery which

actually guides for living a classical good life. Both poetry and philosophy, this long

poetic essay challenges the reader to examine his or her life and live it genuinely.

Thoreau is the most relevant figure of the Transcendentalists today for his ecological

consciousness, independence, abolitionist values, and political theory of civil

disobedience and peaceful resistance. His ideas are still appealing, and his insightful

poetic style and habit of close observation are still modern (29).

2.3.8 The Brahmin Poets

In their time, the Boston Brahmins who were Harvard-educated class and known as

Brahmins held the most regarded and genuinely cultivated literary authority of the

United States. Their lives fitted a pleasant pattern of wealth and leisure directed by the

strong New England work ethic and regard for learning. They used to be ministers,

professors at Harvard and also ambassadors or got honorary degrees from Europe in

later stages. They also used to express their European –oriented opinions in the US

through the Boston magazines, the North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly

(32). The writings of the Brahmin poets amalgamated American and European

traditions and sought to create a continuity of shared Atlantic experience. These

scholar-poets tried to educate and lift up the general population by familiarizing a

European aspect to American literature. But ironically, they were conservative and

their impositions of the European styles stalled the growth of a distinctive American

consciousness. The most important Boston Brahmin poets were Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell (ibid).

2.3.9 Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Longfellow, a Harvard professor of modern languages, was the best-known American

poet of his time. He was responsible for the steamy, ahistorical, legendary sense of the

past that fused American and European traditions. He wrote three long narrative poems

popularizing native legends in European styles — “Evangeline” (1847), “The Song of

Hiawatha” (1855), and “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858). Longfellow also

24

wrote textbooks on modern languages and a travel book named Outre-Mer, retelling

foreign legends by following Washington Irving’s Sketch Book. He also wrote short

lyrics like “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” (1854), “My Lost Youth” (1855), and

“The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” (1880) (33)

2.3.10 Two Reformers

In the years before the Civil War the New England shined with intellectual energy.

Some important figures, who are valued today than the collection of Brahmins, were

encompassed by poverty, gender or race issue in the own age. But the modern readers

toady more and more started to value the work of the abolitionist John Greenleaf

Whittier and feminist and social reformer Margaret Fuller ibid).

2.3.11 John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

John Greenleaf Whittier was the most active poet of the era. He was an ardent

abolitionist for decades before people came to know it. He is regarded for his anti-

slavery poems such as “Ichabod,” and his poetry also represents regional realism. His

best work, “Snow Bound,” lucidly recalls the poet’s departed family members and

friends. This simple, religious, intensely personal poem, coming after the long

nightmare of the Civil War, is an elegy for the dead and a healing hymn. It establishes

the eternity of the spirit, the timeless power of love in the memory, and the

undiminished beauty of nature, despite violent outer political storms (33-34).

2.3.12 Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Margaret Fuller, an exceptional essayist, was born and raised in Cambridge,

Massachusetts. She was the first reputed professional woman journalist in America.

She wrote influential book reviews and reports on social issues such as the treatment

of women prisoners and the insane. In Papers on Literature and Art (1846) she

published some of these essays. A year earlier, she wrote her most significant book,

Woman in the Nineteenth Century. It originally had appeared in the Transcendentalist

magazine, The Dial, which she edited from 1840 to 1842. Fuller’s Woman in the

Nineteenth Century is the earliest and most American exploration of women’s role in

society (ibid).

2.3.13 Women Writers of the Era

In American society women faced many inequalities in the 19th century. They were

denied the right to vote, right to education, were prohibited to speak in public and even

to attend public conventions, and unable to own property. To counter these inequalities

and patriarchal hegemony, the women writers gathered and a strong women’s network

grew up. The women started their revolutionary journey for social change through

women’s newspapers, books, letters, personal friendships, formal meetings. The

intellectual women observed a parallel humanization of women and the slaves.

Through their acute observation and realization they became outrageous. They out

rightly demanded their fundamental rights. Through their intellectual literary works

they outburst their resentment and crave for an equal for society. They also composed

sentimental novels to express their quest for equality and liberty. The sentimental

novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, gained gigantic

25

popularity. They were successful to draw the emotional response from the audience

and often through enactment they appealed to the emotions and often dramatized

controversial social issues, especially those dealing with the family issues and roles of

women. The leading reforming women writers were Lydia Child, Angelina Grimké,

Sarah Grimké, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth (42)

2.3.14 Harriet Jacobs (1818-1896)

Born a slave in North Carolina, Harriet Jacobs learnt to read and write from her

mistress. She had a terrified life experience as a slave. But she resisted and moved

ahead. On meeting and becoming friends with Amy Post, a Quaker feminist

abolitionist, she got encouragement for authoring her autobiography to narrate her

plight as a woman. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published under the

pseudonym of “Linda Brent” in 1861, was edited by Lydia Child. The autobiography

outrageously condemned the sexual harassment of black slave women. Jacobs’s book,

like Douglass’s book, is part of the slave narrative genre encompassing the narratives

of Olaudah Equiano in colonial times (45).

In the history of American Literature there are galaxy if writers emerged during 1900-

1950. Some of them have written after this period as well but those writing have not

been discussed here. Here writers of worth reading including African American have

been discussed keeping in mind their focus on the issues of milieus.

2.3.15 Novelists

Novelists of this are famous for portraying the realism, gender issues, and women

empowerment and so on. Some of them are discussed below. William Faulkner:

Hemingway’s great rival as a stylist and mythmaker was William Faulkner, whose

writing was as baroque as Hemingway’s was spare. Faulkner combined stream-of

consciousness techniques with rich social history. Works such as The Sound and the

Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and The Hamlet (1940)

were parts of the unfolding history of Yoknapatawpha County, a mythical Mississippi

community, which depicted the transformation and the decadence of the South.

Faulkner’s work was dominated by a sense of guilt going back to the American Civil

War and the appropriation of Indian lands. His later books such as Go Down, Moses

(1942) and Intruder in the Dust (1948), showed a growing concern with the troubled

role of race in Southern life. Two of the most noteworthy novelists of the 19th

century are:

a) Ernest Hemingway:

Hemingway’s early short stories and his first novels, The Sun Also Rises (1926) and

A Farewell to Arms (1929), were full of the existential disillusionment of the Lost

Generation expatriates. The Spanish Civil War, however, led him to espouse the

possibility of collective action to solve social problems, and his less-effective novels,

including To Have and Have Not (1937) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940),

embodied this new belief. He regained some of his form in The Old Man and the Sea

(1952) and his posthumously published memoir of Paris between the wars, A

Moveable Feast (1964)

26

b) Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940):

This Side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby

(1925), Tender Is the Night (1934), The Love of the Last Tycoon (1941), these novels

shows the American history, illusion and reality, wealth, youth, maturity, beauty and

economic classes are some prominent themes.

2.4 PLAYS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Early 20th century theatre was dominated by the Barrymores—Ethel Barrymore, John

Barrymore, and Lionel Barrymore. Other greats included Laurette Taylor, Jeanne

Eagels, and Eva Le Gallienne. The massive social change that went on during the

Great Depression also had an effect on theatre in the United States. Plays took on

social roles, identifying with immigrants and the unemployed. The Federal Theatre

Project, a New Deal program set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt, helped to promote

theatre and provide jobs for actors. The program staged many elaborate and

controversial plays such as It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and The Cradle

Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein. By contrast, the legendary producer Brock Pemberton

(founder of the Tony Awards) was among those who felt that it was more than ever a

time for comic entertainment, in order to provide an escape from the prevailing harsh

social conditions: typical of his productions was Lawrence Riley's comedy Personal

Appearance (1934), whose success on Broadway (501 performances) vindicated

Pemberton. The minstrel shows of the early 19th century are believed by some to be

the roots of black theatre, but they initially were written by whites, acted by whites in

blackface, and performed for white audiences. After the American Civil War, blacks

began to perform in minstrel shows (then called “Ethiopian minstrelsy”), and by the

turn of the 20th century they were producing black musicals, many of which were

written, produced, and acted entirely by blacks. The first known play by an American

black was James Brown’s King Shotaway (1823). William Wells Brown’s The

Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858), was the first black play published, but the

first real success of a black dramatist was Angelina W. Grimké’s Rachel (1916). Black

theatre flourished during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s. Experimental

groups and black theatre companies emerged in Chicago, New York City, and

Washington, D.C. Among these was the Ethiopian Art Theatre, which established Paul

Robeson as America’s foremost black actor. Garland Anderson’s play Appearances

(1925) was the first play of black authorship to be produced on Broadway, but black

theatre did not create a Broadway hit until Langston Hughes’s Mulatto (1935) won

wide acclaim. In that same year the Federal Theatre Project was founded, providing a

training ground for blacks. In the late 1930s, black community theatres began to

appear, revealing talents such as those of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. By 1940 black

theatre was firmly grounded in the American Negro Theatre and the Negro

Playwrights’ Company. After World War II black theatre grew more progressive,

more radical, and more militant, reflecting the ideals of black revolution and seeking

to establish a mythology and symbolism apart from white culture. Councils were

organized to abolish the use of racial stereotypes in theatre and to integrate black

playwrights into the mainstream of American dramaturgy.

27

2.4.1 Plays of Eugene o Neil.

Bread and Butter (1914), The Personal Equation (1915), Beyond the Horizon, 1918 -

Pulitzer Prize (1920), Anna Christie (1920) - Pulitzer Prize (1922), The Emperor Jones

(1920), The Hairy Ape (1922), The Fountain, (1923), All God's Chillun Got Wings,

(1926), Strange Interlude, (1928) - Pulitzer Prize, Mourning Becomes Electra, (1931),

Days Without End, (1933), The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, published 1940, first

performed 1946, Long Day's Journey into Night, written 1941, first performed 1956;

Pulitzer Prize 1957, A Moon for the Misbegotten, written 1941–1943, first performed

1947, A Touch of the Poet, completed in 1942, first performed 1958, these are his

most famous plays.. He also wrote plenty of one-act plays. Bound East for Cardiff

(1914), In the Zone (1917), The Long Voyage Home (1917), Moon of the Caribbees

(1918) are some notable one-act plays of Neil. O'Neill was the first American

dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and the only American playwright

ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. O'Neill saw the theatre as a valid forum

for the presentation of serious ideas. For more than 20 years, both with such

masterpieces as Desire under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, and The Iceman

Cometh and by his inspiration to other serious dramatists, O'Neill set the pace for the

blossoming of the Broadway theatre

2.4.2 Notable Prose/Short Story Writers

Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio (1919) are his famous writing where casting

his inmates O Henry , oral tradition of storytelling, failure,, ambition, nostalgia, desire,

loneliness, epiphany. Ring Lardner: ‘You Know Me Al’ (1916) and ‘The Big Town’

(1920) explores tales of country folk encountering the slick and exploitation of big

city. Dorothy Parker and F, Scott Fitzgerald: ‘A Telephone Call’ and ‘Good Souls’ are

the short stories of Dorothy Parker and her stories generally deal with ordinary

people's lives and their struggles in a satirical, humorous way. ‘Head and Shoulders’

(1920), ‘Absolution’ (1924), ‘Love in the Night’ (1925), ‘The Rich Boy’ ‘At Your

Age’ (1929), ‘Two Wrongs’ (1930), ‘Emotional Bankruptcy (1931)’, ‘Babylon

Revisited’ (1931) ‘Six of One1932),’ ‘Boil Some Water- Lots of It’ (1940). Family

relationship, selfishness, loss of youth, portrayal of strong female characters,

consequences of wars in American society, dangers and consequences of alcohol are

themes Fitzgerald explored in his short stories. Their focus was on urbane wit,

sophistication, immortalization of a metropolitan world of glamour, romance and

superficiality

2.4.3 Lost Generation, 1920

After WWI, a group of American writers grew increasingly disillusioned by, and

resistant to, what they saw as hypocrisy in dominant American ideology and culture.

Many of these writers left America in search of a more artistic life in London or Paris.

Major works in Poetry Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, in prose Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot and

in novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises are notable

examples.

28

2.4.4 Beat Writers, 1950s

Beat Writers' writing was generally anti-traditional, anti-establishment, and anti-

intellectual. Major works in poetry by Allen Ginsberg's Howl, Lawrence Ferlinghetti,

prose by Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot and in novels by William Burroughs, Jack

Kerouac's On the Road are mentionable. The history of American literature during

1900-1950 is of paramount importance in every aspect from American as well as world

literature point of view. Apart from writers of different genres of literature and their

writings on various issues, emergence of literary theory and criticism, women

writings, African American writings, and emergence of America as a political

superpower were of significant importance in the sphere of world literature.

2.5 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE OF COLONIAL AMERICA

The literature of this section highlights the different groups who travelled from

England to the new world. Some of these groups came for the purpose of practicing

their religion freely, but many came for secular reasons. The Jamestown colony in

Virginia (founded in 1607), a territory which originally included not only the current

state of Virginia but also the northern parts of North Carolina up to the Long Island

Sound in New York, was founded as a commercial venture. Those traveling on

the Mayflower founded the colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. This group

represented a mix of goals, as some colonists wanted to build a religion separate from

the Church of England—known as the Separatists—and some had commercial

interests in the new world. This mix of interests was a motivating factor behind the

Mayflower Compact. The most religiously focused early colony was that of the

Puritans, a group of around 1000 Puritan refugees who settled in Massachusetts Bay

in 1630. Their desire was to purify the Church of England, and their colony consisted

of a devout group of people (men, women, and children) who were dedicated to that

goal.

More colonies soon joined those in Massachusetts and Virginia. In 1632, Lord

Baltimore (1605–1675) was given a charter for land north of the Potomac River. A

Catholic, Baltimore established the colony of Maryland as a place of religious

tolerance. A charter for the Carolinas, a territory which extended well beyond the

modern borders of those states, was granted in 1663 and settlers established one of the

first colonies under this charter near Charleston, South Carolina. In 1681,

Pennsylvania was granted by King Charles II to William Penn (1644–1718) in

repayment of a debt owed to Penn’s father. The colony became a refuge for members

of the Society of Friends or Quakers, as Penn was a recent convert to the denomination.

Georgia was the last of the original colonies. Founded in 1732, the colony was

intended primarily as a bulwark between the English colonies to the north and the

Spanish colonies to the south.

29

Figure 1. Map of Colonial North America 1762

2.6 NATIVE AMERICAN INTERACTIONS

Certainly, this ongoing expansion of English colonies caused continual tension with

the Native American tribes already occupying the territory. The Powhatan

Confederacy, a union of tribes occupying the tidewater Virginia region, alternately

collaborated with and fought against the Jamestown colony from its founding until

1645, when the English forced the confederacy to surrender and cede land. In New

England, the Pequod War (1636–1638) was one of the first significant fights between

the colonies in Massachusetts and the local tribes, pitting the Pequod tribe against the

Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their allies, the

Narragansett tribe. The natives of New England continued attempting to hold back

English encroachments, making their last major effort when the Wampanoag,

Narragansett, and other allied tribes, led by Metacom (1638–1675)—called King

Philip by the English—attacked frontier towns. The so-called King Philip’s

War lasted from 1675 to 1676, when Metacom was captured and executed.

2.6.1 Slavery

The use of African slaves in the colonies also grew during this century. African slavery

had first been introduced to North America by the Spanish, especially after the

Catholic Church started cracking down on enslaving Native Americans. Slaves were

first brought to the English colony of Jamestown in 1619, to Connecticut in 1629, and

to Massachusetts in 1637. The widespread adoption of slavery languished initially as

it proved to be too expensive of an option for the struggling colonists. Indentured

servants were a more economical option, but as wages rose in England toward the end

of the century and dried up the supply of indentured servants, the use of enslaved

Africans grew in the colonies. Though slavery was most prevalent in the southern

colonies because of their greater focus on agriculture, the New England colonies were

the first to codify slavery (in Massachusetts in 1641) and the first to forbid it (in Rhode

30

Island in 1652). Even before America was a nation officially, America had a slavery

problem.

2.6.2 Puritan Philosophy and Influence

While the Puritans were only one of many groups settling the English colonies, they

were the one with the most cultural power. For that reason, it is necessarily to

understand who they were and how they saw the world to understand many of the

readings of this section. Overall, the Puritans were people who felt that the Church of

England, otherwise known as the Anglican Church, retained too much of the doctrine

and culture of the Catholic Church after the Protestant reformation. Their name

derived from their desire to purify the church of these Catholic aspects. There were

also non-separatist and separatist groups within the Puritans as a whole. The non-

separatists, like John Winthrop’s company, believed that the Puritans should remain

within the Anglican Church and correct it from within the system; the separatists,

represented by William Bradford’s Plymouth Company, felt the Church of England

was a lost cause from which the Puritans should separate themselves. The restoration

of King James I to the throne and the subsequent persecutions of dissenters made the

distinction moot. The only way to safely practice views that differed from the

orthodoxy was to put considerable distance between oneself and English authorities,

which both Winthrop’s and Bradford’s groups did.

The Puritans came to the new world with the goal of building a community constructed

around religious principles that could stand as a model—a “city upon a hill,” as

Winthrop put it—for a Christian community. The Puritans subscribed to Calvinist

theology, embracing Calvinism’s assumptions about humanity and its relationship to

God. Calvinism held that mankind was born depraved as a result of Adam’s original

sin. The presence of sin within the human soul meant that all of man’s impulses,

desires, and beliefs were tainted. The Calvinists believed that humanity was incapable

of achieving salvation on their own. Only God’s intervention could save people from

the damnation they deserved.

According to Calvinism, some of the faithful will be saved because of unconditional

election. Election, or God’s decision to replace a person’s original, depraved spirit

with a clean one capable of understanding and following God’s will, could not be

earned through good behaviour; it was unconditional in that it had nothing to do with

choices the person made or would make. It was also limited to a relatively small

number of people rather than all of humanity. A logical outgrowth of these points of

theology was the concept of predestination, which Calvin

described in the Institutes of the Christian Religion as “the eternal decree of God, by

which He hath determined in Himself what He would have to become of every

individual of mankind . . . . Eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation

for others.” Whatever one’s predestined fate was, one could do nothing to change it.

Yet, the Puritans held that one should always behave piously because one did not know

one’s destined outcome. Their society emphasized an attitude of indifference toward

material things—to “wean” themselves of their natural attraction to the worldly—as

well as to personal relationships, including one’s own family. This was not to

31

encourage hard-heartedness but rather to make spiritual things the main priority of

one’s life because the things of this world will not last; only the life of the spirit was

permanent for the Puritans.

Given their beliefs in the total fallibility of mankind, Puritans looked outside of

themselves for guidance in following God’s will. The first source of guidance was the

Bible, which the Puritans took to be the most direct expression of God’s will. The

Puritans, like other scholars of the Bible before them, believed in a typological

relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. However, the

Puritans did not confine typological interpretation to the Bible alone. Typology

assumes that all of human history and experience is part of a larger pattern of meanings

that communicate God’s will, so any event—as big as smallpox decimating the native

populations in greater numbers than the colonial populations or as small as a snake

failing to ingest a mouse as recorded in John Winthrop’s journal—could be considered

part of that pattern and signs of God’s approbation or disapprobation.

Despite vigorous policing of their theological borders, the Puritans’ power eventually

faded along with the membership of the denomination by the end of the seventeenth

century. Initially, the bar for membership in the church was quite high. Believing that

only the elect, or those who are destined to be saved, should be members of the church

and thereby be able to choose leaders for both the church and the state, prospective

members were required to testify of their conversion experience and be interrogated

by the other members of the church. It was a rigorous experience that more and more

people decided to forego, and eventually, church members in the colonies were

outnumbered by non-church members. To increase their ranks and hold on to political

power, Puritan churches adopted the Half-Way Covenant in 1662. Under this

covenant, the children of church members could become members without testifying

to their conversion. Despite this measure, the political power of the Puritan churches

continued to decline, though their cultural power continues to influence American

culture.

In the spirit of purification and a return to a simpler practice, many of the works in this

section demonstrate the Puritan aesthetic of plain style. In contrast to the more ornate

style of European writers like William Shakespeare, the Puritans and some other

Protestant denominations felt that the best style was that which lacked embellishment

or ornamentation and strove for simplicity and accessibility to the average person.

Plain-style writing typically eschewed classical allusions, preferring to use figurative

language originating either in the Bible or in everyday experience; was didactic

(intended to teach a lesson) rather than entertaining; and featured limited variation in

syntactical structures—though those structures might seem complex to a modern

reader. This aesthetic can also be seen in the narrow colour range of Puritan clothing

and the distinct lack of gilding, statuary, and altars in Puritan churches.

32

2.7 LET US SUM UP

American Literary history is a wide landscape of a lot of eventful incidents, the Puritan

philosophy and influence being one. This unit also talks about slavery and its influence

on literary writings. This unit also throws light on a few writers and novelists whose

works have greatly influenced the literary world on a whole like Earnest Hemingway,

Scott Fitzergald etc… This unit also throws light on the religious/Biblical

interpretation of the literary works that happened to take place in that century.

2.8 UNIT END QUESTIONS

1) Write short notes on:

a) Washington Irving

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

b) Earnest Hemingway

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

c) Slavery

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

d) The Brahmin Poets

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………

2) Elucidate about the women writers and women writings of this era.

33

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

3) How has Religion/Christianity influenced the literary American works?

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

4) Explain how and till what extent did Puritanism influence the American

Literature?

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

34

UNIT-3 19TH CENTURY UNIQUE AMERICAN STYLE

Structure

3.0 Objective

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Development of the 19th Century Literature

3.3 Twentieth Century and beyond

3.4 Introduction to Literature of the Revolution

3.5 Introduction to Literature of the new Nation

3.6 Introduction to the Romantic Era

3.6.1 Relation to Transcendentalism

3.6.2 Romantic Themes

3.7 The Romantic Period also saw an increase in female authors and readers

3.7.1 Prominent Romantic Writers

3.7.2 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

3.8 Self-Reliance (1841) by Ralph Waldo Emerson

3.9 The Penny Press

3.9.1 Background

3.9.2 Appealing to the Commoner

3.9.3 The Sun and the Herald

3.9.4 Abolition: A Thorny Issue

3.10 Author introduction-Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

3.11 Let us Sum up

3.12 Unit end questions

3.14 Suggested Readings

3.0 OBJECTIVE

After going through this unit, the learners will be able to have a clear knowledge about

the nascence of the 19th and 20th century literature. The literature of the 19th and 20th

century have put remarkable impact on the Literary History for over centuries together.

This unit also introduces the learners to the ‘Literature of Revolution’ that tells stories

of battles and wars that has been one of the major pre-requisite for many of the writers

who were famous for the literary writings in that period. This unit further covers a lot

of noteworthy topics like transcendentalism and Romanticism in that era.

3.1 INTRODUCTION

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, newspapers and pamphlets were

the publication method of choice because they could be quickly printed and were ideal

for circulating short political and news items at a moment of rapid change. Thomas

Paine’s Common Sense, first published anonymously in 1776, could be considered

America’s first best seller. As literacy rates soared in post-independence America and

35

the nation became more stable, the market for longer books increased. William Hill

Brown’s The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature, published in 1789,

is considered the first American novel. Brown’s epistolary novel, which is a novel

made up of letters of correspondence, warned about the dangers of seduction. Brown’s

novel shares some features with a novel published 2 years later, Charlotte Temple by

Susannah Rawson, another cautionary tale about a woman falling prey to seduction.

3.2 DEVELOPMENT OF THE 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE

Though women were often the subjects of popular novels, they were increasingly the

audience as well. Eighteenth-century Americans were influenced by Enlightenment

values, which maintained that a strong nation needed an educated, moral population.

Although the public realm of education, employment, and politics was dominated by

men, women had control over the domestic sphere and the education of the next

generation. The 18th-century idea that American women should educate their children

for the good of the emerging nation, sometimes called republican motherhood, helped

to legitimize, expand, and improve women’s education. Women’s literacy rates rose

sharply during this period, and more and more books were tailored to women’s

interests, as women tended to have more leisure time for reading. Authors such as

Frances Burney and Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about issues facing women of the

period, and openly criticized the fixed role of females in society.

Other 19th-century writers in the United States concentrated on developing a uniquely

American style, a mode of self-expression distinct from European models. James

Fennimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans (1826), wrote adventure

stories that celebrated the American frontier, championing a theme that would intrigue

U.S. writers for centuries to come. Poet Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass (1855),

a collection of poems that shocked readers with its frank sexuality and fresh use of

language. In contrast to most other English-language poets at the time, Whitman wrote

in free verse, mimicking the rhythms of actual speech in his poems. He was

purposefully informal; he valued everyday speech; he spoke openly about sexual

themes; and he was an important figure in establishing an American idiom that was

open, informal, and focused on the experiences of common people. Washington

Irving, author of the now-iconic short stories “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and “The

Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), helped establish satire and wit as important aspects

of the emerging American style.

Mark Twain famously used humor in his many works of journalism, travel writing,

and fiction. Twain’s characters’ voices are funny, irreverent, and full of off-the-wall

idioms and odd regional coinages. This passage, from the first chapter of The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), shows Twain’s use of distinctively

American speech patterns: “The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed

she would civilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering

how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t

stand it no longer I lit out. “Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry

36

Finn (1885; repr. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912). Twain was also one of the

first writers to use a then-newfangled invention—the typewriter.

Edgar Allan Poe is best known for writing macabre stories and poems like “The

Raven” (1845), “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843).

A master of the Gothic genre, Poe is also credited with writing the first detective story,

1841’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” (Some people also credit Poe with the

invention of the horror story and the science fiction story.) In this and other stories,

Poe established many of the classic features of detective stories, including Arthur

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales: a brilliant, crime-solving detective who works

outside the standard police system; the detective’s assistant or friend, who serves as

narrator; and an emphasis on analysis and solving a crime through reason. Poe had

such a strong effect on the mystery genre that the Mystery Writers of America annually

give out the Edgar Awards, named in honor of Poe.

At the end of the 1800s, American literature could be broadly categorized as reflecting

an interest in the natural landscape, preoccupation with questions of identity (both of

the individual and the nation), an interest in humor or satire, a pride in common speech,

and an interest in politics. An emerging interest in what we now call genre fiction was

increasing and would become a fully-fledged movement as the 20th century

progressed.

3.3 TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND

In 1900, L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a novel set in the

fantastical world of Oz. It became the best-selling children’s book for the next 2 years

and went on to spawn 13 sequels. Baum’s book is considered part of the so-called

golden age of children’s literature, which is considered to have begun with Lewis

Carroll’s Adventures of Alice in Wonderland (1865) and ended with A. A. Milne’s

Winnie-the-Pooh books (1924–1928). Along with children’s literature, other kinds

of genre fiction saw their birth or growth in the 20th century. Owen Wister’s The

Virginian (1902) and Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) established the

Western as a uniquely American genre that would influence the popular Wild West

films of the 1920s and beyond. Other genres including science fiction, horror, mystery,

and romance sprung up out of the late-19th and early-20th dime novels, named for

their cheap cost and known for their sensational, quickly written stories. The dime

novel gave way to the even-cheaper pulp magazines and books, inexpensive

publications named for the cheap pulp paper they were printed on. Pulp stories were

generally sensational and featured sordid tales of murder, prostitution, and gangster

violence; others told fantastical stories of aliens or monsters. The pulps were gleefully

low culture and were quite popular with readers. Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan, Zorro,

and The Shadow all made their first appearances as characters in early pulps. The

paperback revolution of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s gave genre stories a wider reach in a

more durable format.

37

While many 19th-century U.S. writers worked to create a distinctive American style,

some 20th-century writers aimed to debunk American myths. After World War II, the

United States’ emerged as a dominant world power. Some writers became preoccupied

with critiquing American society and government. Dissatisfied with the widespread

1950s ideals of conformity and homogeneity, Beat Generation authors wrote in a

freewheeling, informal style and proudly described their drug use and sexual exploits.

Touchstone works of the Beat Generation include Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other

Poems (1956), Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), and William S.

Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959). These books celebrated road trips, drug trips,

spiritual yearning, distrust of the mass media, and gleeful obscenity, and they helped

pave the way for the hippie movement of the 1960s.

After the end of the Cold War in 1991, American literature saw an upswing in books

that expressed the diversity of voices and experiences of late-20th-century America.

Jhumpa Lahiri and Amy Tan wrote about the immigrant experience; Sherman Alexie

and Louise Erdrich penned acclaimed novels about Native American life; and Toni

Morrison explored the political and historical dimensions of slavery and race in the

United States. Sometimes called multicultural literature, these and other books were

celebrated as a way to promote cross-cultural understanding by examining the

different value systems, histories, traditions, and speech patterns of people in America.

The 21st-century market has so far been dominated by several massively popular novel

franchises—such as Left Behind, Harry Potter, The Twilight Saga, and The Da

Vinci Code—that have collectively sold hundreds of millions of copies. These haven’t

only been popular as books; they’ve also spawned equally lucrative films and

merchandise tie-ins. Consumers who are so inclined can purchase Twilight Saga wall

decals, Harry Potter earrings, or Da Vinci Code board games. In some ways, such

novel franchises harken back to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 19th century, which was

a multiplatform success popular on the page, stage, and screen.

3.4 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE OF THE REVOLUTION

The American eighteenth century—often called the Revolutionary or Early National

period because it coincided with the establishment of the soon-to-be United States—

was one punctuated by warfare and nation building. The country’s first major

experience with warfare in the century came with the French and Indian War. Part of

the broader Seven Years War, this North American phase began in 1754 with

territorial disputes over the upper Ohio River Valley by traders and settlers of New

France and traders and setters of the Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies. The dispute

escalated when both territories established forts in the area and escalated again when

they called their respective mother countries into the argument. The fight between the

colonies was another extension of the historic enmity between France and England

and was also mirrored by enmities between different Native American tribes who

allied themselves to the side which best served their interests and desire to defeat rival

tribes. The North American phase of the war concluded in 1760. The larger conflict

38

was not settled until 1763, and France was compelled to cede Canada and lands east

of the Mississippi to England.

American colonies’ participation in the French and Indian War affected the American

Revolution in two ways: American militias gained valuable military experience that

was put to use in the later conflict, and American dissatisfaction with England erupted

once they started getting the bills from the war. The British government and public

felt that it was only right that the American colonists help pay the costs of conducting

the French and Indian War since it was on their behalf. The American colonists

disagreed since they had no representation in the government that decided what to tax

and how much. American resentment of and resistance to England peaked with the so-

called Intolerable Acts of 1774, which added the insult of usurped governance to the

injury of taxation. Among other things, the Intolerable Acts closed the port of Boston

until the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party was repaid. It also put the

Massachusetts government under direct British control and required American

colonists to quarter the British soldiers there to enforce that control. In response, all

the colonies with the exception of Georgia convened the First Continental Congress

and sent a Declaration of Rights and Grievances to England in late 1774. England’s

reply was to send troops to put down colonial resistance, and the Battles of Lexington

and Concord in April of 1775 initiated the American Revolutionary War.

Soon after those battles, the colonists set about establishing a government. The Second

Continental Congress met to draft the Articles of Confederation. Codifying a loose

connection among sovereign states with a limited central government, the Articles also

established the new name of the country and a bicameral federal legislature, one side

with representation proportionate to population and the other with equal

representation. Completed in 1777 and finally ratified in 1781, the Articles proved to

be problematic after peace with England was officially declared with the Treaty of

Paris in 1783. While the new Congress had the power to pass laws, it lacked the power

to enforce them, and it became clear within four years of nationhood that a new plan

was needed.

When the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met in 1787, they all agreed to

the rule of secrecy—no details of the new Constitution would be leaked until the draft

was complete and offered to the states for ratification. It was only when the draft was

released in 1789 that the national debate about its principles began in earnest. Two

major positions quickly coalesced. The Federalists, who included George Washington

and Benjamin Franklin, supported the Constitution as written, favouring a strong

central government composed of executive and judicial branches added to the

legislative branch and relatively weaker state governments. Anti-Federalists like

Patrick Henry were leery of the consolidation of power by a federal government

headed by a President, arguing that the Constitution replicated a system like the one

from which they had just separated. They wanted strong state governments because

they thought states would be more likely to protect individual freedoms. Anti-

federalists ultimately influenced the new form of the federal government by the

addition of the Bill of Rights, designed to protect individual rights from the power of

39

the federal government. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights containing ten

amendments were finally ratified by the last state in 1790.

3.5 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE OF THE NEW NATION

Post-Revolutionary war, there was a group of American artists, including the first

generation to really consider themselves professional writers, who were concerned

with creating an American cultural identity. However, much of American’s cultural

understanding was shaped by the art and literature from Europe, and by the assumption

that culture was for the socially elite. Thus, there was some controversy among artists

and writers about the ways to develop an American culture that was different, as well

as controversy within American in general regarding creating an American language

that was distinct from the English of Great Britain.

As this discussion evolved, there were calls for writers to create a distinctly American

style of language and writing. Many writers who we recognize as the great American

writers bought into this, working to create an American literature that was different in

significant ways from the European written works (which were still widely read and

circulated within the Colonies and later within America). Chief among these was

Washington Irving. At this time there is also a significant controversy revolving

around the reading of fiction. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, the novel became

widely popular during the late 18th and early 19th centuries

Irving, at the prodding of Sir Walter Scott (of England) took German Romantic

literature (specifically folk tales) and naturalized them to display a strong sense of

American place. These stories, both included in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey

Crayon, Gent, offer stories couched in American themes and American scenery. By

this time period, many American writers were focusing on things within their literature

that were uniquely American, including the wilderness, local landscapes, rural

villages, issues of slavery and images of native peoples. In many ways, the literature

of this time period celebrates America as a unique physically, culturally and

politically. Regionalism is a way that this is embraced by individual writers and artists,

and something that continues throughout America’s literature, extending even to

today.

3.6 INTRODUCTION TO THE ROMANTIC ERA

The European Romantic movement reached America during the early 19th century.

Like the Europeans, the American Romantics demonstrated a high level of moral

enthusiasm, commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self, an emphasis

on intuitive perception, and the assumption that the natural world was inherently good

while human society was filled with corruption.

Romanticism became popular in American politics, philosophy, and art. The

movement appealed to the revolutionary spirit of America as well as to those longing

40

to break free of the strict religious traditions of the early settlement period. The

Romantics rejected rationalism and religious intellect. It appealed especially to

opponents of Calvinism, a Protestant sect that believes the destiny of each individual

is preordained by God.

3.6.1 Relation to Transcendentalism

The Romantic Movement gave rise to New England transcendentalism, which

portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and the universe. The new

philosophy presented the individual with a more personal relationship with God.

Transcendentalism and Romanticism appealed to Americans in a similar fashion; both

privileged feeling over reason and individual freedom of expression over the restraints

of tradition and custom. Romanticism often involved a rapturous response to nature

and promised a new blossoming of American culture.

3.6.2 Romantic Themes

The Romantic Movement in America was widely popular and influenced American

writers such as James Fennimore Cooper and Washington Irving. Novels, short stories,

and poems replaced the sermons and manifestos of earlier days. Romantic literature

was personal and intense; it portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical

literature.

America’s preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for

Romantic writers, as many were delighted in free expression and emotion without fear

of ridicule and controversy. They also put more effort into the psychological

development of their characters, and the main characters typically displayed extremes

of sensitivity and excitement. The works of the Romantic Era also differed from

preceding works in that they spoke to a wider audience, partly reflecting the greater

distribution of books as costs came down and literacy rose during the period

3.7 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD ALSO SAW AN INCREASE IN FEMALE

AUTHORS AND READERS

3.7.1 Prominent Romantic Writers

Romantic poetry in the United States can be seen as early as 1818 with William Cullen

Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl”. American 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 Leather stocking Tales of

James Fennimore Cooper. In his popular novel Last of the Mohicans, Cooper

expressed romantic ideals about the relationship between men and nature. These works

had an emphasis on heroic simplicity and fervent landscape descriptions of an already-

exotic mythicized frontier peopled by “noble savages”. Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of the

macabre and his ballad 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).

41

Later transcendentalist writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo

Emerson still show elements of its influence and imagination, as does the romantic

realism of Walt Whitman. Emerson, a leading transcendentalist writer, was highly

influenced by romanticism, especially after meeting leading figures in the European

Romantic Movement in the 1830s. He is best known for his romantic-influenced

essays such as “Nature” (1836) and “Self-Reliance” (1841). The poetry of Emily

Dickinson—nearly unread in her own time—and Herman Melville’s novel Moby-

Dick can be taken as epitomes of American Romantic literature. By the 1880s,

however, psychological and social realism were competing with Romanticism in the

novel.

3.7.2 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essays, poems, and lectures, clarified and distilled such

quintessential American values as individualism, self-reliance, self-education, non-

conformity, and anti-institutionalism. He asserted the individual’s intuitive grasp of

immensity, divinity—or soul—in observable nature. He brought to human scale and

his own understanding the metaphysical Absolute united in the physical and in all life.

Author Introduction- Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essays, poems, and lectures,

clarified and distilled such quintessential American values as individualism, self-

reliance, self-education, non-conformity, and anti-institutionalism. He asserted the

individual’s intuitive grasp of immensity, divinity—or soul—in observable nature. He

brought to human scale and his own understanding the metaphysical Absolute united

in the physical and in all life.

This latter vision would inspire a group of his friends, who met at his home in Concord,

to develop a Transcendentalist philosophy influenced by German and British

Romanticism; higher criticism of the Bible, that is of the origins of the text; the

philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804); and German Idealism, a doctrine

considering the differences in appearances —as objects of human cognition—and

things in themselves. Rejecting John Locke’s view of the mind as a tabula rasa and

passive receptor, these Transcendentalists saw instead an interchange between the

individual mind and nature (nature as animated and inspirited), an interchange that

received and created a sense of the spirit, or the Over-soul. They rejected institutions

and dogma in favour of their own individuality and independence as better able to

maintain the inherent goodness in themselves and perception of goodness in the world

around them.

Emerson was early introduced to a spiritual life, particularly through his father

William Emerson (1769–1811), a Unitarian minister in Boston. He died in 1811, when

Emerson was eight. His mother, Ruth Haskins Emerson (1768–1853), kept boarding

houses to support her six children and see to their education. Emerson was educated

at the Boston Latin School in Concord and at Harvard College. From 1821 to 1825, he

taught at his brother William’s Boston School for Young Ladies then entered Harvard

Divinity School.

42

In 1829, Emerson was ordained as Unitarian minister of Boston’s Second Church; he

also married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died two years later from tuberculosis. Her

death caused Emerson great grief and may have propelled him in 1832 to resign from

his church, which he came to see as institutionalizing Christianity, thereby causing

church-goers to experience Christianity at a remove, so to speak. Emerson later

affirmed his views and broke permanently with the Unitarian church in his “Divinity

School Address” (1838), protesting the church’s having dogmatized and formalized

faith, morality, and God. Emerson thought the church turned God from a living spirit

and reality into a fixed convention, evoking only a historical Christianity—making

God seem a thing of the past and dead.

From 1832 to 1833, Emerson travelled in Europe where he met such influential writers

and thinkers as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle

(1795—1881). He and Carlyle remained life-long friends. When he returned to

America, Emerson settled a legal dispute over his wife’s legacy, through which he

ultimately acquired an annual income of 1,000 pounds. He began lecturing around

New England, married Lydia Jackson, and settled in Concord, at a house near ancestral

property. In 1836, he anonymously published—at his own expense—his first

book, Nature. It expressed his spiritual and transcendentalist views and drew to

Concord such like-minded friends as Bronson Alcott (1799— 1888), Margaret Fuller,

and Henry David Thoreau. They started The Dial (1840— 1844), a Transcendentalist

journal edited mainly by Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau. Staying true to his

individualist views, Emerson often visited but did not join the utopian experiment of

Brook Farm (1841–1847), a co-operative community whose residents included

Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Unitarian minister George Ripley (1802—1880).

Emerson did continue to lecture across America and abroad in England and Scotland.

He publicly condemned slavery in his “Emancipation of the Negroes in the British

West Indies” (1841) and later attacked the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He also

supported women’s suffrage and right to own property. Emerson published a number

of prose collections drawn from his lectures, including his first Essays (1841), Essays:

Second Series (1844), Representative Men (1850), and The Conduct of Life (1860).

In Poems (1847) and May-Day and Other Poems (1867), he also published poetry

notable for its metrical irregularity; poetry that, though disparaged by many

contemporary critics, inspired the long line of Walt Whitman. Indeed, Emerson

became one of Whitman’s earliest champions. Through his life and work, Emerson

promoted literary nationalism and a distinctly American Culture.

43

Figure 1. “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of

Art, New York Public Library, Likely Public Domain, No Known Restrictions.

3.8 SELF-RELIANCE (1841) BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

“Ne te quæsiveris extra.”

“Man is his own star; and the soul that canRender an honest and a perfect man,

Commands all light, all influence, all fate; nothing to him falls early or too late. Our

acts our angels are, or good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Cast the bantling on the rocks,

Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat;

Wintered with the hawk and fox,

Power and speed be hands and feet.

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original

and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the

subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought

they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in

your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction,

and it shall be the universal sense; [5] for the inmost in due time becomes the

outmost,—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last

Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to

Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not

what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam

of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the

44

firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it

is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come

back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting

lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with

good-humoured inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other

side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we

have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own

opinion from another.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy

is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse,

as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing

corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is

given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he

knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for

nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another

none. This sculpture in the memory is not without pre-established harmony. The eye

was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We

but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us

represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be

faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man

is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what

he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does

not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no

hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine

providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, and the connection

of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the

genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was

seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent

destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before

a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and

advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children,

babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind that distrust of a sentiment

because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose,

these [14] have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when

we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform

to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five [15] out of the adults who prattle

and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own

piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put

by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot

speak to you and me. Hark! In the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and

45

emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold,

then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a

lord to do or say ought to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A

boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible,

looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences

them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting,

silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences about

interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not

court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon

as he has once acted or spoken with éclat [18] he is a committed person, watched by the

sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account.

There is no Lethe or this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who [20] can

thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected,

unbiased, unbribable, unfrighten innocence, must always be formidable. He would

utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary,

would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. These are the voices

which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing

of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The

virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities

and creators, but names and customs.

Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal

palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be

goodness. [22] Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve

you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer

which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont

to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, what have I

to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? My friend

suggested: “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied: “They

do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the

Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names

very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution,

the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all

opposition, as if everything were titular and ephemeral but him. I am ashamed to think

how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I

ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity

wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful

cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbados, [25] why should

I not say to him: “Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and

modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this

incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at

46

home.” Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the

affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none. The

doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when

that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius

calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat

better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to

show because why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a

good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are

they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime,

the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There

is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I

will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education

at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now

stand; alms to sots; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I confess with

shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by

I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the

man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or

charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade.

Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,—as

invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to

expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it

should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering

and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask

primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his

actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those

actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I

have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need

for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally

arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between

greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think

they know what your duty is better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live

after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man

is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of

solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters

your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you

maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party

either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers,—

under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of

course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I

shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself? A man must consider

47

what a blind man’s-buff is this game of conformity? If I know your sect, I anticipate

your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one

of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he

say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of

examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that

he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side,—the permitted side, not as a man,

but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the

emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another

handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion.

This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but

false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two,

their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not

where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-

uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure,

and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying

experience in particular which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history;

I mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company

where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The

muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow

tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man

must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the

public street or in the friend’s parlour. If this aversion had its origin in contempt and

resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour

faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and

off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude

more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm

man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is

decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But

when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant

and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of

society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of mantle other terror that scares

us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the

eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we

are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse

of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public

place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of

wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory,

but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a

new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity; yet when the

devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should

clothe God with shape and colour. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand

of the harlot, and flee.

48

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and

philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He

may as well concern himself with the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now

in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again,

though it contradict everything you said to-day.—”Ah, so you shall be sure to be

misunderstood.”—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was

misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and

Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be

misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by

the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in

the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is

like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; —read it forward, backward, or across, it still

spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me

record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot

doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book

should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my

window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also.

We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they

communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or

vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and

natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike

they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of

thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of

a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the

average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other

genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have

already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be

firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before

as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and

you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue

work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the

field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and

victories behind. They shed a united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by

a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham’s voice, and

dignity into Washington’s port, and America into Adams’s eye. Honour is venerable

to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day

because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for

our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old

immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the

words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us

49

hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great

man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should

wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I

would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid

contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact

which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor

working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but

is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and

all events. Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some

other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the

whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances

indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces

and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;—and posterity seem to follow

his steps as a train of clients. A man Cæsar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman

Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that

he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened

shadow of one man; as Monarchism, of the hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther;

Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton

called “the height of Rome”; and all history resolves itself very easily into the

biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or

steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in

the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself

which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels

poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, a costly book, have an alien

and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, “Who are you,

Sir?” Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they

will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to

command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who

was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed

and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony

like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that

it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and

then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false.

Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John

and Edward in a small house and common day’s work; but the things of life are the

same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and

Scanderbeg, [64] and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?

As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and

renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be

transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

50

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of

nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due

from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the

king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make

his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money

but with honour, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which

they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the

right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the

reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a

universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-

baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of

beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear?

The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life,

which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition,

whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which

analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which

in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from

space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously

from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life

by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget

that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are

the lungs of that inspiration which gives man wisdom, and which cannot be denied

without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes

us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we

discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask

whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault.

Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the

voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his

involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them,

but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful

actions and acquisitions are but roving;—the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion,

command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the

statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not

distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that

thing. But perception is not whimsical, it is fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see

it after me, and in course of time, all mankind,—although it may chance that no one

has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to

interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one

thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light,

nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create

the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass

away,—means, teachers, texts, temples, fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future

51

into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,—one as much as

another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal

miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know

and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered

nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than

the oak which is its fullness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into

whom he has cast his ripened being whence, then, this worship of the past? The

centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space

are but physiological colours which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is

day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be

anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming Man is

timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but

quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose.

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones;

they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There

is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has

burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root

there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But

man postpones, or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with a reverted eye

laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to

foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the

present, above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God

himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or

Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are

like children who repeat by rote the sentences of granddames and tutors, and, as they

grow older, of the men and talents and characters they chance to see,—painfully

recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of

view which those had who uttered those saying, they understand them, and are willing

to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes.

If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is

for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the

memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice

shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn and now at last

the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that

we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now

nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in

yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the

footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any

name;—the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall

exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons

that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There

is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called

gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal

causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with

52

knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South

Sea,—long intervals of time, years, centuries,—are of no account. This which I think

and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my

present, and what is called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides

in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in

the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that

forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to shame,

confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas [71] equally aside. Why,

then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power

not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak

rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I

masters me, though he should not raise his finger? Round him I must revolve by the

gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do

not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and

permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities,

nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the

resolution of all into the ever-blessed One. Self-existence is the attribute of the

Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters

into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain.

Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war eloquence, personal weight, are

somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see

the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the

essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which

cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the

bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal

and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and

astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple

declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for

God is here within. [73] Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law

demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius

admonished to stay at home to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but

it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like

the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off,

how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary!

So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father,

or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All

men have my blood, and I have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or

folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be

mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems

53

to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child,

sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, “Come out

unto us.” But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to

annoy men, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through

my act. “What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.”

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist

our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage

and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by

speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to

the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say

to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after

appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truths. Be it known unto you that

henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but

proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the

chaste husband of one wife,—but these relations I must fill after a new and

unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break

myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the

happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my

tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before

the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble,

I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions.

If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will

seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and

mine, and all men’s however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this

sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as

mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. But so may you give

these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their

sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into

the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all

standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of

philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two

confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your

round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider

whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town,

cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex

standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It

denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge

its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this

law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives

of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart,

faithful his will, clear his sight that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law,

to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

54

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will

see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and

we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of

fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect

persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we

see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition

out of all proportion to their practical force, [80] and do lean and beg day and night

continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages,

our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour

soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young

merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges,

and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of

Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being

disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire

or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps

a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth,

in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these

city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not “studying a

profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance,

but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are

not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of

self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed

healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the

moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out

of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him,—and that teacher shall

restore the life of man to splendour, and make his name dear to all history. It is easy

to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations

of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living;

their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not

so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition

to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and

supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular

commodity,—anything less than all good,—is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of

the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and

jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means

to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in

nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He

will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed

it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard

throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher’s Bonduca, when

admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies,—

55

“His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours; our values are our best gods.”

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it

is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend

your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as

base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead

of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more

in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are

flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honours crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our

love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously

and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned

our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. “To the persevering

mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.”

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

They say with those foolish Israelites, “Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak

thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.” Everywhere I am hindered of meeting

God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely

of his brother’s, or his brother’s God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it

prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a

Betham, a Fourier, [94] it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! A new system.

In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches

and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent

in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting

on the elemental thought of duty, and man’s relation to the Highest. Such is

Calvinism, Quakerism, and Swedenborg’s. The pupil takes the same delight in

subordinating everything to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany

in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the pupil

will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master’s mind. But in all

unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a

speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the

remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them

hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any

right to see,—how you can see; “It must be somehow that you stole the light from

us.” They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, and indomitable, will break into

any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are

honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will

crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful,

million-orbed, million-coloured, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Traveling, whose idols are Italy,

England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made

England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where

they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The

soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties,

on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still; and

56

shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the

missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not

like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of

art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go

abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to

be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself,

and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and

mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of

places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and

lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last

wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting,

identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated

with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever

I go.

But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole

intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters

restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate;

and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign

taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our

faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever

they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an

application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be

observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty,

convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any,

and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done

by him considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people,

the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will

find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with

the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another,

you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none

but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has

exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the

master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or

Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part

he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do

that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There

is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of

Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, [112] or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different

from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven

57

tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you

can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs

of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and

thou shalt reproduce the Fore world again. . As our Religion, our Education, our Art

look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the

improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It

undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is

rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given,

something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast

between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil,

and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is

a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare

the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal

strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day

or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the

same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on

crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he

fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and

so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know

a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and

the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks

impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the

number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber;

whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in

establishments and forms, some vigour of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but

in Christendom where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk.

No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between

great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and

philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than

Plutarch’s heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race

progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave

no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be

his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each

period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved

machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Bering accomplished so much in

their fishing boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the

resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid

series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus found the New World in

an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and

machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before.

58

The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art

of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the

bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valour, and disencumbering it of all

aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, “without

abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the

Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand mill,

and bake his bread himself.”

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed

does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only

phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their

experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect

it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things

so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as

guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be

assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and

not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of

new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is

accidental,—came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not

having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because

no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by

necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait

the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but

perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. “Thy lot or portion of life,” said

the Caliph Ali, “is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” Our

dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The

political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with

each new uproar of announcement, the delegation from Essex! The Democrats from

New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! The young patriot feels himself stronger than

before by a new thousands of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon

conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! Will the god deign

to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts

off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He

is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing

of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the

upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is

weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving,

throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the

erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his

feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all,

as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause

and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained

59

the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political

victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend,

or some other favourable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are

preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

a. Introduction

During the middle of the nineteenth century, newspapers changed from being

mouthpieces of political parties to serving a broader public appeal. Many of the

changes that came with this shift brought about new features of journalism that remain

important today, such as the editorial page, personal interviews, business news, and

foreign-news correspondents.

Many newspapers in the early part of the nineteenth century were published by

political parties and served as political mouthpieces for the beliefs and candidates of

those parties. Over the next few decades, however, the influence of these

“administrative organs” began to fade away. Newspapers and their editors began to

show greater personal and editorial influence as they realized the broader appeal of

human-interest stories.

b. Birth of Editorial Comment

The editorial voice of each newspaper grew more distinct and important, and the

editorial page began to assume something of its modern form. The editorial signed

with a pseudonym gradually died, but unsigned editorial comment and leading articles

did not become established features until after 1814, when Nathan Hale made them

characteristic of the newly established Boston Daily Advertiser. From then on, these

features grew in importance until they became the most vital part of the greater papers.

c. News Becomes Widespread

Nearly every county and large town sponsored at least one weekly newspaper. Politics

were of major interest, with the editor-owner typically deeply involved in local party

organizations. However, the papers also contained local news, and presented literary

columns and book excerpts that catered to an emerging middle class and literate

audience. A typical rural newspaper provided its readers with a substantial source of

national and international news and political commentary, typically reprinted from

metropolitan newspapers. In addition, the major metropolitan dailies often prepared

weekly editions for circulation to the countryside.

Systems of more rapid news-gathering and distribution quickly appeared. The

telegraph, put to successful use during the Mexican-American War, led to numerous

far-reaching results in journalism. Its greatest effect was to decentralize the press by

rendering the inland papers (in such cities as Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, and New

Orleans) independent of those in Washington and New York. The news field was

immeasurably broadened; news style was improved, and the introduction of

interviews, with their dialogue and direct quotations, imparted papers with an ease and

freshness. There was a notable improvement in the reporting of business, markets, and

60

finance. A foreign-news service was developed that reached the highest standard yet

attained in American journalism in terms of intelligence and general excellence.

This idea of the newspaper for its own sake, the unprecedented aggressiveness in

news-gathering, and the blatant methods by which the cheap papers were popularized,

aroused the antagonism of the older papers, but created a competition that could not

be ignored. The growth of these newer papers meant the development of great staffs

of workers that exceeded in numbers anything dreamed of in the preceding period.

Indeed, the years between 1840 and 1860 saw the beginnings of the scope, complexity,

and excellence of our modern journalism.

3.9 THE PENNY PRESS

3.9.1 Background

In the early 1800s, newspapers had catered largely to the elite and took two forms:

mercantile sheets that were intended for the business community and contained ship

schedules, wholesale product prices, advertisements and some stale foreign news; and

political newspapers that were controlled by political parties or their editors as a means

of sharing their views with elite stakeholders. Journalists reported the party line and

editorialized in favor of party positions.

3.9.2 Appealing to the Commoner

Some editors believed in a public who would not buy a serious paper at any price; they

believed the common person had a vast and indiscriminate curiosity better satisfied

with gossip than discussion and with sensation rather than fact, and who could be

reached through their appetites and passions. To this end, the “penny press” papers,

which sold for one cent per copy, were introduced in the 1830s. Penny press

newspapers became an important form of popular entertainment in the mid-nineteenth

century, taking the form of cheap, tabloid-style papers. As the East Coast’s middle and

working classes grew, so did the new public’s desire for news, and penny papers

emerged as a cheap source that covered crime, tragedy, adventure, and gossip. They

depended much more on advertising than on high priced subscriptions, and they often

aimed their articles at broad public interests instead of at perceived upper-class tastes.

3.9.3 The Sun and the Herald

Benjamin Day, an important and innovative publisher of penny newspapers,

introduced a new type of sensationalism: a reliance on human-interest stories. He

emphasized common people as they were reflected in the political, educational, and

social life of the day. Day also introduced a new way of selling papers, known as the

London Plan, in which newsboys hawked their newspapers on the streets. Penny

papers hired reporters and correspondents to seek out and write the news, and the news

began to sound more journalistic than editorial. Reporters were assigned to beats and

were involved in the conduct of local interaction.

James Gordon Bennett’s newspaper The New York Herald added another dimension

to penny press papers that is now common in journalistic practice. Whereas

61

newspapers had generally relied on documents as sources, Bennett introduced the

practices of observation and interviewing to provide stories with more vivid details.

Bennett is known for redefining the concept of news, reorganizing the news business,

and introducing newspaper competition. The New York Herald was financially

independent of politicians because it had large numbers of advertisers.

3.9.4 Abolition: A Thorny Issue

In a period of widespread unrest and social change, many specialized forms of

journalism sprang up, focusing on religious, educational, agricultural, and commercial

themes. During this time, workingmen were questioning the justice of existing

economic systems and raising a new labour issues; Unitarianism and

transcendentalism were creating and expressing new spiritual values; temperance,

prohibition, and the political status of women were being discussed; and abolitionists

were growing more vocal, becoming the subject of controversy most critically related

to journalism. Some reform movements published their own newspapers, and

abolitionist papers in particular were met with a great deal of controversy as they

rallied against slavery.

The abolitionist press, which began with The Emancipator of 1820 and had its chief

representative in William Lloyd Garrison‘s Liberator, forced the slavery question

upon the newspapers, and a struggle for the freedom of the press ensued. Many

abolitionist papers were excluded from the mails, and their circulation was forcibly

prevented in the South. In Boston, New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and elsewhere,

editors were assaulted, and offices were attacked and destroyed.

3.10 AUTHOR INTRODUCTION-EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)

Born into an influential and socially prominent New England family in 1830, Emily

Dickinson benefited from a level of education and mobility that most of her

contemporaries, female and male, could not comprehend. The middle child of Edward

Dickinson and Emily Norcross, Dickinson, along with her older brother Austin and

younger sister Lavinia, received both an extensive formal education and the informal

education that came by way of countless visitors to the family homestead during

Edward Dickinson’s political career. Contrary to popular depictions of her life,

Dickinson did travel outside of Amherst but ultimately chose to remain at home in the

close company of family and friends. An intensely private person, Dickinson exerted

almost singular control over the distribution of her poetry during her lifetime. That

control, coupled with early portrayals of her as reclusive, has led many readers to

assume that Dickinson was a fragile and timid figure whose formal, mysterious,

concise, and clever poetry revealed the mind of a writer trapped in the rigid gender

confines of the nineteenth century. More recent scholarship demonstrates not only the

fallacy of Dickinson’s depiction as the ghostly “Belle of Amherst,” but also reveals

the technical complexity of her poetry that predates the Modernism of T. S. Eliot, Ezra

Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore by almost three- quarters of a

century. In the selections that follow, Dickinson’s poetry displays both her technical

62

proficiency and her embrace of techniques that were new to the nineteenth century.

Like her contemporary Walt Whitman, Dickinson used poetry to show her readers

familiar landscapes from a fresh perspective.

Figure 1. Emily Dickinson

The selections that follow, from Dickinson’s most prolific years (1861-1865),

illustrate the poet’s mastery of the lyric—a short poem that often expresses a single

theme such as the speaker’s mood or feeling. “I taste a liquor never brewed –”…

celebrates the poet’s relationship to the natural world in both its wordplay (note the

use of liquor in line one to indicate both an alcoholic beverage in the first stanza and

a rich nectar in the third) and its natural imagery. Here, as in many of her poems,

Dickinson’s vibrant language demonstrates a vital spark in contrast to her reclusive

image. . . . “The Soul selects her own Society –,” shows Dickinson using well-known

images of power and authority to celebrate the independence of the soul in the face of

expectations. In both of these first two poems, readers will note the celebrations of the

individual will that engages fully with life without becoming either intoxicated or

enslaved. . . . “Because I could not stop for Death –,” one of the most famous poems

in the Dickinson canon, forms an important bookend to “The Soul” in that both poems

show Dickinson’s precise control over the speaker’s relationship to not only the

natural world but also the divine. While death cannot be avoided, neither is it to be

feared; the speaker of this poem reminds readers that the omnipresence of death does

not mean that death is immanent. This idea of death as always present and potential

comes full circle in . . . “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –.” Here Dickinson plays

with our preconceptions not only of death, but also of energy which appears always to

be waiting for someone to unleash it. Considered carefully, these four poems

demonstrate the range of Dickinson’s reach as a poet. In these lyrics, mortality and

63

desire combine in precise lyrics that awaken both our imagination and our awareness

of the natural world.

Figure 2. Wild Nights, Manuscript

Figure 3. “Emily Dickinson,” Unknown Author of Derivative Work, Wikimedia,

Public Domain.

64

3.11 LET US SUM UP

This unit deals with the time when a good amount of major changes took place in the

history of American Literature; secularism, self-reliance and also includes some major

revolutionary changes when the country’s first major experience with warfare in the

century came with the French and Indian War. This unit also tells about the 21st

century American Literature and how it had become famous amidst the general

audience. The Twilight Saga, The Harry Potter series and the Paulo Coelho series are

a few remarkable works that has made their prominent place in the literary world. This

unit also throws light on ‘The Penny Press’ that became famous in that period at the

New York City.

3.12 UNIT END QUESTIONS

1. Who was Emily Dickinson? Highlight few of her noteworthy works.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

2. Explain “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

3. Write a brief note on the female authors of that time.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

65

4. How did Literature beyond 20th Century look like? Write some famous works of

the post 20th century literature.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

.

3.13 SUGGESTED READINGS (For Unit-2 and Unit- 3)

Image Credits:

“Emily Dickinson,” Unknown Author of Derivative Work, Wikimedia, Public

Domain.

“Wild Nights, Manuscript,” Emily Dickinson, Wikimedia

After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes (ca.1858-1865) By Emily

Dickinson

Becoming America, Wendy Kurant, ed., CC-BY-SA

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/after-great-pain-a-formal-feeling-

comes-ca-1858-1865-emily-dickinson/n

Becoming America, Wendy Kurant, ed., CC-BY-SA

https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/Home/ViewSubject?catid=13 , accessed on 15/01/2021.

https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/Home/ViewSubject?catid=13

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/test-3/

https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/culture-and-media/s06-02-books-and-the-

development-of-u.html

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/introduction-to-literature-of-the-

new-nation/

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/introduction-to-the-romantic-era/

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/author-introduction-ralph-waldo-

emerson-1803-1882/

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/self-reliance-ralph-waldo-

emerson/

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/introduction-to-nineteenth-

century-literature-of-reform/

66

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/after-great-pain-a-formal-feeling-

comes-ca-1858-1865-emily-dickinson/n

https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/Home/ViewSubject?catid=13 paper 05, module 01, e-text

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/introduction-to-literature-of-the-

new-nation/

Boundless US History, Lumen Learning, CC-BY

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/author-introduction-ralph-waldo-

emerson-1803-1882/

Becoming America, Wendy Kurant, ed., CC-BY-SA

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/self-reliance-ralph-waldo-

emerson/

Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Public Domain

Nineteenth Century Newspapers and Literature of Reform

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/introduction-to-nineteenth-

century-literature-of-reform/

Boundless US History, Lumen Learning, CC-BY-SA

Poems by Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman, Public Domain

Becoming America, Wendy Kurant, ed., CC-BY-SA

Becoming America, Wendy Kurant, ed., CC-BY-SA

https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/Home/ViewSubject?catid=13

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/test-3/

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/chapter/introduction-to-the-romantic-era/