LITR 4328: American Renaissance

Model Assignments Final Exam Essays 2016 assignment Sample answers for A1. Overall Learning

Kimberly Hall

December 7, 2016

Reflections on the American Renaissance

          First things first: I am not a Literature major. I am a psychology student, and a literature enthusiast. Before this course, most of my knowledge of Romanticism was related to the European traditions, ranging from my mild high school obsession with Mary Shelley to my current fixation on Victor Hugo, and my exposure to American Romanticism was mostly limited to Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. So, coming into a class on the American Renaissance, I was prepared to be the most under-prepared person in the room.

Fortunately, I less unprepared that I had expected. Still, I learned an exceptional amount about the American Renaissance as a period. What stands out to me the most is how heavily the course integrated historical context with trends in literature–which is where I found myself learning the most throughout the semester.

Take, for instance, the social movements during this time period. This was a period full of sociopolitical unrest, spurring the rise of the early women’s rights movement and abolitionist movement. As explained in my research journal, “Language of the Revolution”, the rhetoric used in both of these reflects that of Transcendental writers, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, making use of Transcendental themes such as ascendance, unity, and adhering to the laws of Nature instead of the laws of men. Much of the popular literature of the time also spearheaded these movements, like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Frederick Douglass’s autobiography. These works helped guide our society to where it is today.

Historical context wasn’t just important for piecing together content–as I learned throughout the course, it also had a great impact on writing style. As a rebellion against the Enlightenment period directly beforehand, Romantic writers tended towards extremely grandiose and emotive language, with the gothic writers using it to express their greatest fears, and Transcendentalist writers using it to express their greatest hopes. This trend in elevated language lasted up until the Civil War, after which realism started to take hold–the aftermath of war was not as glorious or transcendent as Romantic literature would have lead readers to believe. The tragedies of the war and struggles of Reconstruction were thus reflected in literature which focused more on everyday realities and hardships than heroic quests, like Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills. Poetry, too, moved from the emotive, theatrical style of Poe to the detailed cataloguing and speech-like cadence of Walt Whitman, in a direct reflection of the changing environment.

I recognize that historical context relating to literature may not seem particularly relevant to a psychology student. However, how people write often directly reflects how people think, which is extremely relevant to psychology students. (As the saying goes, books frequently reveal more about their authors than their characters.) Studying in this course, learning in more detail about how writing style reflects history and culture, has given me greater tools for psychological analysis of people, both as characters in my favorite novels and in the real world.