LITR 4328: American Renaissance

Model Assignments Final Exam Essays 2018 (final exam assignment) Sample answers for A1. learning about American Renaissance

Breanna Runnels

American Renaissance as a Historical Base

          When I first came into this class, I saw that the pieces were from about 1820 to the 1860’s and the only thing that I could thing was, “God… how am I going to get through this language and theses boring old pieces?” It was not long, though, until I realized that these pieces were the ones that shaped the American literature that we know today and is even considered the greatest era for American Literature. The era’s surrounding culture and history allowed this period to become significant and nothing like America had ever experienced before as Americans were finally taking traditional European styles and making them their own.

          My biggest piece of learning that I found through the American Renaissance is that history is the biggest role in literature. Many of these pieces would have never survived without the American revolution and its unsolved issues that remained. This was also the time that readership and literacy increased with the increase of big-scale publishing, making literacy necessary for leisure, social engagement, and power in society. All of this being said, this concept was very important to me as a literature major and a one-day teacher of literature as it is this era that allowed my passion to become a career. Also, since “renaissance” generally means “a cultural flowering”, it is only appropriate that the American Renaissance brought along the romantic period and its English influenced pieces.

Throughout this class, I’ve learned that romanticism is a term that really is a base for many other terms. It includes things like gothic, transcendentalism, sublime, sentimental, romance, and many more. This “umbrella term” allows for many stylistic themes and values to meet under it and come together to interact as one movement. It is much more than what the modern mind has made anything with the world romance within it think that it is. My initial thoughts when I was told that we were reading “romantic” pieces were that it was going to be feel good, sappy, love stories like the romantic genre that known today. I was shocked to find that romanticism is more about journeys and trials and finding your way in the world. It is not exactly like the mushy romance we idolize now, but it does have some of the same elements. My idea of romanticism completely redeveloped and came to include so much more than I had considered part of this concept. I would have never considered gothic romantic, as it is dark and scary – but I can now see how it has the correct criteria and ideas to be part of this literary style.

          Reflecting back on the course, I found that one of my favorite concepts was the gothic. I wrote about women’s influence on and within gothic literature for my research essay and was very interested in this topic throughout the entire course. I used a European piece, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, as a comparison with the American romantic gothic writer, Emily Dickinson. It is easy to see that these two are quite similar in their writing styles though their pieces were written at different times. Because the American renaissance came after the European one (obviously), It was necessary for American authors to make their own version of these European themes and ideas throughout. The common gothic theme in European writing was the “creepy castle” but since America did not have anything exceedingly old at this time, we used our own version of this and made the “creepy woods” our common theme for gothic writings.

          This course also taught me to understand and appreciate the things that minorities went through at this time. In Life in the Iron-Mills by The Korl Woman, we see a story about marginalized or exploited people – the iron mill workers. At this time, these people were considered less than. This piece reminded me of the many historical pieces that I read in high school and even into history 1301 in college. This piece brought understanding and insight into the people actually within these mills, rather than statistics and historical findings on them. I find that this is the most appropriate reason for needing literature. It is not always about the history of a problem or an era, it is more about understanding those that went through it and understanding the things that they went through. This is much like the earlier reading, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. These pieces are quite alike, in their use of dialect, explanation of the main character’s personal struggles in correlation to the struggles that they face from the society and its standards around them. Though the problems they are facing are different, they are still alike. We can find many writings similar to these that deal with things like homophobia, women’s rights, or even still – the rights of people of color.

          This course has taught me many ways to recognize and appreciate the insight of authors and poets as a way to explore the history of a time and focus on the social and personal struggles that the people were facing. It is easy to see that I will most likely teach one or many of these pieces in the future, as they have become the classics that we love.