LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Answers to Question B3

Amber Criswell

An Intimate History

There is something quite amazing about reading a historical text. It engages you in the period with which it was written, in a way that a textbook cannot achieve. It is also a reminder that these people, who were long gone before your own time, once existed together in the same time period, and each one affected the other’s lives. In a way, it is humbling when you stumble upon this realization and it begins to make history intimate. As a student, you no longer affiliate historical figures with rigid dates of birth and death, but instead remember facts, like Hawthorne and Lincoln existed at the same time together, because you happened to read about an encounter between the two great minds! It is fascinating and a wonderful treat to be able to connect two figures in that way. Even more so, as a reader you begin to pick up upon the subtleties in-between the texts, and begin to experience what others may have experienced at the time the text was taken place. An example is reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and then finding out that Lincoln commented that she was the “little lady that started this big war.” It is moments when things of that sort happen and merge the two giants of literature and history together to create a truly human moment; it is connection from the reader to the historical figure.

The term American Renaissance implies a “new birth” of American literature and spirit, and is an excellent time to study the texts of the great historical and literary figures. The nation was booming with great minds and ideas and as an effect, many of these great people were intertwined. It is eye-opening to read the accounts of Abraham Lincoln by authors such as Nathanial Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Douglass. Both Douglass and Emerson’s accounts were delivered after Lincoln’s death, and begins to shed light on the romanticism that was developing around Lincoln’s untimely death and grand earthly actions. Douglass sums up the actions as this:

“Abraham Lincoln saved for you [white citizens] a country, he delivered us [former slaves] from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.”

This shed light on the post-Civil War view of Lincoln from the Negro perspective. This was not an aspect I had considered before, as I am in the category of “white citizen” and do not automatically relate to the plight of the Negro ex-slave.

          Hawthorne, on the other hand, wrote an account of Lincoln that occurred during his lifetime. While it does not carry this same weight of Frederick Douglass’s description and reflection, it does give the reader a small glimpse into what feels like a living history. Hawthorne’s description of Lincoln is as follows:

“…in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure, of an exaggerated Yankee port and demeanor, whom (as being about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreeable) it was impossible not to recognize as Uncle Abe.”

It is not common to hear such seemingly trivial facts about Lincoln’s physical description, but it adds a very realistic depth to his personal. Lincoln is an American hero of mythic proportions, but he does fit into any type of heroic archetype. Hawthorne’s description of Lincoln is extremely humanizing, and is one of those moments that you as a reader feel you gained an insight into Lincoln had not existed before.

          Frederick Douglass, who developed my sense of the myth that evolved around Lincoln after his death, gave greater insight into the life of slave. It is rare to have a book that is the direct experience of an ex-slave, completely from their perspective. Douglass was a well educated man and was the voice of the slave during this period, as their voices were never given the chance to develop. While Douglass wrote “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” as a cause for the abolition movement, it is also starkly objective. There are few times when Douglass veers into elements of Romanticism, expect for the overall tone of a desire for freedom. But, his actual plot and story-telling is perfectly executed to be studied as a historical text with much information to be discovered.

          Within the contents of the slave narrative, Douglass arrives at many conclusions about race, class, American sentiment, true struggle, and pain. His story developed my vision on the struggle of the slave during this time period, and gave me a perspective that had long been lost to both time and my own race. The humanistic aspect of Douglass’s narrative cannot be overlooked because the atrocities of slavery can still manifest itself in a modern culture. In this way, I connected the slave narrative of Douglass into the immediate future. During the American Renaissance course, it was my third time reading the text, and every time there is something new to discover and understand about a time period that seems so distant.

          The time period that exists around literature is so greatly influential, and that is one of the strengths of the American Renaissance. That period in literature marked a time when it was appropriate to create new rules and understandings about literature, as times were changing rapidly. As previously discussed, it was no longer satisfactory to just readily accept the rules of the past, whether is politically, religiously, or morally. Authors surfaced, like Frederick Douglass, who as an ex-slave, would not have been able to produce literature of that magnitude even twenty years prior. Even more so, these authors and figures were accepted and used during their time period to cause a cultural revolution, not left aside to be studied or discovered later. This is one of the greatest insights that can be gained from studying the literature of the American Renaissance time period. It is uncommon that a time in history is so willingly progressive and the best way to understand that is to immerse yourself within the world of these figures, and the most effective way is to study the same literature they were at the time.