LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2012 Student Midterm Samples #1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning American Renaissance or American Romantic literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

Velma Laborde

The American Renaissance: A Time in Motion

          Literature of The American Renaissance is significant in many ways.  It is literature that was written during a historic time period in America that ranges from the 1820s through the 1860s, and in some definitions through 1900.  It is representative of a unique time in history when America was struggling with its past, present, and future.  Included are writings not only from traditional white male authors, but works written by women, African Americans and about Native Americans.  Also known as "a cultural flowering," the literature of the American Renaissance embraced America's past struggles, cultural changes of the time, and the possible future, all at once in a new and exciting manner.  Termed the "Romantic" period, its literature not only reflects this romantic period in history, but a romantic style in the writing.  The romantic style includes many different terms that range from the dark gothic and sublime to the sentimental and utopian.  The range of the "romantic" style mirrored the range of issues America was facing.  There were changes in thinking as well as changes in physical lifestyles, and alongside all of this were changes in literary style.   It was a time of transformation and re-birth for Americans and for American Literature where a unique reflection on the past collided with a wonder for the future.

          To understand the American Renaissance it is important to first understand America during that time.  This period falls after the American Revolution but right before the civil war which began in 1861.  During this time important events were taking place in America.  Abolition was on the forefront and the women's movement was beginning.  People began moving from the country and into growing cities.  This city growth also spurred technological growth and with it the expansion of publishing capabilities giving literature a wider audience.  Other cultural movements in things such as religion, spiritualism, and transcendentalism (among many) contributed to an even greater time of change, reflection, questioning and future pondering.  Alongside the cultural and historic significance of the time, was the rise of the literary romantic style contributing to the greatness of the American Renaissance.

          The romantic style encompasses an extremely broad range of terms, with different authors using the same term in very different ways.  Some of the terms used in romanticism include romance, sublime, gothic, sentimentalism, and the use of correspondence.  The term romance can further include things like nostalgia, utopian thought and transcendentalism.  More importantly, most of the romantic terms and styles indicate a longing or desire for something more or beyond.  Sometimes they are dark, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes both, but generally they bring forth an emotion towards something.  Dr. White describes the "motion" of romance in his notes as having an "inner-outer orientation."  This "motion" of romance is the center for literature from the American Renaissance and is the starting point for many of the associated romantic terms.

          Examples of romanticism incorporating the inner-outer motion are seen in Ralph Waldo Emerson's Selections from Nature.  In paragraph 17 he says, "…every natural process is a version of a moral sentence.  The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference."  Nature is the center and morality "radiates" from it, moving from the inner to the outer.  This motion is transcending what is real; the natural process.  It moves outward to something beyond that is intangible; moral law.  In Walt Whitman's poem, There Was a Child Went Forth, he says, "And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years."  The relationship between the child and the "objects" or nature, are romanticized by their motion from "the day" to "many years or stretching cycles of years."  The movement forward begins with a single day and moves to an infinite number of years, indicating an uncountable amount of time.  Similar to Emerson, Whitman describes the relationship between a person and nature as transcendent and uses the same inner-outer motion to do so.

          The motion of romance is also seen in other ways.  In Edgar Allen Poe's Ligeia, this motion is expressed by his use of correspondence.  In paragraph 22 he is describing hearing Rowena on her deathbed and says, "when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery.  - I felt it had come from the bed of ebony - the bed of death."  Then later says, "I had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened in me."  The awakening of the dead body of Rowena corresponds to the awakening of his soul.  The movement is from the body, a tangible, to the soul, an intangible.  Later, in paragraph 24, the speaker is listening for the sounds of Rowena being alive and says, "I listened - in extremity of horror."  Here the motion is felt by the stillness of listening and the projection of moving to the "extremity" of something, or to its most extreme boundary, as far as can be imagined.  With Poe, his examples of movement are also combined with his style of gothic and sublime.  His "bed of ebony" as a "bed of death" is an example of the gothic.  His use of "extremity of horror" is an example of sublime.

          The gothic and sublime are also used in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle.  In paragraph 49 a scene near the woods is described as "On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it."  This description is both gothic and sublime.  The gothic is the "matted" trees and their shadows.  The sublime is found in the "cavernous" gloom.  Yet, the scene also emits a feeling of motion.  The vines in the tree "threw" their shadows over the brook.  Not only are the shadows thrown over the brook, but they are "cavernous" giving the feeling that they are endless.  The sublime as something grand, large or extending generally gives a feeling of movement outward or forward.  Sometimes movement is not necessarily forward, but a change.

          Change can be scary, like sublime, yet still sentimental.  In Rip Van Winkle, Rip awakens in paragraph 44 and says, "I'm not myself - I'm somebody else" and "everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!"  In this example, the physical change that Rip has gone through is symbolic of the changes everyone goes through as they grow older.  It also symbolizes the way America has changed.  This example of is sublime because it is an extreme change that Rip has experienced and the whole experience is a bit creepy.  It is also sentimental because it is representing the idea that everything changes and not always for the better.  There is something scary about the way things change and become unrecognizable, and it gives a sentimental sense of longing for what once was.  A further example of sentimental is found in Maria Susanna Cummins, The Lamplighter.  In paragraph 1.28, Gerty's love for the kitten is described:  "How much she came to love that kitten no words can tell" and "But there were in her soul fountains of warm affection, a depth of tenderness never yet called out."  This paragraph contains both the sublime and the sentimental.  The sublime is the ever-reaching devotion that Gerty has for the kitten that cannot even be described.  It is beyond description.  Yet, she also loves the kitten with a sort of desperation that further lends itself to the sublime.  This same desperation is also sentimental, a longing for something good. 

          Sentimentalism along with sublime, gothic and transcendentalism are all examples of some of the literary terms used during the American Renaissance to represent not only romanticism, but what romanticism meant during that time period.  It was a time of historic and cultural change that was scary and beautiful.  It was sublime.  America was moving forward and changing and those changes are reflected in the literature of the time in a way that was new and fresh.  America and literature were sentimental to the past yet trying to look forward to the way things could possibly be.  It was a special time in America's history that produced a special time in Literature.