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)

Dorothy Noyes

Making a Mountain out of a Molehill… In a Good Way

          The American Renaissance: the name alone is rich with expectations. If history has taught us anything, a renaissance implies a meeting and flourishing of minds, the rapid spread of new ideas and technologies, and a transformation of the way a group of people functions. But what is representative of a renaissance in the world of literature? Is it a mass movement of change, a stylistic approach shared by all the authors of that time period? I don’t think so. Upon reading the assigned texts, something very clear began to emerge, something that united and defined the American Renaissance, made it a movement instead of simply an ideal. The American Renaissance was a time of change, certainly, but it also introduced and expanded on something seemingly simple that changed the world of literature, taking the ordinary and, through the eyes and words of the author, making it extraordinary.

          Romanticism is the blanket term in the American Renaissance that allows the author to represent the norm as something else entirely, to make it beautiful, make it profound. When thinking of the perfect example of the Romantic author, one who overall embodies the ideals of this time period and movement, Walt Whitman comes to mind. Whitman took what he saw around him and his experiences in day-to-day life and painted a picture of the ordinary scene or idea with his “brush” of Romanticism. Simple ideas, everyday acts became beautiful, or mesmerizing or even tragic. His poem, “There Was a Child Went Forth” is a perfect example of this. A child’s walk to school is transformative, as he takes into himself everything he passes. Children walk to school every day, but now we the readers, can glance out of our car windows as we pass these children slumping under the weight of their backpacks as they trudge to school and see something more. We are changed.

          Although Romanticism is the overall term that describes this experience and movement, there are many different aspects of this which exhibit the numerous ways that the American Renaissance changed the way people perceived their daily surroundings and experiences. Among these, the idea of the transcendent stands out. Transcendentalism means to literally rise above and beyond, which is a key factor in the way the Romantics altered the lenses through which their readers saw the world. Through nature especially, readers could rise up and be close to something larger than themselves, whether that be their own personal gods or just more enlightened understanding. Ralph Waldo Emerson is the perfect example in our reading that illustrates this aspect. He takes the readers outside of themselves through his works, and makes them view the world around them, the same woods that have always bordered their backyards, in a way they never had before.

          The gothic aspect of literature in the American Renaissance takes the same ideas, but just spins them in a different and maybe darker way. The gothic takes what the reader is surrounded by in the world, and changes it into something more complex than it was before. The American Renaissance authors, such as Irving and Poe, observed what surrounded everyone and transformed whatever landscape or setting they could into something desolate and unnerving. The gothic is the part of Romanticism that digs into our psyches and finds the part that wants to be afraid. They take simple things, simple actions and make them into what scares us the most. No longer does the howling of a wolf in the woods represent a simple animal call, it now embodies everything we fear: loneliness, the unknown. The authors of this period who utilize the gothic in their writing add to this American Renaissance trend of changing our everyday world. They use what is there and make it bigger and better. Scarier maybe, but undeniably better.

          While the authors of this period changed what readers saw all around them, they also changed the way people communed with their world. The idea of correspondence, which features heavily in the Romantic literature of the American Renaissance, deals with the relationship between the self and the outside world. In these works, the world and the individual are in a constant state of interaction. When the authors of this period used correspondence they opened up a whole new understanding. People were no longer isolated inside of their own heads, their thoughts were not only weighing on them. Correspondence made a web of what was formerly a single string. This allowed readers to see not only outside of the character they were reading about, but outside of themselves.

          All of these aspects of the American Renaissance and Romantic literature were incredibly innovative and obviously changed a generation while influencing many more to come. Through the works of this period; the use of the gothic, sublime, correspondence, the field of literature was inalterably improved. Readers would no longer have to imagine the fantastical; they could simply look outside their own windows and see it. The authors of the American Renaissance made the human experience itself unique, made people see their world in a new perspective, and ultimately changed the world of American literature into something extraordinary.