LITR 4232 American Renaissance

Sample Midterm Answers 2004

Assignment: The following two questions combined the two options (Option X: Literary / Formal & Option Z: Cultural Historical)

Throughout this half of the course, the readings have seemed to ring out a message of the strength of the American People in times of trial or difficulty. This idea has given a new impact on the importance of Literature during a very important historical era as well as speaking a great deal of the strength the American people have during today’s times of trial. This strength that rings so true is not physical strength but mental strength that allows Americans to overcome physical set backs. In other words, the strength shown provides a power of mind over body. This idea is not only seen in the historical realms of Literature but in the romantic realms as well. Transcendence, a very romantic element, rings true to the idea of an inner spirit or mind being more powerful or strengthening than physical strength alone.

One such example of this power is seen in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s, Uncle Toms Cabin. The first of these characters to show the element of mind or will power over physical strength is Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom faces trials of freedom from bondage throughout the story and faces a great deal of physical demand, at times almost bringing him to his death, but he is able to use his mind power to keep a clear image of his ultimate goal, “ –only opened the gate of the kingdom for me; that’s all! … A sudden sinking fell upon him; he closed his eyes; and that mysterious and sublime change passed over his face”. (pg2516) Here Uncle Tom focus’s not on his physical pain, but on the destination of heaven, a destination that Tom has placed all his spiritual power towards transcending to.

The second character developing this power in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is Eliza.  Eliza is a younger mother who runs away from her slave life to reach the goal of freedom and reunion with her family. Eliza’s power of mind over body is portrayed in the following passage, “Yes, sure! Said the mother, in a voice that startled herself; for it seemed to her to come from a spirit within, that was no part of her;… Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.” (pg. 2486) In this passage, Stowe uses the romantic elements of language to display the strength felt by this mother when overcoming her bondage. A quote from a 2003 midterm sums up the use of romantic element to bring light to this cultural idea nicely, “Her style also has elements of romance as her characters emerge with a compelling personal force, sweeping them in their quest for either freedom through the salvation of Christ, as in Tom's case, or freedom from the evils of slavery as in Eliza's flight with her child.”

This idea of romantic language being used by an author to prove mind power being used to overcome bondage of the physical body can be seen again in the work of Henry David Thoreau. In Resistance to Civil Government, Thoreau overcomes the power that the government has over a man’s body but not his mind by saying, “I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.” (pg1681) Thoreau is speaking of being thrown in jail a bondage in which he is able to overlook because they can never lock up a mans spirit or mind.

Thoreau, Uncle Tom, and Eliza all share a connection in that the romantic elements of freedom, nature, and religion allow them to overcome the physical holds by using the unattainable strength of their own mind to look towards a moment of transcendence or release into nature. The message of the American People’s mental and spiritual strength  rings out in all three of these examples and gives a sign of order and hope for difficulty and trials that may face our culture in the future. [AC]

The American Renaissance moment is basically an American Romance moment. In America however the Romance movement had to take on a new life of its own, separate from its European counterpart. It was inevitable this would happen in one respect because it was placed in a new environment, the more open landscape and untouched land of America, rather than the more historical and developed European landscape. When speaking about certain elements of the Romance movement, such as the gothic and sublime, it becomes noticeable they take on a new shape. Where the gothic of European descent was often placed in the “haunted house,” in America the forest and other such confining wilderness become the setting of the Gothic.

Consider "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving. First let us look at the setting and then more textual elements. The haunting story is set in a “valley” know as Sleep Hollow; it is not a “plane”, or a “mountain side”, nor a “prairie”, it is a “valley” the constricting ideal that the valley represents is typical of the gothic style. This constricting nature of the setting allows for it to be haunted. Something must be confiding to contain something such as a “witching influence of the air,” which this valley does (2095). You can see Irving has replaced the “haunted house” with a haunted wilderness. Yet Irving takes this haunting to even more constricting levels, as the character Ichabod Crane travels into the haunted forest where all the fun stuff really begins to happen.

Claire Garza in her class presentation pointed out the similarities of the Gothic noises heard in Sleepy Hollow and Last of the Mohicans, I would like to add the use of “history” as a similarity between these two works as well. Not only are natural element chosen for the Gothic setting because of their constricting nature but also because of there containment of some kind of “history.” This is noticeable in the work of Irving as well as Cooper’s book The “Last of the Mohicans.” As with Cooper the characters in the story travel into a forest, and they will travel into an even more confiding place, the cave that is “forever a secret from all mortal man” (chap 5). The fact that Chingacook describes the cave as being “forever” a secret implies some kind of history in there. To say that, men will come and go but the cave will last forever-- or perhaps even more important, the cave has lasted forever. In order for something to be haunted, it has to have a history and Cooper is setting up the history of this cave early, before it is even inhabited by the characters, and long the exploration of its hidden passages and twisted tunnels. As a past student has pointed out, both Cooper and Irving are able to “achieve the gothic image through the landscape,” even though they are unable to use the “castles” of European romanticism. In this specific example it is the cave that has replaced the haunted castle.

As we have noticed in Irving and Coopers work, history is important when incorporating the gothic. Yet history can also be used in a broader since in incorporating the Romance, even in Representative literature. Consider some of the Representative literature of the time. The one I think most incorporates the gothic would be the speech by Chief Seattle. When Seattle is discussing the differences between the whites and the Indians, Seattle discusses that the difference between the Whites belief in the dead and the Indian’s. “Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity” Seattle continues, “Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being.” If anything is more eerie than someone having a memory of a dead person, it is a dead person having a memory of you. Although this may simply over lap into the grotesque, the Gothic idea of a remembered “history” is still noticeable. Seattle continues, “They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays.” As is noticed, Seattle is forced to work with the same setting, the American wilderness. Although the Gothic ideal is present in this setting (notice the use of “valley” as Irving does) the atmosphere still seems to transcend the Gothic into a somewhat exalted state. Seattle’s use of the vanishing Indian transforms a Gothic principle of the living dead, into more than an eerie emotion, but into an exalted state that can only be described as the Romantic ideal. [BP]