LITR 4232 American Renaissance
Sample Midterm Answers 2006
Sample Answers to Option X
essay
(literary / formal)
Romantic literature is most commonly described as women’s literature in the form of romance novels, but the classic notion of romantic literature involves the love of nature. It emphasizes feelings over rationalism. More importantly, romanticism deals with the nature or beauty of a situation rather than the functionality of a situation. American Romanticism allows audiences to immerse themselves into aspects of America’s past which they will never be able to visit otherwise.
One of the elements of romantic literature involves the use of the gothic. The term gothic comes from the idea of gothic architecture in which there is a mixture of light and dark as a result of pointed arches. As indicated by JL’s 2004 midterm, this kind of architecture was traditionally seen in the castles and old cities in Europe, but when the Europeans came to America, there were not castles or old cities. As a result, writers had to invent a way to create the gothic atmosphere in their work. Washington Irving effectively created the gothic in the forest in his Legend of Sleepy Hollow. As indicated by Michael Luna in his research project of 2002 (also used in Melissa Jones’ web highlight), “An aspect of the English gothic that Irving keeps is the use of ghosts and superstition. [. . . Irving] makes the forest seem alive and makes the shadows play all sorts of tricks [on] Ichabod’s superstition-filled mind.” Irving takes the beauty of nature “which [Ichabod] had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon” and transforms it with “the very witching time of night” (11). This is evident in the description of the “enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all other trees of the neighborhood” (11). The limbs of this tree were “gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air” creating a picture of arches and light and dark (11). In fact, the description of this tree is gothic, but it also enters into the realm of the sublime because it becomes “larger than life.”
In addition to the sublime being “larger than life,” it is also defined as “a brush with the supernatural,” as so eloquently stated by classmate, Kate Barrack. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl, she discusses Truth’s brush with the supernatural when Truth “met God” (2604). Truth believed that Jesus sheltered her from the heat of the “burnin’” bright light that seemed to “[go] through” her (2604). While this encounter is definitive of the sublime, the later knowledge passed on to Stowe’s reader confirms it when Truth explains that she “had never been told about Jesus Christ” (2605), therefore, her experience was, indeed, a brush with the supernatural. While some would say this is religious propaganda, it is nevertheless, a sublime experience as it is described.
Another form in which romantic sublime is used is in the idea of transcendentalism. Sarah Margaret Fuller is a good example of an author who weaves nature into literature to create the form of transcendentalism. In Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century, she combines the romantic with nature and God in an effort to promote women’s rights. Fuller imagines women having “every path laid open to [them] as freely as to Man” (1705). This statement by itself is romantic, but Fuller does not stop here. She follows this statement with a prediction that if women were allowed the same freedoms as men “we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty” (1705). This is the nature and beauty of the romantic form of transcendentalism. She, then, contends that “divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres would ensue” (1705). Fuller cleverly inserts a brush with the supernatural through asserting that “divine energy would pervade nature” resulting in “harmony” between men and women. In this brief passage, Fuller accomplishes the form of transcendental romantic sublime.
In conclusion, when romanticism came to America, it arrived through nature as a means to convey its essence in many forms. It is visible through the gothic and the sublime. In the process Transcendentalism was born, furthering the use of nature in American writing. Irving, Stowe and Fuller creatively and effectively utilize the various forms of romantic literature to create timeless, classic works of art. Perhaps the fact that their works never die is also a reason they are considered romantic – they connect readers to a time they would never experience otherwise. [JO’G]
The birth of classical American
Literature can easily be traced back to the formation of the transcendentalist
movement of the mid-nineteenth century. Prior to this, the bulk of American
Literature was crafted in a manner that would appeal to a broad audience
(popular literature), but was not very intellectually stimulating. In a 2004
mid-term, [BL] postulated that, “the founders of America successfully formed a
political divide from England, but never an intellectual one.” The formation
of that divide, which encompassed religion and philosophy as well as politics,
was the creation of transcendentalism. Transcendentalism, as a school of
thought, is very difficult to define. In its simplest terms, it is an elevation
of the individual to a higher plane via the recognition of the connection of man
and the natural world to the Divine. This is very similar to idea of Romanticism
and many of the conventions are the same. However, transcendentalism is more a
school of thought than a literary movement. America was, at this time, a new
nation, and this movement was designed to help man in his quest for discovering
a new and unique mystical and intellectual energy. The works of authors such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller exemplify the
transcendentalist spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, Nature,
emphasizes the idea of a “universal Being” that ties all things in the
universe together. Of the three writers mentioned above, his work is the most
recognizably Romantic. He focuses on the relationship of man to nature and to
God. Emerson blends the concepts of religion and philosophy in order to
transcend conventional nineteenth century thought processes. He challenges his
readers to view nature not only intrinsically, but what it is in association to
mankind. In addition, Emerson uses elevated and poetical language to emphasize
the beauty in transcendence.
Henry David Thoreau takes Emerson’s ideas and
extends them to the political world. Thoreau argues that the true nature of
transcendentalist thought should be applied to the American social
consciousness. In his essay, Resistance to
Civil Government, he suggests that the rights and responsibilities of the
individual transcend the individual’s duty to adhere to governmental
regulation. He expands upon the premise put forth by Emerson in, Self
Reliance by stating, “I think that we should be men first, and subjects
afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as
for the right.” Thoreau advocates
resistance to, and/or refusal of governmental dominance over the individual if
the individual deems that government to be acting in a way that intrudes upon
the rights of the individual.
If Thoreau’s ideas were radical then those of
Margaret Fuller must have seemed almost fanatical. In Woman
in the Nineteenth Century, She proposes that the ideas of self-reliance
(Emerson) and individuality (Thoreau) be extended to include women. It is her
belief that the whole of humanity transcends gender assignations and
restrictions, and only by allowing,” inward and outward freedom for woman as
much as for man” can this be accomplished. She believes that women should be
judged as individuals and not as a communal unit and she stresses that women are
as spiritual (if not more so) than men and by denying them rights is to,
“impede the soul.”
The movement that was labeled Transcendentalism
did not survive the nineteenth century in any organized arrangement. However,
the seeds that were planted during this time period influenced the landscape of
the nation. Literarily speaking, the creation of transcendentalism serves to
expand the conventions of Romanticism and marks the birth of classical
literature in America. Authors like Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller sent an
important message to the rest of the literary world: America has arrived! [WW]
When language is inadequate to describe an object the reader is taken into the realm of the sublime. This realm stimulates the ideas of pain and risk. This idea is on such a massive scale that sometimes there are no words to describe these ideas. Irving, Cooper, and Stowe commonly use the realm of the sublime within their text to give the reader awe-inspiring emotions.
In the forest Ichabod is faced with is nature at its worst and here the reader can observe where the gothic and sublime meet. The trees in this gothic forest Irving has illustrated have become Ichabod’s enemies. Irving describes the trees as “huge, misshapen, and towering” making both Ichabod and the reader feel like the trees are too big to escape. The objects become larger than life and are “like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler.” These gothic massive trees have become something that embodies the idea of the sublime. In comparison, Cooper also meets the two ideas of gothic and sublime in the forest. “The pleasure and pain aspect is key in the formation of sublime writing. Cooper, just as Irving before him, mixed the forest into something that is both scary and beautiful at the same time.” [JL 2004] Heyward believes that the trees have morphed into his enemies and they are watching their every move. Cooper describes the trees as becoming real and massive which is a sublime aspect in the text because he personifies the trees into something they will never be. “The elements of the sublime are revealed in ‘…twenty times he fancied he could distinguish the horrid visages of his lurking foes, peering from their hiding places, in never-ceasing watchfulness of the movements of his party.’ The forest seems to take on human form here, which would be a brush with the supernatural.” [JO 2006] Both main characters in the two authors’ text feel incomparable to the “human-like” trees. . . . [AB]