LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 Student Midterm Samples #1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning American Renaissance or American Romantic literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

Eric Cherrie

1.                                               The American What?                  

          My father walks into the room carrying a cigarette in one hand and coffee in the other. He is an airline pilot by trade and works hard, but on his days off he wears a robe and lets his beard grow thick—he looks homeless. He takes an interest in what I am studying, partly because he thinks that is what “fathers do,” and partly because he studied math in college and wonders if a liberal arts education is worth the money.

          “So what’s the American Renaissance?” my father asks.

          I am tempted to tell him that it is a little early in the semester; I have not read enough or discussed enough to be sure. However, that might not go over well. He wants to hear an answer.

So I decide to characterize it in my own way. I believe that the American Renaissance is America’s version of mythology. If we look to the original Renaissance, the “rebirth,” then we see a society stuck in the idealized image of the past. Despite their static view, the renaissance culture flourished into one of the most productive and creative societies to date. A couple centuries later the American Renaissance takes off; like its European predecessor, the American Renaissance is arrested by the glory of the past (especially our genesis narrative). We were a country founded on Greek principals; therefore, we were North America’s Greece, only better. America had something Greece and the European Renaissance lacked—Romanticism. Romanticism was the response to the hyper rational Enlightenment period. Romanticism describes not what is possible, but what ought to be possible. As a result, the American Renaissance creates its own uniquely American version of Greek mythology.

I start of by talking about Poe; my father knows a little, mostly what they teach in high school. He does not know Ligeia, but it is easy enough to explain to him. I tell him that this is gothic literature. Gothic literature in some ways represents the foil to Romanticism. Take for instance, the biblical narrative of the angel coming to visit Mary in Luke’s Gospel. The angel is a Hebrew version of the Greek Hermes (the god of revelation). It is a rather Romantic experience: the hero’s announcement.  Conversely, the “angel of death” or “grim reaper” or “death personified” is the gothic version. Rather than coming with good news—you’re going to have a blessed life—the angel comes with bad—I am going to kill you. Poe works in the same manner. While his contemporaries, like Emerson, imagine worlds where man becomes one with nature, Poe depicts the way man can conquer nature (death) simply with love. While that notion is romantic—love is eternal; Poe portrays it in a literal way. Poe describes Rowena’s return as, “The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead, once again stirred—and now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopelessness than any.” Rowena has literally defied death because of love. It is almost impossible to not think about the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus goes to the underworld to save Eurydice; however, he fails to retrieve her. He looks back even though he is told not to. Where Orpheus fails, Ligeia’s lover excels; he never looks away from the goal. He remains true to love. Thereby, Poe has written an American version of Greek mythology. Though, his version is even more romantic because love does conquer death.

Walt Whitman continues in this tradition. In his poem “There Was a Child Went Forth,” Whitman explores the idea of shape shifting. Whitman writes, “And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became.” The obvious connection to Greek mythology is to Proteus. While I have never read a myth involving Proteus, I understand him to shift into the object a person fears most in order to escape. Proteus is able to tell the future; if you can hold on through your fear, then he will tell it to you (Nick Flynn uses Proteus in his newest memoir: Ticking is the Bomb; I recommend it). Furthermore, free verse poetry is in its early roots; Whitman solidifies this new form with his poetic style of lists. He names of several different things the boy becomes. This is similar to the way Proteus turns into several different things in order to get away. However, Whitman’s poems are far more appealing. The child is a literal interpretation of the future. He changes according to the thing around him. In essence, while Proteus changes to avoid capture, the boy changes to become one with the world. It is incredibly more romantic.

The last connection I would like to make is between riddle poetry and the use of riddle in mythology. During the American Renaissance, Poe and Dickinson are writing riddle poetry. While riddles are common to all cultures at all times, it is interesting that two of America’s finest poets are writing in this form. In class we focused on Dickinson’s “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass.” The connection I have made is with the Oedipus and Sphinx riddle. Oedipus is not allowed to enter a city until he answers the Sphinx’s riddle. Likewise, Dickinson’s poem is a riddle that most be solved. Dickinson elevates herself to the level of the Sphinx. We cannot begin to understand any of her poetry until we get though her riddle.